Bikes and Bases -Episode 8 repost

Bikes and Bases -Episode 8

Hi everyone and welcome back

It’s been a couple of weeks, and some progress has definitely happened!

Bases

One thing that had me a little nervous, was that as the chapter has been built, sprayed, and started to come together on the desk, is that the silver is very bright when en mass. Not a total surprise at all, and there are a couple of factors, one being that there is very little other colour, with most of the models unfinished, but the bases are also sprayed silver, adding to the mass of colour. Since my first 100 bases arrived, I decided to base up one of my tactical squads, to get an impression of what a finished squad will look like. 

I believe that basing should compliment the model, it provides a frame, and is one of the main things that is seen when viewing the army. As always, I needed the bases to be mass produced easily, but it needed to balance out the silver. Silver, and black, two of the main army colours are very cold and harsh, so I wanted a warm brown, slightly reddish to compliment the green and to give the warm tone. I have a existing table that was in a colour very similar to what I was envisioning, so it made sense to base the army in the same way, then it would look consistent on the tabletop. I decided I would also use the same basing material, a mix of tile grout and sand, to match as well. On top of this I would add a few different kinds of static grass, and foliage. Process wise, I would glue on the sand mixture with PVA, go over with watered down PVA to seal it. When dry I would paint using the brown I had selected (conveniently available in a tube for $3), then apply static grasses.  Once I had decided on the basing, I painted up a squad:

Build and paint

I continued on my build spree, and managed to get the final marines built. Right near then end I ran out of shoulder pads, but was kindly donated 30 more by a friend, these will go on soon. I had a pile of leftover marines without arms, these got split in two ways, first I allocated enough marines for all the heavy weapons in 9th company. I plan on buying the heavy weapons from some devastator boxes with my mate Ben in a month or so, which will get them all “armed”. I have struggled to find assault marines for a cheap price, so the remainder of the marines I have given assault weapons, which brought me up to 40 marines from 8th company, the only thing missing was jump packs. I have got a solution for that, watch this space.

With all the marines I have built, it was time to crank out the paint brushes again. First under the brush was a squad of bikes, being slightly bigger they took a bit longer than the tactical marines, coming in around the 6-8hour mark, but I’m happy with how they are turning out:

Coming in slightly faster, I also finished 3 attack bikes with Multi meltas:

Buying more bikes!

The last thing on note with the army, I found a few cheap purchases on trademe, all from the same seller. 2 lots of 3 bikes, and 5 terminators. Each of these came in less than $15, so I grabbed them all. They arrived, and definitely need some rebuild work, but that's what I expect for the price!

I have put in an order for some of the parts I need, but more on that when it arrives…

See you in a couple of weeks.

Mark