Works in Progress

  My Imperial Guard army for Warhammer 40,000 is trundling along.  Currently I'm working on a few things.  Hopefully by posting them here, it'll motivate me to keep at them and get them done quickly.  Commissar Yarrick is being added, he was an impulse purchase at a hobby shop back in 1998 or so.  He is finally getting to the painting block.  Good for him.  Also in progress are a regular commissar that someone over at bartertown.com gave me for free, and a sentinel walker, sort of a light vehicle for Warhammer 40k.  The sentinel is being painted in winter camo colors.  Now that I have had some thoroughly fun experiences with yellow, I'm moving on to the second hardest paint, which is white.  I was skeptical of Games Workshop's decision to (yet again)  redo their line of paints, but the new ones really are a joy to work with.  Getting bright tones has never been easier.  Painting the red bits on the commissars has got me excited to do a big red project in the future.  Once these things are all done, I'll do 1-2 units of winter camo stuff to sort of round out that segment of my army, add another hero or something, and then the Imperial Guard will be at 2,000 points, which seems like a good place to stop and take a break and move on to another army for awhile.

  I don't really get into tactics too much with my miniature gaming, but in recent games against my old wargaming buddy LAD, I noticed I had almost as many men lose their nerve and flee as get wounded.  So, I'm going to try combining squads into bigger units (don't be scared, there's safety in numbers boys!) and painting a few extra commissars and other heroes to lead them on better.  Also, I need some kind of fast moving reserves to counter units that can do annoying things like parachute in behind my lines, hence the sentinel.  Its probably not ideal for the purpose, but I've always liked the model, so I'm adding one to my army.  Other than strict legal requirements of my army list, I always pick all my units based on what I feel like painting, rarely on tactics.  I figure this does two things.  It simulates the fact that no army in history ever has precisely the stuff the commander would wish for, and it keeps me from accumulating stuff that I neither want nor need.  No one NEEDS any of this stuff, so if I don't want a particular model in and of itself, I'm not going to paint it just to gain an advantage in a pretend game that takes place on a well decorated kitchen table.