Plans for August

Maybe it will help me to get painting if I list specific goals each month rather than just shooting for 10 models.

So here goes: This is what I'm hoping to paint this month. It's an aggressive goal, but the year is more than half over and I have to kick it up a notch!

A large unit of French Marines:

Some Thugs for Frostgrave:

Although I've been on a Bones binge with the Kickstarters, I had been collecting Reaper's metal models for years before Bones were ever invented. These guys are a few from my pile. It was nice to see the level of detail on them after painting nothing but Bones fantasy models lately!

Here's the important part:

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July buying.... the LEAD PILE GROWS!!!!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of the size of my lead pile and try to stay disciplined with keeping my painting output steady and reducing my buying so the lead pile stops growing so quickly.

This month was a terrible example of lead pile exponential growth at it's worst.

I painted 10 models, as per my stated monthly goal for the year. That's the good part...

Unfortunately I BOUGHT a lot more than that. It was a perfect storm, with my once-in-a-lifetime trip to Historicon (and it will definitely be once in a lifetime, unless it moves from Fredericksburg!) combined with a sale at Wargames Foundry.

I ended up buying two army deals from Foundry, that's 44 packs at roughly 7 models each... 308 models there.

I also joined the "Old Glory Army" at Historicon and bought 4 packs there. That might not sound too bad, but their packs are 30 models each. Yikes. Another 120 troops.

Add in a few odds and ends from the show, and my lead pile definitely grew by over 500 models this month. AAAAAHHH!

I thought I would add this funny picture of the packaging that Foundry used to send me one of my army deals. This sack was almost 4 feet tall, and as big as multiple sacks of potatoes... I put a 28mm model in for scale. Very odd!

July painting

I got 10 models finished this month... largely because they had all been started last month!

Something tells me next month is going to be a tough month because I haven't managed to get anything started yet... usually I am working on a few things at a time, but I literally just put the varnish on my 10th model today and have to start August with a blank slate. Fortunately I had time to prep some models and prime them at least!

Without further ado... here are the results from July.

The French & Indian War got some love again and I finished off my characters from the Last of the Mohicans. 

Natty Bumpo, a.k.a. Hawkeye, La Longue Carabine: the man himself!

And with his foster family:

For FIW I also got my drummer painted for the 35th Regiment. Still need to paint up the two standard bearers and then a Grenadier company for these guys.

It's a lot of damn lace! Happy to be done with this guy.

The rest of my output this month was inspired by the new Frostgrave game. Kept going with some random Reaper models, all Bones material. I stuck with the lipped bases I had been using to paint models for use with Song of Blades & Heroes. 

A group shot of some of the characters; from left to right I am thinking: Thaumaturge, Elementalist, Apothecary, and the last guy can either be an undead construct or an Apprentice for a Necromancer.

Some solo shots:

And my first Baddie for the random monster tables... A Snow/Ice Troll! I'm not sure if I want to do a whole set of themed terrain and models with snow bases for Frostgrave, or if I'll just stick with the rules mechanics in a more generic setting. 

For this guy though I definitely wanted to experiment with a snow base. I started out painting the base white. This looked rather boring.

I tried something new after this and went with the baking soda/glue approach. I'd never done it before; I'm sure I can improve on it but it came out OK for a first shot I think.

Historicon 2015

Up until last year, I had never been to a gaming convention in the USA. I was lucky enough to attend SALUTE in London a few years ago (which was awesome), so I always wanted to try one in the states...

Fall-In and NJCon both got a visit from me. But I had heard the granddaddy of them all was HISTORICON....

Let me just say, the convention was not terrible - but for me personally, it was the let down of the century! First of all, it was the worst road trip of my life getting to and from Fredericksburg VA. And then on top of that, the convention seemed to be no better than Fall-In.

I will definitely not be going back! But I did scoop up a bunch of miniatures and terrain of course.

The game tables were what I was most interested in seeing, but I was a bit disappointed there. There were many of them, but the really spectacular ones were few and far between. I was hoping to see the types of awesome work-of-art gaming tables that I am always seeing pictures of on the Lead Adventure Forum, but I guess these are a European thing! The terrain was much more functional and "tournament table" style, like something you'd see in your local gaming store, for the most part.

I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Flames of War demo table

Some cool winter tables. I was particularly interested in these since I've been interested in doing some terrain for the new game Frostgrave...

More FoW

This guy had a cool idea and did a big "display board" to go with his game. He was putting on a Germantown AWI game. At first I thought it reminded me of a high school science fair project... but then I actually liked the idea. I would like to do the same thing if I host a historical re-fight scenario some day. I spend a lot of time reading, might as well share some info about the battle with my fellow gamers!

New "Flint and Feather" Indian minis... cool.

Someone was putting on a demo of how to do scratch built terrain... I wish there were more tables like the one this guy was building!

Probably the coolest table/game of the convention. A huge Conan-type fantasy city.

Castle by Miniature Building Authority.