new direction, new units

After reviewing my collection of marines, I am going to make two good squads of marines instead of three mediocre squads. This will have me moving guys around between my two completed squads plus adding a few from my incomplete 3rd squad. This action has also freed me up to start work on my scout unit, which I have now built, they just need a shot of primer and some the painting can begin. I also pulled out the dreaded "greenstuff" (its a modelling putty for those who dont know - a really irritating "I'm trying to sculpt with chewed chewing gum" putty) and tried my hand at sculpting a missing Nightvision goggle for one of my scouts as well as some bigger ammos clips for a 5-man marine squad turning them into homemade Sternguard troops. No pics yet since my gal pal has the camera, but hopefully there'll be something soon picture wise!

2nd tac squad complete!

The 2nd tac squad is now complete! Im not completely happy with it modelwise and paintwise, but it'll do I guess. No pics since I dont have access to the camera at the moment, buts only 4 additional guys so its no big deal. Now to begin on the 3rd tac squad!

2nd squad pics - almost done!

Got some pics up of that 2nd squad im still working on - almost done:


this guy was a bitch to paint on the far left - absolute worst sculpt ever combined with previous damage, no wonder he is angry looking!






various stages of work and progress

almost done with 2nd tac squad

Almost done with the 2nd 10-man squad, they have been a nightmare to paint. Should have pics soon!

My birthday

yay! happy birthday to me, I'm almost an old man.




no new painting updates except I'm on the next 10-man squad with 2 guys 95% complete. I got a loooong way to go.

Sergeant is done, here be the photos!

Managed to get some photos of my full squad and sergeant/captain/chapter master guy this morning. They haven't been based yet, but I'll save that for when everyone (40+ guys) is complete.



And now there is another squad of 10 on the bench getting ready for their paint up!

Before pics I scrounged up, and rain is bad for painting!

Raining all today, plus tired from all-nighter at work. I did manage to find some bad before pics of the marines before I stripped and rebuilt them:

1st tactical squad complete (well somewhat)

Got the first 10-man tac squad painted up except for the sergeant and the guys havent been based yet. I'll base them all at the same time when I get everyone painted. Here are a few pics of the progress:



Its just a snippet of the whole group, I'll probably have the sergeant/captain/whatever I want him to be guy done by tommorow. Here is a shot of the ol' workspace:

1st Post! Lets get this ball rolling with a lil background information!

A while back I decided to try a new hobby, and that hobby turned out to be table-top wargaming. What that entails is getting a bunch of miniature army men and vehicles and playing them out on a table made up like a battlefield or forest etc. I figured hey, I like models and I like painting, so this looksl ike a win/win sitituation. I set about to find some Warhammer 40k models, but to my suprise these lil bits of plastic and metal cost a good bit more than some bag of green army men. $15 for ONE small metal guy in a blisterpack?! There's got to be a better way!

I decided to do this on the cheap, so I checked out ebay and found a lot of broken, badly painted, and all around mishandled space marine minis on the cheap. I like a decent challenge and figured this would be the best way to try 40k out without the big investment. With my "buy it now" bid placed, I was the new owner of a slew of minis that arrived at my door fairly quick. Upon opening the boxes, the minis didnt appear as bad as they looked in the ebay photo, but they needed alot of work nonetheless. Alot were put together wrong (i.e. medic guy's shoulder badge on the wrong marine etc.) and painted horribly, but I had a plan - and that plan was SIMPLE GREEN. With the minis sitting in a bucket of Simple Green, a good bit of the bad paint sloughed off leaving the rest to scraped with a toothbrush.

While I dont have a pic of most of the "before" models I do have a few showcasing the damage and quality of what I had to work with:



And here is a vehicle that was broken up. I managed to get a few replacement bits off Ebay to fix it up (most dark parts are new addons). It still needs more work as of this photo:



I've decided to make the Space Sharks chapter of space marines (hence the name) due to the simple color scheme and awesome name! SPAAAAAAACEE SHARRRKKSS!!
I've got all my paints and tools out, time to get crackin'!