Why bury the lede?  I placed second with the Captain Whistlelock figure I did so well with at NoVA’s Captial Palette last year.

Anyway, Historicon happened this past weekend!  Due to reasons, I was only able to make it out for the Saturday; I’d have really liked to have come out for the Saga tournament, for example, but it just wasn’t in the cards to do more than the one day.  (In fact, getting down for the single day was somewhat dearly bought, but not making it down wasn’t an option.)

I’d hoped to pick up a couple of things from the vendor room: The Crescent & The Cross, the Fireforge Light Mongol Cavalry and maybe, if I was lucky, somebody’d have Donnybrook.  No luck with any of those, though.  I did spend some getting spun up on By Fire & Sword (I backed their first Kickstarter for the rulebook but no minis, and had already plunked down for a larger buy-in with The Deluge), which turned into a purchase.  I also grabbed a box each of Wargames Factory’s new AWI minis, to supplement the Perry ones I picked up a few months ago.

I ran into Ashley and JC and kicked around with them for most of the day and checked in with Casey (who was Bolt Actioning) throughout the day.

I only played in one game, and it was the large WWI table.

I had a good time, despite the scenario being somewhat lacking.  (Allies: run across the table! Germans: murder them all before they reach you! )

Next year, I’m definitely going knife-fight someone to make sure I can get out for more than one day.

Anyway, the rest of the disappointingly inadequate photodump:

Working feverishly to get this stuff done, but I’m running out of runway: I’ve basically got until Friday and then it’s a day here, day there without much predictability until NoVA happens.

Fortunately, the Soul Grinder’s, like, 95% done.  Just some washing (metals), black on the torso, highlight black, then touch back in some fleshy bits.  Made better time with it than I thought I would.

Then I just need to bang out four infantry-sized models for the base list to be done, and wrap up three larger models (that are mostly done) and three Screamers (which will paint up incredibly fast) and I’m done.

I’m definitely in time-crunch stress mode.

Historicon is in two weeks, NoVA is in eight weeks.  Of those eight weeks, I’m on the road for somewhere between four to six weeks for work (and, ever so briefly, vacation).  Effectively: the lead in I have for Historicon is the same as the lead in I have for NoVA.

For the Historicon painting contest, I’ll just have to enter what I entered in the Capital Palette last year (which was, more or less, the plan).

For the NoVA GT, as with last year, my Khornate Daemons are my shortest-path to having a GT ready army.  I’ve got a few models that I need to paint for it, but it should be (just barely) doable with the time I have.

For the Captial Palette: I think I just need to accept that I can’t enter anything this year.  This is hugely disappointing.

As I look back over what I’ve painted since last August… the past year has been hugely productive in terms of quantity of models painted, but that’s come at the cost of quality: frankly, nothing I’ve done is worth competing.  Doing a Saga warband based on a stupid whim in less than a week, for example, is definitely an accomplishment,  but it’s not going to result in any winners.

The plan had been to work on some models specifically for the competition (which worked out pretty well last time), but I just don’t see when the heck I’d be able to do it.  Sure, I could work on something instead of finishing my army for the GT, but comparing the cost of the GT (already paid) to the cost of the painting competition (not yet paid), the decision is clear.

I might get lucky and find time, but it’s not likely.  Better just make peace with it now than add even more stress trying to do the impossible and then seal it with a heavy coat of disappointment when it’s for naught.