...and by that I mean 'Planning', 'Preparation' and 'Practice'  As I've gone into each step of painting these Marines, I've followed each of these steps - using my tester Marines to plan, prep and practice before painting the finished squad. 

Except, the one time I didn't do this fully, it caused me a bit of faff! When it came to doing the highlights on the Chainsword casing, rather than try it out on a tester Marine first, I just went straight jn. I usually do straightforward painting on edge highlighting, and I thought this would be OK to do so here. How wrong I was! Due to the edges on the back of the casing not actually being that sharp (they're actually a bit rounded), and the awkwardness of some of the angles, I could not get a standard of edge highlight I was happy with. 

So I went back to a tester Marine and tried a different approach - drybrushing with the highlight colour (Mechanicus Standard Grey) then washing with Nuln Oil or Black Legion Contrast, in between the edges, to tidy. I knew this was immediately the better approach:

So I went back and redid the Chainsword casings on the squad - I'm glad I did! 

So, lesson learnt - stick to the Three P's! 

Although, ironically, having just finished the chest Aquillas and other gold details, I didn't practice that first - but to be fair I've already had practice doing gold chest Aquillas on a previous project