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Looking forward to seeing those Spartans mate.

Nice Christmas haul btw.

I really enjoyed your painting fest this year with all the flash back models. Very motivational and getting the walk down memory lane was great as well. You definitely deserve to do a fun model every now and again. I seem to keep getting distracted by those, and the deals I get, but they are good to break up the monotony of massed hordes. Will definitely be watching for the spartans

That's a lot of goals Az, I hope you can clear them to your satisfaction I look forward to tagging along and watching the progress!

I've enjoyed watching you blast through all these minis this year, and I love your more "bloggy" posts (I have been known to check out your actual blog as well ).

Good luck with the goals for next year!

Thanks guys - I'm hoping that the goals will be achievable. Given how long it's taking me for the Giant and Be'lakor, I'm not sure if I'll get a big-cool model painted every month, but having it there will hopefully encourage me to do more of them.

Thanks, Boss, while a lot of the content gets posted in both places, I do some other stuff there, and usually have a few more pics of the models as well.

Turns out my "Year In Review" post with all of the pictures is going to take me literally hours to transfer to Dakka because I'd have to re-embed the images and then re-imbed the links into each image - so I'm going to use the time working on getting the first batch of those Spartans finished instead (and hopefully playing some more Max Payne 3)

I'll leave a link here for anyone who wants to look over a year's worth of painted miniatures in one post (with links to each individual entry)

2015's Painted Figures In Review

I love that post. I need to duplicate it. Maybe not for last year, but I need to keep documentation such that I can do it for this year. For sure.

It's a very good set up for keeping track. I got a free calendar from one of the doctors at the hospital I work at, I was just going to keep track of it.

Huh that sounds like a solid way to do it.

Love the goals. Should keep you going strong. Definitely think letting up on massed infantry and doing something special is so worth it. Can really get the enthusiasm going again.

I actually forgot three more goals that I've been wanting to get done:

Minotaurs on the Table – Get 1k points worth of Minotaurs Space marines built, assembled and painted.
I've easily got the models, the scheme is pretty straightforward, and it gets Marouda a 40k army of her own (somewhat) into existence.

Iron Warriors on the Table – Resurrect/update my previously-half-finished Iron Warriors Combat Patrol into a 7th Edition 1k-point force.
I need to finish the models I started, and no doubt add a few more. They might well be a mixture of models painted as pre-heresy and "modern" IW.

Vikings and their Foes - Get two warbands built for games of SAGA. Vikings, and one other.
That's what? 30-odd figures a side? Very doable, though 60 figures is a good chunk of annual output as well...

I'll need army list help for both, of course... since I hate list-making, especially in it's usual overly-competitive form. If I can get both finished - amazing, but if I can get them both well on their way, that'd be fantastic in and of itself.

You have a nice long list of goals as well, nice to see I'm not the only one

Looking forward to watching your progress.

Do you mean list building for the marine armies or the SAGA stuff? Just do what I do and build lists you like the models/back story/aesthetic and then damn the torpedoes and get them on the table top

SAGA I can do myself. 40k list building is the main obstacle to me actually getting any forces built or put together. For some reason I just hate doing it these days. I've got the core of both the Dark Angels and Iron Warriors done, and know some of the things I want to have in the Minos. but it's filling in the gaps and then the expansion beyond what's already "assigned" that's the nightmarish part - especially since I'm so far out of the 40k loop these days.

Anyway, I finished some stuff today:

These twelve models are the first of 36 Spartans that Marouda and I started painting the other day after watching a doco about (who else?) Leonidas and Thermopylae. She seemed enthusiastic enough, and off we went. It took three days to clean and assemble the 36 models, and with a bit of daily painting, we've (well, almost entirely myself) have gotten the first dozen done. I swapped in a lot of the bronze bell curiasses into this group. Initial paint as noted the other day was a dark Tamiya red spray with a Zenithal highlight of Army Painter Red. Maybe I have a crappy can, but that AP spray really leaves a horrid grainy finish. I don't think I'll buy their stuff again. I'd rather pay a slight premium and buy GW or Tamiya's coloured primers.


Anachnonistic Spartans showing their shields. Ready for SAGA Ancients! Whenever that becomes a thing.
The Warlord (formerly Immortal) figures are decent enough, and have both positives and negatives. The sprues that make up the majority of the kits are identical between the Spartans, Ancient Greeks and Classical Greeks, with only the command sprues offering any differentiation or extra pieces. The Spartans come with a sheet that has 90 Lambdas, though that's broken up into 30 White, 30 Black and 30 Red - so if you want uniformity from your box of 40 figures, you need to buy more. Except - here's the kicker - Warlord don't actually sell them!

I got lucky with Warlord's quality customer service when I called them the other day and asked to order several sheets. I paid for the EIR sheets and they're going to manually swap them out for the Spartan sheets, which will give me enough to have some freedom on my boxes of Victrix Spartans that don't come with any decals at all.


Of course when they're front on, you can't see their armour decorations.
I did my research before putting together or painting these guys. The Warlord models don't come with cloaks at all, which is a shame. There's differing opinion on whether Spartan linothorax armour (the linen armour) was dyed red or not, so I went with "yes". Similarly with the horsehair crests, there appears to be differing opinions on red or black and white, or some combination. Since the Spartans were around for quite some time, I'd guess both are probably correct. Similarly, I chose a "Hollywood" style anachronistic combination of the Corinthian Helmet (worn in earlier times) over the Pilos, along with the Lambda (used in later times - and not yet at the time of Thermopylae). Let's face it - if anyone were to decide that they don't want to play with us because the Spartans aren't historically accurate (and knowingly so! GASP!) then I probably didn't want to play someone like that anyway.



It wasn't until taking these photographs that I realised I forgot to flock the figures. I'll have to do that tomorrow. I might go over the shields again with a satin varnish. The matt is a little washed out. These models aren't going to win any painting competitions, but it's been a nice thing to finish a dozen models - a unit - from sealed box to ready for the table (after flocking!) in only 1 week. They're at a tabletop standard that I'm quite happy with for historical models that I literally have hundreds of (roughly 900-1000 plastic infantry between the various types of Greeks and Macedonians - ouch!) It's also been a good learning experience on what to do and what not to do. Now to get the other two dozen of this batch finished!

It also means that my painting total for 2016 is 12 models after 3 days!

Impressively fast and very cool paintjobs! Now we need to see them facing off against your Greek-themed undead, Jason and the Argonauts style!

Yeah, those guys look very solid, great work!

Great job on the spartans. Only note is you glued all the "V's" upside down .

As for 40K lists, I can't even bring myself to looking at GW rulebooks. If anything grab an older codex and add 20% to your points for each previous edition back that you go and you will probably be good.

Very nice mate. I like the hollywood look you have gone for.

Very nice! About the AP sprays, they're really good, but unlike other sprays, you have to be VERY close when spraying. Like max 10-15 cm or something. If you're spraying from further away, like you do with GW for example, they'll dry before they hit the mini and you'll get that grainy finish.

Awesome stuff.. Oh and err.

I enjoyed your photographic retrospective for 2015. I remember seeing all of those minis as you posted them, but seeing them again all together really showed just how much you got done last year.

I hope you meet and exceed all your goals for next year!

Spartans are looking good. Can you get Xerxes Inmortals by any chance?

Thanks guys - Well, Warlord have a range of Achaemenid Persians, and Immortals are one of the other things on offer.



No plans to collect them myself - Various Greeks, a variety of Romans and several flavours of Celts will be enough ancients for me.

So I'm bored.
Yes, I've got stuff to finish off, and a pile of painting goals for 2016, but I'm bored.

Like many people, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Paul Sawyer & co's "Tale of Four Gamers" from WD in the 1990's and have always wanted to do something similar, but of course never really happened. There was a thing last year or the year before with monthly painting challenges on Dakka, but it petered out, as these things do. Full Army-building challenges are obviously hard to do and maintain, what with the majority of us having work and/or study, not to mention significant unexpected life events scattered through the year. I like Para's monthly painting challenges, but my brain is usually too full of horsegak from work to be able to think much outside of my little box and plan mini-dios, etc and actually start (let alone finish) an entry.

A Tale of Four or Six or whatever gamers probably won't work. Especially since most of us will never be able to play against each other, and that seems a useful key to those particular projects. I think Archer is the only one around here who's even in the same city as I am, but I believe he's right over the other side, way East.

So I'd like to figure out something that a bunch of us can and would be interested in doing for a year, or even six months - regardless of geographical locale. I guess we'd probably want to have some sort of common theme to tie what we do together better than "I painted an ancient greek spartan this week" "cool, I painted a mantic zombie" "lovely, I painted a chaos space marine" "and I did a TIE fighter". Unless we all chose an army/force and tried to meet targets. Though we'd want them to be achievable first and foremost - something to encourage painting rather than seem like more bloody work and deadlines. And also something that wouldn't interfere with our existing projects/goals for the year, either. Unless whatever it was was adaptable to also cover one or some of people's individual projects.

I dunno. I'm really open to ideas. I'd be fine with it being flexible enough to cover "brand new" projects and also people's existing WIP projects. Whether it's a motivator to start new models or just finish off old ones - I think allowing for both would be better than making a bunch of strict rules that all models must start off new, etc.

I guess the first thing to do is see who'd be interested in joining in, then we can thrash out what we'd like to do and what the "rules" would be - then we can move it from here and give it it's own thread?

Anyone interested?

"A Tale of Several Painters" sounds delightful. If we need a shared theme, a lot of people are working on Dungeon Saga, so that might work. I have a bunch of half-finished games that I want to get done this year as well-- Dreadfleet, Sedition Wars, and Myth stand out, as well as a ton of Deadzone stuff and most of Bones 1-- and I know that I'm not the only one. Maybe a round robin challenge, where every participant chooses something from another's list that they want to see?

How about a painting Epidemic?

There's a lot of people here such as myself working on Zombies. We could challenge everyone to paint their zombie hordes wether they are Zombicide, GW, Mantic or WGF and keep a running total. It would be fun if there was a map that could track hotspots by color code and geographic location. The winner is the most infected or one who painted till they dropped....then got back up and painted more.

But I could probably also go for dungeon saga, sedition wars or blood rage as all of those are in boxes around me with some having been primed.

I like Theo's idea about the geographic numerical something or another happening. Be it zombie outbreaks, or a loose generic fantasy campaign where the imaginary borders of good and evil are pushed back and forth based on how many good or evil things everyone paints. I could shuffle some things around to participate as much as possible, though my entries would be spotty at best what with the kids.

I think you may have to figure up some kind of poll or something.. figure out where the most interest is. It would be nice if the campaign thing could have the loosest possible theme to allow the largest number of participants given varied interest... but at some point narrowing down a proper theme would be necessary for the narrative. I guess?

I dunno. I don't have the time or energy to manage anything these days... but if you do, then do it And tell me the parameters for my participation

Well, the way I see it is that we need at least a very loose "theme" of some kind to make it more than simply our usual plogging updates - but more flexible than "We're all going to build 2k point 40k armies with a minimum of 200pts per month painted" which will allow more of us to participate. One Blog I follow (Cheetor's Sho3box) has a thing with Mr Saturday where they alternate having a single Judge Dredd/2000AD model painted every fortnight (so one a month, each).

Or it could be "pick a single army for the year from any game you play and get a legal unit painted for it each month" so as a collective we all end up with more painted and cohesive armies at the end of it (and people like Archer can participate while gliding through 3 or 4 armies for the year!) That's fairly flexible to the point where "I'm counting all of my Black Plague Runners as a unit" or "My Dungeon Saga Orcs & Gobboes" sound perfectly reasonable as well and stops scatterbrains like myself from simply having 12 units painted in a year for 12 different games/armies. I figure - as with most wargaming campaigns, the simpler the better - and if it works we can thrash out more advanced rules at the end of the 6 or 12-month campaign. Actually, I'm thinking 6 months might be a good length of time if we went for an army-unit-based "theme" - at the end we could continue with the same force for the Challenge, or go for something completely different.

Though the geographical thing might have legs.. we could split into "teams" based on geography, or even "good/evil" forces for some friendly banter and very casual competition.

Hm.. I'm liking the sound of "pick an army (or boardgame) and get a unit painted each month" more and more as I think about it. It allowed anything from KoW armies to Imperial Knights, to a Wing of TIEs to whole sets of Zombicide and/or DKQ through to Infinity and beyond! (sorry!)

What do you guys think of that as a loose-enough theme? Who'd be up for it?

Yeah, that sounds good, assuming we won't be restricted to one genre or alignment. When would you want to start?

Well, I think if we can get at least 4 of us who are keen, this weekend can be the "official" starting date, and then allow maybe a week for any more people who want to join in the first "campaign".

Essentially we'd each be setting our own restrictions by the project that we decide we'd want to complete (or make solid headway on) in the time.

Call the finish date the end of July, and allow people to call January a "full" month, a "half" month (with a smaller "getting started" unit target?) or roll it into Feb as a "combined" month?

I wouldn't mind a half-month with a full start in February just so I can clear out some half-finished models.