There’s a great video by Uncle Atom where he talks about a wooden plaque, if I recall right, that he found while cleaning out a relative’s basement ages ago that read “the price of perfection is prohibitive.” If I can find the video, I’ll toss a link to it below. I think it’s definitely applicable to painting, where sometimes just getting a model done is all that you really need to do, and sometimes with a project you can over-paint it to the point where you lose sight of the forest through the trees. I think it can also apply to collecting, and storage, which have both become bigger concerns in my hobby over the course of the last couple years. One of the benefits of having a shame pile, I’ve discovered, is that it stays relatively compressed, and once you start to get all of those things painted they need somewhere to go. And as for collecting, especially with the cost of living rising and every enjoyable hobby subject to severe scalping and grifting, is it possible to be a completionist anymore?

Recently, we took a meandering little adventure into a swamp, where we met a couple of neat elves, a cantankerous ogre, some fairy tale creatures, and a strangely familiar-looking daemon who was just there to make a mess out of all of it. It was my second big push into my “Demonweb” refresh series; Demonweb was a miniature set that came out in 2008 and it has a special place in my heart. I was never quite able to collect the full set of the pre-painted miniatures when they were in circulation, and I thought it might be fun to either fill in some gaps or refresh some of the older-looking models now that I had taken up miniature painting myself, using the Nolzur’s line as a modern starting place for the sculpts. It’s been a fun ride but I think from a storage point of view I’ve reached the limit I can commit to this series right now, unless someday I’m able to clear out a little more room and the right miniatures happen to fall into my lap.

As such, I thought it would be nice to finish off this classic Drow-based Demonweb set with some actual Drow – some web for the Demonweb, as it were. Drow Assassin was also one of the miniatures I had been missing from the set for a long time and one happened to come my way recently, and I thought it would be the right piece to book-end the series with. I picked up a Phase Spider from a FLGS and ordered a couple of Drow NAMES when I found them online while resupplying on some paints I couldn’t get locally, and thought I was all set to go. Then, as it should happen, @kinpatsusamurai happened to have a misprint of a cross-bow wielder that he gave me while I was visiting for a Majestic 13 game, and I felt the need to include them. He gets impressive results out of FDM/PLA, but it’s not uncommon for pieces to break off because they’re intended for resin printers.

I painted them with some of my usual Vallejo and Citadel paints, with the Green Gray variety and Sky Grey putting in work on skin tones, Air Blue putting in work as a glaze over the blue, and with Naggaroth Night, Xereus Purple, and Genestealer Purple all putting in modest work on the purple bits. I was a little lazy on the metallics, namely throwing on just Leadbelcher, Runefang Steel, and Retributor Gold alternated with washes, but…again, “the price of perfection is prohibitive.” It’s a cost these days that I don’t feel like I want to keep paying, especially when practice beats perfectionism every time. Very happy with how these turned out and I think they’re a good note to end, or at least pause this series on for now. It’s been a fun little side quest, and thank you all for coming along for the ride! Also, here’s that Uncle Atom video I referenced above.