My Life In Miniatures

Au'taal Command Wants You!

It’s been over 5 months since my last post. In that time my day job went from insane to LUDICROUS SPEED as I took on the role of subject matter expert for all, and by ‘all’ I do mean ALL, things eCommerce. In that time, my Tau have as yet to arrive.

Let me say that again, my Tau as still overseas. Despite the promising initial work, the corrections and then further corrections, they are still languishing. In all fairness, most are done, but there were several outstanding purchases, (2 XV8, Devilfish, 6 Kroot Hounds). The hounds are being given up, crediting back to the order I hope. The suits and fish are in hand and getting worked on. The sum total of the work should be shipping back soon. The latest purchases and the Crisis Suits already being worked on are the final task. Unfortunately, the team totally built them wrong in the first place. Nothing at all like requested in the army list. We’ve run back through several corrections and they still aren’t right. I fear they won’t be right until i get them home as both I and the team are frustrated. I hate to be petty, but I paid for a job, I explicitly described the job and the job wasn’t done to my satisfaction. *sigh*

As I said previously, despite the issues Navin has generally been a pleasure to work with. With almost 1100 albums to their credit, Painted Figs certainly can pump out the paint. Unfortunately, it appears I am too demanding and we’re both just trying to wrap this up and get on with the next tasks. For those who aren’t aware, Navin had some real struggles this year thanks to a douche bag whom he thought was a helpful colleague. You can hear all about it in this podcast with Raef. So, here we are almost on the anniversary date of the project and I still have no figs, (hopefully soon), I still have corrections which aren’t likely to get handled and ultimately the project didn’t end up in my hands as desired.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have attempted this. Hindsight. I look through the albums and I see work for what I hope are satisfied customers. Maybe I’ll be somewhat satisfied once I have them in hand and make my own final corrections. I certainly hope so, given how much I’ve spent to get to this point.

*sigh*

Paint my Au'taal Sept, Earl Scheib!

Ok, so I have actually commissioned work before, but that was a birthday gift and the talent was truly top shelf, (see here!)

I’ve been eyeballing the crew at PaintedFigs for a very long time, years now. As I have grown older and ended up with less time to do ALL the things I enjoy in my free time, I have pondered what it would be like, or cost, to have someone else put paint to the projects I want done. Like most older hobbyists, I have a closet full of models for a score of projects across half a dozen game systems. What can I say? Plastic & pewter is like crack for me. Anyway, a couple of years ago I began to hear good things about this service. Over holiday 2010 they advertised an opportunity to get discounted figs and painting for a club fee. At this point I jumped in and I will see how it fares over the course of 2011.

The best example I have, outside of my own, is a forum member’s description of their process on BarterTown. For myself, I can tell you that I have been planning, plotting, scratching, calculating, collating and generally being a right evil pain to Navin, proprietor of PaintedFigs. In the last 2 months I have organized 4 full fledged painting projects, 2 of which I was hounding him about regularly. During the course of this, I ultimately decided to allow project number 1 to be my Tau.

When Apocalypse launched in Oct 2007 a number of box sets became available which drastically undercut the cost ot the individual models packaged inside. You’ve already see the two Necron Monoliths I have built which were part of an Apoc box. I also picked up the Tau Armoured Interdiction Squadron, (2 Hammerheads, 1 Skyray), a short while later. Combined with a host of eBay purchases, I pieced together about 3500pts worth of Tau at 20% off retail or better. I’ve never really had a thing for the Tau. They don’t look 40K. If I want to shoot like hell I’ll play IG. If I want to assault I’ll play anything but IG or Tau. If I want to play Xenos I’ll play Orks or Eldar, (and soon Necrons!!!) But those are topics for my 40K blog, (which I’m still working on launching). Still, I honestly want to own and play each and every race in 40K. Dark Eldar are soon to be the only race I don’t own.

But what does this have to do with anything? Well, I knew I would never get around to actually assembling my Tau, let alone paint them. To that end, I have decided to box up 14lbs worth of minis and send them half way around the globe to let someone else do them for me. I’ve chosen Au’taal as my Sept as the color scheme should work very well for a majority dipped technique. Additionally, they are described as being, “known for their easy going attitude to their duty to the empire, and other Tau often regard them as lazy.” Damn if that don’t just fit me to a T! Of course, there’s a catch. I promised not to engage in another large project until I had finished one of my own. Enter said Necrons.

If you want to know more about the colors, products or army list this project is based on, well, I just gave you the links didn’t I? I’ll post more about the project as we get into the real work portion.