The Art of 'Good Enough'

I've been in a bit of hobby existential crisis this week. 

You see I've been painting up some new Corsairs I've got for a local Middle Earth event next week, which I got from a quite excellent 3rd party company called Medbury Miniatures.

They really are lovely sculpts. They put GW's Corsairs to shame. They're up there with Forge World in terms of quality I'd say and were a dream to paint up. 

The problem came when I went back to start doing a spruce up on my existing Corsair army. GW's models are bad. Not just in comparison, but just objectively. They're an older plastic kit and it shows. The details are lumpy and shallow, with the mold clearly wearing out. 

I consider myself to be a pretty decent painter, but this is the best I could do with them. 

Of course my pedantic, autism-driven brain went into overdrive. The difference just seem too much to reconcile and I immediately set to work trying to apply more highlights in an attempt to bridge the gap between the two sets of models.

Then I stopped, put my paintbrush down and started thinking. Why did I need to do that? Not every model needs to be a work of art.

If it looks decent enough on the table, why worry too much about it? Seems a bit obvious when I write it down like this, but I am guilty of going overboard with my painting projects.

Of course it's good to be trying to improve my skills, but it doesn't need to be done with everything I do. I can probably get away with not going in to that third or fourth highlight on trooper 5 of a 30-strong force. It's still going to look decent on the gaming table. 

You're probably thinking "Congratulations, you've just discovered Tabletop Standard painting", but I've always had a perfectionist streak when it comes to painting, so it's good to think about it every now and then. 

Moving forward, I'm going be trying to not worry so much about achieving the perfect result on each individual figure and focus more on how units appear as a whole. That lets me save the more involved stuff for characters and other centrepiece models.

I'll see how I get on with that. It might even have a positive effect on my endless backlog!

On a side note, I also had my first game of 10th Edition 40k this week. It's hard to judge too much from just a single game, but it seems pretty fun and plays much smoother than 9th ever did, even though I need to shake up what I'm running with my Orks quite a bit. 

I've got another game scheduled for Monday, so I'll be able to get a better idea of things then, but if I can play the game without the rules bloat and mental fatigue which plagued 9th, it'll be excellent and keep me far more excited for the game than I've been for a long while. 

Oh and I'm picking up my Leviathan box in the morning, so that's fun too!

Until next time, Happy Hobbying! 

I did it!

I've reached quite a cool moment on my hobby.. For the first time in the 20ish years I've been playing, I've actually got a fully painted 2000 point army for 40k!

I've collected a lot of armies over the years, but I've never been all that disciplined in getting them painted. I've always gotten distracted by other projects.

Having taken part in a 40k league at the local club for the last six months though, it's helped me focus quite considerably.

It helped that Orks are quite fun to paint and I chose quite a simple paint scheme. It still took me the better part of two years since restarting the army to get there though. 

Just in time for 10th Edition to screw with the points!

It's fine though, it gives me a solid pool of finished models to draw on to keep to my goal of only playing with painted models in 10th, with a fair few more that could be finished quite quickly if I want to use something different, so it's onwards and upwards from here!

Next up is getting some Corsairs ready for a Middle Earth event at the end of the month, then tackling the Leviathan box, so that should be a lot of fun. 

Until next time, happy hobbying!