Clearing the way

And those Mantic Elf Scouts (Kindred Gladestalkers) are now complete which leaves my workbench more or less clear to crack on with those goblins and trolls.

 I've got speed painting Mantic elves pretty much sorted so I am hopeful that I can come back to the tray of unpainted elves and work though them before the end of the year. For now I am on to more pressing matters which will involve a lot of green paint.

And now for part 2

Returning from my summer holidays it looks like I'm going to have to get cracking. So far my "year of completing projects" hasn't exactly been going to plan with a grand total of er.. zero projects finished. Secondly this is about the time of year I begin to focus on my Clash of Kings army for October. After taking Elves to the last three events with mixed results I decided it was time to take something else instead. With the current meta being what it is I have opted for goblins with a few upgrades and upgrades has meant purchases.

I did manage to go 8 months without buying miniatures which is probably the longest purchasing embargo I've had in years but the prospect of some discounted trolls proved too much temptation for me to pass up. I have bought 6 more trolls, a troll bruiser and a goblin war trombone - all Mantic. Together with some items from the lead pile these will allow me to field a goblin army at the Clash of Kings that stands a reasonable change of doing well (I hope).

Before getting cracking on with those I decided to try and clear some elves I had already started off my workbench. This small chap has been a work in progress for a while and it really is about time he was completed. The new Mantic elf dragon is made from board game plastic and is an adaptation of the model they produced for Dungeon Saga. The material holds a reasonable amount of detail but I ended up painting the body scales individually as they weren't quite distinct enough to dry-brush as I would usually do. The rider is metal and is nice and crisp.

The model is much larger than the original Mantic elf dragon I painted recently, here they are together with my GW elf dragon for comparison.

I'm looking forward to a game where I can actually field all three at the same time.

With the dragon done I'm not putting the finishing touches to some elf scouts which are nearly complete and once those are out of the way then it will be time to get on with those trolls!

Halfway mark

We are now into July which means it is time for me to look back over the first six months of the year and see what I've accomplished.

My pledge tracker spreadsheet tells me that I've painted a total of 103 28mmeq and bought zero new miniatures (8 months and counting!). Whilst this is good news on the pledge front it does mean that I am behind on my aim of painting more than 300 miniatures again this year.

Why am I not painting faster? Well my painting time has been curtailed by PNKD but I've also got a little bored of painting elves.

After a recent disastrous showing at a KoW tournament my attention has been diverted back to my modern city project. My aim for 2016 was the year of completing projects - and the modern city project is a pretty good candidate for this. I had a box of street furniture, some cars, a building and a single 28mm miniature left to do and I have made a pretty good dent in it already.

I've also been working on the rules for the game which are coming on pretty nicely IMHO. Once this lot is out of my system I will probably be back painting the elves before too long.

6 months and counting

Today marks a big milestone - it has been six months since my last miniatures purchase. In that time I have not backed any miniatures kickstarters, placed any pre-orders or swapped or traded for miniatures. As a mildly obsessive collector this is probably the longest period I have gone without a miniatures purchase in many years.

Looking at the projects in front of me there isn't anything I *need* for any of them either so I could potentially keep this going for a while longer. Part of me wants to frivolously purchase something just for the sake of it but this is balanced by another part which is wondering just how long I can keep going. We shall see.

End of Q1

As the curtain closed on Q1 I managed to finish splashing some paint on a few more miniatures. These elves have been cluttering up my workbench for a bit, I started them before assembling the mass of miniatures in the last post.

Also from the workbench are some elf characters.The mages are metal miniatures from the 1st Mantic KoW kickstarter. The one on the left arrived damaged so I converted him with a GW component. The standard bearer is from Mierce miniatures. When I started painting him the standard had a dragon head at each end of the cross pole but it seems to have gone missing at some point. Hopefully it will turn up again soon.

And this post's surprise round consists of the restic Enforcers from the first Deadzone Kickstarter. My DZ2 rulebook showed up last week and I thought it would be a god idea to get these done so I could get some games in. I'm not especially proud of the results but they're done and I'll take that.

That brings my painted total up to 103 miniatures for the year so far so I'm on target to beat the 300 barrier again as long as I keep at it.

Send for reinforcements

Following the plan of "completing" things I took time out over the weekend to assemble every last remaining Mantic elf in my collection. We have here:-

• 20 Stormwind Cavalry (2 regiments)
• 10 Kindred Tallspears
• 20 Kindred Gladestalkers
• 30 Kindred Archers (1 regiment and 1 troop)

Now that they are assembled I need to fill some gaps in the horses (I didn't do a very good job of putting them together). After that everything will get washed in detergent (to remove grease/release agent) then have sand applied to the bases before priming.

If I can get this batch of elves painted up in a reasonable time scale I will be very happy. I still have some elves from a previous batch part painted on my workbench so those will get done first and I'm sure there will be the odd interruption but I'm keen to get cracking.

.. and we're back.

Even for this blog that was a long pause. A combination of health issues and real life conspired to limit the amount of painting time available coupled with a loss of enthusiasm for painting (when I was actually able to) meant that February and March were not productive months.

April has been better so far and I have been able to put the finishing touches on the miniatures that I have been picking away at since my last post. I have added (yet another) 10 Mantic elf Kindred Tallspears (spearmen) to my army - only 10 more left in the unpainted pile.

Also joining my KoW army is an Elf Master Hunter. This is a metal miniature which was available via the Mantic points programme as a scout captain but has been OOP for some time I believe.

And finally for this update a troop of 10 Mantic Orc Greatax. Yes I know they aren't elves but I fancies a bit of a change. The speed with which I managed to get these painted make me think that I might get round to painting up my Mantic Orcs sooner than I had planned.

Next on the table are likely to be some elf archers but plans may change depending on whether I can make it to a KoW tournament in Altringham next month. I need to work out which army I would like to take and see if I need to add any units to get a decent list.