Bad Lancer

The static pose Lancer is done, no pics. Not the best paint job in the world. Just need the Centurion done now for the Mangled Metal tournament for Sunday. Technically only enough so I can glue his shield on without blocking access to the rest for painting. Looks like just the right arm and I'll be fine. I can definitely at least get that done prior to Sunday. I may get the whole thing done, we'll see. This brings me to 331 points worth of painted Cygnar.

Hunter Done

Well not exactly done... technically I have to paint black around the edge of the base but close enough. I'm really happy with this model. It's definitely only tabletop quality but in the process I got better at the two brush blend. I used a mixture of two-brush blending and my standard layering though for this mini I went from Cygnar Base to Cygnar Highlight in one
step, then an edging step with some white
mixed in. Quick and easy. Also I need to mess with the formatting on this blog... but right now I'm too lazy.

Hunter WIP

The back pain kept me away from the painting desk but yesterday and today I sat down again. Did a little on my wife's Kaya but started playing with my new Hunter and just ran with it. Thanks to the article from BrushThralls I freehanded the Cygnar symbol on it. I'm pretty darn proud of that. Most of the base coat is on, I'm about to go clean it up then start shading and highlighting.

The Pain

Lack of motivation driven by suspicion of kidney stones. I did manage to assemble my wife's Tharn Wolf Riders and prime them as well as the other models I put together on Friday... but that's about it.

Due to the pain I missed out on a 50-ish mile bike ride, painted nothing,... I didn't even get to play. Hopefully the wife and I will get a game in this week and I'll make it to the store on Sunday to practice with my new 'jacks prior to the Mangled Metal Tourney at the end of the month....

Putting things together

I hate cleaning and assembling minis, however I ordered a bunch of Cygnar in preparation for a Mangled Metal tournament at the end of the month. I fully plan on getting destroyed in it, but I picked up enough models to field a force for it (750 point tourney). The box came today so I started putting stuff together. I got a Defender, and Hunter, and a Sentinel put together so far. I opened my Centurion, saw all the damn pieces and balked. Instead I got my Gun Mage Captain Adept, Long Gunner Unit Attachment, and Eiryss put together.
I really don't like the Eiryss sculpt, thankfully the special sculpt for her is coming. I'm not thrilled about cutting the little triangular "proof of purchase" from my next three NQ issues but I'll do it for the model. Speaking of NQ I managed to pick up every No Quarter back through issue #3... I guess if I had started looking when I initially started thinking of playing I could have found issues 1 and 2 as well...

The Story So Far

Ok... where to start. I've been playing minis games for a good long time, but with some long breaks here and there. The last break was really long, somewhere between 5-10 years. Last year I went to Gencon for the first time... something I've wanted to do since I saw the ads for it in Dragon in the 80s.

In the time that I had been away from the minis hobby there was apparently an explosion in not only the quality of miniatures being produced by companies that were not Games Workshop, but in the ability of hobbyist painters and modelers. I got sucked right back in.

I demoed Wargods of Aegyptus and Hordes that year. I don't remember why but I picked Wargods, it might have been the incredible minis I watched Marike Reimer paint at their booth, to be honest I can't recall. I do remember getting a bit of high pressure sales after my Hordes demo that reminded me too much of GW. However for some reason or another the concepts of Hordes and Warmachine took hold and I ended up buying a bunch of the books, two battle boxes, and two squads. I started painting them but for some reason or another ended up putting them down for 6 months or so, until a few months before this years Gencon. Somehow this time around the painting and gaming took hold.

I've only played a handful of games so far and only one that wasn't against my wife or my friend, who is also a long time minis gamer. A local game store called "Games and Comics and Stuff" has weekly Warmachine and Hordes open play (there was a battle report from there in No Quarter #8 I believe). Everyone I've met there so far seems cool and they have monthly tournaments so hopefully I'll get to play a lot more people regularly.

I'm not a good painter.. hence the blog title, but I'm hoping tracking my progress and what I've painted helps me improve. The idea for a blog came from vxghost on the PP forums. I intend to track what I've painted, assembled, and games I've played. I'm not restricting this to Privateer Press games and I'll probably be talking to myself, but that's cool, it'll help me keep organized.

I also make terrain for fun so I'll probably have terrain entries from time to time as well.

I figure I'll start things off with a few shots of my office. I paint in my upstairs office, I have a horribly disorganized terrain workshop spread across the basement and garage, and we currently game in the dining room.

So this is my painting desk. I was painting in the basement but it gets damn cold down there and I wanted a nice comfortable place where I could spend long periods of time without back pain.











Facing my painting desk is my computer desk. I'm usually streaming XM while I'm painting (channel 44, FRED) and switching back and forth between the computer and the painting desk. I'm a Software Engineer and I write code for fun as well so I can switch tasks depending on which is more frustrating at the moment. Of course it's also nice to be able to turn around and look up some painting stuff easily as well.





Here are a few shots of our game board and terrain: