My Toil Is Endless

It is in the dead of winter that morale flags and our spirits weaken.

This is my List of Shame, that being the mini wargaming projects I have undertaken within the past few years and not finished.

Previous to my discovery of the ease of eBay, this list was laughably short. I generally bought or acquired figs and worked on them at a comfortable pace, with a few squads or prize figs always awaiting completion.

I realized the other day that I am "stress purchasing" figs off of eBay. I dare say that I enjoy NOT winning auctions that I bid on almost as much as I enjoy winning them, and I usually try to keep single figs under 10 bucks U.S. and squads under 20$. That's a modest goal, and easy target to hit, so I am gradually taking on more models than I may ever finish in my brief life span!

Things to finish:

1. I have a handful of marines that need power-sword fixing with my airbrush.
2. There was this box of 20 3rd or 4th edition Catachans. Hideous. Assembled now for like 6 years, awaiting paint. Convert to Beastmen or maybe Orlocks.
3. Original St. Celestine. Arm broken: needs pinning and painting.
4. Repaint my 8 man Arbites squad(note, I made a mold of the easiest one and have been slowly venting/tweaking so I may one day have like a anti-riot squad but that's a different thing). Thinking Judge Dredd scheme, since it's neat.
5. Repaint my 5 Seraphim(note: I stripped these down because my paint job was pretty awful and I wanted to make a mold of the twin-bolters sister, but we'll see if that ever happens)
6. Finish Wayne's Inquisitorial Land Raider. been assembled and waiting for months and months, now.
7. Finish the Genestealer Cult. Needs highlights and bases.
8. The Cult Brood Lord conversion from a WFB ogre is stalled. Need green stuff. I have milliput but not sure if I like it.
9. Finish the Space Hulk 'stealers and termies
10. Finish the Sisters' Immolator
11. Finish the Gangs of Commoragh
12. Finish Necromunda - just need to assemble the Escher and paint everything
13. Have some Fenryll skellies i just grabbed. Want to use them for solo Frostgrave stuff so they ought to be 0
14. Paint the Crypt Ghouls for Frostgrave. Ought to be .5
15. Convert a new level 5 wizard for my Frostgrave warband (Chaos-y, with tubes and wires n such. Ought to be .75)
16. A metal Brood Guard or hive guard, in the pile somewheres.
17. Some HDF terrain: a 3x3 medieval urban board with canals/sewers.
18. Survivors for Walking Dead: All Out War
19. Gaslands cars (8 or 9). Magnetize with some bits from 40k
20. Gaslands terrain
21. Convert a team of Dark Elfs for Blood Bowl from these 3rd edition Dark Eldar kabalites. Maybe.
22. Dungeonbowl board. I have the chests primed and ready but they await.
23. A squad of Tommy Gun wielding mob goons that ought to be good for survivors for WD:AOW, and a couple of other bits and bobs survivors.
24. A jillion little jobs to finish.  I have this one WW2 era Phantom bomber that I squished a couple of IG pilots into, and it needs glue-ing and basing and a crummy rules set.

These are just the ones I can recall, in no order of import. I don't know that I'll be actually playing 40K any time soon, despite hearing great things about 8th edition... As you can probably tell, just going into my frozen hell of a basement makes me exquisitely anxious with idea debt. Interestingly, while NOT doing these things on the list, I have completed a table-ready job of a Frostgrave band and even some objective markers. Proud as I am of those, my head grows heavy and my heart shrinks at the thought of these undertakings. I need to print it out and staple it onto the wall next to my bed to give me a little motivation.

Into the Frostgrave

Ahh, Felstad. Ancient, illustrious, doomed. An icy hellhole. Perfect for pilfering and chock full of dead secrets and money.

I had the original Mordheim - after Necromunda it seemed like a good bet. We tried it a bit, and it didn't go over as well as Necromunda, and so it was shelved. I confessed at my gaming group yesterday that in a fit of pique at lugging that shit around for a decade, I threw it all in a trash can and sulked off. I recanted (of course!) but the trash was gone in the morning, and I've always had a little bit of great deal of remorse about it. I still have the pretty perfect rule book.

The good thing is that Frostgrave scratches that itch quite nicely. We started up a campaign yesterday and it was great fun. The focus on the game is not really the combat so much between the two groups of wizards and henchmen, but rather on Getting The Phat Loot and Getting Out Alive Intact. There was a great deal of stuff going on in our 3x4 stretch of wintery wasteland - the group has a house rule that collection of treasure tokens spawns a random monster from the Frostgrave Bestiary and of course I am thinking of ways to tweak that out to fit scenarios of my own devising... You could alter (add/elide) the list, insert monsters, change spawn points with special rules. I mean, it bears hacking which is maybe my favorite thing about the game, after its simplicity and speed.

Anyhow, I will tinker with it and we'll see what we'll see. Painting of zombies from TWD:AOW is slow, but getting done. Assembly of Necromunda has not even started. I'm liking the rules and figs but not totally sold on the modular approach - I note with some chagrin that I don't mind the modular approach of Frostgrave (by comparison) owing to the relative costs!