This post marks the end of my first, successful, army project! Not too unexpected, since it was a small and easy little project. Still, it paves the way for future projects! I look forward to doing more... Not sure what the next one will be though... In any case, I have finished the Mongol Project article, updated the Mongol Conquest gallery, and put together my standard army showcase article... Really, it's a lot of redundancy, but that's how it goes ;) Actually, I short change myself; the project article has all original pictures, none of which are in the army gallery or the showcase article... However, the showcase and the gallery have redundancy... Oh well! Here are the links:

• Mongol DBA Army Project - complete!
• Mongol Conquest Army Showcase
• 15mm Mongol Gallery

There it is, done! It's nice to complete a project, and it's great that it's more than a month early! This gives me the chance to finish off a third(!?!) army for the upcoming convention!

Next up... not sure really. I have some reenactment action to prepare for in a week that will likely take up all my free time and more, so I am not sure if I will even have a painting update next week... I will have some articles though. I have a few things brewing on that front. I might paint some figures though, finish that HotT-Hammer elf army or some 15mm figs...

It took me a bit longer than I'd hoped to get this out this week, but it's been a busy week. I had planned to have this done earlier in the week to let everyone else chronicling their projects have some more inspiration (or opportunity to scoff at my slow progress!). It's here now though, check out the narrative for week two of the Mongol Project here.

Week three is well under way, and it's turning out to be more work than I had hoped :) As I sat down to do the first highlight I realized it was going to be trouble... It took me back to last year at this time when I was working on my Islamic Persian DBA project... So many barded horses... The Mongols have the same armour as the Persians did, thankfully there are only three elements (nine figures) for the Mongol army, instead of eight elements (24 figures) for the Persians. Still, I should be able to finish by Monday... I also have to write up some other articles. The most important one is an event report that I will put together for the tournament that I am running in October. It will involve maps and other work-intensive stuff, so don't expect that too soon... In any case, until next time.

Given that I have been documenting the Mongol DBA project that I am currently working on, I thought I should make the effort to document the construction of the camp that I built for the army. The camp was displayed in my previous update, and here's the how-to article on the ins and outs, and ups and downs of actually building one for yourself! Check out the Building a 15mm Mongol ger article here, or simply go to the articles section of the site and click on the 15mm Mongol Ger article link.

After last week I didn't have it in me to paint too many miniatures. It was on to some terrain instead. After listening to Conn Iggulden's first Mongol empire book I was ready to build a camp's worth of gers; Ger being the Mongolian word for the round tents with conical roofs. They tend to be called yurts, but yurt is the Turkic term for the structure, and wholly inappropriate to use in the Mongolian context ;) Check out the Mongol gers in the DBA Terrain gallery.

I also managed to paint a few figs as well, finishing off the nine light horse elements by painting the last three I needed. Now I only need to finish the three heavy cavalry elements and the army is complete! Check out the latest three light horse elements in the Mongol army gallery. Three weeks for a start-to-finish army is still pretty good for me, but I am a little behind again, since the three light horse plus the camps took me a bit longer to finish... and I thought I was taking it easy this past week ;) Next up I will be updating the Mongol Project article and also I will likely publish a how-to article on the construction of a Mongol ger for those interested. Stay tuned!

I saw a couple of 'challenges' recently. People would start an army challenge, stating that they would paint a nice army over a certain period of time, hoping to get watchers to start armies and follow along with them. They typically came in video format outlining their progress as they put the army together. Unfortunately I found that more often than not they would die in their infancy, leaving me feeling empty and depressed... Okay, well not that depressed ;) So, naturally I figured I would try it out, but with articles instead of videos... I'm far too shy for videos... I figured it might be fun for me to look back at certain projects and have a closer looks into how they went together... closer that is than the usual images of miniatures that I post of every project. Also it might be interesting to others to follow along as well. Of course I realize that starting something like project articles might very well show me following the footsteps of the others, and I'd fail to finish the project at all... but it's a risk I must take! So, check out the first article in the set of project articles that I hope to do: The Mongol Conquest DBA project. I will store these in the articles section going forward, so see it there as well.

Admittedly it's an easy one for sure. A relatively small DBA project, and since DBA armies are relatively small in the first place it's especially small. But hey, start small and then grow. Also perhaps this will inspire some people to start DBA projects for themselves! Who knows, it's a great game for people with low attention spans like myself! I will update the article as the project progresses, and I'll drop update notices here!

I also added a recent image to the Desk Shots gallery so check that out if you're interested in that kind of thing... Until next tine...

In a flurry of activity, I finished the first six elements of my DBA Mongol Conquest army for the up coming Fallcon convention. Why is it that I always insist on painting new armies for conventions? Why not use one of the ones I already have finished? Not sure, but likely it has something to do with that short attention span that all gamers suffer from... In any case, I have been gearing up for this Mongol project for a while, researching and whatnot. I grabbed an audio book titled 'Genghis: Birth of an Empire' to listen to and finally got around to watching the Mongol movie. From all of this, check out my first installment of Mongol riders in my 15mm Mongol gallery. The army is six out of twelve elements on its way to being finished!

As for Temugin's story (the birth name of the infamous khan), particularly the Mongol movie, it almost sapped my will for the project. All I saw was a guy who basically went crazy after having such and adverse life, who then went on to spread that adversity all over the world. There is a lot of reverance for crazy empire builders, but I am not sure why... In any case, I remembered that I was a mini gamer and all about the role-playing of evil empire builders, and so managed to finish the first six elements. I did bite off a bit more than I could handle with twelve figures; I try to split my projects into week-long chunks, and this one was a bit large for that. As such, I will likely do only three more elements of light horse for the next batch, and then finally finish with the armoured Mongolian nobility in a couple of weeks.

On the topic of the project planning, I am still planning to do a project report on this army; I just have to put together the article, as all the pictures are ready to go, so stay tuned for that later. Also, I might take a break from painting and do some camps as a break. So, expect more Mongols or some DBA camps in the next little while!