Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Orks Are Coming!

Since the start of the year, I have completed the painting job on the first quarter of my Space Orks. The second batch are now about halfway done. At the current rate, I should be finished the whole force by the end of the year, which would be nice.

In parallel with this, some of the members of my gaming group have expressed an interest in actually playing some of the wargames (for which the minis are intended). Of course, they have naturally indicated a preference for the fantasy game, rather than the sci-fi one, rendering my orks somewhat useless!

(This is especially amusing as the only reason I have the orks in the first place is that when I moved to Yeovil, the group there played the sci-fi game rather than fantasy. I do have two entire armies for the fantasy game, but they're packed away in boxes, and I don't really want to unpack them, as they take up a lot of space.)

A funny thing about the painting: I find the whole process very relaxing, and yet there isn't a single part of the process that I would actually say I enjoy. Preparing the figures for painting is a hassle, the undercoating is a nuisance, the early coats are dull, and the later coats are very frustrating. I don't even particularly like looking at the finished figures - they tend to get shelved as I move on to something else.

But still, there's something about it. It's probably a combination of two factors: the ability to spend an hour here or there focussing on a simple task without worrying about anything else, and also the clear and obvious progress towards a clear goal - with every hour, the minis become visibly more complete.

It's interesting.

Plus, it's quite good fun to dream about the next painting project - do I build up my ork force into a proper army, do I invest in a bunch of character models for use in D&D, do I do something else entirely (maybe a Dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy?)... or do I do nothing at all and just pack it all up again once these ones are done?

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