All posts filed under: 40k

Mentor Legion Squad WIP – Part 4

Well I was finally able to get all the white done on this small squad. I think the last two guys got a little rushed in my anxiousness to get them done, but overall they seem to match up pretty well. Now with the white done there is little left to do other than details: the aquilas, purity seals, squad markings, and the bases. Hopefully I can get these done over the weekend. I also tried a couple different background for the photo shoot as white models on a white background don’t work all that well. For both of these shots I grabbed a nearby t-shirt and crumpled it up as the backdrop. Tan backdrop: Dark brown backdrop: What do you guys think about the different backgrounds? I am also going to try out a dark, textured paper somewhat like what Massive Voodoo uses. [amazonify]B000NH42Y0[/amazonify]

Rhino of 14th Grand Company

Iron Warrior Rhinos – WIP

The ever faithful Rhinos! These are 3 of the 4 rhino transports currently possessed by the 14th Grand Company with the 4th being an ancient piece needing some fierce care before being shown to the public. All three are in various states of near-done. Mostly it is the various copulas that need to be finished and details added. Oh, and this one is now missing the roof, some how got left at the LFGS and never found, teaches me to not just seal it up and hide the inside. I made heavy use of the washes for all three tanks, perhaps too heavy. I wanted to give a worn, weathered look which is often hard for ‘silver’ areas as they don’t have paint chips. Instead they came off a bit blotchy and may need some touch ups… we’ll see. [amazonify]B0009JJZ2G[/amazonify]

Mentor Legion Squad WIP – Part 3

So the white armor is takes a while to do… After painting this guy’s base coat I realized that to take full advantage of the paint mix I needed to complete him before moving on. I think his armor looks smoother than the Sargent but doesn’t show the same depth and shading. win some, lose some yeah? Anyway the steps I used to paint the white. I started with mixing 1:1:1:5 mix of graveyard earth, codex grey, skull white and water. I used this to pretty much cover everything except the recesses in the armor or where it met other colors. I then added more and more white and water and added about 6 or so layers focusing more on the ridges and ‘tops’ of the white areas. I finally used pure skull white to highlight the hard, upper edges. Here’s a shot of my messy desk area. In the background you can see some Iron Warrior Terminators awaiting finishing touches on their bases. Center back is my really basic ‘light box’ to take WIP shots …

Mentor Legion Squad WIP – Part 2

Although I was hoping to get some feedback on my first cut at my Mentor Legion Squad before continuing I decided to press on and finish the squad. As I picked up my paintbrush I realized that this was the first time I had done any painting for nearly 3 months! And man could I tell, my hands were somewhat shaky, the paint wasn’t smooth and my hands kept cramping up. After a few sessions I was able to get some good progress on the squad and regain some of the painting mojo. I almost didn’t post this next picture as it looks like a elementary school kid slapped the some paint on so that they could be played in a store… ugh. But oh well, here is some WIP shots of the squad: Here I blocked out the different colors to both get an idea of what goes where, as well as cover up all the white primer in all the little nooks without worrying about getting paint where it doesn’t belong. Colors are pretty simple: …

Mentor Legion Sargent - Head

Another Side Project: Mentor Legion – WIP

A long while back my FLGS was doing a challenge to paint a unit from every Space Marine Chapter on the poster that GW put out a few years back. I looked into my bitz boxes and realized I had quite a few loyal space marine pieces that I needed to put a use to and decided to jump in. I wanted to chose a chapter that would be fun to paint, but require me to stretch my painting skills. With this requirements, the Mentor Legion caught my eye as they are a not-often played army (at least from what I’ve seen) and had white armor (which I heard was difficult to paint well). To further challenge my self I decided that I would minimize my use of washes on this army and work on blending and layering. I decided to start with the sergeant the squad as the test model since it is a bit more ok if he stands out slightly from the rest of the squad. I think the white armor came …

Iron Warriors Vindicator

Iron Warriors Vindicator

So this is one that I’ve have done for a long time but seem to have failed to capture it on film. Personally I really like the vindicator and put it in nearly every army list. Sure it is a one-trick pony with its one big gun but no matter what it hits, it is gonna hurt. In objective missions I’ll often leave the vindicator in reserve to give the enemy time to move towards my objectives. Once the tank rolls on it should be able to find a nice juicy target to demolish. [amazonify]B0010A1AHQ[/amazonify]

Chaos Sorcerer Done

Another step to finishing the Golden Throne challenge, my Chaos Sorcerer is not finished. I’m not completely happy with how he turned out but for now he is done, perhaps I’ll come back to him and touch him up. Tzeentch has always been my favorite of the Chaos powers so naturally I did this sorcerer in the colors of the master of change.  The challenge is to have him still fit in with the rest of my army. I’m not sure how well this comes off in the end though. As with Fabius, I took step-by-step pictures: I wasn’t sure what colors I was going to paint where so I “blocked” out the main colors to get an idea of how it would fit together. Next up is 3 squads of bikers for my fast attack. I’m hoping to do this much quicker than the models to date, the Golden Throne Challenge is half over and I have 2/3s of the models left to paint.

Fabius Bile

Another classic model that I’ve had since third edition, Fabius Bile used to be a potentially amazing (or horrible) character – all his stats were D6 modified! One of my goals for this Golden Throne challenge (other than actually paint all the force org slots) is to try some different painting techniques.  For my terminators and obliterators I focused on the faces and tusks. For Fabius I wanted to try white power armor and even more practice on his face and fleshy robe. I know he is painted with a dark purple armor in the codex but I figured that since Fabius used to be the chaplain of the Emperor’s Children the traditional white armor would be fitting as well. Other than the armor and darker robe I tried to follow how the original GW Fabius looks. For both my own records and since I have been asked before how I paint different aspects of my army I also kept notes and took stage-by-stage pictures of Fabius. Next up is a Sorcerer to finish my …

Obliterators

I finished my Obliterators as well, which fills my heavy support slots for the Golden Throne painting challenge. Some of you old time players may recognize these classic sculpts by Dave Andrews, for those who didn’t play 3rd edition CSM behold the glory of old school Chaos: That’s right, these guys are so awesome they have guns out of their eyes, mouth and chest! They are smaller than the current models (they used to be on the smaller bases) but how could I pass up repainting these guys and putting them on the battlefield? One thing I did do with both of these and my terminators I just finished is a slightly different base colors. I had been doing grays for gravel for city besieging but it seemed to make the whole model more dull and blur with the silver. Instead I tried a more organic look with browner gravel and grass. I used graveyard earth for the base and highlighted with bleached bone added to it.  The grass is a mixture of GW’s scorched …

More IW Terminators Finished – Golden Throne Painting and ToEMP Final

Well I was happy to continue plodding along my with my Traitor Guard army (I have a handful of guys to add and half a dozen tanks to paint) but when I happened to stop by my local GW I was told about the Golden Throne painting challenge. Basically you get 6 weeks to fully paint a full force org chart. Although I do have plenty of guard to paint the was no way I could fill up a force org without buying a great deal of new guys. Instead I pulled out my old, metal Iron Warriors (the ones I painted many years back). I had already dunked a handful of them and after adding in the ones I was planning on adding to the green tank I am short only one bike of a full chart! It wouldn’t be a very competitive list (not sure the survivability of 3 man terminators and 5 man troop squads), but it fits the bill. The first selection filled, my Elites with three 3 man squads. Squad …

Army Finished and Tourny Results

Perhaps the title is a bit misleading, are any of our little plastic armies ever really finished? Perhaps not, but I completed the 2,000 point army I brought to the Seattle GT  including a display board for it. Two models that were last to be finished also completed (though very late) ToEMP #10: officer of the fleet and the company command’s chimera. The officer of the fleet is a real help against reserved based armies such as drop pod marines. During the tournament he wasn’t a game changer as none of my opponents relied on reserves, but then again maybe they just changed their tactics in response to him? The Chimera was used to protect my command squad with the invaluable Commander Creed. This tank was destroyed in nearly every game in the tournament but Creed was lost in only 2 of them, so I think all in all it was well worth its cost. As for my results? I achieved my goal for my first ever GT: win 2 games. In fact I even …

A Year in Review

After reading through December’s White Dwarf article about GW’s year in review I was inspired to look back on what I had accomplished this year. January The 14th Grand Company blog is started The Iron Warriors are started: Baneblade Dreadnaught Land Raider Captain Nestryx Raptors February Must have slept through this month! March The scratch built titan is started The Basilisk company is finished April Defilier Terminators A little progress on the titan Chaos Space Marine Squad May Another CSM troop squad done Three weeks in the hospital for appendicitis June The traitor guard army begins with Platoon Command The Warsmith is started My first 40k tourny, taking 2nd place July The Warsmith is painted The Traitor Guard grows with Platoon with lascannon support Seattle hits 90+ degree temperatures and I learn how to paint in the heat August Another platoon finished I join A Tale of Even More Painters and 73rd encourages many to finish those projects The Company command is finished and the traitor guard is a legit army A Leman Russ appears …