Where we've been in 2018, where we're headed in 2019

Hi All,

One of those year end posts that everybody loves. I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

In 2018 I:

• Painted 100 items
• Finished and played with my Bretonnian Army
• Went to Kublacon, Monolithcon and got in a game in Sacramento.
• Wrote 18 comic reports
• Actually built some terrain (I still have woefully little)
• Actually played a game at home with my son (WFB 3rd Ed.)

In 2019 I'd like to:

• Finish my Undead Army for OWAC2
• Paint my Renegade Warband that I've rolled up
• Paint a Slann Kill Team
• Build more Terrain (Especially finish that dang Coach House)
• Paint up IG for a local (Phoenix) Rogue Trader Campaign
• Get back to cataloging stuff for the 100% painted challenge
• Go to BOYL2019
• Go to Monolithcon 2019
• Maybe some other Con
• Finish my expanded campaign map and play out more games in that world

Unfortunately I cannot go to Kublacon in 2019. We have a family trip that we postponed last year and it was rescheduled to conflict with the con, so guess what takes precedence. It's all good though.

Welcome to Dark Knight, thanks for following the blog. If you have a hobby blog, let me know and I'll add a link.

Thanks for looking and commenting. Happy New Year.

Back from Cinque Terre

Hi All,

Just got back from a week in Italy to celebrate our 20th wedding Anniversary. So I thought you might enjoy a few shots from my cellphone.

When we went to Vernazza the sea was so rough that they had brought all the boats in from the harbor.

The next day we had a bike trip from Levanto to Corniglia, followed by a wine tasting on that terrace over the cliff in Riomaggiore.

Lopez reminded me I should look for Oldhammer in Europe. This game store in La Spezia. They had mostly current GW offerings and a lot of Kromlech and a few Rackham models. I later also went to an actual GW store in Genoa, but that was just because I walked right by it on the way to dinner.

The Via Garibaldi in Genoa was interesting, there are many narrow side streets off of it. We happened to pick one that was lined with prostitutes in the middle of the afternoon, it was surreal.

The Piazza de Ferrari in Genoa was interesting.

As was Christopher Columbus's house. It's tiny.

The Cathedral of San Lorenzo is another photogenic spot, but there's not a lot of room to get a picture.

Square across from the docks in Genoa.

The Galleon Neptune, one pier over from the aquarium. I don't know what the deal with it was, but it was interesting to look at. We didn't feel like paying 6 euros each to board it.

All in all a great trip. I highly recommend staying in La Spezia and day tripping by train into Cinque Terre. Super easy to do and La Spezia is an easy going smallish city. Genoa is a much larger city but you can see a lot by just walking around. In both cases we stayed at a Hotel that was about 10 minutes walk from the train station.

I hope to be back at my painting desk this week and getting myself organized for the upcoming things as we barrel towards the end of the year.

I'd also like to welcome Brett Besley and Mathia Gerner to the blog. As always, let me know if you have a hobby blog you would like me to link to.

Happy painting.

Paint Table Saturday 201 - (On a Sunday)

Hi All,

Busy week this week as I had the in-laws in town for the holiday weekend and then spent Wednesday through Friday on Catalina with my son's 6th grade field trip.

The pier at Fox Landing at dawn.

We did snorkling, kayaking and marine science stuff. They kept us very busy. We spent about 8 hours at LAX as our flight home got delayed until midnight. It was very challenging wrangling all those kids in terminal for that length of time.

But on to the table.

Nothing much has changed. I did drybrush a few shades of grey on the skull altar, but it needs more. The IG are pretty much the same as before.

I received my Undead Landsknechts from The Assault Group Kickstarter,

and my Triumph of Death skeletons from the Skull and Crown Kickstarter. So my plan now is to organize and prime all my undead for the upcoming Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I think this year will be number 8.

I also used my 20% off coupon from Mario to essentially get free shipping on these from Mini Monsters. Ork/Orc totem at top. Large barrels, small barrels, crushed barrels and objective markers. The prices and shipping are very reasonable and they have some cool stuff. I'm looking forward to painting these up.

Finally a welcome to new follower Dave Bone. I don't see a link to your blog, if you have one I'll link to it. Thanks for following.

My schedule will not permit much painting for the next few weeks so we'll see what happens with things.

Plan for the year ahead

Hi All,

I thought it might be useful to put thoughts to blog as I try and have a think about what I want to accomplish with my hobby in 2017.

So the trick is, how to make an actionable list of things I want to accomplish?

Promote Oldhammer in the New World

Ok. I want to see more people playing Oldhammer. Painting and collecting are all fine and dandy, but I think where Oldhammer really pays off is in playing and the camaraderie that ensues. I also want to play more myself so encouraging others may lead to more opportunities for me. 

Action Plan:

Aside from attending the next Oldhammer USA event I'm going to be investigating existing conventions that I can go to and surreptitiously meetup and play Oldhammer. Last year Airborne and Bulldog went to Historicon and met up with Kronos for his massive Space Hulk game. Rusty and Blake met up with Orclord for a massive Warmaster 28 game at Adepticon so I know there are things like this happening. So if you know of a Con that's worth going to, let me know.

I will also continue to put out the zine once a quarter. For now it is fun and people seem to like it, so I'll go with it.

I may look into more ways to promote Oldhammer on social media.

Painting my frigging figures

I spent way more time acquiring than painting in 2016, so I need to get on this. Part of the problem is getting excited by new games, figures, projects but not following through.

Action Plan:

Catalog the mountain and painted figs. Maybe everything painted is a place to start. I'm also going to return to the painting desk by painting upthe figures I owe Curt and David B from last years painting challenge so I can be free and clear to focus on my own stuff without guilt.

Build more Terrain

For how long I've been in the hobby I have a real dearth of terrain. I need to remedy that.

Action Plan:

Finish up all the various trees, rocks and hills I started over the years but never finished. Build the paper models I've been purchasing and work on terrain weekly as opposed to semi annually.

Just generally game more

I've let being tired and disorganized get in the way of just pulling out games and figures and having fun. 

Action Plan:

Have a tidy up and then make time for quick gaming sessions with my family. I'm also going to try and get more involved at local games stores to see if there are other like minded individuals.

Conclusion

Perhaps still a little broad strokes, but I think there is something I can drill down into. Perhaps I should have written this out on paper rather than type a stream of consciousness on the blog. But why change my style now?

Anyway hope your projects are coming along and that you achieve most, if not all of what you wanted to in 2017.

Struggles, but some progress

Keepin' it real here on the blog.

I have gotten a few things done over the last few days, but nowhere near what I'd like. It's Monday night as write this and I might get some more done on a few figures.

Here's what we have thus far:

The Red and Black Boyz have had the ground work dry brushed and the last few bits that were left white have been painted. I started focusing on all the little stray paint areas and obsessing over the change in green color that I now use.

Black and Yellow Boyz have had the ground work base coated Earth Brown. I think there were a couple of missed scabbards and straps here that were covered up as well.

The Standard Bearer and Orc Shamen had their ground work painted and the shamen got an ink wash over their white areas to try to give them some definition. I found a picture of wolf cloak here and Oddgit here (hopefully you won't need to scroll down).

The Fanatics and Goblin Shaman had their ground work done and an ink wash to the white. Of course I became paralyzed by the possibilities of how to color them. I'll figure it out.

So I've made two charts to try and figure out my schedule.

Unit	Figures	Status
General	1	done
Army Std B	1
Biguns	10	done
Trolls	2	done
black orcs	10	done
boyz	20	1 left
boyz	20	5 left
arrer boyz	10
arrer boyz	10
gobbos	20
gobbos	20
stickas	20	done
stickas	20
gob wulfboyz	10
gob wulfboyz	10
Orc Shaman	1
Orc Shaman	1
Gob Shaman	1
Fanatics	2

So we can see we have about 14 unfinished entries for the army so far, as it stands I think my list is still a tad shy of my 2000 point target. I may be able to massage some more points into it.

The calendar is sobering.

Wk	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Unit
1	06/01/15	06/02/15	06/03/15	06/04/15	06/05/15	06/06/15	06/07/15
								nothing finished
2	06/08/15	06/09/15	06/10/15	06/11/15	06/12/15	06/13/15	06/14/15
3	06/15/15	06/16/15	06/17/15	06/18/15	06/19/15	06/20/15	06/21/15
4	06/22/15	06/23/15	06/24/15	06/25/15	06/26/15	06/27/15	06/28/15
5	06/29/15	06/30/15	07/01/15	07/02/15	07/03/15	07/04/15	07/05/15
6	07/06/15	07/07/15	07/08/15	07/09/15	07/10/15	07/11/15	07/12/15
7	07/13/15	07/14/15	07/15/15	07/16/15	07/17/15	07/18/15	07/19/15
8	07/20/15	07/21/15	07/22/15	07/23/15	07/24/15	07/25/15	07/26/15
9	07/27/15	07/28/15	07/29/15	07/30/15	07/31/15	08/01/15	08/02/15
10	08/03/15	08/04/15	08/05/15	08/06/15	08/07/15	08/08/15	08/09/15

So nine and half weeks to get these guys ready, although the first week is gone and nothing finished. There is also the week and a half when I'll be travelling so I may have to take my painting kit.

Well, at least I know what I'm in for now.

Wish me luck.