Quirkworthy

My least favourite part of painting is cleaning up the models in the first place, but it has to be done. So that I can avoid using that as an excuse not to do it, and so that I don’t make a mess of something valuable, I’m going to start with a few models that I’d already cleaned up ages ago. I was going to show you a photo, and indeed I shall. However, my camera + skills are not up to taking a decent photo with what I have in the dark. I need the great daylight bulb in the sky to get a halfway decent shot. Photos will have to wait till tomorrow.

The models I have dredged up are a mixed bag, as you might expect. That’s not the point. They are a means to an end.

I’ll also show you a couple of my old models so you can see that I used to be an OK painter. I never was fast though, and that’s something I need to fix.

Well that crystal ball gazing got a bit of attention 🙂

Hello and welcome to all who joined us from TTGN. Seems that my predictions caused a bit of a spike in traffic. Perhaps I should take up fortune telling?

Please come in and make yourselves at home. Feel free to wander around, ask questions and comment on the decor. It’s something of a work in progress, so you may find unfinished pages, but do not be alarmed. Things are developing at a pretty pace and if you check back often you’ll find extra pages and all manner of additions crop up regularly. Alternatively, you could subscribe with the button on the right and the marvels of modern technology will mail you exciting stuff as it happens. At least, I think that’s what it does 🙂

It has been a long time since I painted any toy soldiers properly. A very long time. So long, in fact, that I have entirely lost track of when I last did it. This is a bad thing.

This may seem peculiar for a game designer who works with miniatures on a daily basis, but that’s also a major part of the reason. Armies/warbands/gangs/etc of miniatures are a stock in trade for me. Some of the time I’m working on video games and other times board games, but a sizable portion of my work is with tabletop games. Without exception, these need me to work with several armies at once, without being partisan about their relative merits and skipping from one to the other and back before I have any chance of painting a whole force. If I collect one army out of half a dozen then it’s harder to be impartial when I balance the game. Couple this with the inevitable fact that often the models aren’t made when I am writing the game or army list that goes with them, and the fact that I’m a very slow painter and you can start to see the problem. However, I’ve decided that this isn’t acceptable.

I do own more than half a dozen painted armies for Warhammer, a bunch of gangs for various skirmish games and so on. However, the ones I painted myself long since ended up on Ebay, and what I have left are playtest armies acquired ready painted from various disparate sources. These armies stand in for whatever I’m working on, and do me good service, though none of them feel like “my army”. They’re just tools for the job.

When your hobby is also your work it gets easily muddled, and so this is really me attempting to regain some of my hobby and to separate the two a little more. It’d be nice to have an army of my own again 🙂

So, with all this in mind, I’m setting out to clear my painting desk again. I’m going to relearn my old skills and add some new ones. And, while I’m about it, I’m going to document it here.

My first step is illustrated above; I now have some Hull Red. Now I can paint anything 🙂

Acronyms anyone?

After a small hiccup or two, Green Menace has now got its own page on Boardgamegeek: DKH: Green Menace, to go with the DKH: Dead Rising page.

If you’ve got any reviews, comments, or just want to go and rate my games that would help other folk understand how they work and whether or not they would suit them. In case you don’t know, Boardgamegeek (BGG to its friends) is an amazingly useful resource, but relies on user driven content to work.