2011 Kickoff and Winter Painting Queue

A new year is upon us and the projects continue on unabated. I'm padding my queue a bit here by keeping it relatively small, but in my eyes certainly manageable. There's lots of other projects waiting in the wings, so let's get these wrapped up first.


1. Hordes of the Things Orc Army

I didn't realize until I finished the first leg of this 6mm army that I have a *lot* of stands of Orcs, especially for a game that requires only about a third of what I have. This gives me a *lot* of options to mix and match with and it also gives me two completely separate armies that can fight head to head at the same time. I came close to painting a different skintone on the next batch, but I think I'll just keep them the same and have one gigantically huge fantasy Orc army.


2. Some Sci-Fi Terrain

There's no excuse to not paint these. They've been built and sprayed with primer for some time. I intended these to be terrain pieces for 15mm battles, but they'll scale further up or down the spectrum just fine. I've got to get in more sci-fi games this year anyway, so why not crank out some terrain to go along with it?


3. Prehistorics

The last of the projects on the block are my prehistorics; cavemen and the Ice Age era critters for them to hunt and eat. I'm looking forward to this one, not that I'm not the others, but the figs look very cool and it's a genre that interests me a great deal as well.

That's it, just three projects in the queue to start out with. Don't be fooled though, there's a lot of stuff to paint up here and I don't see myself blazing through it either. The terrain should come together easily enough, but the stands of Orcs will end up being tedious if for no other reason than sheer numbers, and the prehistoric plateful of cavemen is deceptive, there's really a lot more there than you'd think waiting for the brush. Once these three projects are all wrapped up and complete there's more on the horizon, there's always more, without much planning ahead here's a quick list off the top of my head for the future:

Incoming on the H.U.D.

1. Space Orks (AE Bounty and 5150)
2. Pulp Figures (Strange Aeons, Chaos in..., etc.)
3. 15mm Sci-Fi Troops
4. Sons of Minos Space Marines
5. Basing and Finishing Touches on the Karman
6. Continue Work on 15mm FoW Brits
7. Deathwatch Marines
   
8. Exo-suits for 28mm Mercs
9. Tanks for the same 28mm Mercs
10. Dino-Marines!
    
11. Lord of the Rings Project
12. A Dwarf PC figure for our FATE RPG
13. Another Spring Garden
    
14. Imperial Guard troopers
15. Sci-fi Greatcoat troopers
16. A trio of Dark Angel rhinos
    

If there was one thing last year taught me it was that I need repetitive games under my belt with the same system. To this end, I need to try some different sci-fi rules well-suited to 15mm to find "the one". I'm looking for games that will handle single mini to a little larger than skirmish level. Having a solo option in there is also a big plus in my book.

Speaking of solo, as much as it pains me to say, I'll be looking at 5150 again. I've had an idea for some time of a pair of Space Ork mercenaries plying their trade across the galaxy and it's be fun to make into a serial here.

This will also be the year my daughter graduates from boardgames to some true tabletop gaming, I'm thinking we start with the Song of Blade and Heroes for some linked games. So overall 2011 has got some ambition to it already and it's just begun. Some of the items listed on the HUD are for projects, but others are just to get done because they've languished too long incomplete. I'm not saying I'll get to them all in 2011, but they're not going away, so whether it's this year, next year, or even further down the road...they'll always be there.