Green, White, and Blue

The horde advances.

While I haven't had many painting sessions lately, and the ones I've had have been brief, I'm still making some good progress with the latest batch of Orks.  I just have blacks and metals left to do, plus red eyes and bases.  I'm happy with how the faces have turned out, but the other blue areas can look better.  What I'd like to do is add another layer between the basecoat and the highlight, but speed is a factor in this project.  It looks like EV will have his 500 points worth done in a week or two, so we'll probably give this thing an official start in May.  I have 15 Orks finished, save basing, plus these 10 and another 15-20 that are half painted as well.  I need to make another Nob still and the Big Mek needs priming, but everything else is primed or better.  I hope to finish this batch tomorrow and maybe get a start on another group, or perhaps build that Nob and maybe some boys and then prime the lot so everything I need for the first list is ready for painting.  I'm at 15/54 which means I'll need to average about a model per day, something I think I've pondered before.  The painting feels like it's going faster, plus most of the models have a start of some sort on them, so I think I should be fine to hit the end of May.  What I'd really like to do is paint up another mob of Dethskull Sluggas so I can keep with the one clan instead of mixing in Evil Suns.  This plan would involve using models intended to be 'Ard Boys as regular Slugga troops and I think I want to put a little more time into them, maybe with some checkers on their armor plates.  This approach will obviously take more time than painting regular boys, so I may plow ahead with the Evil Suns and then paint the Dethskulls if I have time left. 

The close-up example.

In various other news, hopefully my Warstore order arrived today or will tomorrow.  I'm looking at adding a pair of Dreads at 750 while maxing out the second boys squad, though Kans are also a consideration.  I have one Dread in the order and will see what that kit is like before I choose between the two walkers.  They'll all be part of the horde eventually, it's just a question of in what order.  I was reading a post at 3++ today where a commenter said that psybolt ammo didn't work on psycannons.  My first thought was "Of course it does," but I didn't see any counter-comments about it.  I grab my GK book and find that the comment is right, psycannons don't get to use psybolts.  At first I was bummed as I lost theoretical S8 psycannon shots, but I'm thinking maybe it's a good thing.  Now I'll save some points by not giving the squads the ammo, so I'm thinking about a list that has a Terminator core with Purifiers in Razorbacks and Riflemen Dreads.  This is the same idea as before except with Psybolted Razorbacks instead of Rhinos.  This also means the list will play different with the Razorbacks rushing to deploy their contents and then lending supporting fire, instead of a moving bunker approach.  Not having psybolted psycannons means the Riflemen are even more important as I'll lost a lot of theoretical S8 psycannon shots.  Fortunately psybolts work on autocannons and heavy bolters, bumping them both up a level in terms of Instant Death.  I'll have to see what such a list looks like.  I liked the one I had before, but it lacked the Dreads and had lots of Terminator Psycannons instead.  A new list is liable to have less Terminators, but it might also avoid the problem of Paladins having 2 psycannons per 5 troops, while the GK Terminators boxes only come with a single psycannon per 5.  Maybe I can squeeze in a Dreadknight too...