Well, here it is, February 26th. I'm working away on my Sergeant Pepper's army and also some tasks as an Outrider. For those of you that missed it, I have become an Outrider for GW, that is, one of the people that goes around promoting the spirit of the game and running events. The first event that I am running is an Army Overdrive. An Army Overdrive is a way to get people moving on their armies and get new people started. In the beginning of an Overdrive, everyone picks and purchases an HQ and two Troop choices for their army. Part of the plan is to have everyone start off at the same point, so no fair bringing in those half-painted guys you have sitting up on your shelves. After assembling these models, the next portion of the Overdrive involves showing the players how to properly prime and base coat a model. They then take the model home and repeat the process on their other models, getting more practice at painting skills in the process. The next portion of the Overdrive sees the players getting assistance in highlighting and shading one of their models. At that point, they take it home and lather, rinse, repeat on the rest of their models, again improving their painting skills. Next is fine detail work and basing on one model, repeating on the rest. Finally, everyone brings in their newly painted armies, they talk about how to use their units and then there may even be a small tournament among the players, just using their 1 HQ and 2 Troops.

Sergeant Pepper's Progress: I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Since I am starting a new army and running an Army Overdrive, I figured I'd just do the beginning of Sergeant Pepper as part of the Overdrive. That means that I've selected and purchased an HQ and 2 Troops. For these purposes, I've gotten 3 boxed sets of Space Marine Terminators, plus a few blisters of Terminators, which may well wait until after the Overdrive to be used. My 15 Terminators have been primed and base coated. (last week's assignment from Army Overdrive) A few (so far, the rest should go tomorrow) have been highlighted and shaded as well. 3 have had final details and basing done to them. That puts me well on my way to a 1000pt list, perhaps more once I pick up some LandRaiders! So, Sergeant Pepper is coming along nicely. As I haven't done enough research on my final Sergeant Pepper paint scheme, I'm currently using the Doom Eagle Space Marines paint scheme. (Bolt gun metal, Blood Red, bleached bone and Snot Green details. It looks better than it sounds.) I'm currently taking a wait and see attitude about how much I will do with conversions. I know I'll be completely going to town on the leaders (The Fab Four, naturally) and I'll be converting the heck out of one LandRaider (The Yellow Submarine, what else?) but I'm not sure about the rest of the "band" of brothers. If the conversions are just too finicky for me, I may just leave the leaders as conversions, and just paint the rest to fit in with them, but leave the models more or less as is. On the other hand, if I think I can pull off the conversions, I'd prefer to have every single one of these guys heavily converted. I think it would look much more uniform and much cooler that way, but I might have a nervous breakdown before I could get there, we'll see.

Outrider Progress: Well, we are currently in the Highlighting/Shading portion of the program, so we're doing that to our miniatures, with Final Details and basing coming next week. We've had a fluctuating number of people participating in the Army Overdrive, so it'll be interesting to see how many people will show up for the mini-tournament. Although we've never had more than 4 of us at a session, There are 7 armies potentially participating: DeathWing, Space Wolves, Tau, Orks, Nurgle Chaos (All Daemons!) Khorne Berzerkers, Necrons. We'll see who shows up next week. It's been a lot of fun, and I've even taught some old dogs a new trick or two. In addition to the Army Overdrive, we're gearing up for the release of Codex: Daemon Hunters and the first ever West Coast Battle Tour! In preparing for that, we are painting up some miniatures for the various events. This means that in addition to my 15 Terminators, I'm also painting up 5 Grey Knights in Power Armor, 15 Tallarns and 10 Delaques (IG conscripts, I'd call them impressed soldiers, but I don't think anything impresses these guys.) Yes, I've had a glance at the codex. Yes it looks totally amazingly cool. No, I can't tell you what's in it, you'll just have to wait. No, I won't sell you the models I'm painting, what do you think I am? Anyway, all that means that I've got to seriously paint to get all this done in short order! (I've pretty much avoided flesh before now, and now I've got 25 faces to paint, among other things!) Anyway, I've got to get back to painting, cause this is just way too cool. Trust me. You are gonna want to check out the codex and the Grey Knights and the Inquisitors and the -mmphhh!