Look - lead!

"Oh," I hear you say. "You're back, are you? I know we hadn't agreed anything, but it seemed fair to expect the next turn in the ongoing saga of The Bridge Over the River Chai oh, you know - sometime soon after the last one was published? A week seems reasonable?"

"And now you tell me you still don't have it? You've got a lot of nerve showing up here, let me tell you!"

Yes, I suppose you're right. Nearly a month has passed since the last report on those crazy orcs and dwarves. It may gall you to know that the contestants are now busy on their eighth turn, but I have yet to even start writing up turn five.

Lets explain: its all to do with New Years resolutions, you see. Having spent the year week after Christmas firmly ensconced in the bosom of my family, I wasn't able to do much by way of hobby work. I was only able to return to the business of modelling work on or about the time of the New Year - a time rife with idiotic promises of life improvements. I decided to pledge to myself that I would not assemble/strip/prepare another figure until I had finished painting everything that was 'hanging around' on the desk.

Now, you may recall at some junction that I was planning to proceed into some sort of Chaos army, possibly based on Nurgle. That wasn't going to happen with my desk in the state it was at the end of 2012. I would have liked to show you a picture, but so taken with my cause was I that I didn't even hesitate  to get to work. So you'll just have to believe me.

The next part of the story is this: I now I have a nine month old living in the house. That's not a surprise - I've was here when she arrived, but far from becoming less demanding, it appears that little girls require more and more time as they get on (and, according to my experience of women, the increment is exponential...).

I mention this because it means I only have a small window of hobby opportunity available. As far as I am concerned (and you, no doubt), the business of hobby work - the actual stripping, gluing and painting parts - are different to the writing about the stripping, gluing and painting parts. I lost that argument - as far as my wife is concerned, its just hobby time - if I choose to spend it writing about the hobby as opposed to just doing the hobby, well - that's my own stupid fault.

So, in order to satisfy me new years resolution, I was required - nay - forced - to paint, leading to Turn five just falling by the wayside.

See - not so judgemental now, are we? I'm the victim here!

Anyway, rest assured, I'll get on with Turn 5 (and the rest) from this week onwards.

Still, I ended up painting some stuff.  A ghost (spectre/wraith/ethereal of your choice), a skull chucker, a corpse cart, a chaos dwarf bazuka and thirty two goblins. Also, I repaired Onowitz Mann'fluh - cos I broke him.

A brief note on the goblins. You've come across the terms strategic and tactical. You are reading a blog about wargames, so of course you have. In information technology, these terms are used slightly differently. Strategic describes the right thing - the correct approach, the gold standard. Most of my modelling work is strategic. Tactical describes quick and dirty - its not great - it just gets you over the hump, as it were. The thirty two goblins were tactical. I had purchased a bunch of goblins a long time ago. They were painted, but not especially well, as I thought. I stripped the metals, but the plastics I had just left. They just happened to be on the desk (due to reorganising). When I looked at them, it occurred to me that if I just gave them a black wash and rebased them - well, they would do. So that's what I did. I'm not especially proud of it, but as you'll see, this move has launched my meagre forces into 'army' status.

Now, there are pictures. And some more explanation.

Right, so on to the payload. Today started like this:

Given that going to work would have resulted in instant death (you know - health and safety and all that), I stayed home.

Much better.

With this sudden injection of time, I decided to take all of my painted stuff, put it on a table and take pictures. For you. Apparently, pictures are worth thousands of words. Here are thirty two thousand words worth of pictures:

It feels appropriate at this junction to highlight that I had no access to special lighting, which accounts for the fact that the flash managed to darken (romanticise?) most of the pictures.

Sorry.

Now I ended up in this situation where I had all these figures on the table. Having looked at them, it occurred to me that I might be able to split them all into two different forces - opposing forces.

Risking the wrath of The Minister of the Interior, quickly laid out a potential battle - between the Undead and the Goblins (with friends!):

So that's what I've been busy with.

Friends?

Oh? What now? You saw some modern figures? Okay, okay - you got me. There are some current edition things in there. Specifically, the goblin bolt thrower? Yes, and the crew? Sure, okay.

As I said:

Tactical.