14th Grand Company

Thanks goes out to 73rd for putting together A Tale of Even More Painters and adding me to the list. Although I am shooting for my own challenge deadline for completing 1,000 points by the end of the month, I look forward to 73rd’s challenges to keep me motivated past that point (painting 60+ guardsmen is tiring!) and providing interesting challenges to keep things fresh and enjoyable.

The first challenge is to have 75 points painted by the 17th. This should be very doable as I am planning on having my company command squad done by the end of this week, but you know how life goes, something always comes up. Speadking of which I will be spending most of next week out of town for work, oh well…

So my local GW store announced that next month’s painting challenge is for a 1,000 point army. I know I could easy submit my finished Iron Warriors, but where would the challenge be in that? Instead I see this as a excellent motivation for me to finish my traitor guard army! Well at least the core of it.

What does that mean for my painting schedule? Well I currently have one platoon (with two heavy weapon squads) done, so to get a legal army I still need to paint the other platoon and my company command squad. This would give me 1,000 points if I bulk out the squads with grenades and such, or I could really push my self and try to get my freshly built sentinels painted as well. Four weeks, 36 guardsmen and 4 sentinels, the math doesn’t really add up when I figure it took me over a month to paint the first platoon… but I could also pass that off as the warm up.

My plan is as such:

Week One: base coat both platoon squads and the platoon command squad

Week Two: Wash, highlight and finish the platoon as well as base coat the heavy weapon squads

Week Three: Wash, highlight and finish the heavy weapon squads and base coat, wash and highlight the company comand squad

Week Four: Paint the Sentinels and detail the command squad

This week is going to be a challenge though due to the fact it is in the upper 90s and I don’t have any air conditioning. Painting wise it creates the challenge of trying to finish a coat of paint before it dries out. Week 3 & 4 will be the big push, but with my wife out of town those two weeks I won’t have much else to do besides paint (and try to stay cool!).