Earlier this year I got stuck in the hellscape that is home renovation. Unfortunately, while this means my available gaming space is now neater and easier to move around in, it does mean I've been left with far less storage space for "stuff". So now I'm having to try and be more economic with the space I do have. And it also means in the near future I'm going to have to be ruthless with some of my gaming belongings and probably get rid of some things.

It also probably means a lot of the terrain plans I had will have to be shelved, as there will be simply nowhere to put anything I create.

Up first, to save some shelf space, I thought I'd finally get rid of the old toolbox I'd been keeping my paints in for the last twenty or so years.

So I got hold of some small, simple acrylic shelves, and mounted them to some MDF that I painted black, and screwed the whole thing to the wall. It's not fancy, but it does the job.

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The space saving ideas continued when I bought some new boxes for all of my Epic scale infantry. These are wide and not very tall, meaning I can fit a lot in each box without the models climbing all over each other. All it needed was a bit of support made out of some foam board, and the boxes can now all be stacked on top of each other, saving me a great deal of space.

All I need now is some new solution to all of the metal Epic models and I'll be sorted.

I'm supposed to be getting through my list of games this year, but after a good start I've not touched one since The Somnium Files. Instead, I've been taken over by a little bit of a painting frenzy.

Up first, I pushed on with the 6mm Androids and finally managed to get them finished. I tried something different this time and sealed over the top of the flock with thinned PVA to try and protect it a little more. This seems to have worked, except the other type of flock that I mixed in at different points ended up going really dark. It was cheap stuff, but I wasn't expecting it to do that. Kinda ruins the look. But oh well.

As I was in the mood, I decided to bite the bullet and pick up a bunch of new paints from Vallejo's range. They arrived too late for the Androids, which is a shame as there are a lot of metallics in there. But it looks like there are a bunch of good colours for the Blood Axes and Slaanesh forces I've got to get around to at some point.

After that, I finished the Stompas I started a year ago. Then I decided that the models I need to paint first are the models that can't be used until they're painted, as they can't be glued together beforehand. This means there's lots of disassembled Epic scale cavalry and bikes to get to next. After rattling off some Evil Sunz Bikeboyz, I'm now part way through the Imperial Guard Rough Riders, which shouldn't take too long to finish. This is the first time I've painted 6mm Guard since 2010.

Because I'm a bit of a saddo, I recently counted up how many wargaming models I've got and how far through painting them I am. The results are not encouraging.

I own over 2600 models, and this does not include everything from Super Dungeon as I currently have no plans to paint those.
Of these 2600, over 760 are painted. Nearly 400 others are painted, but they were done years ago, and I am no longer happy with them. This means they will need to be revisited at some point.
All in all, I calculate I'm about 40% through all the painting I need to do.
If there's any good news to come out of this at all, then it's the fact that most of this painting has come in the last few years. So if I keep this up, I may actually get through this monumental task.

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So here it is. The 6mm Android army I was hoping to finish in 6 days before Christmas has actually taken another two months. Which is very typical of my painting speed.

So I had a think about those Eldar power generators, and decided that there indeed was a better way to do them. I snipped out the wooden crystals from the centers, and have ordered some coloured plastic crystals from ebay to replace them. Still not fully sure how to do the replacement, but I'll figure something out. Probably with some wires to look like crackling beams of power or something.

Speaking of crystals, I've been thinking about and working on new Super Dungeon things for a while now, which has motivated me to make my first purchase for the game in quite a while. It's the Dungeons Of Crystalia tile pack that took my fancy, after I decided I needed more varied maps. Believe it or not, I actually first tried to buy this pack a couple of years ago, but there was a mix up somehow with the delivery and it never arrived. After getting my money back, I convinced myself that I didn't actually need to buy it. But I saw it randomly pretty cheap so went for it again. What the hell. Only live once. And if my new rules work I'll be happy to have them.

I've also taken the spare wooden squares that I bought for The Shipwreck Arcana build, and have made some more "terrain thingies" for Super Dungeon, just in case we find we need them.

The first half of 2022 was not too bad on the miniature painting front, but I fell far short of the 4 armies I was hoping to complete before the summer months.

After the weather cooled, I just couldn't get back into the habit, and until recently I had not picked up a brush since June.

However, I found myself with a run of six days with no work during December. Though I probably should have been thinking about getting Christmas sorted, I instead decided to dive back in at the deep end and have a massive painting week.

Rather than continue working on the things I'd already started, I had the bright idea to try and paint my entire 6mm android army within the six day period. Difficult, at my painting speed, but as they are mostly metallic, I thought it might be possible.

Of course, I was wrong.

It's not like I didn't try either. On two of the days, I painted for 10 hours straight, and there was also an 8 hour shift, two 6 hours and a 4. I just don't paint fast enough to get shit done.

I didn't help my cause when I realised too late that I had not fully cleaned the mold lines when I assembled the army back in 2009. Oh well. Too late to worry about that at this point, so I just soldiered on. They're an unoffical army anyway, so getting them done in a quick and cheap way would be fine by me.

I threw further wrenches into the gears when I decided the walkers needed proper bases, so I glued them onto some cheap 25mm bases I'd got, and plugged the gaps using thinned down filler. They do look a lot better, and more closely match the Ork Stompers in size now, which are their most direct comparison.

After the six days were up, I'd made some progress, but I was a long way off. Half of the infantry and all of the walkers were base painted and washed, awaiting highlights. The other half of the infantry was mostly base painted, just needing a few more details on the weapons and things. But I had not started the three big models at all.