Resolutions 2014

In January 2014 it was time for another New Year's Resolution. In the interest of involving our fair readers, I chose to organize a little vote about which figures I should paint.

Flintloque won. Possible because I said it was the option you should go for if you hated me.

Well, regardless the people don't vote wrong. At least not in anything I consider a real democracy, so the game was set. However, I quickly ascertained that the Flintloque figures wouldn't last very far. So in addition I vowed to paint a unit from my 19th century box each month after the Flintloque stuff, following the same guidelines as last year.

Additionally, I promised to hold demonstration games for Flintloque once done with the figures.

The Goal

Simply put, the first goal was to paint a Flinqloue unit each month until all the Flintloque minis are painted.

Once that's done, paint a unit of 24 infantry or 12 cavalry each month from my 19th century stockpile until the end of the year. As an additional incentive should I not make it, I promised to donate all the remaining figures to the voters.

Let's get to work!

January: Undead Cavalry

This should be plenty of horsepower to send the pesky ferach scurrying back...

I started off with a bang, choosing the undead cavalry as my first subject. There were some Liteupski lancers, some Zombiski cossacks and even a pair of winged wraith hussars.

First I did the cossacks to get up to speed. They were the simplest figures of the lot and generally dirty and scruffy looking anyway, making them prime subjects for a little dippy action.

Then I moved to the real meat of the subject, the lancers and hussars. They were actually pretty fun to paint, even though looking up references for fantasy units was occasionally a bit frustrating.

Current batch: 14 figures
Running total: 14 figures

February: Lady Wintermore's Fangs

I really like the vampire dude and the line troopers are nice too.

Then it was onto the Lady Wintermore's Fangs box set. I took the undead from the set and added a blister of werewolf jägers to the mix, basically all the remaining undead figures for Flintloque.

With lots of character models these were a bit time intensive to paint, but very fun. The zombie line infantry got a scruffy treatment with more attention being given to the vampires and other character models.

The it was time to move onto the elves.

Current batch: 12 figures
Running total: 26 figures

March: Ferach Cavalry

Cuirassiers lead the way with the general.

Elf cavalry, all 13 of them went to the line next. There were lancers and cuirassiers plus a very flamboyant leader. After the scruffy undead, these were clearly a step up in complexity.

Luckily I found a nice web site with uniform guides for Waterloo and promptly adapted those paint schemes.

I had started the project pretty wash-heavy, which suited the zombies fine, but progressing into the elves I increased 3-color painting step by step. The cavalry are still done in a hybrid style, but the final infantry would be pretty much all 3-color.

Current batch: 13 figures
Running total: 39 figures

April: Ferach On Foote

Cuirassier detachment ready for lunch or something.

Next I tackled the elves from the Wintermore box. As there were only eight of them, I gave them all a full 3-color treatment.

You don't really see cavalry troopers on foot too often, and these were great fun to paint. If I may say so, I think these are among the best work I've done ever. But that would be a biased opinion.

Napoleonic uniforms are quite fun to paint in small batches, they're starting to grow on me. It's just that for most Napoleonic games you need piles and piles of them, and doing them in large batches is... not as much fun.

In addition to the figures, I made a box full of ice floats for the demo game.

Current batch: 8 figures
Running total: 47 figures

May: Final Few Ferach

Whew, here they are finally.

And then there were 18 left... The remaining lot was a bit weird with not a single musket in sight. I think they were not initially made as Flintloque figures but rather got hijacked from some previous range.

But painted they were going to get anyway. I did these in a hybrid style, 3-coloring the fleshy bits and relying on spot washes elsewhere mostly. The set is rather heavy on the command figures. I probably should get some line troopers to make some sense out of them.

For the demo game, see the reports in Mini Action Comics.

Current batch: 18 figures
Running total: 65 figures

June: Tribal Warriors

I hand-painted the shield designs. They are probably totally bogus. I didn't really care for doing the common sawtooth design.

Then it was time to sail off to Africa. I dug out the 19th century box and sorted all the tribal warriors into lots. There were enough basic warriors to last for a while and then some character figures and more complex subjects to top it off.

To start, I picked 24 figures from the basic warriors and went at it. The actual paint jobs are pretty basic, but to compansate I hand painted all the shield designs.

African shields are really fun to do because you can let your imagination fly. And because you are far less likely to run into an expert on tribal shield design than on, say, medieval heraldry.

Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 89 figures

July: More Warriors

I still haven't quite gotten the hang of the shield pattern.

July was basically more of the same. But because my warriors were from a Foundry horde set, they were a big mish mash of everything. This meant that I didn't get bored doing just one thing over and over, but it also means that it's a bit difficult to gether a coherent force out of all these.

I tried out more different shield designs, including the animal skin ones shown here. In fact those shields are not African shields at all, but rather something Black Tree puts in some of their hoplite sets for some unfathomable reason. They are nice shields. Just not for hoplites.

Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 113 figures

August: Even More Warriors

More masked merriness.

The supply of basic tribal warriors was slowly running dry, so for this batch I worked on more special models like leaders, witch doctors and masked warriors.

Though probably not actually worn for combat, African masks are really fun to paint. Even more fun than the shields. Just make sure you have very strong red and white paints that cover over black.

Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 137 figures

September: Warriors and Explorers

Another look at the heroes.

More warriors, more witch doctors, more masks and... explorers?

Yes, I exhausted the tribal cache sans the masai and had to add a few European explorers to make up the numbers. I gave the explorers a full 3-color treatment because it seemed to suit their attire better and I wanted the practice anyway.

Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 161 figures

October: Masai and the Ladies

Perhaps the hair could have used another layer of wash...

Scrounging together the final scraps of africa, I went at the Masai with gusto. I had initially feared doing them a bit, but in the end they weren't all that much harder than regular tribal warriors. Since I have plenty of Masai spears left, maybe I should get more and build them into a larger force?

To top it off, I painted the remaining explorers and European ladies. The latter were especially fun to paint, I've always liked doing dresses.

And ofcourse, there was... Ororo.

Current batch: 25 figures
Running total: 186 figures

November: Apaches

Full 24 models with no duplicates. Gotta love these proper metal ranges. There's actually even more in the range, even though it is one of the smaller ones.

Once Africa was well and truly done, it was time to hop on a boat and sail west. Quite willingly unlike many others in this time frame.

As part of my Old West collection, I had a bunch of Apache warriors. These are old Foundry figures I bought way back when we were playing old west games, but the games dried up before I got to painting them.

Grabbing three blisters of basic warriors I set upon them. To do justice to their varied equipment and to test out my new Foundry skintones set, I did the entire batch in full 3-color.

Which actually didn't take all that much longer. With a varied lot like this you're going to spend a lot of time switching colors anyway.

Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 210 figures

December: Mr. G and His Merry Fellows

Mr. G and some firewater.

And once I got the routine down, I finished it off by doing Geronimo's warband, another Foundry set, in glorious 3-color.

As this wasn't quite enough, I made the numbers by painting a couple of blisters of Mexicans. The Mexican villagers are quite fun, I should probably get some more. They were done in a hybrid style to save a bit of time because I was in the middle of something else...

Current batch: 24 figures
Grand total: 234 figures

Final Thoughts

This was different from last year in that instead of random sets here and there, I was actually finishing coherent sets of figures. I did all my Flintloque, all my Colonial Africa figures, all of my Apaches and Mexicans which made up a large part of my unpainted Old West figures.

Even though the raw numbers aren't as high, this mode felt better because the goal was clearer. And I did paint e.g. large batches of orcs anyway, just not as part of the resolutions.

There were no plastic figures in this year's resolutions sets. Everything was old school white metal.

Good things about this project:

Things to improve:

I will definitely do another resolution for 2015... but I think I'm going to try something a little different.

P.S. These figures are for the resolutions stuff only. I will write a year end report with full production figures and maybe even charts again in January. You know, after the dust settles.


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