Taking Stock

Now that I’ve established that I’m back after a short absence and I’ve got one of my “to do” project completed reasonably satisfactorily (the Grey Knights) I feel the need to take stock, evaluate where I am at and outline some plans.

At the moment I have the following complete armies at 1000 points –
• Imperial guard
• Orks
• Ultramarines
• Daemonhunters

I can easily bump the DH to 1500 with other figures I have. Add to that I could ally in either of the Marines or Guard I could field 2.5k points. If I use the Marines, they are all painted too. Now they won’t be tactically the greatest force ever seen by a long stretch, but I’m quite happy with that.

I do want to develop the orks further, there are only about 600 points of them painted and they are very basic units. I need to get the guard painted, I’ve 1 guy done and I don’t like him very much. He might have to be “test paint guy” and take one for the team.

My main army will always be the DH though, and I plan to add some GKT’s to the force as soon as I can get over the mental block with the GKT conversion. Oh and I’ve designs on a Land Raider.

That segues neatly on to what’s currently on my painting table.

If I look to my right I can see the 5 aobr terminators in various states of repair as they are going to become my GKT testers. I can see also the aobr dread in ultramarines colours about to be pulled apart to be converted to a GK dread. Theres a chimera half painted and in need of weathering for my Guard/DH For some reason I also have a half painted marauder horseman and a primed Games Day miniature I’m going to paint for a friend.

That’s a pretty clear table for me, but If you wanted to complicate matters we can add the unpainted guard (2 vet squads CC squad and 2Russes) and the unpainted, unconverted Orks (about 15 boys, 4 deffkopters and a bunch of aobr nobs and boss I intend to make into meganobz) Then it starts to look a whole lot scarier.

Let’s rationalise for a second, and talk painting points for the year. Here’s a quick recap of the Lone pilgrim system I came to via Admiral Drax

- Infantry miniatures on standard round bases - 1 point
- complex infantry or equipment, bikes, horses etc. - 2 points
- individual minis (e.g. characters) and easy scenery- 5 points
- Walkers and medium-sized scenery - 10 points
- Tanks* and CoD ruins - 20 points
- Superheavies - 30 points

Since returning to this hobby in early 2009 I’ve racked up 474 painting points. That’s crazy.

I started my first mini for 6 years on the 31st Jan 2009, IT wasn’t even mine, I converted and painted it for a student of mine. (it’s in one of the slideshows to the right, a soul drinkers bannerman with a slight mutation problem) I’ve learned a lot since then, and re-learned a lot too and am having a great time.

I’ve two months to go to hit the year and with the queue on my table and whatever bounties Christmas will bring I look set to top 500 points. I’m not sure if that’s an achievement or a damning indictment.

As far as the blog goes I have taken some new pictures of some of my earlier guys and intend to get some more segregated slideshows up on the side. I also fancy a bit of a posher banner at the top, though I’m unsure what.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

So that’s where I am at. I’m also astounded to see nearly 80 people interested in this blog, so I realise I must put something up that resembles a tutorial soon, by way of a “thankyou and please keep watching” as it’s been a while since I did that to, suggestions there would be very welcome too 