Prepping the Next Batch

I have a lot of miniatures. I'm always buying more. Part of it is because I like the appearance of them or get a good sale or gifts. One of the things I've been trying to do, unsuccessfully to a point, is cut back on actual miniature purchases. While I'm still picking up brushes, paints, bases, textures, and other bits I'm trying to hold back on new minis.

This has been difficult for me. You see, I love a good looking miniature. While I don't play Vampire Counts, some of the new figures for the range have been fantastic. Really good stuff like the new Krell figure. It inspired me though to get out my old unpainted Liche Master and Nagosh and see if I can throw some paint on them. Avatars of War also has some great stuff up and coming and it requires a little will power to refrain from it.

But in the meanwhile, I still have a ton of unpainted plastic, resin, and lead around so I'm not suffering too much.

The ogres are part of a battle box I bought many moons ago. After I primed them, I noticed some mold lines so went back in. What's worse though is it is really bad primer. If they weren't plastic I might dip them.

The scorpion is for a Reaper miniatures Warlord faction. I hate it. It's not that it is a bad model, but the back legs are separate and the two sets in front of it, and the tail require a bit of patience and glue and as I've mentioned before, I am a bit of a clumsy oaf so glue on the fingers a few times tonight.

To the far right, you might notice a piece of cork with a shield in it. That's for my 3rd Griffin Knight that I've had almost finished for... I want to say three years? The drive to finish him off died when Confrontation went from an awesome skirmish game to some prepainted plastic crap but since I'm now trying to actually finish off some models....

The two red women are the same model from different time periods. One is the old metal model, the other the new plastic. Both hit up at the same time as the other Khador forces. I finished the others first because they were larger and I was able to hit large plates at a time. These two will require a bit more finesse and so take longer and don't hold my interest as much.

So what is everyone else working on? Anyone hold backing on purchases? Anyone wanting to pick up some limited edition goods but holding back? Everyone in overtime mode?

Khador Warjacks and miscellaneous

The warjacks are the plastic/resin from the new set. These are not dipped. The 'interesting' thing is that the initial red primer pokes through here and there. It didn't wear out like some primers do which actually caused a bit of a problem as when handling the model you get 'wear' spots and the red keeps poking through. These figures were much easier to assemble and work with than the classics that I dipped but have some minor flaws of their own. The lack of the Khador symbol for one should've been an easy one for PP to put on the hull of the beast considering some of the details here.

These three... ugh. The first one is something something the White Axe from the Celtos line. The second and third are from Reaper. I'd go into more detail about them but the pics are so hideous I think I'm going to try to take some better ones later and see if I can salvage it. But hey, they're done so that's the important thing.

Painting The Night Away

While I love the funds that working overtime can provide, I found that I put in hundreds of hours of overtime last year and it really didn't improve the quality of my life so this year, instead of going to bed at 9:00 PM every Friday on a regular weekend day or 7:00 PM because I started at 4:30 AM, I figure, I'm going to try to hold down the crazy spending (not all the spending, just the crazy spending) and try to work that overtime only when I have to.

The Khador soldiers in front still just have the basic red Army Painter Primer. The ones in back have got some of the shading I'm working on to try and follow the Khador Army book for getting that 'Khador' red. It's supposed to take something like 14 layers of inking so we'll see how long my patience puts up with that nonsense.

The ones in front will get a quick dip in the Army Painter Strong Tone soon and that will be that for them. Well, I'll throw some basing material on them too and touch up the base, etc... but I don't anticipate any big issues.

If you look to the right of the photo, you'll see I'm still working on that stone giant from my earlier updates this year. He's a pretty good figure and I'm pleased with the way he's turning out so far.

The rest of the stuff is a mismatch of various bits and pieces I'm working on, all at the same time. When it comes to painting I'm afraid I've got really bad ADD because I hate to waste paint and I like the 'shinny'.

As you may be able to tell from my desk, I don't have a single favorite paint but use a lot of varieites. Despite the awesome things I keep hearing about P3, I'll tell you this, I'm using Reaper Master Bronze because my P3 bonze, like the Pig Iron (boltgun metal) I had before it, turned to gunk. Sure, I could post on Privateer Press line and get some more, but it's already the second bottle I've had and to be hoenst, most of the P3 metallics, in my experience, are terrible. Maybe it's because I've gotten bad batches or its old or I need to periodically open them up and check them when I'm not using them all the time but I consider it a lesson learned.

The rest of their paint line is pretty good and for a 'fantasy' range, I like their mercenary colors for 'realistic' style painting.