Squad planning OCD

Laying the sprues out, there is plenty of opportunity to mix and match parts between the BA and regular tac squads, along with a few of the legs/arms/shoulders from the command squad so I can then use the more ornate BA pieces for the command squad later on. 

No doubt the later squads will be far less carefully planned out, but planning the combinations of parts for the first couple of squads has been a fun way to start... 

Initial purchases were:

- Starter box: 

       Blood angels Dreadnought (the furioso/DC/librarian options)

       Commander/squad (now out of production)

       Blood angels tactical squad

- Regular (ie, ultramarine) tactical squad

- BA Upgrade sprue (mainly for the 2x chests & pads initially)
Enough for 2x 10 man tactical squads and some leftovers for the company command (which will likely get built some time much later). 

Probably overkill, but I thought I'd plan some of the combinations out in advance and see if I could mix lots of unique combinations. Enter the little red book...

And as a bit of a contradiction - while I love the detail they have added to the BA tac kit, I don't particularly like that these are flagged as 'standard' marines... there is way too much bling for the most basic company unit - much of this looks like it should be on veterans or death company. So... as part of building the tac squads, I'm aiming to limit the number of overly ornate parts that go into any one miniature. The sergeants are ok going a bit more OTT, but that is about it. 

Going through a paperwork version of the squads turned out to be quite helpful - by the time I started clipping from sprues, I had a little mini cutting list for each model; as well as a record of what parts go together if anything gets separated during airbrushing.  

Having said that, the first 20 tactical marines to roll off production are taking waaay longer to clip & clean up than expected. The original tactical kits (ie, 1993...) had marines in effectively 3 pieces (marine, backpack, weapon), plus a slottabase. Current kits feature: legs, front chest, back chest, backpack, 2 arms, weapon, 2 shoulder pads, head, +base. Some have the weapons/legs in multiple parts, and sergeants have a flag etc as well. Minimum 10+ pieces to clean up and assemble per marine = 200+ pieces for 2 squads... not too long to clip out, but mold-line scraping & filing each individually is something of a mission. 

I was starting to get annoyed that a bunch of marines wouldn't have the 'round' knee pad that I could put squad markings on, but in a fit of strategic brilliance, using these legs for the heavy weapon or specialists means that I can swap them between squads without any repainting... effectively the 'core' bolter marines are the only ones with a permanent marking. 

Assembly challenges up next...