2019: A year in review

Greetings fellow wargamers and welcome back to Wargamer Ramblings!  It's been a helluva year for many of us in this hobby and in our lives so I hope you are doing well and that fortune has favored you in your endeavors.  It's been a year in the making but here is the last wrap-up post on the journey in 2019 where I resolved to "just try and paint more minis."  I can say that compared with a lot of years in my hobbying career that I did just that.  So grab a nice drink/snack, get comfy, and enjoy this segment on your Sunday morning/afternoon/whenever.

In total, I have painted 235 (forgot to include the 8 Battletech minis on the board) miniatures this year which as a ratio of miniatures to days I have painted the equivalent of a "mini a day" for about 62% of the year!  Compared to my historical average of about 0% I'd say that's a pretty nice change of pace.  So what can I say I've taken away from this information?  Well, earlier in the year I had a personal revelation where instead of relying on motivation I would discipline myself to try and do some kind of hobby-related thing daily.  For the most part, this was painting but there were times where I gamed some, assembled some, and truthfully allowed myself a break from time to time.  I think for me personally this resulted in a lot of painted stuff than I would have any other year!

Now I won't say that I'm a pro-painter or anywhere super-skilled compared with a lot of folks out there, but I like to think that I did improve somewhere along the road here.  I've experimented with some weathering powders, started using contrast paints as a base, and trying out different basing textures.  I think mechanically I've got some work to do on things like edge highlighting as they still end up being thick, but now I'm able to go back and fix them a little instead of just leaving them thick and ugly.  Throughout the year I have learned a lot of valuable lessons and have made an effort to try and be less afraid of new techniques in fear that I'll "ruin the model" and "waste money."  I hope in the end I improved my skills as well, which after 235 models I would hope so!

So does this mean my model queue has been relieved somewhat?  Uhhhhh...........

Not really...

I'll get to that in a second but 2019 was a great year in my hobbying world and I have felt great being able to sit back and complete projects that I have for the longest time let fester in my mind.  Some were new and goal-directed, such as the Thousand Sons for NoVA Open, and others because I either really liked the models or the game, much like the 4 Blood Bowl teams and Shadespire bands.  Motivation does have a use in sparking that "ooooh I should paint X next," but in making sure I actually follow through and complete the project I rely on discipline.  It's inspired me to continue the process of painting and I would be interested in seeing the hobby results in 2020.

So now what does that mean for the blog?  Well, I started this blog at the end of 2015 because I love this hobby and just getting my thoughts out there.  Last year was hobby/painting focused and for my resolutions this year I am still keeping "paint more minis" as one of them.  I also want to try and expand my projects from just minis.  In a couple of recent games I've played I kept thinking to myself "man if only this terrain was painted up. We have our armies painted up but the scenery isn't," and with that, I want to (weather permitting) start getting terrain painted up.  First I have to get a gameplan established but then once spring hits I should have some terrain up.

Also, I have recently invested in Age of Sigmar for real this time as I have purchased a 2000 point set of Ossiarch Bonereapers (hereafter referred to as Bone Daddies).  I've dabbled in AoS models but not the game, however, with the release of these Bone Daddies I have taken the plunge and so with that in 2020, in addition to the paint more minis and paint terrain, I will take a monthly look at my progress in building, playing, and painting up these Bone Daddies.  I am very excited about this upcoming prospect and I hope here in the next week or so I should get to cracking down on assembling some of them for a 1000 point game.

So that's 2019 in a nutshell with pictures of models all throughout the year.  I hope your year has been kind or productive, especially both, and that I hope 2020 is a great year for your hobbying.  What are some of your resolutions this year?  Did you keep your 2019 resolutions for the hobby?  I'm curious to hear what you have to say so leave a comment below and as always happy gaming until next time folks!

Only Two Months Left!

Good afternoon folks and fellow wargamers!  Welcome back to another bi-monthly post from here at Wargamer Ramblings.  As usual, I hope things have been doing well for you all and I hope it just keeps getting better and better!  We are almost done with the 2019 year and the resolution started to paint more minis and so I want to bring you along with my journey and where I am.  Cozy on up with a warm drink and here we go!

So the past two months have been pretty brutal on my painting progress if I am being honest here.  After NoVA Open I came back absolutely drained.  I not only had the post-con drain of hobbying and gaming too much but it was just tiring on me physically.  One of those 'getting older' kind of experiences I suppose, but that's why I didn't do a post-con blog about it.  If you're curious about pictures you can go right HERE.

It was a better experience this year compared with the one in 2018, primarily because I actually signed up for stuff this go around!  I ended up attending roughly half of my events, though I wish I had gone to all of them.  Regardless of the events I missed, the ones I attended were a blast.  I have to say I think I hung around the Warhammer 30k Richmond group crowd the most.  A lot of great people from that group but also some of the best looking armies.  Something about their passion for the Horus Heresy and the stories they wove with the scenarios just really drew me in.  I only participated in one event with them, the Zone Mortalis, but I had a blast and would do it again!

After a week like that, I came back and I frankly didn't start painting again until nearly a month later!  Part of that was a dedicated time of respite from painting and trying to get as much done before the NoVA Open but real life has a nice way of making sure to exhaust you to where video games seemed to have been an easier choice.  This is true, it's a lot easier to go play video games than to do this hobby and sometimes that wins out.  I did spend a good amount of time assembling new models as I snagged some Dark Elves from Greebo games for Blood Bowl.

So when I did decide to pick the brush back up I started off with Warcry's Iron Golem warband.  I had the color scheme in mind: frost exposed skin and metallic green armor!  After looking up some tutorials I decided to give the skin a try aaaaaand...ended up with the Grimace.  Yikes.  I was disheartened but I didn't quite give up (took me a couple days to get over my own frustration) and I somehow salvaged the paint scheme to be less frost and more desert themed.  I think it kind of worked but I'll be honest I'm not in love with the scheme and given the chance to do it again I will try to avoid it.

I think that's ok though which is weird to me. It goes against how I've operated for a long where I treated all models as something more than they really have to be, which is something along the lines of "they have to be perfect because I spent all this money on them!"  I suppose for some that are true but as I've been painting more I've also come to appreciate the process of discovery.  Sometimes it works out in my favor, like those pink Yu-Jing from infinity, but sometimes it doesn't and that's fine with me.  By exploring and opening myself up to failure I ended up with some new skills (e.g. recovering from a bad scheme), experience with new techniques, and an appreciation for other color combinations I would have never explored otherwise.

So after the Iron Golems, I went and started working on the Untamed Beasts and I felt the results were more pleasing to my eye.  Not to say the Iron Golems are not contrast paint friendly, but I felt that you could pretty much do the entire Warband with nothing but contrast paints had some great results with this band.  I also appreciated the models more as I painted them, as earlier I was not a fan of the whole tribal theme.  After getting my hands on them I appreciated the sculpts and that helped the painting process go more smoothly.  I experimented with some other paints, specifically Scale 75 colors, and found that the ultra-matte effect their paints have had an undesired effect on things like cloaks but worked really well on the bone weaponry.

I started working on some Blood Angel Primaris marines but didn't finish them in time before October ended, but here are some progress pictures anyways.

Slow couple of months but I think I am picking back up.  How is your hobby progress coming along?  Let me know what you're working on regardless of the smoothness or struggle it might be and I hope you end up doing well.  We're almost done with this year and the bi-monthly progress report so it should be interesting to see how I did over the whole year.  Well until then folks take care of yourselves out there and happy gaming!

NoVA Open 2019 here I come!

Greetings and well wishes folks!  What a wonderful end to the summer and I hope that your time in the hobby has been well spent.  I will be brief tonight because I am off tomorrow to head on out to NoVA Open 2019!  So I've got some pictures for you all and just a couple of quick talking points, so let's begin!

Right to the point: I met all of my hobby goals for this convention.  That's right, all of those models painted up...and then some!  I hit a slump earlier in the month of July and I think it was because I ran into some problems with the A Song of Ice and Fire models.  Everything I tried just didn't go right.  Priming went bad so then I had to strip the models, which ended up not working as well.  Then the color scheme went funky and so on.  It was discouraging at first but after a small break from painting I went right back and picked up Infinity.

Two Yu-Jing starter boxes later I started on my Aristeia team, managed to paint up some figures for some folks I know, painted up a Battletech started box birthday gift, and here we are: the night before NoVA.  It's a good feeling when you get everything you wanted to painted up and done.  Might just need to get another event to motivate me for certain projects...but we'll see.

Without further ado here are some pics of the stuff I've painted up in no particular order:

It's been a blast painting up some of these models.  My only complaint with the Aristeia models is that the plastic they use makes it annoying to clean off properly.  Still, I feel my progress in knocking out the horde of grey/white/black unpainted models is going well, and I look forward to continuing the trend and seeing where I go from here/

That's all tonight folks.  I must continue to prepare for tonight and hopefully, if I can remember to take some pictures I will share them with you!  Until next time folks game well and happy hobbying!