Red Scoprions reinforcements!

I seem to have found a way of blitzing space marines in a way that, to me, is easy and quick. The greys on all of these were done in one 2 hour session with one of the large terrain drybrushes that GW sells. Turns out you can get some great control with one of those and churn out some nice looking armour. Next time I have to paint some Marines, which should be in a few weeks time when the next batch of Conquest arrives, I'll try and remember to do some stage by stage photos.

Some transfers have arrived for the shoulder pads, but I need to test them out as reports are not good. Apparently they are thick and don't take well to the curvature of the pads. I didn't fancy ruining these guys just in time to submit them for the AHPC. 

Starting the ball rolling in this set of reinforcements we have a Primaris captain in Gravis armour from the starter set. Another should be along at some point, so I can play around with poses and equipment later. One day I should have a read of the actual army lists to find out what they can take, rather than going with what looks nice as I have no idea how these all play!

The original batch of standard Primaris are boulstered by another 10. A number of these are the easy builds that came with Conquest. Issue one was 3 of these, plus a brush and 2 pots of paint for £2. It would have been rude not to buy extra copies to bulk out the force. You'll notice that throughout the force, all of the baseline infantry have their heads covered. Bare heads with power armour just seems like a dumb idea to me, so one in three of those figures are not being used as they have a helmet stuck to their leg. Once day I may have a go at cutting it off.

For a bit of fast attack we have 4 of the easy build Inceptors. Two more of these should turn up throughout the course of the Conquest series, eventually giving me two squads of these guys. I was tempted to try and buy some spare arms from ebay to make them a bit different, or add other weapon options, but at this point two squads with the assault bolters seems pretty good.  The OSL on these was done with some light dry brushing of the blues and was surprisingly quick and effective.

Recently the series added a squad of easy build aggressors to the army and the models are really really nice. I know a lot of people moan about these easy to build figures, but some of the monopose models are much nicer than the multipart kits as they can ensure that the pieces interlock properly and give a nice dynamic feel. These I really like as they still seem to be able to move in their chunky armour, unlike most of the old plastic Terminators (not counting the relatively recent Space Hulk ones)

5 Hellblasters will add a bit of punch to the force. Again, the OSL was all dry brushed on. 

These 5 Reavers were from the Kill Team box as the onesfrom before Christmas were the easy-builds with pistols and knives. By getting this kit, I've now got some different pistol/knife arm combos to use on the second batch of easy builds to round out that squad with some unique poses for two 5 man squads. If I ever want to bulk these out to 10 men each, I just need one retail box of Reavers

I know I said no bare heads, but the Lieutenant is my one exception to this as I really like the model.

I had a Contemptor dreadnought kicking around from the Horus Heresy board games, so I decided to add him to the lineup as well. As this was the plastic Contemptor, the pose was a bit naff, so a bit of hacking later and he is now striding forward and twisting at the waist to look a little bit more dynamic than the very static pose they decided to go for.

For now I only have a couple of extra figures left to complete for the army. I've not put the finishing touches to them yet as they were started before the painting challenge. I really should rectify that, even if it doesn't get me any extra points. This is the full crowd to date, including the bits from late last year. Not too shabby. 

Clearing the decks part 4

This is the last batch of Primaris before the Challenge

First we have one of the anniversary Lieutenants with a Scorpion shoulder pad.

I'm quite pleased with the OSL on these two Hellblasters. Hopefully I can remember how I achieved it when I get around to the rest of them :/

This objective marker/Teleport homer is from the Deathwatch board game. It has been sat on the table for ages and just needed the lights painting, so it made sense to finish it off at the same time.

And here they are, all together with a sneak peek at another Lieutenant that isn't quite finished yet. When I took a picture of him, the helmet didn't look great, so he's going back for a bit more work.

No painting tonight as it is our work Christmas do, featuring a private gig from the mighty Prof. This is one of his videos that some friends made and our entire team at the time are in it. I'm in it twice as two different characters :D

Clearing the decks part 3

A few more bits for the Red Scorpions to start putting some leadership onto the table

First up is a Primaris Ancient. Like all the others, I'm waiting for the transfers to arrive so I can finish the banner off

To accompany him we have some sneaky Reavers armed with pistols and knives. I need two more to flesh this out to a base squad

Clearing the decks Part 2

Following on from yesterday's Red Scorpions kickoff, the next unit finished is a second batch of 5 Intercessors. There are a few more Intercessors in the pipeline, but they are reserved for the Challenge.

Clearing the decks part 1

With this year's AHPC coming up, it is time to start finishing off all those little projects that have been filling the painting table for months, half done. Some of them feed into the challenge, some don't... but all of them need to be finished in order to safely start something new on the 20th. If I don't, they will never get finished!

This first batch are the start of a Red Scorpions Primaris force. I used to have a Forge World Red Scorpions force years ago, but sold it when my gaming buddy moved away as there wasn't really any use for it. Over the last year I seem to have picked up a number of Space Marines again, thanks to the starter box and the magazine that is currently ongoing. I figured it was about time to put paint to figures and see where it goes... even if it is straight into the sale pile once they are all painted.

The main issue with Red Scorpions is that FW stopped doing their transfer sheet, so the choice was either a third party transfer sheet, or hand paint logos on every single figure... After one or two failed attempts? I'm waiting for some transfers. On one, that's fine. On two... not a hope in hell.

The first batch finished is a squad of 5 Intercessors

Resuming blogging

It I about time I started writing stuff down. Sadly I missed the last few weeks of the APC this year and dropped in the rankings. I had grand plans to finish lots of different projects, but in the end got sidetracked with a number of new clients at work that required travel. Thankfully I did manage to close off a couple of projects and start the long awaited terrain project. The full gallery of bits and pieces can be found on my Google Photos.

The plus side to this year is that I have already achieved two of my secret goals. The first was to get one of my figures up on the GW main site. You can still see it there along side the official Great Unclean One images :D

The second was to actually enter a painting competition in my local GW. Just after the end of APC they ran a competition where everyone had to paint the special edition terminator captain. I was the only one that did any updates to the figure, by including the Deathwatch pad and icon on the Iron Halo.

I'm very pleased to say that he came in second place, much to the slight disgust (I'm sure) of all the regulars as I only ever go in to buy paint and leave straight away. They must have been "Who is this guy and why is he entering our competition?!" The guy who came in first had done some very very smooth transitions on the armour and some freehand iconography, so I'm not surprised he came in first. People did assume the shoulder pad on mine was a transfer though, which is a nice compliment. I wasn't convinced the red circle was quite good enough, which is why there are scratches and chips all over it.

Next self-challenge is to enter more of the local competitions and improve the smoothness of the painting a bit more.

Heresy recommenced

Looking back through the blog I notice that in one of the very few updates this year I started to show some of the progress on by Betrayal at Calth and Silver Tower box sets. I can't believe I never actually posted finished versions of anything. As I mentioned last time, I'm painting up the full box as Imperial Fists so that I have some options when facing off against some friends. Still not sure if I shouldn't pick up a second copy for a chaos force as well as I can't actually play the game at home any more. Then again, there was the leaked preview of the next Horus Heresy boxed game this morning, so that may be mostly painted up as Thousand Sons instead of the even split.

Anyhoo. The BaC box is still unfinished, but it is looking nice so far...

The captain is wearing a nice set of gold duds, with a shiny new combi-pistol (I forgot to heat-colour the barrels!). I considered converting it, but the kit is so well designed that the pieces only really fit in one way, so it would have taken a fair bit to hack it apart.

The Word Bearer character has become an Imperial Fist champion instead. This one had some hands removed and a head swap to bring him more in line with chapter equipment and give him that IF feel. The power fist he has is intended to be a Solarite Power Gauntlet.

I've only done 5 tactical marines so far, but these were far more enjoyable to paint than the Red Scorpions I did years ago. Now I just need to get around to the other 25! The simplest way to paint these was to leave off the pads, guns, pack and head until the main colours have been finished. Transfers and weathering can then be done. These are also the first marines that I've painted on the new larger bases. They look so much better than on the smaller bases

For now, the last set is the terminator squad. In the HH ruleset, the Imperial Fists are allowed to use assault cannons instead of Autocannons. As I had a spare one kicking around in the bitz box, it made sense to upgrade the heavy flamer arm to the assault cannon.

I've still got the dreadnought and a pile more marines left in the sprue mountain for when I need to paint something yellow.

Silence breaks with the fall of some promises...

So, first up my apologies for the silence (work, work, work!) and the fact that I still need to post out the loot from the painting challenge! I'll try and sort those this week. Adam, could you please PM me your address so I can send you a Frostgrave prize? :)

Unlike previous years, I am still painting after the challenge, so I obviously didn't work hard enough to get burnt out... which is probably a good thing all considered. the current mini project is working my way through some of the Space Marines from GW's boxed game, Betrayal at Calth. I've tried painting Space Marines before, but I could never quite get the hang of painting the armour, but the armour design included in this box was always my favourite, so I had to have another go. The friends that I'm likely to play Calth against have their own set of the game, so I've decided to paint up all of the models in one colour scheme to have a wider selection of options.

I'm glad I did give them aother chance... the quality of these is leaps and bounds better than the ones I had to work with before. I've seen quite  few complaints about the right hand being part of the bolter, rather than the arm. To be honest, this is a genuis move on GWs part as it makes the construction so much easier. I always get carried away with plastic kits and stick them all together and end up fighting with bits that didn't get undercoated properly. This time around I've gone for the partial build assembly line version and it seems to be so much easier!

I've chosen a slightly brighter colour scheme this time around. Past attempts were either our store Ultramarines *yawn*, or some Red Scorpions based on the Forgeworld resin parts. This time I've gone for Imperial Fists as a change. My Guard ended up a drab brown with ochre accents, so they should work nicely as allied Imperial Army allies.

I've never been a massive fan of the bright canary yellow you see promoted by most GW books, so I decided to go for a more muted, ochre colour instead; which I'm much happier with. The one on the right looks like he is going to be rocking out with a guitar with that pose!

The transfers arrived on Friday, so once I've got a number of them ready, I'll go back, put all the chapter markings on them and pray the final varnish doesn't ruin them all.

Red Scorpion Librarian

As I've mentioned before (back in the article on painting white), I used to own a Red Scorpion space marine force. When I sold it off, Sevrin Loth was the one remaining model that I kept. It's taken me years to get around to painting him up properly, but he's finally finished. It reminded me how much I don't like painting Spare Marines and the smooth armour... but I do like them when they are finished.