New Year, New Excuses

Yet again, a new year has begun, and yet again, I'm about 3 weeks late with the "hopelessly optimistic resolutions" post. Still, no time like the present, let's get stuck in!

First off, let's see how I did with 2014's resolutions...

1) Keep Painting and Blogging!
Well, I think I can say I've managed this, even if there was a bit of a gap here and there. I'm not above using the birth of my son in March as an excuse for doing less than I might have otherwise, but I'm pleased with what I have managed to achieve.

2) Play some of the games I've neglected
The aim was to play at least two of the following...
The Hobbit - Everything's still in the box, so that's a fail.

Force on Force - Success! I never got around to posting about this (that doesn't invalidate the first resolution, because I say so) but I did play a couple of starter games with Wes. I want to go back to this one, it's an interesting game that's fairly different to anything else I play.

Empire of the Dead - Nope.

All Things Zombie - Sort of. We did play a zombie game for halloween, but used Akula's Rules. It was really the using of zombies that was the goal here, so I'll call that a pass.

Warpath - No, which is a shame as it's a good game.

Kings of War - No. Again.

Gorkamorka - No. But I still keep the faith!

So, just scraped a success there. 

Not too bad then, but I didn't exceed expectations. I've decided this year to keep it even simpler. 2015's resolution is...

I will paint more figures than I buy!

I've just done a very quick tally through my blog posts. I think I painted about 40 28mm models (including two vehicles) and a few 6mm units. But I bought something like 75 28mm models, and some terrain, and some more 6mm stuff. So the lead pile got bigger in 2014! I want to reverse that trend. The Mountain Reduction Challenge thing should help (although I've been failing the "one blog post a week" part of that by a wide margin), but I want to carry that spirit on through the year. 

So far, for 2015, the tally stands at:

Painted: 8 models
Bought: 0 models

But Vapnartak is in a couple of weeks, so it may all go wrong there...

The Faustian Pact

January certainly seems to be motoring on, it's only the 4th but here I am with more painted models!

This time, it's a collection of Volkssturm/partisans with panzerfausts. 

These will be dotted about in the partisan force, to give units the ability to assault tanks without passing an orders test first. In the German list I have the option of taking four fausts in a single unit, so that might make it feasible to actually fire the things. 

Anyway, this will probably be it for the "civilians with guns" painting for a while. I've used my second mountain reduction challenge joker (the first got me some as yet untouched mounted riot cops), and ordered a starter French army, again for Bolt Action. I used money I got for Christmas, so I reserve the right to claim this doesn't count later on!

My hope is that painting infantry all in uniform will be a lot quicker. I have 39 men and a gun to get through, so it would be very helpful to be proved right on that score. 

Stay tuned to find out!

A Token Effort

Alright everyone, strap yourselves in, I'm going to reveal my first completed paint job of 2015. And here it is...

No, the models aren't invisible. These are supposed to look like this.

Three tokens for Bolt Action!

You see, every time I use my excellent and entirely fair partisan force, I hear a lot of moaning about the three bombs that I'm allowed to place on the table. Amongst all the many many whinges of bitter losers, there is one justifiable complaint - despite using all painted models for everything else, I've been using whatever change happens to be in my pocket to represent the bombs. So, I've finally rectified that with these beauties.

I've tried to make these look like "potentially suspicious objects" rather than obvious bombs - my interpretation of these is that they represent areas where the partisans have been up to something, but they aren't necessarily a bomb themselves (hence there's only a 1 in 6 chance of one going off when a unit moves up to it. 

So, I've used whatever bits and pieces I can find to make each token. We have two sticks of TNT... or possibly just some old piping. There's a land mine, or maybe it's just a discarded wheel. And there's the mysterious box - is it empty, or packed with explosives. I'm sure my opponents will have a lot of fun every time I roll the dice to find out!