The Day of Paint

Hooray! Yesterday (Monday) was a very successful day off to 'work' all day at hobby painting. I spent the day doing nothing but working on my Perry Miniatures 'Wars of the Roses' figures, and by virtue of concentrating all efforts on this, I've managed to make some strides forward!

To recap, I have a massive 'to do' pile of 32 bases (10 figures a base, so 320 figures - just for the regular bow-and-bill units.) I have 11 bases done already, which I showed off earlier as my Basic Impetus Yorkist army. So, 21 bases to go!

There's two approached to painting a large project, I find: break it up into small nibbles and fully complete a section at a time; or do the whole thing as a mammoth one-off and try to do the whole thing in one batch. I find the first method is best at the early stages, just to avoid getting discouraged. Towards the middle stage of a project, I find that it can actually get worse as one completed 'chunk' goes away and gets replaced by yet another identical 'chunk'. After a while, it's good to switch to a huge pile, so you can see the entire thing and think 'yes, it's a lot to do, but once this is done, that's it!' My WOTR project is now at that stage, thankfully!

I have been painting away at all the un-showy, laborious and off-putting jobs, which have now been swept out of the way. Specifically:

Green bases - never again shall a paintbrush undercoat the lush grasses of Medieval England for these guys!

Steel - all arrowheads, sword hilts, bills, sallets and plate armour are done. Blacksmiths across England have filed for bankruptcy!

Flesh - the hands and faces are done, meaning that when the police investigate the aftermath of a battle, the photofit people will at least have somewhere to start. (Assuming the 15th century had the photofit. Or the police.)

This metaphor is getting even weirder.

The end result of this dull-but-worthy painting is that I'm now on the downhill - only materials like liveries, leggings, etc. remain, plus some detailing on belts, etc. Then it's all done, save for the dip/varnish finish!

There's a plan in place...

Just a brief post here, to say I'm underway with a quick-fix bit of gaming (board game, as it happens - I'll post the narrative sometime soon.) However the main update is that I have arranged for the next Monday to be a day off work, and I intend to spend it on a massive painting binge for my Wars of the Roses figures. Hopefully I can get a big bound forward with them by devoting an entire day to it!

Gaming Quick-Fix Options

Thinks have been a bit quiet here on the wargaming front. I've been dividing my attentions between the Wars of the Roses figures and the growing Waterloo Plastics project. I need something that's a bit more of a 'quick hit' for a gaming fix. I've done a little towards this with my old stand-by option of my Seven Years' War collection, which I've launched into a little mini-campaign with (I'll spare you the full details as they're on my other blog) In any case, it's proven a nice refresher.

So, what else is there? As ever, I'm long on ideas but short on resources (money, and particularly time.) So I have to fall back on what I already have or something I can do with only counters or something similar I can make easily enough.

I aim to continue with the other two, and root around for something else. I was wondering though if any other wargamers have come up with an ingenious solution to this sort of quick-fix problem, where every project threatens to be a monster-sized epic, and nothing can get done in the here-and-now?

Prussian Guns

The final outstanding arrival has turned up - two boxes of HaT Napoleonic Prussian Artillery. These ones were quite difficult to find, and I wound up ordering from America through ebay International. Fine service, although shipping took quite a time (obviously) and also the box was battered & squashed (thanks, postman!) Thankfully the packing the sender used, plus the soft & flexible plastic fo the figures themselves, meant these guys were practically indestructible. Only the boxes got a bit crumpled!

Now I can get on with some serious painting - there's not been too much model-painting recently, sadly, as I had a bit of a DIY disaster here and most brush-wielding efforts have been directed at the walls of the flat! Still, I'm hoping to get some work done this coming weekend - and possibly even a game!