Honoured Brother Tabascus, Ultramarines Legion Dreadnought

30 Saturday Aug 2025

Posted by in Age of Darkness, Finished Work, Space Marines

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We return today to the Age of Darkness, and my first batting on the other half of the (previous now) Age of Darkness boxset. The new one has now been released, and I am forbidding myself from buying it until I have completed the last one. Well, I’ve done the Sons of Horus and now I am doing the Ultramarines. But Doris, I hear you cry, the boxset was Sons vs Imperial Fists, why are you doing Ultramarines. Well, there is a slightly boring story there that I will tell you because that’s the sort of guy I am. The first Horus Heresy boxset was Betrayal At Calth many years ago. I bought it, but lacking interest in Ultramarines vs Word Bearers I painted them as Imperial Fists vs Death Guard. This time the Fists are getting a proper go, but I have some 30k Fists already, why not do something new? So I am, and as Fists got to be Ultramarines last time round, Ultramarines get to be Fists this time.

We start with a Dreadnought. I had fun building this guy, I wanted to see how much motion and action I could get in. Admittedly its not very Ultramarine, but this is one angry dread, he’s a pretty spicy guy as his honour-name suggests. So he has a tendency not to act as a mobile artillery piece but get in close and stompy. I don’t know what the chap on the base did to get stomped so hard, perhaps he is a cultist of some sort. Tabascus has been built so that most combos of weapons are possible, which is good, as too often I glue stuff in place and then wish I hadn’t!

The rest of Tabascus’ force will show up eventually, I am sure!

The Man Comes Around…

21 Wednesday May 2025

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Having previously featured Bumblebee and Megatron, my brush turns eventually to the man himself, Optimus Prime. A fantastically drawn hero, Optimus is, like God and Jesus, all things to all men. Thus he can be an inspiration to me and to this guy, as morally and politically opposed as it is possible to be. Of course, there are many Optimus Primes, often within the same part of the franchise. G1 Marvel UK Optimus and G1 cartoon Optimus are quite different, and IDWverse Optimus is different again. The Optimus of the Bayverse movies is a brutal killer wrapped in an American flag, whilst Aligned Optimus is literally a god of community and unity!

This Optimus is the G1 cartoon version, painted slightly off schema. Instead of using the cartoon colours I have used an actual original Optimus toy as my reference material. This only really means that the silver bits are silver rather than grey, and that his eyes and mouthplate are yellow and silver rather than light blue and grey respectively. I don’t like the ethno-implications of Optimus’s blue eyes in the cartoon (and don’t get me started on Spike and Carly and Daniel and their little aryan nation).

Uh yeah so Optimus Prime. I’ve tried to paint some animation-style light reflection on the windows, with middling success. Enjoy!

Inquisitorial Sisters of Battle army

17 Saturday May 2025

Posted by in Inquisitors, Sisters of Battle

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I have often thought about a Sisters of Battle army. They’re delightfully gothique, and have some wonderful miniatures. I would have thought that the whole sexy goth nun thing was kind of a generational trope, maybe beardlings don’t really have that whole late night telly – Bizarre mag – plastic trousers cultural foolishness axis. Perhaps these days Sisters of Battle stand for nothing more or less than Ladies Who Purge The Heretic. So anyway, when Imperium magazine had some Sisters that seemed like a good time to jump in. I bought possibly too many, but they were bargainishous. So this is the first round of Sisters, to see how they feel. I think the future ones will be converted, possibly heavily to make them chaotic. Meanwhile these have been both fun and frustrating to paint. Fun, because I tried some new techniques, frustrating because there is SOOOO much kibble and detail on these guys that just don’t really fit with my painting style [skills].

My big thing with these guys was an attempt at pearlescent armour. I got it wrong, but next time will be better. I chose Wraithbone as my undercoat and Flayed One Flesh mixed with Irridescent Medium for the armour base coat. Next time I will use Pallid Wych Flesh and more Irridescent Medium and then glaze with pure medium over the top and see if that looks more like pearl. Or try another of the colour shift paints I bought a couple of years back – I used one on the Chaos Knight and liked it a lot. Either way this was an acceptable first attempt but you can’t tell really. No complaints though.

The Inquisitor was really an excuse to paint a mini I liked. This is Athera, The Blade Of The Matriarch, who is an Escher Gang character from Necromunda. A little digression about Necromunda. Necromunda is where so much of the cool shit is happening right now. Almost every mini released for Necromunda adds new colour and character to 40k. It’s all full of amazing levels of characterisation and drama – GW have taken the opportunity to zoom in on a single planet out of a million (or more) and fill it full of grotesqueries, monsters, and humans trying to survive in a psychotic fascist death machine. I could buy everything because its all amazing! And I don’t even have the boxed game! For no good reason. One day…

Finally, there are some female space soldiers from god knows where. Drew Williams, I think. I thought that these would fit in fill up some gaps as well as creating a new heavy weapons squad for a bit of long range oomph.

Descend into the Age of Darkness with the Sons of Horus

15 Saturday Feb 2025

Posted by in Age of Darkness, Finished Work, horus heresy, Space Marines

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The other year I realised that I had a build up of GW vouchers and so I jumped on Age of Darkness when it was released. This is a good example of Getting Over Excited Because Other People Are and Not Reading The Instructions Properly. Not that its a bad set or owt, this is a great set. The minis are fantastic and for GW it’s a decent price (interjection: have you seen Rogue Hobbies’ video on Gundam? I am not a GW hater but goddam when the relative prices of plastic sprues are compared it makes me piss blood. I cheered myself up by reminding me that I recommended that my father-in-law buy GW shares, and he is well pleased with the return and regularly praises my stock tipping skills so what comes around goes around and all that). No, not that at all, but because I don’t especially collect Horus Heresy minis and already have a massive pile of shame dreams. In point of fact, I actually thought that a) this was a game in itself, like Betrayal At Calth; and b) that this would be a limited edition boxset like Betrayal etc. Whoops!

When I did Betrayal At Calth I decided, foolishly in hindsight, to paint the marines as Imperial Fists vs Death Guard. This was because Imperial Fists are great and Ultramarines are dull, and Death Guard are super interesting and never get any love. Since then of course Death Guard have become their own Thing and I have loads of them and they’re a bit boring (in an entertainingly squishy sort of way). It was clear that Sons of Horus vs Imperial Fists was fun, but I’ve already painted a load of 30K Fists, did I want to do more? Well, I will worry about that later, I’ve never painted any Sons of Horus and considering I’ve got some Lupercal Green and Sons Of Horus Green sitting here crying out for use, let’s start there.

What can I say about these? I really enjoyed painting them and I think they came out well. I am very pleased with the Spartan because tanks are so hard to paint well if you’re a hamfisted spanner like me. The marines look good. I think I should have added some battle damage and dust to the marines, but its not a problem really. I am also pleased with the freehand Sons logos. All in all, a success.

Space Marine Motorised Attack Team

10 Tuesday Dec 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Space Marines

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Another batch of Space Marines finished. These are mostly newhammer with some older bikers from the Dark Millenium (or was it the Dark Imperium? fucked if I can remember) boxset and some really battered Land Speeders from my junk pile. A solid slab of grey and red moving swiftly and angrily towards aliens and heretics! The hardest part of this lot was working out the points values at 10th edition! I had to fudge it, there is no way of doing it! You might notice a lot of Dark Angel kibble on these guys.. well this is the fluff for it. Steel Guard aspirants are trained according to the perceived disciplines of all the (loyalist) primarchs. Within the chapter each of the primarchs are honoured in the formal name of one of the companies (the first company is The Emperor’s Company, whilst the second company are The Lion’s Company. Whilst all Steel Guard are expected to be equally proficient in all aspects of battle, some are more attracted to certain styles of battle or philosophies. They are able to express this through trinkets, gewgaws, and honour marks that are associated with those primarchs or their legion. Thus Ancient Ypsima who leads this group is clearly a devotee of Lion’el Johnson (they so should have retconned that name at some point) and has probably picked for the job a few others who feel similar.

I’m pleased with these. Should have used a different green for the company colours, should have used a different colour for the bases as grey on different-grey doesn’t work. I experimented with a different way of painted the red flashes on the backpack, which works for the newmarines but not the old ones. I have decided that any future newmarines will have the new style of red but the oldmarines will stay the same. Steel Guard are flexible enough to be able to handle different paint jobs on different styles of armour… this might alarm the inquisition, who have already had to deal with this chapter’s flexibility when ***REDACTED***PLEASE REPORT TO THE NEAREST INQUISITOR FOR RE-EDUCATION***

The Dark Mechanicum strikes! Tech-Geist haunt.

07 Saturday Dec 2024

Posted by in Chaos, Finished Work, Uncategorized

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From the moment the Nighthaunt range began I was struck by the urge to make weird Mechanicum chaos creatures out of them. I picked up a load of Nighthaunt models in one of the Hachette partworks series, which I have come to think of as GW sales, and then I left them for years! Eyes bigger than my stomach, as my dear old Mum would have said, etc etc. Anyhoo, throw in some spares from various Skitarii and other bits from my bitzbox and here we go… I tried to use a blanchistu set of tones too, just to pretend like I knew what I was doing….

From out of the depths: Space Hulk genestealers finally completed!

27 Sunday Oct 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, genestealer cults, Space Hulk

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It was nearly a decade ago that this project began, with the reissue of Space Hulk in a shiny new box with amazing new Terminators and Genestealers. I picked it up, swooned over it, and started painting. I made a few mistakes with this set. Firstly I painted a single Terminator as a Blood Angel, didn’t think much of my work, and painted the rest as Steel Guard. They look great as Steel Guard, but perhaps they might have been ever better as Blood Angels! Secondly, I was intimidated by the vast mass of claws and teeth and divided the ‘Stealers into two piles to make them more managable. The first were painted more-or-less at the time, the second have languished at the bottom of the leadpile ever since. Well, no more! I’ve been trying to clear my backlog by painting or selling on those things that have been waiting the longest for my attention…

Fibrius Clustor, beloved of Nurgle, and his Begrimed Host

22 Tuesday Oct 2024

Posted by in Chaos, Finished Work

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I’ve been sitting on these for months waiting to have the time and energy to post. This horrible bunch are Fibrius Clustor and his warband. We’ve got Fibrius himself, which came from a Kickstarter, and is a lovely miniature. Fibrius could be a daemon prince, the magic using leader of a Plague Marine army, or a powerfully mutated human cultist well on the path to ascention. Then there is the big tube creature, from the same Kickstarter. These two are beautiful and were a joy to paint. Big Tube can be a Greater Daemon, a spawn, a daemon prince, or perhaps a Beast of Nurgle, depending on my feels. Up next we have some Oldhammer goodness, a Rhino and some original monopose plastic Plague Marines. The Rhino had already been converted towards Nurgle, I just tidied up the conversion a bit and repainted it. The Plague Marines are pretty limited but I made some conversions. In theory these are table legal in 10th edition, with a Plague Spitter and Plague Weapons modelled in addition to the missile launcher (Plague Launcher?) and flamer (Plague Flamer, i dunno). I think that they’ve come out alright considering how shonky the minis are. I hated them at the time because the Realm of Chaos branded Chaos Marines were so good and these are so basic. But they’re a step on the path that led us to where we are now, with amazing Plague Marines. The final bits of this warband I am not so happy with. Firstly, Newhammer Chaos Spawn, which were tricky to paint and unrewarding. In the end I did lots of layers of different shades to try and get a dusky bruised and rotting effect. This wasn’t especially successful. Finally a fansculpt Space Crusade style dreadnought. This was difficult to paint mostly because the sculpt is a bit of a stinker. It looked alright on screen but it doesn’t fit together well at all, and the detail is scrawled on with a point, and where it is sculpted on its pretty basic and has fingerprints in it and generally looks like a beginner’s piece. We all need to start somewhere, and I am happy to support enthusastic amateurs. It’s just hard to get a piece like that looking good, especially with my limited skills.

Until next time!

Battlemasters: Completion!

30 Tuesday Jul 2024

Posted by in Battlemasters, Empire Knights, Finished Work

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Yes, here we finish a project almost a decade in the making (and wait, have I been doing this blog for a decade… *checks* woah so I have!). Way back in 2015 I posted my first Battle Masters painted minis, a stand of Chaos Warriors. It was pretty basic. I wasn’t a very good painter (am still not going to win any awards but hey, you’ve got to have mediocrity to have excellence) and these are hard minis to paint well. Roll on nearly 10 years and I have finally finished painting the whole Battle Masters box. The last four stands are complete, and the armies are ready for battle! I will be taking photos of the armies laid out Ansell style sometime, but for now here are the final minis…. as I said before, these aren’t very easy minis to paint well. My biggest complaint regards the archers and crossbowmen – that the mold line runs down the middle of their faces, which are already poorly defined. Very hard to do anything there without losing all facial defination. The crossbowmen are sculpted so that where there should be a space between the bow and the body there is plastic, which is hard to paint in a way that hides it. The knights are a lot easier to paint in a way that flatters your painting skills just by adding some design to the barding. I was experimenting with different coloured undercoats on this lot, using paints from the various tiny pots of Airfix style paint. I then layered shades and contrast paints to see what I learned. I didn’t learn much but that’s part of learning! One final comment – I did pick up lots of BM Ogres as per that 2015 post, but never did anything with them! Might be about time to pull my finger out….

Combat Patrol Sprung!

23 Sunday Jun 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Space Marines

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Up next we have a small force of Astartes, a combat patrol to use the current parlace, led by a Librarian, Brother Cheres Sprung. Brother Sprung is in disguise, wearing phobos armour and a cameoline cape, so he isn’t using the blue armour more normally associated with the librarius. Either that or some foolish chapter serf got confused during armour maintenance rites. Ahem…

So I pulled the tank out of my leadpile and decided to build a small force around it. I needed a leader, and at least one squad. Grabbing at random from appropriate piles gave me a librarian and a suppressor marine. This is all looking very newhammery so far. The patrol needed to be a bit bigger, so I selected a couple of minis at random from Space Marine Box A and Space Marine Box B, which gave me another squad and an apothecary.

Brother Sprung is ably assisted by Brother Ploug of the apothecarium. Clearly this is a mission where they are likely to need a field medic. The Repulsor (ably piloted by techmarine Brother Janni) is a bit big for just the two of them so a tactical squad is just the thing. Led by Sergeant Rucker, this tactical squad is about as oldschool as it gets. With a lascannon for tanks and a flamer for troops this lot are determined not to be overshadowed by their bigger brothers! Finally to support the Repulsor some suppressors. I am not sure about the physics of these guys, but flying men with giant autocannons is definitely pretty cool.