Setting Goals

For the past few months, it's been difficult for me to find time to paint. When I finally have an opportunity to sit at the painting table, I take a look at my current squad of models and think about how long they've been sitting there and how little progress has been made. With as little time as I have to actually devote to painting, it's difficult to stay motivated.

Luckily, the guys over at Masters of the Forge have come to my rescue once again. Adam and Snorre showed me a blog post that talks about setting painting goals to avoid burnout and stay motivated to keep making progress. In response to this awesome piece of advice, I've taken a look at my current painting schedule to see if there was anything I could do to help me stay motivated. I just painted two complete Tactical Squads and am currently working on the third. My idea is to get all six of the regular Tactical Squads out of the way first, so I can focus on all the fun stuff in the company. That's a lot of bolter marines all at once. That's a lot of the same thing for a long time.

Now, I'm going to change things up a bit. After I've finished the squad I'm working on, I'll be doing 4th Company's Captain, Chaplain, and Command Squad. I'm looking forward to working on that awesome banner as well as all the details on my Chaplain.

Check out all that awesome detail!

After that, I'll probably do another Tactical Squad or two and throw in something cool every once in a while. After I do another Tactical Squad, I may move on to the Devastators or maybe even some scouts! I've been thinking about how fun it'd be to work on a vehicle, so I may make my Command Squad's Razorback. I guess you'll just have to stay tuned to see what awesomeness comes out next!

As for now, here's where I'm currently at:

Slow and steady wins the race, I guess. Keep checking back to see how things turn out!

The State of the Hobbiest

With work and school taking its toll on my schedule, it's been a while since I've been able to work on any hobby goodness, let alone post about it here. In response, here's the current state of my hobby progress and where I'm headed in the future.

Before I begin, I'd like to take a moment to recognize my favorite podcast: The Masters of the Forge. These guys are single-handedly keeping me interested in the fluff and keeping my mind on the hobby while I'm spending time away. Snorre and Adam are always coming up with new interesting ways to play the game and going into detail about the parts of the background that I've always loved. In a world of responsibilities, they're my one last bastion of hobby goodness. If you haven't listened to them yet, go check them out.

And now, on with the blog post.

Gaming Table:

The table itself is complete and the first set of tiles is finished. I only have one set of trees to place on it, but I'd like to make a whole lot more as well as a little farm to put next to the road. I'm hoping to do some more work on it after I've gotten a sizable force of Knights Bellicose completed.

Current Knights Bellicose Project:

Right now, I'm working on the third Tactical Squad for 4th Company. My goal for now is to duplicate what I have in my Ultramarines force, then expand on it from there. Ultimately, I'm planning on completing the entire company, then move on to other companies until the entire Chapter is complete. Once this squad is complete, I'll have three full Tactical Squads to work with, and they'll all have options of which specialist weapons I want to include. Here's how they currently look:

Having recently completed my skin test, I'm confident I can add some radial diversity to my Chapter, which is something I've always wanted to do. In the spirit of that, this squad will feature three separate Marines without their helmets on. In order to better facilitate the painting process, I'll be painting the heads separate from the rest of the Marine.

Future Project:

Once my third Tactical Squad is complete, the force still won't be playable. I'll need some leadership for that. To help me break up the monotony of painting so many Tactical Marines, I'm going to work on 4th Company's Captain and Chaplain next. I'll probably even do the whole Command Squad, so the whole leadership section will be completed in one go. As of now, I've purchased the models and made sure there were no defects since I went with Finecast in an effort to build a whole army with no metal in it. Here's the models I chose:

Hopefully, I'll be able to devote more time to the hobby in the future. I really miss being able to work on my models as much as I used to and I miss posting on the blog as often as I used to. Once I get a little more homework out of the way, I'm hoping to spend a very large amount of progress in the hobby room. Keep checking back to see how things turn out!

Have fun painting!

Celebrity Encounter

This past weekend, I headed down to California to visit my best friends, Sean and Reuben. Just before I headed down, I heard that the guys from Masters of the Forge (formerly from Deepstrike Radio), were going to be down visiting The Independent Characters on that very same weekend! I thought to myself that it would be an awesome way to kill two birds with one stone, so I made arrangements to meet up with some of my favorite podcasters! Snorre from MotF was the only one to make it down to Game Kastle that day, but it was still cool to say hi and show my support for the podcast. It was really neat to be able to meet some of the people that I consider to be celebrities. I even got Snorre to sign an autograph for me! I'll have a picture of it once it's hanging in my art room.

Snorre (right) and I standing in front of
Game Kastle in Santa Clara

One of the coolest parts of the whole day was how Snorre gave me a great idea for the blog. In the coming weeks, stay tuned for a whole new array of cool topics like starting a fluff-based army and what to think about when writing the background for your new army.

In other news, my new additions to the Grey Knight squad is nearing completion. Also, I was given an Inquisitor Coteaz model to paint up. Pretty soon, my 250-point Grey Knights sideboard will be completed. Keep checking back to see the new progress and to get some good ideas for your DIY army!

I hope to see you again soon!