Hi guys,

I'm jumping on Orton's idea for a tale of epic gamers (TOEG) challenge to complete an army by the start of 2010 (see here). I'm terrible at completing projects and in something like 10 years of collecting and painting various armies in various GW rules systems, hand on heart, I've never painted a complete army. This project is about changing that.

The rules as they stand at the time of creating this thread are as follows

1/. Armies must be completed over a 5 month period (Aug - Dec 2009)
2/. A minimum of 500 points of models must be painted each month.

As it’s the 1st of August and I'm still up I thought I'd get cracking.

So I've chosen to paint an AMTL/Skitarii army as in the past few months I've amassed quite a collection of tanks and infantry which would be suitable (mostly due to panic buying at forgeworld and being tempted by the delights of dark realm and exodus wars). I want to focus more on the Skitarii than titans as I've seen plenty of titan lists but very few Skitarii ones.

To help me stay on track I've created the following army list, it's not necessarily very effective but it contains a nice mix of models and means I don’t have to buy any more.

So here's the list of what I intend to paint, When I work out how to add strike throughs or change colours I'll indicate what's been done.

Skitarii Demi-Century 1 9 Hypaspists 300
1 Tech priest -
1 Tech Lord 100
5 Chimera 125

Skitarii Demi Century 2 9 Hypaspists 300
               1 Tech priest -
               5 Chimera 125

Skitarii Demi Century 3 9 Hypaspists 300
1 Tech priest -
5 Chimera 125

Sentinel Squadron 1 4 Sentinels 100

Sentinel Squadron 2 4 Sentinels 100

Super heavy Company 3 Stormblades 500

Cataphract tank comp 9 Leman Russ 625
1 Baneblade 150

Forge knights 6 Forge knights 400

Artillery 3 Manticores 250

Flak 3 Hydras 150

Super heavy tank 1 Shadow sword 200

Warlord Titan 1 Warlord Titan 725
2 TL destructor 50
1 gat balster 25
1 Vol Cannon 50
Vet Princeps 25

Warhound titan 1 warhound 275
Vulcan bolter -
Plasma blastgun -


The plan is as follows

Aug - Super heavy company, artillery, Skitarii Demi Century 2
Sep - Skitarii Demi-Century 1, Forge knights
Oct - Warlord Titan
Nov - Skitarii Demi Century 3, Cataphract tank company
Dec - Sentinel Squadron 1, Sentinel Squadron 2, Flak, Super heavy tank, Warhound titan

Knowing me I probably wont stick to this and there'll almost certainly be some extras thrown in, but with this thread and the others which I'm sure will be appearing soon, I'm sure I'll finally be able to complete an army!

Here we go....

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

Mate thats a good plan to start off with.. I'm now concerned my "paint whatever IG model feels good" plan won't go the distance.

Can't wait to see the super heavies.

Only 5 Chimeras for the Demi-Century (10 infantry units, not 11 : the Tech-Lord is a character).

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My gaming and painting blog : http://figsdeflogus.blogspot.fr

lol and that's where skim reading at 1am gets you!

Cheers will correct now

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

Ok so I've hit my first snag.

Whilst painitng my FW super heavies these giant sausage fingers of mine snapped no less than 3 lascannons off the sponson turrets. I take it i'm not the 1st but has anybody come up with a more sturdy replacement for these guns? I'm sure if I just re-attach them they'll end up breaking off again and again.

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

I think Otterman might be able to help you out there

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Sofa General

Nobody expects the Inquisition!!!
http://theepiclounge.wordpress.com/

Yes, there is a certain Aquatic Mammal that can assist you. Having recently experienced a similar problem myself, I can attest to his skill with the problem.

thanks guys I've been in contact.

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

Ok so here's my first real update and conveniently it covers the whole 500 pt minimum in one go  

My models tend to be quite dark which makes photographing them difficult for me but I've given it my best shot.

Here we go



or see here for a bigger pic

It seem to be the norm to provide a colour recipe with these things

1/. prime balck
2/. basecoat dark flesh
3/. 50:50 dark flesh/mechrite red
4/. mechrite red
5/. 50:50 mechrite red/blood red
6/. heavy was with badab black
7/. gentle drybrush mechrite red
8/. painted highlight in blood red
9/. flat areas are given a wash with baal red (this seems to pull all the various shades of red together)
10/. matt varnish
11/. gloss varnish on the power coils

As you might've guessed looking at the above, I'm a self taught painter and have never had anybody to share ideas with or pick up tips from etc. (the internet only gets you so far). Please feel free to point out any steps you think are redundant or ones which would add something.

Things I've learnt so far.

1/.Airbrushes are fickle things but the one I found in the back of a drawer the other day was a godsend.
2/. A wet pallet is the greatest thing ever!

I'm currently working on the manticores so it shouldn't be long until my next update, thanks for any comments

Edit :- I'll update progress with a thunbs up    to show what is completed in my first post

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

That deep dark red with the highlights works really well , my reds always come out very bright and garish.

The las cannons on my SHT turrets came pre-snapped off for my courtesy of forge world   think i might even have lost the bits.

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

Nice! I quite like the more 'serious' red tone on the tanks, makes 'em look mean

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Ideas are like soda cans, recycling sucks
If you talk to God you're religious. If God talks to you, you're psychotic
My Epic Blog

Thanks for the comments guys. Does anybody have any tips on weathering, I've given it a shot but I think I may have over done it on the pic below.

Next up are the manticores, I prefer the old style configuration, although the lack of detail is quite frustrating.



I've been painting in a gloomy room and when reviewing these pics its easy to see how my painings suffered (see small red spots showing through on missiles).

My next task is to buy a lamp and some decent bulbs to go in it before starting on the infantry. Note I'd much rather be painting tanks but I'll never have any infantry painted unless I force myself to.

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

The weathering looks fine on the Manticores.

I always do some drybrushing with graveyard brown/earth for weathering.

Ok well because of the problems with the boards at the end of August, here is my slightly belated end of month update.

As preicted I'm slightly behind schedule, mostly because I find infantry quite difficult to paint. Getting motivated to do them is a real problem for me.

so here's Augusts final effort leaving me behind by 6 bases of half painted infantry and 4 unbased.

 

 

The skitarii are DRM industrial infantry and my main reason for starting this army, the colour scheme is a blatant rip off (or at least attempted) of the models painted up in the gallery

http://www.darkrealmminiatures.co.uk/store....&page=1

I've included two of the chimera just to highlight the difficulty I have taking photos I know its a practice thing but any tips on how to take consistent photos would be ace. The photos are of the same model but the shades look completely different!

Any suggestions about how to do the bases guys? I was thinking like a martian sand/desert but any other ideas would be great.

Right now to plow into Septembers models and hopefuly finish off those lovely little blighters I missed last month  

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip