As promised, MetalJim provides a status report on his painting project…

[This was supposed to be last week’s post, but we had some technical glitches here at d21.  Hopefully those glitches have been sorted out now]

A few months ago, I decided that there was a part of my brain that had not been utilized in some time.  This is the part of my brain responsible for “art projects”.  For some reason, I came to the conclusion that the only way to scratch this particular itch was to build and paint an entire army of minis for Warhammer 40K.  I don’t know precisely how I got there, or why I chose to start with the evil alien bug horde known as the Tyranids.

The ‘Nids aren’t really a race for “starting” 40K players.  Because a lot of the “basic” bug minis have a relatively cheap points cost, it means that I have more models to buy and more models to paint in order to get a full army on the table, compared to an army of “vanilla” space marines.  ‘Nids are also hard to paint because the little buggers have six limbs instead of four, and sometimes it’s hard to work your way in to paint some of those little crevasses, armpits, etc.

Another tricky part about gluing and assembling your ‘Nids is knowing what sort of mutations, ahem, “biomorphs” you want to put on your minis.  I opted to give quite a few of my dudes a little bonus power called “toxin sacs” which adds +1 to the strength of the model (for a few extra points) but which also requires me to glue teensy tiny little pouches onto the forearms of each mini with the mutation.  Let me tell you, that took some patience with the crazy glue.

I also have no idea why I opted for yellow shells.  I think I just wanted my ‘Nids to look different.  You can easily make the case that the yellow paint doesn’t really “work” as such. 

I sincerely believe that my problem is that I need to give my minis a good solid inkwash with some brown ink.  This might help to give the shells some more depth and some more definition.

As of right now, I still have another 12 or so bugs to paint, plus the whole inkwashing project, before I feel comfortable heading down to the local gamestore to try and book a game in the 750 to 800 point range.  I want to get a couple games under my belt before I decide how to expand this army further.  It would be more cost effective to simply double my existing battleforce, but it would also be cool to go for more variety, rather than just doubling up on existing troop types.

Under the “glass houses” rule – don’t make fun of my paint job without providing a link to an army that you painted yourself.  If you CAN provide such a link, I have no doubt that I will bow to your superior awesoness in the area of miniature excellence.  This is just a part-time hobby for me, after all.

Hopefully, I will post some “before and after” photos once I apply the inkwash.  However, I am in a pretty busy part of my semester right now, and that might take a few weeks.