What's on my plate

I'm thinking about making this a regular Friday post, something that will help me keep my projects in order and on track and maybe actually finish one or two of them before the end of the year. A couple of these do have real deadlines so that might help me stay on target. I'm going to sort of list these in a priority order, of course that is subject to change without notice.

1) RPG characters, finish. These are for my every other Saturday game. There are only six of them, you would think this was a slam dunk kind of thing. 1 Female Gnome Battlemage, 1 Male Dwarf Barbarian, 1 Male Dwarf Cleric (NPC, currently being played by someone interested in joining the group), 1 Female Human Rogue, 1 Male Human Cleric and 1 Male Elf Paladin. These only have to be tabletop paint jobs and are likely to see rough use. I would like to have these done for the next game so I have a week at this point.

2) SAGA Norman army, get started. These are the Perry Miniatures which are all prepped and just need to be mounted for painting and primed. I want to enter these in the army painting competition for Genghis Con XXXIV in February of 2013. So they are to get my best efforts. There are 87 miniatures here so I do need to get moving. I think rather than my normal assembly painting style I'm going to paint these up by SAGA points which should let me concentrate on just a small set of figures at a time. So 4 mounted Knights, 8 armored Spearmen, 8 Crossbows, 12 Archers or a single character. For the characters I plan on mounted and dismounted versions of the warlord plus a couple of small character vignettes.

3) SAGA Norman army, repair and touch-up. These are the Gripping Beast Miniatures which make a fine wargame army. Unfortunately some repair is necessary after they were returned to me. I have some new steel lances on the way to replace the cast pewter ones so those will become more survivable (and slight more dangerous to your opponent since they are actually quite sharp). I found some Gripping Beast crossbows to replace the two missing ones and I'm going to take a shot at sculpting a couple of tails to replace the missing ones on the horses (I think there are two missing tables). A little touch-up work after that and this will be an army to be proud of on the battlefield.

4) 15mm British Napoleonics, re-base and paint.  After initially being very enthused about the LaSalle rules my group has kind of soured on them. Although others may disagree they just don't have the right "feel" to them. It has nothing to do with the weird turn sequence either (I have several games I enjoy that have weird turn sequences), its like the armies are just to generic and don't really seem to behave the way you expect them to behave. I can't really explain it better than that. So I'm mounting these up for Napoleon at War. This will let me use them for Napoleon's battles as well. The bases are a bit larger than Napoleon's Battles but pretty close. I have remounted one infantry unit (74th Highlanders, non-kilted) and started another last night (88th Connaught Rangers). These are mounted on six stands of four for a total of 24 figures which means I have 8 figures left over from each LaSalle unit I rebase. I'll have a bunch of extra center company infantry after I'm done so I guess my British infantry force is going to get a significant expansion which means I'll need more command, grenadier and light infantry minis to fill them out. Of the six stands one is grenadier, one is light, one is command (2 flags, an officer and a drummer, this counts as center company) and three center company stands. Each unit also gets two little skirmisher stands. These will be filled out mostly with regular light infantry but I'll do a proportion of them as rifles as well. Hopefully this will be the kickstart I need to actually get the artillery and cavalry done as well.

5) 15mm ACW, finish. I just need to get the union cavalry done for this army. Its never been a high priority since the union side rarely has cavalry and I have some older stuff that can be subbed in.

6) 28mm WWI USMC next unit. This has always been a side project so I'll fill it in a unit at a time as I feel like it. I have everything I need for this army now, including a couple of little FT-17s for support.

7) LoTR Helmingas finish. Originally this was going to be a display/tournament army that would have taken place last month. Unfortunately that tournament was cancelled when the organizer moved to the other side of the state for work. I have almost all the pieces for this one, the infantry component has been started and I think I have most of the cavalry component now. I'm missing two characters Eomer and Erkenbrand to finish off the army. I do intend to finish this army as I enjoy the game. There will probably be re-newed enthusiasm once the Hobbit is released.

8) Legion of the Damned 40K, acquire. This is a truly long term project and again is meant to be more of a display army than anything else. I have slowly been acquiring Legion of the Damned miniatures, both older and newer models to create an army. Now of course its not legal as an army but I'm not letting that stop me since I don't actually intend to play 40K with them. This will be a highly converted army and some of the ideas are still gelling while I acquire the various components (the cheaper the better!).

9) Genghis Con XXXIV entries. Its never to early to start on competition entries. I have all the components for my diorama and construction and painting can commence anytime now. I haven't decided on which individual piece I'll do, but I'm determined to have at least two entries in the competition this year.

10) Danish TYW in progress. Another display army for me, currently no one is playing so I don't feel rushed to get it done. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes on this one, however, I do want to get some work done on it to see my painting style mixes with the oil-wipe technique.

11) ATSF "the Patch" general work. Although construction proceeds at a snails pace it does slowly move forward as I work on rolling stock, motive power and the occasional building. The first priority there is to finish the brick freight house that I started. I found the clerestory windows that I misplaced that I need for the roof so I can get back to construction on that.

I think that's a reasonable accurate list at the moment. Of course its going to change on a whim, as other miniatures surface. I'm pretty sure that I have pirates and cowboys hidden away in drawers that would like to get painted. I'll probably add those to the list after I get my ships from the Laser Dreamworks Kickstarter and I get a look at the buildings from Battle Flag and Sarissa Precision.

So what's on your plate?