Paints, Masters and Skyrim

It seems to be a fairly common thing for bloggers to drop off the radar for a bit, then reappear in a gush of apologies and a frenzy of catch-up activity. Well, this is me doing much the same thing. Admittedly, I wasn't gone for all that long - however, it is still the longest gap I have left so far in my postings. Real life caught up with me a little bit, and I had to spend most of my spare time preparing for a presentation I had to do. Thankfully that is out of the way now, so maybe my blog can enjoy a bit more attention...

So, what have I been doing? I have a number of things to update, so I'll put it all under some relevant headings.

Masters preparation

The Masters are this coming weekend, and my army is not yet ready. I am still in the process of painting 22 Halberdiers to pad out my regiment for the tournament, and they have a way to go yet before they will be done.

The Halberdiers progress gradually. Since I took this picture, I have added a basecoat for the white half of the uniforms to most of the models.

The lists for the other players in the tournament have been revealed, and the peer-based comp scores have been determined. You can see the lists here, on WargamerAU. It's a tough field, and in hindsight I think my army is not structured ideally to face some of these lists. This doesn't really bother me, but the proliferation of chaff was not something I had anticipated. My comp score of 3/5 is one of the better scores, so that is something. Whether it will serve as adequate compensation for what some of the armies may do to mine... Well, we shall see.

Reorganising the paint station

I am one of those fortunate hobbyists who is able (allowed?) to maintain a permanent painting table in the house. Being able to do this saves a lot of time when it comes time to paint, and also makes it more likely that I will actually sit down and do it in the first place. The table is also large enough to accommodate a couple of other people, as happens on an almost weekly basis at Painting Night. 

Or at least, it would accommodate that many people comfortably - if it wasn't such a cluttered bomb site most of the time. It seems to be the default dumping ground in the room, and there are all sorts of bits of mail and other junk all over it, covering piles of models, parts of models, and tools used to turn models into parts of models (or the other way around, I guess). Then there are the lamps, paints, brushes, putty, glue, random sprues, and general hobby paraphernalia all piled in a general heap.

In the interest of improving the situation at least a little bit, I decided to get some shelves to attach to the wall over the table, where I can pile my paints and other stuff. It won't fix the problem by itself, but it will help. I found some ridiculously cheap shelves at IKEA, and set about attaching them to the wall. Turns out part of that wall is so bowed as to almost be round, but I coped alright.

My new shelves. Yes, there is a table under there somewhere. It is, errrm... out of shot. Yes, that's the problem. It has nothing to do with the pile of junk on top of it. Nothing at all.

I'd love to tell you that I have solved all my problems with these shelves, but it would be a lie. In truth, I think I am going to buy another 6 - put another row underneath the ones I have already installed, and another column to the right. Then at least there will be room for all my paints. Those shelves there are double-stacked and 2 paints deep, but still I have plenty that didn't fit. Oh well, I'll get it sorted eventually.

Paints in the Mail-strom

I recently decided to put in a fairly large paint order from Maelstrom Games - where I was sourcing almost all of my purchases, up until the GW embargo came into force (and I've bought almost no GW products since - go figure). I ordered a pile of empty dropper bottles, some heavy pigment paints, and a range of interesting colours, all from the Vallejo range. I also spotted the enormous pots of wash you can get from the same range, and decided I would give them a go. The price was right, after all.

Unfortunately, when my shipment arrived, it looked like this:

My box! What happened to my box??

I'm pretty sure that pot of wash is not meant to have a special window seat for the trip over from the UK.

The carnage revealed when I removed the plastic (and the offending pot of wash)

It turns out the black pot of wash had leaked in transit, and the leaking paint had softened/devoured the box. The plastic bag the whole thing had been wrapped in was Australia Post's doing - they had managed to get it all together, seal it up, and attach a note explaining that my parcel had exploded spectacularly. Amazingly, nothing was lost - the entire order was present when I went digging. Obviously not all my wash was still in the pot...

The sinister pot of wash, somewhat depleted, and wearing part of my poor box as a hat.

I contacted Maelstrom to warn them about the dangers of these pots, so hopefully they can check the lids or tape them shut in future. They are also sending me a replacement, because they're awesome. All in all, I've been pretty happy with all the parties involved.

And my other main distraction...

OK, so all the stuff about that presentation I had to do was true. However, it has not been the primary destroyer of my free time, so much as the main reason I have been busy at work and not been able to update the blog. The main culprit for my free time at home being devoured has been a certain game called Skyrim. I had been looking forward to the release of this game for many months (years?), and couldn't help but rush out and buy it shortly after release.

Priorities... Skyrim asserts itself over my poor painting queue of models.

I have not poured countless hours into the game the way some people will have, but that is largely down to me not having that many hours available. I have played it about as much as possible, and I am enjoying it. I will have to put it aside until next week though, or my feeble efforts at preparing for the Masters will be completely derailed...