My Hordes Trollblood models arrived Thursday and I played my first "painted" game with them yesterday. It was a lot of fun having painted models; I must say they look great on the table. When they arrived almost everything looked great, except for the fire on my pyre troll and my kriel warrior standard bearer. The fire on both of them looked retarded, and that's after I asked them to change the fire from the original that you can see in the links.
It sort of boggles my mind how everything else in the force can look so great yet the fire looks like they got jiggy with the finger paints. So I got some paints out and did my best to fix the fire problem. Now I'm certainly not the best painter in the world but I think what I have done with the fire is far superior to what they did. However, overall I'm very happy with the finished product and it's going to be a lot of fun playing with them over the summer.

As far as yesterdays game went, I lost, but thats not uncommon for me. I seem to overextend myself frequently and put key pieces to my army in compromising positions. I was playing with Chief Madrak Ironhide one of the most durable trollblood warlocks and still managed to put him in a such a horrible position that I think it would have been difficult for my opponent to not win. For some reason I do not see the options on the table and do not pick my order of operations well when playing with a new force. I have helped others play new forces quite well but it's as though my powers of observation are ten fold better when I'm not actually involved in the game. I guess thats why I play the game, to learn and get better.

Speaking of Warmachine and Hordes, we are starting the final chapter to our campaign tomorrow and I'm very excited to get a chance to play my forces against a wide array of players here locally. The campaign has had an overarching story that has developed in the last couple of five week chapters. I wrote all of it myself and while I think generally the plot is fairly poor, as stories go, it has still been a lot of fun. Currently I only have five people committed to playing in the spring campaign but I know a lot of them are procrastinating to the last minute before giving me the lists they will be playing in our campaign (for the campaigns we are using static lists that can't be changed for the duration of the campaign). The fall and winter versions of this campaign had six and twelve players respectively and I believe we will have a similar number to the winter campaign this time around. It should be a lot of fun and you can look forward to hearing more stories of me overextending my force and getting crushed beneath the heals of my opponents'.

So about two months ago I decided I really wanted to have my Hordes Trollblood army painted. I have artistic talent, but my desire to go cross-eyed attempting to paint miniature models is not very high. I love having painted models as opposed to bare metal miniatures it just looks and feels so much better. I truly believe that having painted models on the table brings a certain intimidation factor against an opponent without painted models. I also think having painted models helps improve the players confidence while using them.

With this desire in mind I began looking for various artists or studios that might be willing to paint my models. I had a few of people show interest and a lot more flat out scoff at my request. I wanted the trolls painted orange and I had a significant number of models I wanted done. I didn't have that many to start with but I figured if I was going to get them painted I might as well get enough painted that I wont need any additional models for a while. So I picked up probably another 20-30 models to round out my force. The combination of orange (a difficult color to paint miniatures with) and the shear number of large models involved (hey they are trolls! what can I say) were the main reasons most people didn't want to touch the commission.

In the end I decided to go with Blue Table Painting. I have used Blue Table in the past with mixed results. I had a Necromunda gang painted through them that didn't exactly turn out how I wanted, but it was certainly reasonable. Blue Table gave me a reasonable price and a turn around time that frankly I don't think anyone else in the world could have matched. I don't have the models back yet but they have been completed and if they weren't shipped out yesterday they will probably be shipped out Monday. Thats less then a three week turnaround on sixty-six models! I was honestly quite amazed at how quickly my project was finished.

The models can be viewed on Blue Table's web site. From what I can see in the pictures I really like what they have done; however, pictures can be deceiving, especially when you're dealing with small models. So I will withhold final judgment until the models arrive and I can personally inspect them. But I am really excited to get these back.