On the painting table

As I predicted a few weeks ago, painting would slow done significantly after last month's bmper harvest. With all the other gaming related activities (and real life) taking up most of my time I have hardly touched my brushes and have finished only three figures so far. And that was more because they were figures that I had meant to finish in January. The little bit of time I did spend painting were used on my Space Marines and my Russians for Blitzkrieg Commander.


After I built up my infantry forces I decided to focus on my vehicles. I cleaned, mounted and started on my SU122s and 152s and I hope to rebase my T34/85s to the club standard of 20 by 40mm bases before adding the finishing touches. Given my limited available time this is looking more and more ambitious every day...

The other project, my "finish 100 points of SM each month" challenge is progressing slightly better. But that is the result of looking up points values in the latest edition of the codex. I was working with my 4th edition copy to get a rough idea of what I would need to paint, but checking the latest edition I found that the costs have gone up for infantry while vehicles are now slightly cheaper.



This meant that my force commander, a lowly captain, has gone from 65 to 100 points. January goal reached! And with a five man squad jumping from 75 to 90 points all I have to do is finish the weapons and backpacks of the four troopers (the sergeant is finished) in the second row to meet this month's deadline.

All I have to do this, is next weekend and one day off work next week. And then it's off to Reihndahlen for "Action 2010"....

1000 Euro

Did you ever wonder what a 1000 Euro worth of GW miniatures looks like? Here is the answer!

So what happened to frugal gaming, what happened to spending less, you must be wondering? Well, there is spending less but there is also earning more... Yes, I intend to make money by selling GW miniatures that do not belong to my (extensive) private collection.

While running the bring and buy stand at "Full Tilt" I noticed one of the club members dumping quite a few shrink wrapped boxes onto the table. Later on he told me he bought them a few months ago at our local toy store. Last summer they decided to stop carrying GW and have been putting their stock on sale. I took advantage of that sale back when they started it, but even now they still have a huge stockpile of boxes and (to a lesser extent) blisters left.

So my friend went in an asked how much he would have to buy to get a 50% discount. He ended up buying 2000 Euro (at retail price) and three months later he sold the last of his stuff at my bring and buy stand. With "Action 2010" coming up in a few weeks, I decided to follow suit. And now I am the proud owner of 1000 Euro (retail) of GW's finest. Most of it is Space Marines and their Chaos colleagues, with some scenery, Necron, demons andEldar thrown in.

With all the items my fellow club members have asked me to keep aside, I have already regained more than 20% of my investment after bringing my collection along at last week's club night. I also used the opportunity to do some market research to find out what would be other good buys. Guess I'll be getting lots of Dark Eldar on a second run... to my own surprise.

Everything has been labeled, my list is ready, now I just have to wait another day or ten and then we'll find if the gamble pays off...

Things I've done, things I need to do

I've been pretty busy lately and I have lots of things to post about and I'll try to get around to it in the coming days. Look forward to:

-Last month's painting in pictures

-Current painting, very limited because of a lot of other gaming activities like

-Our club's Warhammer tournament: "Full Tilt"

-Busy club nights spent gaming and discussing...

-My Space Marines challenge

-My new life as a GW dealer

I'm aiming to get one post done every day for the next week. That way I should have caught up by this weekend...

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Februari Forecast

I'll post a look back on Januari when I have applied the matt varnish spray, but because I have to do this at work it'll be a few days before I can take pictures... but it was a great month.

And Februari is looking good as well, full with all kind of wargames activities. This weekend my club will be hosting its annual Warhammer 40K and Fantasy tournament: Full Tilt. With well over 100 players it is one of the biggest in Belgium. I won't be taking part myself but will be running the bring and buy stand. Last year we tried this for the first time during a tournament and though it was a late addition and only few people brought stuff, it was a succes. Now it has been added to the registration process, so everyone knows about and I'm expecting lots more goods on offer.

The weekend after that we'll be running a two day playtest of our Blitzkrieg Commander game on the Battle of Hechtel. That way we'll be able to play all 15 turns for the first time ever and see what needs to be "fixed" now that the second edition has been published. At the end of the month we'll be running this game during Action 2010 in Rheindahlen (Germany), the only two day wargames event in our region that I know about, allowing us to play the game to the finish. So we need to be prepared...

Conventions, bad for the bank account and the lead pile... but then again...
I don't really have anything that I am planning to buy, no major new projects or big expansions to existing ones. I'm mainly looking to buy some scenery stuff, mostly buildings in a variety of scales. I'll be browsing for some books, most likely for the seven years war period and picking up some magazines. And maybe, just maybe I'll pick up a copy of "Black Powder". Some impulse buying might always happen, most likely at the bring and buy.

When it comes to painting there will be a slow down. With a lot of activities planned on the weekends, when I do most of my painting, I'll have less time to spend on that. I'll be giving 6mm infantry a break for now and will move to the vehicles for a while. The Space Marine project will continue and, sometime this week, my test order of Minden Miniatures will arrive. These will be cleaned and primed in no time, I'm looking forward to start painting them.

In short, it will be a busy month.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes,
happy gaming!