Bitten by the bug again

As usually happens, I lose interest in building and painting minis, then I go to a tournament, be it six players or 60, and suddenly I'm all fired up. In the past, it's always been seeing all the fantastic, armies that other players bring. Even at the local tournaments, some beautiful armies show up and make me want to improve my own.

Last weekend there was a local tournament with only six players, and only one fully painted army. Two of the three armies I played had little to no paint at all. I even broke my own personal rule of not putting unpainted models on the table because I wanted to see how the winged slasher worked out in play.

It took me until today to realize why I suddenly felt so enthused. It was the game itself. I started seeing places I could improve my army that I already have the models for; they just need painting. I then realized I have the models for a rather large orc army, a significant elf army, and also a decent sized goblin army. They all need painting. So much painting to do.

What started as, "All I need for Bayou Battles is to finish up the dragon and the war drum, became, "Well, I could use my black orcs as a greatax regiment, but some of them have shields and some have two weapons, but I have more black orcs with two handed weapons to replace those, they just need painting." It then became, "You know, I probably have enough two-hand black orcs to just replace the unit, and then I could multi-base them and that could look really cool."

As for the tournament itself, taking third out of six was fun. I rarely finish in the top half of these things. Knowing the tiebreaker for second came down to the 210 point head to head loss in round one was nice to know. What was great was knowing how close my games all were. A 210 point loss, a 500 point win, and a game that on paper looks like it was a blowout win for me actually turned in my favor on the last throw of the dice in the bottom of turn seven where I had to roll nine or more to get the win and rolled exactly nine on the both first roll and the re-roll.

The point is not that I played well and won two of three. The point was that each game was fun and while one game turned on a single die roll, in reality, the biggest factor in each game was decisions I or my opponents made. In that final game, I don't crush his flank if he doesn't make a mistake in allowing my trolls to flank one of his units in turn two. If I don't make a similar mistake in turn five, I win the game without needing a crazy die roll at the end.

What it comes down to is that win or lose, I like this game. So far, I have felt out of my depth against certain players who are simply better at the game than me, but I haven't felt like I have won or lost a game due to special rules or one army simply being over-powered or under-powered compared to the rest of the armies.

A mild bit of inspiration...

So there's a KOW event at a nearby shop this weekend. I have enough models to bring a fully painted Orc and Goblin army, but of course there are some models I want to play that are not painted. I'm limiting myself to only two models to get done by Saturday. Should be easy, right?

Well one of them is an orc general on a black dragon and the other is a kit-bashed war drum made from a skaven war machine of some kind.

No photos yet but I did get them based last night.

Note to those with an airbrush: when cleaning your airbrush, don't set the compressor on the bathroom counter. It will vibrate right the hell off the counter. The compressor is fine, but the moisture trap and regulator need to be replaced