Baby's first birthday- 12 month review

Hi everyone 

Although I started writing this blog (on my previous platform) in November, this project really kicked off in September 2020, this is when I first sat down, looked at my existing marines, put my plans in place, and purchased a whole pile of first born marines off Ben. Since this month marks the 1st birthday of thos project, I thought it would be nice to look at where its at right now, and what's next.

All the boys

Let's start off with some photos, here is the full chapter so far:

Then company by company:

First company 

2nd battle company- Mark 9 primaris 

3rd battle company- Mark 10 Gravis

4th battle company 

5th battle company 

6th reserve company- all mounted on bikes or speeders

7th reserve company- all tactical marines 

8th reserve company- close support squads 

9th reserve company- fire support squads 

10th reserve company- 100 vanguard and scouts

I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. I've been assembling and spray painting in batches, but trying to get everything assembled and sprayed relatively close to when I bought it. This is mostly just because it looks a bit better that way on the shelf. The current hold up has been to a lack of spray paint and an outstanding order pick up due to lockdown. 

Budget

Probably the biggest challenge so far has been staying within budget. For most of the first 12 months this has been around $150 nzd a month. I have supplemented that with some sales of minis and an army, as well as some special occasions such as Christmas. I have 'borrowed' ahead from savings occasionally, but this only really allows me to have got some batches early, and I have just repaid the following month. Along the way I have been closely tracking my spend. I had an original expected budget of about $6.5k, spread over 3 years. My total spend so far has been just shy of $3k, only 45% of my plan, and I've managed to fund raise ahead of expectation. I'm feeling good about being able to come in under budget, but there are still some expensive areas ahead such as the vehicles. 

Tracking progress 

I'm quite visual and data driven, and enjoy the planning and Tracking process. It's also very useful in a project like this to manage all the moving parts and make sure I don't over buy. The first table shows where I am at from a purchase perspective,  bright green means purchases completefor that line:

I hope you can see the detail, but in general there are a number of companies complete, or nearly complete, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th companies are fully purchased, with 1st, 8th and 9th within 20% of completion. Further away is 3rd, 6th and 10th.

Overall I am at 81% purchased. 

The next table tracks my assembly and painting progress, I call it my heat map, and gives a good visual guide on where the greatest challenges are. White is not purchased, but after that the 'cooler' the color, the more complete. This tracks at a unit level:

This shows a slightly different picture, with 4th company complete, and good  progress in 1st, 2nd and 5th. Most of the table is orange, which represents the assembled silver sprayed masses. Overall I have painted 256 models, which takes me to 23% painted. Considering I have had frequent painting breaks to assemble, and also painted a more time consuming chaos army in the middle of this, I think I can paint more than 250 in the next 12 months.

So, what's next?

My rough maths puts me in track to finish the purchase of the full chapter within about a year, I'm expecting the paint to take about the same amount of time, give or take a month. I'm probably past the point of being able to get many more large purchases without having to resell marines, so from here the focus will shift to finishing a company at a time. This will run roughly in order from 1st to 10th, with the exception that I'm going to leave 6th until last. With the bulk of each company done I hope this will be done by early next year. After that I will switch to the armory. 

I tend to balance painting tactical squads with more interesting squads, so the painting focus will be 1st and 5th companies, I will alternate between the two until I get down to the last few squads then push them to the finish. From there I can alternate primaris companies with first born, knocking off a couple at a time. That should help keep things interesting to the end.

Well, thank you for reading this far, and reading along this past year. It's been great talking to people about the project, and everyone getting involved! 

See you in a couple of weeks 

-Mark