6.13.2013

Cooling on Tyranids

I haven't done much in the last week that relates to 40K. I did prime my Hive Tyrant's main body assembly and give him a basecoat of green, but I stalled after that. I need to apply the shading wash before I can move on, and I just have no real motivation to do so.

I've simply cooled on Tyranids, and I'm mad at myself. I got all gung-ho about building the army, and painting the models to a high standard. The key thing I forgot is that painting to a high standard is not compatible with producing an "army."

I bought my Hive Tyrant kit and was very excited. I took my time assembling and painting (still not done, obviously), but I also sat down with the Nid codex and started building army lists. Every time I did so, I crumpled up the paper and thought "Why bother? The damned Tyrant won't be done for months anyways." I'd get a small jolt of motivation to finish from that act, but it would peter out soon enough.

To make matters worse, I started shopping. As a way to finance my Tyranid project, I started liquidating Space Marine models and all my peripheral books and items. I had all this money sitting in my Paypal and FLGS store credit accounts, and nothing to do with it. So I started buying models. Now I'm sitting on a small mountain of Hormagaunts, Warriors, and Genestealers. All bought at a good price, all sitting around doing nothing. I simply traded my overlarge pile of Marine kits and sprues for Tyranid kits and sprues. Dammit!

The Genestealers won't resell for hardly anything, as they're the least popular Troops model out there. The Hormagaunts might recover some of my money, as folks seem enamored with them lately as an alternative to the ultra-competitive build of Tervigons and Gaunts. Warriors are also en vogue, though the allure is limited. I'm going to take a loss on this stuff if I try to sell it. I just have to decide if I want to sell it. The whole point of the Marine sell off was to reduce my collection, and keeping this stuff around goes counter to that.

Oddly, I've been slightly more interested in my Marines the last few weeks. The narrowing of my focus into fast-mover units seems to have helped. I'm looking forward to buying and painting a Storm Raven to support my Marines, but haven't done so yet. I'm thinking of taking a shot at a small unit of 5 Vanguard Vets, because I'm enjoying painting white. I event thought about building a Shrike model (or using the super limited lightning claw Cato Sicarius model I have, or painting up a squad of Doom Eagles Assault Marines (We are the Doom Eagles, and we are dead already!).

So, I'm not really sure what I'll be doing with Tyranids. The temptation is there to just get rid of it all, knowing that I won't have a fieldable army for at least a year or more. By then, they'll have a new codex, but so will Marines. it all seems so very pointless and hopeless.

I probably should have just painted my Space Hulk set as a way to sate my Tyranid interests, and not gotten in over my head. Oops.



3 comments:

  1. Interest it an army is directly proportional to hobby progress, at least to those of us who love the hobby. My funk the past few months was that way. No hobby progress because of work involved in getting Fratris going meant my interest in my army was minimal at best. That's now turning around but I've always found a stall in hobby progress to be a stall in gaming and/or interest in gaming.

    Your approached the Nids all wrong if my opinion. You started with an HQ, a model you want to get perfect and have stand out amongst the sea of bugs. The problem being you're using that model as a test as well. It's frustrating to start on a model that needs to have a high standard when you don't have a paint scheme, or even technique, finalized. That's why when I start armies I begin on the grunts and use them to fine tune the process. It's not a big deal if the grunts aren't perfect and I even paint them to a lower standard because of how many I need. Once I've churned out a few units of grunts then I move on to the bigger stuff, now that the technique is refined.

    My suggestion is set aside the big guy and grab some Gaunts. Work out the painting method there and get comfortable with it. Not only will it let you tackle the big stuff easier, it will also let you see progress and help motivation.

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    Replies
    1. I think those are some accurate assessments.
      My renewed interest in my marines is likely directly related to their solid performance at Fratris. I actually accomplished something with them, so it makes me want to do more with them.

      I can see how starting with grunt troopers would have been the smart idea. Unfortunately, I approached it purely from a painting competition angle, and wanted my flashiest model done first, so I could enter him in a competition. A bunch of tester-level Gaunts wouldn't have been suitable for that, but definitely would have made a better starting point.

      I think I'm going to go ahead and put all of the Nid stuff in a box, and bury it in the closet. Everything except the five Genestealers I built, one Hormagaunt, and the Tyrant. That will put all the rest of it out of mind, and allow me to make visible progress on the smaller stuff. The compulsion to finish the Tyrant is still there though. The body feels like the easiest part now that I have all my recipes and orders written down in my paint book.

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    2. That sounds like the right idea. Then, if your interest doesn't magically appear again, you can always sell them when the codex is released and they're the "new hotness." They should fetch a better price at that time.

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