Season One Finished

So I finally managed to finish a roleplaying campaign. Last week we had the seventh and final session in our Hunter: The Vigil game. Its a pretty big milestone for me as I haven't finished a game before. I don't think any of my players finished one before either! I have started loads of campaigns with massive plots and world shaking events. This time I didn't do that. The game went really well and everybody is eager for more. I am attributing this to the shortness of the game and the fact that it had a clearly defined story. I took on the idea of using seasons for the game with each season being a contained story.

With Christmas looming on the horizon I think it is best to take a break and to begin again in the new year. Otherwise we would end up having around a four week break in the middle of a story and that wuld just result in killing the game. Even I wouldn't be able to remember the more subtle facts and happenings and that would make for a really bad game. The story arc I was going for was able to be brought to an end, maybe not a satisfactory one for my players, and using a seasonal approach it fitted perfectly as the end of a season. The players know that there is the possibility for more and that despite the fact they got their revenge they didn't get satisfaction. This can fuel season two a little and with the correct seeds planted season two doesn't end up as a monster of the week style game.

I have been listening to the THAC0 podcast a lot recently and they have covered approaching roleplaying games in the same sense as a TV series. I think this is a really excellent way to approach things. You can set up a story with a good view to an end and then play towards that. As long as you keep it a resonably achievable story it can finish in under ten sessions allowing the players to take a break. This gives you a season and as long as everyone is willing to keep going it is possible to continue playing, in my opinion, for much longer than games normally last.

Friday Showcase - Swamp Gobbers

These guys are great. Firstly there are only two of them so its not going to take long to paint them. Secondly they are so characterful they are fun to paint and finally they are also great in the game so thats motivation to get them done. These were one of the first units for my Circle force that I painted. I tested out some different colours and while I think they worked out fairly well they were not done perfectly. Yellow skin is pretty weird but I wanted to avoid green. It is far to strong in a visual sense and I didn't want these to take away from my rule of no green for the army. Well I use green but only for armour or gems. It is a pity that there are not more models in the range as characterful as these. Swamp Gobbers would make for an awesome faction!

A Tale of Three Gamers - Targets Set

So it is week one, the challenge has begun. All three of us have set their targets and only Gar was ambitious. I am setting myself a modest target of a Giant and a chariot. Al is aiming for five Chaos Knights and Gar is going for thirty Dwarves! I am being lazy. I have time at the moment to make a good dent in some of the core requirements but I don't want to commit deeply and lose motivation. I hate painting big regiments as forty or so models really take a long time to make progress on.
Here is what I have managed to get done on the giant so far this week. Just a base coat nothing special. I am keeping him in the warm brown tones that the test Ungor had. I am not sure if that is really going to work out for the flesh but hopefully it does! I was going to use him, with some conversions, as a Ghorgon but really I can't justify it. I don't think I would be able to convert him enough. Adding horns and weapons really wouldn't cut it I think. For the chariot I do plan some conversions. I hate the boars that are pulling the chariot and I think I would be able to use some Chaos Hounds instead. They are almost as big and they are much nicer models. I wouldn't have to do much either to add them under the yoke, just chopping and resculpting some of the fur on their napes. Lets just hope my eBay source is prompt in sending the chariot out to me.

Here is Gar's test model. He already has a few regiments done for this army but he is using this challenge to add more to the army. First up is some great weapon armed clansmen, a regiment I really am not looking forward to facing on the battlefield. Gar has used a nice contrasting dark blue and bright silver scheme for the Dwarves. The shields on the clansmen is done with GW Ice Blue to make them stand out a little stronger. Getting these done within a month is going to be tough.I always lose my motivation on bigger regiments. Especially when they reach above about fifteen models. I usually try to paint them in batches of five or six so that I don't have an endless line of thirty or so to do. When it takes a few hours to get something like the silver done thats when I really start to get annoyed. That is one of the benefits of Wwarmachine maximum units sizes are ten so you feel like you are making progress much more often.

Al is going to be holidaying this month (lucky him) so he is committing to a small regiment. So while we are slaving away for our corporate masters he is having cocktails on the beach. I still think it is a push to get these done as cavalry take a lot of time. There is a large surface area on those horses and painting them takes longer than expected. You can see here clearly a greek theme with hoplon shields and corinthian helmets. I have no idea on what the colour scheme is going to be yet, hopefully Al will make some WIP shots so that they can be put up here next week or so. I intend putting a post up every Thursday showing or at least discussing the progress made by each of us. I guess that will include quite often a lack of progress too! At the start of each month we will all present what we intend to do. It is going to be around 300pts in total though it will vary a little depending on what we select. The hope is that we will get 2400pts completed within eight months or so. We might even manage to get some terrain done along the way!


Month's Targets:
Al: Five Tzeentchian Chaos Knights
Phil: A Giant and a Chariot
Gar: Twenty Five Dwarven Clansmen


Tale of Three Gamers:
Test Colours
The Beginning

I hate painting wood

Okay so I hate Mannikins, I really hate them. I am painting the Sentry Stone at the moment. The Sentry Stone itself is really nice to paint. Its got nice flate well defined surfaces. It is pretty easy to spot the details and where the highlights should go. However the Mannikins are a different story altogether. They are nice models despite the fact that they are not really that different from each other. I really don't like the wood grain, well I like the grain I jut don't like having to paint it. It takes ages and often doesn't look that good. I can manage the odd decent weapon haft but usually I don't put that much effort into them. On the Wolds there really isn't enough smooth surfaces to the wood so that avois the problem. However I really can't manage to get the Mannikins to look right. Tomorrow I am popping up the progress on the Beastmen so I expect it will be Monday before I have the Mannikins on here. I hope I can get them looking good!

A progress report

So it is the start of a new month and I thought I would take some time to check my progress over the last while. I posted about this before here and it is interesting to compare what I have managed since, well at least for me! Its exactly six months ago that I updated this last and there are some big differences. First up is the fact that my Khador collection has almost tripled in size and is still totally unpainted. I had better make a start on them soon! I have made a lot of progress on my menites. Thirteen more models bought and yet I managed to get them to 91% done. I really need to sit and finish them off too. It would be really nice to have them at 100% done. Aat least then I have a good excuse to buy some more. My mercenaries have also tripled in size but at least they have also been painted with 97% of them done. I also managed to avoid buying more Circle models and to paint some of the backlog. It would be really awesome to get these close to 100% but there are just too many nice models and I will be investing more in them over the coming months, especially considering the arrival of Domination. Minions have stayed the same so thats good!

So all this boils down to the fact that I bought fifty nine new models just for Warmachine and Hordes over the last six months. I also managed to increase the average number of completed models from 60% to 66%. That is a pretty decent increase in my mind as I have continued to buy miniatures, especially Mercs and Khador. Also interesting to note is the fact that I have managed to start a new system, Dystopian Wars. I have a small fleet thats close to being completed. I have only seven models to paint and they shouldn't take long. The problems is that nobody here really plays the game and so I have no motivation to paint them.

I am wondering a little what is going to happen over the next six months. I have started a Beastman army for warhammer Fantasy. Thats going to be over a hundred miniatures I am guessing. I am intending to paint them to a high enough standard so thats really going to effect the amount of time I have to spend on Warmachine and Hordes. I still want to make progress with them but I have to resign myself to doing single models rather than units. Thats okay as I do have my eyes on a few solos. I do think that Dystopian Wars will get squeezed out. There is only so much time and I can't dedicate that to a system I am just not playing. Its a pity but I really don't see any hope for my Prussians.