Post Quarantine. The New Normal. And Hitting A Wall
We are now into the end of April. And this year is turning out to be completely screwed up. The whole world is shut down or shutting down. Supply lines are strained. People are dying left and right. Surely this can’t continue, right?
Yeah… about that…
Having finally shaken the sickness, my extended quarantine now finished, and having returned to work on an alternate schedule. I took a little time off from hobbying to adjust to everything. I was now working midnights only. A schedule that I don’t mind. Love it actually. Though sleeping during the day on work weeks did not leave much time to do much of anything like painting or gaming. Of course I was only just returning to work after quite a long time. So I would need a bit of time to get a routine going.
During my time off, after that first week, I was able to knock out the Battle Sanctum in a couple days. And I was floored at how good it looked with Sisters all around. It looked completely different from the mass of grey plastic it was a short time ago.
Next up would be the aforementioned(part 2) White Scars Xiphon Interceptor. My roadblock was taken care of. I was able to source an actual reusable respirator mask with disposable filters, not the totally disposable paper masks. So I could now get to work on the resin.
It ended up being a pretty easy build(compared to my last Forgeworld jet…) And I painted it with the airbrush. So I was able to finish it in just a few days. It’ll look pretty sleek on the table if I ever get around to building my White Scars.
After that, I moved on to a couple models from Blackstone Fortress. I picked up the game as a suggestion from Tyson. You can play it solo. And it looked very interesting. But I will get into Blackstone Fortress later.
Next up, I decided that I should give my Iron Warriors some much needed attention. I had a pair of Forgeworld dreadnoughts that were sitting built and primed for about a year. I haven’t painted anything Iron Warriors since November of 2019. Half a year. A long time considering they are technically my primary army.
The Leviathan and Derdeo Dreadnoughts are some massive models compared to the more well known dreadnoughts. And that is reflected in points cost for games.
It was around the 10th of May that I finally got hit with hobby fatigue and hit the wall. I was having trouble figuring out what to do next. There was certainly enough. But I just wasn’t feeling anything immediately in front of me. Tyson suggested that I paint some of my old Orks. And to that I kind of laughed him off. I absolutely had no plans on working on those models any time soon. Maybe ever. That was a task that would most likely never see an end.
Then later on, for the hell of it, I dug out some of those orks. Just to see what I had. And before I knew it I was working on restoring some of them. Stripping the old gross paint off and priming them with new paint. This would end up being just what I needed.
First up was a relic of a model. A circa 1988 Rogue Trader War Buggy that I found in a lot of pewter Orks on eBay back in the early 2000’s. This model had a paint job on it that was SO bad.
I wanted to restore this model, and base it to display. A relic from the lost ages. But first I had to strip all that ugly dollar-bin craft paint off of there. I originally thought that I had bought it painted like this. No, I definitely painted this. Those memories returned after some reflection. Ugh…
The restoration went pretty smoothly. As it is not exactly a crazy detailed piece. Though it took a few days to strip that old paint. It was caked on there.
Not bad for a 30 year old hunk of pewter. Rogue Trader had some goofy models. Well, in comparison to modern models.
This venture into the past kind of lit a small fire within me. I wanted to keep working on the Orks. But not the plastic 2nd edition Orks and Gretchin, that I had in abundance. I wanted to work on pewter models. Generally, I do not like painting pewter. Compared to modern plastic or finecast, the details tend to not be as crisp. And therefore tricky to paint well. But the weight is something I like. They are easier to hold while painting.
Over the course of a week I ended up restoring 2 Nobz, a Warboss, and Ghazgull Thraka. All from the late 90’s. Though, Ghaz is missing some bits. Long lost to moving multiple times. And time itself.
Kommandos were next. 1991 was cast onto the pewter mounting stems. Well, before I cut them off. These were definitely older pewter models. Much smaller than the newer Orks. And they all have that ‘flat’ shape that old school Citadel miniatures had.
I decided they would be Red Skull Kommandos.
I finished those Kommandos on May 25th. That is when I really hit the wall. I thought I was doing okay. But that was not the case. Hobby fatigue turned into a full blown rut. I could not get anything started. So what did I do? Sought refuge with Mistress Playstation, of course. Though I cannot remember what I was playing then. I think it was the newer Sword Art Online game. I’m a fan of the manga, anime, and game series.
A New Idea
Tyson and I had been discussing ways to game over long distances. To help both of us out of our respective funks. We concluded games of 40K were impossible. However, other games showed promise. Particularly games that worked on grid-like tabletops. Like Blackstone Fortress. The game I had picked up a while back to play solo.
The concept was simple. We both had the box sets. We both set up the boards and cards the same. And we both set up the characters the same. When he made a move, I would move his characters. And he would move mine when I moved. We established North, South, East, and West positions based on where I was sitting at the table. And to make that all easy to understand, I had a camera set up above the table using a tripod with a horizontal mount.
We were doing these sessions on Zoom, to start. But after Zoom changed some rules and put caps on the amount of time for meetings, due to their massive popularity increase, we moved to Skype. I operated 2 accounts on both platforms. One for me, and one for the overhead camera. It worked surprisingly well. Of course there were a couple orientation snafu’s, but we ironed those out. After the sessions concluded, I would store everything for myself and Tyson’s characters to keep track for the next game.
It was a lot of fun. And we continued it for quite a while. Playing 2 to 3 times a month.
Blackstone Fortress and all that was super fun. But my rut continued for just about one more month. I still couldn’t get anything started. But I would thankfully shake that soon enough.
A big project was about to light a major fire under my ass. One that would occupy a massive amount of my time.
To be continued…
[This post was originally published at Otherverse Games & Hobbies]
Robert
All of these are true except for one:
Robert is: a Hobbyist, a Music Lover, an RPG Gamer, a Mustard Lover, Chaotic Neutral, a Japanese Speaker, a Veteran, an Otaku, a Table Tennis Player, an Anime Fan, an Aviation Professional, a New York Rangers Fan, a Chaos Lover With Loyalist Tendencies.