Team Fortress 2 Project (1) - Test Figure

 I've been long obsessed with the team based online shooter, Team Fortress 2. I've pumped  a little over 300 hours into the game according to steam which for me is a lot. I haven't played in a while now but this is a project I've had on the back of my mind for a while. 

Originally I was planning on writing a set of rules specifically to do skirmish gaming with the franchise but I have some different ideas to adapt a ruleset now. For now I just want to paint all 18 figures (and a couple accessories) and have a collection. If a game happens, cool, but I'm not sweating that. 

When I first got an idea to do this I found some files on Thingiverse and squirelled them away. Unfortunately as best laid plans go, this was going to throw up a bit of a roadblock. The files I found are super low res. Years ago, before I knew about printing and long before having a resin printer, I printed the scout in fdm and thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I had no clue the low res was part of the sculpt. I'm guessing these are ripped right from the game but I'm not sure. 

Heres a WIP photo with a bit of paint on it. I was gonna post a primed example but I forgot to get a photo and dove right into the painting.

 

I'm completely fine with a block paint and leaving it at that. First of all, these are just to have. There's no planned game or anything yet so I mostly just want "the complete set" with paint on it. Second of all, I think this style of no contrast painting works fine on these figures and the aesthetic of the game. I've got a few of the other classes already printed. I've been getting lucky with auto supports so far. I did have a couple pieces come off and break while removing supports but to be honest, theres no way stuff like the engineers lasso bit was going to last once the print was cured. More soon.

New Year, New Hobbies

 I feel like every year I start the year off with some sort of vague attempt to quantify the hobby or set goals or expectations and this year is no different.

I had a very interesting 2022. I got married, truly dived into a new career and generally I've changed a bit how I've felt about the hobby. I've waxed lyrical about how I feel about hobby content creation over the years on various platforms and I'll save that for a different post but for now I simply just want to lay out some plans for the year and attempt to make a bit better use of this platform going forward.

On New Years Eve, while watching The Banshees of Inisherin (absolutely wonderful by the way) I took a few minutes to write down a few "concrete goals" This year I just wanted to pick a bunch of stuff to get acomplished across the hobby as opposed to a static number of figures. A fair few of these are simply revolved around playing more games. Any time a goal says "play" I fully intend to have all of my figures involved in said game fully painted. Without further ado;

 

End the year with a sub 200 Golf Score

Begin the Lord of the Rings Ringbearer Campaign

Play Spectre Ops

Print and Paint two sets of Team Fortress 2 Figures

Play To The Strongest with painted 10mm figures

Finally Try Age of Hannibal

Play a game of A Song of Ice and Fire with a painted Baratheon Force

Finish 2k points of Old Dominion for Conquest and play a game

Completely Paint 2 complete factions for Crisis Protocol

Finally Try Moonstone

Finally Try Mad Maximilian

Play at least one game of Necromunda

Try Necropolis28

Try Mordheim

Play a Game of War of the Ring

Play a game of Horus Heresy

Finish at least one Cabinet piece (resin probably)

Play both Sludge and Turnip

Try the new edition of Kill Team

Play Never Mind the Billhooks

Attend one tourney or play event

Finish my Death ray Designs City Board

I intentionally picked mostly projects that were at least partially started in an attempt to finish some of these desk hogs while still allowing me some wiggle room to experiment with whatever new nonsense catches my eye. Ideally I want to finish the year out with a negative golf score but after looking over my numbers for last year (which come to grave with me) sub 200 is a real milestone. 

I've already made a great stride into one of these goals and am starting in on a second already so I feel surprisingly confident already. Theres approximately 22 line items here so to keep on pace i'd like to accomplish at least 2 of these a month.