Chapter review 2021 repost

Chapter review- 2021

Happy new year everyone, and thanks everyone for reading so far. Its been exciting to see that there has been different readers from all over the world, I hope you're all enjoying the project and blog, feel free to leave a comment down the bottom and let me know your thoughts. 

Review so far

I thought I would kick off the year with an update on exactly where the project has got to. I have been slightly ahead than the blog, so this will get me right up to date for 2021:

Purchases

The cost so far has been $880 NZD. This has been my budget up to and including Jan 2021. This has got me 547 marines, and 5 vehicles taking the chapter to 51% complete. I am $420 ahead of my budget I had set for myself so far, which is about 4 months which is great.

Here is the summary update by company:

4th, 5th and 7th companies all but done, and starting to get some progress on all of the others, with a long way to go on 1st, 2nd and 3rd in particular. 

Assembly and painting 

My starting point was to get a couple of squads painted up. The good news is the experiment with sprays went pretty well, which meant each of the tactical squads took 4.5hrs + spray time to get painted, one squad using a black and 2 silver sprays, one squad with just the 2 silvers. I'm pretty happy with the results considering the time invested:

The outcome was that I definitely need the black spray as a base coat, then the two silvers on top. This covers any left over old paint (even after stripping some still remained) and helps give a better gradient to the zenithal highlight.  Following this I sorted all the acquired models so far, and (re-) assembled (many models are missing arms etc) and cleaned two companies. I will continue to build the army until everything I have is fully assembled, this will let me know if there are further parts or weapons I need. I also sprayed one company with all three sprays before I ran out of the black I had left in the can. I feel that I will be able to get about 2 companies out of the cans, which is only about 5 cans of each color for the whole chapter, which isn't bad (I may buy all of this soon so I have enough in case the paint range changes half-way through).

Here is the results of the setup, build and paint so far:

Incoming purchases 

I have a couple of additions in transit at time of writing:

10 assault intercessors 

100 32mm bases

These are counted in the budget and overall total, but not in the company updates until they arrive.

Next steps

After I ended up buying a couple of individual squads, I realized this isn't the right play right now, I need to look out for a few more bulk buys first, probably 1-2 dark imperium equivalents, 1 Indomitus equivalent, a Ravenwing army and a deathwing army equivalent. This will get me close enough that individual units will start to make more sense. I expect to be able to get one of these about every two months through this year, although I will need to get more bases, and maybe squad symbols which may shift that. The next step with the stuff I have is to finish the assembly and base sprays of all the models, then into painting. I plan on taking the blog to every 2 weeks, with a purchase update and painting update a month (roughly), next time a painting update.