Another Assault Squad

I've been finding bits of time here and there at night after farm stuff is done to paint more Raven Guard. I, like many others, have gotten a bit of a motivational jolt after seeing how 8th Edition will work.
The squad is just five Marines for now, sergeant with a power sword and two Marines with flamers.

I'd decided on the weaponry before 8th was announced, and thankfully it's still a respectable setup in the new edition.

I had a couple issues with the Raven Guard chapter decals, as I always seem to. On this batch, some of the edges near the ravens' heads flaked off and they were sealed before I noticed it. Oops.

I used the new ASM torsos for all of the models, and the legs for three of them. I really like the legs for the new kit, as they have a nice variety of poses (the old one had two, if I remember right) and the feet have a larger surface area for gluing to bases. The old ones were like trying to glue two pin heads together.

I have the flamer Marines old style standing legs and metal jump packs. The combination allowed me to use up some old bits and keep the models stable while doing so. When I'd used metal jump packs on my Ultramarines on top of running legs, they were prone to breaking and tipping.

The squad will get another five models in the future, one of which will have an eviscerator. 8th makes almost every weapon option worth taking now in one situation or another! ASM as a whole still look like fun in the new edition, which makes me happy. The only thing I'm not happy about is the cost of all the new books I'll need to run all my models (core, Imperium 1, and FW Index Imperium). I had pegged that cash for a Stormraven or some Stormtalons, but now it goes to books. That just means I'll be going back into the hoard to paint models I already have unbuilt and unpainted. 

Here's a little phone picture peek at what's next on the table:

Yeah. three more Landspeeders. Unfortunately, they're the old version with the single piece top. Total pain to assemble, but I figured out some tips (beyond "clamp heavily") that might help anyone who's still sitting on some of these. I'll share those when I've properly documented the processes. I've also got to find a trio of Typhoon Launchers, assault cannons, and heavy flamers at some point, as these old kits didn't have those options.

Raven Guard Chaplain

Well, it certainly has been a while since I've updated the blog. Since my last post, I've completed my Rhino (nothing fancy, just a plain old Rhino), four more pistol/chainsword Assault Marines to round out a squad of ten, attended an invitational 40K friendly tourney, and painted a Chaplain to lead my Bladewing Assault Brotherhood. Oh, and GW also dropped the bomb of 8th Edition on us.

I had intended to put my thoughts on the edition change down in words, but I think this image sums up my experience thus far quite well:


Put your hands in the air!

 Yup, complete roller coaster ride. When the news was first released, I was very up and down on the idea. First mad, then excited, back to mad, then apathetic, up, down, round and round. I've settled on optimistic and enthusiastic after GW started their slow release of actual info on the Warhammer Community page. The news that while my codexes and supplements are recycling bin fodder, my army itself is not was very welcome to me. The fourteen FOC layouts sound promising, as do all of the other rules. I think I'll be able to play my Bladewing Assault Brotherhood without requiring formations, which is awesome!

To that end, I put some energy into painting a Chaplain for my Raven Guard:

Just the basic monopose model from the Reclusiam Command Squad kit. No real reason to try to reinvent the wheel on this one. Well, except for this:

Yes, Thor, I magnetized his backpack! While I don't plan to field him with his standard power pack very often, there was no reason not to make them interchangeable. Just a magnet sunk where the nub on his back was, and a couple in the holes of the packs. I did have to tilt the magnet in the jump pack ever so slightly forward to get it to sit behind the rim on his right shoulder pad.

I'm excited to field this guy this weekend at what may be the last tourney I play in 7th Edition. I've got another five-man Assault Squad with a pair of flamers and a power sword on the painting rig right now. I need to order some more Assault Marine torsos and legs to bump the squad to ten eventually.
The news that pistols will have extra utility in close combat in Eighth was welcome to me, as I've had the parts for a five man Vanguard Squad with a bunch of plasma pistols and power weapons lined up for ages now.

Raven Guard Rhino, Progress Report Two

Solid progress on my Raven Guard Rhino. I've got the gunner, hatches, ad doors mostly done, the dozer half done, ad a base coat on the main chassis.

 

Pretty boring stuff. It'll get some decals, maybe some freehand lettering, and I have to bust out the airbrush to paint a squad symbol on the top hatch. Nothing fancy, just a masked off section for a tactical arrow.

I'd pledged this thing for a motivational challenge in the Raven Guard subforum at the Bolter and Chainsword. It might help my crappy Tactical Squad on the table.

After this is done, I have to paint like mad to complete four Assault Marines before the 8th, when I'm attending an invitational event. I'm working down the long road of fielding a Bladewing Assault Brotherhood. It'll be 20 Assault Marines (I have six done), 5 Vanguard (completely different loadout to my current five), and a Chaplain.

Blood Bowl Orcs: Three Down!

The first three models in my Blood Bowl team are finally complete. A thrower, blocker, and lineman.

To be honest, I lost my enthusiasm for the models and sort of phoned it in on the paint job near the end. They're better than primer or bare plastic though, so I'll take it.
I added white stripes for the player numbers, as plain white numbers didn't look right. The Orc-style font I tried ends up looking a little off, but good enough to mark them out on the board.
My base ring colors are sloppy. I got tired of chasing colors back and forth with the black. Again, good enough for the board.
You might notice that the lineman is missing a finger on his left hand. I dropped these models on the floor more than once, and the lineman suffered an amputation, while all three lost the tips of spikes here and there. Oops.
The bases are just small rocks and sand glued down, painted brown, and some pale green flock added. I got it years ago in a pack from Secret Weapon, and can't for the life of me find the rest of the bag, I just have a tiny bit left in a sandwich bag. I may have lost the rest I the house move. I chose it over the bright green stuff because I figure plants on an Orc pitch would be in less than ideal health.

Now that these are done, I'm working on some Raven Guard models (a Rhino ad a few more Assault Marines) before I try my hand at some Harlequins. I'll randomly select three more Orcs to paint ad add them into the queue.

Blood Bowl Orcs, Progress Report Two

It's time for an update. Things have been busy since Christmas what with vacations, holdays, birthdays, snow days, and a big DIY renovation project on my house. Tearing down old plaster walls and putting in new electrical lines and some plumbing. Not a ton of time for painting of late.

I've been working on these three Orcs for what feels like an eternity now. I'm oh-so-close to being done with them. Here's what they look like at the moment. The images are washed out, as is usual for me and my lazy photography.

 

They all need eyes, teeth, and nails painted and some touchups done on the pink armor where I slipped while painting spikes or rivets. You might notice that on the Black Orc, I stopped painting the spikes and rivets in silver. I decided I just hated the look. For the rest of the team, I'm just painting armor spikes that don't have a defined separation from the plate as well as rivets in the pink armor color, and just highlighting them.

I'm also going to be adding some white stripes to various armor plates and then painting the numbers over that in pink. I think I'm going to go with red for the ball, to look like squig hide.

 

I've played a total of three league games with my team now, accumulating a win, a loss, and a coin toss win (we were tied after the second half and didn't want to fudge through sudden death). I'm thoroughly enjoying the game of Blood Bowl, and really like leveling up players in the league. However, I'm sort of bored waiting for new Orc team models to be released. I'd like to own a Troll and some Goblins, but have no idea which models to use. I'd like to do some hand and head swaps on the duplicated sculpts on the team, but am not sure which models from the Sigmar line would match. I'm thinking the various Ironjawz for Orcs, but am not sure on scale. Anyone know how the Ironjawz match up to these Orcs?

I'm at a total loss when it comes to Goblins, but I think I might try to land one of the old Battle of Skull Pass Troll models for my team.

 

Those plans are a ways off, as I'm finding myself a little bored with painting these guys. My attention span for non-Marine models is historically awful. I think I'll hop back over to a Raven Guard Rhino next, then some Harlequins, more RG Assault Marines, and then the next batch of three Orc Blood Bowlers.

Blood Bowl Orcs, Progress Report One

There's been some good progress made on my first three Blood Bowl Orcs. I painted the skin with Reaper colors, with a wash of old GW Thrakka Green in the process. I'm not sure if I like the result or not. It's hard to tell until the model is complete. The nice thing with Orcs is that I can have different green recipes for different models and it won't be a problem.

After the skin, I applied Screamer Pink to the armor plates:

 

Then I covered the armor with Pink Horror. At first I tried leaving some Screamer Pink showing in the recesses like I used to do with my Ultramarines, but it looked like crap on such uneven plates. So, I covered over the whole basecoat and will have to go back and use a shading wash.

 

I am not sure what would be a good wash for pink. My first thought was a red, but right now I only own purple (old GW Leviathan Purple). I think I'll thin that out with some medium and see how it pans out. After that, I'll touch up with Pink Horror. Then I have to decide if I should edge highlight or drybrush the final layer of Emperor's Children. The Warhammer TV method is to drybrush the final color, though they used red and not pink. I've never really drybrushed armor before, and am not sure if I'll like it. I think if I drybrush, I'll want to add some sponged armor chipping to edges to give some definition to the edges. If I edge highlight instead, I'll likely skip the chipping.

 

I have no real idea what to do. Any suggestions?

 

No progress has been made on the Harlequins yet. I simply haven't decided on a paint scheme yet. Do I do a preexisting Masque from the codex, or something of my own design? I feel like the diamond patterns on the GW studio models really make Harlies stand out, but I'm also really interested in trying a gradient fade using progressive glazes. Maybe I should do a halved or quartered scheme that uses both?

 

I'm adding a single Rhino to my Raven Guard, and have the thing mostly assembled. I need to add magnets in the side doors in case I ever want to use it as a Predator. I don't have a top turret, but I have scads of sponsons kicking around. I'm also trying to fiddle some magnets into the bottom to hold an IG dozer blade. The IG dozers look downright mean on a Rhino chassis, but they're tough to fit in place without extending the profile of the Rhino by a couple inches. I don't like extending the profile that much because it causes issues with model placement, measuring, and movement. Anyone ever gotten one of these dozers onto a Rhino while keeping the blade relatively tight to the front of the hull?

I'll try to get some pics of the dilemma for my next post.

 

Bomb Pod!

I've been taking my time painting now that the Standish  Standoff is over. I've not really been working on improving or anything, just slowly picking away at models for fun. Right now, I'm applying paint to a Forgeworld Deathstorm Drop Pod.

I originally bought this model for my Ultramarines, but never got around to painting it despite having magnetized and assembled it into subgroups. As of this morning, it looks like this:

It's a pretty simple model. You replace the complicated harnesses with the missiles racks, which is a HUGE chunk of solid resin once assembled. Unfortunately, shortly after snapping this pic, I snapped off one of the little power feed cables you can see down near the base of the doors. I've broken it twice before, once while removing the sprue gates and once while painting. I couldn't find the piece on the carpet, but I don't think anyone will ever notice. If I do stumble across it later, it should be easy enough to slot into place and glue.

The next steps are the hazard stripes on the doors, and then the main black color. I plan to have it done for the monthly tourney at the FLGS on Saturday. It'll be a 2000 point day, so I'm just running my Standoff list (1750), plus this thing and a few other models. In game terms, the pod is impressive. When it lands, it hits every unit within 12" with d3 Whirlwind shots, each. After that, it functions like a regular Whirlwind, one shot per turn. Slap this bugger down in the middle of a gunline and BOOM.

Last Saturday I managed to get in my first ever game of Blood Bowl. I played Orcs against Humans and had a lot of fun. I'm planning to get the Orc models cleaned of mold lines, assembled, based, and primed soon. Painting will wait until after Christmas, as my wife wanted some small things to get me as gifts, and the pink paints I needed were a perfect option. I've already got various greens for their skin, but have never owned pink paint.

The Blood Bowl Orcs shouldn't take too long to paint, and after they're done I have more Raven Guard or some Harlequins to paint. Not sure which I'll go for. I'm struggling with basing ideas for the Harlies, so I'll have to take some shots and see if you folks can help me decide.

Raven Guard, Tactical Squad Ouvai

After painting my ass off for a couple weeks straight, I have another squad and a drop pod completed. You all know what a standard drop pod looks like, so I'm not bothering to share that. Plus, I cut some corners to get it done in time for the Standoff, so it's not my favorite.

Anyhow, here is Tactical Squad Ouvai. They're led by Sergeant Yasson Ouvai (YAH-sohn Ooh-VUY). It's just a 5-man squad right now, armed with a combiplasma and a plasma cannon.

Here are the bolter Marines. Suitably boring, though I'm trying to break up the wall of black paint with things like pouches and grenades. I've finally gotten a brown leather recipe I like for pouches. It's a basecoat of Reaper Ruddy Leather, a wash of Devlan Mud/Agrax Earthshade, and then an edge highlight of Reaper Leather Brown. Simple and effective.

 

Then we have Sergeant Ouvai and the plasma cannoneer.

 

I really like the plasma cannoneer model for some reason. As I looked at him over and over waiting to be 100% done, I started to become very enamored with his posing and the line of his eyes/helmet toward the target. It's an old, metal cannon from ye olden dayes. Normally I hate the metal heavies, but this one seems to work.

 

Sergeant Ouvai isn't all that interesting, as all he's got is a combiplasma. No fancy wargear to paint or dynamic pose, but that's ok. the big thing I did with him is determine how I was going to mark him out as a sergeant. For my old Ultras, it was easy. Red helmet. But a red helmet on a Raven Guard model would look awful. I didn't want a white helmet, because I reserve white for veterans. I could say he's a Veteran Sergeant, but he's not. I racked my brain until I came up with this:

 







It's a red, horizontal Tactical arrow from the Dark Angels section of the standard Space Marine transfer sheet. Red for sergeant, and a squad number. I was originally going to trim one point off it and turn it vertically, but I really liked the result. The only thing I was hesitant about was that I kept seeing an Eye of Horus symbol when I looked very quickly at it. I got over it, and I think I'll be using red squad markings for all my Sergeants in the future.

I played this squad at the Standoff, and it did jack in all three games. The plasma cannon fired maybe three times total across all three games. My guess is that that was the result of not having a transport and my attempts to use them to sit on hidden objectives. It's tough to get a good line of fire for the cannon, and if you need to move to adjust, you can't fire it anyways.
These guys were supposed to be a foray into a trio of Tac squads so I could run either the Pinion Demi or Battle Demi formation, but I'm reconsidering. I either need to paint up some Rhinos or move on. Tac squads just bore me to death with their options and slowness.

Dreadtober Update #4: Work Complete!

This is my final Dreadtober update, because I successfully finished the model!

 

 

Firstly, I fixed the sepia tone of my images. I covered the table with white paper to prevent the brown color from reflecting up onto the model. I also discovered that the shrouds I put over my front lights actually had small burns on them from the lightbulb heat. I changed those and it may have helped. Of course, fixing the white balance in GIMP also helps.

 

I replaced the model's right shin plate with one from the Ravenwing upgrade sprue. Many thanks to Berman from A Painted Life for the new plate. I like the bit of asymmetry it creates against the left plate. I really like the brass ribbed pipes. They break up the silver nicely. I didn't go with colored cables like I did on my Leviathan, mostly because the one power cable I'd apply color to is hard to reach on the lascannon. It crosses over that brass cable awkwardly.

 

The decals on the sarcophagus came out nicely. The XIX numerals came from an IG vehicle sprue, while the icons came from the Forgeworld Raven Guard sheet. I went with a grey-white for this model, and did edge highlights in pure white. You can't really see it in the pictures, but you can in person. I like the effect a lot, and it should stand out even better on infantry models that have more edges.

 

I played three games with this model last weekend before he was 100% complete. He's pretty ineffective with this armament. He just doesn't have the rate of fire needed to be a true anti-tank threat. After the Standish Standoff, I'll probably give him a new set of arms. Maybe multimelta and Dreadnought close combat weapon.

 

Next up is my 5-man Tactical squad packing plasma weaponry. I've already base coated the black and am at the edge highlight stage.