Taking a Break...Happy Holidays!!

I'm stepping away from the blog for a few weeks while I focus on the family and our holiday celebrations.  Over the break I'll be checking out the Dark Angels codex and considering my next projects.  Deathwatch and Grey Knights still await of course, and I'm looking forward to mixing in some Dark Angels projects in the New Year as well.  I see a decent amount of interest in the Sector Mechanicus terrain projects I posted earlier this year, So I expect I'll need to get some of that painted up as well.  Plenty of fun projects await! I am looking at how to put in more how-to content for 2018 so I'm not just showing of my work. I read so much good content out there on other blogs and its time I did my best to contribute as well.

As I close out 2017, here's a look at what I was able to accomplish.  It all got started with Squaduary 2017 when I was able to complete a squad of Deathwatch marines.

Squaduary 2017 project

The I built and painted some scatter terrain and a couple sets of the Munitorum containers.

The Custodes I recently completed got built in the spring of this year, and the sector Mechanicus terrain came out.

The spread of new Sector Mechanicus themed terrain on the table-top

I dabbled in Shadow Wars: Armageddon, building Orc, Space Marine, Astra Militarum and Harlequin war bands.  I even dabbled in painting Orks again.

"I'm a hankerin' fer yer loot!"

And I tried out a Tempestus Scions paint scheme for my Imperial Guard war band.  I'll get these finished up one day, but they were put aside for now.  I don't get nearly enough time to play and Necromunda now looks like a more compelling rule set...and I was eager to use what little game play opportunities I had for 8th edition 40K.

WIP: 29th Zetic Tigers

I posted an article about my efforts adding extra shelves to my Ikea display cases. This was a great project as it doubled my display capacity without requiring any more square footage from my already cramped hobby cave.

Same ol' cabinet, twice the shelf space!

There was a good deal of modelling Deathwatch marines and the adding Grey Knight characters from the new codex.  And the Deathwatch Watch Master got painted.

Deathwatch Watch Master

Then it was time for Dreadtober and a fully painted Grey Knight Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight!  This was such a fun project...modest in the customization, but ambitious (for me) int he painting!

Grey Knight Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight Armor

Hot on the heels of this character, I decided to paint up my Grey Knight Librarian.

"Purge the Deamons!"

And I finished with my Custodes assembled earlier in the spring...

Custodian Guard

That's fourteen completed models and a handful of completed terrain (scatter pieces and containers) plus a large number of general assemblies for Deathwatch, Grey Knights, Shadow Wars: Armageddon and Sector Mechanicus Terrain. Quite a haul for one year by my previous standards.  I hope to outdo this for 2018 and keep the hobby momentum rolling forward.

I will leave you with my Best wishes for the holidays and a very Happy New Year!

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Results from the 2016/17 Hobby Season

As I align my own hobby work with 40KAddict's hobby season, it's time to reflect on what I got done since September of 2016. My hobby ToDo list was intentionally long and filled more with opportunity than direct goals and I had no intent of knocking off the whole list.  For the 2017/18 season, I am thinking of modifying that approach...but that's a tale for another post.

What got accomplished in 2016/17?

My Deathwatch force started to take shape:

I participated in Dreadtober 2016 as the Deathwatch work continued:

Then it was on to Squaduary 2017 and the Deathwatch caught more paint:

I completed some scatter terrain:

And some Munitorum containers:

And dabbled with a unit of the Emperor's praetorians:

And dabbled with Shadow Wars: Armageddon:

 

And made some beats lab improvements:

And finally, the Grey Knights landed...

That's quite a season of hobby for me! Some solid progress here and there; some flights of fancy as well along the way.  I am very happy where I got my terrain to and I have already enjoyed a few Shadow Wars and 8th ed. 40K games on it.  Some Deathwatch progress, but lots more to do.  And a good deal of Grey Knight enthusiasm as I head into the new hobby season. And these are just the highlights I culled from past blog posts. There were other bits here and there as well that got done for which I have no pictures (lots more deathwatch were built and primed. the new 8th ed. 40K objective markers set got built, etc...).

For the next season I'd like to continue exploring and honing my painting skills.  It is all to easy for me to fall back on building models, which I love, instead of buckling down and getting on with the painting of it all.I will look for new events like Squaduary and Dreadtober for incentive to complete quality projects and will kick myself to fit in a few more on my own initiative. I expect to make more progress on the Deathwatch and to turn up the heat on my Grey Knights.  I'm even setting a goal to paint at least one of my currently unpainted squads of Dark Angels, possibly including a transport.

It's going to be a fun and busy season. Best of luck for your own projects and ambitions.

Cheers and Happy Gaming! 

WIP: More 29th Zetic Tigers

After another session, the kill team is coming along pretty well. First some edge highlights for the black armor...

Man do I still need A LOT of practice with this kind of brush work. I mean the principle seems easy enough...draw the edge of the brush along the raised edges...but then there is the reality of managing flex and splay in the bristles and that crazy tip that seems to lash about like some chaos spawned tentacle. I had to abandon my Broken Toad brushes and return to the faithful Winston-Newton for this work. Better control and better results but even still...<sigh>

Highlights done, I treated myself to some detail work using the plasma marine as my test model before attacking the squad.

Getting there.  The company insignia on the left knee is crap...it was actually almost there, then I ruined it in a fit of perfectionist passion with the black as I tried to clean up the triangle on the yellow field. I'll practice more on something else, then go back and redo it before attacking the rest of the kill team.

I liked how the lenses and screens came out though, so I applied this detail to the rest of the team and cleaned up some of the highlights on the black.  Oh, and I realized when taking the close up above that I forgot to drill out the plasmagun.  So that had to get done as well...

So still some slow going, but progress is definitely happening.  I'll get one more session this week, then I'm done for a bit while I head out with my family for vacation.  I'm still loving the scion models, but my ambition is out-stripping my skills still at this point.  I'll keep at it and see where they end up.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

WIP: 29th Zetic Tigers

A quick upate post today to share progress on the Shadow Wars: Armageddon Astra Militarum Kill team I introduced earlier in the month.  I have enjoyed the opportunity to work on the excellent Militarum Tempestus models.  There is a great deal of detail to paint, and I admit to hitting a bit of a "painter's block" if such a thing truly exists.   I have taken a little time off to look at my Deathwatch force in the context of the WH40K 8th edition rules. This will prepare me for some new Deathwatch painting projects once I finish the 29th Zetic Tigers.

But then I read today that a Grey Knights 8th edition codex may be coming in August...so we'll see.  I hesitate to get too committed to specific Deathwatch miniatures before I see the real codex. As it is, I converted a Deathwatch Flesh Tearers veteran with shotgun to a Deathwatch Salamander veteran with combi-melta to bulk out a combi-melta kill team for anti-armour/large model control.  But this was to be a post about the Zetic Tigers, so I digress.

Here's the state of the kill team after gold details were applied:

Not shown above, I also got the edge highlighting done on the black armor.  I experimented with the screens on the armor, eye lenses, and armor camera lenses using the plasma scion.  I don't have a picture yet, so I'll show that off in a follow-up post as the progress continue. In keeping with the codex art, I chose yellow for the screens and lenses.  I used layers of GW Casandora Yellow shade over a base coat of Vallejo white.  I then followed up with white highlights and an additional coat of yellow shade in an attempt to build up transitions that hopefully add interest to these areas.

I hope to drop one more post on the Zetic Tigers before I take a break to head out on a family vacation. This should likely go unnoticed here since I only post a few times-per-month anyway.

I hope the summer is passing well for you.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

On the Workbench [July] - 29th Zetic Tigers

With summer upon us here in the US Northeast, I find my hobby time limited but not gone.

Having run across a blog article about using nail polish display racks for organizing hobby paint, I set about Amazon to find myself some racks!  I have a lot of paint and other hobby product put away in various cases, bins and what not.  It never gets used, and I keep picking up new stuff like Nuln Oil pots when I don't really need them.  So after a brief wait and a tiny bit of labor I now have this...

I picked up two racks from Amazon after looking through various options.  There are many suitable choices.  These were inexpensive and hold a good amount.  They are deep enough for GW pots and still hold Vallejo and other bottles just fine.  The shelves have a low lip that keeps things from sliding/toppling off easily which is also good, especially since this wall is part of the stair case going back up to the first floor and so sees a fair deal of jostling as we go up and down to the basement.

The mounting holes in the racks were 16", perfect for standard wall construction here in the US (studs are supposed to be placed in the wall 16" on center) , so I could have screwed them directly to the exposed studs.  However, I couldn't have mounted them side by side using a single stud that way and would have had to leave a big gap between the racks, wasting wall space.

Instead,  I cut some left over 1"x8" shelving boards to make two horizontal straps to mount the racks to.  The boards were mounted to the wall studs, and the racks were then just screwed to the top board using their mounting holes. The bottom board running horizontally behind the racks is not attached, but gives support.  Since they are a brittle hard plastic, the racks may otherwise have cracked at the top if I inadvertently push too hard on the bottom while organizing/grabbing supplies.

I originally intended to spray the transparent blue racks black.  But after getting them I decided they looked innocuous enough in my basement hobby den and so left them as is.  If I ever hang dry wall and clean up the space so it looks more finished, then I'll likely revisit this decision.  My only complaint with how everything turned is that I could use two more racks just like it to hold stuff I still have put away! :)  This will have to do for now though.  I have limited wall space.

So that's whats over the work bench...now let's move on to whats actually on the work bench.

I got another game of Shadow Wars: Armageddon under my belt.  It was another tragic loss for the Death Korps of Krieg at the hands of the Necrons.  The game taught us a bunch. I realized we were ignoring the pinning rules (very important!) and that I was ignoring the abilities of the Astra Militarum kill leader to direct the shooting of the team (when within 6"). One thing about shadow wars, there are a LOT of dice modifiers...and a team like the Astra Militarum can suffer it seems ot me from all the minuses to hit.  I knew I had to rework my team to better accommodate the realities of the rules.

The Death Korps, being all resin, don't have a tone of options and I'm about out of spare parts currently after building the latest team.  Then it struck me...I have a decent force of Tempestus Scions that just scream "Make us a Kill team!!".  And so I plucked a few models from my existing collection and built a coupe more for the ones I couldn't represent accurately.  Then I set about reading their 7th edition codex to choose a regiment.  After some time, a kill team form the 29th Zetic Tigers was born!

Photo Credit: Games Workshop, ltd.

Here is the team after priming.  Eight models for now.  If I enjoy playing them then I'll model new members as they are recruited. I'm choosing a strategy of using the leader, at least initially, to buff one or more specialists. So to start, he has only his base equipment and nothing else.  This freed up points to spend in the team...things like red dot sights to improve my chance of effecting other models in the game!  I also gave up on trying to be good at both hand-to-hand fighting and shooting. This team is armed for shooting.

The team is mostly armed with lasguns, hots hot packs and red-dot sights (represented mostly by all the scopes).  Not sure how to represent the red-dot sight for a plasma gun, I just left it alone. That gun is funky enough...

Then I took the new recruit and tried out a color scheme for the cloth uniform. As with other projects, I'll post up a paint recipe once I'm finished.  I like where it is heading, so on to the rest of the team.

The recruit above, the sniper and the Tempestor Prime (leader) were built from scratch for this project.  The Prime is built stock, so he doesn't count really.  The only notable thing was to furnish him with no weapons other than a knife for WYSIWYG.  I have spare parts for a new leader if I choose to re-arm him later on. The new recruit stands out with a beret (hasn't earned his full kit yet) and a standard lasgun, no hot shot pack, no red dot sight.  I clipped off the scope and the wires running from gun to back pack to represent this.  The beret will make it very easy to spot new recruits in the team.  If this one gets promoted I'll swap the model out with a proper Scion and re-purpose it for another new recruit. 

The real fun was the sniper.  Why is it that there are no plastic Astra Militarum snipers?!  Anyway...I clipped the barrel off the lasgun and drilled out the hand grip as you would a gun barrel.  I then clipped the barrel from a Space Marine Scout sniper rifle and glued it into the front hand grip of the lasgun that I drilled out. I did not think to take WIP pictures, but you can see the sniper above on the right side of the back rank of Scions.  I added the support legs from a Space Marine Scout heavy bolter, and replaced the lasgun battery "clip" with a true clip snipped from a Space Marine bolter. This last modification was to help the weapon look a little more sniper-like and a little less lasgun like.

The shot above shows some detail of the work on the inside of the leader's coat. I'm figuring some element of the Zetic Tigers were dispatched to the sprawl on one mission or another and got pretty messed up.  This remaining band is held together by a surviving Tempestor Prime and continues to do the Emperor's work. I'm currently floating the kill team name "Tempestor Rock's Fuggin' Few".  

Overall, if this team comes out well I'll adopt the scheme of the 29th Zetic Tigers for my full force of Tempestus Scions in the future.  For now, this has been a great way to enjoy these brilliant models in my games of Shadow Wars: Armageddon.

So that's what I'm working on this July.  I hope your own hobby projects and games are going well.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!