Too Much Stuff

I went to Portland this last weekend. It was relaxing, but I accomplished nothing in the way of progress on my Alamo prep. Instead, I went to the Nike employee store over at the Nike campus in Beaverton, Or., and bought some new gym and running shoes and workout clothes. That place is nuts! And pretty amazing as they carry all this season's Nike gear at half the cost. Must be good to be a Nike employee.

When I came back from my trip I noticed two things. First, that West Coast Hammertime had a new podcast up so I had something to listen to while at work. Second, and more important to this gaming blog, I noticed my paint/modelling station was looking like a disaster. So I began to clean it. As I cleaned it became more and more clear to me that I, like all of us hobbyists I assume, had tons of models I had not even gotten around to putting together. Here are a few examples of the crap I need to decide what to do with.

 So there seems to be another 20 or so Dryads plus another 20 archers in one box that need to be either primed or painted.

An entire Brettonian army (3000 pts) in various stages of modelling.

An entire box of sprues. They look like Wood Elves, but I am sure there are also some Skaven sprues in there.

Finally, an entire pile of boxes of miniatures and terrain that have yet to be open.

This, of course, is on top of what I currently have on my plate which is finishing two separate 2500 point Wood Elf armies for two different 2500 point tournaments. However, because I get bored easily, I can't just paint one of these armies and then the other. Instead, I have to paint them both at the same time, in various stages and with certain models as I fancy. This leads me to believe that I won't actually finish either army in time, but I am working regardless.

Speaking of painting, I took some pictures of progress being made on both Wood Elf armies. Here they are:

Here's more of that unit of archers from the previous post. I start with a base coat of Scab Red and Dryad Bark as shown here. Next I add a layer of Dwarf Flesh to the fleshy bits which I will hopefully be able to do in the next day or so.

Dryads painted a base color and then washed to add some depth. From here we will highlight up with some quick drybrushing while spending some time to actually paint the leaves and sprites.

A close to finished Drayd. This one has just a few final highlights. Notice the haunting eyes and mouth to contrast with the fall colors. This will be in all my Drayd units. I still need to add the foliage to this one and then start working on its base, but it should be finished in the next few days as well.

Horses! These actually take quite awhile to paint. Each horse is slightly different from the others so that they don't all look exactly the same. Which is important because horses don't look the same in real life and it adds a little bit to army paint scoring from my experience. These horses are in their first stage of life.

This horse is further along in the process almost ready for final base work and a little more definition on the markings to differentiate the five different units that I have planned for the fast cavalry army build.

 Part of squad two (the green squad). These horses have base colors, washings, and initial highlights done. They need to be worked on to bring them to the level of the horse above.

The first finished horse of squad two. The fall base is complete. I need to put together the movement trays so I can put him together with the rest of the unit as they get done.


Now I just have to start getting work done on the riders! This will be a busy couple of weeks.



In other news, I finally got around to purchasing and reading my copy of the new White Dwarf magazine. I loved it and the changes (even though its almost all 40k). I will have a full review of the new magazine for the next post. In the meantime, I need to get painting.