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As my Ghost Archipelago project nears its end I've started thinking about what's next. With the impending start of the Imperium subscription this seemed like a natural candidate. It's my hope that I'll be able to keep up with the release schedule and paint everything as it comes in. That however would make this less of a main project and more of side one to break up the monotony of the larger projects. Today I spent time building everything from the first two issues. That was a real learning experience too as I had no idea just how difficult the easy to build Necrons could be. Eventually I cobbled them all together though and based them in preparation of priming. As you can see one is missing its head/face as it was used in a conversion project. As luck would have it though it was never painted so I added it to the project.

Though I have no actual intention of playing until Quarantine 37 is released I went ahead and created a Stargrave crew. Initially this was only an excuse to start planning out the crew and maybe even finalizing a list/crew sheet. Once I had finished filling out the crew sheet however I couldn't help but notice that I probably had all the figures needed for this crew. A quick rifle through my backlog just confirmed my suspicion. Even more interesting though, at least for me, was the rediscovery that I don't own any unpainted Guardsmen with flamers. I had planned to paint one up specifically for this crew but it turns out I don't own any unpainted ones. So before the project even began I've already finished a miniature, talk about speed painting. Armed with the remaining nine figures I decided this would be a nice palette cleansing project. Oh yes, I actually made that joke. It also occurred to me that this would be a great project to try my hand at speed painting too. After a few years of debatably tabletop quality paintjobs I'm eager to see the results I can achieve when I'm trying to paint quickly. One quick note before jumping in, this single post condenses four nights of work all together. Back row from left to right: My Captain, First Mate, Gunner, Burner, Sniper, Grenadier, Runner 1, and Runner 2 Front row: Recruit 1, and Recruit 2 First up was my Captain who needed some conversion work. I'm not exactly worried about WYSIWYG for this particular batch but I figured my Captain deserved the extra "effort". That extra effort being laughable once you see it. A quick snip of the hand, a pin, and some glue completed the conversion. I'm not exactly big into converting but this may just be the lowest effort conversion I've ever done. Painting the Captain proved to be a little more involved but about half a session later I had a nearly finished miniature. The First Mate went even quicker as I chose to go with a limited color scheme. Next were my three remaining specialists. My Gunner like the Captain took about half of a painting session with the Sniper and Grenadier taking most of the remaining time. That bit of leftover time wasn't wasted though as Recruit 1 received most of its basecoat. My two recruits were finished pretty quickly during tonight's session. The Runners received most of their basecoat but I ended up running out of time tonight.

As I attempted to finish my wife's Orks before the new year (a task I failed at) I started planning the "first" project I'd start afterwards. As usually happens, at least with me, I decided upon and subsequently changed my mind about numerous projects. Eventually my first project ended up being Reaper's Layer Up kit. There was of course another project that was a really close contender, especially considering how much prep work I'd already put in. Coming in second place I give you my fairly cheap armada. Many months ago my wife and I came across these neat little two packs of "spaceships" at the Dollar Tree. Needless to say I picked some up. Looking at the packaging they're not actually spaceships, they're just weapons for spaceships but I think you'll agree they make cool spaceships. So I did say I bought a few. After using poster putty to cover the crystals on a few of the ships I attached them to slats and primed them. Sitting down tonight I thought I'd begin painting until I realized I had forgotten to greenstuff over all the screws in the plastic. So I spent about an hour doing that instead. I did however get to paint a bit, the eagle eyed may have noticed there was a figure amongst all those primed ships. Turns out this particular toy line also has a few Captains, though I've only ever found one. I think it doesn't even look that bad and I really considered just rebasing it as is. As you've already seen it primed however you know I fought that instinct. In less than an hour I ended the night with this. There is still a lot to be done but I think it's off to a good start. With any luck I can finish this tomorrow and begin painting the spaceships.

I painted this one up for a player who is running a 16yr old knife throwing poisoner. I did a minor conversion on the hand to switch her to a knife thrower - and I lost the hand I cut off! So the primitive sculpting came about! I painted up the scrolls as bottles for her posions - first attempt at glass bottles. She was fun and good enough for table top. The player likes her, so I'm happy.