86 - Shock Trooper for Third Squad/ 1st Platoon of the Cadian 265th Regiment

Cadian Shock Troopers are almost as easy and quick to paint as skeletons! Whoohoo! Now I have 2 fall-back miniature types I can use when I find myself pressed for time.

Again, in my haste, I realized only after the fact that I forgot to paint in his eyes. A few of these miniatures I've painted up in the past 2 weeks have been missing painted bits here and there. I'm really going to have to establish a pace whereby I don't feel too under the clock where my miniatures end up looking like half-painted blobs of paint but also where I don't torture myself over minute details to the point where I refuse to put a miniature down and say it's done.

So, this Cadian Shock Trooper begins my 3rd Squad (the 1st Squad being my Veterans - "The 50/50s" - and the 2nd Squad being a standard rank and file squad with an attached mortar team) for my planned Imperial Guard platoon. He was pre-primed months ago so all I had to do was slap the Cadian color scheme on him and then give him a liberal ink wash with Badab Black, Devlan Mud and Ogryn Flesh followed by highlights of Hunter Green, Fawn, and Dolphin Gray. Well, actually, I replaced the Badab Black ink wash with a Liquitex Carbon Black ink because I was almost out of the GW wash. The Liquitex Carbon Black actually worked quite well...after I mixed it with about 10-15 drops of Liquitex Flow Aid. Without the Flow Aid, the Liquitex ink was not watery enough to slip into the cracks and crevices of the miniature. Instead, it kind of just acted like watered down acrylic paint and clung to the surface. After massively diluting it with Flow Aid, it then began to perform almost as well as GW's Badab Black. It seems like the key to GW's inks, then, is how ultra-watered down they are. I've also picked up 2 or 3 other bottles of Liquitex's inks as supplements to my GW inks mostly because they're much cheaper. I'll still primarily use GW's inks though because, honestly, they're awesome.

Okay, I'm still 2 miniatures behind. I probably won't have time to do another model tonight (the wife and I have to attend a friend's birthday soiree), but I'll try my darndest to get 2 done tomorrow. On the docket: a Necron Warrior (easy-peasy, I'm expecting) and maybe my Gunnery Sergeant Harker conversion if I'm feeling particularly ambitious. If not, then another Cadian Shock Trooper or possibly a Blood Ravens Multi-Melta Operator for Tactical Squad Fortis.

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85 - Blood Ravens Tactical Squad Fortis Meltagunner

Day 13, miniature 11; still 2 miniatures behind. Hmm, I sense more skeletons in the very near future. No, just kidding.

Say hello to the meltagunner of Tactical Squad Fortis of the Blood Ravens...er...huh, apparently, I haven't considered which company my Blood Ravens are a part of. I'll have to do some research into this. I know they can't be the 1st Company as that's usually the all Terminator veteran company in a standard Astartes force organization chart. They can't be the 2nd Company because they already have a published history (Dawn of War 2). They can't be the 5th Company because according to Blood Ravens fluff, that's the "Fated Fifth," a company that returned from the warp somehow...tainted. They can't be the 10th Company because that's the all Scout company. So that leaves 3rd, 4th, and Sixth to Ninth Companies. Anyone know if according to the Codex Astartes, those remaining companies have any prescribed specialities? In other words, are any of them primarily mechanized companies or jump assault companies or drop pod companies, etc.?

Well, there's really nothing all that special with this particular model. He's the 14th Blood Raven I've painted up, so it's getting rather mechanical painting these guys. At some point I'm going to either buy some blank water transfer paper or learn how to free-hand the Blood Ravens chapter logo onto their shoulder pads though.

Okay, so what's next? I've got a converted Gunnery Sergeant Harker I'd really like to paint but considering that I'm already 2 miniatures behind, I'm probably better off focusing on painting up more rank and file troops. I've still got about 30 more Cadian Shock Troopers to do so I just might go that route and try to pull back to even in my miniature count. But I've also got some converted Ork Kommandos that have calling to me from their place on the shelf. Hmm, well, we'll see.

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84 - Vampire Counts Crypt Ghast (Originally the Reaper Ghast and Crypt Miniature)

Woot! This guy was as easy to paint as I suspected. I needed that for sure. With him out of the way, I'm now 2 miniatures behind my schedule. I currently have a Blood Raven meltagunner basecoated Opaque Red sitting at my painting station. Hopefully, the motivation for painting I feel at the moment will help me finish him before bed.

Now about the Ghast - he's actually not from the Games Workshop Crypt Ghoul plastic kit. He's a Reaper Miniature I purchased almost a year ago, back when I first started this hobby. The first dozen or so models I bought were mostly Reaper minis; the detail, diversity, and, most importantly, cost of their line of miniatures really appealed to me. Before discovering cheap miniatures on eBay, the idea of paying MSRP (or even at a 20% discount) for GW minis made me recoil in horror. So I figured I'd ease my way into the hobby by painting some cheaper, moe affordable miniatures that were equal in quality (in my opinion).

I've pretty much segued almost entirely into GW models right now. I'll occasionally buy a Reaper miniature as a stand-in for a Warhammer Fantasy special character/ lord/ hero type because, again, the prices GW charges for these independent characters is mind-boggling. Why pay $50 for a Lord of Change when I can get a close equivalent from Reaper for $15? (In fact, I managed to purchase that exact Reaper minature for about $5 on-line from a secondary retailer.) Granted, the actual Lord of Change is much more detailed and probably larger and taller, but the Reaper equivalent isn't that far off. Or an even better comparison: why spend $20 on a GW Mounted Vampire Lord when you can get a similar figure from Reaper for $12? Now, again, the GW model is much more finely detailed but in this particular case, the Reaper miniature is pretty damn cool too. In fact, you wouldn't know it from the description of the model, but it comes with two heads - the helmeted one you see in the picture and a non-helmeted one showing the Vampire in all his dark majesty.

Just in case you're wondering, I don't work for Reaper or for Miniature-Giant (the on-line retail store I've linked to in the previous paragraph). I'm just a very frugal collector who, as it is, spends way too much money on this hobby. Anytime I can trim costs from this very expensive past time, I will (e.g., buying decorative basing material from general craft stores rather than from dedicated hobby stores/ manufacturers, buying stand-in minis from Reaper or some other maker rather than from GW, using craft paints rather than specialty paints, etc.). At this point, all of those things have served me rather well in terms of producing decent table-top quality miniatures. About the only thing I might replace in the future is my use of craft paints. If I get to a level of painting where I think craft paints are holding me back, then I'll make the invesment in Vallejo or GW or Reaper paints. I'm obviously not there yet.

Finally, a little bit about the paint scheme for the Ghast. I pretty much followed GW's online article on how to Crypt Ghouls - I basecoated him with Dolphin Gray, then gave him a liberal ink wash with Leviathan Purple. After he dried, I went back over the upraised parts of his musculature with a drybrush of Dolphin Gray and also added in some watered down streaks of Opaque Red into some of the deep crevices of his skin to give the impression of infected, torn flesh. The tombstone, by the way, was from a Halloween decorative kit that Michael's was selling over the holidays. I think for a set of 4 or 5 tombstones, I paid about $5. The relief seemingly carved into the front of the tombstone is actually a plastic Empire shield scavenged from the Warhammer Fantasy Giant kit. Overall, it took me about 2 hours to complete the Ghast.

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83 - Converted Lord Commissar

Well, I'm slowly falling behind my goal of 7 miniatures per week. At the moment, I'm now off my pace by 3 models. Boy, this is going to be harder than I thought. As I wrote in the post which launched this project almost 2 weeks ago, I do almost all of my painting either late at night during a workday (after the wife has gone to bed) or on my two off-days. The last two days, though, work has totally sapped my energy, so I got very little painting done Tuesday and Wednesday. However, I did cobble enough time together to paint up this converted Lord Commissar.

The Lord Commissar is essentially a Cadian Command sprue torso affixed to Cadian Shock Trooper legs. His power fist is also from the Command sprue while his bolt pistol from a Space Marine Tactical sprue. He is sporting a Pig Iron head and the tattered cape fluttering from his shoulders is actually a loincloth from the Warhammer Fantasy Giant kit. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with him. He's not as grandiose looking as Games Workshop's Lord Commissar, but that's easily explained away. I'm just going to say that he's been out in the field for months, furiously barking at his men to dig in and hold the line against the xenos scum so reinforcements can drop down from the sky and save their worthless hides. In other words, he's had to abandon most of the shining accoutrements of his office in order to better do his job.

Painting-wise, he's okay, if a bit rough in some areas (my highlights are still too harsh). Turns out this Lord Commissar was easier to paint up than I thought, seeing as how his uniform is black, thus allowing me to basically use the Black Gesso primer as the undercoat and basecoat. I'll probably need to clean up the highlighting around his peaked cap as well as the blotchy paint around and about his bolt pistol, but he's for all intents and purposes finished. I'd like to possibly add a few more fiddly bits to him at a later date - maybe a sword scabbard, free-hand designs on his shoulder pads, and a pistol holster for starters - but that can wait for now.

Well, today is my day off, so if I plan on sticking with this project, I better get cracking on the painting. I've got a Vampire Counts Ghast primed and ready to go at my painting station. I figure he's going to be quite easy. As far as I can tell, VC Ghouls are basically a single primary color (for the skin) plus some contrasting colors here and there for the detail bits. Hopefully, I can get him painted up quickly and possibly move on to another miniature before the day is done. Best case scenario: I'm back to where I started to begin the week - one miniature behind.

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82 - Skaven Clanrat

Finally finished with the Skaven Clanrat. As I wrote in my previous post, the new plastic Clanrats are very nicely detailed, so much so that it took me completely by surprise at how much fine effort was required to properly paint it up. I've got a couple of the new Stormvermin plastic miniatures laying around as well, and they look incredibly complicated. Considering Stormvermin are also Core units, I salute the efforts of all of the Skaven players who have to paint up 20 or 40 of them for their armies.

Again, pretty pleased with how this little feller turned out, although looking at it now, I probably should've given him a Black nose to make it stand out better. I also completely forgot to ink wash his teeth! Isn't it strange that the miniature with the most prominent teeth is the one I forget to shade while Imperial Guardsmen who have barely visible teeth always get the ink wash treatment? All in all though, I'm seriously considering starting a Skaven army. Aside from 40k Orks, most of my miniatures are human in nature and it would be a nice change of pace to be able to paint up more monstrous creatures. Also, the Skaven fluff is just awesome. How can anyone resist an army of mutated, overgrown rats who's politics are dirtier than our own?

Okay, I'm still 1 model behind in my project. This Clanrat makes it 8 miniatures in 9 days. I probably won't be able to make a serious attempt at catching up until Thursday (my day off). Still, the last thing I want to do is fall behind even further, so I have a couple of options on my docket for tomorrow - a Blood Ravens meltagunner, a Vampire Counts Ghast, or a converted Imperial Guard Lord Commissar. If I find myself really pressed for time, then the Ghast will step up to the plate for obvious reasons. If I find myself for some odd reason with ample time and motivation, then I'll do either the meltagunner or the Lord Commissar.

Leia Mais…

81 - Tomb Kings Skellies

Day 8, miniature 7. Two skeletal spearmen for a Tomb Kings army (who will count as 1 miniature for the project). You all better get used to seeing skeletons on this blog because whenever I find myself falling behind on this 365 miniatures in 365 days project, I will resort to painting up skeletons. Not only are they extremely easy to paint but also extremely easy to make look decent with some ink washes and minor highlights. I got bogged down with the Clanrat so I broke the emergency glass and quickly painted up these two skellies. I thought the Clanrat would be easy but it turns out the new plastic miniatures GW have been putting out as of late are pretty finely detailed, even on the rank and file models. This is both a good and bad thing. Good in the sense that finely detailed models are always preferable to shapeless blobs of plastic; but bad in the sense that the notion of having to paint up 100 Clanrats and Skavenslaves is enough to make one run for the hills.

Do not fear, however, faithful blog followers! The 365 miniatures in 365 days projects is still on track! The Clanrat is almost finished; I only have one or two more basecoats to go and then an ink wash, some highlighting, a decorative base, and he'll be ready to go. That'll give me 8 miniatures in 8 days - bang on target. At some point, I'd like to start painting up more special characters rather than continue focusing on Troop/ Core choices, but for the moment, my painting acuity is still not quite at that speed.

Oh, by the way, I'm going to have to add a 7th rule to this project - I won't require myself to completely paint a miniature in a 24 hour period in order for it to count. In other words, I'll allow myself to start miniatures and then put them down to be finished another day. That way, I may actually get some more elaborate models done after a year. Still, the prime directive stays the same - after 365 days, I must have 365 painted miniatures.

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