The New Painting Season

Hi Chaps

The new painting season has almost started. The time of year when the clocks go back and inclement weather nudges us all closer to the painting table as opposed to all that healthy outdoors nonsense! Personally this is my favourite time of year as I treat myself to new figures to paint and maybe even a new rule set to read (but rarely game!).

This season seems to be all about skirmish games, Frostgrave is getting good reviews and the upcoming Osprey Black Ops looks very interesting. Even Games Workshop have excelled themselves with the free Age of Sigmar rules which I think are very subtle and when used with the Warscrolls give a great game. With this in mind I have a large chunk of chipboard which will soon be a gaming table ....either 3 or 4 foot square, maybe I will go for the larger size as I am rather enjoying the Sigmar ruleset.

On the painting side of things it has been a productive time. Ebay has been a source of enjoyment in both clearing my shelves of half started projects or bidding on new/old figures to throw some paint at. I suppose the downside of secondhand figures is that they occasionally have paint on them though I rarely bid for these or they can be even more expensive than new castings-beware of the Ebay bug!

 I would provide a picture of what I have been painting but my new (to me) computer did not come with any photo editing software! Photo's of mini's without the aid of an editing programme are simply shocking....have a look...

Any advice would be most welcome...I have tried GIMP (yes I thought it was a joke too) but no matter how I fiddle about I cannot find an auto correct part of the programme or even a cropping feature.

Please keep blogging and do enjoy the new season.

Well done Games Workshop!

Hi Chaps,

I never thought that I would be praising Games Workshop . but...The Age of Sigmar rule set is free (I am on a tight budget) and it is backwards compatible with all their previous armies. The bods who run GW seem to have realised that by the time you have purchased an expensive rulebook and codex the average customer has not much left to spend on figures, or they have been put off by the start up costs in the first place.

This renewed interest in fantasy war gaming was unexpected-even my son was wowed by the figures!! So I dusted off some old Dwarves and rolled a few dice...fun was had and I assume that there will be more players than the excellent but now rare DBA fantasy rules Hordes of the Things. Back to single round bases for the lads...

I was so motivated I decided to scratch build a terrain piece for a game that I never played-Mordheim...which led to Frostrgave...I am sure there are plenty of other gamers who just read rules but never play the games! Anyway this piece is a work in progress and is number five in my medieval collection of houses, which again could be another sub hobby...people who make and collect scenery that never gets used!

The theme of painting or making figures and buildings that we are not really interested in has cropped up a lot for me this month, I now own 25 Space Marines and a couple of character figures-I swear that I only wanted to paint a few of them but it has grown into a bit of a project.

Keep blogging I need to know that you are as nuts about this hobby as I am.