So those who know me know I've been intending to start this blog for a couple months now and I'll come onto the reasons for not starting it sooner shortly.
For those who don't know me a bit of introduction is in order and for me to explain the new gaming philosophy I guess I best start by explaining the old one.
I've been playing Games Workshop games since I first got a copy for 40k for my 11th birthday, almost 17 years ago exactly (not counting Hero quest and Space crusade before that). And in all that time I think I've only ever had one fully painted army and that was my Orks back in 2nd Edition when I was maybe 12 or 13 and that was only because they didn't allow you to use unpainted miniatures in the GW stores. Thinking about it I think I may have had a fully painted Chaos Marine army around this time too, but then these were the days when a Lord, 5 Terminators, and Dreadnoughts and 10 Berserker made up a 2000pt army. Needless to say however the standard of painting was more than a little piss poor!
My painting has definitely got better. I'm no Golden Daemon winner but I don't think its too much to claim that I have a decent table top standard, but since that time I've never finished an army. My Tau came close but then I didn't play many games with them anyway, soon got bored of them and sold them. I finished painting my Skaven Bloodbowl team, but even that could use a couple more linesmen painted to get it to a full 16 'man' squad, a fact which is particularly bugging me at the moment as I painted them 9 years ago using an article in White Dwarf as a guide and I can't remember how I did it. I remember I didn't undercoat them, which seems silly now, but if I paint more part of me thinks I shouldn't undercoat them to remain consistent...
Anyway I digress...
See I've always had a tendency to buy too many miniatures in one go, particularly when collecting a new army. My Skaven that I got when the previous army book came out for example. I spent 100quid+ on the plastic boxed sets (Just clanrats and night runners at the time) plus a couple characters and weapon teams. This worked out to about 100 models of basic troops, and without any heavy hitters it was pretty useless in battle. Realising I would have to spend a ton more money, which I couldn't afford, to make the army workable and being daunted by the prospect of the 100+ models to paint I soon ditched this army.
Very much a case of jumping in head first, I'm sure many others can relate to this story and its a story that has repeated itself many times during my gaming 'career' (I hate to use that word, if anyone knows a better one let me know). Most recently this has happened with my Tyranids, where slowly over the last couple years I have been trying to amass an Apocalypse army to go along side the tasty Forge World gargantuan creatures I want to buy. My aim was to buy 6 of the battle force boxes (when they still had Carnifex in them), I got to about 4 I think. Basically I have about 100 Gaunts, 50 Genestealers, 12 Warriors, 4 Carnifex, and a Hive Tyrant. None of which are painted. Tactically its not ideal for smaller games either, playing (and losing) several games the end of last year at 1750pts made me realise I need to invest in some of the more specialist Tyranids.
But again I had jumped in head first without thinking about the best way to collect an army. These few games I played last year were a real eye opener to me. I've just moved to a new area and so trying to integrate myself in to a new and much bigger gaming group to what I'm use to. Not only did I learn the tactical limits of my army but to be quite honest I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I must have played 5 or 6 games and each army I faced was either fully painted or almost fully painted, compared to my Grey Gaunts and Metalrant.
So when the new year came I decided on setting myself a goal. To get a fully painted army for both Warhammer and 40K by the end of the year. This goal also encompassed a new philosophy to gaming. I was going to build my armies a little piece at a time, play small games with them as I build them up, and...the important one...not buy any new miniatures until I got the new ones painted up!
No a massive goal per say, but a big step for me and more about discipline than anything else.
So this is where the idea for the blog came from, the idea was to chart my progress to 1) encourage myself to keep going and 2) to hopefully encourage some of my friends who have the same problems as me to set similar goals and habits.
The reason I'm only just starting this blog now is because so far I've been successful in this goal. I've always had in my mind what my first few articles would be, that this blog would take a bit of time to start but once it had started updating it would be easier. While I was in the right frame of mind for painting, I wanted to spend more time painting rather than just writing about painting. Now my painting schedule has calmed down I figure I can start this blog (also I figured I best start it soon before I had too much catching up to do).
I realise this is quite a lengthy introduction, but before ending this post I want to quickly talk about the kind or articles you can expect. Well, all sorts is the answer to that I guess. Articles tracking the progress of building an army, assembling and painting, battling with said army and tactical discussions on where to take the army next. I've got the next 3 or 4 posts planned, and they'll be up in the next couple days, so that should give you an idea of what to expect, but I have no strict format at the moment a will write as things occur to me.
I write this blog mostly for myself but if anyone else even gets one thing out of it I'll consider that a win. Also a welcome constructive comments and criticism, with the emphasis of the the constructive part.
This post now stands at around 1000 words, I assure you most of them wont be that long before you get worried :D
Jim
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