Hoarding: Where Everything is a Must-have

I've been known to collect a little too much. I have 4 concepts for armies currently in progress(Imperial Fists, Severites, a Death Korp army, and some stuff for WHFB). I have a whole short list of projects for other people; a chess set for my brother for x-mas, a double set of armies for a friend of mine in payment for work on my car, and some mock ups for a colleagues' FULL THRUST ships.

My concepts and ideas list pales to the amount of unfinished, half there projects. I have started(and nixed, or postponed), a WHFB Empire army, a Brettonian army, multiple super-heavy tanks...the list goes on.

My bits collection is probably bigger than anyone else' at my FLGS. I have kits and pieces from every army if both WHFB and 40k. This allows me to pull some wacky-ass ideas from out of my proverbial hat. I have plans to convert a carnosaur into a counts-as sentinel for my home brew IG regiment, the Severites.

Concepts, armies, bitz; I collect them all! It's almost debilitating. Because of my scatterbrained nature I have a hard time focusing on one project. Sort of like ADD for gaming. I start my Imperial Fists project only to get side-tracked by the idea of getting my DKoK started.

I know that many of my fellow gamer hobbyist are afflicted with this disorder. How do we transcend this difficulty and embark on a more successful carreer? Is their a way to avoid this hopping from one project to another? I've been building models for 3 years straight, and I don't have a single army to show for it. Isn't that kinda wierd? If you have a friend or pal in your local FLGS whom suffers this diffculty, please be kind :) We are only trying to figure out what we love best about gaming. As it turns out, we love everything about gaming. Folks like us love every army out there that has tremendous capacity for conversion, concept work, or just excels at collectabilty. I guess that's just the way things are. So the next time you see me, please don't ask me how my latest army is doing. You will only make me cry.

Rare Yellow-belly Razorback Sighted!

Ah, the crispness of autumn! Well, actually the crapness of autumn in Maine. But the turd tastic weather has allowed me to delve into my workload! Voila! Et un Razorback(I don't speak french, and the only french I know comes from World War II movies, so if that last thing makes no sense, not much I can do about it.)! Finished my first piece for my Imperial Fists army, a sweet little APC. I also got to go full circuit with Wil Davies instructions on how to paint yellow. His advice to utilize a yellow ink glaze over the coat of vomit brown makes this paintjob really warm and sensuous. Note the Forge World doors on the sides and the front plate with the IF iconography. Those naughty lads came in my FW order three weeks ago, and I had been itching to slap them onto this piece. They were also a bastard to fit on. Who would have thunk it? FW products not fitting right? Surely you jest. I ended up slowly filing them down to finally snap into the cavities on the sides of the 'back. Ditto with the forward armor plate. I even made sure I got my moneys worth out of this model by building both the Rhino and the Razorback kits. It was simply a matter of glueing the two pieces of hatch together for the plain old Rhino, glueing together the Razorback cannons together, and then glueing neither permanantly onto the 'back. Should my precious get deaded on the field of battle, I'll simply remove the hatch plate to represent mortification. What should I build next?

Space Wolves Are Broken

Gar! Yet another commission for my pal Nick. This time it was a piece I was only vaguely familiar with; Dreadnought! I had the distinct displeasure of putting together a Venerable Dreadnought kit about a year ago. Damn. You. Games. Workshop. This half pound piece of crap destroyed my entire complement of drill bits, didn't fit half the time(the chassis was a bastard), and ruined two metal files. Dear GW, Patrick again.....yeah....about those models that are huge bricks of pewter....ummmm, I'm gonna have to never buy any of those again. Sincerely, Patrick. Well they finally got rid of the paperweight that is the Steamtank, though it's secondary function as a doorstop and even an instrument of self-defense will be missed.

I digress, as you can see I had been commissioned to build and paint a Space Wolves Dreadnought. Above you can see the project midstride, based black with some portions painted shadow grey. The portion I want folks to see most is the right shoulder of the chassis, the yellow and black area. I was very happy in particular with this non-standard paintjob, it was accomplished witha bit of blue painters' tape and my airbrush. It even pushed me to make the right arms(lascannon, assault cannon and JOY! plasma cannon), black, with only certain parts painted a very darkened boltgun metal. I then shaded them progressively with a mix of chaos black/grey/skull white, up until the final highlights with straight skull white. I had to go super light on the white, you don't want it overpowering the hard work you put into creating a consistent gradation from black to white.

I chiseled the raised areas off the faceplate of the sarcophagus and painted it white, then placed a decal from the Baneblade in the middle, it pulled a good piece together and added my signature custom touch to the piece.

I am super satisfied with my efforts this time around. The SM Dreadnought is a joy to assemble and paint. I only hope that Nick thinks so too!

Have Brush, Will Travel

I just finished a commissioned piece for my pal Nick; a Damocles Rhino. The kit is actually from FW, and it’s really just the satellite dish and a comms package on the right side of the Rhino. As you can tell from my blurry (sorry) pictures, they are done up in a Space Wolves color scheme. The yellow was actually a tasteful mix of Iyanden Darksun and Golden Yellow, it produced a warm yellow to contrast the drab shadow grey base. Speaking of the base color, I achieved the consistent base with my airbrush. I enjoyed doing this piece for my pal, and he was so pleased, he commissioned me to do a second piece for him; a Space Wolves Dreadnought!
This is my first time finishing a commission for pay(I charged Nick a $35 troop box, and I earned that box). It was kind of funny doing the Rhino. I felt freer than when I would have doing work on my own miniatures, it didn’t matter that the Rhino wasn’t super individualized or the chapter home-brewed. I just set my mind to it, and ground that bad boy out. I also felt a tremendous amount of pride in providing a service to my friend. I really tried to do my best work on his commission, and it touched me when I gave it to him that he placed it in his stores main glass case(he’s the LGS owner). I would say that the greatest compliment one player could pay to another is to ask him to enhance the look of his army and trust him to do just that. I’d also like to recognize a fellow rad painter/modeler in my area whom is doing the special characters for Nicks army; Zach Phillips. His exceptional efforts with the brush are pushing me to blow Nicks mind as best I can and bring my skills to a further threshold. They say great opposition makes for exceptional efforts, I certainly hope this applies to the work Zach and I put into our friends playing pieces!