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A productive year! Good stuff, and while you can't really see it in the big group shot, I think your quality has also gone up a lot this year! Keep it up!

Very good work Nev. Not only prolific but I can see that your technique has improved as well.

Shouldn't there be a biker captain in the pic from last year?

Either way, the consistency is great! roughly the same amount painted. And tbh, it's quite a lot of models. You should feel proud!
And I will echo the comments about the quality going up. I think the monthly challanges has a bit to do with that. Gives you a reason to try a new technique.

Thanks all. Last year I just barely made my 1-a-week goal, and that was with a little fuzzy bookkeeping. This year I was a little ahead. I think it’s an achievable pace, even for people busier then I am. And it makes for a decent pile at year’s end. 52 models, even with counting vehicles as 4, is a full army. And when I was batch painting basic troopers, I was kicking them out at a much higher pace. If there is someone at your FLGS who is not adverse to painting, but is daunted by the pile of stuff, I’d suggest it to them. It’s a workable goal, and gets results.

Looking at the two pictures I’m also struck by the variety I did this year. 2014 was mostly blue, with only a handful of things in alternate pattens. And it’s not just the Eldar that’s different (and even they had the basic red/black and the rangers). Partially entries into the monthly comp, but also guys like the dwarf. Much more diverse stack of minis.

Zambro, the bike captain was back in 2013. I don’t think I did a year-to-date picture that year, as I started my blog halfway through it. If I think about it, I’ll sift the early part of the blog for what I did, and my fuzzy memory for the part of the year before documentation, and grab everyone for a shot. Just for posterity.

Edit: As I run the third batch of candied pecans through the oven, I figured I’d re-post a link to last year, where I shared all my non-classified recipes. Wile you guys are too far flung a bunch for actual baked goods delivery, I can share virtual cookies. Bake a man a cookie, and he will snack for a day. Teach a man how to bake a cookie, and he’ll put on 10 pounds. Except all you darn teenagers with your damn high-gear metabolisms. Your time will come...

Happy holidays all.

Ahh man... He was longer ago than I thought... You're right about the variety, too. When you paint for an army, you always run the risk of getting bored with the repetition. The Eldar give you a consistent secondary focus and the occassional 'other' mini helps too!
It helps a lot too that you already have loads painted for your Ultras. You dont 'need' to paint X unit for Y list - you already have options.

A productive year I see. Good work Nev!

Excellent work this year Nev, can't wait to see what you get up to next year.

Great stuff Nev!

And just to prove that I’m still at work, even with all the distractions:


Should have all the blues done on the librarian. Needs the brown wash, then a detail pass. Some of the accessories need a bit more work. Sword blade needs doing, and a few more details on the head. Plus the blending on the robes. OK, he’s still got a ways to go. And time is running out. Tomorrow is pretty much a lost day; family Christmas up here with the in-laws. And next Wed we drive down to Kentucky for a week. So if I want to finish him for the end of the month, it needs to happen soon.

Eldar bike needs one more coat of red, then the blacklineing. Plus the seer at some point

I’m done with all my holiday shopping, still need to do a bit of wrapping. I have to say, one of the perks of having the 4x8 foot table in the basement comes up at Christmas: so nice for wrapping presents. Down to 2 batches of cookies to bake. They are labor intensive ones that need to be rolled out and cut. But I’m almost done with that. If I have the energy I’ll bake a stollen for tomorrow, but that’s iffy. I’d like the holidays more if they weren’t so much damned work. It’s like a slo-mo train wreck that starts sometime mid-November and disgorges my shattered caracas sometime in early January.

OK, enough griping, back to the kitchen with me; butter should be softened by now.

The librarian is mostly done, just needs his base finished. I glued a rock and tuft of grass on, so once they are set I can go and flock it. Will grab final pictures after.

Eldar bike is done, and I put the first coats of red down on the seer.

I need to bake off one more batch of cookies, and then they are done until phase two

Christmas with the in-laws was not nearly as painful as it could have been. Next step in the holiday hit parade is a ~14 hour drive, and then just making sure The Wife doesn’t kill my dad. They don’t see eye-to-eye on a number of things. Not that I do, I’ve got more experience ignoring him and not letting it bother me. But at least when I’m down visiting my folks, the only thing I need to do is mitigate family friction. It’s a big job, but only one thing.

And back to baking. Hopefully pictures tonight or tomorrow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And done. Both with the librarian, and the baking.





Not quite happy with how the robes turned out, but overall pleased with the guy. And he finishes up the librarian matrix:

Bike w/force sword (magnetized)
TDA w/ force axe and SB
JP w/Forcestaff (magnetized)
Foot w/Forcestaff & auspex

Very nice work on the biker, especially the face. You're going to give Knightley a run for his money on "clean and crisp" at this rate!

The face looks great! As does the white shoulder trim. Looks smooth!

Looks nice! Regal as any ultramarine should be. Great use of that head as well, far and away my favourite bare head in existence

Love the Biker Librarian. Makes me want to start on my own. Good work Nev.

Thanks guys. In general I think I'm a bit hard on myself. If I had painted that librarian even two years ago, I'd be stoked. Now I'm kinda meh. Part of that is knowing I've done better, and should be able to repeat that work. The other is the ultra zoom pics to show all my flaws. Sometimes I wish my photography never got any better.

I'll be afk for about a week, so no real hobby updates. Just short sporatic posts when I can get some quiet time away from the chaos.

Wishing you and yours happy holidays.
--Nev

Well, we are almost done with 2015. Time for some year-end review. First, a quick look back to what my goals for the year were, from last year’s review post:


1 - Fail. I think I put abase layer down on 2 arcoflagelents, and then shuffled them to the back. In fairness, my friend hasn’t played a game all year IIRC, due to work scheduling and health issues. So not a lot of drive to get these done. If I want to view this a little more loosely, I did paint the monk for a different friend.
2 - Fail. I was doing fine until I picked up the BaC box. Otherwise, pretty good.
3 - Fail. Yup, big 0 progress on this one.
4 - Progress! While not everything, I did get some work done here. Everything I paint for a challenge gets based, and I’ve done up a few squads.
5 - Progress! Spare arms for dreads, a few backpacks, tank hatch. Still a bucket of bits sitting there, but it’s at least shrinking.
6 - Success. Solid win here. I’d have to go back and check, but IIRC I passed the more games then last year point over the summer.
7 - Success. I’m a good blogger, and made my 1-a-week goal
8 - Success. If I use wargear heavy option, I have 1k in new paint. As the goal was for the army, I can count some of the older painted stuff, like the falcons, viper, and guardians.

So this year, we have 3 wins, 2 partials, and 3 fails. Compare to last year’s 1/4/2. More fails, but also more wins. I’m OK with that.

Here is a list of what I had on deck to do, with color commentary.

Overall I got a lot of those things done. I think my primed pile is bigger this year then last, so my to-do list is quite extensive. There is so much stuff, that I can’t just list everything primed as a “What to expect to see in 2016” list. Things that I think I’ll defiantly want to finish:
At least one full squad of BaC Mk. IV marines, possibly all 3.
The BaC characters, dread
Vindi
LS
Bike techmarine.
5 sternguard
More Eldar. I want to get paint on at least 2 full squads, preferably more.

Building is going to be more sparse. The pile of on-sprue shame is actually quite small.
5 BaC terminators
10 Bac marines
1 SM bike
1 Eldar bike (old)
Some Eldar guardians, weapon platform
3 legs to build marines

Of those, the BaC is going to be built, the other stuff might. The guardians, if assembled, might be gussied up to try to pass for more dire avengers.

Things on my to-buy list. Which is still very fuzzy, and unlikely to happen. I’d be more likely to spring for an unknown new release then pick up old stuff.
1-3 Whirlwinds
Stalker/hunter
LRC/R
Scout bikes (Would be nice to have a larger squad a/o field 2 squads.)
Cents (I know, they are kinda ugly, but the rules....)
Eldar Fire Prism

Another thing that might happen is that I may strip some of my old RTB01 marines (and possibly a few other old guys from the BA) and work up a second battle company.

As with the last few years, I’m going to recycle my old goals. Just a few tweaks this year (modifying 8 and adding 9):
1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IG HQs .
2 Paint more then I buy.
3 Make a display board for my army. I've had the sheets of foam insulation waiting to be carved for years, never get around to it.
4 Base my army. Someday this will happen.
5 Paint my spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options.
6 Try to get more games in.
7 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week).
8 Get my Eldar army to a larger level, 2 more full squads minumum, with viable 1,500 or 1,850 point lists being stretch goals.
9 Enter and finish an entry every month for the painting challenge. If the monthly challenge stops, enter at least one comp in the year. In addition, paint something odd from the back of the bench a/o try out a new technique every month.

--Nev

(There are a few more end of year things I want to add, but they require more time and I’ve been at this for a bit now. I may edit them in later, or just do another post later)

That's a solid bunch of goals! Also a great reflection, mate. Looks like your keeping track of your hobby astonishingly. Might have to second you on the painting comp goal

 lipsdapips wrote:
That's a solid bunch of goals! Also a great reflection, mate. Looks like your keeping track of your hobby astonishingly. Might have to second you on the painting comp goal

Thanks. On the topic of keeping track of things:

I just went over my year end picture with a calculator and Battlescribe to get a points tally. As there are some partial squads, the numbers are a little fuzzy. I went with a how I’d play it point total, so things like ML2 on the librarian, etc. Mostly WYSWYG. The Eldar side came out to exactly 1,000 points. I think I spent a few more points on the Autarch then I did on previous reckonings, and counted the foot seer with staff as Eldarad, as that’s the most likely way he’s going to see the table. Marine side came in at 1,224 points. Total new paint for the year: 2,224. Plus some odds and ends, including some fantasy stuff and spare bits.

A year ago I posted this:

8,323 points by rough count. Few spare minis that can’t find a squad, but not many. Looking back a year ago (pretty close to exactly) I had 6,508 painted. So that’s about 1,815 points of fresh paint in a year. Of course, some of that might be organizational. I painted a few sergeants, which might have allowed spare heavy weapon guys to form up into dev squads. I’d have to see if I kept my notes from a year ago to double-check. I wonder if I have enough unpainted plastic to push me to 10k? I doubt it, but would be fun to check...

So I painted more points then last year, not surprising as I did finish more minis. If my math is correct, that’s 9,547 points worth of Ultras. I should do a full count of stuff on the shelf, rather then just adding up stuff from my year end pic. But I suspect that this year will see me pass the 10k mark. Should be fun!

Insane amount of ultramarines, never change Nev

Looking forward to your progress this year!

Wow... That's a lot of points worth of minis. 2200ish is quite a solid amount of points. Especially when you think that it came down to 1 mini a week.

A nice round up of the year. Don't worry about not painting more than you buy. The BaC box more or less blindsided that goal.

I think you should start working on a display board! Almost 10k of ultras is practically begging for a display piece to go with it! Call it 20 minis and aim to finish it by the end of the year. 20 minis is the equivalent of 5 months. If you worked on it through out the whole year, and dropped you actual mini's painted aim to 32 you could get both the 1 mini a week and display piece goals!

I think it's a great list of accomplishments and a great list of future projects. Going to be very enjoyable to see you work your way down next year's hobby trail.

Getting the display board is on the list, as always. If I can find my foam cutter, I might actually get started on it. It would be nice to put a “Done” or at least a “Progress” next to it at the start of 2017. That goal has been rocking the Fail since I started the list.

I just finished up a full census of painted minis. Turns out it’s a little lower then I estimated. 9,389 points of Ultramarines. And a bit of that is not legal. Battlescribe was flashing up all sorts of error messages. But by doing things like having dev squads with 6 heavy weapons, I was able to count the guys on the swap shelf a lot easier. Eldar I just counted the old painted stuff, and came up with 1,095 points of old minis. As the new paint was an even 1k, that puts me at 2,095. I didn’t bother to count partial squads for them, so things like the 2 swooping hawks and 3 spiders didn’t get counted. Plus the harlies, which I might actually be able to get a valid squad out of.

Not included are any of my old dust covered forces. But also left out are the slightly more likely to see the table things like my ADL w/quadgun and the Vindicare assassin.

Part of me wants to tally up the points worth of stuff in the primed pile, but I think I’m mathed out for the day.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends.

--Nev

That's still a respectable pile of marines, especially that it's painted.

That's a whole lot of Ultras, I'm impressed. Do you intend to have your Eldar get anywhere near that mark?

It is a huge pile, and no, I have no intentions of letting the Eldar get that big. But then, I never intended the Ultras to get that big either.

If time and money were no object, there would be a few things I’d want to pick up. Another few tanks(falcon, a WS or two, FP), box of the new wraithguard, and a modern wraithlord. I’d love to add some squads of aspect warriors, but am not going to pick them up in finecast. In an ideal world, I’d have one squad of each, to be able to swap them around.

So I guess I could add another 1-2,000 points or so to the Eldar, But that would require GW to put out a bunch of new kits. But even then, they’d be half the size of my Ultramarines.

I think I have ~500 points primed and awaiting paint, so that’s defiantly happening. Eventually at my glacial pace.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, just did a little inventory and math.

Eldar:
9 jetbikes
4 swooping hawks
5 dire avengers
6 fire dragons

516 points primed. This is not counting the bikeseer that is a WIP, for another 100ish points.

Ultramarines:
TDA captain
3 pa captains (2 old, 1 BaC)
MM, GC devs
5 scouts
6 sternguard (3 c-meltas)
Techmarine on bike
TML speeder
Contemptor
Vindi
3 LotD
20 BaC tacticals

That comes up to about 1,614 points.

Unbuilt Eldar is maybe 100 points of guardians defenders
SM have the rest of the BaC box (5 terminators, 10 tacs) and 5 sniper scouts I keep forgetting about. So probably a little over 400 more points.

You have 2,000pts of models already primed ready to paint?

 Adamski Alders wrote:
You have 2,000pts of models already primed ready to paint?

Yup. I normally try to keep a decent amount squirreled away for the winter months, when I can’t prime. This year was a little odd, due to the very mild Nov/Dec. I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to get to the BaC box until spring, but was able to get ~800 points more added to the pile before the winter hit. Points/primed is also not the best metric to work with, from a painting POV. From a hobby standpoint, there is not that much effort difference between a scout trooper and a TDA captain. Whereas rhinos/pods cost the same points as a basic marine with a heavy weapon, and take far more effort. The gamer in me does like to track points though, so I can get an idea of how large my armies are.

And because it’s been a while since I’ve pictured it, the pile:

I think your primed pile is a little bigger than mine but I've been counting on using the airbrush to prime if I'm just unreasonably productive

Wow, that's an impressive pile ready to get painted.

Nice primed stockpile. Looking forward to see what 2016 brings from you, sounds like you had a decent total for last year. I'm planning on documenting what models I complete this year for that sweet moment of reflection!

EDC