I took my miniature for this month's painting contest to the store today. The shop owner liked the spikes on the base. I asked him what sort of gaming goes on in the shop, and he told me that the games played there are Dungeons and Dragons, Warmachine/Hordes, and the Star Wars CMG. None of that really appeals to me, so I'll probably just keep entering the painting contests as long as they keep holding them. I picked up a miniature while I was there today. It's one of the barbarian-types, Lars Ragnarson. I had to get out the pliers, as his axe was bent all the way around his head. The axe handle straightened out pretty well.

Today I looked at my shelf of "ready-to-paint" miniatures, the pile of bare-metal figures scattered around my desk, the partially-painted unit of Battle Nuns on my desk, the boxes of unassembled figures scattered everywhere and I came to a conclusion. I have a large pile of unpainted lead (and plastic). I am hesitant to count it, but it's probably in the 200-figure range. At my current rate of two to three figures a month, that's like 6 years of painting. I think I need to paint up a couple of Clanrat units or something to make myself feel better. Actually, if I could just get through these dangblasted Battle Nuns I'd probably explode into tears of joy.

I've finished my contest miniature up, and will probably be taking him to the shop at some point during this week. The pics may have some glare on them as some spots on the dullcoat are still wet. I left a gloss finish on the metal parts of the model, but brushed dullcoat over the gloss on the cloth and wood. Since this miniature is in a rather boring pose, I spruced up the base a bit to suggest that he's standing behind some field fortifications waiting for a battle to start. I modeled the outward-pointing stakes after the ones in the last photo I've posted.

I hope my model does well in the contest, as there is going to be a drawing in June for Reaper's Deathsleet dragon model. Each contest entry is good for one entry in the drawing, and each contest victory gets an extra entry in the drawing, as well as a free miniature for the next contest. Nothing gets me going like a chance at free stuff.

I've finished my mini for the April contest and placed him on a base. I didn't have time to take any pictures today, so I'll probably finish him up and post some pictures tonight.

I did a little more work on my contest miniature this week. I finished his crossbow and his gloves. I also started on the cloth portions of his clothing. At some point I'll finish him up, hopefully in the next day or two.

I've been wondering if I still want to build my Warlord armies up. Reaper just announced that they are cancelling the 3-packs for grunt-type soldiers and moving to singly packed figures or "army packs" of 9-11 figures. The problem with the single-packed figures is that Reaper took the best-selling sculpt of each grunt type and only sell that sculpt in the single packs. The problem with the army packs is that they cost approximately $40 each. The price point on the 3-packs was perfect for a standard visit to the hobby shop ($12-14) and the 3-packs usually contained 3 different sculpts, so you could build up a unit of soldiers that didn't all look exactly alike.

On the Reaper forums this move has been met with a lot of resistance from casual gamers (like myself) and people who like the 3-packs for games and painting outside of the Warlord hobby, but there are a few hardcore Warlord players who are quite adament that Reaper is doing the best thing for the customers.

The price point issue has been a major issue of debate, with the hardcore players saying that they'll just save for an extra week to buy the army packs and the impulse buyers saying that they'll just buy something besides Warlord figures. I fall into the latter camp. $40 falls into the "planned purchase" category for me, and so I'll probably be buying from other companies with the $10 or $15 purchases that make up the bulk of my hobby spending. Also, how many hobby shops will take a risk on a $40 pack of miniatures that they can't be sure they'll sell?

The problem with getting only one sculpt in the single blisters has also been discussed. The fanboys say that if you really want variety, you can just order single minis directly from Reaper's online store. I have two issues with this. First, one of the selling points of the army packs was that they cost less per model than the smaller packs. That's true, but a lot of people don't need or want 9 or 11 figures of the same type. And ordering the singles through the online catalog is a lot more expensive per model than the army packs or the 3-packs. My second issue with the "order from Reaper" solution is that it bypasses the local hobby shop. This may be good for Reaper in the short-term, but taking business and foot-traffic from the already hard-pressed hobby shops will probably be bad for them in the long term.

I like the minis and the army concepts, but the price point and extra models I'd have to buy for the army packs are putting me off in a big way. For me, Warlord is a cool game that I can pick up a couple figures for every once in a while when I don't have any paints or other figures I need. I just can't justify planning my purchases around these new packs when I have other projects with higher priority. So Reaper is going to lose my business on the Warlord end for a while until they get this sorted out.

In other news, we had a nice visit to my parents' house tonight for Easter dinner. There's always good food to be had on the farm.

April Contest WIP

I've started working on my entry for the April Painting Contest. Yesterday I did a basecoat and ink wash on his armor. Today I highlighted the armor and did basecoats on a couple of details.

Just in case you were wondering, the video in my previous post stems from a thread on The Miniatures Page. Someone posted a link to a different version of that video, but I did a search and found a more complete one that captures every awesome piece of choreography.

I tried out my proposed method for varnishing minis on my contest entry by brushing on the satin finish, waiting until it dried, and then brushing on the flat finish. It seems to have worked, although it looks like I've had a couple areas where the flat finish gobbed up a little into a sort of spiderweb pattern. I'm not sure if there was some sort of contaminant on my brush or if I used too much varnish or if I just haven't made sufficient offerings to the paint gods this month and gobby varnish is their punishment for me. It's not too noticeable, so I'll probably just leave it as is for now. I can't bother with it too much as I need to take the mini in to the hobby shop tomorrow. I didn't get it turned in today as I slept in a bit and mostly just had time to get to work.

Painting Contest Mini Completed

I've finished up the base for my competition figure, and I'll probably take it into the shop tomorrow. Now I've got to get pumped up and finish the Battle Nuns.

My Painting Contest Mini

I've pretty much finished the painting of my miniature for the local shop painting contest. I am not extremely happy with it, but I don't think I have time before the deadline to bother with starting over. I don't really like the way the skin turned out. I worked at it for a long time, but I never really got it to be the right colors and it's ended up looking pretty chunky and uneven. The face is a mess. Everything else went pretty well as far as painting at my current skill level, but I've been looking at lots of pictures of expertly-painted miniatures lately and it frustrates me to compare them to my own work. I need to learn some blending techniques and also learn to be more patient so I can use more coats of thinner paint. The only thing I'm really proud of on this miniature is that I stepped outside my comfort zone and did a little bit of freehand on the hem of the cloak. Hopefully the spackle on the base will be dry tomorrow and I'll be able to finish the miniature off. Then it will be on to finishing my unit of Battle Nuns.

I didn't work on any miniatures this weekend as I had my little brother over for Saturday evening and Sunday. We played a rather simple D & D scenario. We each played two characters and I did double duty as the GM. Things moved pretty slowly as we are both learning the rules, but it was a lot of fun. We killed a lot of kobolds and lizardmen, collected a bounty, and have a couple of hooks for the next adventure. We also managed to roll natural 1's on our d20s approximately 50% of the time. It was such a good time that my wife said she might want to try it out sometime. I'm hoping to have enough miniatures painted to play a game of Supersystem next time he comes over to visit.

I just upgraded my blog to the new Blogger. I'm not sure what it means, but one neat feature is that I can add labels to my posts so readers who don't want to hear about my real life can just read wargaming stuff or look at pictures of my minis.

Speaking of photos, I meant to take some WIP pics of the Battle Nuns today, but as usual my camera battery was dead and I did not take any photos. I really haven't done much on them. Last night the paint on their faces dried and smoothed out quite a bit. They don't look nearly as bad as they looked before. They're not great, but the faces are certainly wargaming standard. Today I painted their sleeves and got a pretty good basecoat on their habits/tabards. Once I get a few more layers done on those, I'll just have various metallics and straps to paint. I hope it goes quickly because I have a project with a deadline coming up.

I went to the hobby store in Nampa today (Team Dewey Toys and Hobbies) to check out the details on their Reaper Mini of the Month painting competition. This month the subject is Wizards. To enter, you have to buy a Reaper wizard miniature and paint it before the 25th. Then they judge the contest and whoever wins gets a free mini for the next month's competition. I looked at the entries from last month's contest and I feel pretty good about my chances. I do need to learn to paint better eyes. There wasn't much selection at the store, so I narrowed it down to a couple of minis. My first choice had already been painted by someone and I didn't really want to do a repeat, so I got this mini instead. I think her hair and the unicorn head on her staff should be a fair challenge, but I should be able to do a fine job of painting her and hopefully place well in the contest. I need to get the Battle Nuns done and off my desk so I can get started on her. I only have twelve days, and I imagine the time will go a lot faster than I want it to.

I went to the doctor's office for my first therapy appointment today. I didn't really feel like going as my back feels fine now, but there are outside forces that must be obeyed occasionally, and She Who Must Be Obeyed wouldn't let me just slide on this one. Before doing any stretching or whatnot, the therapist hooked me up to some sort of electrical stimulator that supposedly relaxes your injured muscles.

He said, "I'm going to turn it up and you let me know when you get a comfortable tingling in your back." I let him go a bit too far and my back seized up and I made a gurgling sound, so he dialed it down a bit and handed the controls to me, along with some instructions on how to run the device. Then he set a timer for about 15 minutes and left to take care of some other patients.

I looked at the screen on the controls and saw that the device was set at 48, about half-power. I got to wondering how high I could go with it, so I turned it up to 60. My back tightened up and my arm twitched a bit, so I took it back down to 50. Then I decided to try 70 out. My back came off the table a little and I snorted a little before I took it back down to 50. Then I got to thinking that I couldn't just do my time without finding out what 100 was like, so I pushed it all the way to full power. It was pretty exciting, so I decided to see how long I could hold it there. My back arched all the way up, my arm was really shaking, and I was making funny noises and sweating from my forehead. Then I heard the therapist say he was going to come check on me, so I dialed it back down and returned to normal.