Guest Blog: Alec: Painting an army in a week, part 1

In a new thing for the blog, I've invited a guest blogger, Alec, to write a piece. He was giving me some friendly ribbing about how slow five months is for a Tale of Gamers challenge, and mentioned he was painting a similar sized army much faster. I felt it was only fair to highlight his pain and suffering as he attempted this.
- The  Responsible One 

So, when I mentioned to TRO that he was being too generous in getting a thousand points of Age of Sigmar onto the table by counting in months and not days, he asked if I wanted to stick some of my current challenge onto his blog. "Why not," I thought, "it would be kinda cool". The aim was simple: get a thousand points of Age of Sigmar Dwarves onto the table of Warhammer World in a week!

Why a week?  Because I am indecisive, I was going to run some High Elves, then maybe I could do Lizardmen right?  Oh but Dark Elves look cool too!  Maybe just paint up some more Chaos as I have at least half a realms worth still to go... Ooooh and Greenskins, I have a few of those still laying around needing paint on 'em to finish painting the collection...

 Anyway, by the time I decided, I had a week - in amongst the other stuff I needed to do, like pack, spend a day travelling and so on. So less than a week really! On the Sunday, exactly a week before I had to have them ready, I had about half the army ready to be undercoated, and a little more because it was an 8th ed style unit. Also at that point I had miners getting primed as well as that was the incarnation of the list. Yes, indecisive!

So there is how they were starting!

The initial list was

1 Warden King
1 Runelord
20 Thunderers
20 Miners
20 Warriors with hand weapons and shields
10 Warriors with great weapons

Idea behind it was use as much Battle for Skull Pass models as possible.

This started evolving rapidly!

Currently the list is sitting as

Warden King
Runelord
20 Warriors with hand weapons and shields
20 Warriors with great weapons
20 Thunderers
10 Ironbreakers

I started painting the Warriors by getting Army Painter Plate Mail sprayed onto the chain parts, then it was onto the beards on the torsos while the parts were separate. Alongside them I started the Thunderers. Two days of painting I have almost got 60 of them to a VERY basic level for Warhammer World.  Tonight (Thursday) I sprayed the characters, Iron Breakers and 20 Battle for Skull Pass Warriors.  As I've almost done the great weapon Warriors and Thunderers it means I can swap to the last 30 models with minimal fuss.

Iron breakers I foresee little problems with, again spray them plate mail, paint the beards on separate heads and them wash before picking out bronze colours means they will go fast.  The older BfSP sculpts will take a bit longer, but will end up roughly the same as the Thunderers, blue and silver, random beard colours, leather pouches etc as you can see from the messily prewashed models!

Pretty simple scheme means it's fast to do as well.

I'd have loved to have got them a little better rather than splodged colours, but meh, limited time plus it gives me something to build on as if I enjoy the Seeds of Hope at Warhammer World as much as I expect to, I think the Dwarves will be making a return trip soon and progress can be seen!