A small errand

Well, I had almost forgotten about another tournament I'd wanted to go to, an event being put on by the Powers of the North in Cotati, CA. A friend of mine is running it, and my parents live about a half hour from there, so I figured it would be a good trip. Well, it's next weekend, and I really, REALLY want to have a fully painted army for it.

Fortunately for me, this is only a 500 point tournament. So less to paint, right? Well, kind of. The tournament gives a bonus to people with fully painted armies, but there won't be the tough standards one would expect at a GT. So that will be easier. However, I had a much bigger problem.

For the army to be Legions legal, I have to have both a hero from every list and no more than 1/3 of the warriors armed with bows in the army. Well, six of my painted models are rangers, with bows. So I can't reduce the numbers in my army too much or I start losing them. Plus dropping lots of numbers is anathema to me. The easiest way to go would be to just drop the King of Men and lead it with Gandalf. Unfortunately, Gandalf isn't the any of the Minas Tirith lists. And there is NO way I'm dropping Mithrandir. Besides, then I'd have even MORE to paint.

So the solution I came up with was this: Drop the King of Men, then use the Rangers of Ithilien list, from which I can take Damrod, the 20 point hero of goodness. Yep, he only has 1 wound and 1 of M/W/F, but he counts as a hero, and he even has a bow! So here is the list I developed.

Gandalf

Damrod

6 Rangers
6 Rangers with spears
17 Warriors of Minas Tirith (I got three more in the mail last week)
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with spears (hey, they're already painted, so why not?)
4 Citadel Guard

Total: 500 points
Models: 39
Might: 4



So that's my list. This does mean that I have some really, REALLY quick painting to do, as seen below.


22 models to paint, 4 of which need to be built, and 11 of which need to be checked for mold lines again. I was going to prime the warriors last week when I primed the rangers, but unfortunately I found fat mold lines on almost all of them. I thought I'd gotten all of them... Grrr. So it's time for a real quick plan.

Tonight: Remove mold lines, build, sand, and possibly put the base coat of brown on the primed bases.
Tomorrow: Prime the models that haven't been done already, then do basecoats for the rangers (including Damrod). After primed models have dried, basecoat of their bases.
Tuesday: Overbrush of warriors and guards then wash. While wash dries, do first layer of highlights for rangers.
Wednesday: Drybrush highlight of warriors and guards, followed by basecoat of cloth.
Thursday: Shadow warriors' and guards cloth, then detail rangers. Drybrush bases and flock the rangers.
Friday: Detail warriors and guards, then flock their bases.
Saturday: Go forth and kick butt!

Alas, I did something very foolish last weekend. I went to get a book that we'd ordered, and while walking through the mall to pick it up, I passed a video game store. I ended up picking up an RPG for the Xbox 360, Mass Effect. That's one of the reasons I haven't gotten more painting done, I've been playing silly video games. It definitely takes time away from my silly miniature games! I'll have to try not to play this next week, and hopefully actually get some tests corrected for my classes.

Vital contruction complete (mostly)

OK, I've got the first stage of construction done.



I am still waiting on a few models to arrive via the mail, and I'll get them cleaned up before I start painting the rest of their batch. Or maybe I'll just get this one batch done and do the others when they get here. I'll figure it out. One way or another, I'm test painting my spearman first.

One thing that I really don't like doing, but am still zealous about, is cleaning the models. Gah, I hate mold lines. However, they do really look tacky on the models after they've been painted, and the methods I'll be using will actually accentuate any mold lines, so I'm being super careful. The most obnoxious - I had one of the Citadel Guard with mold lines over the wing detail on his helmet. Removing them while keeping the detail was a challenge. The next most obnoxious was a mold line down the middle of the face of one stance of the plastic rangers. Getting rid of it while keeping the facial detail was another pain.

Ah, well, I'll get the test model painted and then I'll review how I've done.