Flawed in its execution how dare you. Everything is going according to plan!
No I know I am terrible and all over the place. I have some news tho! I have made some good progress!
But first! Let me introduce you to a project I just completed:
EDIT: Dammit, these pics are showing a lot of imperfections I didn't see with the naked eye that I will have to fix.
What you are looking at is about a 1/300 scale Dom Prototype from Gundam MSV. How big is this guy you ask? Well here he is next to my Empire General.
I've actually mentioned these little kits before somewhere in this thread, but I will recap below.
Now me and the Dom Prototype go way back. As a matter of fact, my mom recently gave me a box of old pics and in it was this one:
That's me opening presents during one of my birthdays back in the day when I was living in Hong Kong, and my friend Duncan (not in the pic), gave me 1/100 scale kits for the Dom Prototype and Zaku Cannon. These kits here:
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10212242 and
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10166810.
Anyway, I was big into Gundam then and was pretty much until recent years. Anyway, I had a hard time finishing big kits and the 1/100 scale ones are pretty big. Hell, I have a hard time finishing their 1/144 counterparts, like I have here:
The larger kit is actually an old 1/144 Dom Prototype (
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10005621) kitbashed with a newer 1/144 Dom (
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10046847). The older kits do not use polycaps, which are rubber like joints that keep the plastic from wearing away. I love posing my finished kits and its a real bummer then suddenly the elbow can no longer support the weight of the gun. I have used all sorts of methods to get around this from using plumber tape to green stuff to superglue to jam some material in there to prevent the plastic from wearing down, but lately I have just been combining kits. So the pics don't show it, but the chest, shoulders, backpack, head, belong to the older generation kit, while the arms, legs, and bazooka are from the newer generation Dom. Now, why not just make a newer generation 1/144 Prototype Dom? Well, they haven't released one, so I did this.
I am actually better at building than painting but even I was impressed how the build came out. You would never know holding it that I broke up a lot of plastic to get this kit to fit together, then filled the spaces and did a lot of sanding.
Anyway, as you are well aware, I have a hard time finishing projects in the painting stage, and size does matter. So I collect a lot of smaller kits, which is how we get back to the smaller 1/300 version.
When I lived in Asia, there was a Japanese company called Morinaga that released small model kits with candy. The models were small, snapped together, and included robots from various popular anime at the time, for about $1 each. I had tons of these, and in my youth, spent a lot of time shooting them with BB guns, blowing them up with firecrackers, or just setting them on fire. I was a total maniac.
Anyway, when I moved back to the states, reality hit me that I could no longer get all these things I took for granted, and I was really bummed out. Many years later, I found someone in Japan via eBay how said he would help me get some of these kits in Japan. Mostly through Yahoo Japan Auctions. After a ridiculous amount of money that I would rather not admit, I now have too many of these to ever hope to finish. Here is a small sample:
Here is the Dom next to the one I showed earlier on in the thread.
These little kits are great as they kind of satisfy the need to build the design, without having to build a bigger kit, which I then have to find room for. And sometimes you can make little kitbash kits with them too which is always fun.
Anyway, so on to Warhammer Fantasy.
So we all know I have been all over the place buying up units to supplement the models I got in the starter sets and Battalion sets. We also know how insistent I was on sticking to minimum unit sizes. I decided pretty early on that I would use 6th for my rules, and sort of just built the remaining starter models to supplement the Battalion sets. I was so set on 6th I actually moved the 7th and 8th stuff to my store room where I put stuff to be listed on eBay. Not the models, just the boxes and books and all that.
Then I was watching old youtube vids one night showing battle reports using the starter sets, and soon after found on the internet wayback machine, the original GW pages for 7th edition, and the additional scenarios for Skull Pass. I've been a big fan of this set, and so I was happy to see the new info. But I didn't think much of it until I laid to go to sleep when it hit me: Build all the starter sets as they were released and just keep them. Who knows I might really like one of the other editions more. And I have plenty of models. The idea originally was to build small armies, using minimum unit sizes, and play small games, but then I got the Battalion sets and expanded on those, so in some cases I had all these models in some cases really didn't think I needed.
So I jumped out of bed, put everything that belonged in each set back into their boxes, but realized I made a mess of the 6th edition starter armies, which I covered a lot in this thread. So the next day I went on eBay trying to buy BACK some of the models I previously got rid of, to make the starter armies look like they originally came. And I have to be honest, I made a real mess of the Empire 'starter' army I posted when I started painting. So much that I am going to salvage my old swordsmen for parts.
So after a lot of work, I am back to where I started. I added cavalry and a wizard to the mix so they would essentially compare to the other starter armies in 7th and 8th. And, I am sure many of you are happy to see, are using the spearmen as a 20-man unit.
And same with the Orcs. The idea is to try to make the armies similar so I could have a fight between the 6th starter Empire and the 8th starter Skaven. I do have an extra standard and musician to fill out another unit if need be, as the 7th and 8th have them for all the units.
I don't know how tough a 20 unit Orc regiment is though. They look pretty intimidating, but its sort of what was intended (the original set came with 18 but I rounded it up. Actually, I rounded up to 10 or 20 with all of them. But I don't know how the 20 Orcs stack up going against the 10-man Dwarf Warrior unit for example. And can a chariot charge a unit of 20 spearmen and survive?
I don't have it on him in the pics, but decided to give the Warboss the face mask he came with. Early on I posted I would leave it off, but decided I have enough Orc faces to look at.
Also, I discovered when assembling the older style Boar Boys that the riders were too wide to line the bases up, and it really bothered me. So I made a base specific to them with the groves so I could just slide the models in place and not have to worry about them sliding.
I know seems trivial but it really annoyed me.
So there you go. I feel really good about this now. I think before I didn't know anything about anything and was all over the place without a plan trying to find my way, but not knowing what I was doing really kept me moving forward because I couldn't conceptualize what the hell I was doing. Now I have 6 completed (built-wise) start armies that appear in similar strength with all of there regiment bases done, so I am ready to play the starter sets as intended, and then mix up the armies when I have a better grasp of what's going on. I am going to try out the scenarios for 7th first since they are pretty much step by step then go from there.
The Empire starter army will be painted as Talabheim, and still planning on doing Reikland and Marienburg later on using the Battalion sets.
I wish I had done this in the beginning and saved myself 16 pages of posts.
I have some terrain to work on too, and will get enough built to play some games with and hopefully do a battle report! Small battle that is. Maybe combine them all to make a big one.