It's a new year and a new project! I bought a set of Hammer's Slammers figures last fall and I think it's high time to start painting them. As my tank transfers are still on their way to me from Ainsty I decided to start with the infantry.

Now, 15mm infantry figures are not something I particularly enjoy doing. While the GZG castings are very nice, they still need to be cleaned and I almost broke a set of ankles in the process already... I'm just not very good with the fiddly stuff.

As for the painting, I hate myself for not being able to do the details, especially on these nicers figures where I can clearly see the detail being there. I can barely stomach doing it with modern-ish figures, which tend to have very drab almost single color schemes.

Yet the final results almost always amaze me. Yes, if you blow up the picture to 20 times the normal size you can clearly see the belt buckles weren't shaded but as composite bases viewed from even modest distance I don't think they look too bad -- even if the lion in the shoulder patch is really only a red squiggle.

15mm figures are relatively cheap, though bulk plastics in 28mm are pretty much the same price these days, and they are pretty fast to do -- I basically painted this batch of 40 in a single evening.

The thing is I just can't bring myself to actually enjoy painting these. I can labor through a batch to get a game going, but I'm not really enjoying myself doing it... and that's the real killer for me.

But enough about that.

Now that the infantry is done, I can get on with the vehicles which I actually do enjoy painting and modelling. I've already started with the hoverjeeps as there is little to no assembly involved with them, but the blowers, combat cars and hogs are already calling to me...

Besides, I need to get these done so I can allow myself to buy more figures ;)