December 8, 2006

Well it’s all over.
This painting challenge was a lot of fun. I learned a few things about my chosen army that I’d like to share:

1) Goblin Fanatics are WILD! I played 3 games in the tournament last Saturday and in 2 of the 3 games the Fanatics were the deciding factor. In my first game they went berserk and carved up my own units, in my second game they ran roughshod over my opponent. In either event I thought it was totally exciting and lots of good fun.

2) Night Goblin leadership is BRUTAL! I guess I never really thought about what leadership 5 really meant, it means you never pass a single test and even the Skaven laugh at you.

3) I had WAY more magic than I needed. I found myself having more casting dice and spells than I had any real use for once units were in combat.
So going forward with my army I’ve decided to make some changes. I’m dropping my Lord and 1 of my Heroes, I’m also getting rid of the Spider Riders, they performed okay but I just wasn’t excited about them. I’m going to add 4 units of 10 Squig Hoppers each (basically to replace the Spider Riders), I’m also going to “upgrade” my army general to a Night Goblin Big Boss with Martog’s Best Basha and the Amulet Of Protectyness (with light armour and shield he’s still only 74 points!). And last but not least a small unit of 2 Trolls.

I also have some painting and modeling yet to do. In addition to painting my new units and character I want to go back and touch up some of my existing models. My rank and file spearmen still need; eyes, teeth and highlights. I also want to add some snow flock to my bases to make them a bit more interesting. Once all that’s done my army will be ready to rock in any and all campaigns (hint, hint) that we have coming up next year.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed following along with us as we’ve built our armies as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing our experience with you.

November 10, 2006

Hello again everybody,

Everything on my last road trip did go according to plan so I now have all my Spearmen done. Here’s how I’m looking completion-wise right now:

FINISHED

- 2 units of 20 Goblin Archers with command

- 5 units of 24 Goblin Spearmen with command

- 1 Goblin Shaman

STILL TO BE DONE

- 3 units of 10 Goblin Spider Riders

- 15 Goblin Fanatics

- 3 Goblin Shamen

Also I unfortunately have to re-do my movement trays. I made my initial movement trays out of thick card and when I came home I found that they had warped on me. Oh well, I’m now making new movement trays out of the plastic trays that we have in our stores.

Everything seems to be going to plan so with any luck I’ll get done a week or two early so I can get in some practice games with my army before the tournament on December 2nd.

My buddy Brad is riding me about being slow with getting pictures of my miniatures up. I’ve given up on finding the USB cable for my digital camera and instead I’m just going to head out and buy one today. So maybe, just maybe there will be a picture of most of the horde for next week.

October 27, 2006

I’m coming to you this week from beautiful downtown Montreal. I’m midway through my road trip and I’ve finished 42 of 105 Goblin Spearmen. I figure if I can get 42 more done on the Ottawa leg of my trip I can finish the last 21 on Sunday when I get home. Honestly I am getting a little less done than I had planned on this trip but I’m still ahead of schedule so I should be fine.

This week’s painting tip is; keep your colour palette simple. Until I get to my characters I’m keeping my colour palette to 10 paints, I keep only those 10 paints with my army and I don’t use anything else. For those of you who may be curious my palette for this army is:

-Green (Warhammer Paint Set)
-Brown (Warhammer Paint Set)
-Yellow (Warhammer Paint Set)
-Red (Warhammer Paint Set)
-Chaos Black
-Boltgun Metal
-Sunburst Yellow
-Graveyard Earth
-Skull White
-Charcoal Black (a mix of 2 parts Chaos Black to 1 part Shadow Grey)

Keeping to a limited selection of colours and putting the rest of your paints away becomes another one of those ways to “trick” yourself and make the task seem less daunting. I line my 10 paint pots up infront of me and as I complete using a colour I move that pot to the back of my paint station, it’s just another thing that creates a sense of progress being made.

Next week when I get back is when I’ll get some photos up on the website. Maybe I’ll also get a picture of tumbleweeds blowing across my desk at the office so I can dispell the propaganda being spread by Jay Mason-Grant that I work at HQ! My goblins are going to crush your weird little doggies Jay!

October 19, 2006

Well here I am again.

So far I’ve built and painted, my movement trays, the command sections for all seven of my infantry units, and both my archer units.

So far, so good (so what?)

And now I look to the week ahead. When last I wrote in I had just finished a tour of Alberta and BC. This time out I’m heading out the door to visit my eastern stores (Halifax, Montreal and then Ottawa), how does this fit into a blog about miniature painting? I’m glad I assumed you asked! As I will be spending five nights next week in hotels it is my intention to bring 105 Goblin Spearmen with me to paint in the evenings while I’m back at the hotel. It’s great because I have huge blocks of free time and no distractions. Assuming all goes to plan, when November hits all I’ll have left to do is; 30 Spider Riders, 3 wizards, 15 Fanatics. When I get back from the trip I’ll definitely bring in some models for the studio guys to photograph.

In my first blog I gave everybody some tips for getting armies done quickly. I’d like to add one additional tip; use the new Warhammer Paint Set to paint Red and Yellow! Is this a shameless plug? I guess. Am I actually doing it myself? You bet I am! All the paints in the new Warhammer Paint Set are designed to give one coat coverage and they are FANTASTIC, especially if you have to paint yellow moons on over 100 shields or red spear shafts and bows on 160 models. I guarantee if you’re an army painter like me and you try these paints, you’ll love them!

That’s it for me for this week. Hopefully I’ll be back online with an infantry horde to show off in two weeks. Wish me luck!

October 11, 2006

Well hello everyone. Sorry I’m the last one to show up for the party, I just got in from an extended tour of our retail chain and this is my first chance to sit down and let you all know what’s up.

First off, a little bit about myself. I’ve worked for Games Workshop for 9 years and I currently run our retail chain. I live in Oakville and I work out of our HQ, if you see a guy hanging around the HQ store being absolutely ABUSED for his inability to win a game of anything involving miniatures and dice by other people in Games Workshop shirts, that’s me.

When the subject of a painting challenge came up I thought “great!” this will really motivate me to paint up a new army. Since I first played Warhammer Fantasy over 16 years ago I really wanted to paint an all Goblin army. But when I first got into the hobby I always thought that a huge horde army like that was beyond me. I was having this discussion with one of my retail staff as I was in the process of losing my millionth consecutive game with my Chaos army when, it was pointed out to me that all my Warhammer 40,000 armies are horde armies and that if I couldn’t apply the same standard to painting a Fantasy army I was clearly in need of a kicking. So here goes the green horde is getting ready to roll over any who dare to stand in it’s path!

On the subject of the extremely generous odds Cory has given me for completing the project I should mention a few things about how I get tons of painting done. Hopefully some of you may find this useful:

1) Paint to completion, not to contest standards. When you’re painting an army basecoat everything in your army before going back and applying highlights. This achieves two goals, first if life intrudes on your hobby time there’s still a very good chance you’ll have something that’s atleast playable before you run out of time, second it helps you play a little trick on your self that you’re “almost done”, when the task in front of you seems less daunting it’s much easier to keep yourself motivated.

2) Try to paint a little each day. Instead of planning on marathon painting sessions on the weekend or late nights try to get in an hour a day if you can. I find that what helps me is to get up about 30 minutes before my wife in the morning so that I can get some work done before my house really starts moving in the morning and staying up about 30-60 minutes later than her in the evenings so I can get some stuff done once things have quieted down for the day. If getting up early or staying up late don’t appeal to you try setting up a paint station where you and your family watch TV. I’m sure we can all follow the average TV show without being fixated on the screen.

3) Always leave time for things to go wrong. Don’t wait to start until halfway to the deadline you need the army for because you think you’re a fast painter. If you leave things to the last minute; a friend will need you to help them move, or your boss will need you to cover somebody’s shift, or whatever. I can practically guarantee that if you leave “just” enough time something will come up to cut into that time.

Well, that’s basically it for me. I’m looking forward to playing with my new army as well as the next army I get from those who fail to complete the challenge!