So my very good friend Peter accidentally got me into miniatures back in the very early 1990s. He and I were in college, and he introduced me to Space Hulk from Games Workshop. He had just recently gotten it, and we started playing it in our group. I remember pouring through the booklets when I was watching him and our other friends play. I was keenly fascinated by the ‘fluff’ (the storyline and background and art and design) of the game and of the Warhammer 40k universe in general. I’ve been interested in the ‘fluff’ ever since, even if I really don’t like the game.
Recently, Peter decided to run Space Hulk for the kids in the gaming group at the high school where he works. However, after all of these years, none of the figures were painted. Many of the genestealers didn’t even have all of their arms glued on. He wanted to get them all constructed, simply based and painted before the group’s next game day, so he came to me. However, we only had two weeks to get it all done: 28 genestealers and 14 terminator space marines. It would be tight, but by splitting the workload, we figured we could do it.

The quickly-painted defenders of humanity
It turned out that by using plenty of the excellent Games Workshop washes, we were able to get them all constructed, based, primed, painted, washed, detailed and varnished in exactly two weeks. They were simple, but they looked nice, and we made our deadline, so that was what counted.

The quickly-painted horde
As it turned out, genestealers may be the nearly perfect quick-paint army. We spray-primed them with the bleached bone spray primer from Army Painter, painted the claws and tongues red, then just washed them several times with the Delvan Mud wash and picked out some other parts (mainly their backs) with the Badab Black wash. Hit them with the Dullcote and stick a fork in them, they’re done. I think they turned out pretty well, and he said the kids really liked them. Hopefully he (and I) have instilled the miniatures bug in the next generation of nerds. What more can we hope for?
Well, we can hope to play a few games of Space Hulk pretty soon, but I think we should be taking care of that next weekend. Maybe I’ll be able to shoot some photos of the figures actually in play.