I’m not dead (I think)!

NoVA was a thing that happened: I had a great time (as expected). It’s weird, though: even though I love 40K, and on paper I think I should love this version of 40K, I don’t think I like it very much right now.  I won as much as I lost and most of my games were a lot of fun (even the one really, really, really unbelievably awful game would have been just as awful with any other edition or any other game, I think), but yeesh.  That, plus a literal 24 hours of 40K over a weekend will make anyone want to take a breather.

That, combined with work hitting a level of busy I’d only describe as “traumatic” (seriously: it hasn’t been that bad for a month or so but it still feels that bad) has meant I haven’t time for much gaming.  I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve been able to move toy soldiers around since Nova was a three-way goof-off game of Saga with John and Mike at Victory comics what feels like months ago.

On the bright side: I have not been idle on the hobby side of things, even if I’ve been too busy to blog about it.

Since NoVA, I’ve:

• Painted 85% of a By Fire & Sword Polish starter (I just need to wrap up those last two bases before I’m done!)
• Painted an entire USMC starter for Bolt Action starter, plus a few models (63 infantry, including weapons teams).  Enough paint’s been applied to a half-track and a Sherman that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to put them on the table, but they’re not done.
• Assembled pretty much all of the Wave 2 Deadzone stuff (I’ve got some Plague Zombies left to do).  Since I didn’t initially put together the Marauders, that’s a total of 3 full factions
• Settled on a Deadzone terrain configuration and painted it.  It’s done and varnished.  Still want to weather it, and I need to do the scatter terrain, but I could drag it out to the game store tonight if I wanted to.
• Did a lot of airbrushing (see: terrain).  I’m not going to be winning any awards for airbrushed models any time soon (or, ever, really), but I did enough with it, got more comfortable with it, and finally started doing more with it than basecoating.  I leveled up with it, at least.

In fact (because I’m obsessive about tracking what hobby progress I make, I can tell you that), I’ve done more hobby stuff so far this year than I have since I’ve been tracking this stuff. By September, I’d painted more models in 2014 than the entirety of any other single year.

Now to just find time to drag out the lightbox and start with some photodumps.

And to get out and game: I think I need to make that an actual priority, effective ASAP.  Like, “Sorry, I cannot do this thing you ask of me, because I need to be playing with toy soldiers.”