Random Non-Gear Pictures

After thinking about it long an hard, I've decided not to participate in this year's army painting competition at DP9.com. There are many reasons for this, not least being the fact that between my job, my work to relocate to Canada and my two-months-old son (see post below), I just don't have much time for painting, and I don't want to be the guy who just enters an Iguana in an army painting competition: that's just not right.

But I also have two other reasons.

First is the decision on the part of DP9 to disqualify Gears and combat groups previously entered in an earlier DP9 painting contest, which leads me to believe that I'd be disqualifying my whole army from future competitions, which I don't want to do right now. Granted, I have lots of other Gears to paint, but nothing like my current MilICIA army.

Second, and this is largely me being an asshole, but I just don't feel like the target audience for this. To quote on of the pod guys one the Dream Pod 9 forum (and this is nothing against them, just part of their pragmatic strategy to promote the game), "it's to encourage people to show up at the American Championships at GenCon with painted armies." That's all well and good, and I get it, but then I look at the people who placed in the three top spots last year:

1st Place: Jakes Staines (Sar), UK
2nd Place: Patrick St-Amand (Commando Zero), Taiwan
3rd Place: Henri Härkönen (SickBunny), Finland

Shameless self-promotion aside (yes, I got second place, but there really weren't that many entries last year and I did submit three different squads. Let me say it now: I am a mediocre painter. CMON says so.), I don't think any of us are going to attend GenCon, for obvious geographical reasons. And then there are the nice guys at Heavy Gear-France (see link in the sidebar) who do an awesome job of promoting the game on their side of the pond. My frustration (if I can call it that; it's really just an itch, actually) comes from my impression that the current Pod Squad-centric promotion drive for Blitz! leaves us old timers in the lurch in a way. I'm sure things will be different next year, but for now, that seems to be the strategy and us overseas fans have to wait it out and hope for different terms next year.

That being said, I don't paint Heavy Gear miniatures to participate in painting competitions; I paint them because I love the minis and the overall imagery of the game. And here are a few more pictures, this time featuring infantry and tanks.