Aliens USCM Technical Manual

In my family, being half French and half English, we have two versions of Christmas, one on the 25th December in Brittany and one on the 1st January in Hampshire. This is great for the kids, as they get to open two sets of presents and great for us, as we don't have to lug my side of the family's gifts over to the other side of the English Channel.

This year, the UK Father Xmas brought me a copy of the very old but very useful Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual, which he (or she?) spotted in the Waterstones sale and thought might be something I'd like for the bookshelf. I thought this was out of print years ago, so I was very pleasantly surprised to get a copy as one of my second Xmas presents.

This led me to dig out my 10mm Pendraken aliens and colonial marines that I based up last year, with an intial drybrush on the bases to see what they looked like in something other than basecoat black. I screwed up the base texturing on these so that every stroke of the brush dislodged little bits of grit and exposed shiny metal, with some serious washing and shading still needed to fill inthe resulting gaps.

The aliens will get a topcoat of Vallejo Shiny Black once I've sorted the bases out. After that, I'll have a crack at the bases on the colonial  marines before starting on the figures themselves. I'm planning to get the aliens finished tomorrow so that I can spend some time on the humans before the end of the weekend. I hope they turn out to be a good start to 2015!.