Dark Angels Command Squad and Devastators.

The Tournament at MAWS is approching fast, and I've got to get my Dark angels finished by then. Its on sunday. Ah. 

Well, to be honest, I shouldn't be to bad. I've got a good chunk of them finished now. I have a dreadnought and a Librarian to finish this week and I'm golden. I don't have any full painting days between now and then, however, so I've just got evenings to work with.

I've hammered out the last two squads this week. Firstly, my command squad, with my lynchpin/bullet magnet model, the standard bearer hoisting the standard of devastation. One thing I will say about buying second hand stuff, is that you get a random collection of models. The empire banner top wasn't a conversion of mine, it came to me like that. I quite liked it though, so he stayed. Also, I'm loving the 2nd Ed apothecary! 

Next up, bringing some support to the field, the devastators. Pictures are somewhat rushed to be honest, but I have a good reason for that too, which I will explain in a minute... 

The squad is in 2 combat squads, for obvious reasons given the weapons they're carrying. I can honestly say after painting this lot, I have got the hang of painting the Dark Angels chapter symbol on shoulder pads.

So, as I mentioned, I rushed these photos a little. The reason being that I just found out the scythe and teacup in liverpool is hosting a Warmachine and Hordes hardcore qualifier in april. This is probably old news to the Warmahordes community, but I've not been keeping up with them recently. I've very tempted to enter but that gives me a hard deadline. To get 50 points of warmachine painted and practised with in 8 weeks? Holy moly, the clock is a tickin'...

Gonders

Pre-heresy Emperor's Children Land Speeder.

Well, you aren't going to see this one coming.  First off, its worth mentioning where I stand on heresy era armies and the whole '30k' side of the hobby which has reared it's head in the last few years. In a nut shell, I dislike whats happened with it.

As I grew up with toy soldiers, the heresy was a time swathed in myth and legend. From a purely background perspective, gamers in the 90's knew that the Emperor created the Legions, the Primarchs, and that after he fought Horus, he was stuck in the golden throne. That was pretty much anyone in the 41st millennium knew too. Going off what was written then, the history from 10,000 years ago was a mystery.

And that, was cool. I like mystery. I like not knowing.

Then, around the 2001 mark, in white dwarf, a series of articles appeared, the Index Astartes. These scribblings detailed the space marine chapters, including touching on the pre heresy side of things, and explained a little more about the primarchs. This provided quite the inspiration for starting some of these chapters and uncovered a little bit of the mystery we all loved.

A few years of this, and the black library releases a book called 'Horus Rising', and two more luna wolves novels, 'Galaxy in flames' and 'False gods'. These were cool books but set up the ruination of the heresy story for me. 

Hourus Heresy mania had begun.

Fast forward a good few years, and forgeworld release the unthinkable. An actual official model of an actual Primarch. The beings no-one knew anything about, suddenly have a face, and suddenly, there's no mystery left in Horus' story. We know every detail about every fight, down to the last punch thrown and bolter shell fired, and if we can stretch our wallets like never before, can fight these battles from pre history on our table tops.

All of which, I do not like.

Despite this, just like the Dark gods themselves and mighty Horus, Games Workshop's Influence has broken my mind. This last week, I've felt the pull of building my own preheresy army. I don't know why.

Maybe I'm just joining what I can't beat. Maybe since painting my Dark Angels, I've got my power armoured addiction on. I can't explain it.

But how to scratch the itch without missing a mortgage payment? Well, when I bought a whole bunch of dark angel's second hand a few months ago, the young merchant was kind enough to throw a second edition metal Ravenwing land speeder in the bundle. Not having any use for it, it has languished at the bottom of a box, waiting to wedge the heresy era door open for me.   

So this week, it has received an experimental paint job. Despite me hating myself, I'm quite happy with this little gem.

Ok, its just stuck into a lump of resin at the moment.

I don't know if I enjoyed painting it because it was a throw back to 2nd edition, or if it was the 30k bug driving my on. Only time will tell. 

I figured Emperor's children would work well with the Ravenwing wings on there. Ok, the sword has broken off the angel on the front, but there's little I can do about it. Hopefully its just a test model. With any luck, I might not even have to do the rest of an army!

Even managed a cheeky freehand chapter symbol on his shoulder plate there.

If I end my bank account on the forgeworld website, I'll be sure to let you know. 

Gonders

In progress. What, no blog?!

Alright, alright, I missed one! If you've been following this here blog of mine, you'll know I've been trying my hardest to blog every other day this year. A week or so ago, I mentioned in a post that I doubted I could keep it up at that rate. And what do you know, yesterday I should've posted and didn't.

Why? Well simply put, I haven't had anything to show. Partly because I haven't had the time to paint a lot, partly because I've decided to finish my Dark Angels batch painting them.

I have a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've got to make sure my dark angels are painted up to 1600 points. That's why my painting desk currently has this on it.

As you can see, I have been painting away, but this is as far as I've managed. When I was talking about blogging every other day, I said I'd been inspired to do it by another guy at our club, Dwez, who does just that. However, I realised the differences in our blogs. Where mine is meant to be solely about painting, Dwez's is more general 40k. I think that with this, I'm putting to much pressure on myself, which in turn is probably lowering my painting standard. I dont want to be rushing things through just to get something on the web. So I'm not going to promise to blog every other day, but I can only try my best. I'll be back with finished dark angels ASAP!

Gonders

One Ugly Forgefiend conversion. Again.

Whay hey, my Maulerfiend arrived in the post! This means a few things. Firstly, it means I could finish building my Forgefiend from the other week, as I can now give him the right guns. It also means, I have the start of my next deamon engine for the army which I'll probably be able to begin to build this time next week.

As you can see, This guy is now ready for a bit of colour. I dropped the 'Mechatendrils bursting out of the stomach' idea. This is mainly because as I glued the guns on, he appeared to be less in pain and more like he is bringing his autocannons be bear on the foe. I don't think it would've looked quite right with tendrils flying everywhere and his head looking not really bothered and more happy to be aiming at the other guy!  

You can see I did some work on the base too, including used DAS modelling clay to fill in under the angled slab of paving. 

Originally, I'd planned to use some spare power cables I have left over from the warhound titan to feed his guns, but I tried it and they simply looked to large. I bent and pinned some brass rod instead, and added some greenstuff ties for a little bit of detail. 

All that was left was to add a little plastic card spacer between the cannons(detailed with a skull, this is 40k after all) and here we have it. Ready for painting next week!

Gonders

Dark Angels progressing. 1600 points incoming

So to break up the chaos that's been coming out of my blog for the last week, I thought I'd post a picture of how my Dark angels are getting along. It's been since 500 points that I posted a full army shot so thought it's be nice to show how I'm getting on.

It has been announced recently that our club, the lost boys, is to attend the second leg of an inter club tournament held between 4 local clubs in the northwest of England. Its my turn to step up, so I'm most likely going to be taking the Dark angels along to the event held at MAWS(Manchester area wargames society, I believe).

So i need a painted 1600 point list to take with me. so far, its shaping up to look a little something like this:

As you can see, I have about 16 marines and a dreadnought to finish. Also, I've had to pull out the emergency librarian for space hulk, hopefully to save my arse from the tournament scene here.

I'd best not delay anyhow, I have marines to paint and a tournament to practise for!

Gonders

Tanks, The Man, The Myth, The Legend.

So my last post featured what appeared to be some sort of stolen dreadknight conversion, right? Well I've beening working away on him, and I can now say my general is ready to hit the table:

So now you've seen the finished product, it's time for an explanation of what is going on with this guy. Well, it all started years ago, in an issue of white dwarf I can no longer remember. In this issue was an article about a gamer who had his very own 'special character', more or less, a Chaos Warlord by the name of 'Steppenwolf'. The guy had made loads of different versions of his general, from power armoured, through to jet bike mounted, for almost every game system. He managed to use the same head(he looked like a mongol warlord if I remember correctly, he had a rough rider's head on every version) to make him look the part each time. Having seen this, I had to run with the same idea.

About this time, codex eye of terror was released, and thus began my love of all things lost and damned. I started an army, but I wanted a leader for my rabble that wasn't a high and mighty chaos space marine. Give me half an hour with the clippers and glue, and out rolls 'Tanks' for the first time...

This, now very old model, was my first shot at my very own character. Pretty poorly painted, but it's years old. This guy holds a special place in my gaming career. But what use was this puny human when I'd had to take a marine to lead the army? Well, the story goes, that a junior officer from the Thraxis PDF(a world, that would later gain a rich history), gained a habit of hitting hardcore combat stimms for an edition or two. Hence the tanks of stimms on his back, and the guy's name. So me and the drug fueled loonatic with a marine's profile became best of friends and crusaded across GW southport for a good few years.  Unfortunatly, his first army of followers has since been lost in the warp, but in time, he rose again...

The second edition of tanks had got an upgrade. Having taken a few skulls, he gained a trophy rack. a much bigger blade, as fits a warlord, and bulkier shoulder plates and armour. now he was beginning to look the part. By now, he had built up quite the array of enemies within our gaming group, including a certain inquisitor who still hunts him to this day.

However, after a catastrophic day on the apocalypse field, Tanks found himself beaten in combat and banished by the chaos god, khorne, until he could prove himself worthy in a world where everyone came on a square base...  

Where he resided for a long time. After reaping quite the tally, the gods granted his return to the thraxis system, where upon his return, his followers had raised a mighty army, known as 'The Black Masks' with which to crush the Imperial world of Gath shedammah.

And so, bearing two mighty deamon weapons, tanks has forged an unholy alliance with the Warpsmiths of the Dark Mechanicus. They have gifted him with a nigh unstoppable 'Anarchy' pattern Combat Walker of their own devising, and once more 'Tanks' Prepares to step foot on to the battlefield... 

 

Until next time! 

Gonders

A Chaos General with a Twist.

So it's just a little one today. Since I'm waiting for parts from the postman to finish my deamon engine from the the last blog, I thought I'd crack out the old brushes on this guy.

Remember how I mentioned I was going to gel my new chaos army with my old traitor lot? Well this is the guy who's going to be running the whole show. He goes by the name of 'Tanks', but there will be more on that in another post soon. 

I've had this thing sat on my desk for over a year now, and to be honest, I never thought it'd get painted. But now with the start of this new dark mechanicus inspired army, it seemed the perfect chance to get him on the table. 

It's largely built from a Grey Knight's Nemesis Dreadknight, with Defiler armour plating and a series of chaotic upgrades, including weapons from a Deamon Prince(which it will count as in game) kit, and small gauge brass chain. 

As you can see, he is still work in progress, but I think he suits his new granite colour scheme well. I've kept it similar to my titans, so hopefully the whole horde will look the part when there are countless deamon engines and infantry flooding the table!

Gonders