Crusade on Gray Plastic or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Organize my Marines

[mcintyrabanks]

The Lion has returned.

 

I never thought I would see the day -- I bought my first Dark Angel model sometime in 2000. Metal, robed space marines sold in pairs via blister pack.

 

23 years is a long time to wait for someone to wake up.

 

 

With the return of my chapter's primarch, it's obvious that I have to get serious about the collection of gray plastic I had tucked away in wheely-bin storage.

 

23 years is a long time to never have a fully painted army.

 

Sure, I've played games where every model I put on the table was painted up. Sometimes even to a reasonable tabletop standard. Every once in a while, each model had proper squad markings on it!

 

But my collection -- my army -- has always had reserves in the dozens who hold a silent, increasingly dusty vigil in bare gray plastic.

 

And they're the fortunate ones. They have brothers who remained for years in flat-packed stasis, still on the sprue.

 

First I set myself a goal to get everything organized. If Lion El'Johnson can get out of bed, I can get my space marines out from under mine.

 

That meant building shelves.

 

 

Great is often the enemy of good. I targeted quick, cheap, and lightweight. I used sub-$2 shelf brackets and rectangles of foam board insulation painted to match my walls.

 

The shelves are high up -- a savvy anti-cat measure -- but that means it's tricky to get a shelf down without knocking space marines all over the place.

 

Enter magnets.

 

It's pretty easy to put a magnet in the base of each Dark Angel.

 

 

When I sink metal washers into pre-planned spots in the shelf, a marine sticks to his spot. And I keep weight and cost down compared to adding a full layer of sheet metal stock to each shelf.

 

But then every marine needs an exact spot to go. I need to know how many washers to sink into each self.  I need to space them properly to accommodate all the squads.

 

It was time to map out how I envision my entire collection fitting together.

 

I found you can fit 50 infantry bases on a 8" x 24" rectangle of foam board with some room to spare. To me that SCREAMS one demi-company per shelf. So I began to see how tightly I could consolidate my arbitrary collection of marines into companies.

 

I fired up excel and got to work. 

 

I love the scale of primaris marines. While I aesthetically prefer ornate and gothic to spartan and tacticool, the size wins me over, and I've focused my collection on them. So I just had to make a company of primaris marines. How hard could it be?

 

It became immediately obvious to me that Guilliman has made a real dog's breakfast of company structure. The 10th company is supposed to hold newly-recruited scouts AND the vanguard marines? More than 10 squads in a battle company? 6 man squads? 3 man squads? I thought that guy was supposed to love spreadsheets, but he was making mine very tricky to consolidate mine into groups of 50 marines.

 

I decided to keep what I liked and ignore the parts that felt too loosey goosey to me:

 

 

This is my headcanon on how to organize the bulk of my collection. Battle companies have 10 squads. They hew to the traditional structure of 6 "battleline" squads, 2 "close support" squads, and 2 "fire support" squads.

If you throw in a couple of squads that have a max size of 6, you can hit exactly 100 marines in the company while including the traditional support structure: Captain, Chaplain, Ancient, Apothecary and Lieutenants. Any extra space is where you put your honored dreadnoughts who fight on to represent their company.

I actually like that MORE than the old lore of 1,000 marines = 10 companies per chapter, 10 squads per company, 10 marines per squad, and please ignore all the extra marines.
And, outside one missing 10 man Heavy Intercessor Squad, I already owned everything needed to build and paint up that version of the 3rd company.

With a little work, I fit the rest of my greenwing into two reserve companies:

 

 

 

Now, I don't own all of those marines: Jump Assault Intercessors don't even officially exist yet.

But this was the tightest way to pack my remaining marines into slots to go on shelves.

It gives me room to grow my collection some. It gives me a plan about what numbers to paint on the shoulders of each of my little guys.

And because my shelves are quick and cheap, I know I can reorganize later at an affordable cost, if need be.

But at least I have a plan of attack that I can articulate.

Once I knew  that every marine needs a spot, I decided to use that to my advantage:

 

 

I'm basing my marines with tiny, rocky islands and water effects.

(My other army is a X-Com: Terror from the Deep inspired Genestealer Cult. Someday all my dudes will face off atop cliffside/ocean mining themed terrain.)

When every squad and every soldier has a known spot, I can make the bases line up on the self to suggest a small series of islands where they stand. 

I can confirm the magnets work a trick:

 

 

I can lift a shelf one handed over my head and everyone stays put. 

All my shelves are built

All my planning is done.

My 1st, 2nd, and 3rd companies all have assigned, magnetized slots on shelves.  My other models are all now at least built and primed and set on their appropriate shelf, awaiting magnetization.

The project enters a slow, steady grind.

From now on, at the end of each week, I will have 5 more painted Dark Angels (or 3 bikes or 1 dreadnaught/vehicle, or 1 HQ/special character.) They will be based with water effects on the base and a magnet set into the base. They will have edge highlighting. They will have decals to indicate their exact squad.

I just have to keep up that pace, and I will, eventually, win my war on gray plastic.

I've made this thread to help keep myself accountable to that goal. At least 5 models per week.

It's time to wake up.

Edited July 30, 2023 by mcintyrabanks

[Helias_Tancred]

Very motivational! Love your plan and how you have lit organized.

[Lysimachus]

When I first started reading and it said foamcore shelves, I honestly wasn't convinced.

 

But then reading about how you would actually not fix the shelves in place, and adding the screws into the foamcore for your magnets to stick to, so you could take the whole thing up and down? Now THAT is genius!

[mcintyrabanks]

5 hours ago, Lysimachus said:

When I first started reading and it said foamcore shelves, I honestly wasn't convinced.

 

 

Yeah, the foamcore shelves are certainly a compromise. They warp and bow more than lumber. 

But I'm not in my forever home today -- I know I will move from this spot to one more lasting in about two years, maybe three.

So the goal of this exact solution was:

 

1. Motivate and empower quickly getting ALL troops out from underbed storage
2. Plausibly live through one move.

These shelves have been great at that. I’m happy about where I am in terms of defining my goals and setting myself up to realize them. These shelves have been a huge asset.

 

In my future-home den, I will likely invest in lumber, a laser level, and doing a better job of measuring twice for each cut.

 

As I see it, there are about 35 weeks until Spring 2024. I know Codex: Dark Angels won’t drop on the vernal equinox, but that’s roughly the time frame to work with until I have a new book in hand.

 

And I KNOW that book will drop with some must-buy models that put me at risk of regrowing a pile of shame. The goal is to have the current collection all painted up, decaled, and varnished the day I buy the new Codex so that any new acquisitions are slotted into a genuine, proven path-to-tabletop-standard.

 

Right now I have 137 greenwing infantry models to paint, and about 7 vehicles.

 

With my planned cadence of 5 models per week, or one vehicle – that will take me 34 weeks to finish.

 

So messing about for 2 - 3 extra weeks perfecting shelves would start to put me behind.

 

Go time is right now, with my first personal deadline hitting on August 5th, 2023.