In case you were wondering, I'm still alive. I'm not exactly sure why I haven't found time to blog recently. I'd love to say it's because I'm making huge leaps in my hobby progress but that sadly isn't true. Most of the problem was catching up with a couple of seasons of Walking Dead but anyway.
Over the bank holiday weekend I decided to take stock (literally) of my entire 40K collection. I wanted to rearrange the cupboard I keep everything in so I decided to empty the whole thing out and lay out everything I own on my gaming table.
I was pretty surprised that I struggled to fit the whole lot on the 6' x 4' surface and you can see that towards the end I was having to squeeze things in pretty tightly to make it all fit (the Tau were the last out of the cupboard so they're particularly crammed in). Anyway, having everything laid out like this made me realise two things. Firstly that whilst I've painted a decent chunk, there's still a depressingly large amount of black undercoat on display, particularly in the Ork and DE portions of the table. Secondly, there are quite a few bits that don't see use. My entire Dark Angels army for example. When the 6th edition book came out along with Dark Vengeance I was inspired to start and Angels of Redemption army but the way the codex was written made me fall out of love with the army pretty quickly. I want a bike heavy army to feel fast as it charges into combat. With the bolter banner the Ravenwing just become a mobile shooting platform. Couple that with the Darkshroud and they just don't feel like bikes should. Of course, there's nothing forcing you to take either the banner or the 'shroud but they feel like obvious choices. Finally, I think a Deathwing army will always struggle in these days of massed firepower so I'm unlikely to ever use them. I don't like to sell models I've painted but frankly they're just collecting dust.
I could say a similar thing about parts of my Dark Eldar army too. I can't see me using either Hellions of Wyches for a long time as they're frankly (and disappointingly) useless. Similar story for Wracks as well. I think parts of my DE army need to be boxed up in the hope that they'll come good again.
There are actually some things I'd like to add to the collection to make my armies more diverse. For starters, I'd love to add some more TWC to my Space Wolves including Harald. I'd also like some more drop pods (which I own but haven't built) to go along with some more dreadnoughts including Bjorn and Murderfang. The Orks could do with some meganobz plus the bikers I own but haven't built (and perhaps even some FW bikers too). My Dark Eldar could use a Voidraven, which I again own, (there's a trend here) another razorwing plus the kabalite warriors need sorting out to get rid of the now defunct trueborn.
That's quite a bit of work in itself. Fortunately my Tau are pretty complete (since I own pretty much everything in the book) and there's only a couple of things there that need painting. What's upsetting is that although my Space Wolves and Tau are "painted", I'm really not ready to call them finished. The Space Wolves need some work, some extra models for the Grey Hunters and Blood Claws. The Tau need tidying up and highlighting before adding some sept markings and transfers.
So then, the thrill of seeing my whole collection laid out together quickly gives way to feelings of remorse at their lack of completion. I mean, there are very few (if any) models that I'd be prepared to say were completely finished. Suffice to say I need to change this. I think the first thing is to get rid of the Dark Angels though. Once that's done I'll sit down and make a detailed plan of what needs doing and try to work through it piece by piece.
It's at this point I should say I'll be taking Orks to Blog Wars so they'll be getting my attention for the next couple of months. Upsettingly I've only got 7-8 weeks to get them up to scratch! Whilst we're on that subject I need to post about a couple of Blog Wars related issues that I need to discuss with you guys but that'll have to wait for another day.
