Facing The Grey Tide: Painting Challenge - Part 01

Painting wise since I painted up 4 Grotesques for my last tournament, my painting has ground to a halt.

Being able to play in my local GW which allows some unpainted models (not that I've done much of that either) and having no tournament on the horizon has really zapped my enthusiasm.  What's worse is that I also have quite a few Space Wolves sitting on my desk in various states, from just assembled, uncoated, needing a repaint to nearly finished,

Then from out of the blogshere Evan over at Facing the Grey Tide threw down a painting challenge inspired by the old White Dwarf series Tale of Four Gamers:

The goal is very open, you set your own spending limit a month that you aim to get painted each month, they suggest $75, but it's up to the individual (eg. because I paint slow I've given myself the lower limit of £35).

You also do not need to buy more models if you have (like most of us) I heap of grey plastic/resin sitting around the house.  You can use the spending limit to purchase from yourself so to speak, once you aim to paint up models to the value of your spending limit.

You can have double the budget for one month, if you want to go crazy one month (or just need to buy a big kit), and the challenge runs from 1st Dec '14 to 1st June '15.

What sets this painting challenge apart is the organisation and the community.  Here are some links:

The Rules
The FAQ
and most importantly the Facebook page

With new enthusiasm I looked at my models from my 3 main 40k armies and tried to decide what I wanted my goal to be:

My Tau are fully operational and competitive, they only thing I really wanted to do was a Tau Knight.  I'm sure some of you may have seen the model below from a few years ago that I recent came across:

[It's from the very talented people at Master Minis, and you can follow the link to see more stunning pics of the model]

I would also like a Ra'Varna for my Tau, but my other two 40k armies are in need of more attention.

My Dark Eldar army got affected badly by the new codex; my Wyches, Hellions & Razorwing Flocks will rarely see the gaming table, and to a lesser extent Wracks and the Voidraven Bomber may see the same fate.  I have been considering some of the big melee units, so would like a Court, another Beastmaster unit (with Clawed Fiends) and a 2nd Grot unit (using GW models so I could use them in my local GW).

My Space Wolves progress grounded to a halt when I made the decision to take my Dark Eldar rather than the Space Wolves to the last tournament.  They need a few units finished to make it to 1500 points, however I would like them to get over 2000 points, so I have lots of choice when it comes to making a 1500 or 1750 point list.

I listed all I wanted to paint, but quickly realised that at my normal pace I wouldn't get everything done, so I had to leave out Space Marine Allies (Bike Captain, Bikes & Centurions).

So without further ado, here's my schedule (for models which were part painted I reduced their value for the budget challenge (HV=half value, QV=quarter value):

December
Space Wolves: Complete Canis (QV)
Space Wolves: 3 Fenrusian Wolves
Space Wolves: Update old Bloodclaws, ie. weapons painting, should pad rims & basing (QV)
Space Wolves: Complete 2 Thunderwolves (HV)
Space Wolves: 2 Extra Riders (Leader with Shield, Wolf Claw)

January

Space Wolves: Iron Priest Conversion

Space Wolves: Squeese In Completing Drop Pods

Dark Eldar: 4 Trueborn, 2 of which with Blasters (to flesh out 2 units of 3 to 2 units of 5)

Dark Eldar: Repair 6th Venom & 3rd Ravager

and then start 3 months of monster mash...

February (Double Month)

Dark Eldar: Court of the Archon (4 Lhamaens, 5 Ssylths)

March

Dark Eldar: 5 Clawed Fiends (Corrupted Wraithguard)

April

Dark Eldar: 4 Grotesques (Converted from Rat Ogres and Talos parts)

and to finish off...

May

Dark Eldar: 5 Scourges (Converted from Raider Crew with Blood Angel wings)

and in case I get ahead of schedule...

Stretch Goals

Space Wolves: Void Claws (Converted with Robes)

Space Wolves: 4 Iron Priest Cyberwolves (using Ogre Sabertusks)

Space Wolves: Arjack Conversion (Robed)

and finally a sneak peek of two of the monster mash months:

Happy Gaming :)

Rathstar