The current state of affairs.

First of all, a proper introduction, I'm Will, a 5th year med student at Dundee. I've collected Citadel miniatures for about 11 years, I got into the hobby through a guy at school who brought in the old Tzeentch Greater Daemon model, and I have been hooked since then! I think the first models I got were some Space Marines, they were smothered in paint and have recently had a lovely Dettol bath to see if they can be reclaimed from a camouflage paint scheme(I was young at the time, I know now how much of a fluff mistake it was!). I have since gathered an ungodly number of models, and I still delude myself that they will some day be painted! This leads to Lesson 1,

Lesson 1: I will not buy any more models until I have at least a playable Space Marine army complete.

This will be tricky especially with eBay, however I cannot justly warrant buying any more models at all(my girlfriend might wring my neck if I do!). Its not my fault that GW release such lovely tempting models though!  This also leads onto Lesson 2:

Lesson 2: I must not begin another army until I have a playable force of each of those that I already have.

For 40k alone I have enough models 5 armies(Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tyranids, Orks and Tau), and in terms of the Space Marines and Tyranids, I have calculated I have well over enough for a 3,000 point force for each of them. Ok, so I definitely cannot justify new models let alone a new army. In terms of Fantasy the army count stands at 4, with a potentially huge(4k+) Lizardmen force and much smaller Empire, Dwarves, Vampire Counts, and Tomb Kings. I suppose this massive collection of bare plastic miniatures makes me a proper hobby hoarder... Oh well, I had to feed the Plastic Crack addiction somehow!

In order to get round to painting the mountain of miniatures I have I must maximise the time I have, this is going to be very difficult with the lack of free time that I get with the course, a girlfriend and everything else. I started this blog for many reasons, the main being that it gives me a window to the community to show the miniatures that I am working on and hopefully get some feedback on them, and as a result push me to get the painting done!

Creating a narrative (or themed) army is the part of the hobby I find most interesting. The background for 40k and Fantasy, in my opinion, is amazing; Games Workshop and Black Library have created two colossal  universes, possibly the best part of them is possibility of creating your own characters and stories(within reason) within them. A hobbyist can then extend the stories and characters that they create to the tabletop by converting and theming their own characters or armies, giving the game a far greater depth and enjoyment. This is what I aim to do with all my armies eventually, I already have a lot of the background for the Imperial forces( due for a future post). In other words I want to make my armies truly my own, which I suppose warrants another Lesson.

Lesson 3: Make the models your own, through background, paint scheme, conversions, and basing. Create a narrative for each force.

Looking around the interwebs it is the armies and models that have had the time and energy dedicated to them that really stand out from the rest, marking the forces at the owners own and something to truly be proud of.

Using the opportunity for reflection that this blog gives me to create these Lessons and also to look upon the Goal I have for June 2012(of course the multitude of blogs I try to keep up with have an influence) I am going to change things slightly. I still am going to focus on creating the Honoured Sons Space Marine army, and probably break things up by chipping away at the Lizardmen I have. In addition to this task I desperately want to expand on the Imperial focused narrative I have had brewing for years, the ideal opportunity for this is  Inq28, the Citadel specialist game Inquisitor at a 28 mm scale instead of 54mm. The flagship Inq28 blog by Molotov is a great inspiration, and he is currently working on a INQinvitational, a project best explained by visiting his blog.

A massive thanks to anyone who made it this far though my ranting, I promise that pictures will be coming in the next posts, however work on the models will be at least 6 week off. I'm halfway round the world in beautiful Nanaimo, Vancouver Island for my elective, I strongly recommend visiting this part of the world, however I couldn't convince the girlfriend to allow me any hobby stuff in my bags! Any comments, queries, anything would be greatly appreciated!