Traders - 40K style

Deadlines are coming thick and fast at the moment, with these chaps being needed for our Exeter Oldhammerers session yesterday. I was able to find a fair bit of painting time last weekend, and just about managed to get them varnished in time for the game.

I've owned these chaps for donkey's years, with the Metal Magic adventurer on the left having got his undercoat probably 25 years ago. Originally the plan was for them to be a 40K version of my Fallout traders - quite a prosperous merchant by the look of it, apparently a rather security-conscious one at that.

The scenario called for him to be an Imperial Governor, which he seemed to work quite nicely for as well. The trouble is, now having a toe in the 40K door, you start to think: he probably ought to have some sort of lackey in robes, and here's this guy with a bit of armour on who I ought to paint up, and so on. A slippery slope.

But next deadline... BOYL... 

SAGA berserkers

My first SAGA unit completed, to go with my warlord from 2½ years ago.

I'm only counting them as 3 towards my total for the year as I made a reasonable start on these in 2016 (undercoat, flesh and a few other bits).

Hopefully progress from here on will be somewhat faster, as I feel I'm starting to get myself better setup for painting in our new house, as well as working out how to set targets that will roughly be met.

One aspect is having at least some of my painting stuff on surface (although that may not always be possible) and painting in small batches, so that rather having to get stuff out and tackle whatever's next to do I can find something smaller or larger that can be done in whatever time's available.

More important though is motivation, which for me seems to come down to short-term, achievable targets, ideally with something concrete such as a game at the end of it. "Paint my vikings this year" simply isn't going to happen, endlessly procrastinated and distracted by other shiny things. "Paint my berserkers for the game in two weeks" might just about happen - although the chaps might have to go into battle without their shields.

And polishing off the last little bits generally does get done, as the finished model is where the payoff is for me.