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.

HeroQuest: the revival!

15 Monday Apr 2024

Posted by in heroquest

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A while ago I noted that Avalon Hill’s revival of HeroQuest was on sale, and having heard that it is mechanically the same but with more modern production values, I thought this would be a cool thing to have. It’s pretty nice! I’ve painted all the minis from the box set now so here they are. these are quick and dirty, to get them on the board asap. The minis are pretty good, but not great. They look ace from a distance, but the moulding isn’t fantastic close up. So we get minis that need detailed work that you can’t give them. A similar problem to the original HeroQuest minis! Sorry about the bad lighting. I have also included a photo of them snugly stored in their tray, which is a great addition to the box and one that GW should think about! Also, its great that this game is priced for a family game rather than a collector game, and it been enough of a success that all the original expansions and some new ones have been added. I bet GW are kicking themselves for giving up the trademark! I’ve since picked up two of the new expansions so will be painting them one of these years!

Squad Jalal – Terminator Squad

29 Monday Jan 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Leviathan

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The final miniatures from the Leviathan Starter set have been finished. The new monopose Terminators are very pretty, scaled well to earlier Terminators, and are nice and dynamic. Pleasure to paint, as Space Marines often are. It’s always nice to finish a box set, I feel a sense of achievement, and pride knowing that if someone came over for a game (if I had any friends in this city :rolleyes:) we could play using a fully painted army. Next up: the new HeroQuest…

Tyranid Attack!

22 Monday Jan 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Leviathan, Tyranids

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Up today we have the Tyranid half of the Leviathan Starter Set. Now Tyranids are not really my thing. They’re kind of boring. They’re not my least favourite 40k faction (waves to Necrons) but I don’t really care about big faceless monsters and hordes of identical smaller monsters. Although I do dig on Genestealer cults. GCs are amazing and are full of character. I don’t have a GC army, but I have the cults part of Deathwatch Overkill and a GC chemist guy and a GC rockcrusher so maybe I do. I also have the majority of the genestealers from Space Hulk painted up, so I could run all these together as a big army or something. That might be fun. Normally I paint genestealery things in the traditional oldhammer colourscheme of blue and (titillating) pink, but I wanted these painted quickly using contrast paints and basic techniques. I flicked through the starter guide and looked at the different Hive Fleets and it was Kronos that stood out for me. I liked the idea of them being Chaos-eaters, developed to function in areas of high psychic activity and specialising in fighting daemons and eating daemonworlds. The dark red-bright blue-brown colour I thought would make an interesting scheme to paint and was different to anything I had done before. Plus all the colours were available in contrast so I didn’t need to mix or shop around.

These were both fun and frustrating to paint. My lack of experience in the miniatures or scheme definitely showed, but I was aiming to get them done so that I could play the game out of the box, not win golden demon. I didn’t enjoy it so much that I will be staying in the Tyranid game, and I’m not especially pleased with the result, but just painting a big batch of miniatures and completing the box set is a victory in itself.