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Gah! Curse my itchy "bid now" finger

I had been watching an ebay item that consisted of 24 Necron Warriors incl. 6 Scarab Bases (BNIB) and 1 Ghost Ark (BNIB). With 10 seconds to go, the bidding was only at £40, so I jumped in and sniped it for £41 (+£7.00 P&P). However, whilst that little purchase has saved me something in the region of £24.00, I now have in total an Overlord, 36 Necron Warriors, 2 Ghost Arks, 9 Scarab bases and an Annihilation Barge to build and paint. What started as a small Necron Christmas project has now ballooned into an army worth almost 1000pts.

I feel a bit overwhelmed to be honest. I don't think I've ever bought an entire army in more or less one job lot. Any advice on the best way to work through the fast growing pile of grey plastic sprues?

Pick a weekend day when you can have several hours free from any other commitments, get a proper cup of tea/coffee, get your tools and sprues out, and put on a couple B movies. The better part of my Daemon army was constructed on a Netflix binge.

Same as Loch, just Cryx and Deuce's Wild. Just plan four hours and mow through them. You'd be surprised how much you get done.

Avatar the Last Airbender on Netflix helped me through a Ghost Ark, assembling Tesla Immortals, converting Deathmarks and Gauss Immortals from the remaining bits, and assembling a box of Praetorians.

As far as painting goes, I take the easy route when it comes to crons and spray paint the basecoat before touching up with washes and detailing. Saves much time.

Sounds like someone should have got an airbrush and a pot of mithril silver for Christmas.

Jokes aside not allot can make building all those kit any easier but an airbrush can help get them finished.

I have somehow built up the equivilent of three armies for FoW over the last couple of years (sales gahhhhh!) while I built up a IG army and thought that I would struggle to get any of it done. But a few hours a week fur a month cleaning and gluing and one day with an airbrush and i have about an army and a half primed (admittedly of mostly 15mm tanks) and base coated.

My worst thing is, I'm waiting for my GF9 glues and bonder stuff to come (was delivered to the wrong address, so have to go pick it up) as I have a squad of Grey Knights to assemble as well as all of my Warmachine to reassemble/assemble. I don't really have a station in my current house for it either which is quite annoying.

The last big lot of stuff I did took me the best part of both Kill Bill volumes and Gladiator but having something on in the background helped me get more immersed.

I'll be bringing my extended Lord of the Rings Trilogy back to uni with me to help me through my big order of Dark Eldar xD

Well you could always outsource the building and painting to somewhere like Worthy Painting or BTP, really depends on how much your time is worth I guess.

I'm currently filing away all the mold lines of all my minis in downtime. While the Mistress reads her shiny new Kindle, I'm filing Orks, BloodBowlers and Chaos Marines. Afterwards I assemble them squad/units/team by the same. When I get enough assembled and the weather permits, I prime that lot. I find that when I'm in the mood to paint if I have to put in tons of time doing prep work then I lost my painting buzz before it even starts.

A couple years ago I spent my tax return getting my ork army and it took all 3 days of a Martin Luther King day weekend, and the entire Robotech series with Shadow Chronicles to get them put together.

Painting has been slower with only 20% painted as you can see here:

Lol, sounds like boxed sets is the way to go.

I like Cannerus's idea of doing it in stages. I've been doing something like that for the warriors i.e. 1. file mold lines off all legs 2. glue all torsos together 3. file mold lines off all heads 4. glue stages 1-3 together etc etc

I guess the trick is not to get distracted by other kits although I've failed at that all ready. Couldn't get through one box of warriors before I moved onto the Annihilation Barge (which I did at least finish putting together).

Painting a large amoutn of models is always time consuming. The most disheartening aspect is when you look at all the grey.

The best thing to do is just take it slow and not let the enormity of it sink in. When I looked at my Tyranids, I had 24 Hormagaunts, 12 Termagants, 10 Gargoyles, 6 Warriors, 2 Zoanthropes, 2 Hive Guard, a Venomthrope, a Carnifex and a Hive Tyrant to paint.

The best thing I did was prime them all. So they're now all red. Then take it squad by squad. First up was 12 Hormagaunts. They're done, moved on to the Termagants. They're mostly done, but I got distracted by my Warriors. I finished 3 of those, and moved on to a Zoanthrope to get away from squad painting. When the Zoanthrope is done, I'll move on to my Termagants and finish them. That will leave me about 1/3 finished.

It all adds up. That first squad will feel like a small dent. But then that second squad will leave you feeling a bit better. The third will start building momentum for you.

However, the single best thing to do is not have them all on your desk. Try to keep the unpainted stuff out of sight entirely if you can. It'll let you focus on just what you are doing. For motivation, keep a painted squad or individual out. When you finish what you're working on, cycle that motivational unit back into its case, and leave out your last finished unit for motivation.

This leaves only painted stuff in view when you're working through it all, and you won't see the mass of grey and get discouraged.