Hobby Update: Painting Escalation League

I am preparing for a painting escalation league which starts this Sunday, June 6th, at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center. It starts out at 500 points and escalates 250 points every month. There is a campaign and territories and to be able to attack to capture a territory, your army needs to be fully painted. Otherwise, you can defend only.
Ok, so I am a crazy magnet guy. All the arms and backpacks in this assault squad are magnetized as shown on the assault squad sergeant and special weapons marine. The jump packs are magnetized as well.

To help me get painted quickly, I took a tip from Kroxitau. He has almost completely painted a 2000pt Tau army in two weeks (after work) using The Army Painter system. Which by the way, his army looks sweet! Go check it out.
I am going for tabletop quality to start, but leaving the paint scheme flexible enough to pick out details later on to bring them up to a high tabletop standard.
I used the Dragon Red over white primer to get a red I liked. I'll wash them with Badab Black, then dry brush Blood Red over them to give them its slightly orange tint, but keep most of the red. The weapons will be painted black and dry brushed Boltgun metal. I also want to use the weapon turrets with my Praetor's of Orpheus so the weapon housings will be painted diagonal black/yellow.
I still need to come up with a basing scheme and I am going to try a blue-grey moonscape to see if the blue makes the red pop off the base. I am definately open to any suggestions.

Here's some side by side pictures of white and dragon red razorbacks and a baal predator...





I'll continue to post updates to this post as work progresses. Then I'll put up new posts every month as we increase the point totals.
I'd love to say I'll do video battle reports, however, I don't have a good camera and don't know if I would even remember if I brought a camera...like JTaylor. Yea, I know, Krox brought his camera so you didn't need to use yours. Heh.

Here's my starting 500 point list:

Troops:
- 5-man Assault Sqd w/ 1xMeltagun, Sgt has PF in TLLC Razorback (190pts)
- 5-man Assault Sqd w/ 1xMeltagun in TLLC Razorback (165pts)
Fast Attack:
- Baal Predator w/ AS and HB Sponsons (145pts)

The campaign has a modified FOC at 500 and 750 point totals so no HQ is required at the moment. It will work up to a 2,000pt fully painted army and go out with a big bash in the end.

I won't be following the trend for Blood Angels with Razorback spam, though at 500points, I needed a little more survivability for my troops. These will be my only two razorbacks. You'll just have to come back every month to see how it develops.
Enjoy!
-Pav


Here's the updated pics. I still need to pull out some details like the tracks on the vehicles and such, but otherwise ready for the league.
Unfortunately, the camera really wipes out the shading details and doesn't do justice to the models. I'll work on that in the future.