Thursday, January 10, 2013

2013-01-05: Month 1 Day 0, Surveying the Legions

About 6 years ago I got back into the Warhammer hobby after having drifted from it during college.  I picked up some Bretonian and Skaven models and slowly started painting of them.  I suffered from the "Ohh! Shiney!!" affliction for the intervening years and flit from army to army as the muse strikes me, often getting models to 90% completion before picking something else up. While I have a mostly complete Skaven army, or it was mostly finished before 8th Ed generated the need for a metric rat-ton of additional slaves, I still have ranks upon ranks of primed or bare plastic troops waiting to be painted.

When Ben Curry of the Bad Dice podcast announced his idea for a Hobby Challenge where participants committed to paint a unit a month for fame and fortune, i.e. a chance at a prize drawing and a few comments on a blog, I decided to jump in in order to get one more army completed.  And while I was at it I thought I would make a hobby centric blog to record all my hobby efforts.  Hopefully, these will provide me the incentive to be more regular with my painting and to actually do the last 5% on some of my projects.

For the Hobby Challenge, I decided to try finish an Empire army.  I have finished some test units in the past for Stirland army. The theme being a force of Stirland troops pushing into former Sylvania territory to purge it undead and beastmen and make it habitable for colonists. I was drawn to Stirland since I like the fluff and the colors match that of my home state of Vermont. With my home state as an inspiration I decided to use snow bases and snow shoes.

The army list will likely be a big unit of halberdiers , inner circle knights (Knights of Morr/Order of the Black Rose), a stank or two, some demigryphs (using bears instead), and lots of archers.  I might also do a unit of great swords.  While the internets tell me that I should be running one big horde of either the halberdies or great swords, I will probably do them in more manageable blocks to give a better chance of completing a unit in a month and to prevent boredom.

While tracking down the great swords, I came across a loss box of ogres.  Mmm…. ogres…. I was tempted to get onto the Big Gut Bandwagon tm, but I decided I like the Empire more.  Also, the Ogres seem a bit of a cop out since a unit could be a whole 3 models.

Here are some of my works in progress that are probably too far along to count for the challenge.  The first photo has an engineer, a death wizard, and several artillery crew.  The second photo is a unit of outriders.  I started that unit a year ago and got to the mostly done stage and there they have languished.

2013-01-08 23.40.19 Painting Challenge Day 0 2013-01-08 23.40.35 Painting Challenge Day 0

 

The next three photos document some of the units I do intend on painting for the challenge.  The first photo has a cannon and crew, a warrior priest on foot, and a warrior priest mounted.  The second photo is 20 swordsmen, and the third is a ‘volleyball gun’ ;).  The later will be my entry for January as I think it should be easier to complete in the remaining time for January.

2013-01-08 23.40.47 Painting Challenge Day 0 2013-01-08 23.41.04 Painting Challenge Day 0 2013-01-08 23.44.13 Painting Challenge Day 0

 

Going forward I will also be posting photos as projects are worked on.

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