Paints From Overseas!

...there were a couple of packages waiting for me when I checked the mail today:

The first was a bottle of Vallejo's white poly primer:

As I've mentioned before, I prefer to prime with white, but I've had trouble finding a white primer that doesn't give my airbrushes fits.  I've heard good things about the Vallejo Surface Primers, but unfortunately Vallejo doesn't seem to be importing them to the USA yet.  Les Bursley mentioned a couple of places where they were available on his blog, but I tried all of them and they were sold out.  I had a project that was being held up by trying to find it, so I bit the bullet and bought a bottle from an eBay seller in the UK who would ship internationally.  The good news is, I've had a chance to try it and it seems to be everything I'm looking for.

The other item was a bottle of Vallejo Model Air Aluminium (yes, that's the proper spelling over there):

...this is for my upcoming Grey Knights project, which I plan to paint using zenital airbrushing techniques.  The Vallejo Model Air line are the only metallics that I'm comfortable putting through my airbrushes, and for some reason the aluminium can't be had for love or money in the US right now.  The seller also included a cool mini-magazine from Mantic, which is timely since I've been seriously eyeballing Kings of War lately...

More New Models!

After playing a game at my FLGS store the other day, I picked up a few new models:

Some Night Goblin Squig Hoppers:

...while these are neat, I didn't really need them per se - I just needed to buy something small, and anything with squigs is cool.  Y'see, my FLGS has a pretty nice "rewards program" where you earn a stamp on a card for every $15 you spend in the store - once you have a full card, you can turn it in for 30% off your next purchase.  I was only one stamp away from a full card, so once I bought the Squig Hoppers I was able to get this at a healthy discount:

...the third & final Land Raider Crusader for my Black Templars army.  I still have all three of these waiting for me in my "to do" pile, along with the Templar doors & ramps from the chapter conversion pack.  Some friends & I are planning a "build party" for the near future, I hope to knock them all out then...

New Squarebase Models

I picked up some new Fantasy models for my long-term Orcs & Goblins project the other day:

...some Orc Boar Boyz & some Night Goblin Fanatics.  I mainly picked up the Boar Boyz because I remember when the models came out and I really liked the look of them, to the point where I seriously considered trying to find a way to work them in to my 40K Ork army.  Of course, right after I bought these, GW announced that there will be new Savage Orc Boar Boyz available next month.  (And I've been trying to intentionally hold out on Fantasy purchases until the new Orc book hits).

I bought the Night Goblin Fanatics mainly because I was reading about how they play, and the unit sounds like a ton of fun.  What funny is that after I put the models into my "to do" pile, my wife came into my studio one night while I was painting - she saw the Fanatics and said "*gasp* Are you building Goblin Witches?!?  Cool!!"  (she thought "witches" because of the Fantaics' pointy hats, you see).  While she's always been supportive of my hobbies (she's a gamer herself), the sci-fi "flavor" of 40K has never appealed to her - she's always been interested in fantasy novels, movies, etc.  I might have to paint up the Dwarfs from the Skull Pass box and see if she want to try a game someday...

On Deck: Grind, Space Hulk

So I had a busy week here, and the next two weeks don't look much better, so not a lot of progress was made. I thought I'd show the next few projects that are going to be occupying my time:


I bought Space Hulk at Origins, all the minis have been assembled and de-flashed, greenstuff work has been started, a bit of sanding and they'll be ready for primer. I'm a little torn about trying new techniques on the Marines - while I definitely want to get away from the basic basecoat/wash/drybrush method, it's the technique I used on my Techmarine (see the "Mini-Friendly Light Box" post below) and it came out great. It would be easily adapted to the Blood Angels from the Space Hulk set. Maybe I'll do the Marines in my traditional method and mix it up for the 'nids - I don't think I care for the standard GW black/purple color scheme that is usually used, so I'll probably change that. I saw a scheme over at Warseer that used Elf Flesh & purple ink that looked fantastic, so I might try to duplicate that.

The copy of Grind was acquired from a buddy of mine who decided to thin out his collection a bit - the minis are assembled, but unpainted. It actually worked out pretty well - I don't play Warmachine, but have been dying to try painting some Warjacks. the last thing I needed was to start playing another game that would require me to buy sourcebooks and build a whole new army, so this is a perfect way to give some Privateer Press models a try. Plus, one of the regulars at my local shop (who also serves as their painting guru) just became a Press Ganger, so I might take the models to one of his seminars to get advice on color schemes, etc. Either way, my friend assembled the models with his personal choice of arms (the game includes 30 different weapon arms) and I want to have options, so I am waiting on some neodymium magnets to arrive in the mail so I can start chopping the models apart and greenstuffing them.

The Ork Nobz are just one box out a full Ork army (1,000 points or so) I bought last year on Craigslist for peanuts, which is all unpainted and mostly still unassembled. It was all thrown in a box and it took me forever to sort it out and bag it up so I knew what went where, but that's finally done, so now I can start assembly. Since the Orks are going to be my "second" army, I plan on having lots of fun with the fluff and trying some ususual stuff with scratch building. I also recently bought a couple of airbrushes & a compressor that I've been getting the hang of, I suspect these will be invaluable for the Ork army in regards to weathering & stenciling.

...on top of all of the above, I have an 18-gallon tote in the closet that's completely full of Armorcast resin terrain I bought at Origins 2009 that I haven't touched yet, and a Zuzzy 4'x6' Terra-Flex terrain mat that has been sitting in my office for months. Oh, and a box of Tau somewhere that I got in a trade...