May Painting

Rough month for painting this May...

I had it all: personal problems at home, traveling for part of the month, busy month at work, you name it!

On top of all that, I had the one dreaded problem we all face from time to time, Painter's Block!

Whenever I did have a few minutes to sit and paint, I tried, but stared blankly at my troops. Grr...

By the start of this weekend, my tally of painted models stood squarely at "zero." Fortunately I managed to get some last minute inspiration and painted up a few ECW troops that had been sitting on my desk since last month.

I still failed to hit my goal of 10, but 7 is a lot better than 0! I painted all of these guys over the past 3 days. They are not great but once they were flocked and on the table top I couldn't really tell the difference between them and the last batch.

Also painted up a preacher. After reading the Donnybrook rules more closely I actually can't use him in my list... but I'm sure I'll figure out something to do with him!

May Gaming

Kept on truckin' with our Mordheim campaign this month. Managed to kill one of the Lizardmen's Saurus heroes.... hehehehe!

Serves them right for turning my henchmen into pin cushions. Here's a pic of a whole group of Skinks lining up their shots through a tunnel and into my henchmen.





And an aerial view of the whole battle.




There was a demon guarding a magical artifact inside the temple. Fortunately for me, my Chaos Magister was able to posses the demon and use him to attack the Lizardmen!





Once the Lizardmen all got engaged though, it was tough going. I would have been toast if most of my troops hadn't already gotten upgraded to have 2 wounds. This is counteracted by the fact that all of the Skinks have gotten upgrades to get 2 attacks!



Once he defeated the demon and took a wound off all of my troops, I turned tail and ran!






In addition to getting in another Mordheim game this month, I also made it over to my buddy's place to see a full size game of Kings of War.

This game is all the rage now with my local gaming group and has definitely taken Warhammer's plae since Age of Crapmar came out.

I definitely want to to try it out. It looks like fun. That being said, I think I totally prefer skirmish games overall since I'm such a slow painter. Not sure I'll get up the nerve to paint an army for this game. Might motivate me to finish painting my Warhammer armies though! I have half painted armies of Lizardmen and Vampire Counts. I also have huge, mostly unpainted armies of Empire and Bretonnians, of which I've only painted up a few units. The rest of my armies are still in their boxes :(

 



This game was Empire vs. Dwarves... the Dwarves were mostly unpainted, so they got the beating they deserved!

The Empire troops were nicely painted though, so their victory was a foregone conclusion:

April Painting

Just barely managed to get my 10 model goal in last month.

Already doubting I'm going to make this month!

Last month was a big focus on fantasy stuff... mainly Reaper Bones and some more Wizards and Apprentices for Frostgrave games (by Copplestone Castings).

I also painted up a Skink Chief on a Cold One for my son's Lizardmen warband in out Mordheim campaign... Had to do it! He bought one and I had no model to represent it. Perfect excuse to paint one.

I have been sitting on at least a dozen of the old Skink Cold One Riders from before Games Workshop GOT RID of Skink Cold One Riders for Warhammer in the Lizardmen Army List.... I remember being angry when that happened - although, in hindsight that seems like a small gripe compared to them killing the ENTIRE game system and universe! Haha.... Oh well. On to Kings of War!

In addition to my fantasy stuff, I realized on April 30th that I was one model short of my goal and had only completed 9. I whipped up one more with a one-day paint job, and in the process, also kept it from being a 100% fantasy month! Now I can say I made progress on my FIW project last month too.

I found an old captive from Wargames Foundry's Pirate range in my closet, and he looked like he'd be easy to paint up quickly, and also a perfect model to represent a captive in various 18th century game scenarios!

April Gaming

Wow... all of April went by with no Blog updates! Fortunately that doesn't mean nothing was happening. I actually got in some painting and some gaming.

It's been a tough year so far to get any games in with my local gaming group, but fortunately I have been raising my own in-house wargame opponent for the past 10 years.

Even though I haven't gotten together with my buddies, my son and I started a new Mordheim campaign this year. He is playing Lizardmen (he ALWAYS takes Lizardmen!) and I am trying out the Possessed.

I painted up this Possessed warband a while ago for one of my buddies (who likes to play but doesn't paint) to use in our annual campaign, but I've never actually played them until now. They are pretty awesome! With some lucky rolls, I've got almost every model in my warband up to 2 wounds. Ouch...

Although the Lizardmen recently got quite a boost too: After searching for just one game, one of the Skink Chiefs has located a Cold One mount to ride into battle. We had to put the campaign on hiatus while I painted that one up :)

Here are some in-game shots from our games...

Starting warbands:





Battle is joined!




I also managed to get a game in of Pirates of the Spanish Main with my daughter. As much as I hate to admit it, my kids would probably love the X-Wing game that is all over the place now. Last thing I need is another game to focus on!