A Bit Of Downtime

So yesterday I didn't do anything, and today I just didn't feel particularly like painting very much at all. I did however slap some basic colours onto one of the drop pods:

These are definitely going to need two things: a masking tape job to ensure a nice straight line between the bone and green, and another coat of bone and olive green before the Nuln Oil wash!

I'm going to Warhammer World on Friday with my long-time friend and opponent S to play a couple of games of 6th Edition Warhammer Fantasy, so tomorrow I'm hoping to make some more headway on the commission ships and maybe some of the Space Wolves too. But we'll see.

Undercoating, Base Coating...

... my goodness, a lot of coating has been going on today. I undercoated most of the commission pieces, except for one ship which I need to mask before doing so, and both (now assembled) drop pods. Then I went through all the Space Wolves and gave them their base coats of metal and blue-grey, before whacking a Nuln Oil wash over them all. While I was doing that I also slapped on some Ironbreaker to one of the drop pods, trying to identify which bits need to be metal and which need to be painted green and bone.

The next step with the Space Wolves will be to give them their highlight layer of The Fang, before starting to work on the details (and there's a lot of details). Once I get to the detail section I'll probably work on no more than four or five at a time, and I may well focus on them one at a time too - it depends how I'm feeling on any given day, and how much progress I make on the commission too.

Dreadnought for scale

 The drop pods are big, and I suspect will greedily eat up all my remaining Ironbreaker and at least a pot of Nuln Oil, but they should be relatively quick to paint (I hope). The internal sections that aren't metal will be a standard olive drab, the external sections will be green, bone, and heat-resistant black. Then I'm going to dirty the bejeezus out of them because these things are fired from orbiting space craft like a shell and then scream into the atmosphere of a planet to slam into the ground at the sort of speed that would kill a normal person and disgorge, in their case, Dreadnoughts. They're not going to look very pristine after all that, frankly.

Drop Pod Assault

Tonight I only had time for a little bit of hobbying, so I cleaned up one of the two 3D-printed Dreadnought Drop Pods I picked up last weekend and built it. It's a really simple little kit and it went together very nicely indeed. Then I slapped on some more blue-grey, finishing the main base coat for the Long Fangs and starting on the Grey Hunters:

The doors go down...

...and up!

In the foreground you can see a commission that I got today

 On top of the Space Wolves I'm going to be working on some miniatures from the board game ISS Vanguard that I have been commissioned to do. So things will progress slowly for the next little while, but slowly wins the race and all that.

Tomorrow I'm going to wash and assemble the next drop pod, and undercoat those and the commission pieces as well as do more basecoating on the Space Wolves.

Venerable Ancients, Tell Us Your Wisdom

Shoot the stabby things and stab the shooty things, mostly.

I knuckled down today and got the two Venerable Dreadnoughts done for my Angels of Redemption Deathwing army, which is now essentially complete except for the two Dreadnought Drop Pods I need to pick up from my friend R, who 3D-printed them for me. 

I ended up going for a more mural approach on the Dreadnought to the left rather than the "stained glass" that I did on my similarly constructed Deathwatch Dreadnought

Both these lascannons come from the same kit, but the ability to build them even slightly differently really makes a difference to how they look on the table

Soot-stained exhaust stacks and Mechanicus seals - yes, it's 40K

You can really see the size difference between the 3rd Edition plastic missile launcher on the left and the 2nd Edition metal one on the right, as well as the design cues that were kept and which were added or changed

Taken together these really add a lot of ranged anti-armour punch to an otherwise quite sparsely armed list - these and two Cyclones are the sum total of long-range anti-tank in the army, but woe betide anything that gets up close to so many power fists.

Next up on the painting table are some smelly Skaven - Poison Wind Globadiers, to be exact. Unless I change my mind tomorrow, in which case who knows...

Painting Points:
Today: 10
This Week: 16
2025: 174

Even In Death They Still Serve

A small update today, concerning the last little bit of my 2,000 point 4th Edition Deathwing army:

Dreadnoughts!

These two are equipped with twin-linked lascannons and missile launchers (as well as smoke launchers). They're both the Venerable Dreadnought kit, but the one on the right has a metal missile launcher that I got through, I think, Facebook. Adds to the air of age, I feel. And makes it pretty hefty. Not quite as hefty as the all-metal ones from 2nd Edition, but hefty enough.

This is actually the second time these have reached this stage - I initially got them to this point then realised I'd painted the cream and green on the wrong halves. This was very demoralising! But now they match the Terminators:

I'm hoping to get them done this week. Eagle-eyed readers may also spot some creatures lurking behind the Dreadnoughts that I hand undercoated today...

Terminators, Terminators Everywhere

Many years ago when I was at university, in the dim and distant past when 4th Edition 40K was the current thing, I had and ran a Deathwing army that I painted up as Righteous Fists 1st Company. It was reasonably successful, although I do remember one game where an Eldar Exarch single-handedly annihilated my Assault Terminator squad along with the accompanying Chaplain in a single round of combat. Mind you, such defeats were offset by quite a few victories, and the 2+/5+ save was a heady change from the 4+ and 5+ of my usual Imperial Guard armies. Alas, a few years later when I was poor and needed money I ended up selling that army, and thought no more of the Deathwing until the release of 6th Edition 40K and its starter set with Dark Angels, which included a Dark Angel Terminator Squad.

The boxed set starter squad on the right, and the multipart Deathwing squad I got shortly after on the left.

I got hold of it, and then it sat around for a while, and then I slowly painted it. I didn't want to do Dark Angels specifically, so I had a flick through their successor chapters for a colour scheme that I liked the look of. I eventually settled on the Angels of Redemption, with a nice half-and-half green and bone paintjob, and painted them up. Then I added another squad, and that was how it was for a few more years...

...until GW announced they were going to be updating their Terminator models! I knew that the new ones would be larger and wouldn't fit alongside my two existing squads, so at the end of last year I picked up all the squads I needed for the army itself. Then, in the early part of this year, I painted them up - and here is the retrospective of the army so far:

Second Cyclone MLRS squad showing Cyclone Terminator and Sergeant at front

Second Cyclone MLRS squad showing the three standard Terminators at front

Second Assault Cannon squad with heavy weapon Terminator and Sergeant at front, standard Terminators at rear

Command Squad, with Apothecary (rear left), Company Standard (centre rear), Terminator with lightning claws (rear right), Sergeant with thunder hammer and storm shield (front left), and Terminator with heavy flamer (front right)

Company Master with thunder hammer and storm shield, front view

Detail view of the storm shield

Rear view of the company master

Converted Blood Angels Terminator Librarian - I still need to do something with that blank shoulder pad...

Rear of the Librarian

I still have two Dreadnoughts half painted, but functionally I have a 4th Edition Deathwing army - Company Master, Librarian, Terminator Command Squad, and four squads of Terminators. A friend of mine has 3D printed two Dreadnought Drop Pods for me, so when I get my hands on them I'll finish the Dreadnoughts and that'll be the full force. No Land Raiders because the idea is the whole thing just Deep Strikes in all the time.

This, by the way, is a long-winded way of saying "didn't do any painting today"! Who knows, I might get those Crusaders finished tomorrow...