To Do: Finish Painting Black Templar

So here we are 12 days until 'Ard boyz and I've got a list of things to finish painting.

Well, a list of things I'd like to get finished painting.

I know, I know... 'Ard boyz doesn't require or ask for models to be all painted and there is no score for painting. However tournament or big game days with friends are really what motivate me to get stuff done. If there isn't anything on my calendar painting grinds to a halt. I've learned just to embrace this bit of my own neurosis and use it to finish up projects.

Also when I paint I rarely have big blocks of time. 15 minutes before work, maybe 1/2 hour before bed, an hour on the weekend when the baby is down; these are really the only times I get to knock out small bits of painting. I also generally plan it out. 'I have 1/2 hour, let me get all the red done on these 10 guys.' This chips away at the bigger project, but it takes days to get any real progress done.

So the real problem now is time. There are really only 11 days between now and the tournament. The 4th of July holiday would be great to finish stuff up... but I'm leaving Thursday-Sunday to go camp with the wife's family. I'm not going to push my luck bringing paint and minis there, hehe.

So left to do I have:
-3 bits- It doesn't sound like much but I need to somewhere squeeze in painting two meltas and a powerfist that got here yesterday. It's not a huge job, but they are the BT bits so they actually have quite a bit of detail (chains, logos, ribbons, etc). I could probably knock these out in a spare hour somewhere.

-10 Marines- this fills out my 2nd drop pod squad and my special/heavy for my 2nd shooty squad. Thankfully they are almost done and I should wrap up painting them tomorrow. Then when I get back on Sunday hopefully I can squeeze out the time to finish up the basing on them. This usually takes a few 15 minute steps spread over time to: glue sand, paint dried sand, highlight dried sand, paint ring of base, flock with green fluff. Hopefully I can take care of the unpacking/whatever-wife-wants-me-doing Sunday night with a few breaks to wrap this up and dullcoat these guys.

-Drop pod- Josh graciously said he would build my drop pod that arrived this week for me since clearly there is not a ton of time. I'm hoping he can have it for me next Monday and I can try to work on that M-Th. Thankfully BT vehicles are generally pretty easy with some drybrushing, highlighting and details. The only silly part is I ended up using a good clip of white on my first drop pod and that takes time and patience. White is a total bane, taking layers and layers of smooth white. Plus, like an idiot, I put it in areas that have very fine lines so there is going to be clean up after all those layers as well. Upside is I kept the BT insignia and will try to knock those out when I do the meltas and the fist. There may be a few early morning and late nights to get this bad boy done.

-Grey Knight Terminators- So I'm borrowing 5 of Anthony's GKT. They are painted ok, certainly not great, pretty much just imagine a pretty clean base coat of colors. The stands are not based at all. At the very least I want to get them based, so I might just do that Sunday night with my other 10 BT marines. If I can I'd like to do some basic touch ups to clean them up. If the pod can be done by Thursday that means Friday night I can do some washing, highlighting, and general clean up. Hopefully a solid 2-3 hours will make them really pop. (Then I've agreed to bang out Anthony's other 6 GKT, but I can follow that up post tourny when I have some time so that is cool. They are great looking minis so they deserve to look nice.)

It doesn't look like a lot, but every time I say that I underestimate the time/days it takes to do things so I'm trying to be conservative. If I only had one solid day to paint this holiday weekend it would be no problem but alas... I'll have to make do. Hopefully it doesn't mean painting until 1 am the night before the tournament (like I did last time... regretfully).

Of course I could always take a PTO day and finish it up... but I'm not that retarded... am I?
(answer: yes, I probably am... but you already knew that!)