Introduction

Welcome to my painting log. This all started last year when I saw someone on the Mantic forum post a simple enough goal, paint some models. His plan however was to paint 365, one for each day of the year, by the end of that calendar year. Reading this I was inspired to do the same... and failed miserably. I am a slow painter. As I primarily play Warmachine I tend to try to paint models to a high standard, there are less of them on a table you see, so making one model look good gets you far closer to a full army than with most other game systems. This does not lend itself well to painting large armies however. My painting efforts for 2012 will have been less than 50 models, just those I needed for tournaments.

This year however I have more motivation. I have gathered up well over 1000 models in the last few years, many of which are still on their sprue or in boxes. This includes 2 full Kings of war armies, 2 full warpath armies, a Kirai Malifaux crew, about 150 points of Cryx, about 70 points of Blindwater Gators, 30 points of Legion of Everblight, some Menoth and some odds and ends that I thought would look cool when painted up. Plus anything I have forgotten... (Like dystopian wars, firestorm armada, the list goes on.) This takes up quite a bit of storage space and with the dreadball and KoW kickstarters sending me more soon I need to get some on my empty shelves! The prevalence of Armypainter products has opened up the speed painting capabilities of even the time challenged so now my excuses are dwindling as my ever growing pile of models threatens to swallow me whole. With a shift to a new home I now have a garage, giving me space for weekend gaming outside of the usual Warmachine tourney prep at the club and a pile of terrain I made for Rallypoint this year. With more gaming time available I may get to play some of the games I have picked up recently, if only I can get them assembled.

So on to the goal. I plan to paint 365 models from Jan 1st 2013 to Dec 31 2013. This will require me to paint quick and dirty for the Mantic games while also getting my Blindwater Gators ready for Ides of March. So on to the details of the plan: With Over the Top in early Feb I would like to try and paint up my Mantic Corporation to use in the 40k event. This partially hinges on me designing a set of 3 escalating lists for the 1k, 1.5K and 2K games without buying any GW models and trying not to buy any more Mantic models unless absolutely necessary. (The desire to field a guard swarm is strong!) This entails somewhere in the order of 150 guardsmen in just 1 month unless I borrow some tanks, which may be necessary to fill out points. Quick and dirty is the aim of the game here, I'm going for a WWII German style uniform and army painter dark shade to speed up the whole process. Bases will be fairly bland with just the standard brown gravel and static grass to add a little colour to the whole model.

March brings on Ides, and a pair of Blindwater lists at 42 points. (With common models.) While this should be less than 30 models the expectation is to put more time and energy into each model. Luckily I already have the scheme chosen and a couple of the models already painted. Unluckily I am doing swamp bases which require a lot of work. Time may dictate stopping half way through the Corporation models to work on the Gators, hopefully the Armypainter spray will speed up the priming process.

All goes well my first 180 or so models will be done by March. Yikes. Worth a try right? In the build up to D-Day I will post some pics of the assembled and primed models. That isn't cheating right?