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Andrew Bird
Australia
Victoria
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G'day all.
I find myself in what I suppose must be a fairly common situation around here: I have a heap of games sitting on my shelf, all with various amounts of plastic miniatures sitting inside them, all eagerly waiting to be painted. And, as much as I tried to discipline myself time and time again not to buy a new game until I'd finished painting the minis from the previous ones, I simply can't help myself.
My list of unpainted games is certainly not monolithic, but when you paint at the painstaking speed that I do, and consider that each game has a decent count of miniatures, it amounts to quite a lot of work to be done:
DungeonQuest
Dungeon Twister 2: Prison
Earth Reborn
Space Hulk 3e
Descent: JitD, WoD, AoD and ToI
Wrath of Ashardalon
The situation came to a head a couple of weeks ago, when I was up in Sydney for a work conference. The conference was completed, and I had a couple of hours to kill before needing to check in at the airport. Naturally, I decided to browse one of the local game stores. The very friendly staff member smiled, weclomed me and asked if I needed any help. I smiled back, and politely stated that I was just browsing. I spent ten minutes or so just wandering the aisles, with my hands shoved firmly and resolutely in my front pockets, away from my wallet. I was doing just fine, right up until I saw it.
DooM: The Boardgame.
Now, a little background: I'm an old computer gamer, and only recently converted to board games. Both Wolfenstein 3D, and DooM hold a soft spot in my heart. At the decline of my computer gaming years, I also played the much later version 3 of DooM, and enjoyed it immensely. I have quite a few friends around who are also old computer gamers, and I've been itching to get them around for a board gaming session. I've just been holding out for the right game to do it with. Anyway, on with the story...
Steady, I told myself. You've read about this one, and although it would be a fantastic game to introduce for a game night, it has serious balance issues, and apparently needs the expansion in order to be remotely playable. Besides, you're a completionist, and both this and the expansion are out of print, so you'll just drive yourself nuts if you get this and can't get... wait, what's that sitting next to it? Oh.
DooM: the Expansion
To my credit, I didn't purchase them immediately. I spent a good half an hour in the park, arguing silently with myself first. Pretty weak defense, hey?
Now, I've become quite good at secreting large-ish boxes around various parts of our property, so that my darling wife doesn't discover them straight away. However, it's pretty damn hard to hide two massive boxes when you're coming home from the airport and all you've got is an overnight bag. My long-suffering wife finally blew up at me, and demanded that I stop buying games that I never end up playing.
I will play them, I said, just as soon as I finished painting them. And then she gave me the Look.
So, I'm going to dedicate as much spare time as I have (which is not all that much, having a couple of young kids to raise and all) to getting these damn miniatures painted. My initial priority was Space Hulk, but that has now shifted to DooM. My eldest is just turning seven, and although we have played Space Hulk (with unpainted minis) before, the finer subtleties of strategy will be a few years in coming to him yet. But DooM - oh yes, I dearly wish to invite my old computer gaming buddies over for an evening, and bring this baby out. And, wanting to make a good first impression, I'll need it to be looking top-notch.
Hence this blog. It will serve a few purposes:
1) It will be a running journal off all the painting I've done to date. Posts will include pictures (of course!), but also I will annotate them with colours used, and any techniques that I've learned/tried out. As to how exciting a read that will be for anyone, well, I'm not forcing you to read it, OK? 
2) It will (hopefully) also serve as a motivation to continue painting. Posts are likely to be few and far between, but as long as I make some sort of progress on a regular-ish basis, I can be content.
3) Maybe, just maybe, someone out there will find my posts useful, entertaining, or informative. Bit of an ask, but you never know...
My next post shouldn't be too far away (as I've already completed the minis in question), so stay tuned!
Cheers,
Birdman.
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...). Playing with a fully painted set is definitely a treat.
