Good evening and thank you for traversing the warp to join me as I present my latest offering to our benevolent Lord Nurgle. I warn you now this is just my thoughts the situation I have gotten myself in by not painting models as frequently as I really should.
With the weather improving and the evenings staying light for longer I have had more draw back into 40k, both the gaming and hobby sides. This started with the release of the new Tyranid kits, I love the look of the flying hive tyrant but have stopped myself from buying it.
I did this because I have an unassembled old style Tyrant with the Alien queen head I got to paint after seeing a friends and preferring it to the current version.
When it arrived it was carefully packed away while I tested colour schemes out and he has sat in his box since. Now it is no secret I like to buy the models that catch my eye and most will sit waiting for the day I find them out and use them for something but this wasn't always the way.
When I first started 40k with my Necrons I painted two battle forces and two Monoliths over the course of weekend so that I could use them the following Monday without being the only player with a grey army.
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| Ugly basing but painted |
As time has gone on playing different lists and armies buying a model and painting it became too expensive and time consuming to do for every unit I wanted to test out. It didn't help that the people I played with felt the same so the bad habit stuck. Model rep became the norm and painting was left by the road side.
Back in the present I have bought reinforcements for my Necrons which are currently boxed up while I play test the units, this makes sense to me as it saves me money on buying a kit twice if I give it the wrong guns or the unit just turns out to be sub par like the Vespids who will hopefully get a boost in the next T'au codex.
However as I played a 1000 point quick game on Saturday I was ashamed to see my force containing a mix of Necrons, T'au and Templars standing in for units I hadn't bought or built yet. This has prompted me to take a step back and admit I need to start working through some of my collection and not just in a basic paint job on everything so I can say it is painted.
Looking at Mighty Simo's latest model it is stunning and I know I can't paint like this and it is purely down to the fact he paints on a regular basis and enjoys it. If I have a game with him I know everything he puts on the table is going to be painted and to a good standard while mine will be grey and most likely include some model rep.
On this I have decided that we have 8 months left until the end of the year so want to set myself a couple of goals:
Firstly I want to paint to completion 24 models. I know this seems a small amount but rather than say a skeleton is 1 model but a terrain piece is 5 everything is going to be worth 1 no matter what I paint.
Secondly I want to reduce the amount I am buying, I have tried buying nothing before and I have failed at it as every so often there will be something I want. To this end I am going to try and only buy a model after I have at least 2 models painted so I am making progress on the pile ( literally is a pile that has taken over the surrounding corner of the bookcase I kept it on).
Finally I want a display cabinet but until I have a decent selection of painted miniatures I am not allowing myself one as I hope this will push my painting skills as practicing is the only way I will get better.
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| Everyone loves Warhammer World's displays |
If I can stick to these goals hopefully I will be on the road to catching Mighty Simo and his painting skills he claims can be achieved through practice and not blood sacrifices to the Gods as I suspected.
I apologise this post has gone on much longer than I had planned but does lead me nicely to my question for you faithful followers of Nurgle.
"Do you play an army of mismatched units before risking your hard earned money or do you paint everything up before allowing it to take the battlefield?"
Until next time remember you are never alone when you embrace Nurgle's blight.
O'Shashar
Ah the old, cant paint/build it until you know its right argument, well its a fair one I have to say but you do fall into the trap of using grey ugly models forever (without the admiral to save you).
ReplyDeletePersonally I usually make a slightly different mistake, I go out and buy loads of things, many of which i then barely ever use (storm raven, guard hellhound, land speeders, guard walkers, wracks to name but a few) so in the end tend to find myself using the right model but with a 99% chance of it being grey due to painting slackness.
With a few exceptions here and there of course for things that either dont have a model (hydra) or are stupidly expensive (hive guard im looking at you).
The painting challenge is a worthy goal and a reward of a new model for every 2 painted could help nicely in getting things done.
It is a problem that has plagued me for a while now and while I buy a lot very little seems to make it to the painting table, with most not being assembled or like my blue tacked together rhino so I could paint the inside easier than the part built one.
ReplyDeleteHopefully this will push me in the direction I need to go but I did write this post instead of painting so could be a long road a head.
One advantage of me having my old, huge WFB army back is being able to downsize to pretty much any game now, so adding new things becomes much less stressful - I know I have some good stuff worked out so I can afford to have some not-so-good stuff in there for variety's sake.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean on selection my T'au, Necron and Templar armies are more points than I use ( especially my Templar which I use the least, not sure how that happened? ) and give me good choice of fielding them but with the new kits being "improved" to make them 5 man instead of 10 for the same price by combining the boxes for troops, which were traditionally cheaper than other slots with elites/fast attack.
ReplyDeleteBefore I would have bought two boxes of 10 and had both options now I had to pay twice as much and with the regular price increase this is a bit of a nightmare as I have tried Tesla for my immortals and liked the additional range when DS as gives me a wider choice of locations to land as well as being more forgiving of scatter but Gauss if I land within 12" gives me twice as many shots and isn't AP- If I need to shoot a vehicle on the sly.
The trouble I have had is while I have a large box of new Necrons I haven't built them as don't want to have them unused. When the army is already covering most bases I like to add in the seldom used units ( looking at you again Vespids ) but with the core of the army essentially doubling in price I would prefer to go back to 10 troops in a box and not have all the spares knocking about.