Hey everybody,
I have no idea if the following blog will be of any interest to anybody – a lot of the time, I myself find these things a bit like some kind of weird hobby flex, “look at how much stuff I have!” etc. While that’s not the reason for me posting today, I’ve wanted to try to take stock again of where I am up to with clearing out the whole backlog of miniatures that I am currently sitting on, and I suppose this can help to both motivate me, and perhaps provide a preview for what’s to come for the rest of the year! I will, of course, be showcasing everything as I clear it, if for no other reason than to motivate me to keep going.
In my July retrospective blog, I talked about wanting to reclaim my hobby time from the endless treadmill of painting up units, and try to game some more. Well, it’s always better to play games with painted models (I believe they roll better), so I’m hoping that I can set out something of a checklist of what I still have to do in this blog, and then in the coming weeks and months I’ll be slowly but surely painting everything up. Such is the plan.
For the purposes of this blog, then, I’ve taken nine of the ten armies shown in the Instagram photo above, and made a list of what units I have built but not yet painted. I know that I also have a lot of unbuilt models for these armies too, but I won’t count those because they scare me. These are codex-entry units, so some armies might look worse than others because there are a lot of single-model units there. I’m purposefully leaving off the Deathwatch, because I don’t know how the models I have can be organised into units, and I am still unsure about which models I’m keeping, etc.
With all of that, let’s go!
I do love a graph. It makes it so much easier to see the chief offenders of the ongoing projects – Dark Eldar are the runaway winners of this contest, for sure! I want to take a look, then, and see just what it is that I have hanging about waiting to be finished, and whether it’s likely any of this will actually see a paintbrush before we get to the end of the year. Going from the top…
So, the Dark Eldar. 23 built but unpainted codex entry units, mainly because I bought units for this army with wild abandon when I was initially getting into the army. I honestly don’t believe I need all of these units, if truth be told – I can currently field a battalion of Kabalites, and a battalion of Wracks, and I think my plan was to also have a battalion of Wyches, all of them in transports. But honestly, I think I might end up just using one unit of Wyches, with a Raider, and clearing out the others. I have 9 Reaver Jetbikes, in addition to the 3 currently painted – and again, I think that’s too many. I have 10 more Kabalite Warriors to paint, despite already having 30 painted (plus extras, for variety of special weapons). The Dark Eldar might need to have a significant re-think in the fullness of time, but I don’t think I’m going to be doing anything with them for now. I know there are a lot of models that I have unbuilt as well, but let’s not think about those for now!
Tyranids are the next highest-offender, with 13 unpainted models. This is because the entire army is pretty much unfinished – I have finished the Zoanthropes, and I think the Tyranid Prime is probably done as well. There are probably half of these models that are primed, and the rest are in bare plastic. Again, I don’t see myself painting any of these before the year is out, although I wouldn’t be surprised if I did try to at least finish off the carnifex that I think is almost done! I only have a tyrannocyte model unbuilt for this army, so I think that’s something of a win!
My Necrons come in third, though if I’m honest they might place higher if I had counted those units that need finishing off – there are at least two that I can think of that need some finishing touches. Annoyingly, though, there are also several units within the 12 unfinished that are counted here, where I have only a few more bits and bobs to do. Three of these units are also scarab swarms, so there’s not a tremendous amount of work to be done on them! I’m purposefully not counting them, but I do also have a second Triarch Stalker, and the Tesseract Ark somewhere in pieces, and I think they need repair work doing before they can be painted. So we shall see.
Grey Knights are next, with eleven unpainted models. Here’s an example of single model units bumping up the tally, because seven of those are just one model. Admittedly, they’re models like land raiders, and the Nemesis Dreadknight, but also the Apothecary, the Brotherhood Champion, and so on. Grey Knights do seem to take me an age to actually do anything with them, and I know I have jokingly said here before that I only paint one unit per year, but hopefully when I next come to paint the knights of Titan, I will actually do much better and get a couple of these character models finished, too. I expect that I will do something with them, too, as December seems to be my traditional month for the Grey Knights to come out of hibernation!
After doing so well at the back end of 2021, I still have 9 units to paint for my Genestealer Cults. This isn’t really a surprise, when you think I have a lot of the original stuff from Deathwatch Overkill to paint up, particularly the acolytes. It did surprise me, though, that I have 30 Neophyte Hybrids still to do! I suppose I did have a lot from stuff like the old Kill Team, and they are beautiful models, but still. While I am pleased with how much I managed to paint last year, there is still a lot to do here. I think I also have a few units in boxes, like the aberrants and another goliath.
Tied with the Genestealers are the Sisters and Black Legion, who also have 9 models to get through. I think these armies will both see more units painted before the end of the year, though, as 2022 has mostly been about these two opposing forces. I do expect to shave some more numbers from the Sisters in the coming weeks, too, as the only reason why I have currently stalled is due to the lack of any undercoat for them! I’m not intending to start planning out my weeks, or anything, as I don’t want to make it into anything too strict, but I think I’m going to turn my attention to the Repentia next, as I had already made an effort with them, so I just need to look at finishing them off, then I’ll probably do the next squad of Battle Sisters. I find getting the big chunks of models finished is really helpful for a productive mindset!
As regards the Black Legion, while I had been intending to paint up the Greater Possessed and the Cultists, I’m veering away from both now, and instead I think it would be good to get the Dark Apostle and the next batch of Legionaries painted. Then, I might try to get the Obliterators painted, not sure yet. There’s also the Helbrute that is very close! I’m not counting the cultist models for the Black Legion, because I no longer know if that’s the way I want to go with the army, but I do have at least two squads of ten cultists hanging about, as well.
I have quite a bit still boxed for the Sisters, and a few models for the Chaos Marines as well, but I think by and large I have models that are actually going to be useful to me waiting in the wings here.
Unsurprisingly, then, at the other end of the scale I have AdMech, with just 7 units waiting to be painted, then Tau with five. AdMech have recently been cleaned out, so I don’t have that many left. I do, of course, have two fairly big models in the shape of the Dunecrawler and the Sydonian Dragoon (at least, that’s how I think I built it!) I talked about this a while ago on the blog, but I have around 880 points of these guys now, between the painted and unpainted, and the box of Kataphron Servitors will bring me to a nice 1000 points, meaning the army is pretty much complete as it stands. So this is a very interesting one to me, as I have pretty much a complete army, I just need to finish painting it all now! I don’t have the Codex for them, however, so I don’t know if I might need to consider swapping in the Skitarii Marshal, for instance, but that can wait for the time being. It’s exciting to think that I have at least one army where it is what it is!
The Tau, with five models built, isn’t a surprise either, because when I started this journey into the Greater Good at the start of the year, I had planned to build then paint on a unit by unit basis, and only ended up with this backlog because I played a game with them and needed more models built up. I do still have a Riptide waiting to be built, but I don’t intend to build that until I have painted everything else. I am hopeful that I can return to the Tau before the end of the year, as well, because it would be nice to get more of the army painted up. I think the Crisis Suits and the Fireblade have been undercoated, so they might be a nice project to move on to next.
Now, I was almost a bit scared to do this, but I have looked at where that leaves me, and I have 98 units unpainted, across the nine armies! At least it’s not a hundred, eh?
So going forward, I think I’m still going to be very much focused on the Sisters for the time being, as I try to get as many of those painted up as I can. The Tau will hopefully be coming back into the mix as well, but my other major priority is going to be the Necrons – for the time being, at least!! I want to try and bring the existing crop up to a standard first, then hopefully I can finish off some Lychguard, maybe throw some scarabs into the mix as well. September is traditionally my renaissance month for 40k, which I know I have talked about before, so I’m looking forward to seeing how much gets done there, if nothing else!
At any rate, I think writing all of this has given me a clear focus for what I have that still needs to be painted, and where I am up to with all of my armies at this moment in time. As I’ve said, I’m not intending to start planning things out, and allotting specific units to certain time periods, but I have a much better idea of what I want to accomplish in the short and medium term. Given all of this stock-taking, I’m hoping that I will have a lot of good stuff to show for myself by the end of the year!!
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