What I'm starting with...

Now that I'm done with the "Picking an Army" portion, I'm on to the painting and modeling portion. First, I want to show you guys what I'm working with. I started Warhammer 40k back like 6 or so years ago, and started back up recently. I started with Dark Eldar, but quickly moved on to Chaos Space Marines. Since then, I have branched out to almost all races, with the intent to paint more than play. Now, onto the goods...

Figure Cases

 To the right is a picture of my two figure cases. One is a Games Workshop case, the other is one I made. I made it out of a box with foam for packaging fruit (It was in my basement somewhere).
A figure case is a must-have. I used to not have one, and that was one thing that killed my desire to play. I kept all my figures in a box, and they seemed to always be broken. It really kills the painting mood when you need fix a model  and wait for the glue to dry before you can paint it.
You can either buy a figure case (they are pretty expensive though), or make one. With all the materials basically free, you should at least try to make one before spending 60-90 bucks on a Games Workshop one. Sometime I will post a tutorial on how to make a case, but for now you can check on Warhammer 40k forums, there are plenty of them.

Miniatures 

Pictured to the right are all the miniatures I have painted, minus a bunch of Dark Eldar and Chaos Space Marines that I stripped and re-primed. Most of them are completed, save for basing (right now, the bases are just painted green, as I am going to put fake grass on them later). I hope to drastically increase the number of models I have painted in the coming months. None of these are particularly well painted, some are ok though. As I paint more miniatures, I hope to see an improvement in my painting ability over time.

Below are the miniatures I have to work with. Many I bought on my own, and the rest belonged to a friend of mine who gave up on Warhammer and let me buy his stuff. I have lots of Chaos Space Marines and Dark Eldar (I have some tanks and larger things from those armies but not at school with me), as well as a squad or two from Grey Knights, Space Marines, Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Necrons, Orks, Tau and Tyranids.

Reference Material

Pictured above are all my Codexes, my two rule books, and a couple of White Dwarf magazines. These are an invaluable resource when it comes to painting, and also they are pretty fun to read for background information on the races. I have both new and old versions for many races. With almost all my miniatures, I am painting them using one of the color schemes in the codex. Eventually, I hope to make my own color schemes and paint miniatures using original schemes (i.e. creating my own Tyranid hive fleet, or Space Marine Chapter).

Materials

These are the paints, brushes and general modeling materials I have paints of 3 different types (Games Workshop, Vallejo Game Color and Reeves). I don't really have an opinion on paint brands, they all seem to come out the same. Then only difference I see is how much they need to be thinned. 

I have about a bajillion paint brushes as well, in all shapes and sizes. My favorite brushes are Sable, which are on the more expensive side, but they are worth it. My suggestion is to get just a couple good quality brushes, and then a few cheaper ones for other things such as stirring paint, drybrushing, painting on glue, etc. 

The plastic case on the upper-right is green stuff, a modeling epoxy putty used for sculpting. Although I haven't done a whole lot of work with it yet, I hope to do some very soon.

So, that's an overview of what I have in terms of Warhammer stuff. I probably wont buy any more for a while; it will take me a long, long time before I'm done painting these ones. My next post will be an agenda for the next few months. I have a lot of plans, and I hope you will enjoy them.

-Dana