Worlds In Miniature

It feels like a mixed bag of a month. I bought quite a few new minis despite the goal being not to… and while I made progress from the backlog, I didn’t manage to finish painting anything.

• Miniatures purchased: 42
• Miniatures assembled: 55
• Miniatures started painting (including priming): 73
• Miniatures finished painted: 0
• Warhammer Fund withdrawals: £35¹
• Warhammer Fund final balance: £12²

So some progress, but not as much as I’d like. I had visions of completing the Sylvaneth I built last month plus maybe one other project during the month, but I found myself too burned out from work to maintain the energy needed to sit and paint much in the evenings. Instead, painting was 5 minutes here and there, or applying a wash while waiting for something else.

On a more positive note, I have still made significant progress on two armies: Sylvaneth, and Daughters of Khaine. For whatever reason, I’ve been inspired to work on the various flavours of elf I have lying around. The woodsy-elves just need a light drybrush, some details, and basing to be considered complete; the stabby-stabby-elves mostly need some clean-up/highlights and basing for the first wave to be finished enough. The second wave is currently un-built while I try to nail down the army colour scheme and process. It’s been proving a challenge. I’m not happy with how things are looking right now, so my enthusiasm has dipped and I’ve been second-guessing everything. I need to get out of my head and “get it done”. With a fair wind (and less nonsense at work) I should hopefully get one or both finished in April.

I primed the Blades of Khorne built last month at the same time as I primed the Daughters of Khaine, so they’re good to go once I clear at least one of the in-progress elven armies out of the way. I’m thinking I want to make them as quick and simple as possible. I should have prepared them for the slapchop method, but I’ve primed them too light in hindsight. It should be recoverable - apply some washes, drybrush, then follow the usual slapchop process.

In celebration of playing my first game with the Cities of Sigmar, I bought, built, and primed a unit of Fusiliers as the first expansion unit. As tempting as it is to go ham with expanding this army at the minute, I’m only letting myself add and complete a single unit at a time.

Interestingly, it’s another month with zero progress on anything 40K-related. For whatever reason it’s just not holding my attention at the moment, even though I have had a couple of project ideas during the last month. It’s taking some willpower not to act on those ideas, but I’m helped by the fact they’d be neither cheap nor quick!

Looking ahead, I want to finally start making progress on my Stormcast Eternals. They were one of my big aspirations for this year, and I haven’t done anything with them so far. With the new AOS edition coming in a few months supposedly bringing some old units up to date with the more modern “Thunderstrike” redesign, I can’t see me being able to resist adding the units from the launch box. So maybe the Stormcast are what I should be concentrating on. I need to figure out a replicable process that’s either quick, easy, or low-stress (ideally all three!) that fits the vision I have for what I want this army to look like - battle-worn, slightly “grimdark”, but knightly and heroic.

But then again, there’s also the Darkoath boxsets on the horizon…