159 In Support of Cadia Part 2

Thoughts on the moves in 40k right now with what seems to be some "End Times" like events are a little worrisome.

Is 40k going the war of WHFB in AoS? 

The Kasrkin are the next up, which is only fair as they are all fighting hard on the line in Cadia. These guys were a real change in the model style for the guard. Heavily geared and detailed. Mine are fully metal and a little limited in pose because of it but brilliant all the same.

The grizzled veteran look is great and I love them! You can see these guys charging in against Chaos without flinching. Which they do in the Eisenhorn Trilogy by Dan Abnett.

135 Son of Russ (Deathwatch Overkill)

The Sons of Russ have signed up a warrior for the Deathwatch!

I really enjoyed painting this guy, the scheme is really simple but works really well.

The Space Wolf details just add enough to compliment the dark of the standard black Deathwatch scheme.

I stuck with muted colours rather than give him the bright ginger hair that GW have gone with but otherwise I have stuck with their scheme if a little toned down in places.

Only another dozen (?) to go!

134 The Last King to Rise

Got my final Tomb King done and dusted over the weekend. He fits quite well with the gang but I have taken a slightly different style with him; going for a more corroded metal with nikilth (??) oxide to get a corroded brass look.

I stuck with the Dark Angels Green for the cloth (thats old paint) and general boney colours for the wraps and ribbons.

I tried to keep his shield front brighter as if he has carried on a memory to polish it as a reminder of his past.

I now need to decide on the basing style, whether to stay with squares or go round....

133 An elder Eldar?

Another lovely model spoiled by being made from Finecast!! So much lost detail, holes, weird overcast bits between parts... argh!

Now at least this time round I was generally able to tell what was poor casting and what was model, unlike my experience with some of the Tomb Kings where I couldn't tell if some of the decay was intended or not!

I didn't want to go with something close to the original GW idea this time round as I think its a little dated and too "cartoon" in some ways so went for something more toned down and gritty... well that was the plan.

Incubi Darkness was my starting point as a green black which I think works well, I went with flesh for her arms instead of the body suit she is meant to wear as I was wanting to step away from the synskin suits of the Assassins I have been doing,

I then tried to get a sort of enamelled look to the body armour parts by using some coelia greensahde and a moot green highlight which I think works well.

The contrasting red for the hair breaks up the otherwise very green palette which is just good ole scab red and a blood red wash. Love those old school paints!

132 (Paint) Stripping Music

A stepped up a gear with my painting stripping experiments, not only have a splashed out (see what I did there?) on Meths but I have also now gone a step further and got myself a little acoustic cleaning thing too.

A week in the meths with a little light scrub from the brush every now and again was working quite well but slowly.

I found that you need to sort of "break into" a section for the meths to then really work well, so once you had scrubbed a toothbrush across a section by the next day the meths had really got into it

So this was a week in with a good scrub at the end with the tooth brush, not too bad but not amazing either. I would say to be honest it was better than the fairy power spray.

Then I when all out and got the acoustic cleaner. I had read a little about it and most I had heard was good so thought at £20 it would be rude not to give it a try.

The unit I went with has a little plastic tray to hold everything up, which I think must be pretty standard to all models

It also has a curved cradle for holding watches and jewellery but not too useful to me

30mins later and they are pretty damn good. Couple of tiny bits left but otherwise perfect.

A few learning points to take away from it. The acoustic cleaner warms the meths up quite a bit, a lot if I am honest. This had me sitting watching it quite a bit worrying that it would burst into flame but no combustion occurred thankfully!

The learning point came when getting the meths back out..... meths evaporates at room temperature quite well, WARM meths evaporates really well so when I tipped it up into my funnel to go back in the meths bottle I managed to get a lung full of vapour. As a one off I came off not too worse for ware but I certainly want to avoid it too often!

Meths and the acoustic cleaner seems a great combo and I certainly will be suing it going forward.

131 Storm Scion Kasrkin Tempestus Troopers

Imperial Guard, Astra Militarum, Grunts with Flash lights, call them what you will. I have always had a soft spot for the everyday joe fighting for his life on the battlefields of the Grim Dark

These particular guys are the 3rd Generation of the original "Storm Trooper" from the Imperial Gaurd often called Kasrkin as they came around after Cadian/Dan Abnett works.

And I love them! They are the last of the metal storm troopers (although the first ones were plastic!)

They suffer from the old "must be flatish" to help with making the moulds posing style but they have a certain flare that works for me.

These guys were painted years and years ago and the only work I have done on them now is to texture paint their bases and add some static grass.

This time I went for astrogranite but with a gryphone sepia wash to make it look more muddy and while when the wash was wet I was worried it looked poor I think in the end is works well

2nd Generation! SAS in space! These guys are the gas masked SAS storming the Iranian Embassy transferred straight into the 40k universe. Again some classic models but they have not ages as well as the 3rd gen but then they are older

I painted these way back when they first game out over a decade ago I guess and you can tell from the overly bright and clean colours of grenades and packs on many of them. These guys will be getting reworked soon but I thought I would post about them now to see them in the former glory!

130 Birth of the Four Armed God Emperor

Praise to the glory of the Four Armed God Emperor! Finally finished this guy off :-)

126 OMG What have I done!!!??

It may prove to be my most costly experiment in painting since the tea cup/brush pot incident of '98 but I have some how ended up encouraging my wife to paint miniatures.....

We started with something simple, an old Empire Knight charger. Some confusion over paint names followed when steel legion drab was substituted for something metallic but we made some progress.

Ignore the saddle but notice the use of washes to add depth and texture to metal!

And this is where it has led us, Perry Miniatures and a very small sprue of French Cuirassiers; there is even greenstuff in there folks!!!

All jokes aside I am really pleased that she has decided she wants to have a go, for someone who was very artist in their youth but hasn't held a colouring pen let alone a brush for years I was impressed that she was up for the challenge.

As a very first attempt with a new medium I am very pleased with how they are going!

125 The Four Armed God-Emperor

Just a very short update on this one, been busy with a couple of other mini projects that I'll be posting about soon but want to show that things are still moving forward with the big guy.

This is a really good model and I cant believe how well they have recreated the vibe of the genestealers and in particular the hybrids so many years after the originals, its truly impressive.

124 An Exercise in Basing

People may have noticed I have a problem.... I am not proud of it and I have lived with it for a long time... I am crap at basing my models!!!

I get the mini how I want it and then it just lingers, unbased, for evoooor!

Today I had a choice to change this sad state of affairs and try to make something acceptable.

Texture Paint - Will it save me from myself?

Like the hair over my ears, tufty and dead looking

A few minutes with a textured paint pot and some steel legion drab and a tuft of two of grassy stuff and they dont look too bad! Pretty basic but really simple and easy. I can see where I can develop these on from here so thats a bonus.

So basing, like a cream egg... How do you do yours?

122 - Multi spectrum warfare

The gang is all here! Really enjoyed painting these; it really took me back to the 90s and the first lot!

These were a long time in waiting for me as the box set came out, what? like a year ago now? But I am pleased with how they turned out and as most people have long moved on from them it is a little bit of variety than what else is going on at the moment!

I am totally going to get the old metal ones out and strip them down and give them an update! Will give me a chance to test a new stripping mix; people have suggested CilitBang?

I hope you have enjoyed read and watching my bungling through painting these and if you have please do take the time to add a comment; good or bad! It really does help me keep motivated.

121 Shape shifting chameleon - The Callidus

Yes you guessed it my favourite assassin was saved for last, the slinky synskin clad Callidus, I guess my passion for the Callidus started way way back before there were even the distinct temples and Ian Watson wrote the Inquisitor War trilogy and I met Meh'Lindi and her amazing polymorphine shapeshifting abilities.

Really impressed with the new model, the dynamic pose and sense of motion is great, they have really outdone themselves.

I stepped away from the current green effect for c'tan phase sword and neural shredder in preference to a blue as well as swapping my normal golden yellow hair for a deep red which I think works nicely.

I have really enjoyed painting the assassins as they are so simple and yet so effective. I am really tempted to get at least one or two again and go for a more daring colour scheme but we'll see when the funds can be found.

120 Brain melting pariah - The Culexus

The Culexus assassin has had some great fluff written about it and there are even little snippets about it tucked away in other codexes or bits of fluff. I particularly like a short snippet about how the Temple of the Culexus assassins was visible to the Eldar Farseers because so many Pariahs had been brought together in one place it was a blank spot in space.

That was back in the days when the fluff around Pariahs was linked to the Necrons and C'Tan and that the whole Pariah gene had been placed into human genetics by the C'Tan before they went into hibernation.

Now they are a little less deep but no less horrific with their ability to such out your soul and fire it as mind bullets! The whole thought of the Animus Speculum being some sort of hole into you soul is also quite a horrible thought. These guys always come across as very tortured individuals.

Painting wise I stuck with the simple and traditional style and I think it worked quite nicely. I added a few of my own tweaks with the bone psykout grenades but otherwise kept it simple.

119 Rage Unleashed - The Eversor

The Eversor was for a long time my least favourite idea for an Imperial Assassin, the original model for me was pretty meh and the fluff of this crazed monster was also not inspiring me...

Then I thought about, and read some short stories about it....

118 Eyes on the Target - The Vindicare

I have managed to finally put the final touches on the Vindicare assassin. I must admit I dragged it out a little bit as I was reluctant to make a decision on the best way to highlight the black of the synskin but have in the end opted for a Dark Reaper highlight and while I am not totally happy with it I think I will be able to live with it for now in the interests of clearing these guys of the painting table!

I have always been a big fan of the both the models and the fluff for the assassins and I am sure many of you are fans of the stealthy killing machines :-)

117 Synskin Sign in.

My goodness but my post titles are getting more and more laboured! lol

I have been making slow progress on the Assassinorum force (Easter Holidays bah!)but am pleased with how its going.

The Eversor is just in needs of some highlighting and his head putting on!

Oh and his utility belt, I had forgotten this off the sprue... whoops

The the Culexus I thought I would try a different style for the Psyk-out grenades and have gone for a bone colour. I am thinking they are carved out of skulls or something similar.

The callidus as always one of may favourites from back in the day so the fact that she now has one of the best models is really quite pleasing. With this one again I have tried for something a little different by going for blues instead of greys for the phase sword and neural shredder.

The state of my hobby desk as the end of March approaches