Reviewing how September went

 

I've finished painting the "Mutant Marshes" scenery pieces. I got these in a Kickstarter run by WilhelMiniatures. They are delightfully awful, and I'm very happy with the awfulness I've managed to instil into the paint jobs.

I'd tried some off brand undercoat in these that had not gone at all well when I'd used it on some Terrain Crate. I wasn't sure if this was a problem with the undercoat or the Terrain Crate plastic, so I gave them a solid base coat of Wraithbone before I painted them up using contrast paints. After the first round of contrasts, where I wet blended the green and purple, I did a bit of drybrushing to add more texture before finishing up the details such as the fingernails and the weeping sores.

To give you an idea of the scale of these things, here's a couple of heroic dwarfs facing off against a strange abomination in some corrupted dungeon.

I'm working my way through the Dungeon Fiends Starter set, having started with the ooze man. I was playing around with the techniques I learned in the Roman Lappat painting tutorial. I don't think I've quite gotten it right yet, but it was some good practice.

The troll is also coming along, with some basic colours dropped in to start working out what he's about. He's not done, by any stretch, but I'm pretty happy with the start of his colouring. I think I want to make his belly paler before I start building up the detail.

I was finding that while I've got one of the Dungeon Fiends done, I didn't get as much of a "happy success buzz" as I usually do. I'm unsure if its because I wasn't quite happy with him, or because as he's part of a group, he's not "finished" until the group is.

In case of the second, I've pulled out a few single models that I can do some nice simple paint jobs on in between the Dungeon Fiend project. I'm keen to up my productivity over the winter, and a few smaller wins to keep me feeling like progress is happening during the bigger projects seems to help quite a bit. Ideally, I want to get at least one project and two small things done in October.

I've already got enough models assembled and ready for paint to last me over a year, so my mental plan for October is to avoid start assembling anything new. I am part way through assembling my Nomad Gator TAG for Infinity, which I intend to get put together so I can try it in some games.

With the new Space Marine Codex out in a couple of weeks, I've held off from getting a learning game of 40K only to have to learn some different things in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, hopefully I'll get an Age of Sigmar game in before the end of October.

I am getting kind of keen to try painting some Games Workshop models - probably some Astra Militarum or Inquisition models I already have lying around. BUT, on the gaming side I want to get a game in, and on the painting side, I want to have got a bit more space cleared by finishing painting miniatures. Also, I still have, half assembled, the Gator, the Battletech starter and the Frameworks Kobolds, which shows the danger of starting (and failing to finish) yet another project. So, finish some models, clear the decks, then a new and fun thing...