Death Guard

Colour me overjoyed that Death Guard are getting some more love, and hopefully, by that scythe, we'll get Mortarion as a character. Can't wait!!!

On other news, to keep my mind off of Mother's Day, I managed to sit down this afternoon and finally finish the Daemon Prince and Heldrake I started two months ago. That's how long it has been since I last had chance to paint anything.

One Daemon Prince.

 I hated painting the Heldrake. The lightning effect over the wings and body are a real sod to do. Frequently I had to go back and try to recover from uneven strokes of the brush. The second one is going to need a different colour scheme.

Painting Day

Due to work and other commitments I haven't had the chance to sit down and do some painting/building for several months. So having a day off today I gave myself the afternoon to get some done. Managed to get the Chaos Knight finished bar it's basing, and a few more plague marines and a rhino done. Lots of undercoating too so I can just sit down Monday evening after work.

Unfortunately what I wanted to do fell through. I have two boxes of Raptors to build and I want them for a game I have against Raven Guard this coming Thursday. But when I went to my pile of new stuff both boxes were missing! NNOOOO!!!! No idea where they have gotten to so I'm going to have to have a full on search when I get chance.

I did get slightly distracted watching TV in the background but it felt good to get back into painting.

Death Guard update

Slowly getting there with my Death Guard painting and I am very pleased with how they are coming out. You may have seen a couple of these photos before but I just grabbed what I have at the moment.

This is Colic my sorcerer of Nurgle and his bodyguard squad of regular Nurgle chaos marines. This squad has since been completed but I don't have a photo of them. The models were 2nd or 3rd ed chaos marines which my boss found in a charity shop and bought for me. They had already been build hence the odd poses on some of them. 

This rhino was also found by my boss but it had originally been covered in pretty much every bit from the sprues which took some time to prune off of it. Any holes created have been plugged with rust (Armageddon Dust). 

Typhus (who I've just realised is also missing a photo) has a squad of terminators as his bodyguards. All five have been painted but this photo was taken as I worked on these three. You might be wondering why they and the chaos marines above are white-ish rather than green? I decided that the bodyguard squads shoukld look different and so are coloured more like the original Death Guard colours but filthy and rusted.

One twenty man squad of Plague Marines complete. Very pleased with how these have turned out. Most are the plastic chaos marine models but some of them use the plague marine parts and others have elements of the Forge World plague marines upgrade packs (thanks to a friend who bought two sets for me). I still have another twenty man squad to build and paint.

Work in progress of a plaguebearer squad I was painting last night. I've painted them different colours to make them a bit different and to have them stand out. Some of the other five are different shades of green and grey. My favourite is the standard bearer as I think he came out looking the best when you see them in the flesh.

You can see three bikes in the background of some of these. They were also part of the figures that my boss found but they are a bit poorly built. I'm having to think how I can paint the riders properly as I can't get to most of the front of the riders.

I've also got another box of plaguebearers, two boxes of raptors, one box of chaos marines, a box of cultists, a box of Warhammer Fantasy zombies to work through. I've also bought myself Cypher with plans for a box of the hooded Dark Angels to represent his chosen bodyguard. 

I decided that my army represents the Death Guard as they are during the 13th Black Crusade. The theory is that Cypher may be the mysterious "Voice of the Emperor" so I liked the idea of using the dataslate to have him as an ally in games against the Dark Angels.

Update... sort of

It's been a while since I've been able to sit down and do some painting for my Death Guard army so I am glad that this week I was able to sit down one evening with Joel Tate and have a painting night. Managed to complete my first twenty man squad of Plague Marines. Going to work on some Plaguebearer allies before I attempt the next twenty man squad.

I'm pleased with how they have come out but I think it is going to be a while before I have enough built and painted to play them.

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The big old 40K league is going along still. Finalized the games and it wraps up at the start of October! The problem is we have so many players who want to partake but we just don't have the room. I don't want to be an arse in future and limit who can play. I'm afraid that I would show signs of favouritism. We shall have to see.

In the mean time one player, Adam Winstanley, has dropped out. He said that it was due to a conflict of things he also does on a Thursday evening but I've also been told he was getting bored of not winning any games. As much as I hate it when players drop out it is a fair point if you aren't enjoying it and it does help speed up the league end a little. The only problem now is players going on holiday, having evening work and the like. As much as I understand, it is driving me around the twist having to constantly update and change weeks that games are organised on. And take a deep breath. :-)

As you can see Jon Quinn is still storming ahead with his Necron army. Out of the players he has left to face I really don't think any have the ability to steal that top spot from him.

EC WIP

My Emperor's Children marine with sonic blaster. Can't wait to start painting him.

Motivation Lost

I'm still suffering from a lack of motivation where model painting comes into the hobby. I'm enjoying player some games with my space marines but the whole painting/modelling side of things is still out searching for a muse.

My chums over at The Fishy Way of Gaming and The Path of the Outcast, and I are supposed to have started a Tale of 4 Gamers type thing with me going Emperor's Children (no one gives them any love around these parts). I think we all need a little motivation though. So far I have begun to paint the basics for the EC HQ but in an evening I didn't get much done.

I'd love to have the ability to paint properly but I just don't have the patience nor the steady hand. If it was up to me I'd simply play with bare plastic models I think. I think that is part of it though. If I could paint awesomely I would probably be more into this side of the hobby.

Still here

I'm still here. Life has just been a bit pants the last month or so, not to mention a zero interest in doing anything painting related. Motivation seems to be a problem right now.

On a up note though I have been given a shedload of a friend's spare marines including a huge amount of Horus Heresy sprues which will help fill in the numbers for my Sons of Tantalus chapter. I also have the Angron primarch model which is £50 GBP roughly so I may see if I can get something for it on Ebay.

I've also decided (again) to do a smaller second army. I had wanted to do a CSM army and since no one plays Emperor's Childen they are going to be the legion I go with. I might not have done it but for my good chum Fish who has badgered me into it.

Once life settles back down again I hope to catch the painting bug again and I can show you were I am up to with my chapter.

Thursday wibbles

So my friend Fish came over this afternoon for a couple hours painting (his Imperial Guard and my marines) and we got to nattering about lots of 40K stuff. One thing I mentioned was the idea of picking a couple armies and working out a HQ and two troops for around 600pts, playing small games, and over time slowly add to each. Fish quite liked the idea and we are going to do something a long these lines but work to do really good painting jobs on them rather than the table quality we normally do. He is looking at doing a dark mechanicus army and I am finally going to get started on my squats, sorry... demiurg, that I've being meaning to do for ages. We are thinking meet up one or twice a month when he has an afternoon free.

It's a good idea I think and something I am looking forward to.

You can check out his gaming blog here.

Stormtalon

Spent this evening working on the Stormtalon for my Sons of Tantalus chapter. She iswn't finished but the base colours are in place. Rakarth Flesh is a nice colour but it needs two or three coats to do it right where as one was fine for my captain. I'll be finishing her off probably over the weekend and then it's working on two tactical squads.

WIP: Captain Democritus

With an afternoon to myself I've started work on the Sons of Tantalus chapter by painting my company captain. Here's where I am after about three hours. Still ngot plenty of work to do on him in areas but pleased where I am so far.

145

So this weekend GW have unveiled their new paint range. Can anyone explain to me what the point was? Did we need double the paints we had and did they need their names changing? That's just going to confuse people.

Thankfully there is this:

Someone on the 40Kforums has posted this guide:

I went to my store to try out the paints today.
Layer is the same as our normal paints. Nothing's changed.
Base is still foundation. Nothing's changed.
Shade is still wash. Nothing's changed.
Dry is useless. It's a thick, mousse-like paint used for drybrushing - but you still need to take the residue off your brush the exact same way. So if you need to drybrush white... why not use the white you've already bought?
Glaze is useless. It's watered down Shade. Just water it down. There's also more Shades than there are Glazes.
Texture is... kind of useful. It's weathering paint. It has paint and sand-like stuff in there that globs up a lot like the Tamiya weathering paint pens does. It's nice to have a GW range of these and it'll mean more newbies are likely to have 'based' models, even if it is based entirely with this stuff. I'd see this as the only welcome addition to the range. NOTE: You need to shake the fuck out of this for it to work right or you get thin paint with very little texture in it at the top.
Other than that, I like that there's more colours now.
Also, the new pots are MUCH better. They have this large plastic nub on them now that cradles the lid rather than holding it back, and the edges are far more raised than on the current ones. These pots are possibly the best ones GW has made in quite some time. Sadly no dropper on the Shades and Glazes.

An update

Well, my Forge Fathers arrived from Mantic a couple weeks ago and I have to say that I love the models. There's no room for converting at least not easily but I don't mind. I've got ten of the twenty built and I finally build the White Dwarf promo mini as well, but so far lack of time and worse, a lack of desire has prevented me painting any of them. I think part of it is also that I desperately want to know whether Demiurg are in the new Tau book or not, and depending which rumours you follow the book may or may not be out in a few months. The lack of info has halted my desire to do anything with them.

I am also in the process of trying to get the flat rearranged so I have a dedicated games room again. Once I do then I think I'll be in a happier frame of mind to sit down and do some painting whether it be my Salamanders or my Squats.

Another reason for getting the games room done is because for a while now I have had the desire to build a fixed games table for 40K. I know some folks out there don't like the idea of a fixed table but it's something I want to do and do well. I was influenced by the following vid on youtube:

Rather than a factorum complex I want to do a burnt out city block. If you've seen photos of the ruins of Stalingrad during the second world war you'll have an idea of the look that I want to go for. It's going to take me some time to organise and arrange but hopefully once I can start I'll post details on here.