Tag: writing

Workbench

The Workbench: Finished Models for September 13th, 2026

With last week being dominated by Trench Crusade, I thought it would be good to check back in with the overall backlog and see how things are moving along!

Black Templars Project

My friend Jackson is just about the best person you could hope to know. I’ve been fortunate to have quite a few friends like that, which is great for me! Jackson has a huge Black Templars army and I was happy to get in there and start painting them up. It’s funny, because this batch is the latest in a project that has been going on for about 7 months, I should probably post the rest of them sometime!

The Battle Standard Bearer is a fun one, still a little over-wrought with fiddly detail for my liking but I can’t deny the final product looks pretty spiffy. (Jackson has his own basing scheme that he likes to do, so that’s why the bases are unfinished)

I have no idea what this tank is, it’s a transport of some sort, but I stopped paying attention to what worked with Space Marines when Primaris stuff came out and made Rhinos useless. Getting rid of Rhinos would be like taking Space Mountain out of Disneyland. I’m against it. Still, the transport does look cool, it’s floaty, and reminds me of my Uncle’s El Camino.

Also not sure on the rest of these dudes, they have swords and shields, and I like knights. So I guess they are knights now? Fun to paint regardless.

And this last guy looks like a Chaplain. A big, grumpy chaplain.

Dracula’s America

Still plugging away at this warband, which I’ll be using Gangfight rules for when they’re ready to rock. There are two Draugur gunslingers and the vampire boss, all are 28mm metal casts from Northstar Military Figures in England. After painting a metric ton of Space Marines, I am really loving the opportunity to paint a classic feeling sculpt. I know they’re lacking in detail, but they just ooze personality, and I love knowing someone sculpted these by hand and cast them the old way. Not a knock against modern production methods, but I love the old method. It puts me in a very happy place!

Marvel Crisis Protocol: The Living Mummy

This guy makes me so damned happy. As previously discussed, I am a sucker for the old 70’s monster craze that hit Marvel and DC. The Living Mummy made his debut in I think 1974, and had sporadic releases for a few decades. He’s never been anything more than a minor character, so getting a really good miniature for him is part of why Marvel Crisis Protocol keeps me in its thrall. Fun stuff.

Warhammer 40,000: Orks

This is the project I’ll be working on the most for the next week or two, just getting the Orks from the new Armageddon boxed set finished. The New Antioch warband project from Trench Crusade was really satisfying to finish, and now I’m thinking that I’ll be approaching most of my projects like that. Just getting into a squad or two and getting them done, and being satisfied that they’re not sitting in the queue waiting forever for me to get to them.

I’m painting these guys up as Deathskulls, which will be fun since they steal everything they can get their hands on. That will help me keep off the boredom once the box set is done, I’ll be taking bits from other armies and adding them to kits to make it look like they’re just booting around with looted gear.

As for 11th edition 40k, I owe it a little debt for the freedom it gave me. I played a couple of games, bounced right off of the rules, the terrain layout, and the constant re-rolls (constant re-rolls feel like sloppy writing to me). This led me to pull out my old 4th edition books, and I remembered what I liked about 40k at the turn of the Milennium.

I like choice. I like fussing about with a list, buying wargear, building out the flavor of the unit. I could care less about meta, I just want to tell a story when I play a game. There is not a single person I know that’s interested in trying 4th out, so I’ll be doing anything I do with these minis on my own.

Which is freedom, frankly. 4th edition is far from perfect, but it’s fun for me, I know what I need to fix to make it work a little better, and I can build narrative lists that tell the kind of stories I want to tell with dice.

I have some Red Corsairs, Space Wolves, Inquisition, and Eldar Raiders that I’ll be building out to help tell those stories, but since this is just for me and NOT something that has to chase new rules collections, I’ll just be taking my time and getting this stuff together as the urge hits me.

After the orks, I’ll be tackling the new Trench Crusade two player box, and rounding out my Konflikt ’47 groups as well.

Until next time, friends! May the point of your brush remain ever sharp!

Uncategorized

Disability and the Art of Hobby Maintenance

After several years of processing and waiting, the United States Government has decided to agree with a panel of doctors and medical professionals, and has declared that I have indeed been attacked by several traitorous organs and am not capable of sustainable, “meaningful employment”.

In other words, I am disabled.

This is an interesting thing to be in the United States right now. We are largely governed by venture capital bros who believe in meritocracy above and beyond anything else, and the meritocracy crowd doesn’t look too keenly on disability. The feeling is that if you are disabled, that you are a drain on society, even though I have been working and paying into the system full time, often with a second job, since 1984.

That’s 42 years. And somehow, I’m struggling internally with being entitled to benefits that I have been paying in to my entire damned life.

So, what does that have to do with hobbying? At the end of the day, everything.

I have about three, sometimes four, good hours of energy every day. Hence, the not being able to sustain a profession bit. Of that three to four hours, I have to exercise for at least 30 minutes, if not an hour, or the vein feeding my liver could collapse and kill me, since my abdomen is so jacked up after five surgeries that there’s no way to fix that vein without potentially killing me.

Defusing the bomb is as dangerous as the bomb.

Doing my hobby helps me turn off the gibbering horde that takes up residence in my psyche, the Doomsday Chorus that likes to remind me that every day is potentially borrowed time. That’s fine, though. I’ve had a remarkably cool life and have very few regrets.

That doesn’t stop the Gibbering Horde, though. Painting, on the other hand, does. So… I paint. Literally, I paint, therefore I am.

I am calmer, I am more at peace with this stage of my life, and I am able to focus on adoring my wife and rejoicing in my time on this (currently burning) rock as it careens about the universe.

There is a lot to be said about hobbies and mental health. And there is a lot to be said about stilling those voices that influence us and steer us away from our better selves. This has led me to deleting my social media accounts, stepping away from the podcast I have been part of for 18 years, and fine-tuning my YouTube content to exclusively hobby based channels.

It’s been liberating. And because of that liberation, those few hours of energy that I have became more restorative. Every brush stroke or assembled figure is a hard-won symbol of serenity for me. A sign that I am weathering my own personal storm, and maybe can show the way for others struggling as well.

The hobby, as it is, can be maddening. There’s a million people out there screaming about “the meta”, and debating the merits of this list, that model, the new game system that’s potentially going to pull a David on the Goliath in Manchester. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We can find peace in our wargames, as ironic as it feels to say that.

I hope you all find some time to rejoice in our hobby today, to escape our grim reality and fire off some joyous endorphins with whatever worlds bring you happiness. It’s an amazing hobby, full of amazing people.

Thanks for stopping by. Be good to yourselves, and happy hobbying!