Breaking it up a bit

It's been a while since my last post. This is partly a natural lull after pumping out my Axemaster tournament report, but it's also because I've been in a bit of a hobby slump recently. After 2 tournaments in quick succession (one of which included a mad rush to get my army ready), I now have nothing on my radar until Cancon in January.

I haven't even acknowledged my abject failure in the Tale of Duelling Gamers yet. The challenge finished at the end of September, and I failed to do anything about my quotas for the last 2 months. In August this was because I was completely focused on the Empire Ogres for Rumble, and then in September it was basically because I was burnt out from the previous month. So I only managed to paint Dwarfs for 4 of the 6 allotted months. In this regard, my efforts were a failure. In practical terms however, I did fine. My output for the 6 months was as follows:

• 20 Dwarf Slayers
• 27 Dwarf Quarrellers
• 11 Dwarf Thunderers
• 16 Dwarf Irondrakes
• 16 Dwarf Ironbreakers
• 12 Dwarf Miners
• 1 Dwarf Cannon
• 3 Dwarf characters
• 3 Ogre Leadbelchers
• 4 Ogre Bulls/Swordsmen
• 1 Ogre Ironblaster
• 5 Ogre Sabretusks
• 4 Ogre characters
• 1 Empire Captain to ride a Pegasus

If I managed that level of productivity every 6 months, I think I'd be pretty happy. So really I don't feel like I failed too badly. I just failed to focus, and didn't spread the load as well as I might have...

Anyway, as I continue to recover from my earlier burnout and without a clear goal in sight in terms of an upcoming tournament, my hobby efforts have been pretty confused and random. I've dabbed some paint on a couple of models, but I haven't produced anything even remotely close to a finished product.

Duelling Gamers - Month 4 Complete

Well, we're 11 days into July, and I have completed my quota for the month. Sounds easy, but in truth I've only just gotten it done in time for Convic.

10 painted Dwarf Irondrakes, ready for battle.

Duelling Gamers - Month 4 Progress

By the standards of my previous months, this update is rather early. Normally I haven't even started painting by this point, but Convic is next weekend and I don't have time for my usual slow start. So with that in mind, here are some painted Miners...

12 painted Dwarf Miners. Technically only 10 of them are part of the painting challenge. The other two are just there because I need them for my Convic list.

Duelling Gamers - Month 3 Completed

Technically we are no longer in June, however I haven't done a Tale of Duelling Gamers update yet, and I've only just finished some of the models. My target was messed about a bit when I entered Convic and committed myself to painting a ton of models in a short time frame, but what I achieved was still pretty close to my original goal.

I had intended to paint the following:

• 16 Quarrellers
• 2 Characters

That was my $100 limit. It got tweaked a bit before I finished the Quarrellers, and this is what I ended up with:

11 Quarrellers, 6 Thunderers (should have been 5, but apparently I can't count to 16 total), Josef Bugman and Grimm Burloksson.

Painting, Irondrakes and Convic Lists

The last week has been a bit of a blur for me, having gotten sick and then taken a long time to recover after getting ahead of myself and regressing. I think I'm on the mend this time though, which is good - because I suddenly seem to have a lot of work to do. 

I haven't entered a tournament in almost 6 months now, however I have been planning to enter Convic. I say planning, but really I gave it little thought until I realised that lists were due yesterday, and then had to suddenly scramble to work out what I was going to do. I did indeed enter, and started to think about lists. If Face Off is anything to go by, there will be about a million Wood Elf armies at Convic, and plenty of other Elves as well. I didn't want to be part of the problem, so decided against using Elves. I also figured I would be likely to get shot at a lot, so wanted an army that wouldn't just get picked off as it jogged across the table. That ruled out the Ogres I have available, and Orcs were not likely to be much better. And then I didn't want to use Empire again, because I've done that enough for now. 

So I am using Dwarfs. This feels ill-advised given that the only other time I took Dwarfs into a tournament, it put me off using them again for years. But they do have a new book and some new tricks, and it seems that plenty of people still don't really rate them. And I'm busily painting them anyway, so why not?

Turns out the answer to that "why not?" question is that I am an idiot, and incapable of fielding a list that makes use of the hundreds of painted Dwarfs I have already accumulated. So I've submitted a list for a tournament in 3 weeks, and it has 40 unpainted models in it. What is wrong with me?

The army as it currently stands.

Duelling Gamers - Month 3 Progress

I've been a bit slack with my Tale of Duelling Gamer updates this month, but that doesn't mean I haven't made any progress.

My plans for the month have me painting another 16 Dwarf Quarrellers and 2 characters in June. Having not particularly enjoyed painting Quarrellers last month, I can't say as I was enthusiastic about this plan, but I stuck with it because it will give me a substantial regiment for the army. I will worry about the characters later, assuming I have time.

Rather than just paint up another 16 of the current plastic Quarrellers, I decided that I wanted to do something about the fact that I might want to equip the unit with great weapons. The normal models really don't allow for this at all, so I decided to work with some older plastic Dwarf models I had acquired - the multi-part kit from back in 5th or 6th edition. The one where the models carried great weapons of crossbows on their shoulders. It seemed like the perfect solution - they had both the weapons I was looking for. 

A few older Dwarfs, each armed with crossbows and great weapons.

Duelling Gamers - Month 2 target complete

Over the last couple of evenings I've had some more chances to paint, and I've now completed the Slayers, and with them my overall target for May.

5 Troll Slayers to add to my growing unit. I think I'm up to about 30 in total now.

Duelling Gamers - Month 2 Update 2. And the odd Griffon

May continues to tick by, and happily I have continued to make some progress in terms of painting. Nothing dramatic, but I'm now most of my way through my quota for the month after finishing the second wave of Quarrellers. 16 models down, just 5 Slayers to go. Seems very achievable.

The full complement of 16 painted Quarrellers

Duelling Gamers - Month 2 Update

We're nearly halfway through the month, and my progress has still been fairly limited. Having said that, I have now completed 8 models and there are only 13 more to go, so it still feels more or less under control.

As I say, I have 8 models done now. The first half of my Dwarf Quarrellers are finished, and I can now move on to the other batch. I am not overly excited by these guys or how they turned out, but they'll be fine and I'm certainly not unhappy enough with them to go back and change anything. And to be honest they look a whole lot better now I have painted the edges of the bases and added some static grass. Funny how that can make a difference. Maybe it's just because I know they're not finished without that.

8 completed Dwarf Quarrellers, in the unfashionable combination of green and orange

Duelling Gamers - Month 2 Commences

We are already 9 days into the second month of the Tale of Duelling Gamers, but my progress has been modest thus far. This is not great news, given I've actually had 2 of our regular Painting Nights to work with, and I don't have a ton to show for it.

I considered revising my target for the month when I realised I had planned to paint 5 more Troll Slayers after painting 15 last month, but in the end it was easiest just to stick with my original goal. So here are some shots of my current progress, and my monthly target as a whole.

Proof that I have been doing some painting. Also proof that sometimes I decide to use some questionable colour schemes. Too many units across too many different armies...

Duelling Gamers - Month 1 target complete!

Well we have nearly a week left to go in the first month of the Tale of Duelling Gamers, but my target for the month is complete! This is very pleasing given how long it took me to get working on my quota, but it's a tribute to how small I deliberately made my target. Turns out I was slightly conservative in what I thought I could get done, but I still had to apply myself.

The final few models for this month are as follows:

This is the old Dwarf Queen Helga model, which appeared as part of the Grudge of Drong campaign supplement. Her face looks a lot cleaner when the camera has not zoomed in so unforgivingly upon her. You'll just have to take my word for it. Stupid clear photos...

Duelling Gamers Progress II

In recent days I've managed to find a bit more time for painting, and my progress is starting to improve. I'm still working on the Slayers, but I've got more of them to show this time. Lots of pictures, not a lot else...

8 more painted Troll Slayers, including a standard and musician.

Duelling Gamers Progress

It seems to be a pretty universal theme for this Tale of Duelling Gamers that progress for the first month has been slow. Nobody shot out of the blocks, and most of us have not offered a lot of updates. Here is a bit of a list of how people are going:

Owen (Terrain for Hippos) has just about completed 8 converted marauders
Nick (Den of the Eternal Youth) has posted some WIP marauder horsemen
Rupert (Not about to grow up) has displayed some (still mostly white) Dwarfs
Nick (Carrot and Stick) has a regiment of undercoated Eternal Guard
Chris (Moruya Marauders) has announced his intention to paint Grave Guard
Pete (The Breathless Host) has decided how to paint his Dryads
Justin (Holiday Hobbyist) has been assembling Orks

All in all, for so many hobbyists, it's really not a lot of progress.

Well, I do at least have a few painted models to show. I made my usual mistake of starting to paint most of my monthly quota at once, before realising what I was doing and pausing most of them in order to complete a few of them. So behold, I have a few painted slayers!

4 completed multi-coloured Slayers. The orange one is a normal Troll Slayer (they will all be orange). The rest of them will probably see some use as characters.

Learning new angles

I haven't been making much hobby progress recently, but I do have something slightly different to report. Over the last couple of weeks I have taken possession of a tripod and remote for our DSLR camera. The hope is that with these additional tools, I will be better equipped to improve some of my photos. 

Specifically I am hoping to get better at taking wider angle shots - shots across the battlefield that take in more than a couple of units, and put more of them into focus. As far as I can tell, this means playing with something called "aperture". I don't truly understand how it works, but in practical terms it seems to mean spreading the camera's focus over objects at a range of depths. It also means leaving the shutter open for a really long time. When I crank the setting up to 32, the noise between the shutter opening and closing is something ridiculous like 20-30 seconds. As such, the tripod is obviously essential - nobody can hold a camera dead still for that long.

Anyway, I had a bit of a play with my new toys and thought I'd share my progress thus far.

This shot was taken at aperture 32. The 3 rows of models here are about a foot apart from each other. So although it's not the best shot, I've got things 24" apart more or less in focus. Given how enthusiastically the DSLR normally focuses on a small point to the exclusion of all else, this is a dramatic change.

Army photos have proven challenging with the new camera. Fiddling with aperture (32 again here) seems to help. Oh yeah, this is what all my painted Dwarfs look like at this point. Yay!

Busy busy busy

April is shaping up as a busy month for me from a hobby perspective. The Tale of Duelling Gamers officially kicks off today, however it may well be a few days before I can sink my teeth into it. Then there is the battle report I have started working on. Or maybe that will have to come first...

I have been meaning to do another proper battle report (of less than ridiculous size) for a while now, and on Friday Nick (or Elmo, Cookie Monster, or one of any number of the other muppet-based nicknames he seems to go by nowadays) and I finally got around to organising and playing one. We decided to use Orcs and Goblins against Dwarfs, both of which are actually my armies. Nick doesn't really have an operational painted army at the moment. Go over to his blog and hassle him about it.

A Tale of Duelling Gamers

Anyone who has been following this blog for a while will probably have seen the Duelling Paintbrushes challenges as they came and went. There have been three of them now. Each challenge went for about a month (I think the first one was shorter), and by the end of each one, I had a lot more painted models to show for my efforts. And a slight bout of hobby burnout, truth be told. Trying to painting anything up to 1000 points in a month can be bad for your mental health.

Anyway, Owen has been up to his tricks again, and this time he has organised a slightly less insane challenge - A Tale of Duelling Gamers. Unlike Duelling Paintbrushes, this will be something of a "slow and steady" effort, with the participants gradually painting up a sizeable force over a period of 6 months. It's the sort of thing that most of you will have seen before, with several gamers buying and painting models as they go, working under a monthly budget to ensure everything stays at a similar pace ($200 AU for the first month, then $100 in each subsequent month) .