Goblin Bowmen and Metal Marines – Trading with Mates is Fun

The other Sunday during my gaming group’s fortnightly games day, Master Goodchild arrived with a sizable box of goodies obtained by a friend for reasons unknown (not because he didn’t say, but more because I wasn’t really listening properly :-s ). While sorting through the contents, it seemed that he had items for everybody’s army, including enough marines for me to start a Chaos Space Marine Army should I so choose (not sure as yet, but I can’t say no to free miniatures, and certainly can’t refuse classic metal minis). In trade for this veritable bounty, it was agreed by all that we would help get his Goblin army up and running for this year’s Master’s Tournament.

Three goblins into the unit armed with bows, I quickly learned that painting a metric crap-tonne of Goblins requires a level of competency in batch-painting that I as yet do not possess. I got a good deal of practice however, as we set up a bit of a production line between myself and Mark, author of Project Circle. I was studiously painting Goblin skin while he smashed out the orange robes in short order. When it comes to batch painting base colours, I have to admit that GW’s ‘Basecoat Brush’ is ideally suited for the job. As the name suggests, I was able to neatly apply Snot Green over a swathe of area and in very short order. That said I did take me the entire night to get the skin of the 25-odd goblins painted to a standard that I could live with.

I've also learned that when it comes to painting other peoples miniatures, I’m not as critical of my work as I am with my own, at least when they tell me that they’re not after the same level of detail as I usually use on my own minis. It was pleasantly refreshing to paint a model to basic table-top quality again (even if the sheer number of mould lines present on each of the models will ruin the effect once the Devlan Mud wash is applied). Thankfully, Mark is much more experienced with the whole batch-painting process and not only was able to smash out the orange robes, but also touched up the hafts of the bows and repainted the quivers on each of the little blighters.

By the end of the night we had finished applying all the base colours to the entire unit in preparation for washing next week. After quickly tallying up the points for the unit, I will never complain about the low cost of Marauder infantry ever again. 2 points a pop is a stupidly low number when you’re basing your painting progress on the amount of points that you have managed to paint over a period of time. Being that one of my Marauders is worth 2.5 Goblins when given a weapon option, makes me thankful that they’re not any cheaper. Anyway, I’ve included some pics of the progress that was made during the first paint night, as always C&C is very welcome.

Catch you all later

Trev