The Obligatory New Year Post

It's 2017! Well, it will be tomorrow anyway.

This would be the point at which I review how I did against my plans for the year, but looking back I've dicovered that I never posted about my plans for the year, and have no idea what I was trying to achieve. So, er, mission accomplished?

I've also failed to keep track of how many models I painted and acquired this year, apart from a lone post in February with a counter on it. So, adding up quickly, it looks like I got through 158 models. That sounds good, but they're largely 6mm, and I don't have a clue how many I acquired (but the Dropfleet Commander pledge on its own will have added a fair bit to the total). So I have no idea whether I came out in credit or not for painting, but it's safe to assume I didn't.

I did however get one last model ready to sneak in under the wire, so here it is!

It's got tracks!

It's got a trailer!

It's a Lorraine carrier for the French. I'm sure you're all sick of me posting about WW2 French, but that's just tough. I have more of these to paint too, so you can expect some very similar photos to come at some point - almost certainly after some Shaltari spaceships.

Right, so what am I going to try for this year?

Well, it's simple. I'm going to try to make a dent in the lead mountain, for real this time.

My plan is twofold. First - make sure I paint more models than I acquire in 2017. "Acquire" is a deliberately all-encompassing term, so I don't get to add freebies just by not paying for them. If I go to a show and get a free model on the door, then I'll have to paint something to cover it. When the big order I placed with Warlord the other day arrives, that's going to hurt my score immediately.

Second! I'm not going to start any new projects that require me to buy models. What that means is I can still start games I don't already play, but only if I can use models I already have. Ideally, it would mean painting something I already own, and thus reducing the pile.

Now, I'm a natural hoarder, so I do have a vast array of unpainted stuff. There's no chance that this policy will result in my lead pile being wiped out, but I'd settle for a decent reduction. Let's see what happens.

Happy New Year everybody!

Catching up

Right, let's keep this moving - the "New Year" post will be along before we know it and there's a backlog building up here!

My internet connection was broken for a while, so I haven't been able to post this - ahem - vast array of painting that I've completed recently. So, here it is...

First up, some casualty markers for my French Bolt Action force.

I'm intending to use these to denote units that have lost their NCO (since in Bolt Action that leads to a morale penalty, and it's not particularly easy to pick out the NCO models in my force so I tend not to bother). These are Great War Miniatures so they're actually WW1 models, but the differences aren't too obvious so I'm not going to worry about it.

Next! Back to fantasy, I've based up two units of Empire handgunners for use in Kings of War.

These were used in our big Christmas game this year... and to be honest, the less said about that the better - I'm sure Kieron will have a post about it at some point to explain where it all went wrong for the Empire's side...

Ok, so now I'm up to date, except to mention that my pledge for Dropfleet Commander finally arrived! It doesn't quite have everything in it, but I can start putting more ships together and painting them, so you can expect to see more of that on the way!