Distractions within distractions

Here's a project I wasn't expecting to do. Well that's not strictly true, I've been planning this guy for a while, but I was planning to hold off on doing it until I'd finished Horus and a few other bits.

But when I sat down to do some hobbying yesterday, this kind of just happened. It's probably a good argument against piling up the bits for my next project on my hobby desk where it can tempt me from what I'm meant to be working on! 

Anyway, I built and (mostly) painted my version of Marius Vairosean yesterday:

He was surprisingly quick and easy to do. I had him built and painted in about 6 hours.,whuch is pretty good going considering that he was quite a complex build. I ended up having to kitbash his sonic cannon from about half a dozen sources, including a Volikte Culverin, parts from the Chaos tank upgrade sprue and even a weapon head from the old Chaos Warrior kit, plus a ton of green stuff work on top of that.

To give you an idea, here's a pic I took before applying paint:

I still need to find a right hand for him. My usually excellent bits boxes have let me down for once, so I need to order an open hand to fit in there, but other than that, he's pretty much done.

I'm rather happy with the way he's turned out actually. He fits closely to how I pictured him in the novels, although I have literally zero ideas on how I'm going to accurately represent him in-game. I can't think of a single HQ in 30k which has rules which would do him justice.

After this I really ought to be getting on with Horus or my Necromunda stuff next, but given my level of distraction recently, my next post could be pretty much anything!

What do you think of him? 

(a quick side note, I'm posting this from my new phone, so if there's any formatting issues, let me know so I can fix it) 

Detour into Necromunda

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to do some Necromunda side-projects, so I figured I'd tell you a bit about those.

I really need a little break from painting endless power armour, so I sat down and got a bit of painting done on my Slaaneshi cultists. The rules for them in White Dwarf seem pretty interesting, so I might end up using them instead of my Eschers if my local club ever gets their Necromunda campaign rolling.

In order to use them though, they need to be finished. luckily I've made some good progress on them:

I'm just waiting for some Sector Imperialis bases to arrive for them and I can finish them off. I started out just basing them normally so I could use them in 40k too, but then I realised that as they gain upgrades in the campaign they'll be straying too far from WYSIWYG for my liking, so I'm better off keeping them as a purely Necromunda thing.

I also found this in a charity shop the other day for a quid:

It's a rather nice toy train which happens to be the perfect scale for Necromunda/40k terrain. The moment I saw it I was imagining the possibilities for fun narrative games this could provide. Me and my mate who plays Goliaths are defintiely going to have to play a heist scenario at some point with this as the objective!

It somewhat harkens back to 'Operation Homehammer', which was my plan last year to build a table's worth of terrain for home gaming. That idea kind of fell by the wayside for a while, mostly due to my lack of time to pull everything together, but this has given me the kick up the arse I needed in the motivation department to crack on with making that a reality.

It'll also help me practice a few weathering techniques I've been wanting to try, but haven't had an appropriate model to test them out on.

Anyway, that's enough gushing from me about junk from a charity shop. I'll post more when I've done something with it!

A Terminator-y kind of post

I was planning to put up a few discussion posts alongside some hobby progress over the past few weeks, but work's gotten a little crazy recently so I unfortunately didn't get the time to sit down and write anything. Hopefully I'll be able to sort something out soon.

What I did manage to get done though was completing my pledges for the latest stage of the Two Week Challenge.

I pledged 5 Thousand Sons Terminators, 8 Veterans and 3 Justerian this time around. I've been so busy that I began to worry that I'd bitten off a little more than I could chew. Cue some rather frantic applying of washes and transfers this morning in order to meet the deadline!

Here they are though:

They're certainly not my best work, but I think I've gotten them to a decent tabletop standard. If I was to go back and redo any of them, I'd definitely start again on the Cataphractii. I just can't seem to be able to get the highlighting right on them. I'd rather move forward and make progress though, rather than dwelling on the same models for weeks on end,

This post has also given me a rather nice opportunity to test the new camera on my phone. Expect a definite upswing in the quality of photos on here in future! Also let me know if the new photos cause any formatting issues, as it's hard to judge from my laptop at times.

So what's next I hear you ask? Well I've pledged to build my Volkite Heavy Support Squad and finish painting Horus over the next two weeks, but I also want to get on with a few Necromunda-related side projects, so expect updates from those over the next couple of days. Hopefully work will allow me the time to actually get some decent hobby done this week. Give that the tourist season's just started though, that may be a forlorn hope...

A little diversity...

I've made a decent amount of progress over the last couple of days, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little while longer before I post it up. I've got a new phone arriving with a much better camera, so i'm waiting until that arrives before I snap some photos of what I've been up to.

In the meantime I just wanted to quickly share something that I'm rather proud of.

I wanted a little more diversity in my Necromunda gangs, so I had an experiment with painting darker skin.

I'm actually rather shocked at the fact that I've been in this hobby over 15 years and this is the first time I've ever attempted to paint a non-Caucasian skin tone.

I think it's a trap a lot of gamers fall into. The vast majority of painting tutorials out there focus on lighter skin tones and most people don't even consider doing anything but that, despite the massive diversity that must exist in a setting like the 40k universe.

Anyway, this was actually pretty quick and simple to do and I think it's produced some fantastic results. I started with a Rhinox Hide basecoat over a white spray, then layered Skrag brown on the raised muscles and finished it with a Seraphim Sepia wash to tie the two colours together. The clearly defined muscles and lines on the model made this really easy, but it'll be interesting to see how this works on a model with softer lines like my Eschers.

My job was also made a lot easier by the fact that I didn't have to worry about the face thanks to the mask I've decided to add to all my Cult gang.

So there you go. A really easy method to produc darker skin tones. Next up will be trying to apply this to some of my Thousand Sons, as canonically most of them come from the Egyptian/Persian region. I've got to actually focus on some of my Hobby Challenge pieces before I do that though, so that might be a while off yet.

Happy Gaming!

Slaaneshi Side Project

In my last post I was feeling pretty positive about my painting points. I should have known it wouldn't last. I went down to my local gaming shop for my 30k campaign game on Monday night, not intending to buy any models. I picked up White Dwarf while I was there and saw that they had the rules for Chaos Cultists for Necromunda in there. My resolve crumbled almost immediately.

Less than 20 minutes later I bought a box of Witch Elves to kitbash into Slanneshi Cultists!

(My usual apologies for the awful picture quality. I'm getting a new phone this week, so this should improve very soon!)

It's an idea I've had for ages, but I've never really gotten round to creating. I've always thought that the Sisters of Slaughter heads on the Tzeentch Acolyte guys from the AoS range would make for some really creepy looking Cultists and after a rummage through my Necromunda bits box, it turned out that I was right.

Now you might think that buying a £30 box just to use the heads is a little wasteful. You'd be absolutely right in that thinking. Luckily I do have a use for the rest of the box. I'm intending to make use of the rest of the kit to make some Death Cult Assassins when I revisit my Inquisition, so they won't go to waste. Technically I'm getting two completely different sets of models from one box!

This little distraction shouldn't take too long to finish, so it'll make a nice side project for me.

What do you think of them?

  I also managed to get a couple of photos from my game.  I've realised that I take loads of photos of my games, but never seem to get around to posting them on here. I'm going to try and fix this in future.

  The first photo was taken moments before I was denied an honourable duel with his commander by the hail of Bolter fire from the Tactical Squad hidden in a building off-camera to the right!

The second captures the moment where my Breachers bit off a little more than they could chew!

I think you can pretty much infer the result just from looking at these two photos. It was good fun though, despite the thrashing my XVth Legion received. Michal's always a great opponent and much amusement was had at my appalling luck and his dishonourable tactics.

After a few games at the 1500 points stage, I'm feeling my campaign list is somewhat lacking in power compared to what it keeps going up against. It's a little annoying, but this can't really be helped. Thousand Sons armies tend to be quite points-intensive and I was forced to improvise a little to make use of what I had available. I should be able to fix this when the rosters expand to 2000 points though. I just need to make sure I get what I need painted in time.

Speeder done

Just a quick one today. I managed to get the Land Speeder done yesterday, including applying transfers:

Considering how little enthusiasm I had for working on it, I actually think it hasn't turned out too bad. It's far from my best work by a long shot, but it's certainly not looking terrible.

That said, I've still decided to leave the painting on the other Speeder until a later date.

Next up I think I'm going to be working on Horus a little more, base my Veteran Squad and maybe paint a couple of Justerian. A few days off from painting red and gold Space Marines will probably do me some good tbh, especially considering the idea I've had for my next 40k project. More on that later though.

For now that's 10 points for me and I've entered positive figures. Definitely a good start to the weekend!

Annoying Land Speeder

I don't know what it is about this model, but it's really starting to bug me. I just want it finished and off my painting desk ASAP.

I think my annoyance with it might be down to a couple of factors. Firstly it's the fact that I don't really want to be painting it. I'm doing it because I need it for gaming. My campaign list has a pair of Land Speeders in it because I can't afford to drop £100 for the pair of Javelins which I really want until later in the year. I'm including them as a nessesity, rather than because I love the models. That really can't help things.

I think the second reason is that it's taken far too long just to get this one model finished. I'm slow at painting vehicles anyway and I really haven't liked how previous painting attempts have turned out, so it's already been stripped twice. Thta basically means it's been cluttering up my desk for ages, easily since before Christmas.

So I just want it gone. I've made it my pledge for this stage of the Two Week Challenge simply as way to force me to sit down and finish it.

That basically means that I'll be rid of it by Saturday at the very latest. I thought I'd be done with it today, but I was too knackered when I got back from work to even think about sitting down to apply transfers. Hopefully I can finish it tomorrow so I can move on to something that excites me.

I'm not going to even think about the fact that I need a pair of these things...

Anyone else have a project like this?

A horde of progress!

I've been pretty busy over the last week. After getting annoyed with the Land Speeder I was painting for my Thousand Sons and dumping it back in the stripping tub, I decided to take a bit of a break from painting red and gold. I turned my attention instead to the easy painting points I was talking about in my last post.

Having had a rummage through the case containing my Emperor's Children, it turned out that I had no less than 27 Cultists which just needed basing to be considered done.

Possibly the easiest chunk of painting points I've ever scooped up!

I also found Kharyk the Wanderer and Aryan Ythykal, my Sorceror and counts-as Lucius who I was working on before Christmas.

They both just needed a couple of highlights and basing, so I got those done too:

That's another 20 points right there. I'm actually shocked that I didn't get these finished at the time, but I'm guessing that I just got distracted. Thanks to these guys, I'm in a position where I just need to claw back one more point and I'm in positive figures for the first time ever!


 Of course this deviation from my focus on my 15th Legion had to come at a price. That price was a crumbling of my resolve not to start on my Primarchs until I'd painted the armies to go with them. Having racked up 47 painting points in a single night, I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to make a start on Horus:

Not a bad start for a couple of hours work I think, although obviously there's still a long way to go on him. Annoyingly I can't just push through till he's finished, as due to a packaging error he came without a head, so I've got to wait for a replacement part to be sent out to me. I think I'm going to get everything save for that done while I'm waiting though.

So yeah it's been quite a productive few days for me. I need to get the Land Speeder done this week for my hobby challenge, so that'll be a bit of a slog, but at least everything's heading in the right direction and I'm in a productive mood, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Watch this space.