February painting goals

Well I feel that I did a good job of digging a hole for myself in January, in terms of my painting goals. They were a touch ambitious, but probably would have been achievable had I not been buried in preparation for Cancon. As it was, I fell short. I painted a Volley Gun but no crew, ended up leaving 7 Swordsmen unpainted, and never got to the Celestial Wizard I wanted done. Basically I did what I had to in order to be ready for Cancon, and the rest fell by the wayside.

Not one to learn from my own mistakes, I have decided to continue with the whole monthly painting pledge thing. No doubt I will struggle with my targets once more, however I am now shifting my focus towards things that need to be painted for the big battle at the Gates of Kislev, so ambitious targets are inevitable.

February painting goals:

• Paint the remaining 7 Swordsmen from January
• Complete the 9 partly-painted White Wolf Knights who have been sitting on a shelf for a year
• Paint the remaining 21 Knights Snow Leopard to round out the unit

It's quite a lot of models, however 9 of the models are partly done already, and I have found Knights to be a fairly rewarding thing to paint - they're worth lots of points, they're covered in armour, and they look funny in sufficiently stupid numbers. If I get bogged this month, I suspect it will be because I need to put green stuff cloaks on the Knights Snow Leopard before I can start painting them. We shall see.

In a grand display of industry, I have already started on my February goals. The Swordsmen are done! This is actually a significant milestone for me, because it's the first regiment in my army that I consider finished, including the full complement of Ogre unit fillers. OK, so there is no freehand on the banner or anything like that, but if I get inspired I can come back to that later...

The final wave of 7 Swordsmen is complete

Unfortunately, seeing the unit arrayed fully now, I begin to wonder if there are enough Swordsmen in the unit. The Ogres are more dominant than I had expected, and they make the regular guys look a bit thin on the ground (despite there being 28 of them to only 3 Ogres - far from the worst ratio of unit filler-to-troop I have seen). It could be that units will only look right to me when there are more regular soldiers in there. I guess we will see when I get another completed unit up and running - things like Halberdiers will be in larger units than 40 models.

The completed regiment of 40 Swordsmen, complete with unit fillers

From the top, showing how the fillers mesh in. Maybe they would look less dominant clumped closer together?

And from the back

In all, I am happy enough with the unit. Maybe I will find myself adding some more Swordsmen later, but not in the immediate future. I have Knights to paint!