Before Lockdown

I started off the year with the following armies:

• Biel Tan Eldar – Fully Painted
• Adeptus Custodes – Fully Painted
• Ossiarch Bonereapers – Part Painted

My plan was to play my two 40k armies at tournaments whilst working on my Bonereapers to finally get back to some Age of Sigmar tournaments (after not having had a fully painted AoS army for way too long)

I managed to play in a Grand Tournament with my Eldar and a Throne of Skulls with my Custodes, both at Warhammer World. I received a best army nomination for both events but yet again wasn’t in the top 3 best armies. I needed to work on a new army obviously!

Lockdown Hits…

Locked in the house with nothing to do but paint models?! I must admit, I took to this quite well. I absolutely powered through my new Sisters of Battle army and got it fully painted in a Synthwave style (which was quite popular).

Also, I finished my Ossiarch Bonereapers army, in fact I painted most of the faction!

And that’s when the trouble hit… I’d painted everything I owned, Games Workshop was closed and independent retailers were running short of pretty much everything. Whilst other people were panic buying toilet rolls I was panic buying things to paint. Anything to paint in fact!

9th Edition 40k & Lumineth

Once the world freed up a bit I looked at all the half finished projects I’d amassed and decided to have a clearout as my little house was getting rather full of armies. The Custodes army was sold as well as my Titans and Archaon (who made me the most profit I’ve ever made painting a single model).

The Lumineth Realmlords really spoke to me for Age of Sigmar and I jumped in with both feet. I even managed to play in a small local tournament during the more relaxed days of Autumn

Once 9th edition 40k was announced I was all in on Space Marines! I decided I wanted to challenge myself so went for a mostly white army. This would definitely not come back to bite me later…

Burnout!

I blame painting white power armour. The endless days and nights of painting finally caught up with me. Combined with a new love of Mountain Biking that me and my friends had turned to in order to meet up with each other my enthusiasm to paint was non existent. I packed up my brushes and paints and didn’t touch them for ages. I gave serious consideration to selling out of the hobby entirely… I think a lot of people probably felt the same and as one reconsidered their desire to make a career of painting toy soldiers. During this time I did go through and sell more of my models including my beloved Biel Tan army and my Astraeus. I’ve never regretted selling an army as much as I have the Biel Tan, I loved the reaction I got when people saw it on the table and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to best it! Ahh well, it paid for some of my new bike…

I’m back baby!

After a few months of inactivity I finally found the desire to paint models returning. I bought a Genestealer Cult army and started to churn out models in my familiar way

And then I stopped myself. I’ve painted 3 40k armies this year and played one game and I was just going to burn myself out. So once again I was selling an army. Instead I decided to focus on painting for the love of painting rather than to play in a future tournament that might not happen for ages. I started my Road to Golden Demon articles on Goonhammer and worked on the best model I’ve painted to date!

Yes, it’s finished and I’m amazingly happy with it! A plinth is in the post so when that arrives I’ll be writing part 3 of Road to Golden Demon and trying to do my first ever display base.

I even painted some more white power armour…

The Future

I’ve already bought 3 more painting projects (single models rather than armies) and I’m more excited than ever about painting. I think this year has really shown me what I love about the hobby and how much I was focusing on the wrong things (winning a best army rather than trying to get better as a painter).

I now have 3 armies that I can take to tournaments and have fun playing games with whilst focusing my painting time into improving and entering painting competitions.

Ossiarch Bonereapers – Fully Painted

Sons of the Phoneix Marines – Fully Painted

Lumineth Realmlords – Mostly Painted

Hopefully I’ll see some of you in a tournament hall next year, in the meantime I’ll keep painting away!