Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!
When the list of Conquest issue contents came in, I bemoaned the fact that, amongst all the shiny new models that were being used in the set, they were including such older models such as Space Marine Scouts, Bikers, etc. These slots could easily have been filled with new models (a set of Rievers to replace the Scouts, for instance) especially as there have been recent releases (the new Vanguard Primaris, particularly) that would have been ideal to fill those slots. It just felt like a bit of a swizz to be using these old models (and we're talking 20+ years old in some cases) alongside the new. So I'd pretty much written off the Bikers and Scouts, etc. and planned to dump them in the Crates of Unpainted Delights, to be used as conversion fodder or sold off on Ebay.
The Real Life happened.
Regular readers of this blog will know that, since the beginning of June (when I decided to make much more of the blog with all the new content) my painting output has been catastrophic. While I've managed to more or less keep up with blog posts in spare minutes here and there, a new job and family matters have meant I've fallen way behind on my commissions and personal projects.
"But what does this have to do with the Scouts?" I hear you ask.*
Well, as I was unwrapping the figures from the magazine an idea struck me. I had the upcoming evening free. The Better Half would be working overnight, and I like to use that time to get out to visit Eddie McSheddie.** I was wondering what I could do with that time. I really needed to catch up on my commission work. My competition pieces have gone out the window (apart from Eadbanger- there's still time for that...) and I really need to update on the projects that I started on the blog. Then I thought, what I really need was a bit of a palette-cleanser. Something I could bash out, start to finish, in one night, just to refresh the old brushes. If I'm honest, I could also use a bit of a soul-cleanser, too. The last few weeks, things have built up quite a bit, and have been taking a bit of an emotional toll on me. What I really needed was a bit of a night off, to just chill, and paint for fun. And I looked at the Scouts and thought, "Hmmm."***
So, I decided to get the Scouts and go from sprue to finished models in one evening. It's not entirely a cathartic exercise. I can use the models as part of a Kill Team and I can get an article for the blog out of it too. And it'll be a good little exercise in using the Contrast paints the way they were intended.
After looking through the Kill Team rulebook, and consulting the online forums, I realised that the shotguns and heavy bolter were not the ideal loadout for a Scout Kill Team. The generally accepted best loadout seems to be bolters or bolt pistol/knife combo, with a missile launcher. This put a bit of a crimp in my plans as a) the heavy weapon on the sprue is the heavy bolter and b) I really liked the idea of fitting them with shotguns, just for the look of it. then I realised that we'd be getting the missile launcher with the sniper sprue later in the collection, which solve problem a- I could simply paint up the missile launcher guy later, and use either/both as necessary. As for problem b? Rule of cool prevailed, I'm afraid. I wanted those shotguns and, if they turned out to be hopeless in-game then, well, i was never planning on playing competitively anyway and, again, I could always add a couple of bolter guys using the sniper sprue later.
the only thing left to decide on was the colour scheme. What chapter to do? And for this, I decided on Ultramarines. I know people say they're boring but the blue and grey (yes, I know Scout fatigues are supposed to be bone white, not grey white but grey looks better, so there...) colour scheme looks great on scouts and the Codex Discipline Chapter Tactic from Kill Team: Elites really appeals, and will work really well with Scouts, I think. Besides, it wasn't as if I was short of other Astartes to paint in different chapter colours. Plus, it meant there was no need to do any conversions to make them look more chapter-specific. I could do them straight from the sprue, which is what I wanted to do.
So, there we have it. An evening of free painting, five Scouts to blat through. Off we go.
I thought it would be fun to see exactly how long it took to get these guys from sprue to an acceptable tabletop standard (or "Battle Ready" as GW insist on calling it) so I'm going to time them closely and, to prove I'm not fudging the numbers, I'll photograph them next to the clock at each stage. So, here's the starting point, with the unpainted, unassembled sprues ready to go.
Okay, they're assembled and primed with Grey Seer spray. I've selected the colours to use (all Contrast):
Armour: Ultramarines Blue
Fatigues: Space Wolves Grey
Rubber, gun casings and metal: Black Templar (I'll use two coats on the hard gun casings to get a proper black)
Skin: Guilliman Flesh and Fyreslayer Flesh
Hair: Gore-Grunta Fur and Cygor Brown
Prepping these models for painting really shows their age. The edges of the armour plates are soft and rounded, sections merge into each other (this is particularly evident where the fatigues meet the pauldrons) and all the detail is soft, as if ever so slightly melted. And the mould lines are just awful. It's clear that the moulds for these models are well past their prime and this is a clear indication that these models need to be retired from the range. Compared to the clean, crisp castings of current ranges, these look like children's toys. As much as I'm glad that I've got these, so I can do what I'm doing, I have to again wonder why they were included in the collection. Anyway, just over two hours after I started (I'm calling it two hours dead, as there was a couple of minutes while I got an audiobook ready to listen to (I'm starting the Horus Heresy again) and there was a cat-related interruption...), they are ready for painting.
After a coffee break and a bit of fuss with the cat I started painting again at bang on midnight so what you are seeing here is the result of just shy of three hours painting with the colours mentioned above. Of course as with the previous batch of models I did with the Contrast paints, they don't stand up to close scrutiny but they are perfectly usable as tabletop miniatures, purely for gaming, and there would be no shame in stopping right there. That's the great thing about these new paints. They really do save a lot of time getting the models to this stage. With traditional paints, I'd have to have done a base coat (which would have taken longer than applying the Contrast paints, as traditional paints don't flow as well, meaning they take longer to apply, getting them into all the recesses and tight spots) and a wash to get them to this stage. At five hours from sprue to done, I'm not complaining.
Of course, I'm not going to stop there. At a later date (probably when we have the second set of Scouts from the collection) I will go back and finish them off with some highlights. But, for now, they'll do. They just need a coat of varnish and they can go away in the figure case until I need them. One issue down, 34 to go...
*Also, "Stop rambling and get to the point!" Was shouted from the back...
**It's growing on me, but I'd still like suggestions for a better name.
***No kidding, I actually stood in the kitchen, holding the sprue in my left hand, and stood in the thinking pose, right hand on my chin, my index finger tapping my top lip...
When the list of Conquest issue contents came in, I bemoaned the fact that, amongst all the shiny new models that were being used in the set, they were including such older models such as Space Marine Scouts, Bikers, etc. These slots could easily have been filled with new models (a set of Rievers to replace the Scouts, for instance) especially as there have been recent releases (the new Vanguard Primaris, particularly) that would have been ideal to fill those slots. It just felt like a bit of a swizz to be using these old models (and we're talking 20+ years old in some cases) alongside the new. So I'd pretty much written off the Bikers and Scouts, etc. and planned to dump them in the Crates of Unpainted Delights, to be used as conversion fodder or sold off on Ebay.
The Real Life happened.
Regular readers of this blog will know that, since the beginning of June (when I decided to make much more of the blog with all the new content) my painting output has been catastrophic. While I've managed to more or less keep up with blog posts in spare minutes here and there, a new job and family matters have meant I've fallen way behind on my commissions and personal projects.
"But what does this have to do with the Scouts?" I hear you ask.*
Well, as I was unwrapping the figures from the magazine an idea struck me. I had the upcoming evening free. The Better Half would be working overnight, and I like to use that time to get out to visit Eddie McSheddie.** I was wondering what I could do with that time. I really needed to catch up on my commission work. My competition pieces have gone out the window (apart from Eadbanger- there's still time for that...) and I really need to update on the projects that I started on the blog. Then I thought, what I really need was a bit of a palette-cleanser. Something I could bash out, start to finish, in one night, just to refresh the old brushes. If I'm honest, I could also use a bit of a soul-cleanser, too. The last few weeks, things have built up quite a bit, and have been taking a bit of an emotional toll on me. What I really needed was a bit of a night off, to just chill, and paint for fun. And I looked at the Scouts and thought, "Hmmm."***
So, I decided to get the Scouts and go from sprue to finished models in one evening. It's not entirely a cathartic exercise. I can use the models as part of a Kill Team and I can get an article for the blog out of it too. And it'll be a good little exercise in using the Contrast paints the way they were intended.
After looking through the Kill Team rulebook, and consulting the online forums, I realised that the shotguns and heavy bolter were not the ideal loadout for a Scout Kill Team. The generally accepted best loadout seems to be bolters or bolt pistol/knife combo, with a missile launcher. This put a bit of a crimp in my plans as a) the heavy weapon on the sprue is the heavy bolter and b) I really liked the idea of fitting them with shotguns, just for the look of it. then I realised that we'd be getting the missile launcher with the sniper sprue later in the collection, which solve problem a- I could simply paint up the missile launcher guy later, and use either/both as necessary. As for problem b? Rule of cool prevailed, I'm afraid. I wanted those shotguns and, if they turned out to be hopeless in-game then, well, i was never planning on playing competitively anyway and, again, I could always add a couple of bolter guys using the sniper sprue later.
the only thing left to decide on was the colour scheme. What chapter to do? And for this, I decided on Ultramarines. I know people say they're boring but the blue and grey (yes, I know Scout fatigues are supposed to be bone white, not grey white but grey looks better, so there...) colour scheme looks great on scouts and the Codex Discipline Chapter Tactic from Kill Team: Elites really appeals, and will work really well with Scouts, I think. Besides, it wasn't as if I was short of other Astartes to paint in different chapter colours. Plus, it meant there was no need to do any conversions to make them look more chapter-specific. I could do them straight from the sprue, which is what I wanted to do.
So, there we have it. An evening of free painting, five Scouts to blat through. Off we go.
I thought it would be fun to see exactly how long it took to get these guys from sprue to an acceptable tabletop standard (or "Battle Ready" as GW insist on calling it) so I'm going to time them closely and, to prove I'm not fudging the numbers, I'll photograph them next to the clock at each stage. So, here's the starting point, with the unpainted, unassembled sprues ready to go.
Okay, they're assembled and primed with Grey Seer spray. I've selected the colours to use (all Contrast):
Armour: Ultramarines Blue
Fatigues: Space Wolves Grey
Rubber, gun casings and metal: Black Templar (I'll use two coats on the hard gun casings to get a proper black)
Skin: Guilliman Flesh and Fyreslayer Flesh
Hair: Gore-Grunta Fur and Cygor Brown
Prepping these models for painting really shows their age. The edges of the armour plates are soft and rounded, sections merge into each other (this is particularly evident where the fatigues meet the pauldrons) and all the detail is soft, as if ever so slightly melted. And the mould lines are just awful. It's clear that the moulds for these models are well past their prime and this is a clear indication that these models need to be retired from the range. Compared to the clean, crisp castings of current ranges, these look like children's toys. As much as I'm glad that I've got these, so I can do what I'm doing, I have to again wonder why they were included in the collection. Anyway, just over two hours after I started (I'm calling it two hours dead, as there was a couple of minutes while I got an audiobook ready to listen to (I'm starting the Horus Heresy again) and there was a cat-related interruption...), they are ready for painting.
After a coffee break and a bit of fuss with the cat I started painting again at bang on midnight so what you are seeing here is the result of just shy of three hours painting with the colours mentioned above. Of course as with the previous batch of models I did with the Contrast paints, they don't stand up to close scrutiny but they are perfectly usable as tabletop miniatures, purely for gaming, and there would be no shame in stopping right there. That's the great thing about these new paints. They really do save a lot of time getting the models to this stage. With traditional paints, I'd have to have done a base coat (which would have taken longer than applying the Contrast paints, as traditional paints don't flow as well, meaning they take longer to apply, getting them into all the recesses and tight spots) and a wash to get them to this stage. At five hours from sprue to done, I'm not complaining.
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
Of course, I'm not going to stop there. At a later date (probably when we have the second set of Scouts from the collection) I will go back and finish them off with some highlights. But, for now, they'll do. They just need a coat of varnish and they can go away in the figure case until I need them. One issue down, 34 to go...
*Also, "Stop rambling and get to the point!" Was shouted from the back...
**It's growing on me, but I'd still like suggestions for a better name.
***No kidding, I actually stood in the kitchen, holding the sprue in my left hand, and stood in the thinking pose, right hand on my chin, my index finger tapping my top lip...
No comments:
Post a Comment