The rough core of my northern war host.
The idea for this blog came to me a few months ago, but I’ve restrained from starting it until now so that I could finish a number of higher priorities. Per one of the motivating factors behind this blog, I also thought it might be a good experiment to wait until shortly after New Year’s Day to start posting.
I was swamped with work last year and didn’t have much time to paint. But I think if I had managed my time a little differently, I could have squeezed some more minutes out of the day to devote to my hobby. I decided that what I needed was a plan. I needed a schedule and a goal (or two) to keep me on track. Also, since I am out of practice, I felt that I wanted to try a different style for at least one of my projects (28mm), something quicker and easier. The Foundry painting system codified in Kevin Dallimore’s Foundry Miniatures Painting and Modeling Guide (I’m about to order my own copy) seemed well suited for what I had in mind. Finally, I wanted something of a retro feel to this project, if not simply because that aesthetic is especially appealing to me now.
With this in mind, at the end of the summer I placed a large order with Mirliton in Italy. I bought almost their entire range of goblins and hobgoblins + a few trial orcs to flesh out the primary regiments in my winter-themed war host. I’ve primed and based the initial batch of models in a way that I hope is generic enough to work with most game systems (although I doubt I’ll ever have time to play). I’ll start painting these using a modified version of the Foundry/impasto painting scheme on Monday, 5 January. I’ve got a number of ideas for this army, which I will post here over the coming days. (I should also take a moment to mention that my inspiration for this army is the WitchHunter’s Norse Army. Beautiful stuff.)
I also want to make great strides with my 10mm Middle-earth project this year. I initially started chronicling this over at The Last Alliance. However, for a variety of reasons that I will not go into here, I have decided that is not the forum for projects of this nature. I hope to finish painting roughly thirty boxes of Copplestone 10mm miniatures this year, beginning with the “Rohan” cavalry. About half of my goal is primed and ready to go.
Finally, I’ll be using this blog as a traditional blog from time to time, meaning that I intend to comment on things I find in the Web related to the miniatures hobby as a whole.
