Wednesday, February 17, 2010

First Blood!

The Great Painting Race is underway and it was my goal to draw "First Blood" and get points on the board before Scott. I intended to make a dramatic splash but my aspirations were too big. I expected to drop like 6 points and do it this passed Monday. Instead it's Wednesday and I'm only dropping 3 Hidden Set Up Counters and a Space Marine Scout. Here's some pics and some info.

First off, last spring Planet Strike was officially announced and I was STOKED! I knew I could expect some of the unique rules from the old 3rd and 4th Edition 40K missions so I endeavored to make some Hidden Set Up markers that would look cool and possibly double as other types of counters. I rummaged through my bitz box and found some old Rhino bitz and I combined them with the rings that come in CD-R spindles. I've had these 4 counters sitting by my painting table for 10 months now? Something like that. Three are now finished. Despite the rules of the race being determined by base size - I'm no chump so I'm only claiming 1 point each. (Note: I still haven't played a game with Planet Strike yet.)
Now more importantly, I've owned 15 of the metal Space Marine Scouts since they first came out around 1998. They've been in various states of completion but I was never quite happy with them. Then, 5 years ago, the new plastics came out. Everyone hated the heads, myself included, but I still bought 3 boxes of them giving me another 15 Scouts. Up until today I had never finished a single one because I was never happy with their look, my early paint schemes, nor how the look of the current range fit into my "Dark Angels." So today I unveil my first Angels of Absolution Scout. His pants are Kommando Khaki to create a beige look that doesn't clash nor blend in with the Bleached Bone. I've used that color on the robes of my sergeants and felt that it worked very well with the paint scheme. If you look at the picture of the scout in C:DA you will see that he has a bald head and a tabard. I decided to take a bald marine head, shave down the neck, and use that instead of one of the standard scout heads, and I made my own tabard out of green stuff. Here are pics of the initial set of scout legs with green stuff tabard and then the completed AoA Scout.

Nick: 4
Scott: 0

Go Nick!

4 comments:

HuronBH said...

Nice job, I like what you have done so far. This contest of yours sounds cool and I wish you luck. I have a bit of a different problem. I paint pretty quickly, as compared to sum I know, but I have a hard time doing it regularly. Also I have a hard to finishing things.

For example, I have an army I have been working on since October (with a short stint in July to start things off) and I would say I have around 2-2.5K of partially painted models currently. Would it take that long to finish things up, no not really, but do I do it. Nope.

I wish you the best of luck on your goals.

Dasanton said...

Great job on getting things going. I like the scout a lot. It's a nice departure from the usual AoA colors, but still blends in nicely with the rest of your army.

Are the sticks in the objective markers a tall grass? Have you checked out this stuff? It might work well with that...

http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/FG171/page/1

Scott said...

Very Good Nick. First Blood indeed. So what's the story of that first picture? Was it an Exacto accident?

I like the hidden set-up markers. I will now dub them "Space Marine Roombas".

The Scout is great. I'm not a big fan of those models, but that head swap makes a huge difference.

@ HuronBH -- Sounds like you have the same problem I did. I like starting projects, I'm just not good at finishing them. I think it just takes a commitment to doing only one project at a time.

I decided last year I wouldn't start anything new until I had finished what I started. Last year was my most productive year ever becasuse of it.

xNickBaranx said...

@HuronHB I can't even tell you how many unfinished projects I have all over this apartment. In order to accrue points more quickly in our competition though, I'm going to focus mainly on finishing projects that have been started. I literally own models I started painting 10 and even 15 years ago - but I want to see a drastic reduction of these as a result of the contest.

@Anton The sticks are off cut broom bristles - the same ones I use to make my "thicket" trees. I just cut them a lot shorter. I'm thinking of retroactively going through all of the AoA and adding them to give the bases more character.

@Scott I just put a new X-Acto blade on my knife. It was hanging off the edge of my paining tray and I moved my hand/brush from the water cup to the napkin and mid swing caught the blade with the underside of my hand. So stupid. haha.