Going slowly and another Slow Grow

True to my previous declaration, my hobby time for the last couple of weeks has basically been dedicated to painting up my Empire Landship. The fact that it's been that long, and that it's not finished, and that I haven't even really been skimping on time spent on it, is a testament to how much work this has been. It's a very big model...

Still a work in progress, but the worst parts of it are done now. Just detailing and crew to do.

This is kind of what it looks like all over...

This is the single biggest model I've ever painted, and I have gone about it all wrong. The model has a pretty clear wood grain texture on most of it, and the smart play would have been to hit the entire model with brown and then try a drybrush to pick out the detail. I was an idiot and did all the metal after the brown basecoat (at the time thinking I should have done all the metal before starting the brown, because the brown bits were easier to pick out). This left me feeling like a drybrush was likely to undo half my work, and I figured I would pick our all the wood grain by hand. I'm so stupid. It was like, 3 nights' work...

Anyway, the pain of the wood grain is behind me, and I can now focus on the small details that should bring some colour and interest to the model. Most of them currently reside in a messy pile on my painting table.

Ship crew (though not enough of them), a little cannon, a whole pile of shields, and there's a flag that's currently magnetised to the top of the ship. Hopefully I don't miss that.

Once these last details are done, and I have been able to source a base large enough for the ship (it really needs one - the front wheels are already held on by some very dodgy repair work including pins, random offcuts of plastic and part of the tube you get that protects the bristles of paintbrushes), I will then be able to move on. Which is good, because I already know what I need to paint next. Dwarfs!

I had no real plans to paint Dwarfs in the near future, but one of my friends decided we really needed to kick off another slow grow campaign/league thing to help combat all the unpainted resin that is accumulating in our houses at present. The general concept is Warhammer 8th edition, 250 points per month, but the first 2 months are rolled together so we don't have to wave anything around until mid-December, when we should have 500 points to show for our efforts. The plan is to grow things up to around 2000 points over the course of next year. Something like that. 

Anyway, I figured whatever I did would likely wander around as a stand-alone force that would ultimately then be absorbed into an existing army, and I didn't want to focus on Empire again. That left me with plenty of choices, but my Dwarf army has some painfully obvious shortcomings and gaps, and this seemed like a good opportunity to tackle those. Also, I really liked the 8th edition Dwarf book and never felt like I really got a chance to put it through its paces properly (I feel the same with the Wood Elf book, which came so shortly before the End Times). So the plan is: paint Dwarfs, focus on gaps that my overall army will be happy I addressed, and play some games of 8th edition. And then maybe I'll be better positioned to play some bigger games once it's all over.

A number of people have said they would take part in the challenge, including armies of Beastmen, Dogs of War, Bretonnians, Empire, Vampire Counts, Wood Elves... Maybe others. Look, it's early. We'll see who actually takes the bit between their teeth and gets painting. I'll include updates from these other armies when we see them. For now, this is what I think my first 500 points will look like.

Clockwise from the top: 10 Thunderers, Bolt Thrower, 10 Warriors, Ungrim Ironfist (as a boring old Thane) and 10 Hammerers.

It feels like a reasonable amount of stuff. Some of the choices are a bit weird, and will get weirder: 

• The 10 Hammerers have no command, and they never will have. Nor will they likely grow beyond 10 in later months. This is because they're the last 10 old Marauder era Hammerers I have. The other 20 (including command) are already painted. The small unit size has always bothered me a bit, so this is tidying up loose ends. Hammerers are actually beasts with 2 attacks in the 8th edition rules, so 10 of them might even do something in smaller games, but they might start to look silly or even get pushed out of the force as things grow.
• The Thunderers do have command, and are a mix of multi-part plastics and a few Skull Pass models. I only have 20 painted Thunderers at present, so this is an overdue attempt to supplement them.
• The Warriors again do not have command. I was going to start a new unit, but then I realised how much effort I went into planning this first unit so many years ago, and I didn't want to undermine that. I planned a unit of 40 back then, but only painted half of it. So again, I'm playing catch-up.
• I don't have any painted Bolt Throwers. Actually my Dwarf artillery is generally pretty thin, at present. So I kind of have to address that. I'm taking the first step toward that here.
• And finally there's Ungrim - a model I've loved for decades, and who has clearly been ready for paint since the last time I was focused on Dwarfs (apparently 7 years ago based on that other post). It's a bit of an insult using him as a Thane for now, but if it gets him painted, that's a win. He can go on to bigger and better things later.

Anyway, this is currently my plan, and I have just under 2 months to make it happen. And I will start on it soon, but not until I get this Landship done and out of the way. It (like everything here) has waited long enough.