If your son is out of school, you could get him acquainted with the business end of a paint brush That'll help you pick up the pace. Also, seeing as it's summer you should be able to prime as and when needed. Not like winter, where you had to wait around for a good day.
Definately gear your Autarch for use with an aspect warrior squad. Either Warp Spiders or Striking Scorpions. That would be my inclination. Maybe even Hawk wings, but I'm not sold on SH. There is no really 'good' CC weapons, which is a shame. There is the lance and bike combo, but that's not 'great'.
Well, the bike is the one part of his gear that is fixed. Saim han and all. Getting mud on your boots is for lesser races.
Finished the DA exarch. How often do you get to say "2mm was barely small enough". Darn wasp waisted space elves. I don't think there is any way I could do arm work without picking up some 1mm magnets.
And now for a WIP picture, as there has been too much text here lately.
So the FLGS is doing a big apoc game this Saturday. Allegedly. They haven’t posted any details yet, and I’ve not been able to head up to chat with Mark. But last I heard, it’s 2,500 a person. So that’s what I put together. All on one FOC, because I like following the rules like that. So pretty much any wacky things that comes up I should be OK with. I wanted to get this all picked out and packed before the 4th, as I’ll have a mess of people over for a cookout, and won’t have time then. And I’d rather sleep late Saturday then list-tweak and pack.
Fresh paint on the field should be the jump captain, the full new assault squad (only half have seen the table) tac sarge with the c-melta, the second sternguard HF, bike CM’s fist, and the TLLC turret on the pred. It might be the first time all four DevLCs have been in use.
Technically this is the first time out for Sgt. Chronus, but he’s just decorative (didn’t pay the points, needed an extra hatch)
No idea what to expect. It’s billed as a semi-naritive event, so the sky is the limit.
WIP from the paint bench is the HG torso. Almost done blocking in colors, then on to the wash/drybrush.
And I still need to figure out how to do his cape. Put a layer of blue on one of the drop pod’s blades. Every layer is one closer to finished.
All the dire avengers are done being cleaned and assembled. Well, pre-painted assembled; they all have the gun arm left separate for ease of painting. I partially glued the bits together for the ammo dump. Left them separate from the base for now. Also added a HB ammo hopper to the mix to help fill out the space. The to-prime box is full enough to justify getting the can out. Scattered thunderstorms and massive humidity say not now though.
The Boy has a 2 hour Summer Enrichment program/camp every weekday for this and the next two weeks. I’m painting for at least part of that every day. It’s a goal, so far, so good.
Hope everyone has a nice 4th of July weekend, regardless of wether it’s Independence Day for you or not.
These Honour Guard are looking sweet man, thought about a red Cape though? You can get a decent effect with a dark base coat and washes of black, brown and red.
I spy a whole bunch of bikes and an assault squad! It's always fun to see stuff you've recently completed hitting the table.
Didn't even realise it was the 4th of july... I hope you have a great weekend I was in Colorado over all of last summer, 4th of July was crazy-fun.
Capes are easy, imo. Pick what ever colour you want to do it in, start dark and apply layers on the more pronounced pieces. Obviously, the more layers the smoother it looks, but you can easily get away with 2 and a wash.
Sir Samuel Buca wrote:These Honour Guard are looking sweet man, thought about a red Cape though? You can get a decent effect with a dark base coat and washes of black, brown and red.
Zambro wrote:I spy a whole bunch of bikes and an assault squad! It's always fun to see stuff you've recently completed hitting the table.
Didn't even realise it was the 4th of july... I hope you have a great weekend I was in Colorado over all of last summer, 4th of July was crazy-fun.
Capes are easy, imo. Pick what ever colour you want to do it in, start dark and apply layers on the more pronounced pieces. Obviously, the more layers the smoother it looks, but you can easily get away with 2 and a wash.
The cape is going to be red, I just need to work out the details. I need to pick the shades from the ones I own, or mix/buy more. I think I’m going to do it last though. I’ve had issues with the blue wash I use on the armor seeping onto the tabards. I’d rather have a little red or brown on the armor then blue on the cape. It changes my pattern for how I paint, normally the blue wash is the last thing I do.
The bikes don’t get a shout out for new paint anymore, they’ve seen enough battle. With the rules being what they are it’s hard not to put them in a list. They are joining the sternguard in units that I sometimes have to consciously leave out, just to make room for other stuff. I do try to rotate units off the shelf if they get a little dusty, but for that the prime units need to take a time out. This list is a little odd, not just due to its size, but lack of deployment shenanigans (scout, infiltrate, deep strike) It’s a rare game these days where I don’t have something in a drop pod, but I didn’t want to play those games in a large scale battle. I’d rather keep my force together, and mobile. Hence the mech-heavy theme. If I had the razorback finished, I’d probably have swapped it and another speeder in for the dread, just to keep everyone rolling.
The game was fun. More like an escalation game with no objectives, but a fun little shootout. 4x4, imperial players (2 Ultas, 1 imp.knights/GK, 1 guard) vs. chaos/necron (1 demon, 1 necron, 2 CSM/demon mix) We had 2 shadowswords, 1 stock baneblade, 3 knights, and the mega fort aquila cannon thing. They had a tesseract vault, khornedozer, scaberax? (FWGUO) but I think that’s it. So nothing huge, and everything might actually be OK for escalation games. The GMing was a little random orkines tossed into the game. Some secret relics that were looted (nothing major) some drop pods of orks scattered around, and a stompa near the end. He also let the necron player rez his vault after we wacked it first turn. I think that was the only major. We still won on the body count, with a marginal win. And that’s with ending in the middle of the turn sequence, so we should have killed another turns worth of stuff. But we had the upper hand for most of the game.
Fun highlights:
My talon was the only flyer on our side of the table. There were 3 drakes (only 1 flamer) and a necron flyer on the other side. It ate a lot of fire, but stayed in the air for a long time. His claim to fame was after jinking, flying over and putting the last wound on kharn the betrayer. Because the closest you want to be to that guy is a high speed strafing run.
The jump captain and assault marines were supposed to drop in the backfield with full squads of LoTD and terminatos, but ended up scattering close to kharn and his berserkers (who had bailed from their immobilized LR) I shot some of the orks, forming an incredibly short lived battlefield truce with the fallen marines (we wanted to see what the story was, so thought to cleanse the green skins) But one of the reasons it was so short lived was a bad scatter on the baneblade pretty much wiped out my marines (and the orks) With no other target, Kharn charged and killed my captain. Not a good first showing for the new boy.
It’s not sexy, but just putting lascannons shots downrange got a lot done. I put a LOT of wounds of things. Mostly demon-bot things, necron transports, and other odds and ends.
The sternguard erased a 20 man plaugeberrer unit that DS next to them. Helpful hint: when a squad is packing paired HS, be careful DSing S&P troops that can’t scatter on landing. It didn’t help that the warp storm made demon saves -1 for that turn. But he burned.
The bikes copped and early death. The CM flubbed his armor saves early and ate it. They got a round of fire in, but didn’t get much done. Speeder was in the same boat. Got a few round of fire then died. Most everything else made it to the end.
All in all a fun time. Shorter then I expected, but I thought we were going to go past midnight. Gathering started around 11, game started around 1:30, and we were picking up at 8:30. and there was an hour+ dinner brake in there. So a solid day of play, but not grueling. I think I would have preferred playing with the objectives, and the actual apoc rules. But this was still a fun day out.
So when driving back from dropping The Boy off at his summer enrichment program, I noticed the sun shining, the birds singing, and the pleasantly mild, thunderstorm free weather. Which means only one thing: Break out the rattle-can. So I braved the unshielded fusion reaction in the sky and the allergen-laden atmosphere and primed the stuff in the to-prime box.
5 dire avengers (w/ swappable exarch)
HBtac marine
2 sergents (c-grav dev, c-plastac)
c-melta sternguard
Ammo dump
Ven dread with all the fixings (including a custom MM)
Painting has been slow, but steady. Both the HG and the pod bit that have been on my bench are done with the blue touch-up stage, and are ready for the blue wash. Then the HG gets his cape done and I start on the next part of the pod. I think I’ll switch from blades to doors for the pod, They are less irritating, and if I get them out of the way I might slip over the threshold for motivation.
It’s getting there. I should be working on it now, rather then posting to Dakka. Time slipped away from me this morning. I need to go pick up The Boy in a few minutes, so I’ll not get a chance to work on it early today. On the flip side, looks like my normal friday night gaming plans are going to be scrubbed, so I should have time to work on it tonight.
Assuming I’m up for holding a brush. The Wife wants to work on repairing the deck this afternoon, so my night might be filled with aches and liquid pain killers.
Nevelon wrote: I should be working on it now, rather then posting to Dakka.
You really are doing your best to avoid it
It just occured to me, that if you get a blue spray can, you can power through your vehicles a lot quicker. I know the GW spray is a bit brighter than your usual blue, but a few washes shouldnt be too bad - A small price to pay for quick vehicles
What takes me the most time on the pods is the edging. There are the parts that get a black basecoat, then a silver drybrush, and the other parts that get the blue/blue wash. I generally do the black first, so I don’t need to clean the silver off of the blue (I use a vigorous, sweeping drybrush) Then I need to go back and very carefully paint the blue right up to the black, without gooping too much onto the finished parts. With the pods, particularly the blade/hull bits, there are multiple places where there are a ton of very tight edges. So even with a spray can of blue, I’d still need to do a lot of touch up work. Masking off the black parts might be possible, but also highly irritating.
For non-pods, there are a lot less edge cases, mostly just the tracks on the tanks. So they take a lot less effort.
And then once the pod is finished being painted, there comes the final assembly, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. But that’s still a bit off in the distance for now, I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.
The honor guard is done and now I need to figure out what to do for his cape. So here is what I have to work with:
I think the formal name of the old pot on the left is terracotta, It’s from the RT space marine paint set. The other unlabeled one on the far right is another red wash I just found today in a pile of paints I never use (I was searching for all my reds) Many were dried out or separated, but some had life left in them. While I normally mock the Blood Angels “Red” (because, let’s face it, it’s orange) I think it will work well for the final highlight. I think I might go crazy, and actually work my way up through all these paints.
Scab Red -> Terracotta -> Crimson Gore -> Blood Red -> Blood Angel Red
With a red wash over all, and then re-highlight the BA Red.
Although it is a very subtle change between the dark 3 shades, so I might skip the Terracotta.
There is also a tassel/rope/cord thing on his back. I think I’ll hit that up with BftBG and the red wash. I don’t want to be messing around with accent colors with all the blending, and I do them up in red anyway.
See! Progress on the pod. You darn slave drivers….
I forgot how much I dislike working with my old red paints. Not only do they cover for crap, but still manage to show all the brush strokes. No close up on the cape, it turned out OK. I think the multi-layerd techniques works better on things with sharp folds, not gentle waving capes. I could have put more work into it, but I’m not sure it would be worth it for the subtle results it would have garnered. Although I do think I need to pick up a red foundation paint before I start work on the eldar. Having to put 3+ coats on everything would drive me mad. Well, more mad then I already am…
Still working on the HG’s backpack. The sternguard ones take more time. Waiting to the brown wash to dry on the giant gold eagle, then I need to go back and drybrush over, and start on the purity seals. Detail is fun, but simple paints faster.
McManiak wrote: wow, i go away for a week or so and you paint a drop pod......is this what it takes hahaha.
Good progress mate and I agree that whilst the old paints are nostalgic they are not as good as the new ones.
Keep it coming mate
Heh, the finished pod in the background is an old one. Often models will return to the paintbench as reference pieces so I get the new ones done consistently. I still have 5 doors and 4 blades left on the WIP pod. Although I put the black layer down on two doors last night, so progress is happening.
I’m almost done blocking out the colors on the HG standard bearer. Just need to put white on the studs and red on the purity seals. Then the normal rounds of washes and drybrushes. Going to do the tabard last on this guy, see how that works. Unlike the previous HG, his torso is glued to his legs, so he’s getting done in one fell swoop. Well, besides the backpack and banner. I still need to figure out what to do for the banner. I might try to print something out, or just go with a very basic freehand on a blue background. I figure in the depths of the sanctuary, there are original banners from the founding of the legion. Nothing ornate, just the chapter symbol on a basic field. But probably handed to the primarch by the Emperor himself. Another option would be to carefully remove the old chapter banner from my venerable RTB01 marine, and retire him; passing the flag on to a new ancient. Or photocopy the old template I used to make that one and fabricate a new one. I suspect the HG will be carrying a empty pole for a while until I figure this out.
On another note:
You know you are a gamer when driving with the windows down on a beautiful summer day your first thoughts are not “I should really do some yardwork” or “This is a good day to go for a walk” but instead “What a wasted day; It’s perfect weather to prime, but the to-do box is empty. I should have been busier building stuff” I will point out that I did do yardwork and go for a walk, as well as show The Boy how to pull fuses on my car (which did in fact work to fix the radio). So while I would prefer to be painting in my cozy cave, I can enjoy the great outdoors. At least in very small amounts.
Backpack still in progress, and I need to decide on the banner, but Ancient Tortalus is almost done. Yup, he gets a name. When fishing through old books looking for fluff, I found a story about Chaplain Cassius anointing a new standard bearer, telling him the history of the Banner of Macragge. I knew at one point there was a named character for the Ultramarine’s BSB, Ancient Helveticus, but he has a powerfist, so not really applicable to the modern FOC. Plus he died at the Battle of Macragge. Another Ancient (which is the title of the bearer of the chapter standard, BTW), Ancient Galatan, who had his arm sheared off by an ork warlord, picked up the banner with his other hand, took 3 more mortal wounds, and refused to die until the battle was over. If I had read this bit before putting my mini together, he’d have a bloody stump and an angry screaming head. As it is, I placed the shining marks on the admantium shaft of the banner pole, where his arm was cut off (as related in Cassius’s story)
Things we know about the Banner of Macragge:
Tall Banner
Gold Ultramarine symbol on a field of deep, rich blue
Intricate with honorifics and victory scrolls
Unburnable, and self repairing.
Lists all 77 UM chapter masters
Honorific for every major victory. Cassus was present for 9 of them. While 400 years old is quite a stretch, it’s just a portion of the ~10k years the UMs have been racking up wins.
So my plan to re-use my old banner won’t work. It’s torn, burnt, and ragged. Plus more rectangular, and not tall. I think that I’ll just freehand a gold “U” on a normal blue banner. And probably tack on a lot of purity seals, hanging scrolls, and the like. There are some good ones from the venerable dread kit I can use.
Also in the pod progress department: I put the silver drybrush on the two WIP doors, and the first layer of blue. Next step is the second blue coat, then wash (picking out the details somewhere in there)
I think some of those marines in the last prime batch are going to be next across the paint station. But we’ll see where the mood takes me. The Boy is finished with his summer program, so I just lost my two hour midday window. Progress might be affected.
Looking solid. I did a version of the chapter banner ages ago (as a back banner for some reason), As the bearer is always called 'Ancient' I put him in Mk I armour. I'll do a pic eventually. I'm interested to read about the banner being self repairing etc, is that in one of the novels?
Your plan to do a simple U with lots of scrolls etc sounds good, the Ven Dred bit should work well.
RandyMcStab wrote: Looking solid. I did a version of the chapter banner ages ago (as a back banner for some reason), As the bearer is always called 'Ancient' I put him in Mk I armour. I'll do a pic eventually. I'm interested to read about the banner being self repairing etc, is that in one of the novels?
Your plan to do a simple U with lots of scrolls etc sounds good, the Ven Dred bit should work well.
All the lore I've picked up for the banner is from the 3rd ed. Chapter Approved book. Which is a compilation of WD articles. Specifically the one with the UM characters, Chaplain Cassius, Ancient Helviticus, and Captain Invictus. There is a one page story about Tortalus being given the banner. Page 121. There are good odds I have the WD on the shelf, but I'd have to dig for it.
"It is said to be made of a stuff known only to the ancients; light as silk, but strong as steel, flame cannot burn it and where it is rent asunder it re-spins itself as perfect as the day it was first made."
So the banner still needs to be done, but it’s not like this is the only empty banner pole in my army. But the honor guard themselves are done. I think I have one more set of legs with the tabard, so might put together one more (with an axe) but for now, I’m calling the squad complete. Minimum 3 man, champ (with the cape) standard bearer, and one normal guy. Well, as normal as honor guard get.
I’d also like to take this time to curse all you guys on the other side of the pond. I keep trying to put that unneeded “u” in “Honor” I blame you entirely, as does my spellchecker.
On the paintbench is the Dev sarge with the c-grav. Almost done with him. After all the ornate details and multi-step processes for the HG, just painting a normal guy in power armor, even a sarge, is a breeze. Once he’s done I’ll probably try to kick out some of the other guys from the last prime batch. They represent the guys I made to get the Company where I want it, so even if they are a little redundant, I’d like to have them done. Although the vanguard vets are looking nice as well. But I think I need to paint something a little more basic for a bit, and the vets are not that.
Quick update: done with the dev sarge, finished 2/5 doors for the pod. The other three doors are done with the black/silver, and are awaiting the blue coats and details.
Pod progress: doors done.
It was the right choice to do the doors next. With them done, the end is in sight, so motivation is on the rise! Just need the 4 blades and I’ll be able to put that thing behind me.
HB: New marine reporting for duty!
RT: By the Emperor! What are they feeding the scouts these days? Or are you one of those “tru-scale” guys?
HB: 25+ years of scale creep pops, deal with it.
RT: <fumes> We don’t need reinforcements, We’ve been doing fine as-is for over two decades.
HB: If by “doing fine” you mean riding the shelf, sure. How much table time have you seen with the old scratch built ML and flamer combo? You are what, the 4th pick tactical squad, right before the 2nd edition bolter huggers? I diligently assembled a full suit of mark VI armor to join you guys. I even got a helmet stripe Do you know the last time one of those got painted on? It was probably one of you guys! I’m the only HB marine outside the dev squads and swap shelf. You need me if you want to fight anything other then dust bunnies.
RT: Good points. Welcome to the third company, 4th squad.
My 4th squad has a heavy bolter too, not sure why you need to know, but hey. Liking the tease of the Venerable Dreadnought and Vanguard Veterans there in the back.
Looking great as always though!
@Warboss_Waaazag: Yup, older then dirt here. One of these days I need to photograph some of my older non-marine stuff. I’ve got a small collection of orks, but because they aren’t related to any current project, they never get near the camera.
@McManiak: Glad you are entertained
@Zambro, Sir Samuel Buca: Nice to know I’m not the only one who looks at the background of WIP shots to see what people are up to. So many neat things lurking in the corners of pictures.
@Sir Samuel Buca, have you ever written up a formal TOE for your company? It’s always interesting to see different people’s takes on the same thing. I’m not sure how much formal information is available on the 3rd, so we just have our peers to compare with.
I suspect the next marine to get paint is going to be the c-plasma sarge. He’s not terribly ornate, so should be quick work. And, of course, more pod bits. I should also take look of what’s going on with the assembly side of the workbench. I’ve not put anything new together in a while. While it might seem we are in the halcyon days of endless summer, fall is just around the corner. Which means I need to make sure I’ve got enough stuff primed and ready to survive the winter. While it might seem a little early to start squirreling away projects, if I need to order something from my FLGS, make it up there to get it (when it eventually comes in) clip, clean, magnetize, and assemble something, there is a significant time delay between wanting to get something and ready to paint. Particularly at my glacial pace.
But enough rambling for now. I should go get a coat of paint on things.
While waiting for paint to dry, I decided to go through this thread and see how I’m doing on my yearly one-a-week goal. With the end of summer in sight, I need to figure out how hard I need to push towards the end of the year. Here is what I’ve painted so far:
Bike w/melta
Bike Sarge
Bike
Attack bike
Sternguard sarge
Sternguard HF 9 assault marines
IG primaris psyker
c-melta tac sarge
c-grav dev sarge
Jump captain
Company champion
3 HG HB mk. 6 marine
So that’s 26 guys I can check off on the “done” list. So by some bizarre coincidence, halfway to my goal. Honest - I didn’t plan this. By a quick flip through the calendar, we have 20 weeks left in the year. So I’m a bit behind, but not horribly so. It does mean I need to pick up my building. I’ve got 19 things in my primary ready to paint pile. There are more odds and ends hiding out in the corners, but I’d like to fill out the paint list with more relevant stuff. I also need to stock a couple of months worth of things in the primed and ready pile for next year, before the spring priming window.
In a more immediate progress report, I’m almost done with the c-plasma sarge. Body is done. Gun is done, and the first layer of blue is down on his arm. So all he needs is the second layer of blue on his arm, and then for that to get washed, and he can report for duty. 2 more blades for the pod are getting there. Black/silver is done, and the first rough layer of blue is drying now. Actually, It’s probably been done drying for a bit now, this post has take a while to write.
So back to painting for me. Hope you all are having a good weekend.
Good progress mate. Only 6 weeks behind is pretty good when you have had spells of bad weather stopping you priming etc. I think you will pick the pace up enought to finish...
Worst case scenario I just slap some paint on the skeletons lurking in the back. I figure I can bang those 6 guys out in an hour. But I’m trying to avoid just painting random stuff to boost my numbers…
With the talk of random stuff in the background of pictures, I figured while I had the camera out I’d take a newer pic of my workspace. I have an older one that I trot out from time to time in “show your space” threads, but it’s a little dated.
Here is the old pic. I’m almost afraid to play the “spot the differences” game with the shot two years old. Some stuff in the the exact same spot, still waiting for paint.
Spoiler:
While not the best shot to showcase his gear, here is the combi-plasma sarge I just finished up.
Turned out OK. The two pod blades I was working on are ready for the wash step, and then are done. So two more after that, final assembly, and finished.
Done with the wash and touch up. 3/5 of the way done on the blades.
Something new for the to-prime box:
HG with an axe. I've had a lot of fun building stuff out of the veteran boxes, this is probably the last full marine from them. And he's not 100%. Still lots of spare guns and other toys, but the torso/legs/shoulders/heads are mostly gone. The gun arm is just tacked on for now, will paint it seperately.
Basic banner with lots of scrolls, tapestries, and purity seals. Not pictured is the back, where I stuck the nunchuck scroll case and a hanging scroll w/ seal. So this gets stuck in the to-prime box for now.
Not a lot of progress to report for last weekend. I just got back from a 4 day road trip out to south of Pittsburg (about an 8 hour drive) where I was visiting family. Lots of cute babies, not a lot of painting.
I did get the black layer down on one of the remaining pod bits. Going to do the other one now.
Deathwatch marines built. I gave the DA a combi bolter, partially for theme, but mostly because I needed to poach the bolter I has set aside for him for that last HG.
So, in order:
Space Wolf
Dark Angel
Raven Guard
White Scar
Crimson Fist.
Right now they all have both arms just tacked on. Normally I'd just glue the left arms on, but with the deathwatch paint scheme, I figured I'd do them separately.
On the paint bench the last pod bits are done with the black and silver, awaiting the blue.
So my days of whining about drop pods are over. At least the personal, in-progress whining; I can’t promise I won’t wax bitter with my 2 cents in other P&M threads about them. I’m sure you all were as irritated hearing me whine about it as I was actually working on it. In other good news, school started back up today, so The Boy is out of my hair for the bulk of the day. Which is good, we were getting a little stir crazy towards the end of summer. But it does mean my hobby time is back to full!
So what to do with all that time? Right now I’ve got the first blue coat down on one of the vanguard vets. They are going to be the next marines across the bench. I think the next vehicle I do will be the LSS. It’s one of the things I really want to try out on the table. Particularly if I play a maelstrom mission.
On the build side I’m not sure what to work on. I was thinking a mk. VI sarge with a c-flamer to join the new HB marine in 4th squad might be worth it. But I should also work up some command squad marines. That, and possible a new captain, are the last things I need to get my company where I want it. Other things on the radar are another land speeder and to kit-bash some LotD. We’ll see where the mood takes me.
Two command squad marines and a mk. VI sarge. All the arms are magnetized. The prime box has nine marines and a banner in it now, time to keep a weather eye out for a nice day...
Nice to see your summer had more hobby time than mine!
Those deathwatch marines look awesome. How are you going to play them, rules wise. Sternguard or regular tacticals?
Glad to see that DP is all done now. How long did it take? Awell, you dont have to do another for a while. 3 DPs are quite versatile and offer a lot of different builds. Next stop, 5 DPs
Zambro wrote: Nice to see your summer had more hobby time than mine!
Those deathwatch marines look awesome. How are you going to play them, rules wise. Sternguard or regular tacticals?
Glad to see that DP is all done now. How long did it take? Awell, you dont have to do another for a while. 3 DPs are quite versatile and offer a lot of different builds. Next stop, 5 DPs
Box to table, the pod took almost a year. I thought it might be fun to sift through my blog and actually get a timeline on it. Dates given are the closest blog post referencing the event.
The pod was purchased: 7/9/13
Cleaned/built: 9/10/13 - 24/10/13
Primed: 6/4/14
Painted 3/5/14 - 5/9/14
I picked it up as part of the supply drop accompanying the new codex, bundled with the strikeforce box. Cleanup and subassembly went surprisingly quickly, considering the size of the drop it arrived in. It spent a little longer in the prime box then normal, due to my rattle-can running out of juice and winter falling before I got a replacement. After sitting ready for paint for about a month, I started slowly painting it in parts, taking over 4 months to finish it.
While the gamer side of me would like to have two more pods, if I even think about it too loudly, the modeling side of me will do unseemly things to the gamer side. I have zero plans of purchasing more pods. Even if I was given some as a gift, unless they were assembled and painted, I’d consider exchanging them. But then, if I had another one [i]in hand]/i] the gamer side of me might be able to convince the modeler to do one more…
The Deathwatch are almost certainly going to be fielded as sternguard. I’ve got more then enough tacticals, and frankly don’t see the need to field a 5 man squad of more bolter boys. I suspect they will be used as unit filler in a second sternguard squad if I ever decide to field two. I don’t have enough to field a full squad of them, and really prefer to drop them in 9/10 man squads.
Summer progress is always a little slower then I like. Weekends are often spent doing family stuff, rather then getting games in, and The Boy being out of school eats into my painting time. But overall, it was a reasonable one this year. Glad we are heading into fall though.
Sorry for the iPad pic, The Wife has the good camera.
Not bad progress for the week. One marine is done, but his arms/pack still need work. The other is progressing though similar steps, just a little behind. If I buckle down, I might be able to finish both by the end of the weekend. But I try to post a progress reports on Friday, so you get a WIP shot instead.
While there is a double’s tournament this weekend, I don’t think I can spend the whole day at the FLGS playing. Need to do the responsible homeowner thing and do some chores like stripping the paint off the deck so we can re-stain it before winter hits. But I do want to head up there and pick up a/o order a bunch of things.
A good red base paint (for Eldar)
Stormraven
King of Tokyo (fun boardgame)
There are a bunch of things on my “maybe” list that I haven’t made up my mind about:
Another box of sternguard (to be mixed with spare tac bodies and the bits box to make both more SG and HG)
More tanks. Either a Whirlwind, Hunter/Stalker, Vindi, or another Pred. For a collection my size, I have very few metal boxes. Could use more treads.
Centurions. They’ve grown on me. I’ve seen some nice, simple, mods that make them look much better. Mostly leaving some of the leg plates off. And they are mechanically strong. They are one of the things that’s if it’s on the shelf, I might walk out with them, but probably don’t care enough to order.
As I run down on the pile of grey plastic, I think again of the LotD idea on my to-do list. And that gets me thinking about bits and options. I like the concept of boarding marines as a counts-as, with GK teleporter backpacks and stormshields for the 3++. But then I think of the bits I’d need to pick up. Especially since I’d need another Dev box for a MM. Is it worth 3 boxes of marines for one squad? Sure, there would be plenty of spare parts. I know I can get some bits separately, but that would cost real cash, rather then store credit. And some places want $10+ for the MM. A third of the cost of the box for one bit? I don’t think so. A lot of the GK sprue could be re-purposed, lots of good bits there.
But on the flip side, I’ve got an extensive bits box from WHFB, where my armies were/are undead and chaos warriors. Tons of bones, skulls, and the like I could just glue onto tac marines, add some black paint and some freehand flames and I’m good to go. Problem is, I’m not 100% sold on the classic look of the LotD. It’s OK, just not my favorite. Cheep and easy though, so it has a lot going for it.
Oh well, enough rambling for now. I should go for a walk then put another coat of paint down. Or the opposite order, so the layer can dry while I’m out getting exercise.
Closing in on the finish of those vets I'm just wondering why there is the SS painted blue, but not the arm? Is he going to have a different colour arm? Surely it would've made sense to do the blue on the SS and arm at the same time..? I might have missed it, but did you say the jump packs are magnetised? The could make a nice double as VV w/ packs, VV w/o packs a/o honour guard...
Some paint for the Eldar... Does that mean they'll be getting some attention? You could get the Citadel red spray can. Would definately speed up the base layer painting (just a heads up, they're not primer, so you'll need to prime first).
A stormraven would be awesome, but also take an age to complete Perhapse you can accompany the potential red spray can with a blue spray can and speed up the process across the board.
As for what else... Get what you'll be motivated to paint. LotD are cool (both models and rules - imo). I like the original models, so I wont comment on how to make alternatives. IIRC, you haven't painted much armour recently. If i'm not mistaken, you already have a vindicator(?), another one would be cool on the table top...
Zambro wrote: Closing in on the finish of those vets I'm just wondering why there is the SS painted blue, but not the arm? Is he going to have a different colour arm? Surely it would've made sense to do the blue on the SS and arm at the same time..?
I might have missed it, but did you say the jump packs are magnetised? The could make a nice double as VV w/ packs, VV w/o packs a/o honour guard...
Some paint for the Eldar... Does that mean they'll be getting some attention?
You could get the Citadel red spray can. Would definately speed up the base layer painting (just a heads up, they're not primer, so you'll need to prime first).
A stormraven would be awesome, but also take an age to complete Perhapse you can accompany the potential red spray can with a blue spray can and speed up the process across the board.
As for what else... Get what you'll be motivated to paint. LotD are cool (both models and rules - imo). I like the original models, so I wont comment on how to make alternatives. IIRC, you haven't painted much armour recently. If i'm not mistaken, you already have a vindicator(?), another one would be cool on the table top...
On the partial paint: It’s one of my bad habits. I’ve found that if I touch the paint before I wash a part, the oils on my skin cause the wash to bead and not flow properly. So instead of temporarily mounting the part on a paperclip or something else sensible, I just paint and finish one half, then do the other. You might also notice the bottom half of the jetpacks are the same way.
Yup, backpacks are magnetized. I suspect these guys are going to be my go-to models when I need something unusual in my list. On my list of things to do is to rig up some bolter/combi-bolter arms for them so they can sub in for sternguard. Need to make sure I have enough vet shoulder pads kicking around. I’m pretty sure I have a lot of the old ones from the command squad, even if I’m out of the new ones from the stern/van kits.
I’ve had problems color matching sprays, and bad rattle cans of primer, so I think I’m going to stick with the old fashioned brush work. While a good idea generally, I’ve had enough bad experiences to swear off it.
The Eldar are getting more attention. I’ve got a farseer on the bench I’m trying to fix. Last summer when I was cleaning mold lines off him, I snapped the head off of his staff. As he’s metal, fixing it is not that simple. Carefully working to pin it. IIRC from when I was originally working on him, I was going to magnetize his head, so I could swap it with the jetseer. Or I might have just be planning to make two heads for the one on the bike, I’ll have to sift through bits and figure out what I was thinking.
I have a predador, not a vindicator. So if I get another “real” tank, the question is if I want to go for variation or redundancy. While I prefer the flexibility of the pred, I already have one, and you need to respect the pie plate. But both work for armor saturation and mechanized lists. Given the way I put lists together, I generally like to have a wide selection of units on the shelf, so the vindi will probably win out. Assuming I go with the big guns, and not one of the support tanks.
One advantage of just puttering along building my collection is I don’t need to make any decisions unless I want to. So if I can’t make up my mind on what tank to get, or how I want to do the LotD, I can just procrastinate. At the very least, it means I can spend more time getting the Eldar up to speed, which is getting closer and closer. I need to finish getting them a fresh coat of primer and in the to-do pile before winter hits.
Speaking of primer: After my walk I sprayed the stuff in the prime box, so another 9 marines can line up on the paint bench and wait their turn.
Quick update: Just got back from the FLGS with some 60mm bases and a pot of khorne red. On order from the 40k side is a box of vanguard vets and the stormraven. I might trade for the GK backpacks I want (one guy has some spares) but the GK box has some nice bits in it. I was thinking of making a jump librarian, and there is the long term possibility of one on a bike as well. An investment in a 5 man box now would pay off on those projects later. Psychic hood backs, all sorts of force weapons; good stuff.
The vets on the table are progressing. Rainy day out put an end to most of the weekend projects, so I've been puttering about all day.
Two down, three to go. Once again, need to get the good camera from The Wife. The next marine on the bench is going to be the c-flamer sarge I just put together for 4th squad. I’ve put the first layer of black down on the LSS. My neck/back is reminding me again of why I’m not a huge fan of painting vehicles. So much area, not enough easy stopping points to stretch.
Sarge: So I’m here to replace you in charge of 4th squad.
Marine: But I’ve been acting sergeant for years! You can’t just step in and kick me out.
Sarge: “Acting” being the key word there. You don’t have the proper helmet strip, or even insignia on your arm. Your only claim to fame is the fact that you are flying your back-banner. With a fairly nonsensical number, considering who we are.
Marine: You can’t boot me to the swap shelf that easily! The squad will back me up.
Sarge: I’m pretty sure the heavy will side with me, and the flamer dates from post-3rd edition, so I wouldn’t count on him if I were you. You might have some bolter boys, but we’ve got all the toys.
Heavy: <ca-chunk>
Sarge: Look, if we ever need to combat squad, you can lead the second half, OK? Now off to the swap shelf, you won’t be the first sarge to head down there.
Marine: <sulks off>
Heavy: Sarge, we’re HB/F and you’ve got a combi flamer, we’re never going to combat squad!
Sarge: I know that, but I wanted to toss the poor guy a bone. He has been in charge of this squad for a couple of decades.
So without further ado, I give you the 4th squad, at full shelf deployment:
So the only marines I need to finish for my revised shelf list is the command squad, and they are built and primed. I’m still debating if I want to build a more flexible PA captain. I like the one I have, and he has a lot of history, but stormbolter/power sword (even relic blade) is just so mediocre on the table. Not a big rush, foot captains are pretty low on the list of things I field anyway.
On the paintbench: LSSWIP. Yes, it’s green. My scouts are mostly in forest camo, with the exception of a pair of snipers in grey/black night uniforms. Rather then just stippling on brown/black, like I did with my scout bikers, I might actually cut up a sponge and give that a try. But I need a second coat of the DA green first, and to do the trim. I just did a rough coat with a huge brush, need to get out a smaller brush for the tight places. And then do the crew (the pilot/gunner, not bothering with the guys in back) and the extra bits.
Next week I’ll probably start on the new command squad guys, just so I can formally close the company. Plus more progress on the LSS, not sure if I can get all that done in a week. But I do need to try to get more then one thing done a week if I want to meet my goal for the year. Not only am I a little behind, but once the holidays hit, I’m going to loose a few more weeks, so it would be best for me to make up ground while I can.
Quick update, just to keep me honest. A little more detail/trim work done on the LSS. I’ll probably give it another coat of DA green and then the camo. Plus the crew and bits. The two command squad guys are almost done. Just need to blue wash the lot and finish the storm shield. Might have to wait until Sunday to finish. Lots of distractions this week, so progress was slow.
I pinned the snapped head back onto my farseer’s staff, and glued him together. So the to-prime pile is growing again. I’ve also started to take a knife to the Eldar rangers I picked up. Finecast. So far not a lot of flaws, but cleaning up all the injection points is a pain. I replaced the blade in my hobby knife, which helps, but you still need the blade skills of a sushi master to get things done right. Hopefully I can clean them up to something passible. There is a narrow window in the middle of the day where I can work with that level of precision. After the morning caffeine jitters have worn off, but before the evening’s beverage kicks in. Not that I have a drink every night, and some are stiffer then others. The fact that one of my ongoing chores is pressure washing my deck does not do go things for my hands either.
Oh well, enough griping for now. The Boy only had a half day at school, so I need to rustle up some lunch for us. Hope everyone has a good weekend.
Al looking good mate. Will be nice to see some Eldar on your page again and I know what you mean about the finecast injection points. I'm alright with any NUrgle bits as they can look bad and be good if you know what I mean haha...
Supply drop has arrived. So here is the plan for what to do with it:
Stormraven is pretty straight forward. Once I break the box open I want to see how feasible it will be to rework the top. Not a fan of the giant intake scoop or top turret. I think getting rid of most of the crap up top should re-ballance the mini and make it look a little less ungainly. The turret is definitely going. If it can be swapped for a razorback, that’s the easy option. I might look into getting a FW or 3rd party one. They are nice and low profile, and look more appropriate for a flyer. Another option would be to build a TLAsC rig similar to what I made for my razor. Maybe have a marine sticking out a top hatch working it like a pintle mount. We’ll see.
A 5 man squad of LotD counts-as. I’m using Voidstalker Veterans as a working unit title. A specialist squad designed to teleport into spaces too tight for terminators, for precision strikes on critical targets. Formed after the Battle of Macragge and the lessons learned in the space battle there. Made from GK and VV parts.
5 more VV. These guys are probably going to be cut with some tactical marine parts, as they are secondary to the LotD build. Still, I’d like to be able to field a full 10 man squad if I want. I suspect they might get a lot of the CC toys from the GK box.
Jump Librarian. If I can’t make a decent looking librarian with a jump pack out of these two boxes, I should just hang up the hobby tools and buy pre-painted minis. Looking at my collection of HQs and the options to field them, I’m getting close to a full matrix. Both captains and chaplains are good with all four options (PA, TDA, JP, Bike) and I already have a PA and TDA librarian. So once I get a JP lib, that just leaves bike lib and MotF as the unfilled options. It is tempting to use the spare GK bits to boost my librarian count to 5 so I can field the formation in apoc games. Who doesn’t love vortex pie plates that might end up sinking into the ground and eating the planet?
I tried to sponge apply camo, it seemed to work OK. Not 100% on how it turned out, but I like it enough that I’m not going to fiddle with it. Still need to pick out a few details, do a little touch ups, and then the accessories and the crew.
The final members of the command squad. All the arms are magnetized, so I can swap things around as needed. I was odd painting the veteran shoulderpads without the white trim. But while vets, these guys are not from the first company, so no trim. Here is the full squad:
Apothecary (BP/chainsword)
Standard Bearer (bolter)
Company Champion (power sword/BP, combat shield)
Veteran (flamer/SS)
Veteran (power axe/BP)
175 points, so not that outrageous, but I wanted some gear on them. Mostly a pure CC squad. In an ideal world the standard bearer would have a BP/CCW rather then a bolter, but I like the way he looks, so he’s not getting replaced. The guy with the flamer and SS is first into the breach. I was going to go with just a bolt pistol, as his job is to eat fire and die. But the flamer is only a few points, and it might be useful to burn things before I charge.
So I opened up the GK box. So many nice CC bits in there. Also one of the legs has a tabard, which means I might put together another HG marine, probably with a relic blade. Some of the halberds might get turned into power spears for the VV. While some of the shoulderpads are firmly GK, others are a little more generically inquisition. I think that incinerator is going to find its way over to the Deathwatch, and a HF salamander is going to join that growing squad. The psy-cannon might end up part of a MotF with a c-beamer, but that project is still in the fuzzy stages of idea formation.
Also on the workbench I’ve mostly cleaned up 2/5 of the rangers. Very slow going, as prepping finecast requires a large amount of focus and precision. As that is not particularly relaxing, it’s a chore to be hunched over the table slowly carving away flash and injection ports. I don’t want to back burner them again, but they might have to step down and let marines through the workbench so I can get them primed before the weather runs out.
So I was over in this Battletech thread and was feeling a little nostalgic. So I decided to break out some of the old lead for a photo shoot. After all, one of the goals of this blog is for me to get pictures of my old stuff. So here we go. Set the wayback machine for 3055, it’s giant stompy robot time.
House Kurita assault lance. Warhammer, Awesome, Battlemaster, Phoenix Hawk. While the P-hawk is a little light, IIRC he’s there so the tonnage ballances out with:
I think this is mearly a heavy lance. No affiliation. Thunderbolt, Rifleman, Crusader, Griffon. For all you 40k players out there, the second guy from the left is the reason 2xTLAC dreads are called “riflemen” Although any battletech purist will tell you that a TLLC/TLAC dread is closer to a “true” rifleman. But then it should also be AV11/10 and have the Gets Hot! rule. Battletech riflemen were notorious for paper armor and heat problems...
House Davion recon lance. Shadowhawk, Centurion, Wasp, Locust. (good chance I got some of these wrong, always had problems telling the light mechs apart)
And a random assortment of Inner Sphere mechs. Catapult, Atlas, Locust, Highlander, Stinger, Wolverine.
And a big ol’ pile of clan mechs. Plus the inevitable pile of parts that fell off.
I know I’ve got some unpainted stuff somewhere, at least one more omnimech and some incomplete mechs with bits missing. Should be a mechbuster aerospace fighter around somewhere, and I think a chopper. I’d have to dig around. Lot of infantry as well, mostly unpainted, but a decent amount made it over to the OGRE side of the fence and is on 1-3 man pennybases.
And for curent projects, I’ve got the first two layers of green on the LSS crew. DA green for the hard armor, goblin green for fabric. Looks like rain this weekend, so I should be able to get some work done painting, rather then outside. This is good.
Just tacked together ATM, but a good mock up of what the squad should look like. He’s the sarge, with a c-grav. I think my build is going to be meltagun/plasma cannon, combi-grav. Although I should probably swap out the melta for a plasma gun. I’d like to run M/MM, c-grav, but don’t have a MM kicking around. And I’d need an old (or FW) over the shoulder one, so that’s probably not happening. I might magnetize the heavy/special arms, we’ll see. I also noticed that these guys can’t take melta bombs, which makes me sad.
GK head, backpack, legs (for some)
Tactical torso (most are the ones with the vent and bulky cables) legs for non-GK ones, bolters
Shoulders are mixed for the squad, mostly command squad w/ t-honors, with simple ones for the other. Sarge gets a little fancy to stand out.
VV Arms, storm shields
Sternguard for the special weapon.
Old RT-era plastic orc plasma cannon. Which I need to find a decent arm to hold. Might require some work.
While it’s still a ways off, I’m trying to think about paint jobs that will differentiate these guys, but still tie into the army. I might do white helmets, as that’s something I don’t normally do for my vets. Other options would be to actually paint the trim on the shoulderpads, or the pads themselves in a different color. Black or silver come to mind for options, but green trim is also a possibility. As I put together some fluff for these guys in my head, they use precision teleports to zip in, evaluate the situation and set up a perimeter. Unlike terminators, which are slow and ponderous, or assault troops who get stuck in and can’t react well once committed, the PA/SS/bolter combination makes for a fluid, durable force. Being that they were developed initially for boarding actions, green trim for the 4th company (headed by the Master of the Fleet) makes some sense. But as they also have a veteran++ statline, white for the 1st company can also work.
Like most vehicle projects, it got tedious at the end. All the scale problems of vehicles and finicky internal detailing (that you can’t just glue the doors shut on) coupled with the “I’m not just blue” paint scheme I do my scouts in. The only thing left to do is figure out how I’m going to keep it on the flight stem. I might sink a magnet into the mounting hole and put one on the peg, so it doesn’t fall out when I lift it to move. Still, just a minor thing.
I’ve cleaned up and partially glued 4/5 of the LotD vets. Changed my mind about the special; replaced it with a plasma gun. Mostly. What I did was use a wrist mount magnet, same as my biker specials. So once I get it painted, I’ll be able to swap for a melta or grav gun. Not that the legion can take grav, but my parts will be compatible. I’m not sure what I’ll build after I finish those guys. The raven is calling, but looking at the GK sprues has triggered a bunch of ideas, so I might just run with those. We’ll see. Not sure who is going to get paint next either, I should start on a tank to work on in the background, while getting some troops down.
Quick update: LotD almost done. PC is just tacked on ATM. Getting the arm right on that is going to be rough. Might have to greenstuff a wrist, extend an arm, or rework the bottom of the cannon.
Edit: Quick update update: Jump librarian is done. Staff arm is magnetized, jump pack separate for painting. Cut parts for HG w/relic blade and Deathwatch Salamander with HF. Not that he’s actually got any Salamander iconography, but he’s the guy with the burner, so that’s who’s going on the shoulder. Just need to clean and assemble them. Not sure if I’m going to leave the SB on the HGs arm. He’s got the GK bits, so two hands on the sword, which is cool. But if I need to diverge from WYSWYG is it better to have no bolter at all, or a SB rather then a normal one?
Continuing in the Deathwatch/Librarian/wacky non-Ultramarine theme of late, I’ve started a little side project. Gitsplitta is running a Mantis Maker competition and I’ve decided to toss my hat into the ring. I’m going to put together a MW librarian, serving with the deathwatch. Odds of me getting this done on time are low (even though I have until mid-November) Odds of me winning are non-exsistant, judging from some of the entries in the last one. Heck, if I place anything but dead last I’d be amazed. But it’s a fun thing to do in the Dakka community, and I’ve got the bits and some modicum of motivation.
The thought was to have him kneeling, bloody sword at rest, focusing his powers with arm outstretched to divine his next target. I might swap some bits around, but here is what I’m working with:
We’ll see how it turns out. I think the weather is about to get damp here for about a week, so I might not be able to get him assembled before it hits.
You have a cool idea for a pose, so that's got to be worth some points before they even look at painting.
I had a hard time working out what those bits are on the backpacks of the LOTD. What are they? You'll have to be careful with them, they look like they have a very fragile join.
Those are GK interceptor backpacks. They use them to teleport around. I’m using them to convey the accurate deep strike ability on PA troops. And they are fiddly.
So I don’t think I picked up a brush at all this last week. Well, not to paint minis, I did use one to help base. Yup, you read that right: Basing.
On Ultramarines even. Surely the end times are upon us. Experimented with another technique (seeing how much flock would stick to a freshly painted white base) Not very happy with the results, will stick to the paste method.
Had some reasonable weather (and some bad). But all it takes is one good day to get some primer down.
I ended up using an old RT arm for the PC. While it is smaller then a modern arm/shoulderpad, I don’t think it’s noticeable hiding under that massive cannon. I built up the area where the hand holds the gun, you will probably get a better angle when I paint it. Also done is my MW libbi. I think I’ll paint some of the normal DW marines to work on my technique before I start on him.
While I’ve had a few shots of my painting space, I’ve only done close ups of WIPs on my assembly workbench. So here is a far shot. In progress is the stormraven. While I think I’m just going to glue it closed, right now it’s rubber banded together in case I need to access the insides for the turret work I have in mind. I’m doing the landing gear as retracted; it’s blocky enough without stuff sticking out at all angles. One thing I have in mind is to take one of the rear landing struts that I’m not using, and have it partially stick out the top turret ring. The guns could either be mounted on the top, or sides, of the strut. This should give the look of a gun that retracts into the body of the flyer for orbital drops, but pops up for combat. And should be lower profile then the big, blocky, servitor gunpod.
I have to re-jigger the HF salamnder I’m working on. I think I was glueing faster then checking, but the rimmed DW shoulder pad (which I already glued to the arm) is conflicting with the backpack (also glued on). As I use plastic cement, rather then superglue, fixing this is not easy. What I might do is cut and rotate the HF, so it’s pointing to the side, and do a hand swap for the formally supporting arm. Maybe a grenade or ausepx. Back burnered for now.
Nevelon wrote: In progress is the stormraven. While I think I’m just going to glue it closed, right now it’s rubber banded together in case I need to access the insides for the turret work I have in mind. I’m doing the landing gear as retracted; it’s blocky enough without stuff sticking out at all angles. One thing I have in mind is to take one of the rear landing struts that I’m not using, and have it partially stick out the top turret ring. The guns could either be mounted on the top, or sides, of the strut. This should give the look of a gun that retracts into the body of the flyer for orbital drops, but pops up for combat. And should be lower profile then the big, blocky, servitor gunpod.
Quoting myself to show how it turned out. Or will, once I swap out the poster tack for glue/magnets. The landing gear has a nice sturdy hydraulics looks, so even if most of it is hidden inside the raven, the glimpses you get of it makes it looks like something that can actually move. From a realism POV, the guns actually do fit through the turret ring. The assault cannons are from the Ravenwing sprue, which are smaller then the ones in the SR kit. I’m not sure if I’m going to magnetize. I know I should, and it would be easy, but including space for the other guns might make me have to raise the turret a bit higher then I’d like, which would defeat the whole reason for the low-profile kitbash.
I think I might take the other strut and make an icarus LC mount from it. Balance the LC on one side with some sensors/lights on the other. Either the lights from the RW sprue or the radar dish from the accessory sprue. But that’s another project.
On the painting front I’ve got the DA marine from the DW force and a c-melta sternguard working their way across the bench. Working on the DW scheme before I do the Mantis Warrior librarian for Git’s contest. Right now I’m thinking black base, grey drybrush, grey highlight, black wash, re-highlight. Still putting down base coats on the details, so a ways to go before we see how it turns out. I’ll try to get pictures tomorrow of my progress for my Friday report.
It’s friday, so for those of you still reading, time for an update! For those of you not reading, Fine! I didn’t need you anyway. <sniff>
Here is the pic I promised yesterday. Progressing nicely at my normal, slow pace. Just did some touch ups on the DW marine’s black, and the wash on the SG’s grey; drying as I type this. The sternguard is almost ready for his second touch-up blue layer and final wash. Need to get a little BftBG on his reds and that should be basically it.
The Deathwatch marine needs to be greyed down, highlighted (which the drybrush might do enough of) and then inked. I want all the little channels and whatnots to be a darker shade then the flat plates of the armor. Which is hard when dealing with blacks. Reminds me of something my high school art teacher told me. “Reserve pure black/white for extreme highlights, as you can’t go any farther. You shouldn’t have more then a few points of each in your work.” This was working with greyscale charcoal and white pastels, but I think the principle holds here. Can’t say I’m enjoying working in shades of black, but I’m not though yet. At the very least, I’m painting something non-blue, so that’s a win.
C-melta done. Not sure if the black-grey-black is enough contrast on the DW marine. Might have to try a white highlight in there before the black ink. Almost done with him, just finishing up the bolter arm.
Transfers are something I tend to do in batches, and not as often as I should. It’s on the list of things to do, as I’ve got a pile of marines waiting for them. Waiting until I finished all the swaps for my company was my latest excuse, but that’s gone now. I don’t know how likely it will be, but I’m going to try to get everyone transferred and based by year’s end. And still make my one-a-week goal. I love deadlines, they make such a nice “woosh” when they fly by.
I’ve got the turret cleaned up, just need to figure out how to mount it. It needs to hover about an inch off the floor of the SR. I’d like to brace it against both the floor and a wall for stability, but need to cut some scraps of sprue for that. I’ve been trying to get more painting time, rather then building time, so it’s progressing slowly. Not helping is the fact that I’ve been playing Skyrm, rather then CivV lately, so there is less load/other players turn time on my computer to work during.
I cut some bent angle struts from the SR sprue, and mounted the turret from the roof. Next step is to start the final assembly on the raven. Not sure if I’ll bother to magnetize the hurricane bolters, or just use sticky tack to swap them around if needed. It shouldn’t be a hard retro fit if I change my mind.
Finished the DADW marine. I was unable to tell the difference between his arm, which I just painted black, over the rest of his armor which received more work. Next marine is going to get more extreme highlights to try to stand out a bit. It’s also interesting to notice the similarities between the c-plama, which is black with a silver drybrush, and the DW arm, which is silver with a black wash.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It’s a busy weekend here.
A lot of parts are just set in place for now. The wings, engines, and pilot/cockpit will all be primed and painted seperatly. Still need to clean up the spare weapons (LCs, Huricanes) I’ve also not glued on the grapple/winch thing on the back. I kinda like it up top, rather then below. It looks more like a fueling port up top, and conveniently covers a gap in the hull there. If I change my mind I’ll have to greenstuff it. I need to stick some random grubbins around. Some aquilas and Ultra symbols left over from drop pods/tanks, and probably some tow hooks/ attachment points underneath for dread hauling, or up top to help fill the space.
I think the raven looks a lot cleaner without the huge servetor gun pod and air scoop up top. More like something that might actually fly. What was that air intake doing up there anyway? The engines are under the wings. On something like a land speeder you need that up there because the engines are right on the back. Not the case with the Raven.
Littletower wrote: Nice customization, looks great, and with added plausibility thrown in for good measure!
Thanks.
A little mixed news today. I took a batch of stuff (including the raven) out to prime yesterday. As I knew my can of primer was running low, I went and got a new can. The core of the raven (body, wings, engines) took the last of the old can, and went on fine. The bits, extras, and two marines I was doing got half of the old can, but when I started to get them from a second angle with the new can: Fuzz. I know it’s not the weather, as the first coat went on smooth. I blame myself for not shaking the can enough. I was in a rush to finish, and it didn’t get the thorough shake I normally use, just a quick rattle. Which considering how full it was was a mistake in hindsight. On the bright side, I realized this right away and everything go tossed in the simple green.
Further on the downside, yesterday was the last good day in this week to prime. And as we are heading deeper into fall, who knows if I’ll get another window before winter hits.
I’ve got around two dozen relevant things primed. If I count the stuff hiding in the back of the bench, patiently waiting years for paint, I’ve got another two dozen-ish. So no worries about running out of things to do over the winter. It might just be skeleton warriors, chaos marauders, arcoflagelents, and some other random minis. I did spend an hour or so with a toothbrush, and the bad primer came off much easier then it did with the eldar last summer. Pro-tip: If you have a bad prime, dunk it immediately. Getting it in the simple green before it cured made it a lot easier to scrub.
Here is a recent pic of the crew awaiting paint:
(I posted it on the last page, but let’s go over what’s in there)
5 LotD counts-as
5 Deathwatch
2 Librarians (one JP, one DW mantis warrior)
1 Honor guard
2 RT captains
1 scout sarge
3 Vanguard vets
Razorback
Ven. dread
5 Dire avengers (under the razor)
1 ammo dump
1 chapter banner
1 c-melta sternguard
Since that picture was taken, I finished one DW marine and the c-melta.
Quick update: I was able to re-prime yesterday. It was just a matter of not shaking the can enough. That will teach me to be hasty. So to that last list of stuff ready for paint I can add:
Eldar Farseer
Deathwatch flamer
HG w/ relic blade
Stormraven
I also started to get some paint on two deathwatch marines; First coat of black is down on the White Scar and the Mantis Librarian.
Zambro wrote: O.o some Eldar?! Looking forward to it
Yup. One of the things about stripping the new stuff is it forced me to finish cleaning up the crimson hunter, which had been soaking for months. A lot of the old eldar stuff I had stripped didn’t get completely clean. While the fuzz is (mostly) gone, there is still some of the primer left on the model. So I also have a couple of jetbikes and the hunter that could get some paint. And I have a pot of khorne red to paint them with. It’s so nice to have a red that can cover.
As I sit down to build stuff, I’m struggling to thing of what I actually need built. A lot of the marine stuff is just going to fill out squads or collect dust. I’ve got a bunch of marine bodies, but not a lot of motivation on what to do with them. Getting 5 more vanguards done seems like a good idea, but I’ve not painted the ones I’ve built, or even fielded them, so there is not a huge rush on that. So my eye is starting to wander back to the pile of Eldar stuff I have sitting around. At this point, I doubt I’ll be able to get any of it ready for primer before winter hits, but I think a goal for the cold months might be to get it all built and ready by spring. I still need to get some magnets into the vehicles, and work a catapult onto a bike or two.
TL;DR: I’m old, some progress on Deathwatch (pic at bottom of page)
This is going to be one of those wall of text rambling posts. Feel free to skip to the bottom if you want to see the progress of my current project. I often joke that I’m old and decrepit. Today, I turn 40, so am feeling it. For years I’ve given thought to a retrospective piece about my history as a gamer. I probably should have put more effort into drafts and edits, but here’s a last minute, stream of consciousness post.
According to Dakka polls, that makes me older then ~94% of you guys out there. One more year and I’ll have to ask a mod if it’s possible to change your vote on a poll. While there might be older people out there, few have been gaming as long as I have. I literally cannot remember a time that I wasn’t playing some sort of RPG/wargame. I remember D&D (both basic and advanced) being played with my brother and kids from down the street from when I lived in New Hampshire. And we moved away from there when I was 10, and we had been playing for a few years. So probably very early eighties, with me being 6-8ish. Mostly just TSR stuff at the start; (A)D&D, Top Secret, and Star Frontiers. Wargameing didn’t really take off until we moved to Kentucky.
While my gaming group in KY did some roleplaying (including long running AD&D and Shadowrun games among others) They were primarily wargamers. We played a lot of Battletech, Car Wars, SFB, OGRE, and other board/beer and pretzel games. Rouge Trader 40k as more of a RPG. I remember the first minis we had. Before that day, when we were playing D&D, if we needed a map, you just used a die or a bottlecap to show where your character was. But one day my friend Dave brought over some grenadier minis. Actual fighters. wizards, etc! It was glorious. We happily used (and expanded out collection) unpainted minis for a while. Then, once again, Dave raised the bar. He had painted the mini he was using for his character. You can tell it made an impact, because here I am, over two decades later, still painting my own minis.
The next big shift in my gaming life was when I went to college (fall of ’93 for those keeping a timeline) I wanted to go to a small, liberal arts college in the north-east, and ended up in upstate New York. I didn’t game much on campus, but instead fell in with a group about half made up of townies. Primarily role-players, but this was also the time of CCGs, so there was a lot of that. I did bring up my paints, and this was about the time I switched from Blood Angels to Ultramarines. Sometime in the late 90, WHFB (5th ed) took off at the FLGS. I jumped back into GW with both feet, and put together sizable undead and chaos armies, with bits from a few others. 40k also re-emerged into my life, at the tail end of 2nd. I helped demo it and get people hooked. The mid 90s also saw me working professionally in the gaming world. I worked part time for The Magic Source, a mail-order game company. Mostly CCGs, but also RPGs and other random stuff. This let me go to some major conventions (Origins, Gencon) and buy a lot of stuff at wholesale prices. Also gave me some sneak-peeks into the behind the curtain of the hobby world. Fun times. Branched out into a lot of different games during this era. RPGs like WoD and Champions saw a lot of play, as well a large amount of experiments into odd systems. Tons of board games, including some more miniatures, like Silent Death
I’m not going to say life crashed to a halt in 2000, but that’s when I got married, so priorities shifted. I was no longer a single guy, living in a cheep apartment, with a big-boy job (and paycheck) but still living like a starving college student. Mortgage payment, and The Wife, who shortly after marriage went back to school, meant I had to be a responsible adult. Still a lot of gaming going on, but the heyday was in the past. I quit my job in 2003, so The Wife took over being the primary provider. Worked a few part time jobs until The Boy was born in’06, then I became a full time homekeeper.
Life’s been on a slow simmer for a while now. Budget is tight, being a single income family, but I slowly expand my collection as time allows. Still game twice a week with the RPG crowd, and get in wargameing when I can. Which is not that often, but a guy can dream. And blog, post, and kibitz with you guys here.
But enough of the ramblings of an old man. Progress!
(You TL;DR people can resume reading here)
Some deathwatch. The guy on the left is going to be a White Scar, the librarian on the left is going to be a Mantis Warrior. WS has received his black wash, so just needs to get his arms done and a detail check. The librarian is still at the drybrushed step. He’s got a lot more things that need to be picked out. I also need to decide what to do with the sword. Right now it’s silver with a gold hilt. I should do some sort of power effect on the blade, then dripping blood on the edge/tip. Might try to tint the blade with a wash, unsure. The shoulderpad is not going to stay yellow, but I wanted a vibrant undercoat to help make the green pop once I put it on. I might have to blend something, as neither the emerald or goblin greens I have seem quite right.
I think you may have a few models older than me in that case!
In all seriousness though, happy 40(k)th, the collection is looking great, can't wait to see those Deathwatch finished.
It’s hard to put an exact date on some of my minis. I know I was painting in the first house we lived in in Kentucky, and we moved to the new one in ~’91 IIRC; I know it was part of the way through high school. So probably in the late ’80s. I’d feel safe saying I’ve got minis that are around 25, but definitely nothing over 30.
Here are some of the very oldest ones. A mix of Ral Partha and Grenadier.
The elementals were some of my earliest forays into washes and drybrushing. I still like how the water elemental turned out. Hint of a green wash, and a nice whitecap drybrushed on.
Looking good on the progress front. What's with the difference in armour colour on the two death watch? I was under the impression traditional death watch is black armour. Got kind of a grey look going on with the mantis warrior. I assume that the unit will have the same armour colour. But which colour?
Deathwatch is all black, with a silver arm. The grey right now is me trying to get some definition in the armor by going with a black base, grey drybrush (with a lighter white/silver on the MW) and then a black ink wash. This should, in theory, let the black of the armor groves actually be black, while the plates are still black, just a lighter shade. The guy on the left got his inking, which is why he is actually black. The Mantis is a step behind, which is why he is grey at the moment. I just did some work on his sword. Put some light metallic green lightning bolt-ish lines on the sword, then a watered down blue wash on top of that. We’ll see how it look when it dries. Then he’s just about at the wash stage, and then the shoulder pad. Which is going to be a bear, as I need to freehand a Mantis Head on that sucker. I should have not glued the pad on, and just primed a dozen blank ones. So when I inevitably screw it up, I can just toss it into the cleaner and start over. Oh well. It’s just a two color insect head on a yellow background. How bad can that be to paint?
How do you get a clean circle with a paint that covers for crap? Negative space is your friend; paint everything not the circle. Next step is the chapter symbol, but that is going to require a steadier hand then the 3 cups of coffee in me allow, so probably this afternoon. If not, sometime next week, as I’m off on a weekend trip to visit family.
I’ll work up the blurb tomorrow/early Friday. And maybe try to get some better pictures, not really happy with any of those angles.
Almost done with the White Scar Deathwatch marine. Just need to see how smooth the last white coat on his shoulder pad went on (might need another) then the transfer. Already based him at the same time as the librarian.
Good effort! That shoulderpad is great.
The thing about getting better with freehand is that you need to do it frequently to improve. More often than not, the hardest part is actually getting the courage to try.
I'm not sure what's going on with his arm (left arm). Looks kinda zombi-like to me - you know, out straight, no strength in the wrist/hand while the zombi ambles forward groaning...
The thought was to have him divining the path ahead, Not quite happy with the angle of the wrist. I wanted a casting pose, but not the traditional lightning shooting from the palm one. Head down, arm out, concentrating.
There is even a tuft of grass on that base, you can see it in the alternate angles. This pic is not the best of the lot, I chose it because it shows off the freehand the best.
As I write this, I realize I’ve not taken a personal close up of the DA. Oh well, I’ll see about getting one later. Probably when the squad is done.
Looking at the WS, I note I forgot to do the cable going from gun to scope, will have to fix that. What doesn’t show up in the pic is the bloody markings. Part of that is my crummy photo skills, the other is the BftBG on black, which is mostly just a redish sheen that shows up when the light hits it the right way. But our friendly White Scar did not feel right without his tribal markings on his armor, so painted some there in his enemy’s blood. Triangle on the helm (like my bike captain) and another one on his right shin.
McManiak wrote: Not been on in a while sorry mate. Happy 40th buddy, im not too far behind you and also have models as far back as 89.
Glad to see the deathwatch coming along d glad you are doing well.
Good to see you back around here. Thanks for the well wishes.
Just a quick update for now. This morning I shoveled about an inch of slushy wet snow off the driveway, so the odds of me getting to prime anything else before spring are approaching zero. I’ll continue to build stuff, but it’s just going to get chucked into a box until March/April-ish.
On the painting front, I put down the first blue coat on the jump librarian, and started some work on the HG with the axe. After the Deathwatch, I felt the need to paint something blue. I figure I’ll intersperse the DW into the normal rotation to help break things up a little.
Have you ever tried brush primer? I've never done it, personally, but it might be worth a look if you finish everything that is painted and have nothing to paint. Especially considering march/april is a long way away.
Zambro wrote: Have you ever tried brush primer? I've never done it, personally, but it might be worth a look if you finish everything that is painted and have nothing to paint. Especially considering march/april is a long way away.
Back in the day I did use GW’s “Smelly Primer” and it worked fine. Not quite the clean and even coat you get with a spray, but it did give the paint something to grab. Frankly, at the rate I work, I suspect I’ll be fine. Worst case scenario, I spend some more time building or paint some of the backlog of random stuff I’ve got waiting in the wings. By my quick math from the picture/list a few posts up, I’ve got 29 things to do, some of them being vehicles (which should take longer). At my pokey 1-a-week rate, that’s like half a year’s worth of work. Even if I double my efforts, that’s still ~15 weeks, so spring-ish. And it would do me some good to clear a little of the backlog.
Are you being affected by the snow? For some reason, the snow in NY / north America was the top story on the BBC's news website. From the look of the pictures I saw, you're not going to be priming any time soon
We just got a dusting. All the news worthy stuff is the western part of the state. It’s lake effect snow: the wind picks up moisture from the great lakes and then dumps it onto the land as snow. 6 feet in a storm is not that unusual, although I hear this one was a little rougher on them.
Librarian and HG are progressing well, I’ll try to get some WIPs later when I drag the camera out. Hopefully will have them done by the end of the weekend.
(edit for pic)
Doing my weekly update today, rather then Friday. Going on a road trip to Kentucky for the week, visiting the folks for Thanksgiving. Didn’t get as much done this weekend as I would have liked, although made some more progress then the last pic. Not enough to warrant dragging the camera out though. HG got his blue wash, so just needs the tabard done and his bolter arm finished. Librarian got another round of details worked on. For whatever reason I missed a lot the first time though; the gold tips on the leather belt thing, a red cord on his arm, and even a patch of blue on his foot.
Also in the news I picked up the hardback mini rulebook. So I now actually own a copy of 7th. I had previously borrowed my friends big book for a read through when it released, but lacked my own. While a bit pricy for what it is, I like the hardback over the soft; durability is nice. And it should fit easier in my bag. $58 is not that much more then the ~$40 the small rules were going for on e-bay, plus I don’t have to deal with S&H and get to use my store credit. Next step is to make my own objective and psychic cards. With the 2 year duration of 6th, there is no way I’m shelling out cash for play aids that might be obsolete in short order. There is a limit to how much money I’m willing to sink into hobby stuff that’s not a model.
I’ll be partially off-line for the next week. While I’m bringing my ipad on the trip, I won’t have the time to spend on Dakka that I normally do so will just be doing short responses and quips. Hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving, or generic week for you foreigners.
(as an aside, this should be my 5,000th post. Damn, I’m getting verbose in my old age)
Edit: Ancient Ultramarine Venerable Dreadnought. Sounds about right. Even in death, I serve.
Hm, thought that picture was a little less blurry when I uploaded it. Oh well. Almost done with the librarian’s jump pack. Just need to drybrush on some silver and give it the final touch up and wash. Next step is to do a recount of the year’s work, see how I’m doing for my goal. If I’m close, I might do a vehicle next. If not, I need to try to bang out some of the infantry. I should also check back for my new year’s goals. Pretty sure I missed most of them, but there is a chance I actually followed through on some of them.
I’ll try to do that by the end of the day, but I wanted to make sure I got a least a quick update to keep myself honest.
Nevelon wrote:
Bike w/melta
Bike Sarge
Bike
Attack bike
Sternguard sarge
Sternguard HF 9 assault marines
IG primaris psyker
c-melta tac sarge
c-grav dev sarge
Jump captain
Company champion
3 HG HB mk. 6 marine
And sifting through my blog from that point I’ve added:
c-plastac sarge
Drop Pod
2 Vanguard Vets
c-flamer tac sarge
2 command squad vets.
LSS c-melta sternguard
DWMW Librarian
DWDA c-plas DWWS marine
HG w/axe
JP Librarian
So 26 from the previous list, plus 13 since then, gives us 39. Not quite the 52, although there are some bikes and vehicles in there which count a little bit more. I’m sure I’ll get a few more done by year’s end, but not the 13 I need for my goal. And because a picture is worth 1,000 words:
(The primaris pyscher is not pictured, being delivered already)
As for the new year’s goals:
Nevelon wrote:But back to 40k. It's been an interesting year. To quote myself from this thread on New Year's resolutions:
Nevelon wrote:
1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IGHQs 2 Paint all my new purchases. Right now this is just finishing an ADL w/quadgun, but my group of friends does our gift exchange this Sunday, so that pile might get bigger.
3 Make a display board for my army. I've had the sheets of foam insulation waiting to be carved for years, never get around to it.
4 Base my army. Someday this will happen.
5 Paint my spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options.
6 Try to get more games in.
There are a bunch of projects I'd like to do, but need to see what the budget looks like. So those arn't on the resoulution list. Make a Lysander counts-as, another squad of sternguard (deathwatch?) or just add a few more items to my army (TFG, some more tanks)
Well, from a resolution standpoint, 2013 was not a successful year. I made some progress on 1 and 5, but still have lots to do. I think all the new purchases that I had for 2 got painted, but overall I've picked up a lot more then I've painted. 3 and 4 never got started. 6 is an ongoing struggle. Not sure if 2013 was better then 2012 for games played.
As for the non- resolution projects, some got work, some dropped. Due to a massive influx of hobby cash I was able to pick up the TFG I wanted, as well as some more sternguard. But due to the new codex, I'm not going to make the Lysander counts-as, and the need for making the combi heavy sternguard went down.
For 2014 I'm going to keep the same resolutions as I used last year. To those six, I'll add:
7 Update my blog more often, and maintain a consistent pace of work.
The second half of 2013 is fairly well documented in this blog. I don't think I painted as whole lot before I started tracking things here.
So, things painted in 2013 (that I can remember):
ADL w/ Quadgun.
Lord Commissar
10 Tac marines (Battle of Macragge push-fits)
Sternguard w/ HF Devastator w/ LC 2 Bikes (1 grav, 1 reg)
Bike Captain
Battle of Macragge pilot
IGGL trooper
3 Terminators
TFC w/techmarine
Chaos marauder w/flail
4 SM bikers (bikes still WIP)
Wow, summed up like that I feel like I've done nothing. By contrast, I've done a lot of assembly work, and did loose pretty much all the work I did on the Eldar due to the bad primer. I also started the year with just dregs of old stuff on the workbench. Spare parts and odd models. It wasn't until about halfway through the year when I started this blog after getting a windfall of cash did the painting side of the hobby take off. I think 2012 was a total of ~12 models, so it's more then that.
As for what to do in 2014, it's going to be more of the same. Slowly slapping paint on plastic. Mostly the stuff you've seen showcased here. One thing I need to do to make that happen is to get some new brushes. Mine are getting old, split, bent, and ragged. The only two that are still have any life left are a pair of detail brushes. This is one reason why the bikes are killing me. Takes forever to do with tiny brushes. I want to get back to the Eldar, but they really missed their launch window due to the primer incident. If I had gotten them moving, the momentum might have kept them active after the new C:SM codex dropped. But as a non-starter, they are just sitting there while the UM get all the love. It's not like they'll go stale, I'll get to them eventually.
I think that the 4/week goal might be a little too aggressive with everything going on in my life. I think I might try to maintain a 1/week goal. Considering what I did this last year, I should be able to maintain this.
So yeah. Not the bast year. Slow progress is progress, and at least I started basing, Oh well, let’s see what I can do in a few weeks. On the bright side I’m home for the rest of the year, so won’t loose a whole week again. On the down side, I need to start all my holiday shopping/baking.
I’ve got the base blue down on one of the wings and picked out some of the details in grey. So progressing. I’d like to have it done by the end of the year.
Thinking about my goals, I might be able to fudge the numbers to make them. Back when I was keeping a 4/week goal, I counted vehicles as 4. If I use that accounting, it means I only need to do 7 more models to reach my target. So if I can finish the SR, and bang out 3 infantry, I’m good to go.
On that note, and also on the getting some progress on other resolutions, I started to put some paint on a pair of arcoflagelents. I have a feeling that these guys are going to be like the IG psyker that lingered around the back of the bench as a WIP for 6 months. Not a fan of the minis. I was hoping to use these guys for the infantry part of my goal, but honestly, I don’t have the motivation to get them done in a timely manner. While I’d like to clear some of the old SoB stuff off the bench, I’ll need to find something I enjoy painting if I’m going to get it done
Looking good, I've just starting my SR now too. I've been a bit AWOL recently but I did keep you with your endeavors in this blog and am just starting mine again.
I’m a bad blogger and hobbyist; I haven’t picked up a brush all week. Running around doing holiday shopping and baking cookies has eaten up all my time. Sooo many cookies. I estimate I’ll need to make around 25 different batches before the season is over. We give out a lot of baked goods around the holidays. While I can’t send actual cookies to all may faithful readers, I can do the next best thing: provide the recipes. So if you want a yummy way to procrastinate your hobby work, give one of these a try.
Brownie Roll-out Cookies
Spoiler:
3 Cups Flour (all purpose)
2/3 Cups Unsweetened coco powder
¾ tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Baking powder
1 Cup Butter
1 ½ Cups Sugar
2 Eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla
Bake at 350 for 8-11 minutes.
Cream butter and sugar. Combine the dry goods in a separate bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla to the butter/sugar mix once it’s light and fluffy. Slowly add the dry ingredients. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for an hour before rolling and cutting.
While these are called “roll out” cookies I’ve never made them that way. I take the dough and form it into a ~1½” log and refrigerate it that way (but could be frozen for later). Then I just cut it into ¼” slices and bake. We frost these with a peppermint royal icing and sprinkle crushed candy canes on top to give out for the holidays.
Cranberry Pistachio cookies
Spoiler:
1 ½ Cup Flour
½ tsp. Cinnamon
¼ tsp. Salt
¾ Cup unsalted butter (softened, 1.5 sticks)
¼ Cup plus 2 Tablespoons Sugar. (total of 3/8 cups)
½ tsp. Orange zest
½ Cup Pistachios
1/3 Cup Dried cranberries
1 Egg, lightly beaten
¼ Cup Turbinado or decorative sugar (coarse, for rolling)
Mix dry ingredients (flour, cinnamon, salt). Cream butter, sugar, and zest. Add the dry, and once that is incorporated, the bits (nuts/fruit). Form into a 1 ½” log, wrap in plastic wrap, square off, and chill for 2 hours. Once the dough has firmed up, brush with the egg and roll in the sugar. Cut into ¼” slices, and bake in a pre-heated 350 oven for 15-18 minutes.
For best results use unsalted pistachios. If you can only find the salted ones, let them soak in some water for a bit before mixing them in. Pour off the brine and dry them on a paper towel before mixing them in, and probably cut the salt out of the dry goods.
Candied Pecans
Spoiler:
1 egg white
1 tsp. orange juice
1 lb. pecans
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. allspice or mace
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
Beat egg white with orange juice until stiff. Mix pecans in egg mixture until coated. Mix dry ingredients and toss to coat pecans. Bake on foil lined cookie sheet (or use a silpat) for 1 hour at 225. Stir once or twice while baking. Cool and store in airtight container.
Shortbread
Spoiler:
Recipe redacted by order of the Inquisition.
Cinnamon Bears
Spoiler:
1/2 lb. butter
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 egg beaten with 1 tsp. water
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3 c. flour
Roll dough 1/8 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Decorate with colored sugars and candies or frost with royal icing with the help of small children. Bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes. Watch and remove from oven when light brown. Cooking time can vary greatly with the thickness of the dough.
VARIATIONS:
To make cinnamon bears, add cinnamon and allspice to the dough. Cut with bear cookie cutter. Decorate with a chocolate chip for the nose and two silver candies for eyes.
Rugelach
Spoiler:
8 oz cream cheese at room temperature
½ lb butter at room temperature
¼ cup sugar
¼ tsp kosher salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
Filling:
6 Talespoons sugar
¼ cup light brown sugar
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
¾ cup raisins
1 cup walnuts finely chopped
½ cup apricot preserves or jam(any preserve or jam will do)
Cream the cream cheese and butter. Add the sugar salt and vanilla and then the flour. Divide dough into 4 pieces, wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. Mix all filling ingredient except the jam. On a well floured board, roll out a ball of dough into a 9 inch circle. Spread with 2 Tablespoons of jam and sprinkle with ½ cup of the filling. Cut the circle into 12 wedges (a pizza cutter is the best tool for this). Starting with the wide edge, roll up each wedge into a crescent. Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat. Repeat with remaining dough. Make an egg wash from I egg beaten with 1 Tablespoon mile. Brush each cookie with a little egg wash. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (3 Tablespoons sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon). Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.
--Nev
PS. Good to have you back RandyMcStab, love your blog.
The only thing that's missing are pictures of the cookies!
Might try your brownie recipe... Where is the shortbread recipe? I love shortbread, and wouldn't mind giving it a crack when I've got some time to kill.
Zambro wrote: The only thing that's missing are pictures of the cookies!
Might try your brownie recipe... Where is the shortbread recipe? I love shortbread, and wouldn't mind giving it a crack when I've got some time to kill.
To post pictures of the cookies I’d either have to set up a non-dakka place to host them, or incorporate them into a wargaming type setting. Don’t want to violate the rules for the gallery here. As I’m a little too lazy and old fashioned to set up an off-site host, you will just have to bake them yourself if you want to see them.
The brownie roll out cookies are full of lies. As they are neither brownies, or rolled out. But they taste like brownies, really chocolaty brownies. We used to give out peppermint frosted brownies-bites, but had problems with the frosting and them going stale. These keep better and are more portable.
Not to be a terrible tease, but the shortbread is one of two family secret recipes. The other being the family buttermilk chocolate cake. We’ve been giving it out as gifts for the holidays since before I was born, and if anyone could make it at any time, it would cheapen the gift (and all our friends would gain 10 pounds)
That's awesome, I'll point these at the Mrs, she's in charge of baking (I do the majority of the evening meals, she does the oven operating).
Glad you like the blog, I'm impressed at your perseverance, kudos. I've enjoyed modelling again but am finding it hard to squeeze in right now but I've more pics to post yet.
Merry Christmas, and other assorted holiday well-wishing.
Once again, another week, another lack of progress. Although after I finish this post, I think I’m going to head back downstairs and actually put some paint down. But I just finished assembling my Christmas present, and needed to share:
No longer will I be assembling stuff on a old printer stand. My sister-in-law drew my name for the family secret santa, and (I suspect) went over budget to get me a new workbench. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Also new on the hobby front is a green cutting mat (courtesy of The Wife), so I can stop using the cardboard back of a notepad. Sometime next week I’ll hit up the hardware store and look into options for the pegboard. So much space, so much potential for organization. But I’m sure I’ll get things cluttered up in no time.
I saw your post in the 'What did you get for Christmas' thread, and was waiting for the pic That is a hell of a nice desk! You got leg room, good lighting and enough space to have a lot on the go at once.
Hmm... Not sure on what to put on the pegboard. In my mind, traditional tools like hammers / saws etc. go on peg boards. I think mini tools (clippers/knife etc.) are a bit too small for the board. Although, maybe you can make a shelf for paints etc? Or even a shelf to store WiPs?
That is a serious awesome workdesk. Have fun with that beast and keep on building. I think I can tell that christmas was a blast this year .
Keep up the good work.
A trip to Home Depot yielded two things for the board. One was an assortment pack of pegs. Pretty much your standard stuff. I think I’m going to buy some more of the little trays, I can see those being useful. I plan on using straight pegs to hold sprues for currant projects. The LS is just up an an example. Normally when I’m building something, I need to shuffle through a pile of sprues to find the one with the bit I need. This way, they can all be up and visible. The other big find was some pegboard magnets. One is holding paperclips, the other my files (I have a third, not mounted) The mounting system they came with didn’t work, but luckily I had some nuts/bolts of the right size, so was able to attach them without issue.
OK, my goal for the year was to finish up 3 more minis and one more vehicle. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that my the end of the year, but possibly the end of the week. But I am making progress. Three vanguard vet bodies are done, working on the arms and jump packs now. One wing of the raven is complete, and the other one has it’s basecoats down. I’ve also started on some of the accessories (AsCs, MMs w/mount)
Which are probably dry and ready for the next coat now. Back to work!
Well, you're getting close to nailing your year's goal. It's a lot to ask to complete in a day or two, but definately doable by the end of the weekend.
One more day to go. I’m probably done for tonight, as it’s time to watch some TV with The Wife. Might get a chance to sneak in another coat.
Here is what needs to be done:
The VV bits are progressing nicely. Just put down the brown wash. Both SR wings are done, as is the front MM mount. AsCs are almost done. The main body, of course, still needs to be started. If I paint like crazy, I might be able to pull it off in one day. End of week should be much easier. We’ll see how it shakes out.
Well, it's 2015 now, and I'm still not quite done. Finished the vanguard vets, so made that goal. The SR has the first coat of blue, black, and the green for the lights/lenses, but the main hull still needs a lot of work. As well as the cockpit cover and doors. On the bright side, the pilot and guns are done, and both wings and engines. Hopefully I can finish it by the end of the week. If that's the case, with a copious amount of creative accounting I can claim to have made my one mini a week goal.
Quick iPad pictures of the VV and WIP of the SR are in the blog section of my gallery. I'll paste them in to this post later. For some reason, I can't copy/paste the urls directly on my iPad.
Some of the arms/packs got shuffled around, but I went back and re-created the poses from the build shot. I guess I should build another 5 vanguard so I can field a 10 man squad. I should have the parts. Might need more magnets though, doing both arms and packs chews through them awfully fast.
The clock says 11:28, so the week is not over. Not that I’m done, but I’m close enough to wave the rest. The doors still need paint, and I’m borrowing the stormtalon’s flight stand for the pic, but here is the Stormraven:
Might not be 100%, but I’d field it. So if I play fast and loose on pretty much every term in my goal, I made it. And that’s good enough for me!
And now, sleep.
Edit:
…And the doors are done. Well, drying from their wash, but done.
Well, the new workbench is calling out for something to be built, so I suspect I’m going to pause on the paint for a bit. First thing that comes to mind is getting 5 more VVs done. But then again, my FLGS is starting an escalation leauge at the end of the month, so that might be a good incentive to get some eldar done.
We’ll see where the mood takes me. One of my friends who doesn’t play 40k, but builds/paints model cars is encouraging me to start a new army, just to break out of my rut. He really wants to see me weather stuff and push myself farther. Not sure if I’m going to let myself be persuaded.
Bike Sarge, melta and basic bikes
Attack bike
Sternguard sarge, HF, c-melta
9 assault marines
5 Vanguard Vets
IG primaris psyker
4 combi weapon sargents
Jump captain, librarian
Company champion, 2 command squad vets
4 HG HB mk. 6 marine
DW Librarian, 2 DW marines
Drop Pod
Stormraven
LSS
Not a bad tally. And close enough to my one-a-week goal that with some creative accounting I’m calling it a win. Lets look at the rest of the resoulutions and see how I did on those:
1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IGHQs 2 Paint all my new purchases.
3 Make a display board for my army. I've had the sheets of foam insulation waiting to be carved for years, never get around to it.
4 Base my army. Someday this will happen.
5 Paint my spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options.
6 Try to get more games in.
7 Update my blog more often, and maintain a consistent pace of work.
1 Well, I did the psyker, that’s one for that. And started two of the arcoflagelents. Progress, but not a lot.
2 While I still have big piles of plastic sitting around, this isn’t as bad as it looks, as most of it was picked up in 2013. I sifted through the blog here gathering info for this post and this year’s minis consist of:
Land Speeder Storm
GK strike squad
Vanguard Vets
Stormraven
Where the Vets and GKs were for my LotD counts-as. So I’ve painted half of my purchases, and the other half are built and primed. Not bad!
3 Yah, no progress at all. Big fail here.
4 I’ve done a few. Not quite a full squad, but I’ve got a system now. Just need to bang it out.
5 I did do a spare powerfist, but the pile of spares has gotten larger, rather then smaller.
6 More games? Probably not. While my memory might be a little fuzzy, I’m going to go with "about the same.” Consistency is worth something.
7 This is a solid win. I’ve been pretty good about weekly updates (at a minimum) and more-or-less maintained my weekly painting goal.
Overall, out of 7, we have 1 win, 2 fails, and the rest somewhere in the middle. Still, I feel it was a good year.
For 2015, I think I’ll stick with the same resolutions. I’ll get them all some someday! Although I’m going to modify #2 to “paint more then I buy” I think it’s a much more achievable goal, and based on my back stock, something I still need to work on.I’m also going to add and 8th: “Get my Eldar army to a playable level, 1,000 points minumum, with 1,500 or 1,850 being a stretch goal”
So for easy quoting in a year:
1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IGHQs .
2 Paint more then I buy.
3 Make a display board for my army. I've had the sheets of foam insulation waiting to be carved for years, never get around to it.
4 Base my army. Someday this will happen.
5 Paint my spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options.
6 Try to get more games in.
7 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week).
8 Get my Eldar army to a playable level, 1,000 points minumum, with 1,500 or 1,850 being stretch goals.
What to expect to see in the new year; here is what’s primed at the moment:
5 LotD counts-as
4 Deathwatch
2 RT captains
1 scout sarge
1 HG Razorback
Ven. dread
5 Dire avengers
1 ammo dump
1 chapter banner
(also some SOB/IG stuff)
Also things that were primed with bad primer, but were cleaned and might get a lick of paint (but might need more primer)
Farseer on bike
2 jetbikes (no riders atm)
wave serpent (still needs turret built/magnetized)
crimson hunter
Things on the short list to be built:
Finish cleaning the 5 eldar rangers
Eldar jetbikes (2x3 squads, autach)
Viper
Landspeeder (probably with the TML just glued on)
5 Vanguard Vets
MotF on foot, w c-beamer
Thing I might end up buying (very fuzzy here)
Fill out the HQ matrix. I have foot/TDA/Bike/JP options for captains and chaplains, but need a bike librarian and MotF to round out the list. If I’m picking up more bikes, a bike command squad could also be very nice to have, but that’s a stretch.
More tanks. Vindi or Hunter/Stalker are tempting me, but a second pred would be nice as well. Although with the SR operational the HS slot is kinda cramped.
Centurions. They’ve kinda grown on me.
Eldar stuff. Fire Prism being the first on the list, but a box of the “new” wraithguard also would be nice.
As there are enough things on my primed/short list to keep me in my 1-a-week pace for the year, buying new stuff is a low priority. Still, it’s nice to get some fresh things for the workbench.
Your consistency is solid. Regular updates here, as well as progress.
How often do you get games in? You've made reference to a few games in some posts, but I've never been able to guess how often you play. Getting more games in seems to be a gamer's new years resolution cliché - the gaming equivalent of 'going to the gym' I dont think, realistically, I can get more games in frequently. I play pretty much every tuesday night (one or two games of 40k/fantasy/X-wing), and over the past months I've played on the occasional sunday. If I start playing more, I'll never get anything done.
If this year is anything to go by, you'll nail the 'paint more than you buy' goal. 10 infantry and 2 vehicles purchased, and yet you crank out around 45(ish) models. Definately in the green with that one
How many points of Eldar do you have already painted? Painting 1000 points of anything is quite the big task (I spent a week on a drop pod, and that's only 35 pts! - And I painted it for an assault squad, so really it's 0 pts!!!). You might need to devote more time to the xenos than the ultras...
Your consistency is solid. Regular updates here, as well as progress.
How often do you get games in? You've made reference to a few games in some posts, but I've never been able to guess how often you play. Getting more games in seems to be a gamer's new years resolution cliché - the gaming equivalent of 'going to the gym' I dont think, realistically, I can get more games in frequently. I play pretty much every tuesday night (one or two games of 40k/fantasy/X-wing), and over the past months I've played on the occasional sunday. If I start playing more, I'll never get anything done.
If this year is anything to go by, you'll nail the 'paint more than you buy' goal. 10 infantry and 2 vehicles purchased, and yet you crank out around 45(ish) models. Definately in the green with that one
How many points of Eldar do you have already painted? Painting 1000 points of anything is quite the big task (I spent a week on a drop pod, and that's only 35 pts! - And I painted it for an assault squad, so really it's 0 pts!!!). You might need to devote more time to the xenos than the ultras...
Z
Every game I’ve played since I started this blog has been mentioned. I just went back and counted: 7 last year. 2x3 game tournaments (one solo, one doubles) and an apocalypse game. Not the best turn out. On the bright side my FLGS is going to be starting an escalation league/ game & hobby night on Wednesdays starting in a few weeks, and I cleared it with The Wife, so I’m going to try to make it up for that.
As for the Eldar, I don’t think I’ve actually painted any new ones since I took this picture at the start of this blog:
Painted and useable is a pair of falcons, 2 guardian squads, a viper, some warlocks, an Avatar and Jain Zar, and a wad of old metal harlies I might be able to get a legal squad out of. If I desperately needed to, I could recruit some banshees that were converted for my WoC army (when witch elves go bad). So while I have a nice basis for a force, it’s not going to be very effective on the table. My goal is to have an army that actually functions.
Just saw blog link over on the plans for 2015 thread, may well have to go back through and catch up, looks like you've got some nice stuff here. I'll have to steal the 'year in review' thing too
GrimDork wrote: Just saw blog link over on the plans for 2015 thread, may well have to go back through and catch up, looks like you've got some nice stuff here. I'll have to steal the 'year in review' thing too
Welcome aboard! I can’t take credit for the year in review thing; it’s fairly common. I was actually prompted into doing one by reading Gitsplitta’s over in his blog.
So I’m in the process of tidying up a little, and decide to reorganize the shelves. The Stomraven was not going to fit nicely, so another shelf has been brought into the fold of the Emperor’s glory.
We can look back on the Ultramarine’s march to glory, from a humble two and a half shelves (sharing with some IG)
to a full 3 shelves:
Getting a little crowded on 3…
To a glorious 4 full shelves claimed for mankind.
Hopefully there is enough space now so I won’t have to shuffle things around again, even when I paint what’s on deck. My foul xenos Eldar army has been pushed down to the bottom shelf, and all the books (and Silent Death stuff) that was there has been moved over to another bookshelf elsewhere in the basement. Which was conveniently cleared and moved to make room for my new workbench.
Speaking of which, I’ve started to assemble the vanguard vets. I might only put 4 together right now. I’d like to reserve the jump pack with the giant aquila on top for the sarge, so don’t really want to use two in the same squad. The two options I have are to do a swap with one of my assault squads, or try to trade bits and get a more plain JP. We’ll see what happens, there is no rush.
GrimDork wrote:Huh, now that's a lot of ultras. Fancy.
Zambro wrote:Collections that size always make me jelous. It's a testament to your dedication.
Althought... There is room for more...
It’s always hard to get a feel of what is considered a “large” collection. You look at people’s sigs, or answers in the “how many points can you field” polls and you see a lot of 10,000+ point armies, or massive collections. Now there might be a lot of self-selecting bias there, where the folks with the large armies are more prone to report/brag about them then the guys with the HQ +2 troops collections
Not that I’m claiming to have a small collection, I just don’t think of it as particularly large. As for “dedication”, my army is more a testament to my pack-rat nature and venerable age. Slowly add to something for 20+ years, and it’s surprising how large you can get. On that note, it’s been a while since I did a point count for the lot, I should do that again, always good for a laugh.
Edit: 8,323 points by rough count. Few spare minis that can’t find a squad, but not many. Looking back a year ago (pretty close to exactly) I had 6,508 painted. So that’s about 1,815 points of fresh paint in a year. Of course, some of that might be organizational. I painted a few sergeants, which might have allowed spare heavy weapon guys to form up into dev squads. I’d have to see if I kept my notes from a year ago to double-check. I wonder if I have enough unpainted plastic to push me to 10k? I doubt it, but would be fun to check...
So tomorrow is the monthly doubles tournament. The schedule is free, I’m feeling OK, so the fates might allow me to go to this one. I’ve got a positive enough feeling that I wrote up a list and took it off the shelf:
1,200 points Ultramarines
Cassius
5 man assault squad, 2 flamers, vet w/axe, pod
10 man sternguard, 2xC-melta, 2xHF, pod
10 man tactical, MM/M, c-melta, pod
5 man scout, 2 shotguns, vet sarge w/meltabomb, LSS (w/HB)
Talon w/skyhammers
Raven w TLMM/TLAsC
While I was taking units off the shelf, I was reminded about my resolution to paint up spare bits. While the assault marines have magnetized backpacks, I have only painted two regular backpacks for them. So I needed to recruit some spare guys for the squad. Also, both my assault sarges have their packs glued on, so I needed a swap for him as well. One flamer came from the swap shelf (battle of macragge pushfit) and the other one and the sarge I swiped from my command squad. The flamer needed to borrow a chainsword to replace his SS, but I have a spare (originally from my bike captain)
The more I think about it, the more I might grab another box of assault marines. I’d like to make a pair of new sarges, fully magnetized. I also need at least one set of legs and a JP for my VV. So that’s like 3/5 of the box I can put on projects right away. Of course, as I’ve just shown by poaching stuff from other parts of the shelf, it’s not like I really need fresh sarges; there are amble guys ready to step in.
VV are still in the process of being cut from the sprues, didn’t get a whole lot done on them this week. One thing that did get assembled is a second flight stand, so that’s something.
I’m taking a short break from painting blue. The SR almost drained the pot, not sure how much is left in the bottom. Buying more is on my short list of things to do. But I did put some red paint down on a pointy-eared fortune teller. Still need to figure out what color goes where on him. I’ll get some WIP pics when there is a little more “W" to be "IP"
Two games, both wins. It was a short tournament, we won. My partner was inquisition; LRC w/ deathcult assassins, two rhinos with henchman (one melta, one plas) cortez, some monkeys, and a vindicare assassin.
Game one was vs. dark/light eldar. Only two WSs and knight, falcon, some bikes, and a fistful of venoms w/ assorted DE. Not too over the top. Pro-tip: flamers, both normal and heavy, do very bad things to DE open topped transports (and their contents) The only thing that kept this from being very bad for them was my reserves being asleep at the wheel. None came in on the second turn, and the raven just made a cameo at the end.
Game two was vs. IG/GK and Knight/SW. The GK player was a DK, terminator squad, 2 wyverns, and a big blob of guardsmen. SW was a giant deathstar of thunderwolves and the imp. knight (w/battlecannon). I dropped the assault marines and the sternguard right into the meat grinder on this one. But with one turn of fire, and one round of CC, they had removed half the wounds from the DK and about half the thunderwolves. They died to a man, mind you, but took a heavy price for their lives. Most of the rest of my time was spend blowing chunks out of the IG blob, and putting pressure on the big knight. Who died to some melta in close proximity to the rest of his army, at which point we called the game.
Fresh paint report:
Stormraven: Game one, mostly sat out, blew a venom off an objective last turn. Game two, spanged shots off of IK’s ion shield.
LSS: took early fire, did mostly nothing. Game two, hung back, took potshots. Would have scored objectives if game was played out.
The 3rd pod: nice having 3, two pods on the first turn is a very nice thing.
Guys subbing in for the assault marines: flamers are good, sarge either was punked (game 2) or just bat cleanup for Cassius.
My Eldar might be briefly on hold. When I was up at the FLGS yesterday, I talked to the owner about the upcoming escalation league. While he’s not ready to do a full data-dump about all the details, he liked my suggestion that I start from scratch, so I can build up my forces with the rest of the guys. The whole point of this league is to get new players involved, both in the hobby and game side. So my Eldar might be my Wednesday night project. Not that I won’t sneak time in during the week, but I want to start more-or-less even with the newbies.
I think I might take the next week or two to clear some of the random bits off my desk. The lack of spare backpacks irritated my yesterday as I scrambled around for stand ins.
Good work on the 2 wins, purge those xenos ....and Imperials, they are obviously traitors. Nice to get a game in. Don't succumb to the filthy Eldar, don't believe their lies!
So durring one of my last games, one of the guys was helping me pass casualties. At one point when my sternguard was being shot off the table, he exclaims “Woah, that’s metal, I’ll let you take care of that!” Which brought to mind the question, how much of my army is lead, and could I field an all metal list? The only solution to that is to grab the camera and head to the shelf: Now this is just the pure metal minis. Well, mostly pure, almost all the backpacks, and a few of the arms are plastic. If I go into more of the hybrid kits, I can add a chunk of devastators and a few bikes to the list.
But I could field a small force here. 14 scouts are enough to furnish the troops. Ample selection of HQs, with enough specials to fill out a command squad, and more elites then I can pack into a FOC. 1,000 points easy, could probably stretch larger if I put my mind to it (particularly if I let the devs in)
Not a lot of progress from the workbench this week. A few reasons for that. Not wanting to paint blue for a bit, and pausing the Eldar until the end of the month sort of restricts what I can do. I did start putting some paint on two of my deathwatch marines yesterday though, but not a whole lot of progress. One of the other main reasons is I’ve been playing some Civ:BE, which just sucks away the hours. Just one more turn…
I’ll try to get some more work done this weekend, so I can try to keep up on my 1/week goal, and not have to race at the end of the year.
So a Ravenguard and Crimson First join the fold. I thought the RG had decals on the basic sheets, but was wrong. Still, the bird shoulderpad gets enough across that I don’t feel like freehanding a symbol. The CF transfer had to have the circle cut away to fit on the raised disk. I’m not sure if it shows up in the pictures, but he also got some edge highlighting on his shoulder. He also joined his fellow squadmate, the White Scar, in a little sanguine-based armor redecoration. While the WS used a little blood to re-do his tribal markings, the Crimson Fist is living up to his name. I should probably splatter some BftBG on the snow for him.
Next up will the the last two of the Deathwatch; the wolf and the salamander.
Zambro wrote: Nice to see more marines into the fold.
Is the title an intentional Game of Thrones reference?
Not intentional. Might just me getting my wires crossed, but I thought that was the phrase for marines and the Deathwatch. It's been years since I read GoT, still need to start the last book.
Ahh, the title makes me think of men joining the Night's Watch.
You definately need to start the most recent book - #5. I really liked it. Not quite as good as the third one, but head and shoulders better than 4, which I thought was slow and relatively uninteresting.
Also, the sixth one is due out this year (iirc). So you definately want to catch up!
Zambro wrote: Ahh, the title makes me think of men joining the Night's Watch.
You definately need to start the most recent book - #5. I really liked it. Not quite as good as the third one, but head and shoulders better than 4, which I thought was slow and relatively uninteresting.
Also, the sixth one is due out this year (iirc). So you definately want to catch up!
Watch-captain Stark: Xenos are coming...
There is a large amount of thematic overlap. Small volunteer force from across the land, working together to fend of an threat most of the innocent citizens have no idea of it’s nature/magnitude. Similar names and wardrobe choices.
And so there is some painting progress to report: I got the base coat down on the two remaining DW.
Deathwatch and Night's watch basically rock. I like yours and am toying with doing more for me, I really enjoyed the one I did for my Sternguard/Tyrannic War Vets.
I’d make more, but I’d need to pick up more shoulderpads and fancy bolters. It would also help to get custom chapter bits, like BA shoulders, etc. Saves me the trouble of freehanding a/o running out of different chapter transfers.
In an ideal world, I’d do 4 more troops, so I’d have a full 10 man squad, plus the librarian. In a slightly more ideal world, I’d have some optional HQs. In a it’s-not-ever-going-to-happen world, my RPG gaming group would actually play Deathwatch, and I’d make custom characters for the gang. But after our experience playing Rouge Trader, I doubt that’s ever going to happen.
RandyMcStab wrote: I've got plenty of the standard marine sheet transfers if you want any posting.
I've played Dark Hearsay but not Rouge Trader or DW. I'd like to as I enjoyed my little foray into the 41st millennium.
I’ve actually got a huge mess of transfers, some dating back to the RT era, so that’s the last thing holding me back from more deathwatch. Mostly it’s the shoulders. I’ll see if I can trade any from the guys at the FLGS. There is a limit to how much effort I’m willing to put into side projects, and the postage for the bits needed probably overshadows the cost of the bits themselves, if I was to buy them separately. I guess if I really wanted to, I could just paint an inquisitorial on a blank shoulderpad. It’s all straight lines, should be within my skillset.
The RPG problem was is chaotic gaming group. Who are also very anti-authoritarian. There is a limit to the casual blasphemes against the Emperor I can take in-character before the setting unravels. Or just degenerates into PVP combat and the campaign implodes. It didn’t help that the player who was our rouge trader is ultra-cautious and risk adverse. Sort of sucks the adventure out of the rim stars. Enough people had a bad experience with the game that us revisiting the setting as a group does not have good odds. Shame.
CaptainStabby wrote: @Nevelon sounds like your group should just cut to the chase and play Black Crusade.
Heretic! <Blam>
I think it’s just better off that we stick to more fluffly systems like Pathfinder. And even then we get bogged down into ethics and morality debates. Some days it’s like herding cats just to kick in the door and kill a few orcs. I love my friends, but there are days they need a good swift kick in the pants. Roleplaying, as in “to play a role” so get out of your chaotic good, nobody tells me what to do, piss on authority, rut and try to get into character for the setting.
So you've got problems with the players Roleplaying "too much"? Interesting, I usually ran into groups that only wanted to fight (or with characters who only *could* fight), or knuckleheads who were just trying to sabotage the game for... reasons?
GrimDork wrote: So you've got problems with the players Roleplaying "too much"? Interesting, I usually ran into groups that only wanted to fight (or with characters who only *could* fight), or knuckleheads who were just trying to sabotage the game for... reasons?
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, it’s not role playing too much, it’s always playing the same character regardless of setting. One of our players has some very strong authority issues, so anytime we need to deal within a structured organization, or some sort of higharchy where we aren’t the top, there is a lot of pushback. Which in the 40k universe is a massive problem.
The other problem is overly imparting modern views onto a fantasy setting. Why are we killing goblins? What have they done to us? In a world where Good and Evil are palpable, measurable things, and the basic MO of adventures is suspect (kick in the door, kill the green guy, take his stuff) how much do we want to debate? Why are we negotiating with the trio of Hags anyway, you know they eat babies, right?
There is a spectrum, on one side is the kick in the door dungeon crawl. The other is the philosophic morality play. Neither is right or wrong, but lets all be on the same page about what we are playing. Some of my group has problems with that.
I’d prefer a little more of being the hero, killing the bad guy, and saving the world in my roleplaying. If I wanted debates about right and wrong, and compromises with evil, I’d watch the evening news.
Full discloser: It’s not that bad, just sometimes. But enough to get my ire up and trigger the occasional rant.
Oooooh... ahh... I see, that makes more sense now.
Yes, it's very important for the entire group to have a somewhat cohesive view of what they're after.
I could see those morality/ethics debates being fun for some people yeah, but at the end of the day I think I feel much the same as you do I think some banter and debate is grand, but ultimately with some action involved as well. Play the evil councilman's game until you can catch him in a lie, and *then* battle his minions as he makes a desperate ploy to escape into the busy city streets.. or whatever.
Space Wolf and Salamander almost done. Just need to base them and put the transfer on the Sali.
Glad I don’t play GKs. That incinerator was not fun to line up.
I need to put together a 500 point Eldar list for tomorrow. Having a bit of trouble with it. I’d like to keep it fluffy Saim-hann, but don’t have enough things assembled to make that happen. I’m fine with unpainted, non-WYSWYG at this point, as the format is encouraging people to start fresh. But I don’t want to field empty bases, and want to keep mostly to new stuff, not the old dusty ones. It’s also a balancing act of playing a newbie friendly list, but not totally sandbagging. I might just dump everything into a box, drag it up to the FLGS, and see who shows up and what happens.
Great work on the DW. The incinerator fits a DW Salamander really well.
I dont have the codex anymore, so I cant offer lists for Eldar. But something along the lines of 10 guardians, a farseer, transport and vypers / jetbikes should get you close to the mark. And, IIRC, you have those models. Or even go crazy and add your Avatar in... Might make a 500 point game interesting
I think my biggest issue is decision paralysis. There are so many things I want to use, what to pick? If it was a 1,000 point list I’d be done and packed by now.
From the left:
Space Wolf
Salamander (w/incinerator counts as HF/F)
Crimson Fist
White Scar
Dark Angel (w/ c-plas)
Ravenguard
Mantis Warrior Librarian (w/ force sword)
And a front shot.
All based. All with drilled gun barrels. Darn your good influence Dakka! If I were to field these guys, it’s probably happen in one of two different ways. Option one is more sternguard, bulking out my Ultramarines to two full squads. The 4 tyranic war vets I have would fit in just fine in a deathwatch kill team for a combined operation. The other option would be as an allied tactical squad, using Mantis Warrior CT, so I can field the librarian for Divination shenanigans. As I generally try to avoid anything that can be categorized as “shenanigans” the sternguard option is far more likely. Still, the librarian does need to take the field at some point, so one of these days I will try the allied trick.
On my things to do eventually list is to fill out the squad to a full 10 men, probably with a magnetized heavy weapon. But that’s way down the road and would involve sourcing parts, so don’t hold your breath waiting.
Gitsplitta wrote:Looks like a great unit Nev! I highly approve of an Mantis Warrior-linked divination shenanigans.
You would! Thanks though.
Zambro wrote:They definately look the part! Good job!
I think you'll have to reserve an IF marine for the DW heavy slot. Heavy Bolter or Lascannon would work
I almost did that in the first place, with the HB from the sternguard sprue. The fact that I wanted to be able to use them as both tactical and sternguard stopped me though. As IMHO the only heavy weapon worth swapping out the special ammo for is a heavy flamer. What I’ll probably end up doing though is a missile launcher. Not because it’s any good (I’d prefer a HB or LC honestly) but because if can be used one handed, without a special backpack. So I can magnetize the arm, and swap out for a bolter if needed. Of course this is all assuming I get around to doing them during this rule set. They might actually come out with rules for DW squads, change options for SG/tacs, or something completely different.
As for chapters of origin, I already have a son of Dorn. I still need a BA, UM, and IH marine, or one of their successors. So while a IF heavy weapon marine is thematic and cool, I suspect if I do put one together, he’s going to be an Iron Hand. Or course, I have 4 slots to fill, and only 3 primarchs to represent, so someone is going to double up. As there are transfers for the ‘Fists, the odd of them taking the spare slot are high.
Forgive me Dakka, for I have sinned. I put unpainted minis on the table for a game. I almost confessed to non-WYSWYG, but I think I actually was OK on that front. So yesterday was the first Wednesday intro night at the FLGS. The goal was to have a casual 500 point night, where people starting out could get a game in, and learn the ropes. While there was only one new person who did show, there was a good showing of the regulars, so we had around 8 ish guys there. There was also a MtG event going on, so it was a little chaotic.
My list:
Farseer, on bike w/spear
5 DA 10 guardians w/brightlance
3 jetbikes
Falcon, scatter laser, holofields.
Edit: picture
4 of us ended up playing pairs, so it was me and a ravenguard force (VVs w/melta bombs, JP captain, tacs in rhino) vs. orcs (lootas,foot boyz, some vehicle thing, boss) and DA (drop dread, scouts, tacs in rhino, captain). We won, but man am I rusty on the eldar front. Makes sense, since I think I last played them near the end of 2nd. I think I could make a list in 3rd, but don’t know if I ever fielded them. Some big things I need to work on, like mastering the psychic phase, and little things like remembering fleet. And that’s not counting the paradigm shift of not playing marines. I can’t just punch rhinos to death, guardians in the open just get to eat random death from bored stormbolters, and where is my anti-tank? I’m so used to everyone having krack grenades. My farseer eventually killed the drop pod with his spear, but it was a close thing. Going from the master generalists to the hyper specialists is a little rough. Still, fun was had and some of the rust was knocked off. A good learning experience.
The irony of going straight from painting Deathwatch to fielding Eldar is not lost on me.
Nevelon wrote: Forgive me Dakka, for I have sinned. I put unpainted minis on the table for a game.
I know the general concensus is that people would prefer playing painted minis, but dont worry too much about it. I play with unpainted stuff, and I play against it. I've got no problem with it...
The psychic phase is definately different than marines. You can actually do something It takes a while to learn which powers are needed, wanted and superfluous. A lesson I think I'm finally learning with my WoC.
I saw some pictures of the new harlies... Awesome. I'm not sure if the Solitare is a HQ unit? And, I fairly sure the Harlie troupe were troops... Harlequin army? Yes please! Do you have any harlequins under the layers of dust? Whats your take on the new ones?
I saw some pictures of the new harlies... Awesome. I'm not sure if the Solitare is a HQ unit? And, I fairly sure the Harlie troupe were troops... Harlequin army? Yes please! Do you have any harlequins under the layers of dust? Whats your take on the new ones?
Do I have anchient minis collecting dust? I think you know the answer to that one While RTB01 gets most of the limelight as far as old box sets go, it was not the only one. RTB06 might be getting a little more love with the harlequins once again taking center stage. And one that I have in my collection. The new ones look very cool, but I don’t know if I’ll pick them up. Mostly because doing any sort of justice to their paintjob is a daunting task. The fact that I own a dozen and an half old metal ones is another strike against them. I looked at, but did not analyze/digest the rules. I’m always wary of putting to much faith on early leaks. While it might looks complete on the dataslate, there might be something missing on another page, or something else in the wings (like the next few weeks) That said, I did ask my FLGS to hold a copy of the WD for me, and will be buying my first GW magazine in decades. I just checked, the last one on the shelf is WD290, March ’04.
They are a fragile, hard hitting, foot assault unit. With all sorts of upgrades and tricks. Unknowns are their dedicated transport, and the relics. And other things, like the format of their codex, if there is going to be one, or just a collection of dataslates. Although with the inclusion of relics, a codex looks likely. Which begs the question, do I want to shell out $50+ for one unit? Well a few, probably.
I guess I’ll sum it up with “Hopeful anticipation”.
RandyMcStab wrote: I sold my Harly box, I never fielded them in RT but always wanted too.
Good work on taking the filthy Xenos on such a successful first outing.
I guess I should brace for the xenos cracks, seeing that I’m fond of tossing them at all my imperial friends who stray from the true path.
It’s Friday, so I feel compelled to report. Not a whole lot done since I finished the Deathwatch. While waiting for the game to start on Wednesday, I did do some work on cleaning mold lines from Eldar rangers, got some progress done there. I’m wary of bring up paints to the FLGS, as in the past I had some freeze in the car and separate. But cleaning/construction just requires bits, files, and my hobby knife (which has a cap). As one of my goals for this blog was getting pictures of my old stuff uploaded, I’ll claim progress with my weekly support of the Flashback Friday thread, with part two of my Undead.
From a month/YTD progress things are looking good. I’m counting the first half week as part of last year, so right now I’ve done 4 models in 4 weeks, right on schedule!
Hope everyone has a good weekend. May your favored team win the Superbowl for those who care, and even if you don’t, use it as an excuse to make a pot of chili and have a few beers.
Not quite happy with the shade of red. I’d like it to be a little brighter, but not full-on candy apple/firetruck red. I think if I put the black slash across the hood, it might come together, but I might give it a red wash first to see what that does. Not sure, still on the fence. Overall my existing minis are quite dark, with the other vehicles being done in my “black wash everything” phase, and the guardians in a black/red scheme. So compared to them, this might be bright enough and if I went any farther would break army cohesion.
On the workbench I’ve got 4 vanguard vets cut and sorted into blisters. Next step is clean up, assembly, and magnets.
Week overall has been slow and irritating. The Boy was home sick Mon-Wed, and we got over a foot and a half of snow dumped on us. Most was in a big lump on Monday, but a few inches spread across the week, just to make sure I was out with the blower or shovel almost every day. Due to all that, I punted on hitting up the FLGS for the Wednesday night league this week. While The Wife might be OK with me heading up there, obviously life has other plans.
If there is any army that really craves an airbrush, it’s eldar. Unfortunately, I just work with the tools I have. In my next house I’m going to have a well lit, well ventilated workspace so I can have fun toys. But right now I work in the basement like a troglodyte.
Just so you don’t think I’m completely slacking off, 4 vanguard vets ready to prime. Fully magnetized.
Power Axe/SS (or combat shield if doing time as an assault sarge) Melta bomb.
CCW/BP, Melta bomb.
CCW/BP Power Spear/BP
As VVs can hand out MBs on a per model basis, I needed to actually have some on minis. It’s not just like a normal squad where I can handwave it onto the sarge. So two guys get them hanging off their belts. Spear is just because. I know they are mechanically a little sub-par, but I had the bits from the GK box, and wanted to have the option available. I should probably cob together a power maul for the same reason. Of course, I actually like to field mauls, but so far only my chaplains and librarians get them.
Not that I expect to prime anytime soon. Right now we have about 2 feet of snow on the lawn. Zig-zaged with trenches and redoubts that would do a guardsman proud. Teaching The Boy about lanes of fire, avenues of approach, and fall-back positions. But some day spring will come, the snow will melt, and I’ll be ready to prime some minis!
One of my friends here is hounding me to get an air brush as well. While not a 40k guy, he does model cars. So I’m getting pressure locally as well. If everything lines up, I could be in a new space in 3-5 years. At the rate I work, there should still be plenty of stuff on my bench, even without buying anything new.
They look good. I like the spear, it gives them something less normal, and makes them feel 'different'.
An airbrush is a whole different set of skills. All this time i've been painting fantasy I've been relearning brush skills - I got a bit complacent when I was airbrushing white for the Scars
They look good. I like the spear, it gives them something less normal, and makes them feel 'different'.
An airbrush is a whole different set of skills. All this time i've been painting fantasy I've been relearning brush skills - I got a bit complacent when I was airbrushing white for the Scars
I wish I had more bits to give them. The spear is a good start. These guys are the cream of the chapter’s close combat marines, with open access to the armory to choose their weapons. The fact that most of them are packing bolt pistols and chainswords kinda ruffles my feathers from a fluff POV, but the the gamer in me keeps yelling to keep their points down. I almost went a little extra crazy on gearing up these four, figuring I’d rarely field more then a 5 man squad. Ticking out these guys with fancy toys would boost the options magnetized that could be swapped around as needed. But the desire to keep my shelf deployment something reasonable held me back.
RandyMcStab wrote:Looking nice, they're nice kits, I've not really seen them. How do you find the do on the tabletop I've never fielded them?
I’ll let you know when I actually do field them. While I do endeavor to get as much fresh paint as I can on the table, the Vanguards haven’t found a spot in a list since they were finished. My partner in the last game was fielding a 5 man squad of them in a RG list with only JPs and MBs for gear, as a bodyguard for his HQ. They seemed to work OK for him. Advance behind a rhino for cover, leap around at last minute, blender stuff. Ork bits everywhere.
I like the kit, from a modeling POV. Both vet kits really, them and the sternguard. So much fun. Picking up a second box of VVs was mostly for the stormshields in the LotD counts-as, but also I dislike 5 men squads on the shelf. Even if I never field them as a full squad, the codex dictates marines are organized into 10 man squads. The fact that I need to trade bits before getting the last guy done slightly bothers me. But I only need 9 men for my plan. When they fixed the LR back to a 10 man capacity I was worried about who would my chaplain would charge down the assault ramp with, as he couldn’t fit with the assault terminators anymore. Vanguard vets are going to be the answer. but probably not until late spring, as I need to prime and paint them. The 5 I have now might see the table with jump packs before then though.
This is a little more of a process piece, rather then just a WIP update. With the VVs off the workbench, I thought it was time to put some magnet magic on the grav tanks. This would let me actually field the wave serpent if I wanted to. Fun fact: one of the Falcons was the first model I ever magnetized. However, the magnet I used popped off, so if needed to be re-done.
Here is the start pic. All the parts more or less laid out.
Here are the magnets themselves. 2mm ones are stocked my my FLGS, the larger ones (.125”) I picked up from ThinkGeek a while back. I know you can get them cheeper elsewhere, but I’m a big fan of connivence.
While you can build special tools to help keep polarity lined up, I just use a BB glued to a piece of sprue, and stacks of magnets.
So if I wanted to make sure both Falcons use the same polarity, I set up on one, and then break off half the stack, put glue on the end one, and press it up against the other tank.
One nice thing I discovered is that the holes on the heavy weapons are 2mm wide and 2 magnets deep. So it was a simple process of putting glue on a pair of magnets and running them in there. This also means that the guns can be placed on either side of the WS turret, or onto the side of the Flacon. You might notice that one of the scatter lasers has a nail head, rather then a magnet. This is from my early days magnetizing, where I was buying much more expensive magnets from Radio Shack, and didn’t have a pin vice. It’s not like it needs the duel magnet strength to keep itself attached. The armor bit for the other one was glued on year ago, the other is free, so I could use the pair of scatters on the WS if I wanted.
And the finished shot:
Getting the chin guns swappable looks to be a little harder, as will be getting the infantry platforms and viper ready. My old viper is firmly glued together, but the new one will be more flexible.
The barrels on the Eldar guns are nice and slim, while they have a chunk of mass at the back. Unlike most imperial guns which are chunky throughout. They all kept pointed nicely at their targets last night. Yup, it was Wednesday, so league night at the FLGS! Bumped up to 750 this time.
Farseer
10 man guardian, brightlance platform, WS w/brightlance, holofield
5 man DA, exarch w/power sword, shimmerfield (in one of the Falcons)
2xFalcons, scatterlaser, holofields
Opponent was Tau. 2 firewarrior squads, one pathfinder. Commander in suit, with 3 suited buddies, hammerhead.
Dawn of war/relic was the mission. He castled up in a corner to start. I drifted forward with the tanks, shot up some suits first turn. His return fire didn’t do much, as I was mostly out of range and behind cover. Turn two the falcons finish removing all the suits from the table, getting me first blood and warlord. I see where people complain about large volumes of high S fire from Eldar. A pair of falcons, generally regarded as sub-par, were doing mean things to his elite/HQ squad. I disembarked the troops to help gun down the tau infantry while my tanks switched their focus to the hammerhead. I then got to witness why some people complain about Tau. He markerlighted my guardians hiding in ruins, stripping away their cover save and boosting the BS of a firewarrior squad. That was ugly. But soon the hammerhead was silenced, and the remaining tau routed, Eldar victory via tabling, top of round 5 IIRC. Casualties to the craftworld were 2 dire avengers and 10 guardians (and one HP worth of WS)
Lesons learned:
Tau fire is bad. I should have stayed in the tanks longer. I knew this before getting out, but it was a friendly game and I would have felt like a dick just drifting around at 30”+ scatter lasering his firewarriors to death. Tau's ability to ignore cover is bad for people who need it to live.
Boxing up the farseer in the WS removed a lot of his potential. No firing ports makes for a bored psyker.
If I’d doing an aggressive deployment with the guardians, I should take a platform that helps them. The brightlance platform was mostly useless.
While I was up there I also picked up the WD with the harli rules. I’ll probably sit down and read it this afternoon.
I masked off the stripe with tape. While it helped get the edge, it was not perfect, and pulled off some of the base color. Still, progress. But I need to pick up the pace a little bit if I want to keep to my goals. Month is halfway gone, and no finished minis. Not good, not good. It was a productive week on the assembly side, so not a complete loss.
Little build update:
I had picked out parts for this guy a while ago, but never got around to glueing him together, as I wasn’t sure what upgrades I’d eventually want to run with. The big one was if I wanted to come up with a fusion gun. I decided that I’d rather get him done with one option, and I can always forgo WYSWYG (gasp!) if needed. So here is the Autarch with a power stabby thing and a arm mounted pistol. Budget wargear will just be a power sword, but I suspect I’ll get much better results with the relic blade. It’s a lot of extra killy for 40 points.
Also in build news are magnets on the flight stands for the bikes with corresponding fixtures in the bikes. While the conection to the stand is not the best, they should serve. The next question is what to do for the tanks. With there larger, more disperse, mass, I’m not sure the little 2-3mm magnets are going to have enough force to keep them on the stands, and not just fall off. Anyone out there magnetize bases for tanks? I’d rather not glue the pegs in as it would complicate transportation. But having them fall out every time I pick up the tank to move it is getting old.
'Look, no hands!'
lol. I dont think Autarchs get much love, compared to seers on bikes. Nice to see a bit of a change, and something choppy in a strong shooty army. From a playability point of view, mantle of the laughing god (if I recall correctly), is a good upgrade to boost survivability...
Not got any decent ideas for the tank bases. I never magnetised any of my tanks when I had my brief stint of Eldar. I cant think of any ideas off the top of my head, either.
Zambro wrote: 'Look, no hands!'
lol. I dont think Autarchs get much love, compared to seers on bikes. Nice to see a bit of a change, and something choppy in a strong shooty army. From a playability point of view, mantle of the laughing god (if I recall correctly), is a good upgrade to boost survivability...
Not got any decent ideas for the tank bases. I never magnetised any of my tanks when I had my brief stint of Eldar. I cant think of any ideas off the top of my head, either.
Who do you think he is, some graceless monkey? The handlebars are just there for show, he can dance through the air with but a thought, and needs his hands free to kill everyone in his path.
An autarch was going to be part of this list since I saw him. Saim-Hann are on the rough and tumble, violent side of the eldar. While they have farseers, they don’t strike me as nearly prominent as other craftworlds. They should be lead into battle by someone who enjoys the wind in his hair and running down some upstart race who’s on the wrong planet. Mechanically, the reserve manipulation seemed like it might be required for the crimson hunter, who really needs to show up at the right time or is going to get shot down. The mantle does seem nice if I’m going to be running him solo. I plan of painting the harlequin rune on his banner to represent it, even if I don’t always equip it.
The need for a little CC was also brought to light in the first game I played with my eldar a few weeks ago. I charged my farseer into a drop pod, needing to kill it. He’s an HQ, and has an armor bane weapon, no problem, right? S user+2d6 is not the best for a skinny little xenos. But he’s a HQ and should have a few attacks base. Nope. Mr. I’m-a-robe-wearing-gimp only has one. At least he had a pistol.
Sorry for the late update. Last week was both The Boy’s winter break from school and my folks coming up for a visit Wed-Sun. So what free time I had was either very early, or late in the day and not a whole lot of progress was made. Did get some work done on the bike farseer. The bike itself got a little cleaned up, and a few more colors on the rider. One thing I had planned when I made him was a swappable head. The farseer one that came with the new plastic one, and a less ornate helm to be used for a warlock. This was found in the crimson hunter kit. In theory it’s for the hemlock wraithfighter pilot. I’d drilled a 2mm hole in the torso for a magnet, but not installed it, back when I first started this project. Just this week I put magnets in the heads. 2mm is a very tight fit, and there was some tearing of the plastic. Hence a little greenstuff smoothed over the necks. I’ll drop a magnet into the body when I’m done painting it. I learned a long time ago not to glue and paint at the same place a/o time.
At some point I need to decide on what I’m doing about gems. Right now I’m ignoring them.
Gitsplitta wrote:I like the way the farseer is coming along Nev. Nicely done.
Warboss_Waaazag wrote:Beautifully painted Eldar. That seer is coming along nicely.
Thanks for the kind words guys.
When I paint, I try to make sure that everything ties together into the same army theme. For my Ultras, this is fairly easy. The only hard part is when I run out of paint and they’ve changed the formula on me. That and trying to color match minis that have had the color bleached out of them by years of sunlight and covered in dust. For my Eldar, I want to mix it up a little. First off, my old stuff was done in my “black wash everything” days. It worked well for my chaos and undead armies, but is only so-so for space elves. I don’t think I’ll go so far as to strip the old stuff, but I’m defiantly not going to continue going forward. But when painting my farseers, I had to go back to the shelf and look at what I did before. "Did I go with bone or gold on the armor?" and other such questions. Seeing that I missed flashback friday last week due to guests, I’ll take this time to show you the old psychic crew who will be leading my forces to victory. Two old warlocks and a pair of harlequin avatars, dating at best to mid/late 2nd ed. And that’s for the warlocks, I know the harlis are RT.
Farseer on jetbike a/o warlock on bike done. Simple headswap lets me use the guy for what I need. Spear option for both, naturally, as that’s glued on. And like the autrch, he don’t need no stinking hands to fly.
In progress on the bench is the farseer on foot with a staff. Although the month is almost over, so I need to pick up the pace. I do count bike models as two though, one for the rider, one for the bike, so I’ve got two down.
It’s come to my attention that farseers can no longer equip staves. So the guy on the bench will hereafter be a spiritseer. That’s fine, I needed to grab one anyway. Here is a WIP, with a special guest from the back of the workbench:
I may have been influenced by another blogger painting old dwarves, and he’s been lurking in the back for a while now. So an elf and a dwarf getting paint together, how very LotR.
And it’s Wednesday, so I should be able to head up to the FLGS for league night. Up to 1,000 points, so I added 250 on to last time’s list. Mostly in the form of a unit of fire dragons and a lot up upgrades. Like a warlock for the guardians, and mounting the seer on a bike, and giving him the laughing mantle. Ghostwalk matrixes for the falcons as well.
Because they don’t have force weapons. They start with witchblades, and can upgrade to shining spears. Unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible.
The dwarf comes from a time out of memory. I suspect he was purchased back when we started gathering minis for out D&D games. He looks to be Norse Dwarf #09 from the ’88 catalog which fits the timeframe. That’s assuming he is one I purchased, which I might not have. I’ve received a number of mini dumps of unwanted lead over the years, and he might be from one of those. But at some point in more recent history I found him in the pile, and as we still lack decent dwarfs (now for Pathfinder) I cleaned him up and primed him. And then he slowly marched to the back of the bench, waiting for his turn with the classic dwarven stone-like patience.
It was another victory for the forces of pointy ears last night. Game was vs. the same Tau guy from last time. He was fielding a 7 man unit of pathfinders, 3x10 squads of fire warriors, one in a devilfish, a hammerhead, riptide, and commander. Dawn of War/Emperor’s will. He lines up on the 12’ line, mostly in the open. It might have worked better for him, but I seized the intuitive. Tanks drift forward, focus mostly on the pathfinders, blow chunks out of them and force them to break and run off the table. His return fire is mostly jinked away, barring the two wounds he puts on my farseer with smart missiles. No LOS needed, ignores cover, and decent S/ROF does bad things to non-IC characters relying on cover saves to live. He advanced forward, very aggressively with the riptide.
I disembarked the dragons and guardians, while the DA’s falcon moved to get a shot on the commander, who was using JSJ to keep out of LOS. Even with Doom, the riptide took a ton of fire before going down. Luckily I had the fire to use, and killed it. Some poor dice rolls on my part, but good enough. Return fire is ugly, killing the guardians an some of the dragons, and the seer. But my next turn sees the end of the hammerhead and his commander, and the rest is just a mop-up opperation until the game ends on turn 5. We both have out objectives and warlord, but I have linebreaker and first blood. If we had gone another turn, I suspect I would have killed the last squad of FWs camping his objective.
Note on the dragons: Eldar on foot are fast. I’m so used to disembarked melta troops getting their one shot, then kinda shuffling around for the rest of the game. After shooting the riptide (which the needed to run to get closer to) they hoofed to towards the tanks, killing the hammerhead. They weren’t in melta range, but massed fusion guns worked. They finished the devilfish off with meltabombs.
Fresh paint report for the jetseer: Being mobile and able to target things with powers was nice, but nowhere to hide against Tau missile fire was his downfall. He did OK, and the dooming of the riptide is what let me kill it in one round.
I was out running errands and needed to pick up some wax at the craft store for The Wife’s candle making project. It’s dangerous to go in there unchaperoned.
Flush cutters, so I’m not using old, dull wire cutters to take things off the sprue.
Micron black pen, for scribbling on banners/seals/tabards/etc. When I get around to doing the Banner of Macragge, this will be required.
Little ziplock bags. A lot of arms these days are paired together. I figure I can cut them and store them in bags, so I don’t need to spend forever trying arms to find the ones that fit together from the bits box.
Metal ruler. For cutting out play-aid cards. Scissors suck for that.
Paint scraper spatula. For applying glue/snow flock mix to bases. As someone who appreciates his offset spatulas for frosting cakes/cookies, I figure I should get one for my modeling work as well.
And just so I have a record for if/when I go back though this thread to figure out how much I spent on the hobby in 2015, that lot ran me about $25.
For those of you who are unaware, Paradigm is organizing a monthly painting competition. March’s theme is “Space Marine” I don’t think I posted my latest HG after I built him, but as he is primed and ready, he’ll be my entry for the month.
And lastly, an updated WIP shot of the good Seer:
Coming along nicely. The gold needs another pass, and I think I might highlight and wash the sash. I’ve already started blocking colors out on the staff, but that and the head shouldn’t take much time.
Nice supply drop, I eye similar tools every time I go to hobby lobby, and have to constantly remind myself that I either already have (or don't need) the things I see!
Looking forward to getting stomped by you and the others in Para's comp. Will be nice to move a space marine from the shame pile to the display shelf.
RandyMcStab wrote:Good stuff, man it feels good to kill a Riptide.
That it does. But damn they take a lot of firepower to kill. We don’t see a lot of Tau at the FLGS, I think this is only the 3rd riptide I’ve ever faced across the table, and the only one I’ve killed. I’ve come close, and/or tied them up for most of the game before. But my Ultras never actually finished the deed.
GrimDork wrote:Nice supply drop, I eye similar tools every time I go to hobby lobby, and have to constantly remind myself that I either already have (or don't need) the things I see!
Looking forward to getting stomped by you and the others in Para's comp. Will be nice to move a space marine from the shame pile to the display shelf.
I just finally snapped and bought it; I’ve gazed wistfully at this stuff for years. I tend to be very stingy with my expenses, as I’m a stay-at-home dad with no income. But The Wife spends more then $25 on hair dye a month, so I figure I can invest in some needed tools that with halfway decent care should last me years. And I might be able to find some non-hobby uses to help justify it. Not that one frivolous expense justifies another, but I do try to budget a little “keep me happy” money into our monthly expenses. Not that I use it often.
As for the painting comp, I have no aspirations of even getting close to winning. I recognize that I paint a quality table top standard, but am a far cry from the jaw-dropping work that many of our fellows bang out on a regular basis. I like competitions like this one for the sense of community, and an extra shot of motivation. Which I generally need. That and encouraging me to stray from my comfort zone.
Yeah, its most of those things you said for me too. I don't plan to win, but I may try a little harder on this model than if I were just painting it to clear up desk space.
Tools.... Something I overlook when considering supplies. I pick up the occassional pot of paint when needed and got new brushes for christmas, but nothing along the lines of actual tools. You ever considered a Dremel? My Dad bought me one for Xmas. I'll be honest and say it's a little unwieldly, but drilling through plastic is an absolute breeze. Not tried it through metal yet...
A micron would be a solid investment.
You have probably seen me cast my hat into the fray with Para's hobby challange. I'll be getting my paint on pretty soon, too. Are you planning anything special for the honour guard, or business as normal?
I have a demel. Well, technically my friend has a dremel, which lives at my house, and has done so for the last decade or so. While I have used it on plastic, it doesn’t go slow enough, so control is a major issue. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to do any conversion work on metal, so mostly is sits in a box and collects dust.
The HG is just going to be business at normal. As normal as a hyper-elite, creme of the chapter, highly equipped killing machine can be called “normal” though. But he’s going to be in the same blue and gold as the rest of the guys in the HG squad though. I might take advantage of this time to base the lot of them though.
Got some time to paint this morning, finished the seer. I think he turned out pretty good. I’ve got a feeling I’ll eventually be pinning that staff arm, but right now it’s glued on. This puts me at 3/4 for the month, so I need to pick up the pace.
Just a quick WIP update, so you don’t think I only update this blog on fridays when I have to. HG is progressing well, next step is to clean up a little overage from the blue wash and do the tabard. Plus the arms. The dwarf is also steadily getting work done, I think all his colors have been blocked in at this point. Next step is some highlights/washes, and a bit of cleanup. He’s going to get some freehand on the shield. I think I might attempt a celtic knot. Not an overly complicated one, but something to push my bounds.
GrimDork wrote:The dwarf colors are very dwarf-like, looking forward to your freehanding attempt.
Marine looks good too. I know they'd probably get torn to shreds 10 minutes into a campaign, but those tabards look cool on space marines.
The dwarf is mostly a symphony of browns. Good, solid, dwarven earth tones. It’s hard to tell from the angle of the picture, but he has a red cape. Right now just khorne red base. I want to add some depth to it, but keep the shade more in the burgundy range.
The tabards are growing on me. They always struck me as totally impractical, and as you say, have a life expectancy of zero in a combat situation. But they do help convey the baroque aesthetic of the imperium. “We’re overly ornate and impractical, and if you have a problem with that, we are going to grind you into dust.” Right now they are the hallmark of my honor guard, although a few other marines sport them. I think just the sternguard sarge and librarians though, not a lot out there.
Gitsplitta wrote:That marine is really looking great Nev. Love the vibrant blue and gold.
Thanks. While it is a bit of a pain to use the blue wash as a glaze, I like the results it gives. Since starting with the base gold/chestnut wash/drybrush gold scheme for all my gold work, I’d never go back. It’s a simple technique that gives really good results.
Some more work done on the HG. I finished the tabard. I’m not sure if it counts as “wet-blending” but I did do some color progressive mixing on it. Little spot of snakebite leather and bubonic brown on the palette, and changed up the ratio as I worked up from the depths. All in one sitting, not waiting for previous layers to dry. Then dry, wash, and highlight. Makes for some pretty smooth gradients. Whoda thunk it? Arms are progressing. Need to brown wash the gold, clean up the blue, and then wash that.
Not a lot of progress on the dwarf. I hit the flesh with a brown wash when I had it out for the tabard.
On the workbench I cleaned some flash off of the Fire Dragon exarch and the last of the rangers. Need to do a little bend work on one of the rifles and probably the firepike. I think the to-prime pile is now at the point where I’d take it out for a spray if the weather clears. Hopefully this month, but maybe next one.
Sorry I missed the chance o say I like the filthy Eldar witch earlier, look better covered in cleasing flame obviously.
The tabard looks good but I think your pic is letting it down. I know how hard it is to light pics properly (you've seen mine) but it looks like you're selling yourself short.
I agree with Randy. It looks like the light is coming from the right, but the tabard is facing left.
From what I can see, it looks good. I can see the dark, middle and highlight. With more light, we might be able to see the subtler transitions better.
Thanks guys. I know I’ve got a lot to learn about photography. OK, that’s a little dishonest. I’ve got a decent amount I need to learn, but also a chunk I know about that I just need to put into practice. I’d blame this one on just being a quick WIP shot, but my “final” pictures aren’t much better. It’s perpetually on my New Year’s resolution list, might actually get to it this year.
As I write this and think about setting up a light box for decent photos, the sun is shining in the window over the winter snowscape that is the back yard. The thought crossed my mind that I could carve a 1x1 foot cube out of the snowbank and use that as a box. It’s pure white, tons of full spectrum natural light, and totally free! Then I come to my senses, look at the thermometer, and chuckle at the thought.
Randy: It’s not easy to model minis on fire, running around burning to death. I might have some unbuilt skeletons kicking around I could try it with though. I’d have to sift through the old fantasy side of things. Might make for some fun objective markers though. While the odds of it actually happening are low, it reminds me that I do want to experiment in green stuffing flames. The thought was to make a burning blade out of one of the ravenwing swords as a magnetized option.
Now that the snow is in theory melting, I’m feeling the drive to build more. We’ll see what the workbench holds.
hey you know what i want to try, but im not sure how to do it
a steaming power sword my firt thought was gluing some cotton, but that would ruin the paint...
LordRahl wrote: hey you know what i want to try, but im not sure how to do it
a steaming power sword my first thought was gluing some cotton, but that would ruin the paint...
My thoughts, which are all totally hypothetical, are thus:
Roll up some green stuff
Flatten it into small sheets, probably about 1cm square or smaller. Probably need 4-6 of these. Cut roughly into a flame shape (but probably just triangular-ish)
On a moistened surface (to prevent sticking) smear them out a bit to get a tapered, ragged edge.
Apply to sword, on the downwind edge, smoothing in towards the middle of the blade. stick flames on both the inside and outside of the blade, mostly towards the tip, tapering down towards the hilt.
Wait till cured, paint.
That’s how it plays out in my head. As I’ve not done any real sculpting, it may not actually work out that way. But it should make for a fun experiment. And it it doesn’t work out, I’m just out a bit off putty (which I have a lot of) and a spare sword bit, which I also have in copious amounts.
So hey, my Eldar are supposed to be Saim-Hann. And that means more then just a red paint job, it means jetbikes. Which I’ve been slacking on. So I spent some time at the bench slapping some together.
I know I need to do the riders, I just don’t like them. At some point my need to have them will override my apathy. Or drive my to actually convert the guardians which is what I originally intended.
But in addition to banging out another 3 bikes, I also put together a ShurCan bike. And took some WIP shots, so here’s my vague tutorial is you want to duplicate my work.
Parts: One jetbike, and the cannon from the vehicle sprue. You should have plenty of extras.
At this point I’ve made 3 cuts. The peg that holds the shurcats on, the little nub at the front of the foot plate, and the top half of the circle normally needed to mount the cannon to the WS/Falcon. There is a little more knife and file work needed.
With a round file, I carved back the underside of the canopy. This gives the gun a little more room to set in. I also carved back the front part of the bike frame. so the hose on top of the cannon fits. Both fairly simple.
Here is a slightly better shot.
And with the canopy on:
And a long shot with the squad, so you can’t see the flaws in my work, but more likely the view had in a game.
So there you have it. Very basic work, but also fairly easy. I should probably go back and fill that little half round hole at the top of the gun. But it’s mostly hidden, and my GS skills are not the best.
In other news, the HG’s arms are on, and I glued a rock and a tuft of grass onto his base. I’ll probably snow flock in later today. I grabbed a WIP pic, but it was blurry, so I trashed it. I’ll grab a pic when he’s done at this point.
I'm not a big fan of the cannon sticking out massively from under the bike. It just doesn't sit quite well with me. But at least you can easily see which one is which on the TT.
What don't you like about the riders? Personally, it's their face-piece which does it for me. It's why I got alternative ones when I did a my brief stint of Eldar.
It’s the face grill and the cone head. Looks closer to the silliness of RT/2nd ed then the modern kits. Not a terribly big surprise, considering the age of the sculpt. But it hurts a nice cohesive army look.
As for the cannon, no other option leaps to mind. You might be able to do some over the shoulder, fixed on the back of the bike thing. Which, while looking cool, would not be easy. A slightly easier option would be to cut either the gun down, and/or carve more of the bike away. This would tuck it more into the frame of the bike, and lower it’s profile. Might require carving away a slot in the front canopy. That’s a lot of knife/file work; while others might be able to make it look good, I don’t have faith in my own skills.
The last option would be to pick up a box of the new harli bikes, and just use those. Or the GW conversion kits. But that’s spending more cash, and I’m cheep.
Here are the bikes staged and ready. I’ve got one more on sprue, and will probably leave it that way for a bit. Right now I’ve got 2x3 man squads, a farseer/warlock, and an autarch. What I could do is take the lat bike and make another warlock with it. Problem with that is I’d need to source bits or do a lot of kitbashing/greenstuffing. But I’m not sure if I need another regular biker. So the last one can wait for now. But I wanted to get a group shot in.
HG is done, and came out for a formal photo shoot. I took the time to white balance these. Just used the adjust tool in iPhoto, so hopefully it worked.
And one with his peers:
To go back to the tool topic, I used the offset paint knife to base him, the first mini I used it on. So much better then before. If you are using a straight tool to spread stuff around, consider switching to an offset. It makes things so much easier.
I think the banner is actually going to be the next thing I work on Zambro. When I had the HG squad out, I thought about finishing them up, which included basing and banner. The basing might require waiting until I can get the primer out, as I’ve got some special bits I should probably use for them. But the banner can be done now.
Here is the research I did for it a few pages back:
Tall Banner
Gold Ultramarine symbol on a field of deep, rich blue
Intricate with honorifics and victory scrolls
Unburnable, and self repairing.
Lists all 77 UM chapter masters
Honorific for every major victory. Cassus was present for 9 of them. While 400 years old is quite a stretch, it’s just a portion of the ~10k years the UMs have been racking up wins.
As the banner is not very wavy, I don’t think I need to use the blending tricks I’ve been working up. The new thing I’m planning is putting the micra pen to the test. Both for squiggles all over the parchments, and to blackline the gold Ultramarine symbol.
darkcloak wrote: This is a great blog dude. Very nice work. Your HG make me jealous...
Thanks. With the exception of the last guy, they are probably 90% from the sternguard kit. While I do have a lot of old odds and ends in my bits box, I think the parts I used to make them are readily available. So no need to be jealous, just steal my ideas and build your own! With the exception of the banner topper, everything is generic marine, so works for any chapter. Kinda funny that I’m playing the chapter that gets an HG kit from GW, and I make my own.
The standard bearer pole is from the command squad, as is his bolter IIRC. Bolter might be from the commander sprue. He needed an offhand bolter, and there are a few still out there that you don’t need to cut the hand off first.
The champion’s back w/cape is from the commander. Not sure where the sword came from.
I think the guy resting his hand on the pommel of his sword is 100% sternguard.
By the time I made the axe guy I had burned through the sternguard torsos, so he just gets a tactical one. The axe is an old SW one, cleaned up a little. One of the few off-hand axes I’ve seen.
The relic blade is half GK (legs, arms, backpack), Torso is tac, shoulders are from a vet kit. Might be vanguard, rather then sternguard. Head is VV as well IIRC.
Paintjob is my standard base/wash/drybrush. Except the tabards, which I am quite proud off. Like the way they turned out. They took a little blending and mixing. I think the hardest part for someone trying to duplicate my work would be getting the paints. Some of the ones I use are archaic. I worry every time one starts to get low.
As I was blocking in the colors I realized I had forgotten to pencil in the Ultra symbol. Oops. So now I need to go back and try to get it on, centered, and looking nice. To help with this, I grabbed a pic (above) and printed it out. I figure I can muck about on paper before trying to put brush to plastic. And since I had a pic, I figured I might as well post an update here in the blog.
Edit: More procedural progress!
Right now you are looking at an image, of a printout, of a picture, of a mini. C’est ne’pas un pipe. (or something like that, my modern art history is a little rusty). This was a helpful endeavor. I got a better idea of the ratios and placement I’ll need, and a reminder of the shape. I forgot the tops were cut in a little, I was going to do them flat. Now back to painting!
From a bookkeeping POV I’m not sure if I’m going to count the banner as a model equivalent, or as odds and ends that needed to be done. I’ll see what the count looks like at the end of the year. New techniques/tools used on this are a few. The math/plotting/sketching is not something I normally do. But for intricate freehand, is probably a good idea. The micron pen saw a lot of use on this project. Outlining the Ultra symbol, putting a blackline around the inside of the gold border, and scribbling the hell out of the parchments! Overall, was fun to do. I can see why the Word Bearer’s do it all over the place. <glances at the Chaplain> I probably shouldn’t have said that aloud. Gotta run!
Cool banner Nevelon. Reminds me of the good ole days when they put paper banners on marines. Tried it myself. The results are best not spoken of.......
Thanks guys. The lines are a little wobbly in places, but overall I’m happy with the results. And having a blinged out banner is so much better then an empty stick in the squad. Now I just need to find 170 points in my next UM list to field these guys. Plus a CM, which should be Calgar. Maybe instead of my Eldar I should bring the Ultras to the next Wednesday league night. See how much fresh paint I can fit into the 1,250 points we are up to now. Less worries about winning then if I commit to a 3 game tournament.
@40kFSU: Most of my banners are the old sticker ones. I’ve hand painted a few over the years. The best results were the photocopy and color in the lines ones. Somewhere (I couldn’t find it) is a BA banner I did for my terminator captain. Soooooo bad. But my old Ultra banner from the back the RT painting guide came out well.
Some banners:
The big 3
Color in the lines RT:
I’ve got a sticker!
My sticker is bigger.
Some old BA freehand work. Not bad all things considered.
Besides slowly plugging away at the dwarf, I need to find something new to paint. I’m sure I’ll think of something.
I like your range of banners, I remember that painting guide! I've got a version of the UM Chapter banner I did as a back banner for some reason back in my 2nd Ed army, I'll try to photo it.
One of these days I’ll turn my old, half melted LR into a terrain piece. But that’s a very low priority half-baked thought.
I’ve put a lot of progress in on the crimson hunter today. It’s painting up fast Orks must be right about the red ones. When vehicles are not cluttered with baroque ornamentation, you can just slap the paint on with little effort. So far I’ve got two coats of the red down, and just put the first black. I might go back and black out some more panels for contrast, still undecided. I’m also not sure if I want to add in the bone parches of the official crimson hunter paint job, or just stick with the red and black. Also not sure if I’m going to give it the Saim-Hann stripe. I’ll try to get some pics up later. Opinions?
RandyMcStab wrote:Stick with red n black and do the stripe.
Zambro wrote:...Out of no where, comes the Crimson Hunter! The coverage looks decent, overall. Might need another layer or two of red?
A chevron or two would fit in nicely!
I was leaning towards the pure red/black scheme myself, but was still on the fence. Having a third color there to break stuff up and accent can be nice, and there is not a lot of opportunity for that on the hunter. I was thinking about blacklineing the gaps, or maybe putting a wash in there to help break things up. The thought crossed my mind to edge highlight all the panels, but I think that might be the madness talking. Of course, actually doing something with the gems would get some color in there...
I’ll aim to put a chevron centered on the back, and then a stripe across the nose, parallel.
I’m kinda shocked how fast this bird is shaping up. It could be that I want to field it in an army, and really like the model. So it’s getting double-barreled motivation. You are probably right Zambro about needing another coat of red. While the Khorne Red is a base paint, it still doesn’t cover quite as well as I’d like. The curse of reds. At least it works better then the mildly thick washes the rest of my red collection is.
Put more black down, and drybrushed the stuff that needed the silver. Started on the cockpit and the pilot. Chugging along. Was holding off on the next coat of red until I finished the silver/black, as I need to cleanup some slop from that.
No game on Wed. Most of the crew was off in Chicago for Adeptecon, and I guess the rest stayed home. FLGS was very quiet. Hung out with the guys running the shop, so not a total loss of an evening, would have been better with a game though.
Snow continues to slowly melt, although we still get intermittent cold snaps. Someday spring will come, and the rattle can will be released upon the pile of grey plastic. Speaking of which, I should add more to that. Like the riders for the jetbikes. They are not going to assemble themselves
OK, finished the old stunty. Used a little more highlighting then I normally do, particularly with the silver, but a little on the cloak as well. Freehand on the shield was shamelessly stolen from Weety’s blog who’s foray into ancient dwarves inspired me to dust off this guy and give him a little freehand work. Obviously her work is much better then mine, but I tried. From a technical POV, I used the mica pen to help clean up/line the freehand. And you thought the black background was accidental! For those keeping track, his tab said “Fighter” and I couldn’t see a date. I also have no idea why he has a boar on his head. Or whatever that thing is supposed to be. But he’s done now, so will go join the ranks on the D&D shelf, just in case we need a dwarf fighter in light armor.
Eldar will continue promply, I just couldn’t resist a dwarf joke. Just had to toss that up there in the title.
Just a a note, mostly to myself. KR is running a BOGO sale until mid next month for their new sized cases. Sounds like time to get more foam. In case I loose the little slip of paper I did all my work on, here is what I’m planning on getting:
KRX #1 (150% taller then a basic KRU)
SM15 (stormraven, dread, 12 troops) Full width, full hight
EL5 (WS, 4 bikes) 1/2 hight, half width
EL1 + EL1 (2xFalcon) 1/2 hight, half width
KRX #2 (all trays half width)
EL 23 (crimson hunter) 3/4 high
F4H (18 troops) 1/4 high
EL1 + EL4 (falcon, 5 bikes) 1/2 high
SM7 + SM23 (3 dreads, 2 speeders) 2/3 high
F3H (18 troops) 1/3 high
EL2 + EL4 (2 vipers, 7 bikes) 1/2 high
Note to self, check and see if I can get the non-SM stuff in red, while the SM stuff is blue. Also, look into if I can get it though the FLGS without causing Mark undue problems to utilize store credit.
Nice freehand! You've really been pushing the boat out with painting techniques latey. They look great, keep it up!
I'm not really up on KR.. So most of what you have written doesn't make sense to me... But is it necessary to get enough boxes to hold everything when you keep your stuff on a shelf and very rarely travel with it all at once?
I get bags and foam from a European company called Feldherr. Their bags are a lot more subtle, not massive plastic boxes with 'GW' on the side I only have one bag, but I have 9 foam trays. Between those 9 trays, I can usually work out a combination of 3/4 that will hold everything I want to carry. I dont find it necessary to get myself another bag.
Zambro wrote: Nice freehand! You've really been pushing the boat out with painting techniques latey. They look great, keep it up!
I'm not really up on KR.. So most of what you have written doesn't make sense to me... But is it necessary to get enough boxes to hold everything when you keep your stuff on a shelf and very rarely travel with it all at once?
I get bags and foam from a European company called Feldherr. Their bags are a lot more subtle, not massive plastic boxes with 'GW' on the side I only have one bag, but I have 9 foam trays. Between those 9 trays, I can usually work out a combination of 3/4 that will hold everything I want to carry. I dont find it necessary to get myself another bag.
I figure after a few decades painting, I should probably try to improve.
As for the foam, it’s not so much the volume, but the shape. Last time I dragged the stormraven up, I had to pack it in a spare box with scraps of foam. It’s sooo much nicer to just plop it into its own slot and call it a day. And right now all the Eldar stuff need to travel ala scrap.. Not all of use just toss our larger vehicles in our backpacks. The only reason I’m getting any more troop-sized trays is to fill up the boxes. With what I have now I can move ~166 basic footsloggers with the KR I have. And if I break out my old GW case, another 108 guys.
The KR system I have uses foam, boxes, and bags. I’ve got a Kaiser 3 bag, which can hold 3 KRU (the cardboard boxes). Each of the boxes has all the nice custom foam, which I do swap around depending on what list I’m packing. Right now I’ve got 4 standard sized boxes. When I place this order, I’ll have the equivalent of 7, as the new ones are 150% taller, but otherwise the same. So I’m not talking about getting more bags, just more trays. They just happen to come in boxes. While you can get the foam trays separately, it can actually work out to being more expensive then just getting a new box full of custom foam. And at buy one, get one free, what I have specced out should run around $100.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
All masked up, hopefully lined up. Asked The Wife for her opinion. “Honey, does this look bi-lateraly symmetrical to you?” is not a phrase you use every day. Actually using masking tape to mask, whoda think it.
And with a little paint and the tape removed. Still need to clean up the work, but the lines are down. I think I’ll continue the stripe up to the fins, so it matches with the black flaps. Also need to put black on the canopy. In the final stretch for this one. Need to figure out what to do next.
Nevelon wrote: Not all of use just toss our larger vehicles in our backpacks.
Haha! In my defence, they've been varnished, and are wrapped in a hand towel! (...Still, I know... far from ideal)...
Loving the chevron / stripe.
Next up; you could line those panels. Take some wash, using a regular detail brush, and put it into the panel lines. You might have some touch ups to do around the edges, but thats no problem. Maybe even your micro pen fits in it?
The smallest micron pen almost definitely will.. just be aware that you'll tear the pen up pretty fast using it for that kind of work. Kind of worth it though.
Another option is oil paint pin-washing, apparently it's the shiz for doing panel lines... as far as I can tell it's virtually the same as dipping with woodstain (or army painter tones), but *only* for the panel lines, so a lot more careful, slower, and tedious
The black lines definitely break up the ship though. It looks good.
That's the eldar ship? Looks a lot like the dark eldar one. Or are there two of those now... I stopped keeping track.
I'll probably do black lines, not sure if I'll use the pen if it will wreck it. Not going to start with oils, while cool, it's a level of work I'm not up to dealing with.
It's the craftworld eldar crimson hunter. Aethetically close to the DE ones, but less spiky bits.
I don't know if using a micron pen on one plane will kill it, but I filled in a bunch of lines on some bases I was doing, probably 2-3mm square tiled floors, that wore it out pretty quickly. Of course, even the namebrand microns aren't that expensive.
GrimDork wrote: I don't know if using a micron pen on one plane will kill it, but I filled in a bunch of lines on some bases I was doing, probably 2-3mm square tiled floors, that wore it out pretty quickly. Of course, even the namebrand microns aren't that expensive.
I started doing the blacklineing with an brush. Figured better safe then sorry. Done with the top already, I’ll do the rest later. Some will have to be done after I glue everything together, as the seem of the two parts will need to be lined.
Gitsplitta wrote:Very nice Nev. Good job with the black areas. Really adds interest.
Zambro wrote:Look great!
You can probably see for yourself that the lining really adds to the model overall.
I needed to do something. I don’t want to re-vist the total black wash of my old vehicles, but it needed something besides just the flat red. Black lining is a good compromise. Happy the way it turned out.
Here is the bird all glued together:
Once it has had a decent time to set, I’ll go back and give it another round of touch ups. Although I’d field it as-is in a pinch.
Automatically Appended Next Post: OK, the Crimson Hunter is done. Final look is not that far off from the last one, so we’ll just call that the “finished” pic. As we are almost at the end of March, lets get a Q1 review:
4 Deathwatch
Farseer on bike
Spiritseer w/staff
Dwarf
HG w/relic blade
Banner of Macragge
Crimson Hunter
Look at that! I’m ahead of the game. Well, with my creative accounting. Bikes=2 models, and vehicles=4. And that’s not even counting the banner as a mini. Which I might end up doing at the end of the year.
Besides the model a week goal, I also wanted to hit 1,000 point of new eldar painted. WYSWYG, no hidden upgrades I’ve got 350 now. About a third of the way, so once again ahead of schedule.
Thanks for the kind words folks. And it’s not knicking ideas if you attribute your source. That’s drawing inspiration from.
The Crimson Hunter could have taken flight last night, but was preempted buy the Ultramarines. There was so much fresh paint in blue that had never seen the table, they insisted to take the field. So I crammed as much of it as I could into a 1,500 point list, and hit the FLGS.
1,500, dawn of war/crusade.
Ultramarines:
Calgar
Jump librarian
HG VV HB/F tac in rhino
CC scouts in LSS TML/HB Speeder
TLLC/ML dread.
LR
His list (Emperor’s Children)
Warpsmith, loaded for bear
2 squads of CSM in rhinos, at least one marked nurgle
2 huge blobs of cultists
3 helbrutes
10 man squad of havoks, w/MLs.
(Pardon the blurry phone pics)
Contact! Off screen to the left is where my LSS is hiding, and the other chaos rhino. Most of the cultists and the other hellbrute are off in the ruins to the right. He goes first, I don’t seize. He pushes forward, I return fire, not a whole lot of damage done. Here is the bottom of turn two:
Not shown in these pictures are the 20 CSM who where there at the top of round two. They were all brutally murderized purged. The honor guard and the scouts blenderd one squad, after it’s rhino was cracked open. The other squad has disembarked to shoot up my tac squad. It was first worked over in the psychic phase by my librarian, shot up a bunch, and then finished off by the VVs, who also multi assualted and killed them andthe horse they rode in on their rhino as well. Enfeeble is bad people. But things are about to get ugly for the Honor guard and Calgar. They take some fire, loosing the champion, before the smith and the brute plow in. While he might look innocent and sweet, that warpsmith is some sort of demon axe weidling, knorne marked, be-tentacled rage monster. He swings about a dozen times with his AP2 clever, and drops the stalwart chapter master. His triumph is short lived, as the HG with the axe puts him down at I1. When the dust settles, the power axe HG and the standard bearer are locked into CC with the brute. Over on the other side of the table, the cultists run towards the action, and their doom.
The Vanguard leap over the wrecked rhino and charge the cultists. Two(!) of them go down to snap-fired autoguns, but then the retribution begins. Do you know why there is a rule in the CC section about what happens when consolidation will not get you close enough to attack? It’s for situations like this. The poor VV with the axe never got to swing, as the combat went straight to resolution at I3. Needless to say, the cultists were run down, and the VV consolidated back towards the main fight.
The rest of the battle went fairly quickly. My massed, ineffective fire eventually brought down the remaining helbrutes, I missed melta in this list, need to clean the optics on those Lascannons. The Vanguard butchered the other (enfeebled) cultist squad, once again killing so many that CC was ended when the survivors couldn’t make it into contact with the marines. One bright point of glory and honor was the CC fight with the remaining HG and the helbrute. Armed with nothing more effective then their courage and krack grenades, the valiantly fought back against the corrupt monster. The Axe marine copped a fist to the face, and was laid low, but the Ancient refused to fall. When the smoke from the scuffle finally cleared, he stood triumphant, Banner planted into the glanced-to-death hulk of the fallen war machine. He then ran over to help finish the havoks, who just finished putting down the last of the scouts in CC. The novice’s sacrifice buying time for the rest of my force to finish mopping up and head over to gun down the ML toting heretics.
Game ended via tabling at the bottom of turn 6, although I also had 3/4 of the objectives, as well as first blood and linebreaker. Both warlords were dead.
Fresh paint report:
Jump Librarian. Probably the MVP of the game. Enfeeble is crazy nasty. Smite is a solid attack, the life drain is no slouch. While not the CC machine that the other HQs are, he was still more then capable to cutting through chaos marines and cultists.
Honor Guard. Blender-rific. Of course, they are still T4 marines, and can roll ones just as well as terminators can. It was fun watching the last, desperate havoc with a ML spang a krack missile off the helmet of the Ancient. There are some perks to 2+ saves. It was worth putting in the axe. He avenged the Chapter Master. Relic blade was a bit of a push, as the squad already was turning anything they touched into a cloud of gore. The S6 would have been nice against the brute, or if there were MCs. But he died before the final brute fight, and there weren’t any monsters.
Vanguard Vets: The poor guy with the axe never got to swing. His comrades butchered everything vaguely within range so well, that combat was called before he got to swing. Every combat. Although the first fight with the CSM there was only one or two guys to mop up after the shooting. Cultist bits everywhere though. And the squad that had been enfeebled? Ouch. The vets probably would have been fine solo, without the librarian leading them. But I was up against mostly “soft” targets. Against something with a little more umph, the HQ would have been a valuable asset.
LSS While it’s been out a couple of times before, the storm still feels like a new unit. Although this will probably be the last time it gets a new paint shout out. It did it’s job well. Ferried the scouts to one CC, let them re-embark, and then took them to another. All while peppering shots around. And jinking like a boss Both of the speeders were forced into evasive maneuvers multiple times and made every save. Something like half a dozen missiles were causally rolled around, never landing on the fragile skimmers.
4th squad It’s hard to call a squad of RTB01 marines “fresh paint” but this was their first outing with their new sarge and HB marine. Sarge never fired his combi, as I thought it was overkill on the first CSM squad they tangled with. After the initial combat with the CSM, they tossed some shots into some cultists, but mostly fell back into their rhino to re-deploy towards objectives.
Zambro wrote: Nice report, Nev! You showed those heretics!
I'm supprised Calgar died. That guy is a beast. Did he kill anything before he went down?
Hmm, I think he punched out some of the CSM. I know I attacked with him once. And I’m not kidding about that tech guy being a killing machine. One of the other chaos guys at the shop was commenting on how over equipped he was. But he got the job done. I think he had the axe of blind fury, but I’m not up on the heretical bits and bobs. I do know that it was AP 2, and gave him d6 extra attacks, which was 5 in this case.
Base attacks:2
Charge w/rage: +2
Extra CC weapon: +1
Axe d6: +5
Mechatendrils: +2?
So 12 S6 AP2 swings. And there is a good chance he was a vet of the long war, and thus hated me. After a certain point I just glaze over and ask how many invuln saves I need to make. I also went into the combat a wound down, having flubbed an armor save to some shooting earlier. Calgar might be an awesome wound sponge and beatstick, but even he has limits.
And because I forget to take a pack shot, here is an unpacking shot, before they head back to the shelf:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gitsplitta wrote: Two nice looking armies on a nicely decorated table. That's all-win in my book.
Yup, it was a good day out. Fun was had by all. For part of the game we were watched by a new player who had just bought his first unit the day before. Always nice to get fresh blood into the hobby. Which, in this case is very appropriate, as he’s going Khorne. So we were able to pass on some advice and tricks to him as we were playing.
It was fun to play, but very concentrated. For a 1,500 point list, I had 27 pairs of boots on the ground. Every armor save I failed was critical. The CSM squad the HG killed had a pair of plasma guns in it. If they had a chance to shoot, half the HG could have been vaporized. I guess Grey Knights play every game like this, but I like to have a little more depth in my ability to soak damage.
Here is a semi stream-of-thought view into my army building. I’m going to ramble out a wall of text, sorry.
When I built this list I had a ton of self imposed restrictions. The first, and most obvious, was the desire to get as much fresh paint on the table. As this was a fun league night list, I also wanted to use units that didn’t get a lot of use. As things started to come together, it became a mechanized list, and I realized that if I took certain units I could fit it all into one KRU worth of foam for easy transport.
The first thing added to the roster was the HG. No choice there, they were the fresh paint that demanded the Ultras take the Eldar’s normal Wednesday slot. Once I picked them, I needed a CM. I could have done a build-your-own for a more reasonable amount of points, but I figured on their first outing, they should be escorting the real deal. Plus Calgar sees a lot of dust, it would be good for him to see the field. How are these guys going to deploy? Drop pod? Rhino? Screw that! The LR is the vehicle of choice of hideous assault units. It does make for a massive chunk of points though. That big ol’ box of pain is taking up just shy of half my points.
OK, next unit. Who’s recently joined the painted shelf? Vanguard Vets. OK, I like the jump chaplain with assault units, but not today. Jump Librarian needs to see the field. Second squad of ultra-elite choppy death added to the list.
Troops would be good, and points are running low. LSS is still new-ish, and I can fill it with CC scouts to help with the theme. I always feel dirty when not fielding at least one tac squad, so I hit the shelf to grab one. The 1st and 5th get most of the time in the sun, but the 4th has recently been upgraded with the new sarge and HB. By now the mechanized column is taking form, so they get a rhino, rather then a pod. Plus I’ve been over using the pods. Or I could use the deathwatch as a half tac squad, but I’d like them to debut with their librarian, and my HQs are full. Not going to ally today. They get a pass.
At this point I’m about 1,250 points. How does the army look? Chock full of close combat death, very light on AT fire (just the LR) no real AA to speak of. And, coincidentally, will all fit into one KRU worth of foam. The sensible thing to do would be to ignore the transport restrictions and grab one of my flyers. Screw logic. What slots are left unfilled in the trays I’m using? 2 dread slots, another speeder slot, and a score of slots for infantry. Dev squad would work nicely, but is not mobile enough to fit the army theme (tempting though, I’ve got a Dev sarge that is new paint). Pred would fit nicely thematically, but it’s tray is in use for the rhino. Dreadnought time; fire support loadout. TML/HB speeder, one my workhorse units, eats up most of the remaining points.
With most of the points spent, I go back for a second pass with upgrades. The dread goes venerable, someone gets a melta bomb. I grab everyone from the shelf. VV get some gear swapped around (I decide I’d rather go axe/pistol + CCW/SS rather then axe/SS, BP/CCW). Then it’s time to pack everyone up into a box, and wait for The Wife to get home so I can flee up to the FLGS and hope to get a game in.
OK, Para’s monthly challance is almost over, and while my entry has been done for a while, I wasn’t quite happy with the pictures. So I not only broke out the camera again, but found some whistles and bells to go with it. A second light, better backdrop then a folded sheet of printer paper, and a tripod. Next year when I’m going down my resolutions I get to say “I got some progress!” when I get to the “improve my photography skills” one. I also poked around my camera menus and took pictures on different settings. Some were massively overexposed, and I’m not sure I could tell the difference between the ones that weren’t. Need to learn more (shock). These are zoomed and cropped, rather then just holding the camera near the mini.
For comparison, here are some of the old shots:
The last new pic that’s the front view is just the same auto settings of the old ones, but I think came out much better. It also shows off the tabard the best. I’m not sure about the white balance overall. I kinda like the warmth of the raw photos, even if it is a little artificial. What I should do is get some daylight bulbs for the clip/swing lamps and see how that affects things. Now I need to pick the best 4 shots and cross post them into the challenge thread.
Next months category is going to be “veteran” so I think I’ll do the ven dread that’s on the bench. Love those guys.
Sounds like an awesome battle you were involved in. Sad to hear Calgar got smashed though, he's usually pretty solid. I'm glad to hear the Jump Librarian did well for you, I'm planning to use one myself to lead my small army of Ultras. You got any tips how best to use him?
@Grim I have to drive about half an hour to my FLGS. Seems like a haul, but at least it’s there. There have been times when there wasn’t a store even that close, and those were dark days. Hopefully something improves in your neck of the woods.
@Adamski I went with biomancy, as it struck me as the best for the assault role. While there is good stuff in the other disciplines (invisibility) I didn’t feel like gambling with powers that may have been situational if I didn’t get the ones I wanted. The only gear I gave him was the jump pack, and a force staff for his weapon. I don’t think he’s sturdy enough to strike last, and the +2S helps get wounds in. ML2 was worth the upgrade. I generally was throwing 3-4 dice to get powers off. Only periled once, and was able to use life leech to get the wound right back.
I’m no expert on psychers. I think this might be the first time I fielded my librarian since they took away my ability to choose my own powers. So take what I say with a grain of salt. One of my problems with rolling for powers is it makes it hard to plan how to use them. I was kinda expecting something to make the lib better in CC. Ended up with blasts and debuffs. Still worked well, but unexpected. I guess that’s another big reason to go ML2; the second power. Makes it more likely to get something good.
I think I've got something 45-60 minutes away in either direction but it's a bit much.
There's a recently opened store in town that runs a lot of friday night magic type stuff, maybe they'll expand and eventually... probably have moved by then
That's how they've handled their magic phase forever, in warhammer fantasy too. I never liked rolling for stupid powers. Hand picking them to make a thematic/purpose-built character would better suit me.
Most of my WHFB magic use was with 5th edition necromancy, where you got to pick your powers. Or the chaos spells were were variations on a theme of “Zot! Die.” so which ones I got were mostly a mater of flavor. One of the underlying themes of my army selections has been to minimize randomness. If I give my troops an order, I expect it to be carried out. None of this “psychology” stuff, or do your own thing if you roll a “6”. Hold the line. Full stop.
While I had the camera set up, I grabbed a few more pictures.
The old spiritseer picture wasn’t a bad one, the difference might just be that I waved the white balance tool over the new one.
Some final shots of the CH. I think it photographs better at a rakish angle, but that would have required moving the tripod.
A sneak peek at this week’s Flashback Friday:
One problem of holding the camera close to the mini for pics is depth of focus. Sitting back and doing a zoom/crop gives you a better shot of guys with bits sticking off in every direction. So I decided to grab a new shot of the jump captain, as I recalled he didn’t want to sit still for his last shot.
And the start pic of the next project: Dreadnought Ghost!
(Just kidding, he’ll be blue shortly.)
OK, so I wanted to try something a little different for the dread. Just a touch of weathering, in a way that would fit in with the rest of my army. So I’m going to try some heat distress on the HF and PC. When I get around to painting them, maybe some of the other arms, but one thing at a time. Basic start off all my guns. Black base, heavy silver drybrush.
Need some paints, specifically a purple. Sitting on the back of my bench is a collection of old glazes, which is actually what I need here. Never used them, and judging from the tag, I bought these back in the early/mid 90s. Anyone who’s lived in Louisville should get a chuckle about the fact that I bought them at Something to Do on sale. Back in the day they were notorious for never marking even the dustiest product down. I think there are more FLGS’s there now, but at the time they were our only option.
And here is an “after" picture, with the paints used:
Not particularly happy with it. Once it dries I can see if it looks any better. Might hit it with a wash and/or another silver drybrush and see how that does.
On a different note: if you haven’t voted for Para’s March painting contest, you really should. Lots of cool minis over there. And not to beg, but someone please vote for me. Or not, I reconize I’m in the bottom half of the field, but I suspect foul play.
Anyway, happy painting all! And have a nice holiday weekend if I don’t update before then.
I think a brown wash would go a long way to tying that together! Good for a first attempt, you've got the principle down!
The voting setup was definitely a mistake on my part, I'll fix it to allow multi-votes next month! In the mean time, I hope you're not put off by the lack of votes, and for what it's worth, I think your entry was great, and better then some that got votes. I think some people may have been voting for themselves, which I sadly can't stop.
Paradigm wrote: I think a brown wash would go a long way to tying that together! Good for a first attempt, you've got the principle down!
The voting setup was definitely a mistake on my part, I'll fix it to allow multi-votes next month! In the mean time, I hope you're not put off by the lack of votes, and for what it's worth, I think your entry was great, and better then some that got votes. I think some people may have been voting for themselves, which I sadly can't stop.
Heh, no problem, I’m not put off, just a little disappointed. When you open the field to everyone, including people who paint professionally, the odds of winning for a normal guy are near zero. Although I think that some of the work done by amateurs was better then some of the professionals in this case. I don’t know if OneMansNoodles or TazN (who were my top two pics) paint for a living, but I know Zambro is a student, and his dread was my third choice. And I know there was at least one full time painter in the competition, possibly more. There is some bias in model selection, theme, etc, which can affect votes.
I’m mature enough not to let it bother me. But still, nobody like to see that “0”. As for voting for yourself, it happens. I know I didn’t. And frankly there are enough people voting that all it works out to is a little vanity boost. The top pieces are still floating to the top.
And I’ll try hitting it with a brown wash once it dries. Thanks for the tip!
Fair enough! I am keen to keep improving the challenge forward, while keeping it primarily just something to motivate/inspire, rather than an out and out competition. Basically, I think if you get to the end of the month and have painted, modelled or learned something new, then you've won and should fell proud! The actual voting is merely a bit of fun at the end, at least in eyes.
Still, if you have any ideas to improve it while still keeping it open and fun, then feel free to PM me the suggestions!
The heat weathering looks pretty good for a first try! I dont remember where I saw it, but recently on here I saw someone post a picture about the different colour steel turns at different temperatures. You dont need to stay true to reality, but it gives you some inspiration and visual cues to do it.
I think your transitions need to be a little softer. Your purple / brown is fine, but the bone to silver is quite harsh. A few things that I would try to fix it is to give it a whole wash, like para said. That might tie it all together. Alternatively, you could try thinning it a little more. It would show the base colour more under it. Although, having said that, looking at the picture, it looks thin enough. In the centre of the bone colour, I can clearly see through it to the black / silver base. I think the bone might have just pooled a little too much on the outside edge which is why the colour is so much stronger at the transition.
When I did the my Dreadnought's flamer / PC, I loaded up my brush with purple wash (one from this century ) I wiped my brush on tissue, to get all the excess off. It left just enough wash on the brush to easily manipulate without flooding the area with paint.
With regards to the voting, I think multiple votes is a good move. Now, with one vote each, it means that most people will vote for the 'best' 5-10 enteries. And because they only have one vote, they want to make it count. With multiple votes, I can not only vote for my favourite entry, I can give votes to those entries who make me think 'wow, thats so cool!' - be it conversions, dioramas or generally good entries that aren't the 'best'.
OK, first pass on the PC, and touch ups on the HF. I feathered in a little silver from the back of the flamer, and then gave a thinned brown wash over the whole thing. The PC got the 3 washes that I started the flamer with, but I thinned the bone a bit more first. I think I might to some blue/white edge highlights around the bore, to show that it’s recently been fired. I’m also thinking of putting some black wash into the recesses, both on the flamer and the plasma, to highlight the weathering.
This is a bit fiddly, but fun!
And Zambro, don’t be jealous that I’ve got paints older then you are
Edit:
I did see the pictures about the color shifts. If you scroll up a bit you’ll see a few links I edited into a post just to keep track of them.
Some progress. But not a lot. Spent the weekend mostly sick, and bailing out my flooded basement. Not a good combo. Plus dealing with my in-laws. But I’ve had lots of experience with all these things, so no long term damage was done. Just left me severely drained. Also, school is out this week, so I have to entertain The Boy. Although today one of The Wife’s cousins took him with her girls to a pool to get some swimming in, so I had a few hours free to paint.
Black wash in the recesses helped. I think I’m calling it done for the barrels, not just for the rest of the details and layers for the dread. The arms are almost done, I just need the second blue layer and then the wash. Plus touch ups, etc. Same with the legs. Next step will be the body proper, which has a lot of detail, so should take longer.
I’m starting to get crazy 4 dread lists floating though my head. It’s not good for my sanity.
Haha, 4 dreads would be fun to play! The weapons are looking good, do you have any plans for his body work? I mean, you've done some burn/heat damage on the weapons, anything special planned for the body?
You count vehicles as 4 models, in terms of your 1 model/week, right? How many have you done so far this year?
Zambro wrote: Haha, 4 dreads would be fun to play! The weapons are looking good, do you have any plans for his body work? I mean, you've done some burn/heat damage on the weapons, anything special planned for the body?
You count vehicles as 4 models, in terms of your 1 model/week, right? How many have you done so far this year?
The body I’m just going to do basic. We’ll see if the mood takes me though. One thing about dreads is all the arms are interchangeable. So if I chip/weather an arm, it would look out of place on the non banged up body; and vice versus. There is enough detail on the body I don’t feel compelled to do more to it.
I did a year to date post not to long ago, but it got auto-apended into another one, so you might have missed it. I’m a little ahead of schedule.
4 Deathwatch
Farseer on bike
Spiritseer w/staff
Dwarf
HG w/relic blade
Banner of Macragge
Crimson Hunter
So assuming I finish the dread on time, I’m still ahead of the game. More so if I paint something else this month. Also in the news is most of the snow is off my lawn. And while the weather report is not good for this week, once we get a clear, dry, day, I can break out the rattle can and prime some stuff.
Heat damage is looking good, I did some on my Marines a few pages back in my blog and more much further back in the IG, feel free to have an ideas plunder.
Plasma arm is done. It might get some transfers, but those come at the end. At the moment the arm is being modeled by my older dread, the ven dread is still getting paint.
Thanks. I like the way this guy is coming together. But I do enjoy my dreads.
And here is the dread, in his full semi-painted, partially assembled glory!
The powerfist arm just needs me to go over it for touch-up work. And the actual killy part, but that’s getting worked on. For whatever reason I didn’t glue it on. Maybe so I could swap it out for the actual fist in the kit. Not that I like that fist, but it’s there. The backs of the leg armor are done, so on to the front of them. Not sure what I’m going to do in the frames. Might try my hand at more heraldry. Or just stick a transfer in there.
I know white denotes veteran status, but I think that is overkill!
You could probably get away with a chapter symbol on one of the shin pads. But I demand some freehand! Not only is this the model that you're putting forward to Para's comp, but it equals 4 models (a month of painting). You have plenty of time to do some freehand now, and finish it off before the end of the month (or finish it, then circle back to some freehand).
Zambro wrote: I know white denotes veteran status, but I think that is overkill!
You could probably get away with a chapter symbol on one of the shin pads. But I demand some freehand! Not only is this the model that you're putting forward to Para's comp, but it equals 4 models (a month of painting). You have plenty of time to do some freehand now, and finish it off before the end of the month (or finish it, then circle back to some freehand).
Don’t you worry, he’ll get more paint. And I think I will try some freehand in one of the legs. Even if it’s just a divided field heraldic thing.
Cleaning up a bit today, saw a photo op:
Lt. Cmdr: Brothers! We have arrived in the promised land! No more shall we accumulate dust on the shelves in the basement.
Seer: Wrong mon-key, the strands of fate have lead the Eldar to this place. This glass fronted china cabinet will be your grave!
Lt. Cmdr: The Emperor’s light shines upon us, none shall stay our wrath!
Seer: That’s is not emperor’s light, but the built-in illumination, which shall show off our reds better then the florescent lights of the deeps we’ve been residing in.
<sounds of garage door opening>
Lt. Cmdr: On second thought, I think I heard someone saying this space was cleared to hold The Wife’s grandmother’s pink depression glass. Perhaps we should cede this battlefield, lest we anger her.
Seer: You speak wisdom, quickly, back to the basement!
In a world of infinite space and resources, I’d love to find someplace else for the assorted stemware, vases, bowls, etc. that are currently housed in the (very nice) china cabinet. and relocate my armies to it. Not going to happen, even when we move to the “Next House”. But a gamer can dream. I do realize that I could get something reasonable, for something closer to a sane price then we paid for the cabinet. It’s on the “things to buy” list, just very far down.
RandyMcStab wrote: Do more heraldry, love that the sprue comes with the 3rd Co. Logo too.
Oops you 2 posted before I managed to reply to the previous post, lovely glassware BTW.
We have more glassware then we ever use. I’ll just pour a drink in a juice glass, rather then have to wash the stemware. But it’s nice to have for those formal occasions. Mostly the china cabinet just holds pretty stuff to look at. Why that can’t be my armies is beyond me. But not The Wife, and she gets to win this one.
But on to progress!
Got the colors blocked in for the rest of the dread. Well, most of it. One shin pad has been left blank for freehand. I’m not sure what I’ll put there, but it’s getting something. Next step will be the drybrush and washes. Things are a little slower then normal, due to the temperature in the basement. The spring thaw means the underground river that flows under our house is sucking all the heat out. It should even out in a few weeks, but right now it’s chilly down there; I can only paint in short bursts.
On the flip side, it’s quite nice out today. Should be in the mid 60s. Very windy yesterday, but if it has calmed down, I might break out the primer.
So it’s officially spring here. I spent yesterday assembling new deck furniture and fired up the grill for the first time this year. Burgers and Brats, winter can suck it! I would have primed stuff yesterday, but The Wife was also enjoying some time in the sun on the deck, and I wasn’t going to taint that with the sweet smell of propellent.
Mmm, look at that crappy lawn. I should probably rake, de-thatch, fertilize, and otherwise take better care of it. But that would cut into my hobby time. We’ve got stuff to prime!
The observant among you will notice that this is not everything that’s been cleaned and ready to prime. There are some finecast Eldar who while free of mold lines, probably need a little hot/cold water action to straighten out a bit. Didn’t feel like taking the time to do that, and wanted to prime while the weather was clear. With the rumors of new Eldar on the horizon, I’m going to wait a few before finishing up the bike riders. I suspect that nothing will change the fact that I need to finish them, but hope springs eternal. If we do get new bikes, I suspect I’ll end up with a squad of the old ones and a squad of the new ones. Probably 6 strong each, but we’ll see.
The turret of the WS got primed, but I still need to figure out if I want to bother magnetizing the chin gun. So that’s still on the workbench.
Before/after on the drybrush & wash pass on the details:
Next step is to do touch ups, then the blue wash. Might finish that by Friday, but probably sometime next week is more likely. Still plenty of time before the end of the month.
It’s Wednesday, so I’m heading up to the FLGS for a game. Set one up with a new chaos player. He’s still gathering his army, and asked for a 867 point game. I’ll take a 7 point handicap for the sake of my sanity and the math. Nothing fancy, just a simple little list:
1st and the 4th tactical squads, auto/las pred, and some terminators lead by the chaplain. I was debating bringing up my Eldar, but it’s hard to make a “simple” list with them. Plus they are hard to pack. Although my new foam should be shipping any day now.
Just waiting for The Wife to get home so I can bolt down some dinner and run.
Dread it looking damn nice! Perhaps the larger flat panel in the centre would be a great canvas for some freehand (even simple scrollwork) if you want to show off!
Looks like a nice list for the game, there's something quite cool about something that simple, no flashy toys or gimmicks, just boots, guns and armour to get the job done!
Paradigm wrote:Dread it looking damn nice! Perhaps the larger flat panel in the centre would be a great canvas for some freehand (even simple scrollwork) if you want to show off!
Looks like a nice list for the game, there's something quite cool about something that simple, no flashy toys or gimmicks, just boots, guns and armour to get the job done!
He had to call it early, do we only got to the bottom of turn 3. Had fun though.
His army was (as far as I could tell) 2 small squads of chosen, one shooty, one CC, a squad of regular chaos marines with a HB and a meltagun, and a unit of bloodletters. HQ was a ML3 sorcerer. Relic. We both moved forward, I disembarked one squad first turn, some light shooting back and forth. On turn two he almost charges me, but rolls snake eyes, a little lucky for me, as his choppy squad would have mulched my tac squad. I only lightly shoot him back, spending the rest of my time shooting up demons. Top of three, the rest of the demons (3 IIRC) charge my terminators who scattered near them, but get killed. His CC chosen grab the relic. Bottom of 3, my terminators move towards his marine squad (where his champion was warlord) while I shoot the relic squad. We fight a close CC, I win by a point, and he stays. Unfortunately, time ran out so we had to call it. 1-0 victory marines, as I had first blood.
I’d have to double-check my numbers, but I think I’ve played as many games year to date then I did in all of 2014. I think I might also be undefeated. I blame those cheezy Eldar.
My list was fun. Very basic. I didn’t want to spam armor, but wanted at least something for him to shoot at if he brought an anti-tank unit. Turns out all he has was one meltagun and a few melta bombs. Not that he got close enough to the pred to threaten it. Terminators did a risky backfield deep strike. The only reason I didn’t mishap was the fact that I didn’t rebase onto 40’s. Just playing the minis on the bases they came with. I’d say I feel dirty, but I really don’t. Tac termis did some light shooting, crumped some heads, rolled some ones. The usual. Love the guys though. I was worried when the demons charged them. There were only 3 left at the time. Only AP3 and not that many attacks. Dead demons, no losses on the marine side. The traitors did more harm, putting a wound on the chaplain and dropping 2 veterans, simply by dice and luck.
As for painting the dread, I can’t promise anything too fancy. If the mood strikes me, I might try something on the center torso, or find a transfer. Not sure. It’s a very central point to screw something up in. I might be a little more daring on the leg.
Nevelon wrote: The only reason I didn’t mishap was the fact that I didn’t rebase onto 40’s. Just playing the minis on the bases they came with. I’d say I feel dirty, but I really don’t.
Careful... That's how it starts...
One minute your playing old termies on the smaller bases they came with. Next thing you know your collecting Eldar. And amassing more Wave Serpents than FoC slots!
I kid (although, you do collect Eldar...)
The dread looks great in the second picture. You're all set to finish on time
Nevelon wrote: The only reason I didn’t mishap was the fact that I didn’t rebase onto 40’s. Just playing the minis on the bases they came with. I’d say I feel dirty, but I really don’t.
Careful... That's how it starts...
One minute your playing old termies on the smaller bases they came with. Next thing you know your collecting Eldar. And amassing more Wave Serpents than FoC slots!
I kid (although, you do collect Eldar...)
The dread looks great in the second picture. You're all set to finish on time
This blog and all you as my witnesses prove I was collecting and painting bikes and Saim-Hann before the new codex and the (rumored/leaked) MASSIVE cheese fest they look to be heading for. Even with that, I think I’ll stick to a self imposed 1 special per 3 bikes. Just like I’ve never fired the serpent shield as a weapon in all the games I’ve played with my WS. Just because the cheese is available, does not mean we need to partake. I asked my FLGS to get me a copy of the codex when it releases. From the WD leaks, I’ll need at least 3 more bikes to use the new formation. We’ll see if the rules make it worth while. I know there will be times I stick with the basic CAD. For example, if you want to field crimson hunters as part of the Eldar detachment, you need 3. That is not happening. Some of the other things, like needed to field aspect warriors in groups of 3 squads, is more doable. I’m not going to worry overmuch before I have the book in my hand though.
I have no plans on getting another WS. When I placed my order for some new foam trays, I did leave some room to expand. I have slots for a total of 16 bikes, and another falcon chassis, but not an extended WS one. It will be interesting to see how the new bikes compare to the old ones in size. I’m guessing there will be some creep. Hopefully they will fit in the same trays, if not I’ll need to borrow the generically useful 4 rhino tray from the SMs.
Speaking of foam, I’m getting a little antsy and impatient waiting. I got my “Thank you for your order” e-mail on the 6th, with a 10-14 day estimate for custom foam orders (mine is) I know KR are running a little behind due to the mass of people taking advantage of their offer, but the UPS guy could in theory be dropping a box off at my door any day now.
I've seen the pictures of the new bikes. They look fantastic! Head and shoulders better than the previous ones. But I've not followed the discussion on their rules - can you give me a run down?
Have any of your Eldar related plans changed because of the new stuff?
@Zambro: the two changes that are causing the internet to implode are that bikes can not take a Scatter Laser/ShuriCannon on EVERY model for 10 points, so 1 unit at 270 points can put out 40 S6 shots at 36" then jetbike-move away, and the Distort Weapons on Wraith units getting Strength D (Along with the WK getting a S: D sword, bye bye Knights!)
@Nev: hopefully the rising tide of anti-Eldar-ism won't hit you too hard at the game nights! Keep that attitude and you'll be fine!
Zambro wrote: I think I might have touched a nerve... lol
I've seen the pictures of the new bikes. They look fantastic! Head and shoulders better than the previous ones. But I've not followed the discussion on their rules - can you give me a run down?
Have any of your Eldar related plans changed because of the new stuff?
The nerve is that jetbikes look to be the new WS, so there are going to be a lot of cheese calls against Saim-Hann players.
There are a few solid bits from the WD leaks:
1- Wraithknights are going to be gargantuan creatures, and very nasty. This doesn’t bother me, as I have no plans on owning/fielding one.
2- At least some distort weapons are going to be D weapons. Some people thing this is huge, I’m OK with it. Plus there are still a lot of unknowns out there on how it’s going to happen and to what extent.
3- every jetbike in the squad can upgrade its TL’d catapult for a scatter laser or cannon for 10 points, rather then 1 in 3. Otherwise unchanged. Basic bike is 17 points, so 27 each with a S6 4 shot gun with a 36” range. With all the movement tricks of a jetbike. Lots of rage over this on the boards.
4- Decurion style army chart. Lots of options. You take 1-3 blocks of guardian forces (which come in 3 flavors) and then can open up 12 different auxillery forces to pick from. The jetbike guardian core is the one I’ll use if I go that way. It consists of:
Farseer
Warlock council
3+ jetbike squads
Viper squad
So if I want to use it I’ll need at least 3 more bikes, for a 3x3 squad setup, and possibly more warlocks. If I wanted to use the foot based guardian forces, I’d need to pick up some war walkers and support batteries, and that’s not going to happen. I dislike the look of the walkers. Or just play with the old CAD, which is probably going to happen a lot. Still no word on what the formation bonuses do, they might be quite tempting. I’m going to wait to see the book before I make any plans. I suspect those plans will encompass a new new box of bikes and a warlock, but I’m not ordering them from the FLGS on release day. Going to read and digest the codex first. Almost out of store credit, so am getting a little more picky about what I blow cash on.
Also in the news: Got a e-mail from FedEx, package ETA Monday. So the foam is incoming! <cheer> I also got the second coat of blue down on the dread, so will probably get around to the wash coat today. Then it’s just clean-up and freehand.
Edit:
Thanks Para. The problem with being long-winded sometimes is posts sneaking in while you work.
Oh, lordy, I can see why people are going crazy. scatter lasers on every jetbike is massively abusable. Are they twin linked from the laser lock, too?
I'm not sure on the Gargantuan Creatures rules. So that change is a little lost on me.
A friend at the LGS has been talking about collecting Eldar for the last month or so, but has held off for the new codex. I'll end up having a flick through his codex to see what's what.
Zambro wrote: Oh, lordy, I can see why people are going crazy. scatter lasers on every jetbike is massively abusable. Are they twin linked from the laser lock, too?
I'm not sure on the Gargantuan Creatures rules. So that change is a little lost on me.
A friend at the LGS has been talking about collecting Eldar for the last month or so, but has held off for the new codex. I'll end up having a flick through his codex to see what's what.
Looks like laser lock has been dropped. Not that it would have helped the bikes, as it only worked on the model’s other weapons, and they just have the laser. It should help tone down WSs though. And nerf the way I fielded my Falcons, but I’ll worry about that later. But I can only assume that the Eldar are going to keep handing out psychic buffs like candy, so it’s not like there aren’t things to do to boost the lethality and effectiveness of already good units.
I’m not that familiar with the gargantuan monster rules myself. But IIRC they are the super-heavies of the monster world, and we all know how balanced the MC rules are. I suspect WKs are going to be even more hideous, and hope they get a points boost to match.
Off the top of my head, the Gargantuan Creature rules are:
All Poison/Sniper Weapons only wound on a 6
5+ FNP Possibly Move Through Cover
Can fire each gun at separate targets, and can fire as many as it likes.
Maybe Stomp?
Basically, I reckon WK will end up as the Eldar 'Knight' equivalent/counter they arguably should be, given the size, but I'll be surprised if they don't clock in at close to 400 points apiecd when kitted out.
Buddy of mine did a YouTube review of the dex preview in WD. It kinda went "viral" (by his standards at least). He did do a good job with it though. If you're interested, here's the vid.
Gitsplitta wrote: Buddy of mine did a YouTube review of the dex preview in WD. It kinda went "viral" (by his standards at least). He did do a good job with it though. If you're interested, here's the vid.
Spoiler:
I saw that; it was very informative. Tell your buddy thanks and good job!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hey, it’s Friday. I should post an update or something.
I think I mentioned that I got the blue down on the dread. Just snapped a pic of him. Here he is pre-wash.
We’ll see if I have time to work on him more today, pile a of chores I need to work on.
Thanks! He’s getting closer to done. He got a wash this morning, and now that he’s dry I grabbed a picture:
Need to go back and clean him up a bit. The blue wash sometimes strays from where I want it. Mostly just a few spots of gold that will need a refresh. And then I need to do transfers and the shinguard freehand. I’m leaning towards a diagonal stripe, but haven’t decided if I want to do a white on red, or a red on white.
Edit:
I’m a little pissed at FedEx. My ETA got moved to Thursday, and the last tracking status for my package was leaving the FedEx location in Connecticut at 4:35am Saturday. I would hope they have seen it since then, but it should have checked in somewhere. I doubt it’s spent all weekend+ on the road. If it fell off a truck somewhere I’m going to be even more irritated. I’ll be a little more patient before I start sending out e-mails.
White on red always reminds me of Veteran Sgt's markings on their headgear. I do think red on white would look fractionally better than white on red. I also think white on red would also be a rarer sight, at least from what I've seen around.
What green did you use for those laurels on the front of the dread? I always struggle with those.
Adamski Alders wrote: White on red always reminds me of Veteran Sgt's markings on their headgear. I do think red on white would look fractionally better than white on red. I also think white on red would also be a rarer sight, at least from what I've seen around.
What green did you use for those laurels on the front of the dread? I always struggle with those.
The laurels, in addition to my plasma coils, frag grenades, and lenses, is an old pot of metallic Glistening Green (seen here). Lenses don’t always get a green wash on top of that, but the rest do. I’m still using an old RT-era pot of green ink. For larger laurels I’ll drybrush a little silver on before and/or after the wash to help bring out the details better. I didn’t bother with that here due to the size.
I hadn’t actually thought about the red/white being the sarge’s helmet colors. I’m still a believer in the old RT markings, with the bordered stripe and cross hatching. Now that I’m thinking of it, the diagonal white on red is also a SCUBA flag, and I think this guy would sink like a stone. I could do a vertical stripe, which would mimic the modern helmet pattern, plus be easier to do. I don’t think I’m going to make up my mind until I pick up the brush. Still undecided on what to do.
While I mull over the options for the dread, I started some other projects. The two Vanguard Vets with meltabombs hanging off their belts got their base blue down, as well as their greens. I also started a closed top vehicle hatch. I forget if I grabbed it from the razorback or the old spares pile. But if I want to play WYSWYG without ponying up the points for an extra stormbolter, I needed another hatch.
Happy progress on the shipping front: FedEx has handed off the package to the USPS for the last stretch of delivery. ETA still Thursday, but it’s moving again.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Went vertical, white on red, like a modern vet sarge’s helmet
With his mostly ‘armless brothers:
and the armory:
And the WIP of what’s currently getting paint:
Next stop is transfers for the dread. Might slap some on the ironclad while I’ve got the stuff out.
One tiny nit-pick with the red stripe: the bottom left red/white border isn't quite straight. In the first picture, it doesn't quite go straight down, it angles slightly. It'll be a quick fix if you do go back to it, a steady hand and probably 1 brush stroke will do it.
I agree with Zambo, the next list you take to a game must include all 4 Dreads! I'm drawing a blank here, does the MotF still unlock HS Dreads? If not you could just run dual-CADs.
One tiny nit-pick with the red stripe: the bottom left red/white border isn't quite straight. In the first picture, it doesn't quite go straight down, it angles slightly. It'll be a quick fix if you do go back to it, a steady hand and probably 1 brush stroke will do it.
I noticed that they weren’t quite even, but thought it was close enough, and might not be noticed. Obviously, I was wrong. I’d go back and fix it now, but it can wait until the middle of the day tomorrow. I’ve got a narrow window of the day I trust myself with ultra-fine detail work. And it’s not after a glass and a half of wine. This assumes I don’t get roped into helping my father-in-law take down his snow fence, which was the plan, weather permitting.
I need to make sure I finish the dread and get all his glamor shots done before I take him out for a battle. Wouldn’t want to get his paint mussed before his entry into the monthly competition. After that, I’ve got 3 pods and a SR, with 4 dreads. They might technically be walkers, but they are going to ride into battle in style!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Paradigm wrote: I agree with Zambo, the next list you take to a game must include all 4 Dreads! I'm drawing a blank here, does the MotF still unlock HS Dreads? If not you could just run dual-CADs.
Either way, he's looking great!
I’d need the MotF, but I can steal the guy from the TFC, so that’s not an issue. It’s a plan.
Automatically Appended Next Post: OK, hopefully this won’t auto-append.
And give us a twirl…
Brother’s in arms:
I’ll select the best 4 tomorrow and post over in the contest thread, Time to watch some TV with The Wife now though.
1250 points, 4 dreads, and probably null deployment. Drop dread gorgeous!
OK, it’s a little silly. Game is vs. the new chaos guy again. He still has to bail at 8, so I told him I’m bringing a very aggressive list. The lead two pods (venerable and ironclad) have locator beacons, so the raven can skies of furry the tac squad and shooty dread down safe. Or I could just chuck them out the back near an open objective. Or all of the above if I combat squad.
Also in the news, my KR order showed up. You can see it in the background of the army pic. Quite happy with it. I’ll do a review in the near future, but don’t have time ATM. Also in a fit of spring cleaning, I cleared off my game table in the basement. It was getting massively cluttered, as all horizontal surfaces are want to do. And a 4x8 gathers a lot of junk.
While light on meltaguns, he did have a few lascannons, and melta bombs. He managed to blow up the ironclad in CC, and shot up the new venerable a bit.
Purge, he goes first. Once again we only did three rounds:
Turn one saw the new venerable dread land next to a pair of sorcerers, killing one and wounding the other. Plasma, it works! The ironclad messes up the jump unit, and some spillover HF kills a few marines. His armor saves were cold, lots of early bad luck. His turn two his sorceror charges my dread, and some of his traitors charge the ironclad. Terminators show up, but don’t have any AV weapons, so stand around. Some damage done to the dreads, nothing terminal. Unlike the sorcerer, who did have something terminal happen to him.
Here is the start of my turn 2.
Both my reserves come in. I kick the TLLC/ML dread out next to the locator beacon. A lot of firepower gets released. There is a chainfist in with the termis, but I manage to kill it. They try to take advantage of the our weapons are useless rule, but get run down. Over at the ironclad, the scouts plow in to help. The champions’ lackeys hold them off, paying for time with their lives. He plants a melta bomb, and blows the arm off the ironclad. I win on wounds, he holds in combat
His turn three is some mostly ineffective shooting. He put another wound on the ven. He charged his chosen into the old lead, but with only a maul and krack grenades didn’t accomplish anything. Over at the ironclad fight I manage to miss completely with the dread, and he saves the wounds the scouts inflict. In return, he tosses a melta bomb right into the ironclad, and blows it up. Rules question we punted on due to short time is “Do wounds from explosions count for combat results?” We said yes, but I made my Ld check, the champ remained locked with 3 scouts.
My turn three pretty much wipes out the rest of his scattered forces. The raven hovers, tacs deploy, and everything not locked in CC is shot to death. Both combats continue without results, but we have to call it on time.
All in all, a fun day out.
Ven Dread did fine for his first outing. While I didn’t think I’d like the PC, it works. I might have to field it more often. It just feels like a waste of a dread platform for a single PC though.
I'm a rather big fan of Plasma Cannon on Dreads, simply because they are one of the few mobile good-AP Blasts we can bring (seeing as Devs can't move and fire and Attack Bikes can't take PC). While in an ideal world you always have models at maximum coherency to mitigate blasts, terrain/other units/simple mistakes mean that doesn't always happen, and being able to throw out a PC shot without slowing down and that is perhaps not as expected/easily avoided as Devs can really capitalise on that. It also makes a nice DS deterrent.
"If you land within 36" of this Dread, he will kill half your squad in one shot with a direct hit. Now ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky?".
That'll help you pick up the pace. Also, seeing as it's summer you should be able to prime as and when needed. Not like winter, where you had to wait around for a good day.
I was in Colorado over all of last summer, 4th of July was crazy-fun.
on a blue background. I figure in the depths of the sanctuary, there are original banners from the founding of the legion. Nothing ornate, just the chapter symbol on a basic field. But probably handed to the primarch by the Emperor himself. Another option would be to carefully remove the old chapter banner from my venerable RTB01 marine, and retire him; passing the flag on to a new ancient. Or photocopy the old template I used to make that one and fabricate a new one. I suspect the 
Just need the 4 blades and I’ll be able to put that thing behind me.
While there might be older people out there, few have been gaming as long as I have. I literally cannot remember a time that I wasn’t playing some sort of 
I estimate I’ll need to make around 25 different batches before the season is over. We give out a lot of baked goods around the holidays. While I can’t send actual cookies to all may faithful readers, I can do the next best thing: provide the recipes. So if you want a yummy way to procrastinate your hobby work, give one of these a try.
on a blank shoulderpad. It’s all straight lines, should be within my skillset.
