Sunday, 22 December 2024

We Are The Lex

I have done a bit of work on the Arbites, drybrushing the boots and gloves and painting the webbing, both in preparation for some washes - Biel-Tan Green on the boots and gloves, and Athonian Camoshade on the webbing. The different colours will give a reasonable facsimile of different material types, and, of course, are thoroughly based on...

 


 

...Judges from 2000AD, of course! After all, the Arbites are in and of themselves essentially just a straight steal of the Judge aesthetic in the first place, so why not?

No IP infringement here no sirree

I also did a bit of work on the giant rats, touching up the undercoat with a coat of black and then blocking in the tails, paws, ears and noses, all in preparation for painting them up like some of the pet rats my partner P and I have had in the past.

Tomorrow is the dreaded Christmas Food Shop, so if I survive that I'll unwind with some more painting and see how much I can get done on the Arbites - who knows, if I get the chance I might get them done before Christmas Day!

Saturday, 21 December 2024

Some Thoughts

The end of the year is rapidly approaching, and I'm sitting contemplating what I've managed to achieve hobby wise in 2024. I've undoubtedly painted the most minis in a single year that I've ever done, sitting at 350 Painting Points as of time of writing and not that far off getting to 368 before New Years, which would be more than one Painting Point per day! I also managed to get in a lot more wargames, partly as a result of going to the local club for a few weeks - this has lapsed due to life reasons but I do want to reattend more regularly next year - and also because I got to play some Kill Team and Battletech with my good friends C, D, and H. And, of course, I met S in Warhammer World for some games as well.

I've also picked up some new games, like This Quar's War and Lo! Thy Dread Empire and have my eyes on some solo stuff like Five Parsecs From Home and, once my Battletech Kickstarter eventually arrives, Alpha Strike: Aces solo Battletech. And there's the Trench Crusade bug too. But above it all this year has been a very Games Workshop-y one, from the Tomb Kings that I cranked out at a rate of knots in the first few weeks of 2024 to the Adeptus Arbites and metal giant rats sat on my workstation right now.

That's unlikely to change really; the bulk of my pile of opportunity is made up of GW stuff - 40K, Warhammer, and Specialist Games like Mordheim, Necromunda, and Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. Things of that nature. So what's the general idea for 2025 then? 

In large part I suspect it'll be "whatever takes my fancy". I have lots of stuff waiting to be painted, some of it having languished for a long time, and some of it brand new (or even yet to arrive). That said, I would love to finish the High Elf force I've been on-and-off working on for nearly a decade. I want to try and get the Quar Royalists sorted. I'd really like to make a dent in my Dark Eldar, too. But then there's my Space Wolves, and the Imperial Guard, and my Argent Shroud Sisters of Battle, and...

It is, after all, a pile of opportunity. So let's see what 2025 brings - and in the waning days of 2024, I'll see how close to 365 Painting Points I can get!

Lest I forget, I also have a bunch of Blood Bowl teams to do...


Friday, 20 December 2024

The Last Raptor

(Maybe.)

I've done it - every Primaris Marine I own that sensibly fits into the Raptor army is finished. Technically I have a random Sergeant and a single Scout on sprue, but neither of them make sense in the context of the army, so they can go somewhere else eventually. 

5th Company standard, with honour marks and campaign shields.

Ancient rank badge

Chapter badge

I'm proud of the banner in particular!

Next up will be some Necromunda Giant Rats, because they're nice and quick, and then I'll do some work on the Arbites as planned.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 8
2024: 199 (350)

Thursday, 19 December 2024

Flying The Flag

I have a spare Primaris Ancient that I have decided to paint up as a Raptor and add to the army (which is, incidentally, for sale: if you'd like to buy 2,000+ points of Space Marines for £500 - a nearly £200 discount from the RRP - leave a comment). And once she's done, I'm going to finish off the Arbites that I picked up earlier this year, I think.

I'm going to try to finish the Ancient tomorrow, but it might drag a bit. I've done half of the tedious bit of the camouflage to be fair!

Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Praise Be To The Burny Fellows

I finally, finally finished them. They took days longer than I expected, and they're done. Hurrah! 

A bad photo sadly but they look great all finished up

Slightly better photo showing how lovely the fire motif looks on both red and yellow

The whole lot is a gang in and of itself, but can also be mixed into my Unworthy Servants Cawdor gang as well if I fancied it. I am particularly pleased with the way the robes ended up and how the burning hats ended up through a mix of contrast, washes, and paint.

I also took the time today to finish making the free minis I got from Wargames Illustrated and Miniature Wargames:

German late-war paratroopers in winter gear that have been turned into Trench Crusade Heretic Naval Infantry Legionnaires and Troopers

I think that the paint scheme on these minis will really make them fit into the Trench Crusade aesthetic more - as it stands they are, after all, just Fallschirmjager!

Then, on the front of Miniature Wargames, there was a sprue of Wargames Atlantic's Sneakfeet - these are Ratling Snipers with the serial numbers filed off, who are in turn of course Hobbits (in space) with the serial numbers filed off...

Haven't decided how to base them yet


I deliberately picked the smaller guns on the sprue because I think they'll probably end up being Generic Sci-Fi sorts for something like Five Parsecs From Home or Space Station Zero.

Having knocked out the Redemptionists, I'm a bit unsure as to what to work on next - I might actually have a break from painting for a bit! Who knows. 

Painting Points:
Today: 7
This Week: 7
2024: 198 (349)


Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Oops, A Distraction

I don't know if you've noticed but Tuomas Pirinen, him of Mordheim and Warhammer Fantasy 6th Edition fame, along with some other creative types has made a ridiculously successful Kickstarter for a new skirmish wargame called TRENCH CRUSADE. Trench Crusade is an alternate universe / alt-history 1914 where the First Crusade accidentally released Hell onto Earth, and so the next thousand years or so have been a long war against Satan's Legions and their various human auxiliaries and soldiers. There's a lot more information out there, I recommend this Goonhammer article for starters.

Anyway, I did some painting on my Redemptionists - blocked out the skin, did the flames apart from the gloss varnish, and started the hair - and then, after picking up a copy of Wargames Illustrated with a sprue of Warlord Games' winter-uniformed Fallschirmjager stuck to the front, decided to rummage in my bits box and make some Heretic Naval Raiders...

They're so close to done. So close. It's painful now

You can see some bits and pieces in the bottom left corner of that photo from the Warlord Games' frame. I opened up the playtest Trench Crusade rules (available on the Facebook group, here) and had a look at what a Heretic Trooper actually has available. As I'm doing Naval Raiders, they get access to sub-machine guns, which is quite nice, so I'm going to do three with SMGs, one with an automatic shotgun, and then two Legionaries with a machine gun and a semi-auto rifle (later to be upgraded to an automatic rifle).

They might look like Germans from the late war, but if you look at their belts you can see some hearts dangling from straps... uh oh! These guys are Heretic Legionaries, with better accuracy than the regular Troopers, and funky padded trousers to help differentiate them. I think that the paint scheme is going to do a lot of work making it clear what they are - strange, deathly pale skin, esoteric runes on their helmets, dark blue naval infantry type uniforms...

Not entirely sure what sort of conversions I could do to make things like an Artillery Witch, or a Heretic Priest, but we'll see. Part of the problem I'm having is that the scale of the Warlord Games' minis is not really compatible with the bulk of my bits box, which is almost entirely Games Workshop's heroic scale stuff. Anyway, that's for another day. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll finally have finished those Redemptionists.


Monday, 16 December 2024

Only In Basing Does Duty End

And I haven't quite got to that stage yet but I am now tantalisingly close to it. I actually sat down for a couple of hours this evening and did the belts, pouches, grenades, books, highlighted the gold trim and masks, washed the nooses so that they look done, and did the first step on the flame-hats (which actually look really good as is, if very different to the way I usually do flames). They're definitely looking a lot closer to how I imagined them when I first picked them up to do:

I just wish it hadn't taken me seven days (!) to get this far! Oh well. Nearly there, and all that.

Sunday, 15 December 2024

What Happens When The Mojo Slips

I'm not sure quite what it is, but I'd hoped to do a lot more painting this weekend than I actually have. I didn't do any yesterday - hence no update on the ol' blog - and today I only did a little bit. I painted almost all the books a dark green, went over the pipes, gloves and boots with black, and painted the belts and pouches in a dark brown (which, incidentally, I also drybrushed over the ends of all the flame weapons). It's just blocking things out for highlights, and in theory it shouldn't take too long to finish the details and move onto the bigger things like the flame-hats and the like, but I just... haven't felt like it. A bit disappointing but there you go.

The flame patterns on the robes look great though!

I have however named them - this little lot comes to 1,000 creds pretty much exactly and can be found with the extremely uninspiring name of "Red Redemption" over at YakTribe. So I know what to paint on their bases when they get to that point. Whenever that is.

Friday, 13 December 2024

Detail Time Starts Now

Having finished the process of highlighting the robes and armour, I have now begun to work on the details. By which I mean I've painted the nooses they wear on their belts in Ushabti Bone, which, if I'd been thinking, I'd've done before I painted the robes with Agrax Earthshade. Ah well. Live and learn.

I think the colour scheme of red, black, and yellow is both really striking and really sinister, as well as giving a good link to the obsession they have with fire. I'm not sure how long they'll take to finish, hopefully I'll be able to get them done this weekend.

Thursday, 12 December 2024

Starting The Highlighting

Not a great deal of progress today, although it did feel like it. Slapped some Cryptek Armourshade onto the gold and bronze sections, applied the first highlight of Khorne Red to the robes, and that was it - took longer than expected for some odd reason. 

Next up - Mephiston Red highlights on the robes and the armour, then some work on the yellow and maybe some Wild Rider Red on the armour to pick some bits out. After that it's detail work really.

Wednesday, 11 December 2024

The Miracles Of Saint Agrax

I remember, many years ago now - and I do mean that, it must be coming up to two decades ago or so - when the hot new thing in painterly circles was floor polish dip. You paint your minis in block colours, then dip them into a tin of floor stain et voila magic skill, your miniature was shaded, highlighted, and varnished all in one. 

Nowadays we just use Agrax Earthshade, Nuln Oil, and contrasts, I suppose.

You can see why, really - these minis have just had block colours and washes applied (well, and the base metals on the trims of their hoods and their masks) and they look rather Blanchitsu, don't they? I'm in half a mind to lean into it, but I don't think I will. 

The next step is to highlight the robes and shoulder armour, then do the various belts, nooses, books, and other random little bits on their belts before I start working up the weapons. The gloves'll end up black, I think, to keep the palette simple. 

So far, they've been quite good fun to work on, which is a nice surprise. I think it's the colour scheme and the relatively open poses allowing me to get my brush into the detail quite easily.

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

"If It Doesn't Hurt... It Doesn't Count!"

Thus spoke Klovis the Redeemer, a great man of action and faith, etc etc.

The Red Redemption are a funny old lot, a bunch of ultra-zealots even by the standards of the Imperium's unhinged religious fanaticism, the Ecclesiarchy's equivalent of the sort of fundamentalists that we see in groups like Islamic State, the Taliban, the Westboro Baptist Church or Scientologists' Sea Org slave-personnel. But, of course, this is 40K, and the Red Redemption are seen through a skewed mirror, with skulls and fire and cackling incompetence as well as unthinking devotion to their faith and its tenets of burning everything and everyone that doesn't meet their exacting standards of belief (essentially, everyone who isn't in the Redemption or, at the very least, House Cawdor. Those priests of the Ecclesiarchy are on thin ice, honestly). 

Damn fun to paint, though:

Averland Sunset is a brilliant base for yellow

I've blocked out the base colours mostly and am now in the phase of doing the base details - yellow flames on red, black flames on yellow - before hitting everything with Agrax Earthshade, Nuln Oil or Carroburg Crimson and then working back up from there. I think there's going to be some "fun" moments trying to paint the face of the Deacon with the flamethrower, but other than that these goons should be a good laugh to paint up.

Monday, 9 December 2024

The Ten Thousand

Of Xerxes, the Shahanshah, are not, in fact, what I'm painting at the moment. But they are Immortals - Necron Immortals. I managed to get them done today, which was nice, and means that all the undercoated Necrons I own are done. Hurrah! 

Shinier than the Warriors, because they're more important

And now I can make a start on the Red Redemption lot, I think. Lots of red, yellow, and metal (as well as flames) so that should be quite a striking look when finished. 

Painting Points:
Today: 5
This Week: 5
2024: 191 (342)


Sunday, 8 December 2024

The Pile Shrinks

This year has so far been my most productive year in terms of shrinking the Pile of Opportunity (or shame, if you prefer), probably ever. I didn't really get into gear in terms of speed of production until 2014 as it became a way for me to stave off a nervous breakdown, and since then I've got a lot better at batch production. Lots of skeletons this year have helped to make the number go up, as it were. Anyway, the latest batch of (metal) skeletons are all done now:

The whole lot, which brings me to a total of 44 Warriors

A squad of 15...

...and the remainder of a squad of 14 to accompany one of the two Necron Lords

Then I went downstairs to get the Redemptionists, to have a go at painting them while the Cawdor-fancy was in my head, and found the five remaining undercoated Necrons, and thought, "you know what... might as well". So that's what I've made a start on today:

Immortals - those massive Gauss Blasters are pretty potent

I'll probably be able to get these finished in the next few days and then make a start on the Redemptionists, which you can actually see in the background of the photo of the Immortals.

Painting Points:
Today: 24
This Week: 37
2024: 186 (337)

Saturday, 7 December 2024

Marching On, Rank By Serried Rank

 Today I painted all the black bits on the Warriors black:

...look how different they look to last time, ha ha ha etc.

However! Now I just need to do the little stones that are on all their bases (for some strange reason), gloss varnish all the green bits, and then base them. They should be done quite easily tomorrow. Hurrah!

Friday, 6 December 2024

Thumb Twiddling

I may have called a blog post that before. Oh well. Anyway today I have done nothing of note modelling wise; I sat down to paint the black bits on my Necron Warriors, did three, then got distracted and ended up watching the incredible thriller Knives Out - which is absolutely the best film I've seen all year (although I have only seen a few this year). Well worth the rental price of £3.49, honestly.

In other news, I was reminded today of the Cawdor figures I have:

The Unworthy Servants

And that, in turn, reminded me that I have a few of the new Redemptionists models - including the Redeemer - undercoated and waiting for attention, so I think once I've sorted the Warriors I might well turn to the foaming fanatics of the Red Redemption.

Just a small update because I didn't want to let a day pass without something on here, you know?

Gangers

Gangers (rear)

More Gangers

More Gangers (rear)

Juves!

Juves! Rear view. Note one is as yet un-named

Boss man and hench-champions

I'm still really proud of the text on the Father's back banner

I really do like the way the Empire Flagellant pieces fit so seamlessly into the Cawdor models.


Thursday, 5 December 2024

Endless Metal Skeletons

Last night I went rooting around in the drawer marked "Necromunda and Necrons" which contains, you guessed it, unpainted Necromunda and Necron miniatures. I discovered a load of Warriors, five Flayed Ones, ten Immortals, and five Pariahs. The Warriors were about half done, the Flayed Ones were undercoated, and of the Immortals and Pariahs, only five Immortals have been undercoated. So I scooped up the Warriors and Flayed Ones and took them upstairs to my painting station. Today, I did some painting!

These are the plastic Flayed Ones, and though I recall the kit being a bit of a pain to assemble they painted up easily and nicely

As always, a mix of skin tones and colours, because humans don't just come in one shade, and it makes the squad look a little more ragged and chaotic, suiting the violent and brutal nature of the unit

The Warriors - all 24 of them - had previously been got to a point where half had had their green glow applied and half hadn't. Today's work got them to this point:

All that I need to do now is to paint the black bits - the wires and gun casings - then gloss varnish the green areas, and base them. Should be able to crack through that tomorrow or maybe by the end of the weekend. 

Painting Points:
Today: 5
This Week: 13
2024: 172 (313)



Wednesday, 4 December 2024

Living Metal And Sinister Green Glowing Things

Yes, it's the Necrons! I have finished the Wraiths and Heavy Destroyer, which - predictably - didn't take very long. A quick highlight of the blue armour plates, a few details here and there, some Tesseract Glow and gloss varnish, and Bob's your relative:

The Gauss destroyer or whatever it's called ended up being black because I checked how I'd painted the Gauss blasters on the Warriors I did a few years ago. I don't think they got theirs highlighted, but this is quite a big model so I think benefits from it, and it also differentiates the piping a bit too

I really like the sort of brushed metal effect on the body of the machine

I particularly like the little mini-scarab you can see on top of the rock on the top left of the base here

The funky Necron glyphs on the side probably do actually mean something, but I have no idea what

Without checking my army list, I think I need another two of these to complete the unit, but they are fieldable on their own so that does mean I have a Heavy Support choice for the army completed now. The Wraiths, which look very different to the 3rd Edition ones, are a completed unit entry as they came in sizes of 1-3 per unit:

I actually much prefer these to the 3rd Edition ones - these look really alien and menacing, like hideous mechanical insects, coiled and threatening, ready to strike

I ummed and ahhed over whether or not to paint the little globes-on-sticks in the glowing green, but decided not to in the end. Who knows what they are, these strange ancient alien pieces of technology


I have a bunch more Necrons to paint up, I think - some Flayed Ones, some Immortals, more Warriors - so I might well work on them while I have the Necron mojo in my system. Those poor Royalist Quar are going to be waiting a while, it seems.

Painting Points:
Today: 8
This Week: 8
2024: 167 (308)


Tuesday, 3 December 2024

Beeping And Booping

Not much actual painting done today but because the Necrons paint quite quickly, I've actually got to a point where I think a few more details and a bit of gloss varnish will have these finished soon:

My Tesseract Glow technical had completely separated but the judicious application of a long matchstick as a stirrer got it to a usable point again. 

In other hobby nonsense today I found an interesting website that allows you to create your own Battlemechs and generates Alpha Strike Data Cards too, although it is missing a few bits - I can't seem to add AWS, ECM, or similar stuff to 'mechs for some reason. Anyway it is still handy, and I used it to generate an Alpha Strike card for my preferred homebrew Firestarter version, the FS9-HM (M here standing for MacLeod's Light Horse, my mercenary company):

This version takes the standard FS9-H and removes all the weapons, replacing them with six Small Lasers and as much armour as will fit on the chassis. The end result is a machine that sacrifices its Medium range damage output of 1 for a doubled Short range output of 4, has one more armour point, and costs 1 more point to buy. I've got some 3d print files that I've asked my friend R (who is looking after my 3d printer for me) to print when she can. So that'll probably be a 2025 project.

And that was my day in silly toy soldiers!