Cairn Wraith and Riptide Wrapup

Well, January is all over except for the crying so let's wrap up this month's hobby goals. I wanted to get my Empire Engineer, Cairn Wraith and Riptide finished up in January and I met some of the goals.  You can see my engineer in this post and I also managed to wrap up the Cairn Wraith.

spooooky

I'm pleased with how he turned out.  I did try to put some nicks on the weapon haft but I don't think they came out very well so I'm going to go back and repaint bone over the top of them to smooth it out.  

The Riptide did not get finished, but I did make more progress on it than I thought I would at the beginning of the month.  It's a large model with a lot of pieces that took a long time to clean and assemble.  I thought that I might only get the subassemblies primed but I did manage to steal a few nights of paint time to get a basecoat on parts of it.

So many pieces...

So the Riptide will carry over into February. I'll also be looking to get a few more empire swordsmen painted up and to put the finishing touches on a big group of khorne bloodletters.  It's quite a mob of models, but the bloodletters are already halfway done so I don't expect they'll take a lot of time to finish up.

That's a lot of demons.

Engineer Beauty Shots

The whole family left town on vacation this week so no progress on this month's hobby goals.  I did get a few minutes to snap some shots of my finished Empire Engineer.

Checking range on the enemy!

I did get some time to think about the RPG adventure I'm cooking up. One important element for any adventure is the addition of a cinematic scene.  This will usually occur during a battle and act as a set piece for the whole adventure. It's a chance as the adventure writer to describe something memorable for the players.

In the case of the beast trainer adventure I'm cooking up I've got some little dragonling/kobold guys and the dogs they've been training.  I've already decided on having the trainers holed up in a cave for the adventurers to explore. Setting this in the cave creates a scene with few routes of escape and a heightened urgency. Since dragons and fire are pretty much synonymous I thought to have the elite dragonlings spit fire.  This led to consideration of the players being trapped in a conflagration and having to escape. Images of smoke filled rooms and crazed, burning animals filled my head and I figured I had the perfect setting for a climactic battle. 

Master Engineer and Riptide Progress

I've been cranking away on this month's goals and I've got my riptide mostly assembled.  It took a fair number of evenings to get the whole thing assembled and cleaned up.  He's a jumble of subassemblies at the moment so that when I go to paint him I'll be able to get my brush into all his little nooks.  I might even magnetize the torso to the legs to make storage and transportation easier.

Riptide Parts!

Once the riptide was mostly finished I was itching for a change of pace so I broke out the Empire Engineer and painted him to a playable state.  I don't imagine I'll ever need two empire engineers in my collection, but if I had to do it again I would definitely paint the base separately from the rest of the model.  There are a lot of fiddly bits on there that are difficult to reach with a brush once the model is standing on top.

Scoping out the competition!

My January goals are going to be coming in tight.  I didn't think the riptide would take as much time to complete as it did so I'm not sure there will be time to get paint on him.  Finishing the Engineer was nice, though. I can't let just one thing eat up the whole month. Progress needs to happen on all fronts, not just the biggest, shiniest parts.

I've also started brainstorming and outlining a little Pathfinder/DnD adventure.  I dug out some minis from the old DnD tactical combat game for inspiration.  I'm thinking the little kobold/dragonling things on the left are training beasties to help them fulfill some sort of plan.  I haven't decided completely on their motivations. Maybe they're retrieving an artifact or trying to drive some townsfolk off their land.  Maybe they're just lurking or being bandits.

2015 Hobby Wrapup and 2016 January Goals

2015 is done! Hooray! But before we put last year completely in the rear view mirror let's spend a bit of time in reflection.

Everything I painted in 2015

I managed to play only a handful of 40K games. They were all fun, but difficult to arrange and took much too long for the points values (many hours for 1500 points to a side).  All but one were also four player games which is probably why they took a bit longer.

Fantasy suffered a bit of a blow with the introduction of Age of Sigmar.  A buddy and I had been collaborating on an empire army themed around witch hunters, and even had a plan to run something like a campaign with them. With no more GW support for proper Warhammer Fantasy we're not likely to do that anymore.  We've played the Age of Sigmar rules but we're not terribly impressed with them. We're just not sure how best to organize a battle so the fight isn't lopsided. We did play around with counting wounds and whatnot but it's just not the same as having points values and force org charts.  We'll see.  I think the rules themselves play fine, but I'm not sure I want to spend a bunch of money for scenario rules or that it has legs enough to keep me interested.

In Warmachine territory I only played a single game even though most of my painting time was put into Privateer Press models. So that's a bit lopsided.  I'm sure I can arrange some more battles this year.

Hobby Scorecard! A lot of this year's hobby was spent finishing models that had been started a long time ago. This is another trend I expect to continue in 2016.  I'm resolved to make a dent in the pile of half finished miniatures I have lying around.

Here are the models I completed in 2015. Twenty-nine total, which comes out to about one model every two weeks.

     12 Empire Swordsmen

     Dark Angels Azrael

     Rhyas, Sigil of Everblight
     Rask, Hordes Warlock

     6 Tau Stealthsuits

     2 Tau Drones
     3 Tau Battlesuits
     Bull Snapper, Hordes Warbeast

     Journeyman Warcaster
     Harlan Versh

Looking into 2016, I'd like to do more one on one combats across all the rule sets that I have armies for, even Infinity. I'm also looking to expand my Tau collection and finish up a few of the half-started armies that are lying around. Setting a goal for the month seemed to work well leading up to the new year, so I think I'll keep that around and try to make it a thing.

Here's a picture of the January goal:

In the front there is a half-finished Cairn Wraith and an assembled and primed Empire Master Engineer. Then of course there's a Tau Riptide taking up most of the picture. I'm building my Tau force very deliberately, only adding a new model to the army once all the other models are assembled and painted.  The only exception I'm making is for drones.  Drones will be saved up to be assembled and painted once I have a sufficient number of them.

Painted: Harlan Versh

Harlan Versh is done. He was the last model on my 2015 list. I guess I'm a day late to have completely met my goal but since I set the goals and hold myself to them I'm going to go ahead and give myself a "Job well done."

I don't really like the model now that I've painted it. He's supposed to be a formidable witch hunter but his pose doesn't speak to this. It's very stiff and wooden.  He's standing with his knees locked. There's very little dynamism to his pose. The cloak on his back is a wide expanse of flat metal that practically requires freehand work just to make it look decent.

Whatever the case, he's done and ready to rain hot lead on enemy witches and warlocks. So along with my Journeyman Warcaster, Bull Snapper, Tau weapons and Sorcha with her Devastator I managed to make the hobby year go out on a high note.

Next up is to look through my list of projects and pick a few for January. Onward and upward.