Thanks for the comments!
Not much activity today. I undercoated the green stuffed chaos vehicles and cut some models into pieces for Obliterator conversions. The lack of painting opportunities for chaos (green stuff drying, conversion in progress, Otterware in the mail) has "forced" me to start painting Tyranids for a bit (who are "ready to go" in large quantities). Here is the test colour scheme. It looks better at a distance. For text schemes I deliberately paint somewhat "sloppy" to get an idea how the last model in a batch will look like. If that looks good at tabletop distance then it will only get better from there
I only painted a single critter to see how the scheme works on infantry.
The highlights on the green carapace are fairly visible in real life but the photo blends them out a bit. I think I am happy with the scheme both in terms of look and "painting speed/mass producability". Comments/suggestions?
My Nid army is relatively modest in size so hopefully I can maintain this style across all models:
Small Critters:
7 Genestealers (+ 1 Broodlord inbound)
8 Gargoyles
7 Hormagants
12 Termagants
Medium Critters:
10 Hive Tyrants
12 Tyranid Warriors
13 Lictors
6 Carnifex
8 Zoanthropes
8 Ravener
Big Critters:
6 Haruspex
9 Exocrine
2 Trygon
9 Malefactors
6 Dactylis
Huge Critters:
2 Dominatrix
2 Hierophants
1 Hydraphant
Other stuff:
2 Synapse Nodes
6 Lesser Nodes
10 Spores
I also have an inbound "tool kit" for a Harridan conversion and some biovores. The force is very light on small critters judging by the battle reports that I read on this forum where "vehicle-Nids" don't seem to appear very often at all.
This is actually one of the two major gripes I have for the EA system, based purely on my "visual" inspection (i.e. not having played a game and just look at batreps): Why are there no tanks in the game? Other than transports, nobody seems to have any vehicles. Here we are in a game system of mighty warmachines, large battles, etc and the kings of the battlefield are individual dudes with lasguns... That just doesn't feel right. Its made even more perverse by the fact that 40k battlefields are (absurdly) choked with tanks (and flyers... on the equivalent patch of a firefight engagement in EA).
My other gripe is the "sideward shuffle assault" that seems to dominate the batrep photos. You know, those assaults where a huge titan is assaulted by infantry on rectangular bases SIDEWAYS. I understand the game benefit of getting more combatants in touch but this just looks dumb. All those guys with lasguns, who shouldn't be able to do f#$k-all to a towering titan in the first place, running in clockwise circles around it until it dies - from overheating of its traverse gyros I guess... I love the basing freedom in EA but the rule designers made a real mistake (in my opinion) when they effectively gave different base choices different impacts on the game. Why not just have a simple definition of how many "engagement points" each level of model has (infantry & vehicles = up to 4 models, war engines = up to XX models)? Wargaming is about suspending disbelief with pretty visuals and this stuff brings it crashing down.
Sorry for the rant... I will focus on painting now
. really great armies
... But of course that doesn't stop me from "just laying it out already...":
