Real Life Obstructing Hobby; miscellany and Carnosaur WIP

So in case you hadn't figured it out already, I rather failed at my goal of painting all my Freebooter's Fate in a week. Not entirely my own fault, at the start of the week I thought I'd have abundant time to paint, unfortunately, after a very quiet month of work, things got super busy unexpectedly late last week, and that continued this week, leaving me almost no hobby time (I drove over 1000kms for work this week, phew).

I'll get back to the FF, like I always do with my crazy collection of projects, but right now I've been distracted by a parcel of goodies from the very awesome Dan at Tabletop Empires. Some Dreadball MVPs who will soon join the Mass Effect project, the new GW Carnosaur I mentioned ordering a few posts ago, and my copy of the rulebook for the steampunk Victorian skirmish game, In Her Majesty's Name. 

I've known about this game for a while, but it never appealed to me, simply because the warbands they had on offer, while not bad, didn't really inspire me. Not enough 'steampunk', too much 'Victorian'. Fellow blogger Counter Fett, however, made me reconsider the game after reading his blog posts about it, and so when Tabletop Empires offered a weekend discount on the game the same time I made my order, I added a copy just to see what they were like.
Having now read the rules, I can say that I'm a big fan, they look both streamlined and enjoyable, offering the simplicity I crave (because trying to remember a dozen different rulesets is hard), while still having plenty of tactics and gameplay options. Best of all, the game includes a points system allowing you create your own warbands entirely from scratch. I'm already thinking of the possibilities, now I just need to find the right steampunk models. I'm sure I'll be posting more about this game in the future.

Anyway, in what little hobby time I've had this week, I got the carnosaur assembled. It's a rather lovely kit, nicely detailed and it assembles easily, without too many gaps. I'm planning to create a large display base for it, but for now I've started work on the oldblood riding it. I'm ambivalent about the results so far... Not unhappy, just not impressed. I'm trying to push myself to paint better, but I can't seem to not paint quickly, so the result still looks sloppy and rough. I'd appreciate feedback on what you think of the model, colour choices mostly.

But anyway, here's the WIP pics:

Cheers,

~ Alex/Magos