Painting progress

I am in fact still alive, and still working on Tau, albeit a bit slowly.  Previously I had base coated, based, and inked all the figures, as reported here.  Then I laboriously went back and highlighted with the base coats again, wherein the poor definition of the casting for these figures annoyed me again (particularly in the legs).  Yesterday I finished up the armor paint job, and today I painted the feet and hooves, so I am just a few colors away from completion.  At this point I estimate that I will have invested around 25 hours into this project, which works out to be an hour per figure.  Not too bad from sprue to finished project, but a bit long if I were intending to paint up another couple platoons worth for a full company.

When these figures are finished, I have the pathfinders to build and paint, as well as a few filler figures for this platoon (mostly to allow them to be standard 40k Tau, instead of configured for StarGrunt II)

In other news, White Dwarf Weekly and Warhammer Visions both launch on Saturday, so if I can slip out of the house to buy copies of each, look forward to a review of sorts.

B-Wing

As a late Christmas present from a friend, I got a B-wing miniature for the X wing game:

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Aside from the miniature, this package supplies more tokens, as well as some system and weapon upgrade cards (including the useful autoblaster). It also has a rule card to explain how ion cannons work.  Since B-wings range in points from 21 (worst pilot, not upgraded) to 62 (best pilot, fully upgraded), they can be a challenge to fit into a list, but with a potential of nine combined shield and hull points, it seems like it can take a beating as well as dish one out.

 

Now I just need to actually PLAY the darn game...

GW bitz service

As you might recall, at one time Games Workshop had a massive bitz service, whereby one could buy old miniatures, parts of miniatures, and individual sprues from kits, as well as other ephemera related to the vast Games Workshop hobby.  In the US at least, this reached its peak in the early 00's when the massive "phone book" bitz catalogs were released in all their hardback glory.  This regularly caused me to go on mad buying sprees as I matched this arm with that body and this head to create (at least on paper) some amazing conversions or weird custom units.

However, Games Workshop decided to get out the bitz business right before they decided to get out of the metal business, and stopped the broad swath of what they had available, reducing it to just a few sprues and figures, now priced even higher. Gradually, this lack of available bitz from Games Workshop was replaced by eBay and other online bitz sellers, chopping up kits and selling the pieces.  This year, Games Workshop has decided that the terms of sale to merchants would not allow for this practice, and to a certain extent the availability of bitz has declined from some sellers (matched of course by the rise in price from the remaining).

Tangentially to this, Games Workshop has always had an excellent replacement service. When kits are incomplete, or miniatures are miscast, they quickly replace the missing pieces, often with complete new ones.  So when my new box of Tau Pathfinders was missing one of the muzzles for a rail rifle, I duly contacted Games Workshop for a replacement, visions of a whole new box, or at least that particular sprue dancing in my head. As the weeks wore on,

So I was a little surprised to get the following in the mail:

Faugh!  Exactly what I needed to complete the kit, and no more?  Which was perfectly fine of course, and ultimately amusing when I realized that GW is effectively supplying bitz in the same way as all those online chop shops...

FLASH - White Dwarf to end?

There are numerous rumors floating about that White Dwarf magazine, Games Workshop's house organ since 1977, will end in February.

White Dwarf is possibly being replaced by a weekly smaller magazine (?) and another magazine of much larger size.

Seems astounding if true, but I guess time will tell.  As someone who has been reading the magazine for... well, a long time, I would be pretty upset to see it go.

Brigade Models January Sale

I have mentioned my love for Brigade Models previously, when I missed their 25th anniversary sale, and I am going to do it again to mention their January New Year's sale, which is 15% off everything in the store that they make.  With the pound at $1.65 USD this is a great deal, particularly as Brigade Models is VAT listed.

I will not be able to take advantage of this sale, as I have other fish to fry so to speak, but you should.

Here are some of my painted Brigade castings (from long ago):

Hmm, I really should get back to 6mm sometime, and finish off these forces.