On Painting the Imperial Guard: Memory Lane

In lieu of fresh pictures, today's post will describe the techniques I have developed as I learned to paint my army.  As you probably have noticed, I am not a 'pro painter'.  That being said, I have come a long way since my first model.

It all started back in 2002.  After talking to my good friend Chris about this Warhammer game we decided that the Imperial Guard was the faction for me.  My first model was the infamous Sly Marbo.  Buying him taught me the most fundamental skills of Warhammer modelling: buying your model and gluing it together.  At this point in my hobbying career I had no time for silly things like undercoating or basing.  My brother and I also learned quite quickly that 'black ink' was not like the other GW paints we had bought as it took a lot to get a nice even coat.  Instead of investigating this further we simply ignored the subtleties of painting and stick to the basics.

A Catachan from the first batch.  Pretty gross by today's standards, but it did the job.

Warmachine Break

You are probably wondering why I have a Warmachine post in the middle of my fervent preparations for the Team OP tournament.  Don't worry, I'm a bit of a multitasker.  Work will resume on my Guardsmen tomorrow.

Super Necron Battle Update

What's that you say?
Blog update on Sunday?
Apparently not...  Instead you get a double header today!

First of all, I got a test game in with my 1600 point Straken list against some proxied Necrons.  I didn't take any pictures as I thought it would just be confusing, but here is the enemy list:

Necron Overlord :gauntlet of fire, resurrection orb, phaeron
Tomb Stalker
15 warriors with night scythe
10 warriors with ghost arc
10 warriors with ghost arc
5 scarabs
5 scarabs
5 tomb blades
Annihilation barge
Annihilation barge
Annihilation barge

-->Lord went in the big unit, and their airplane just did shooting stuff.

Team OP: first unit based!

So today I finished basing my veteran unit.  I did these guys first because they don't really need much in the way of painting, so I figured I would just base them and get that out of the way.

Team OP preperation, update #2

So I've been slowed down a little by things like job finding, car fixing, and procrastination, but I have managed to finish the assembly on my tank and get my plasma guns into the hands of Straken's command squad.  I also have pictures to prove it!

Team OP: First steps

So, a day has passed and I've started getting my models organized.  In this first picture we can see my Leman Russ tank being built, along with some random Catachans and some basing supplies.  This tank still needs a name, so suggestions would be appreciated.

This next picture shows how I plan to base these dudes.  You'll notice that it is quite jungle-ish, which is exactly what I want!

Team OP Tournament, planning stages

Well it seems like every time I want to get some work done on Dark Eldar I find another reason to get more guardsmen. June 2-3 is the Team OP tournament, a 1600 point 40k affair. My army list is due on the 18th, so I've got some time to playtest it before it becomes final. Here is the second draft:

More Dark Eldar, finally

So today I was struck by the urge to do some painting, so I pulled out the deneb stone and did the skin on a wych squad and a couple of warriors.  It seems that just painting a couple of models at a time isn't doing it for me, so I think I'm going to switch back to the tried and true batch painting method I used for my imperial guard army.

Neo-Retro-Chaos

So today I got to play a very odd game of warhammer 40k.  To set the stage, the scenario was two objectives and the deployment type was Dawn of War.  These were randomly rolled.  My list is a fairly standard dark eldar list, as follows:

Fighting fire with elves

So, game one of the Vassal tournament was against http://www.warmoreradio.com/ co-star Adam using his Protectorate of Menoth.  I decided to use Ravyn instead of Rahn for this one as I know that Adam enjoys stopping me from using magic.  With that in mind, here are the lists and our deployment.