Progress, Progress, Progress and a possible setback...

My painting progress is continuing at an excellent pace. As February turns into March, I've already painted more than I did in the entirety of last year, so obviously I'm very happy with how my painting points system is working out.

There is a threat to my progress on the horizon though. A friend of mine is selling some of his Elysians. They've been my dream army for a long time, but way out of my price range. This friend is selling them for a ridiculously good price though, so I can't really say no. Of course, 1500 points of Elysians will put a massive dent in my painting points total in the wrong direction. I have a plan though.

I'm going to cheat.

Well, not exactly cheat, but just start being extremely strategic in what I paint in order to offset the points which I'm about to lose. You see I have a lot of stuff which is either half finished or can be finished very quickly and easily to net me some easy points, so I'm going to focus on getting those finished up over the next couple of weeks.

These include:

•  The two White Scars Bikers I started a few weeks back -  4 pts
• My half-finished Corsairs unit - 20 pts
• The Sons of Horus Whirlwind Scorpius I've had stripped for repainting for ages - 10 pts
• 2 Dreadclaws for my Sons of Horus which have been half finished for a few years now -20pts
• A few single characters I've been meaning to finish up, which should net me a quick 5 points each
• My two Thousand Sons Contemptors -20pts

As you can see this will give me 80-90 points without too much effort, which should nicely offset what I'm buying. Hopefully I'll get round to painting the Elysians so quickly that it won't matter too much, but at the same time I'm aware of how easily I get distracted. I know some of you will argue that I shouldn't worry so much, but I'm taking my hobby pledges very seriously this year. Just looking at what I've managed to get done this year so far, this extra nudge of motivation is clearly doing it's job! 

So with this in mind, I started working on these guys last night:

 This guy's an idea for a Sons of Horus Lodge Master/ Chaplain/ Lupercii Chieftan I've been thinking abut for a while. The moost common comment I seem to get on him is that he looks a little too chaotic to be a Heresy-era model, but my force is set in the Siege of Terra/ Scouring era, so I think he works nicely, considering that's the point when the traitors really started to go off the rails.

He's nowhere near done yet unfortunately, but really it's just detailing and working on the base which needs to be done, so he shouldn't take too long. He's also serving as a tester for my new method of painting the green for my SoH armour. I'm rather liking the effect, especially as it's much quicker than my old method, so I'm really happy with how this chap's coming along.

On the other hand, this guy is done to the stage where I'm feeling comfortable enough to claim the points for him, once I've pianted the edge of the base. He started just as a one-off piece to make use of the Greigor Fell-Hand (or Not-Bjorn as I like to call him!) model I got in the Prospero box, but he might end up turning into a small contingent of traitor Space Wolves, as I love the concept and enjoyed painting this guy so much. That's for a point in the future when Idon't have so many unfinished models knocking about though.

I also started this guy:

I wasn't intending on making any progress on my Harlequins at all for a while, but I found the Death Jester I got in Death Masque at the bottom of my sprues box whilst I was digging around for Greigor, so I figured I might as well start on him too. Considering it only took me about half an hour to get to this stage, I'm really glad I made that choice. It's such a nice model, both in terms of looks and ease of painting. It's so nice in fact, that that my desire to get a display shelf to show off off these one-off pieces is really intensifying. I'll have to see what money I have spare after buying the Elysians I think.

I'll post more soon!