A Week in Miniatures: May 2 to May 15, 2016

More accurately two weeks in miniatures seeing as how I forgot to write an entry last week.  Not that it was too eventful.

First of all I packed up all the 40k models I'd been working on.  You need a change of subject once in awhile or you'll burn yourself out.  So May was supposed to be anything but Sci-Fi (Warhammer 40,000).  It was a rather bumpy first week.

Four layers of paint later, the gold looks amazing.

The Stormcast Eternals were taken out and dusted off.  And I remember why I stopped working on them.  The gold is extremely time consuming with two complete coats required before mid-tones and highlights can be applied.  Now, I'm not arguing that putting brown paint down before layering down warm metallics is a bad idea.  On the contrary, it looks amazing.  The problem is that it is very time-consuming to do so.

So I have to kind of stop and re-assess how to paint all these Stormcast Eternal models without going insane.  I should probably re-primer them with a dark brown since the bases need dark brown as a starting point anyway.  Everything else I can either paint the colors straight over or re-do in black.  I can't really do anything about the models I've already started though.  Those I'll just have to power through.  Good thing they don't make up the majority of the models in my possession at the moment.  The models may look slightly different in coloration, but that's already a thing since I refined the colors and process last year when I was working on them.

I also tried to assemble a unit of Basilean Men-At-Arms from Mantic Games.  I hate these models with a passion.  They are not very detailed, the pieces fit together very poorly, and plastic glue doesn't work all that well on them in spite of being the plastic sprue variety of model that Mantic produces.  On top of that I had very real trouble getting the plastic arm holding a metal banner to stay put and ended up having to pin that arm to the model.  On top of that problem, there are only five poses for the models and some of them are inappropriate for the spears I have decided to arm them with.  The models are supposed to rank up and if I don't modify the models they will certainly never do that.  I will eventually assemble the entire twenty models (of which I have assembled five), but for now they are sitting in a bin due to the sheer frustration of assembly.  The silver lining here is that I now have a bunch of swords I can arm 40k models with.

I was so frustrated with my efforts to do anything fantasy-related that I broke down and assembled Assault Marines just so I didn't start hating the hobby.

And that was the first week of May.

The second week was pretty uneventful as I needed to take a break from the frustrations I'd experienced.  Eventually I started considering and working slowly on the Stormcast Eternals in preparation for a Path To Glory campaign the local Games Workshop store is running.  But I realized quickly that I was having the same problem with the Stormcast Eternals as I was with the Space Marines; I needed some way to store them or they'd get ruined from being transported.  I ended up buying magnetic vent covers, a big storage box, and a bunch of washers (An idea liberally taken from somebody else).  I was skeptical about the magnetic vent covers having enough grip to keep models in place, but tests show that the washers have enough surface area to hold the plastic models in.  Especially when we're talking about 40mm diameter bases and roughly the same size washers.

So now I have the means to store all these models with huge sweeping wings and I'm happy about it.  Next week is probably going to be spent gluing washers to bases and re-primering things in dark brown.