Candy!

Sweet delicious candy!

Here's hoping some detail work and a good wash will make them look a little less like the world's most depressing children's vitamins.

Humidity be damned: primerfest 2011

Not sure it was the best idea, but when the humidity dipped down to 60% here this afternoon (positively arid for central NC in fall) I sprang into action.

Army Painter Dragon Red
(Battletech, Kuritan 2nd Sword of Light; OGRE, 1st Polish Lancers):

Army Painter Demon Yellow
(Heavy Gear, Eastern Sun Emirates Honor Guard and Footmen; OGRE, Vatican Guard

Battlefront/Flames of War War Paint British Armour
(Heavy Gear, ESE-aligned Badlander clan; OGRE, undetermined Combine unit)

Army Painter Ultramarine Blue

(OGRE, Royal Navy)

So it worked out fairly well, all things considered. Bullet points (bet you a dollar I can't actually get this into a bullet-pointed list):

• War Paint, as usual, is freaking fantastic. I am redoing army paint schemes in my head in a frantic effort to use these as much as possible.
• Army Painter is good, but the brighter colors I guess make it a bit trickier?
• the red went on surprisingly well, the real champ of the day (not counting War Paint)
• the yellow had a few problems; some weird strings of paint I had to knock down with a fingernail, a bit of a bumpy finish in places, problems getting into very tight spaces on the Heavy Gear minis but worked like a charm on the flatter surfaces of the Ogres
• the only real disappointment is the Army Painter Ultramarine Blue. I've used it already as the color primer on my Heavy Gear MILICIA MP Cadre, and I had similar problems today - powdery coverage that rubs off at a touch.

Here's a few close-ups of the problems with the yellow:

Still, here's hoping a bit of touch-up paint and an eventual wash knocks these problem spots down.

PS: hey! I think the bullet-points worked!

EDIT: well, the close-up pics of the yellow guys were so underexposed and blurry that the problems don't show up. Maybe I just need to bring a dry ice machine every time I plan on fielding them....

What's in the box? 22,000 tons of nuclear fury

Six Combine Mk IIIs, Six Paneuropean Legionnaires.

OGRES.

Glued these guys up today (Sept 18). I have had them for OVER A DECADE which makes me feel super old. Planning on running Exercise K with them at MACE when I go for the first time this November. Still have to paint them and source a map somehow. Squads will be:

PANEUROPEAN:
Red - 1st Polish Lancers
Yellow - Vatican Guard

COMBINE:
Green - 1st Armored Divison (Old Ironsides)
Blue - Royal Navy

Dumb/thematic names solicited. Right now I have some bad ideas for the Vatican Guard Ogres, as well as some good ones for the RN (fictional British naval captains!) but I'll take any suggestions.

As for the actual assembly, they are really clean sculpts and other than a bit of flash on some of the treads and gun barrels, they went together effortlessly - although I do wonder about how that wasp-waist is going to hold with just CYA glue. I've got some JB Weld on hold if they prove fragile in service. Here's hoping the periodic rumors about SJGames looking for a new caster to start making these things again is true.