Eh, I'm still new enough to this hobby that I don't know what the "industry standard" is for shipping out new games. If there is an industry standard, that is.
My frustration is that I ordered through the Haven, who of course relies on a distributor, and they have no idea when the distributor will get the game. Which is certainly not the Haven's fault, so I'm not blaming them. I ordered through them because I preferred to support the store instead of ordering directly from Spartan and then using the Haven's space to play (just didn't seem right to me). Spartan I guess is still a small enough company that it takes awhile for stuff to make it over here. I guess. But what do I know?
As excited as I am about this game, I do still have lots of other miniatures that need my attention (especially the stuff I'm prepping for Tacticon), so it might be just as well that I don't have the game yet. It is hard, though, in this day and age of instant communication where I can see other people already painting and playing.
So it's given me plenty of time to think about how I want to paint the Ground Command. I think I'm going to keep my green glaze scheme that I use for my Covenant ships and adapt that to the ground vehicles and infantry. For the UNSC, I'm thinking about some type of tigerstripe-pattern camouflage.