Rebasing

Have been thinking a lot of how to proceed. I have been thinking it may be better to "attempt" to rebase one squad of Firewarriors and see how that goes. If all goes well and I manage not to cut the heck out of my fingers then I will rebase all six squads. If the rebasing goes well then I will finish off the last of the XV-8's.

The rebasing doesn't need to happen all at once, 72 Firewarriors will take some time. The 25mm bases come ten to a bag and the 40mm bases come five to a bag. I will make sure that I stay on track. I still have the rest of the A-X-10 to finish off, six Devilfish, the Piranha's, three unpainted XV-88's, and some Pathfinders.

I have been draining the local stores of mechrite red. Between a special order of ten jars from a local gaming store, and clearing out a GW store a little at a time, I have managed to lay low and not come up on anyone's radar.

The painting has been going smoothly, much better than I had thought. The investment of the airbrush really has paid off. I am no longer limited on the type of color I want to use as a base. Also the paint seems to come out much smoother, or more constant. The paint doesn't seem as "heavy" as from a can. I will defiantly recommend that if anyone is planning on painting a large army, as in over 3000 points, get an airbrush. Its really paid for itself and save a ton of time, while being fairly inexpensive. Like anything else, you need to get familiar with using the airbrush, but the results and benefits are well worth it.

I am thinking that for the bases, I will leave the bases black, and then use another type of railroad ballast, one of the more coal like ballasts. The good thing with using a darker color is that it wont take much to lighten it up or show some contrast. A coat of dark gray, and then a second coat of some light gray may work well. There will be allot of experimentation next month to see how things work out. I am not sure if I want to go into using static grass just yet.

I bought a modeling book that covers 40K models and how to base them. The default seems to be the light green with flocking. I wasnt quite sold on the brown or desert base. The city scape could work, with bits of tubing or polystyrene parts.

There are a few pictures around the net that show models standing on top of some "mesh like" material. I was thinking that some of the mesh from a window screen might work. While in a crafts store, I found some plastic mesh. It came in a grid and looked to be about a 1'x1' piece. It was flexible and it also came in different colors. I was thinking that either black or gray would work well. It would be easy to add some depth on to one of the bases that way. It would also be easier to have a piece of mesh to easier identify what formation that model belonged to.

I haven't been thinking about how to tell the different formations apart. The Farsight Bodyguard isn't bad. However the other 50+ suits are going to be a problem. Whats going to be worse is the problem with the Firewarriors.

With a current total of eight-teen squads I am thinking its going to be a nightmare. Add to that the leader has to be identified with certain markings. Its not going to be as easy as, painting the helmet white on the leader, then have the rest of the squad follow him around the board. I am thinking that if there is a gun-line then there will be multiple squads in close proximity to each out and could possibly get mixed in together. So again, do I use the bases to differentiate each squad, have different squads painted differently, or a combination of both?