280: One Force Mk III Sternguard painted

At last.  I don't even want to think about how long its taken me to get to this point but I've finally finished painting my initial batch of One Force marines.

Without further ado, here's my Mk III Iron Armoured squad.  They are built with combi-weapons that come from Anvil Industries, with the top level of the weapon interchangeable so I can swap in meltas, plasma, or even grav options with minimal extra painting.

The squad is a mix of the Iron Hands squad and the Legion Mk III squad from Forgeworld (no cheating plastic Mk III here ;), and they are beautiful models with lots of bionics which fits nicely into the One Force aesthetic.

As elites within One Force, they are painted up in a slightly alternate, predominately black colour scheme highlighted with greens and then with spot colours of the One Force trifecta of camo-green, grey, and desert yellow.

I'm also deviating somewhat from my original One Force paint job (which will of course require a repaint of everything thats come before) to include some metallics into the scheme.  Ho hum.

Hope you like them, and Happy New Year to you all.

279: Storm Talons finished (almost)

I built these guys a heck of a while ago (a full 18 months ago it turns out!) and they've since been sitting in my painting queue as I lost all motivation.  After finally finishing off the Mk III marines (post to come when I get some decent photos), I pulled these out and couldn't quite believe how quickly they painted up.

278: J'migan bridge part 1

Ordo Xenos Inquisitorial intercept.  

Ensure review of the following information and prepare for additional data inload.

277: Finding Wally/Waldo for a second time

Scarily, it was 4 years ago, December 2012, when I posted about finding Wally/Waldo in the Assault on Isstvan diorama, tucked almost out of sight in a doorway at the back.

Well guess who's back, and this time featuring in White Dwarf no less...

Can you see him?  If not, in CSI fashion I can zoom (but not enhance ;)

276: Bahzhakhain!

I recently finished the requirements for the Guardian Battlehost version of the Craftworld Warhost. I took a pic to celebrate.

 Bahzhakhain is the term used on Biel-Tan for a battle host ("Tempest of blades").

Click on the image to embiggen slightly.

Or download even higher res.

275: War walkers

Wotcher. I have yet more eldar completed. These leggy fellows should get their first outing in a couple of days.

They are built straight out of the box without much tweaking. They come with scenic bases. I did feel the need to hack bits off and add patches of cracked earth in different places so they were not all the same.

The guns are magnetised. Indeed, they are identical to the guardian squad's heavy weapon platform guns. I painted up so many of those that I have not bothered to paint the guns that came with the walkers.

274: Bikes

Progress!  Hopefully not the last either.  I'm back and with One Force marines no less.  Here's my latest addition, a trio of bikers to add into my force to help me on the way to running one of the new Codex Space Marine formations.

The two slightly drunk bikers are taken from the Dark Vengence set, bodies replaced with more generic marine torso's (One Force are a spartan chapter after all), and Volkite Calivers for weapons.  As these don't appear in 40K, I can reasonably claim them to be grav-weapons for the purposes of running them as filthy grav-bikers.  The Sergeant gets the standard yellow helm, and a combi-grav which is a DIY combination of a Volkite Caliver and a bolter from Anvil Industries.

These also mark a slight change in my painting technique for One Force.  Previously I've completely avoided the use of metallics in their colour scheme, but on reflection (its only taken my 40+ models), I've decided to change their weapons and a few other details to metallic and give them black weapons housings.  This'll be applied to all of the models going forward, and potentially retro-applied to the older models.

I've not weathered the models yet because that is another aspect I'll be changing going forward, but I haven't had a chance to experiment yet.

273: Eldar artillery and a Vyper

I finished some stuff for my Bahzhakain. First, a Vyper

Secondly, a Vaul's wrath defence battery.

The crew on their own.

I painted all 3 gun options for the artillery. It's a nicely designed kit in that no magnets are needed. The guns sit on a block, and can be slid on. It's just snug enough.

272: Guardian horde

I chose Eldar because they are an elite army. I was not keen to paint huge numbers of models. So... I just finished almost 50 models.

40 guardians, 4 heavy weapons platforms and 3 warlocks. I will probably use them as 2 squads of 10 guardians and 1 squad of 20.

271: 2000pts BA&IK vs SM&Eldar

My friend, codename Luther, recently completed his first Imperial Knight model, and wanted to take it out for spin. Luther shows off his lovely models at the might brush.

He teamed up his new knight, Gerantius, with his Blood Angels.

I have mostly Iron Knights (Imperial Fist successors), and some Eldar, which I am expanding.

We played Big Guns Never Tire with diagonal deployment. I have Thunderhammer terminators up front and a rhino with a full tac squad behind. Castling up in the corner, I have a lascannon dev squad on the hill with a bunch of sneaky eldar hiding behind it. They are joined by a master of the forge on a bike with a conversion beamer. I have a bike squad with grav and multi melta attack bike next. My cloak and sniper scouts infiltrated and scout moved into the ruin. I have a Crimson Death (3 plane Eldar formation) in reserve.

Luther deployed the mighty Gerantius front and centre. Supporting fire would be supplied by a Deredeo stood high in the ruin.

270: Airbrush medium makes a lovely thin glaze

Andrew mentioned to me that airbrush medium (AKA thinner) is handy stuff. I was looking for a lazy way to shade an orangey yellow on my guardians sashes. I mixed some airbrush medium with some orange, and used it like a wash over some yellow.

This was quick and I think it worked well.

The glaze is thin in the sense that it has low viscosity and in the sense that it is see through. Note the difference between a glaze and a wash. This is on the border.

For my first go, I tried adding some retardant too: don't! For the first time, I managed to make some paint that never dries. The airbrush medium is quite slow drying anyway.

I wonder if airbrush medium plus grey might be a solution for the tricky problem of shading white.

269: Eldar flyer commission

Hey everyone, actual painting progress has occurred!

Now that you are all over the shock, to the pictures.  These are two of the Eldar flyers, Wraithfighters I think they are called, that I've been painting for Zzzzzzzz who blogs over at Devos IV. 

They will join his growing Void Dragons force.

I can't claim any credit for the paint-scheme, that comes from Zzzzzzz, although every one of those hexagons is free-hand painted with two stages of highlighting.  The colour is a beautiful metallic red that is a mix of Mephiston Red and Hashut Copper as devised by Pirate Viking Painting, and the technique I used to create the hexagons is explained brilliantly in this blogpost.

 

Otherwise its just standard metallics, greys, and although they aren't visible in these pictures, the weapons and wraithbone was all done in a pretty standard bone colour pushed all they way close to white.  The weapons were magnetised at Zzzzzz's request, you can see them attached in his blogpost.

Cheers

Andrew

268: Filtering airbrush paint

If you find that a certain paint just keeps making your airbrush spit, it may have curdled. If there is air in the bottle can start to cure in there. Perhaps there is air in from the factory. I have had this when I half used a bottle and then left it a few years. Lumps come through and block the brush.

First, give the lid a thorough clean with some pipe cleaners.

Prepare your bottle like it's going to rob a bank with some tights (I believe pantyhose is the US term).

Screw the lid over the top.

Trim the hosiery.

The newly installed filter will prevent lumps escaping the bottle.

I intend to do this pre-emptively on all bottles I have opened. Just as soon as the Mrs gets some more ladders. (I don't look fabulous in hosiery).

Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0xMTPdBonI

I thought I would write this one up, as I don't like to watch videos where I could have got the info by skim reading much faster.

267: The new GW, a refreshing change

Its been pretty hard not to notice the change in GW recently. We've seen:

• the release of "Start and Army" bundles with actual savings 
• the re-introduction of Facebook groups for GW, Forgeworld, and Black Library 
• the tantalising possibility of the re-release of perenial fan favourites like Blood Bowl and Battlefleet Gothic 
• now we've had the call for questions and release of an FAQ that actually seems to answer real questions with actually thought out responses that while perhaps not perfect, definitely look like they are trying 
• and AoS is going to get a points system, and not just willy-nilly, but one that builds on the work done by the tournament community and has had input from mega tournament organisers and pillars of the AoS community HeelanHammer, Bad Dice, and FaceHammer (check their podcasts if you don't already, they're really good). 

You can hardly argue that GW isn't trying to become a new company and one that so many of us have been clamouring for for many, many years. What strikes me is that a lot of this seems to coincide with the stepping down of Tom Kirby as Chairman of GW. As of 1st January 2015, Tom Kirby was no longer in charge of the direction of GW and if what I suppose is true, GW made this change just in time. While Kirby was perhaps a necessary evil when he first took the helm, his drive for profits over community involvement and seeming impression that GW was infallible was producing a truly poisonous relationship between company and customer.

I've been so pleased to see the changes in GW, and look forward to whats coming in the future if they continue this course.

266: 1500pts game, GSF vs SM&Eldar

I got in a game recently against my co-blogger Colonel Fazackerley, we're taking part in a little tournament of local gamers, playing the Forge the Narrative missions. This game was mission 4 from that pack which is the diagonal deployment setup, the primary objective is 6 objectives setup evenly across the board which are scored cummulatively with the winner the first to 8 points (but with the option of a draw if both achieve 8 in the same turn), the secondary objective was the Emperor's will, and the tertiary objective was slay the warlord. The usual 3 additional GW objectives also counted.

I was trialling some of the new formations from the Space Marines codex, and CF was running Space Marines and Eldar.

My list was:
Gladius Strike Force - Iron Hands Chapter Tactics
Battle Demi-Company
Chaplain in Terminator Armour
3 x 5-man Tactical Squads with Missile Launchers
3 Bikes with 2 Grav-guns and a combi-Grav
5-man Devastator Squad with 4 Missile Launchers

1st Company Task Force

2 x 5-man Sternguard Veteran Squad

5-man Terminator Assault Squad with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields

Storm Wing

Stormraven Gunship with Assault Cannon and Multi-Melta

2 x Stormtalon Gunships with Skyhammer Missile Launchers

CFs list was:

Farseer on jetbike

Unit of Jetbikes with Warlock

Unit of Dire Avengers

3 Eldar Flyer Formation

Space Marine Captain on Bike with Primarch's Wrath

Unit of Marines on Bikes

Unit of Assault Terminators with mixed weapons

Devastator Squad with mixed weapons

CF won the roll-off and nominated me to setup and go first. I setup first, mostly down in my corner as you can see in the image below, CF only set up a few units, all hidden away as much as possible to be out of sight, as you can see in the image below that.

265: Fort Vallum

This project took me almost a year. I got a wire cutter for it. It also toppled over any lingering resistance to getting an airbrush.

In a little while I will post up some rules, and ask for some advice. 

 

264: 2015 in recap

As the end of each year approaches, I like to look back at the year, see what I've achieved (sometimes more than I realised - last year), and to have a think about what I'd like to do in the new year which often follows as a new years resolutions post.  It helps me to keep stock of my progress, and try and know where I want to go in the coming year.

Its been quite a quiet year for me, with "life, the universe, and everything" somewhat conspiring to swallow up the majority of my spare time.  In rough order of what I achieved, I started the year painting the Treeman/Avatar after finally developing a suitable molten metal technique, and managed to bring it to near completion later in April.  I also managed to finally post a picture of the majority of my skaven army as they are painted.

In May, the blog added its first additional contributor - ColonelFazackerley, who probably produced most of the years material, posts:  245, 246, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 259, and 261.

I eventually got back into gaming, and as the new Necrons were revealed to be a little more powerful than expected.  I also had to add Tomb Blades to my force, as they are a requisite of the new Decurion Detachment.  GWs relentless release schedule also saw the release of the new Space Marine book, and I promptly gave in and acquired StormTalons which needed a little conversion.

A big part of my year was taken up by my trip to Japan, where I discovered Gundam.  I've got a lot of potential material from that trip, but it'll take me a while to get any of that posted.

Last but not least, I managed to paint my Fire Warriors.

This year, I also set myself a relatively modest 5 goals as part of my New Year's resolutions.  All were partial successes, I posted pictures of those models I hung onto, but have gotten rid of most of the Tyranids, got rid of a lot of my old models that were hanging around but still have more to be rid of, made progress on One Force but didn't complete everything, and the same for other painting projects.

• Post pictures of all the models I painted during 2014
• Skaven army, the Tyranids, One Force marines (Mk II and Mk IV)
• Continue the clear out
• Tyranids, Space Wolves (most of them), a lot of spares and bits and pieces
• Complete painting One Force as it stands
• 5 Mk V marines and jump-packs, 10 Mk III veterans with combi-weapons, missile launchers for all squads, Master of the Forge
• Complete standing painting projects
• Skaven warp lighting cannon, Treeman Avatar, Tau Firewarriors and Riptide, and any other bits and pieces I have lying around that I've forgotten
• Return to blogging

I'll keep on plugging away, and see where I get this year.

Happy New Year to you all.