Tuesday 19 January 2016

McZ's Magpie Resolutions

#shamelesslyfollowingonfromMcBeth

I had a pretty good year keeping the magpie at bay in 2015, amazingly. I started one new game (Frostgrave) and bought a sum total of zero models for it. I picked up maybe half a dozen releases for my Warmachine Protectorate army and mostly spent the whole year staring at my assembled, but unpainted Teutonic Order army and used that as the lever to not spend more money on anything else!

So, like McBeth, I'm making a list for this year to try and tick off. I kind of hope that, come the 2016 Christmas holidays I'll be able to post a bunch of photos or links to posts with all this stuff in it. Am I going to get it all done? Probably not. But that's not a good reason to at least have a crack eh? I also blame Pooch for making me actually look in the boxes in the cupboard in the games room and finding things that I now want to do stuff with!

Warmachine / Hordes
I basically own one (or two...) of every model Privateer Press has released for the Protectorate of Menoth. Currently I plan to pick up three unreleased models this year - Pyrrus - Flameguard Hero, the Hand of Judgement and an Indictor. I doubt I'll ever buy a Colossal for Warmachine, but if I do, when the Revelator comes out this year, I'll make a call one way or the other. My real project this year is two 50 point armies for the Hordes Minions Faction, specifically the Farrow pact. I like the organic / mechanical mashup they do so there's lots of opportunity for some nice warbeast conversions.

What's to do:
  • Paint two warlocks - Midas and Helga. 
  • Purchase, convert and paint the three heavy war beasts required for both lists
  • Purchase and paint one or two units
Frostgrave
I love this game. Love. It's fun to play, relaxed, silly and the other magpies are great to play it with. I've really enjoyed painting some old Warhammer Fantasy models to use for it and have been quietly painting new warbands for no really good reason other than the occasional game.

What's to do:
  • Purchase and paint a wizard / apprentice for my High Elf warband
  • Purchase and paint an apprentice for my Tzeentch Chaos warband
  • Convert and paint a box of old Chaos Warriors for my Tzeentch Chaos warband
  • Purchase some cheap daemons (hopefully from TradeMe) to make up the numbers! 

Flames of War
Unlike the rest of the magpies, my time playing FoW has not reduced to near zero! I had some great games with clubmate Richard (check out his blog here) last year and will be keen to play more games with him in 2016. What we'll play is something of a mystery although we do both have quite complimentary collections so anything's possible. My Flames collection is mostly painted and so forth so this is all pretty low priority given everything else on this list but if Panzerschreck in July is Early War, some of it might come screaming up the priority list pretty quickly.

What's to do:

Italians
  • Purchase and paint a CR42 Falco
  • Paint my Lancia da 90mm trucks
Germans
  • Finish assembling and painting my Late War StuG company
  • Tidy up the infantry and paint camo stripes the vehicles in my Early War Pionier company
  • Paint four Panthers for Late War Panzerregiment Franz Bake
Australians
  • A tidy up of the basing and some TLC is required for these guys - they've been a bit knocked about. 
Team Yankee
We've blogged one game of TY so far and played a couple more. Suffice to say, I'm keen. I've got most of the models already and enjoy playing Flames of War. So I have already ordered (yep) a few bits and bobs to make up the options for TY  that I want to use. It'll give me a couple of understrength tank companies, some recce, some artillery and an infantry option that'll either be in BMPs or be landed by Hind Ds. This, especially, is cool.

What's to do:
  • Paint 5 T80s, 10 BMPs, 3 HAIL21s, 3 2S1 Carnations, 2 Hinds
  • Rebase infantry to be identifiable for TY and possibly paint a few more LMGs 
  • Rebase vehicles
Infinity
Infinity, Infinity, Infinity. It's a game I love playing. I love it's complexity and the world that it's set in. I hate the fact that I am almost always undone by lucky crit rolls because I don't know how to play the game that well. It needs to be played more. I've painted most of my Chinese Yu Jing army already and basically haven't bothered to finish it because we've not been playing enough. So, I figure if I get it done, and get a table made over the winter (see below) there is more chance I'll play it more too.

What's to do:
  • Finish my partially completed Shaolin Monks, Yaozao Remote and Su Jian IAU
  • Paint my Celestial Guard Link Team
  • Paint my Authorised Bounty Hunter
  • Purchase and paint a Terracotta Warrior and one (or possibly both because they are such nice models) Yan Huo Invincibles. 
Impetus
The end is in sight. I have painted, at the time of writing, 8.5 of the 15 bases of models I have for my Teutonic Order army. That's really quite exciting for me, given how long they've sat unpainted because I was too scared to paint all that white.

What's to do:
  • Purchase and paint two bases of Livonian allied light horse and 2 of light foot
  • Finish painting the 'change' base for the knight wedge (super low priority!)
  • Apply transfers to tabards and shields for all the Teutonic foot and horse
  • Make and apply banners and pennants for all the lances and foot banner bearers
  • Build the baggage dice tower (this is a fun project I'm looking forward to) 
  • Base the whole army (which I have no idea on how I'm going to do at this point) 
It will be done for V3, Prinny's Last Hurrah before he departs for Europe, in May. It. Will. Be. Done.

AWI 
Like a lot of the magpies, I am painting stuff for the big Brandywine game. No idea if I'll actually play in it, but it seemed like a nice little project for a change of pace. The assembly is done, but I've been focussing on painting my Teutons while I have the mojo to do it so it's next off the list.

What's to do:
  • Paint two regiments of Maryland infantry for Triple T
  • Paint a regiment of Hessians for McBeth

Bolt Action?
I think I'd like to play BA this year. I think this will be my one serious project that doesn't involve models I don't already own. But I am having a hard time deciding which army to paint - there are too many cool options. It was going to be Italians until I decided I don't want to paint more Italians and then it was going to be Aussies (using Warlord's lovely Chindit models which were on sale at Dat Ape) until they sold before I got to order them. Now I'm back to the drawing board. Tempted by Early War French, Marines, Rangers, Blitzkrieg Germans, honestly......MAGPIE!

Terrain

I have been meaning to put together a decent table for Infinity for a while, partly to encourage me to play it more. Dat Ape has some really nice options that I will invest in some time this year. Either the Plastcraft stuff or the really sweet looking modular bits from Mantic. Not sure yet. I'd also like to finish making up a few other bits to go with my GF9 ruins to make a good set of terrain for both Warmachine and Frostgrave and finally, my 15mm European terrain needs a bit of TLC. This is a winter project I feel.

Stuff that's been done

Yep. I have actually already done some stuff. [smug]
  • Finished my Savage Orcs for Frostgrave - I found a Forest Goblin Shaman in the bits box, so he got painted and that was the impetus to finish off the Savage Orc Boar Boy (just in case mounted ever comes into Frostgrave!), the Forest Goblin Fanatic (I made it for Mordheim, seemed silly not to keep it) and the Stone Troll (also for Mordheim) who's just part of the warband. 
  • Clean out my bits boxes - I have chucked a lot of random stuff, broken bits and pieces, failed terrain construction projects and reboxed all the things in my bits box into containers for different game systems. It was amazing what turned up. Some of that stuff will find it's way onto the blog this year, although what I do with an out of print 40K Callidus Assassin is a mystery.  I'm open to suggestions on that one. 
  • Clearing my desk - it's already clear enough for me to go back to painting on the desk in my games room instead of on the end of my gaming table. Success! 
[/smug]

Anyway, that list is slightly terrifying so I best crack one eh?

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