For anyone that has been paying attention you’ll have heard on most WFB podcasts, Twitter and Facebook GW slightly threw everyone for a loop in the run into AoS. Ignoring the game side as largely that has taken care of itself the real hit for people is knowing where to put their modelling & painting time. The vast uncertainty around what is changing makes people unwilling to commit to army projects where they might end up wasted so instead many people went ‘on hold’.
If you look through some of the recent posts on this blog you’ll see the impact of that with Rich off painting Guildball, Battlefleet, Darklands, 40k. Scott’s put up some guildball too and generally there has been a dearth of Warhammer content until the AoS painting competition came round.
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| To do box |
As it happens I was on one of my swings into other game systems so I’d shelved the Warhammer projects anyway so this didn’t overly affect me, though I did shelf a couple of my New Year resolutions for Empire and WoC projects. Instead I was focused on Guildball and having a great time with some seriously beautiful miniatures.| |
| Guildball - Butchers |
| Guildball - Union |
But after turning out a couple of teams I just seemed to hit the wall. In part this was down to ‘real life’ TM issues and just lack of time but following on from that even when I did have time I just couldn’t bring myself to pick up the brush. I’m fortunate that it is very rare that I lose motivation this way as I tend to find just flipping to a different project gets me going again and I’ve plenty to be going on with (see my previous post on being a poly-gamer and alternative games).It was a struggle to dig myself out this funk but it finally happened yesterday and in the weirdest fashion.
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| Partly linked to my NY resolutions and the Fools Daily Challenge (from the Fools Daily podcast) I have a box of figs which is my ‘to do box’. I’m not sure if this actually knocked my motivation as it was too full or if it was just coincidence but when I pulled it together was around when I lost my urge to paint. In the box were 3 Guildball teams (20ish figs) and about 20 Malifaux figs (a mix of Guild and Neverborn). Actually quite a diverse range of figures, for those that don’t know the two games they have quite varied themes between the guilds/factions, so not usually something that would bother me as a to-do list. Maybe a few too many models given I paint them to a higher standard than I do WFB stuff as I think about it. On realising I’d hit the wall as such the first thing I did was reassess my needs, I then sold one of my guildball teams onto a friend and I’m contemplating selling on a second. That helps drop the model count but still didn’t get me painting. In the box there were a bunch of Malifaux models which I’ve painted in the past and these were just duplicates I’d picked up in trades. I thought about trying to sell off these but then had the great idea of, why not paint them to sell then as it would doubtlessly improve their value. A great idea... But not one which actually changed what was in my paint queue at all. There was one model which was in the box that I'd half painted and then got stuck on. It had been basecoated & washed then just felt a bit dull. The model was a reaper bones sculpt but one I'd chopped up a bit to use as a proxy for a Malifaux model. I decided to pull him out and thrown on a few highlights just to get my brush going again. And that was the eureka moment, soon as I got the highlights on the model it came to life and with it the desire to paint everything else! Pic below is before he got based up but that's all done now too. |
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| Reaper Bones - being used as Malifaux Francisco alternative |
So these are the guys I'd decided were probably best just sold on. Only now they're painted why bother, lets just put them in the cabinet with the others. Sure why not, stupid brain, but at least it got them painted. Somehow the idea of painting models I'd never use was more appealing than painting models I'd want to use, go figure!
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| Malifaux - Beckoner |
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| Malifaux - Guild Guards |
So that's me and how I've gotten myself back on the painting bandwagon, next up should be to finish off my Guildball Alchemists team and a bunch more Malifaux stuff. I'm also starting to get an itch to pull out some Warhammer bits again and paint something for that but on a round base, yikes!