Weekend Painting with Better Photos

I didn't do any more painting this weekend, but I figured I'd post a few better photos of how the marines are looking. The Assault Marine on the right has been hit with my white undercoat, but I haven't done the second coat yet. Which is why he looks a bit "creamier" than the others. The guy on the left has been half painted in Dark Angels Green as a test to see what the flat colour on black would look like. I'm interested to see what happens when I hit it with my standard green colour.

I when over the green undercoats with a wash of Dark Angels Green, and I liked how they came out. I still have to do some highlighting, add the backpacks and weapons (or, in the case of the guy in the middle of the back, his arm!).

The guy on the left was hit with a Badab Black wash which is why his white half looks so grubby. I was testing out ways to improve my painting time. Two of these guys were done by carefully painting the basecoat around the lines in the armour (leaving the black). On the other three I went much quicker but not as carefully. On two I went back over the lines with black and the last one I hit with the wash. Which didn't work like I was hoping.

I'm not sure which of the other two methods was better, but I think adding in the black lines later was faster. More tests required.

Golden Woops

I've had some of these paints for a few years now, and in the last few months I've started to notice some of the less used colours have started to dry out a little.

In the case of my gold, a plug of semi-dried paint had formed just inside the dropper. I thought I could just carefully squeeze it out, but no...

The worst is that the paint plug didn't actually come out - it just pushed open and then closed itself again.

Angels of Redemption: Tactical Marines

I spent a couple of hours this evening doing some details on the 5 tactical and 3 assault marines I've been working on. My camera's got a flat battery and I couldn't be bothered digging up the charger, so you're stuck with my phone.

I'm ready to attach the weapons (or arm, in the case of the guy in the back left) and the backpacks. Once that's done, I'll do a quick wash, some highlights and these guys will be ready for basing!

Cat's Away: Night 0

I spent about half an hour last night clipping a bunch of backpacks and torsos off the spure and cleaning off the mold lines. Wow space marine backpacks are annoying to clean up!

Anyway, I decided that the way I was managing the scores was really hard to understand. So here's a table. The work I did last night wasn't really worth any points, so everything it still the same as the last post.

Model	Prep	Con	Ass	Prim	Col	Det	Bas	Total
Tactical (AoBR)	10\10	0\0	10\10	10\10	0\30	10\30	0\30	40\120
Tactical	10\10	0\0	5\20	5\10	15\30	0\30	0\30	35\130
Combat	0\5	0\0	0\10	0\5	0\15	0\15	0\15	0\65
Assault	5\5	0\0	8\10	3\5	3\15	0\15	0\15	19\65
Scouts	5\5	0\0	3\10	3\5	1\15	0\15	0\15	12\65
Terminators	5\5	0\0	5\5	5\5	6\15	8\15	0\15	29\60
Captain	1\1	0\0	1\1	1\1	0\3	0\3	0\3	3\12
Librarian	1\1	0\3	0\1	1\1	1\3	1\3	0\3	4\15
Dreadnought	1\1	0\0	1\1	1\1	0\3	0\3	0\3	3\12
Rhino	1\1	0\0	2\2	1\1	2\3	2\3	0\0	8\13
Total	39\44	0\3	35\70	30\44	28\132	21\132	0\129	153\554

The Cats Away: Head Start

Okay, so like I mentioned before, I'm not starting from scratch with all of these. So how many point have I already earned?

All of the Assault on Black Reach stuff is already cut, assembled and primed. So that's 51pts. The model I'm going to use as my librarian has also been assembled, but I'm probably going to pull it all apart again. So I'll only claim 2pts for it. I've already painted all of the tactical marines as Ultramarins, so that doesn't help me, but it does mean that if I'm careful I won't have to redo a lot of the details. So let's take 1 point for each of them (so another 10pts). 2 of the terminators have also been painted blue, so I'll claim another point for each of them. Of the other 3 terminators, I've painted them all green, so I have to do the white half and maybe touch up a few details, so I'll claim 4 points for them. The librarian has had some painting but since I'm going back to do some conversion work, I'll only claim 2 painting points for it. So that's 79 points done from the AoBR models.

For the Battleforce models, I've got 5 tactical marines assembled and base coated (6 points each, since i haven't done weapons or backpacks yet). I've also cut and cleaned the parts for the other 5. I have 3 Assault Marines assembled and half of their base colours done (5 points each), I have another assembled (3pts) and the parts for the 5th ready to go (1pt). I also have 3 scouts primed (one with half the base colours done) and the parts for the other two ready. I put the Rhino together a while ago and painted it green. So I still have to do the white half and touch up some details (so 8pts). So that's 76 points of the Battleforce done.

Altogether, I've already done 155/554, which is a bit more than 25%. It leaves me with about 400 points to cover in 14 days, or about 30 points a day.

If I can cover 200 points then I'll be very happy. Anything less than 100 would be disappointing (unless it meant I was off doing something even more fun). Let's see how I go!

The Cat's Away Hobby Challenge

I'm going to have a reasonable amount of hobby time over the next couple of weeks while K's away in London. So I figure I may as well set myself some goals. Here is the list of stuff currently in my to do pile:

Space Marine Battleforce
10x Tactical Marines
5x Combat Marines
5x Assault Marines
5x Scouts
Rhino

Assault on Black Reach
10x Tactical Marines
6x Terminators (I picked up an extra one with a copy of White Dwarf which I want to convert into a Librarian)
1x Captain
1x Dreadnought

The aim is to get all this stuff assembled, painted and based. Which isn't going to happen in this time frame (even given the fact that some of it's already been started). But to see how well I go, I'm going to work out some point values for achieving different things.

1 - preparing the pieces
1-3 - any conversion work
2 - assembling the model (1pt for anything from AoBR)
1 - priming
3 - base colours
3 - details and highlights
3 - basing

So the list above breaks down like this:

Tactical Marines - 250
Combat Marines - 65
Assault Marines - 65
Scouts - 65
Rhino - 10
Terminators - 60
Librarian - 15
Captain - 12
Dreadnought - 12
Total - 554

Wow, I'd better get cracking!

News: Rackham Posts all AT-43 Rule Books

I just found out that Rackham Games has put online PDFs of all the rule books for AT-43. I've never really looked at AT-43 before, but now I certainly will!