This is going to be harder than I thought...

I sat down last night before the Bruins game and had a go at trying out some of the paints I have on the primed Carnifex carapaces I have. I had picked u p my new Hive Tyrant kit on Saturday after the FLGS' team tourney (which I won't bother to write about, let's just say my dice hate me right now for some reason).
I grabbed the only green I thought might even remotely resemble the color I wanted (an olive-like green), and got to work. I thinned some paint, and started applying it. I remember why I hate white primer...it's hard as hell to get an even coat of anything on it. I kept ending up with streaks where my last brush load ended, and trying to blend in the new brush load of paint to extend the painted area was scrubbing the paint down to the primer, leaving streaks. I put two coats of olive on a third of the carapace before I quit (the game was about to start anyways).
Methinks I need to get out the bottles of drying retarder that I have somewhere in my toolkit and mix it with some flow improver and try again. Straight paint and water doesn't seem like it's going to give me the quality I'm after.

During the game I opened my Hive Tyrant kit and started messing around with dry fits. I pulled the legs and tail sections off the sprues, and started posing a little. I discovered that the new Tyrant kit only allows you to create two poses: standing, or flying. I'd really wanted to use one of the flying legs and one of the standing legs in order to make the Tyrant look like he was climbing onto a rock or ruin/rubble. Unfortunately, you can't put the flying legs on the standing tail, and vice versa. I'm going to have to sit down with the kit again tonight and see if I can't do some cutting to repose the legs.
It's important to note that you COULD get the legs onto the other tail sections (flying leg to standing tail, etc) by carving away at the attachment nubs inside the leg joint, AND taking off some of the armor outside the hip area. I may end up doing that. If I screw up the trim/cut, I can always get a spare tail section from a bit seller. Seems the tail section is cheap because you get two in every box, but only one pelvis and torso.

I'm also trying to figure out the pose for the Tyrant's scything talons. I'm going for a double set. The kit comes with one set, and I have a couple spare sets from buying a bitz box on eBay. But, I'm not sure having two identical sets on him will be the best bet. Does anyone know how the scything talons in the Mawloc/Trygon box stack up next to the Tyrant talons in regards to size? The Mawloc box comes with four sets of talons in descending size. My thought is that a large set (from the Tyrant box) and a smaller set (from the Mawloc) will look more natural and less unwieldy than two large sets. But I need to know which ones to buy! Suggestions?

On Saturday I also took possession of the IA: Aeronautica book I ordered from Forge World as part of our group order. It's pretty cool. I probably won't run any of the flyers out of it anytime soon, but the anti-air units are nice. I am thinking of bringing a pair of Whirlwind Hyperios to our next monthly. Yes, they're AV11 vehicles that only fire a single shot per turn, but that shot is twin-linked at BS4, so has a reasonable chance of hitting. S8 isn't bad either against the lighter flyers. With the way terrain works at the shop (we use plenty of it), I'm thinking that I could obscure or hide one or both of the Hyperios (Hyperii?) until turn two, then roll them out and intercept. Really only works if I have first turn (turn one, hide. turn two, move to fire lane, intercept on opponent's turn two). If I have to go second, I hide turn one, move turn two, and just fire regularly instead of intercepting. We'll see.
The Hyperios Air Defense system is also neat. I have the two gun mounts from my Aegis Defense Line/Bastion, and enough removable Whirlwind turrets to fill them. Slap turret on mount and I have impromptu anti-air turrets that are perfectly WYSIWYG. They eat a Fast Attack slot though, and since they're automated artillery, I think I have to deploy them pretty close to one another. Still, some anti-air is better than no anti-air.

As for marine paint work, I finished my fifth attack bike on Friday night. I'll get some pictures up hopefully later this week, though I didn't do anything special with it, so it looks a lot like my other ones. I'm out of Marine bike riders, so I'm going to either switch to Scout Bikers or forge ahead with my 5-man Sternguard, since I have the heads about 40% done, and one body/bolter all mounted and ready for primer.