When it comes to assembling miniatures, everything is going great and I am confident that not only I'll manage to achive my goal, but beat it completely and finish this year with no unassembled miniatures. Since January, I have built:
- Start Collecting: Slaves to Darkness set (16 miniatures)
- 20 Kairic Acolytes
- Ogroid Myrmidon
- Custom Tzeentch hero (built by converting one of the Varanguard models)
- Khagra's Ravegers WHU warband
- Unit of Kurnoth Hunters (3 models)
- Unit of Tree-Revenants (5 models)
- Converted Branchwraith out of the Branchwych model
- Abaddon the Despoiler
- Unit of Havocs (5 models)
- Hellbrute
- Unit of Allarus Custodians (3 models)
- 2 units of Custodian Wardens (10 models total)
- All miniatures for the "Cursed City" board game (around 60 miniatures in total)
In my post back in January, I was not considering building Custeds models - however, as you can see, I have built a lot of them, so the only remaining Custodes unit at this moment is Vertus Praetors. I am still waiting on my Tzeentch stuff to arrive (the order got misplaced and has been lost in the Warp since February, but hopefully I will get it somewhere in June). At first, building that many models seemed a bit initimidating, but I spent 20-30 minutes almost every day to build a few smaller models or continue assembling a larger one. I did this usually during my break at work, or early in the morning, while the rest of the family were sleeping. As you can see, A LOT can be done in multiple small sessions.
When it comes to painting, there's a lot less progress here, because the recent job change and the day-to-day dynamic leaves me exhausted (and I tend to prioritize free time on excercise and reading). However, there is still progress and it's likely that I will hit my goals for this year. Since january, I have worked on the following models:
- I've finished one Varanguard model and I'm very close to finishing the first unit (out of the two). For some reason, while I like these models a lot, I struggle a lot when it comes to painting them
- I've finished unit of 3 Allarus Custodians! This wasn't among my goals for this year, but since I really love Custodes models and they are so easy to paint, I managed to paint this unit quickly.
- Kurnoth Huters are progressing nicely and I think I have nailed the new colour scheme.
I expect that I will struggle a lot less when I finish this first unit of Varanguard, because I've been working on them for a while and I now just want to have them finished. But in the same time, I don't want to do a half-assed job, but maintain the consistent quality (similar to my other minis). It seems that I have picked up a colour scheme that I really do not enjoy painting that much - this is a clear sign that I have to choose something else for the scond unit. Allarus paintjob was nice and easy, and I enjoyed it a lot (and it helped out to paint some WH40K minis, because I am working on Age of Sigmar models most of the time).
So far, I am really satisfied with how everything is going. I played only one game of WH40K and a few Kill Team games so far, but I hope that will also improve during the rest of the year.
