Painting, Metal, Contemplation

Mmmm, nice green skin.

I'm taking a three-pronged approach to posting today.  First up is the painting recap.  I finally managed to get a decent bit of time in painting yesterday.  Of the boys I have assembled, about half of them are painted to some degree.  I scooped up a bunch of those a few days back with the intention of painting them and made good on that at last.  With the models in differing stages of completion, I decided to treat any existing paint as a base coat and work up from it.  I started at the only sensible place: the skin.  Ork skin is almost soothing to paint somehow.  It all seems to line up naturally with areas for highlighting and shading being obvious, a pleasant change from doing power armor that all but requires a cheat sheet for me to figure out.  Half of the batch looked like it had a heavy green inking over a Goblin Green base, while the other half looked more like a Goblin Green drybrush over a black base.  I started with the first half, which was the darker of the two, and went to town with the Goblin Green.  When they were done, I rolled on into the second half as well to firm up the existing green on them and to try and make the two groups look as similar as possible.  Plus, I like doing ork skin.  After finishing with that shade I got out the Snot Green and made with the highlighting.  In both cases I was trying to cruise along at a rapid pace, content to hit most of what I aimed for and a little splash damage as well instead of trying to get each line and plate done just right.  I'm happy with the results, at least for the moment, and the time invested to do the ten orks was about the same as doing the initial red on 3-4 Blood Angels.  Quite the improvement.  I'm considering a wash or two, either Thrakka Green or the ever-present Devlan Mud, as I think the boys might be a little bright.  Taking a couple days to consider won't hurt anyone, and it'll be that long before I have another good painting opportunity.  I feel a little odd doing Evil Suns boys when my initial batch of orks should all be Deathskulls, but they were already started in Evil Suns colors so I'm just going with it.  I can whack together some fluffy justification later if I really need to.



With the apparent demise of metal minis from GW on the horizon, I've been considering what I'd like to get before they all disappear.  I have no particular love for metal minis.  They've always been a pain to work with, from basic assembly to conversion or just attaching them to the base.  Plastic has been my material of choice since I first laid hands on the old beaky box, so the prospect of GW going exclusively to plastic makes me happy.  My only concern is a mild one that I doubt will come to pass, but one that I'd rather not get caught out by: the total disappearance of some models.  Mostly I'm concerned about special characters, Blood Angel characters in particular, but there are a couple models that I like for the design alone.  To this end I've developed two lists based on priority.

Potentially Regrettable
The Sanguinor
Astorath the Grim
Lemartes
Draigo
TDA Librarian
TDA Chaplain

The first four are mostly game pieces, though I do like them aesthetically.  The last two I've talked about before, with the Chaplain in particular as one of my favorite GW minis.  This is the list of minis that I'd probably feel bad about not having at some point, while this next list is the stuff I'd like, but don't think I'd lose any sleep over if they never reappear.

Would Be Nice, But Skippable
Lysander
Pedro Kantor
Crowe
Luthor Huss
JP Chaplain
Gabriel Seth
These two Sternguard
These few Vanguard Vets
Dark Angels Company Master
Celestine
Various SoB Seraphim
Just about any Dwarf Lord with a winged helmet
Kurt Helborg
Most of the Wood Elf Lords and Wizards

Again the first couple are for gaming purposes, though I do like the Luthor Huss model enough that it almost made the first list.  These are the models that I simply like the look of, regardless of whether or not they'd see the table.  I'd like to run Seth one day, but considering the amount of Flesh Tearer icons I'd have to cover up I've been planning to convert one up should I ever stick him into a list.  The Dark Angel Company Master is a call-back to this model. one that I've loved since I saw it and have stripped countless times in a futile effort to paint it well.  Perhaps I'll dig it out and give it another shot.  Ultimately the first list is probably going to hit my usual hobby spending limit, so the second list will have to wait and hope for reissues.

Thought I'd missed the group shot, didn't you?

The final leg of the tripod is considering how to channel the slow growing army collection EV and I are doing into something with a little more flair.  We discussed options a bit on Thursday and came up with a couple ideas.  I don't really know anything about Dark Eldar motivations, apparently because there's not much to know about them.  EV tells me they collect prisoners to have souls to give to Slaanesh, lest the Demon Prince take theirs.  This is all well and good, except that Orks have an equally shallow motivation of fighting because they like it.  EV brought up a Webway Portal as something to fight over, which I think works as well as anything.  I'm thinking of something like DE raid Ork camp, Orks track them down for more fighting, Mekboy finds Portal and attempts to tear bits off it, DE get all uppity, more fighting.  It'll need more to it, but it's a start.  I also want to have some sort of proper name to call this whole thing by.  A brief Google session gives me Chaac 16, which I'm going to run with unless EV has any objections.