In January 2013 I did something I've never done before. I made a New Year's resolution. I wanted to do something about the ever growing pile of miniatures in the painting backlog. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to stop buying new stuff, so instead I resolved to slave through the backlog regardless of new purchases.
The resolution was quite simple: each month I would paint a coherent unit composed entirely of backstock models. The unit should be at least 24 infantry or 12 cavalry, though I immediately forgot about the latter option and only painted infantry. In general, I really don't have a backlog of cavalry waiting in the wings.
Let's get to work!
For the first batch I chose some pretty generic space warriors. I dubbed them Space Comrades and commenced painting. I also started using my airbrush, which I bought ages ago but haven't really used. My Iwata HP-C is probably huge overkill for applying basecoats, but hey, it works.
As I wanted to make sure I actually finished these figures, I intentionally chose a very simple color scheme. After the initial color was applied, the figures got a heavy sepia wash overall and then some details added. You would be pretty hard pressed to call this more then three colors...
The actual batch was 45 figures, though I painted the First Comrade later on to complete the set. I actually have 50 of them, but I wasn't a huge fan of the bare-headed sergeant models so I painted only half of them, making this 4 squads of 10 plus a support section of 5 models. I even built a prototype drop pod for them and featured them in a couple of videos.
So far these figures have not been in any games.
Current batch: 45 figures
Running total: 45 figures
The Space Comrades prompted me to dig up and paint some of my Starship Troopers models as Space Komsomol -- the idea was using the comrades as marines and these as scouts.
Since I had already dug up the SST boxes, I decided to paint up some bugs too. I grabbed a pile of them which turned out to be 28 figures. Rather than trying to replicate the movie color scheme, I decided to use my old tyranic black-and-gray-with-spot scheme, mainly because I knew I could do it fast. In SST the different bug species tend to be color-coded, but personally I think a unified color scheme looks better, and the possibility of fielding the bugs with my nids did enter into the equation.
The painting was very easy as I suspected, but assembling these figures was a huge chore. I don't like assembling plastic figures in general, but these guys were a proverbial pain in the rear. Cleaning and assembly took far more time than actual painting. I sort of envy people who don't care about mold lines on their figures...
The trick with the color scheme is that it's done directly on top of gray primer. That is washed with black, then the armor plates are picked out in black and the whole thing is drybrushed in gray. After that it's just a question of adding the yellow dots and white for the bony bits. The black/yellow pattern draws attention so well everything else can be a bit bland.
We actually played a couple of games of SST with these.
Current batch: 28 figures
Running total: 73 figures
I wanted a little change so I got out my 10-cent orcs. Some gaming store had been making and selling these at 10 cents each and ofcourse I had to buy 100 of them. I had painted 49 previously, so there were 51 left to do.
I've never been fond of green skin for orcs. I think that's just silly, next they are going to say orcs are some sort of walking plants... but I digress. After basic cleanup, the work on these starts with a brown basecoat, followed by details and the return of the sepia wash. I've found the sepia wash on silvery weapons looks pretty stupid, so I did some final detailing after the wash and they were done.
You may notice the cow pattern shields. They are pretty fun and easy to do. Just paint the shield white with a light gray wash, then add random black splotches.
The orcs have not featured in any games so far...
Current batch: 51 figures
Running total: 124 figures
By this point I had promised to put out a Starship Troopers demo game. One thing about the game is that you can never have too many warrior bugs (and if you ask me, it's one of the reasons that killed the game). So I took out the remaining 32 bugs and painted them.
The cleaning was perhaps a little easier since now I knew what I was doing, but basically this was just a repetition of February.
Current batch: 32 figures
Running total: 156 figures
I was a bit busy making sure I had everything ready for the SST demo game, so I chose a safe subject for May. Long ago I bought a big pile of Bretonnians off eBay. The vast majority of them were the plastic archers from the Warhammer box, maybe 5th edition?
I have maybe 200 of them. Since there was just no way to paint them all, I picked out 24 and started working. I actually rather like these figures. There is no assembly, they are easy to clean and pretty quick to paint.
Rather than face ridicule from some heraldry fanboy, I chose a generic brownish color scheme. This works well with, you guessed it, sepia wash, but it actually slowed painting down a bit because you don't want to paint every figure with exactly the same colors.
So far, these figures have not been in a game.
Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 180 figures
Continuing in the fantasy vein, I dug out the plastic dwarves that came with Grenadier's Fantasy Warriors game. The game tanked which is a bit sad. In addition to having a pretty nice figure line, the game was actually ok. Except maybe for cavalry, the rules didn't really support massed cavalry formations.
The game box came with 50 dwarves and 50 orcs if I recall correctly. I painted the crossbow dwarves long ago, so there were spearmen and axemen left. Neither would actually amount to 24 figures by themselves, so I called them a composite unit and painted both sets.
There is a lot of chainmail on the figures, so these were a pretty old school drybrush job for the most part. Just some additional details and a little washing and they were done. I didn't have any suitable shield decals available, so I did some freehand patterns instead. This is actually easier than it sounds especially if you are not trying to replicate any specific pattern. And quite frankly, real shields were likely to be painted in pretty slapdash fashion too...
The dwarves have yet to see battle.
Current batch: 36 figures
Running total: 216 figures
The short guys obviously needed more opponents, so I kept with the Fantasy Warriors and started with the orc archers from the same box. I had actually bought a box of 50 extra orcs at some point (they were dirt cheap, and they still are). As I had only 20 archers, I also took out my old Battle Masters orcs. There were 10 of these guys, basic onepiece castings with shields and swords.
Then something a bit odd happened. Someone left free orcs at the club and I picked up 10 of them. I painted them with the other orcs, but since they are not technically back stock, I won't include them in the totals.
As there were basically three different types of figures in the batch, painting techniques needed to vary a bit but still it was mostly basic drybrushing and sepia washes.
These orcs are still in the reserves box.
Current batch: 30 figures
Running total: 246 figures
Returning to kingdoms of men, I decided to do another batch of the same archers. This time they would be in uniform. I chose the red tunic mostly because I just like red, but also because sepia wash works with red.
This was pretty much a repetition of the previous batch. I went for this safe choice because I had to finish a bunch of African militia for our Force on Force games as well.
These archers have yet to loose an arrow in anger.
Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 270 figures
No sepia washes for a change... I had received a box of Perry plastic ACW infantry as a subscriber freebie for Wargames Illustrated a few years ago. Since I had no pressing painting requirements at the time, I decided to try these out. ACW uniforms seems pretty simple to do.
I am not a huge fan of the Perry plastics. They are too slim, delicate and fragile for my tastes. Assembling these proved to be a bit of a chore, but that was expected. Painting on the other hand was a bit of a surprise. The basic blue uniform is easy to do, but I was suprised by the amount of time that went into painting all the little equipment details. I am also not a fan of contrasting color strapwork...
Why no sepia? Blue doesn't go well with sepia. Instead I used blue inks and traditional drybrushing on the uniform. In retrospect, the pants turned out a bit too dark, should have given them a separate wash.
The Union has been at peace for now.
Current batch: 36 figures
Running total: 306 figures
Maybe it was all the archers that prompted me to dig up these excellent Hundred Years' War figures from Black Tree. I only had 20 halberdiers so I had to supplement them with some mixed infantry.
These figures were a joy to clean and paint with very minimal assembly. And the padded coats were an excellent subject for, you guessed it, sepia wash. I think I have about 20 crossbowmen from this line tucked away somewhere. I really should get more of these if could only figure out a use for them, they are so nice.
These figures have not been in a game so far.
Current batch: 24 figures
Running total: 330 figures
This was a risky shot. Even though I had assembled and primed these figures during the summer, I also needed to paint 48 Portuguese line infantry in November. But I got an idea, and nothing is more dangerous than a many with an idea. Except maybe a man with two ideas.
I had just recently played Killzone 3 and I thought I might do some Helghast standins. So I scoured the net for some pictures and settled on this gray/black scheme. I was a bit hesitant about this, but in the end I quite liked the results. Unlike the bugs, this is not done on a gray primer though that would have speeded it up. It's really the same paintjob except without the yellow spots. Instead, I spent a little effort picking out studs and buttons in silver. And then I fabricated the Helghast symbols from 1/300 scale hinomarus to give these a little splash of color.
The name Baughast is obviously a composition of the source of inspiration Helghast (to avoid getting sued) and the actual figures' Bauhaus (because hardware store warriors just sounds stupid).
I really have no idea what to use these for. They haven't been in a game yet.
Current batch: 40 figures
Running total: 370 figures
I was really burned out after doing the Portuguese. I really just wanted to do something else, so I chose some more Grenadier orcs. I had these swordmen and the spearmen left. I chose these basically randomly, I'll probably do the remaining ones a little later.
Nothing really new here, except I did way more freehand on the shields. Another win for the sepia wash. I frankly don't know where this project would be without my giant tub of Vallejo sepia. This final batch was actually finished in record time.
This orc tribe has also been uncharacteristically peaceful.
Current batch: 31 figures
Grand total: 401 figures
This has been an interesting experiment. I was initially unsure if I could make it but the further I got into it, the more vested I was to see it to the end. I knew some months, particularly the summer and December would be problematic and some batches were selected simply because they were safe choices. Had I missed a month that probably would have been the end of it.
Still, I painted more than 100 figures over the minimum required 288. This definitely put at least a small dent in the backlog, though ironically it's hard to talk about diminishing the lead mountain when 10 out of 12 batches were actually plastic figures.
Good things about this project:
Things to improve:
I will definitely do another resolution next year, but it won't be the same thing. I will try to address some of the issues with this run and next time I will entertain some input from the audience just for the fun of it.
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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Copyright 2003-2021 Mikko Kurki-Suonio
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