Hi, my name is Tim T., and I'm an Airbrush Newb.
After years of seeing even what an airbrush can do for the hobbyist in blogs like Dark Future Games, and talking to award-winning painters who compete in Golden Demon and Crystal Brush, I took the plunge and emptied my wallet on an entire set-up.
…but what do I do now?
Now we've talked about placing a value on your services as a commission modeler and painter in the hobby. How to price yourself, and the level of commitment it takes to actually be successful with your commissions.
At the same time, I don't think any of us have an issue with placing a monetary value on a box of bits, individual bits, or even just a half-finished model. Heck, there are entire bits trading nights at some hobby stores and national events like Adepticon.
But how do you place a value on a finished, personal army?
Back in 4th Edition, we had the glory of the Chapter Traits system. So long as you balanced everything out, you could create a custom Marine Chapter that fit your taste, be it for story or competition. In 5th Edition, we had that carpet pulled out from under us, but it was replaced by the new musical chairs, HQ edition. Didn't feel like playing your Imperial Fists AS Imperial Fists? That's okay! Just use Calgar, paint him yellow, and give them a different rules set!
So far, the bonus in either of the past two editions, is that you could have your collection, model whatever you wanted according to the rules, and still use it. Who cares what color of the rainbow the figures were, so long as they were WYSIWYG, and your list was correct.
With the new 6th Edition Codex, however, and it's Chapter-specific rules, rather than character-specific ones, is this the end of the grand age of Counts-As?
Now that the new horse is out of the gate, so-to-speak, how's he faring? Are the new marine rules playing to everyone's expectations? Better? Worse? I know that those of us getting the "Enhanced" iBooks version of the codex were let down quite a bit with the absence of the Force Requisition portion of the book. I'm sure that an update will rectify that, but still.
For those of us hobbyists, however, who do so enjoy the building, converting, and ransacking of kits for a single, solitary bit, just how do the new releases fare when in comparison to the bar set so high by the new Tau and Eldar kits?
Games Workshop opened the floodgates this weekend, with the new Space Marine preorders. So much so, in fact, that their own site was crashing at the onset. Needless to say, I believe this will be a successful release, and I happen to be excited about many of the new and redone kits, while on the fence over one.
However, I'm guessing that from the title of the article, if you're here, you're wanting to see my compilation of all the high-res imagery I pulled from the digital White Dwarf. I was able to pull quite a bit, and even spliced together some of the two-part images as best as possible.
Take a look after the jump, and let the comments fly!!
Now, I'm the first person who will admit that a firm deadline is a wonderful motivator. In fact, I've used many deadlines in the past to get projects not only off the ground, but finished on time and ready for a tournament. I'm happy with what I've turned out because of said deadlines, and will continue to set deadlines for myself in the future.
Unfortunately, many times in the past I've come to dread those deadlines. Seeing my hobby as more of a harsh commitment than something that I'm supposed to enjoy. Is there a line we can draw? How do we know where to draw that line?
How do we keep our hobby from turning into a second job?
