Scenery Warhammer 40.000

For my Warhammer 40.000 armies, there are also a few scenery plans, but not at all as many as for the Fantasy part.
I would like to make some ruined buildings to make out a small settlement that has been bombed and burned, as some of my Imperial Guard units are specialists in urban warfare (according to their fluff).
This will also work very well with my Space Marines, as they fight under all contitions.
My idea is to make the bases quite similar for the marines and Guard units, so that they blend in when used together for games of Apocalypse.
This means they will have dark bases with some flock or lighter stones appearing somewhere. For the first Space Marine bases I used black aquarium gravel, but I am almost out of this now, and will try a little experiments to see if I can use coal crushed up for brewing wine/beer. I will also use the Warhammer scenery set for some of the bases.

Ideally I can make a building with four walls in the middle of the town, and have different ruined buildings going outwards from this. But the exact set-up will vary from time to time, and this isn't really something I will plan too much until I start to build.

I would also like to have some other terrain, like barricades to use in the city, and an Imperial Bastion, and/or a Fortress of Redemption, and some Skyshield Landing pads. I will also make some terrain outside of the city itself, like the Battlescape set, some craters and hopefully some self made bunkers or other small scenry pieces.

My plans for scenery for Warhammer Fantasy Battles

Following the blog post from yesterday, I thought I would write a little bit more about my plans for scenery, as the blogpost yesterday got very "shady" regarding this.

My plans for the scenery is to start with getting my first forrest (Citadel Wood) finished. So far I have assembled the stems of my trees. Next step is to paint the bark, then paint and add leaves. Also I need to paint the forrest floor with its roots, stones and earth.

Then the plan is to build a ruined tower (Dreadstone Blight) to help me perfect my stone wall painting technique before I build my big tower (Witchfate Tor). The plan for Witchfate Tor is to build it as a complete tower, without any wall damage. Because of this I might create another small ruined tower alongside the Dreadstone Blight, or I might add some height to Dreadstone Blight (whatever looks the best).

My Temple of Skulls is assembled and ready for priming. And hopefully I can spend some time on this as well, in between all other projects. It will be a lot of painting rocks, and I don't think I will manage to do that in one continous action.

Other plans include getting the Garden of Morr, a Fortified Manor House and Skullvane Manse.

I also plan to build myself some scenery for my Dwarfs, but this will have to be scratch built as I don't know any providers that make what I like to make. The Idea is to make an entrance to a mine, and I have an idea on how to do it.
The second idea is to make a brewery for my Dwarfs, but here I am still trying to find possible solutions. I know what I would like to make, but not how to do it.
I won't make too much scenerey for my Dwarfs, as they mostly live deep under the mountains, but I figure they got to have some entrances from the ground down in their mountains, and I would love to make a small valley with a few buildings, and with entrances down to the deep mountain halls. The valley opening should be guarded by some heavy walls, like the ones used for fortresses and city walls. Apart from that, there should be some nice mountainsides and hopefully everything could be modular so that the different pieces fits together. But how I can make this happen is at the moment a little unclear as I need storage space to keep such an item. Might have to make a deal with the wife again...

thoughts about what to do next in the armies

Just a little blog post to let my mind wander, and to get some drive for the different armies that I have.
The post is a sort of "what to come" in the future for my armies:

Imperial Guard:
Finishing the Baneblade is first priority. Then it is time to finish the 10 veterans I have on my desk (Bastions Bastards), and then the old metal Cadian command squad (6 figures) and 5 Cadian troopers (ment to finish off a unit together with the 5 troopers who started off my army). It is also high time to finish the details on the orgyns  standing on the table, and I really need some heavy weapon teams. Also it would be nice to assemble and paint the second Baneblade and the Shadowsword, and some other vehicles to get the boxes away from the shelves.

Space Marines:
Finishing the bike and attackbike standing on the workbench, and also paining up the comand squad and the terminators I have started on are the first tasks here. Then the next step will be to paint terminators I have bought on Ebay, and painting the marines standing on my workbench. It would also be nice to finish the dreadnoughts I have cut from their spues, and build some of the different vehicles I have to get some more boxes away from the shelves.

Sisters of Battle:
A temporary codex came out with the latest issues of White Dwarf, but as far as I have understood there will be no new models at this time. So my only task here will be to paint up nicely the models I have on my workbench. When the new codex comes, and models are re-made in plastic or resin, I might take this further.

Warriors of Chaos:
First item on the agenda here is to assemble and paint up my warriors of Khorne, and doing the same with the remaining 3 knights of my unit of 5. Then it is a matter of making units and single figures from the shelves and get them ready for the battlefield. I have no special priority on any of the units, just a general wish to get a playable army painted up.

Bretonnian:
No really big plans for this army. They will stay on the shelves for a while longer, but when I get some of my scenery done, I might paint up at least the foot soldiers to get some people to stand among the buildings for picture purposes.

Dwarfs:
I look forward to getting back into assembly and painting of my dwarfs. The first units that will get attention here are a unit of thunderers. I will also make quarrelers and rangers, but I will see what order I make them in. Also I have a resin Gyrocopter and two very nice White Dwarf subscription minis that I would love to build and paint. I also have several other dwarf units to build and paint up to get a playable army from the boxes on the shelves.

Goblins:
My "all Goblin" army have several large and small units that I would like to see ready for use on the table. Everything from the Arachnarok spider throught the doom diver and down to the Squig Hoppers or normal units of Goblins, night goblins or forrest goblins (spider riders). But the first thing I will make here, are 6 River Trolls (2x3). I think the trolls will be the next item to build.

Ogres:
My first plan with the Ogres is to finish the unit of 6 "regular" Ogres that I have started. After that I might go for a unit of Leadbelchers or Ironguts, before adding more "regular" Ogres and some of the larger sets in the army at a later time.

Scenery:
First thing to make here is a forrest, a dark and a quite scary one. The next thing should be to make a ruined tower...

progress has been slow

Finally got to do some painting again. It has been way too long since the last time I sat down to paint.
This afternoon I have done the rest of the laser cannons and the heavy bolters on the Baneblade. I have also done all the grey on the back panel, and painted the barrels on the back Dark Angels green.
Most of the tracks are now painted, but I need to go over them with a smaller brush to cover some of the details. I still need to do the inside, between the driving wheels, and the sides of the tracks. This is quite easy painting and is done in a short time, as long as I don't need to wait for paint to dry before I can finish.

What remains now (apart from finishing the tracks) are the details on the back panel, and this will take several sessions I am sure, as there are so many details that needs to be taken care of. Still, I have a pretty good idea of the colors I would like to use, so hopefully it won't take too many sessions.
There are also the details on the turret, with the heavy stubber and the arms of the officers, and some minor details on the main body of the tank.

The Baneblade will come out very nice in the end, I am convinced of that. Still I have already decided that both the other Baneblade and the Shadowsword will be painted during assembly. There are just too many small pieces that is hard to reach with a paintbrush, and if you reach it you are guaranteed to hit something else that should not have that color.

Hopefully another progress report will follow shortly.

Got some more painting done...

I seem to be on the roll these days. Painting several days in a row is a good habit that I will do my best to keep up. I know there will be little if any painting on Wednesdays and Thursdays as I conduct a school windband on Wednesdays and on Thursdays I play in a bigband. Because of this I am home late, and that means less time to paint. But if I could get in to a habit of painting at least 2 weekdays and at least one of the two days of the weekend, I would get a lot done in a short time. I have so much I would love to paint up, so I could really gain a lot from getting this to work.

Todays painting session was used to paint both my Baneblade and the new Ogre unit I have been talking about the last few days.
On the Baneblade I did the last of the black painting, painting the track guards and the drivewheels for the tracks, and also the end of the exhaust pipes. I also painted the last lascannon, and the twin heavy bolters on the right side.
Remaining before completion: Painting the back of the tank (several colors will be needed here), painting and glueing the remaining pieces to the gunner and the commander, painting and adding the heavy stubber in the turret and painting and adding tools and spare parts on the tank.

The Ogres got all the leather painted, so they now have Beastial Brown belts and boots. I know Games Workshop painters usually paint boots black, but it is one of my peculiarities that boots shall be brown. I started this on my Chaos warriors after the first batch got all black, and have decided to do this as one of my "things" for all the armies from Warhammer Fantasy. The next step for the Orges will be to paint hair and skin.
Remaining before completion: Hair, skin, weapons, banner, shields on the bellies, and also to paint the Gnoblars I choose to add to the unit.
For the hair I have decided to paint it in a red-brown color for the entire army (perhaps with a few exceptions, but not many), and that color will probably be Terracotta.

I have a good feeling both for the Baneblade and the Ogres now, even though I know it will take some days until they are done. 

Ogre update

Just a small update on the Ogre progress before I go to bed at midnight...
I have now painted the pants of my ogres, and as an experiment I tried to use three different colors for my six big Ogre warriors.
Two Ogres for each color: Shadow Gray (sort of blueish gray), Astronomican Gray (a light gray color) and Dark Angels Green (a dark, bright green, and the same color as the capes and hoods of my elite Space Marines).
From looking at the colors while they are drying, I think I will end up with most Ogres having bright pants. the dark green color looks very nice, and I think when I add the brown leather boots it will be a nice match.
There are two reasons for me trying out different colors within the unit:
1: Most pictures I see of Ogres have different colored pants within the unit, so it sort of goes with the flow
2: I wanted to test out what works and what doesn't work, if I'll start a bigger production of Ogres in the future (and let's face it, when one unit is in the house, it is most likely that others will follow at a later time).

So far the only thing that has disappointed me slightly is that even though the Gnoblars are high in numbers (6+1 to be exact), there are only two poses (well, three if you add the Gnoblar intended to be atop the banner). Still, I figure if there are other poses on the Gnoblars in other units one can still mix and match, and the poses in this box can fit in any kind of unit.

So far the Ogres have been a pleasure to assemble, and I look forward to working more with them after work tomorrow (or rather today...).

and in came the Ogres

It is official!

Once again I have failed to finish one project before starting another.

This time it is my Baneblade that is standing 92% painted on the dining room table, and on my worktable there are a unit of six regular ogres. 

Right now they are standing placed on their bases, with their bodies attatched to their heads and both arms. In front of them are the belly shields and their hands lined up for each ogre.

The plan now is to paint one color on the Baneblade, and then while that is drying I will paint some ogres, and so on, until at least one thing is finished.

I also have a lot of Marines that needs to be painted, and I would love to start painting and assembling some river trolls for my goblin army.

Speaking of Marines, I started to count how many terminators I can field, and have found that I can field my entire first company in terminator armor if necessary. That will look mighty fine for games of Apocalypse, and also it will give me several options to assemble the force I need at all times.

The rest of my marine units are falling behind though, so for now a force of terminators and dreadnoughts are my solution if a force should be called upon to fight.

When it comes to the Goblin army I have 6 river trolls (2 boxes of 3 trolls) that I would love to see painted up and ready for the table. I even bought a special yellow-brown paint for them, as I figure them being yellow-brown and green, with perhaps some other colors as details. Also it would be nice to get some more goblins painted up, as they are a horde army.

While I visited my local Games Workshop store this Friday, I also bouth myself the 2012 subscription for White Dwarf (remembering that it took a few issues before I started getting it in the mail the last time), so with a few issues this time, I would get my first issue for 2012 in January and that works out perfect.

This year the miniature that came with the subscription was the Dwarf dressed up as a pitate, complete with a parrot and a treasure chest. For about a year I have been thinking of making my own airship, using the 2011 White Dwarf figure as the pilot, so this year I might have to consider also making a boat or at least something maritime for him to be added to the army. 

Finally some progess again...

I am happy to report some progress on the Baneblade again. I finally took the box down from the shelf and on to my livingroom table. One side of the tank is now finished, except for the lasgun tower and the twin heavy bolters that need a touch of Boltgun metal.
The small front turret with twin heavy bolters is finished, and will be placed on the tank when the other side of the hull is painted.
The main turret is finished, but I am still painting the Commander and the Gunner. I have not yet painted and glued on the heavy stubber that the gunner will be using or the hatches that will be glued on in open position to provide some cover for the backs of the personell in the turret.
I also have a grille on the back of the main hull that needs to be painted before it is glued on, as it shows off the engine below. But before I do that, I need to do some weathering on the engineblock. This will probably be achieved with a layer of black ink over the shining metal parts.

When I was looking for some more colors for the Baneblade paintjob, I also found a tray of Marines that I had put down on a shelf under the livingroom table to work on later. 15 terminators, among them 10 close combat terminators if my eyes didn't fool me. Also there were two attack bikes that appeared to only need washes, and it also appeared to be one or two other marines on there.
I look forward to diving in to the painting of these marines again, and not to mention all the marines I have in my giant Lego brick standing on top of the dvd cabinet. I think with the terminators already finished and the ones on the tray and in the Lego brick I have enough terminators to field my 1st company almost entirely with terminators if an Apocalypse game should require it. But I will usually have at least some units with Sternguard or Vanguard veterans entering the battlefield in drop pods or Stormravens.

I'm really looking forward to completing units and adding up their points and getting them ready for combat. It is very motivating to see an army increase in points and number of models.
Still I have a lot of scouts in my glass cabinet that needs the upgrade to the new look. This will not take a lot of work though, as I think all that is needed is to repaint one shoulder with the dark colour, add the insignia and give them a wash. Also I will need to make the scout sergeants a bit more visible, but this should not be too much extra work as soon as I have decided on how to do it.
Also I might think up a way to differentiate between the marines-in-training and the full battlebrothers that still serve as scouts. I figure this can be done by finding some way of showing off veteran status and have a few ideas on how this might be done. I will test this as soon as I can.
Apart from this I think it is only one regular Dreadnought and a Rhino to upgrade before all finished models have a unified look.

More Guard stuff...

I haven't done much building in the last weeks (or month really)but I have been thinking a lot.

I know where I want to go with my Imperial Guard army now, and my challenge is to get there.

The Super Heavy tanks will be Adeptus Battle Gray with Chaos Black detail. I will not go for camouflage patterns, as these tanks are so large and bulky they wouldn't be easy to hide anyway.

The smaller tanks will have camouflage patterns though. The colors and styles will be a little different from unit to unit. Some tanks will be typical urban camouflage with grays and black, while others will be more colorful with yellows and/or greens.Still the basic color for all vehicles will be Adeptus Battle Gray to keep the basic color consistent throughout the entire army as the uniform pants on the infantry also is Adeptus Battle Gray.

The vehicle commanders will get different colored garments depending on what they are commanding, but where I can I will try to make it look as much like the traditional uniform as possible.

Painting update

I haven't been up to much painting lately. I've been doing so much other stuff, and also had a vacation in Turkey for one week.
Now life is slowly returning to normal, and I've placed the Baneblade box on my livingroom table to try to get some painting done.
On Saturday I was in Skien with the wife, and as usual we dropped in to a toy store (we tend to do this when we are out shopping), and I ended up with two Leman Russ kits. One Battle Tank and one Demolisher. They will have to wait a little while for assembly though, as I plan to paint the Baneblade first, and then see if I can assemble 3 River Trolls for my Goblin army.

Banebalde progess update

I had planned to spend the weekend painting up the Baneblade and getting it ready for action, but the weather has put a stop to that. The air is so hot and humid, that there is more paint stuck in the brush than I get on the tank. Also when I get the paint on to the tank it dries so quick that it is hard to get every stroke distributed evenly.

Still, it seems that the paint dries ok, so I don't have to redo what I have done so far.

I have painted the rotating heavy bolter tower on the front of the tank, painted the front and top of the tank, and the main turret except for the main cannon.

I hope to get some more painting done when the sun goes down and the temperature drop a little.

It won't be finished tonight as I originally had planned, but hopefully within a few days it will be done.

Painting the Baneblade

I have given the painting of the Baneblade a lot of thought.
Earlier I have mentioned that I plan to paint the main body of the tank dark gray (Adeptus Battle Gray) and all towers and the underside black (Chaos Black). I have re-thought this after assembling the tank.
The entire tank, turrets and all, will be dark gray, then a lot of the details that stick out from the tank will be painted black. Typical things that will be black is the viewports and tracks protection.
All Aquila symbols will be painted Chainmail or Mithril silver to make it stand out from the dark gray. I know that this is painted white on a lot of miniatures, but I don't like using white paint more than I have to as I feel I don't get it to cover as much as I would like without using several layers of paint. This in turn makes the details more shady, and if there is something I would like to stand out instead of being shaded it is the details.
The tank commander and the gunner will have black or Sky blue uniforms. I will have to give that a little more thought before I decide. I have decided that my air cavalry units will have the blue uniforms, and doing the same for the tank crew would help making the impression of a coherent force more obvious.
Still I have a feeling that the commander of Baneblade 01 would look dashing in a black uniform coat, but on the other hand it might make him look a little too much like a Commisar, and that is not something I would like either as I don't want to explain the difference to everyone seeing my complete army on the battlefield.

For Baneblade 02 I will use the minis that comes with the tank to operate it from the turret. BaneBlade 01 will have the before mentioned metal commander and a gunner from the boxed set (perhaps with a headswap). The Shadowsword that will accompany the Baneblades will either have a commander from the box or a commander I bought off Ebay a while back.

I plan on starting the painting this afternoon, and hope to have it done by the end of the weekend. Pictures of the Baneblade will follow when the paint is completely dry.

Super heavy almost ready...

My Baneblade is now almost completely assembled. The tank is finished and looking mighty big and impressive standing on top of its box. The one thing (or rather two) that is missing before I paint it up is the commander and gunner, and their hatches in the tower.

I didn't manage to get all the turrets movable as described in the instructions. I know I had some glue residue that keeps the heavy bolter turrets from rotating, but this doesn't really bother me as I expect them to behave like the similar turrets on the Leman Russ. There the paint was scraped off when the turrets were swung, so I ended up gluing them shut on that mini. Still the heavy bolters move up and down as they should.

I would have liked to have the lascannon towers moving, but they are assembled with a bolt pinning through the turret and it should be glued with a tiny drop of glue at the bottom. I would have liked the hole to be deeper so that the bolt reached farther away from the tower. This would have made it a lot easier to glue the bolt shut without getting glue to smear out under the turrets. Still, I positioned them in a way that makes the tank look very threatening.

The cannon on the main body is fully movable, and also the main cannon in the tower have the elevation it is supposed to have. The small heavy bolter turret at the front is assembled and has full rotation. This turret is made just like the main turret, and this would actualy be the best solution for the side turrets as well if Games Workshop was to change something in the design on their super heavies in the future. I think this is more important than making drive sprockets that attaches to both sides of the side walls as other people have commented on in forums and blogs about 40K.

All in all I am very happy with the way GW has made the set, and it will be very nice to use it both for Apocalypse and display purposes.

more super heavy updates

Just thought I should add a little more info about the super heavy project. 

Both the Baneblades will be assembled with both a commander and gunner visible in the turret. I don't know what I will do with the Shadowsword yet, as I need to assemble some of it and get the feeling for it before I take that desition. But at the moment I'm leaning towards having some command figure looking out of the hatch of that as well. The Baneblade 01 will have a metal commander from a bit-set. You can see him on the left here. I needed an officer that did not look exactly like Knight Commander Pask, as he will be commanding one of my Leman Russ tanks. So the choice fell on the commander as he looks like a posterboy for an officer. Both dashing in his uniform and battle hardened enough. The Baneblade 02 will have the two original minis that comes with the tank. I will also assemble the standing commander, but he will most likely end up as a commander in some other part of the Imperial forces, as I don't need loose figures for the tanks. I also have some commanders in my bits box that will see action in one of many tanks in this army. When it comes to painting, I have decided on a basic groundwork of Chaos Black and Adeptus Battle Grey (dark grey color). The main armorplates will be painted in dark grey, and the underside of the tank and the towers will be painted black. I will also paint some details on the tank black. The main gun will be black or dark gray, and the smaller guns will be painted gun metal. I plan to paint a camouflage pattern of lighter gray on the tank, but have not yet decided how to paint this pattern, other than it will be painted on top of both background colors.

Not just heavy, but super heavy

Here is one more update before I turn in for the night.

Except for the before mentioned problems with the tracks (see the post from earlier today) the Baneblade has been a true pleasure to assemble. I have assembled plenty of tanks of this size before, as I also build and paint dioramas with 1:35 scale models. The difference is that they tend to have tracks that can actually turn if assembled right, and that the Baneblade is a little wider than these miniatures usually are.

As an experiment I decided to build this Baneblade without painting while assembling. This is how most people in the Warhammer hobby assemble their miniatures after all.

I have decided that I will go back to my old way of doing it, painting while assembling when this tank is done. The reason for this is that I see there are a few places where it might be difficult to get good access with the brush when painting. If I was using airbrushing I would have reached everything I guess, but I'm not there...

Because of this I have decided against using this Baneblade as the command tank it was meant to be. The other Baneblade that I have on my shelves will get the honor of being maked 01, while this nice tank will get the 02 markings. Then the Shadowsword will get the designation 03.

There might be other super heavies in the future, as there are several very nice versions to be built from the boxed sets that exist. But for now I only have the three tanks, and as far as I can understand they will be more than enough for regular games of Apocalypse and certainly for showing off in my glass cabinets. Along with enough Leman Russ tanks, Hellhound variants, Chimeras and the odd Manticore or Hydra this will be a mighty army. I will have to follow up with painting a lot of Imperial Guard infantry to go with such an army but I do like to paint and assemble so that should not be a problem.

The Baneblade 02 (it will get a "real" name before it is used for games and put in the glass cabinet) is only missing the main turret, and this will have to wait until I have painted up the commander and the gunner, although I am looking in to ways to work around that, to get the tank as finished as possible in a short timeframe. Still I will not take shortcuts that results in an ugly miniature, as the Baneblade certainly deserves to be assembled and painted to the best of the owners abilities.

Super Heavy rolling in...

My wife was going to compete in a food competition in Stavanger for amateur chefs this weekend, so my plan was to start Friday afternoon and keep working on it all through the weekend.

But then something happened...

At 15:26 a carbomb exploded in front of some of the government buildings in Oslo. This was Norways first taste of "international" terrorism. We had a war here from 1940-1945 but after that Norway has been a peaceful part of the world. And just a couple hours later, a desperado started shooting at a political youth camp and killed more than 80 people and wounded about 70. So Instead of building my super heavy I watched the news. Turns out a Norwegian man aged 32 is behind both attacks, and he got arrested Friday night.

Saturday I spent several hours helping my widowed uncle move out of his home and in to a smaller place.

But today I finally managed to start on my first super heavy.

Many people complain that the drive sprockets on the tank are very wobbly and because of this hard to fit nicely to the tank. I didn't find that to be a problem at all, but I had a little problem with one track on each side on the front.

Apart from that it seems like a nice enough assembly really. As usual the building instructions is rotten, but that is a known problem with all Games Workshop miniatures that demand assembly above gluing arms and heads to bodies. still, this is not the worst I have been working with.

The model itself is a real beauty.

More will follow when more work has been done.

more attackbikes

Just a few missing details now, before the attackbikes (trikes) are finished.
I am missing a few details that needs painting. The antennas on the helmets needs to be painted in another color than the Ultramarine blue they have now, there are a few Imperial symbols that needs to be painted gold, the straps on the backpacks needs to get some brown paint and I need to add some wax seals. Then the whole model needs to get washed to get the same look as the other Marine units.

Both bikes ended up in the 4th company, as part of the fast attack units for this company.
One got equipped with a heavy bolter, while the other got a multi-melta.
These attack bikes will soon be followed by regular bikes. I have one box with a bike squad (3 bikes) and a couple of loose bikes that is laying on the shelves waiting for assembly.
I also have a few scout bikes (think I have 2) that needs to be assembled to join the one scout bike I have already. This bike is in the old colors, but there are very few details that need to be changed to get it upgraded to the new style.

I would also love to start to work on my Baneblade for my Imperial Guard army. This is a huge kit from Games Workshop. After checking the size of it, I have found it is roughly the same size as a modern tank in 1:35 scale. This is something I have built plenty of, so it should not be too hard to build it. What I would like to do first though, is to get the marines off my worktable so I can work with the Baneblade there. This means I ned to assemble and paint several marines first.
I also need to think out a paint scheme for the Baneblade as this is a tank of a completely different calibre thant the Leman Russ tanks that wil make up the backbone of the cavalry along with some hellhound type wehicles. Since the Baneblade is so much bigger, it would be nice to do some more detailed camoflage pattern on it.

Attackbikes

I thought I'd like to do something different from terminators for a little while, so this weekend I started to work on two attackbikes for one of my companies. Havent decided what company yet, but need to do this during the evening, as I plan to paint and glue the shoulderguards today.
I was thinking of 4th company, as I haven't got any troops in that company yet. According to the Codex Astartes the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th battle company and 6th and 8th reserve company have bikes. I plan not to build too much of my second company yet, as there are so many 2nd company marines around on gaming tables and pictures. Would be nice to show off some other companies as well. Building a chapter I do need to make a 2nd company, but I will fill up some of the other companies first.
Reserve companies will be filled when the regular battle companies are up to battle strength. They don't have to be full, but I would like them to have at least half strength before I start on the reserrves. First things that will drop in to the reserve companies will probably be dreadnoughts for 9th company as I like to build and paint them.

After reading at http://www.lexicanum.com it seems like my bikes will end up in the 4th company. I will make them as two 10 man squads that can be split up in to 4 bikesquads. Two of these will have attackbikes. Then I will have more attackbikes (at least two attackbike squads) in the 6th or 8th company.

I have decided to put the Grey Knights on hold for a while. I have one Inquisitor, and he will be painted up when the time comes. But for the moment he will be alone, or he might find some use somewhere else.

Spacemarine progress

As stated in the previous post, a Finecast Librarian in terminator armor found his way home from the GW store yesterday.

My visit to the same store on Thursday brought home the remaining two boxes of Dark Angel Veterans that I need for my veteran marines to give them all a coherent look, and also the last terminators that I need. Two boxes of Close combat Terminators will complete the terminators of The Gatekeepers.

I have assembled all my plastic terminators, but I am waiting on 40mm round bases to base the ones from Space Hulk.

I bought a few metal ones, that will go with my metal captain for some apocalypse games, but they will be assembled at a later time.

The close combat termies have been equipped half with lightning claws and half with power hammers and storm shields, making it a total of 5 of each.

I am currently painting the 5 with power hammers and storm shields. Because of the placement of the shields they are currently not attached to the termies, but I will do that when I have finished the details on the backside of the shields (the power "cables") and the details on the torso that will be hard to reach with the shield attached.

So far all 5 have gotten the dark legs, and two of them have gotten the Ultramarine blue torsos.

For the remainder of my Terminators, 5 regular termies have gotten their dark legs painted, and the one I have been working on for a little while with the heavy flamer is 99% complete. He is only missing the gold on the terminator honors on his left shoulder.

The chaplain is now only missing the white on his seals, and I will do that later today. He also needs to have his scull fixed with some white as I decided quite spontaneously yesterday to give him red eyes after all. He looked ok with the black eyes in the white scull, but I have painted all other eye lenses red, so it would look more in style with the others if his lenses were red too.

The finished 3 termies and the chaplain will also receive a final looking over, to make sure that they are ready for the gameboard when the time comes, and then they will be placed in my hobby room in the tray where the other minis waiting for basework resides.

R.I.P. Metal - welcome Resin

Yesterday Games Workshop retired all metal miniatures, and they can now only be found second hand.
As of yesterday the minis that are not cast in plastic will be cast in resin.

I was quite sceptic to this originally, as I have had more problems with the few Forgeworld resin models I have then with my metal minis, but I am now a bit more optimistic.

The new Citadel Finecast series is more flexible resin than the Forgeworld stuff, and is said to glue great with GW Superglue. I saw a lot of kids doing this in the store yesterday, and if they can do it so can I! The question will be how long they stay glued together, but I am quite sure that they will stay together for a long time if treated right.

The great advantage with resin is weight, as large metal minis tend to be rather heavy and gets some wear and tear just from that.

I came home with a Dwarf Gyrocopter that will be assembled when I return to my dwarfs later this year. I look forward to working with this, as it has been said that the metal edition of this set required quite a lot of work to get presentable. It is also said that it is not so with the resin kit.

An Imperial Guard Lord Commissar was also one of the models that made his way to the house. The details on him is amazing, and here one can truly see how resin can have an advantage over plastic and metal. Hope I can do him justice when I paint him up later in the year.

The last Finecast mini I brought home yesterday was a Space Marine Apothecary in Terminator Armour. This will probably be the first of the Finecast minis that I work on, as I am currently working hard on lots of Space Marines. The Apothercary had the coolest weapon option I have seen on any mini so far, a combi stormbolter/melta that was combined beside each other. This will definitely be the chosen weapon alongside his librarian staff.

slow and steady...

I am not feeling to well today. Throat is very soar and my head feels like it's filled with cotton. Also feels like I am starting to get a fever. My hands are shaking more than usual, and that's why I am happy to report a slow progress on my Marines.

The 3 veterans I have been working on has gotten their arms and shoulder guards attached, and fully painted. All that is missing now is the metal on their breath masks, a little gold detail, the red on the wax seals and a wash.

The 3 terminators are only missing their gold details and washes.

The chaplain and the remaining 6 terminators on the workbench are at different stages of completion. The chaplain and the heavy flamer have their bodies finished but are missing details. The flamer has not gotten the weapon arm attached to his torso yet, but that will be done next time I work on him.

I have also started to paint Sergeant Lorenzo from the Space Hulk set, and it seems like the paints gets a lot more glossy on the plastic that the space Hulk terminators are made of. It will be exiting to see how it will work out.

Things happen...

I have gotten all 10 Space Hulk Terminators and the 1 Terminator Sergeant. They all came in the mail today, and the first thing I did with them was to cut them from their spruces and cut away the worst of the mold-lines.

I found out I don't have 40mm round bases, so I don't have anything to base them on yet, but the good thing about Space Hulk models is that they are designed to be used without, so they have a thin base that they stand on. My plan is to simply glue that onto 40mm bases. I'm quite sure I can find a way to make it look rather natural.

Apart from that there aren't anyhthing to report as of now...

progress

Have been working for a little while with the Marines these last few days.
3 terminators are only missing the gold paint and the washes. They are starting to look like good Marines, and it is not possible to see that they had been painted red before I got them. The painting was done with thin coats, so even after my paintjob they have all their details intact.

The 3 veterans I had to pick apart are now redy to be reassembled. I glued the arms on the first one last night, and will work some more on them tonight to get the white trim on their shoulder guards and finish them.

I have also painted the body, head and shoulder guards of my first Terminator chaplain, but there are so many details to paint that it will probably take a little while to get him ready for action. The pose on him is really cool, with a skeleton mask, stombolter with amunition belts hanging from the gun and a generally mean look to him (click here to see pic at GW website).
Mine was bought used and did not come with the halo, but I will see if I have a spare halo somewhere to use if I feel it will improve his look. He is basically chaos black, but will get chainmail and gold details along with the usual Blood Red and Scull White seals and Skull White washed oath papers. I have high hopes he will be a valued addition to the terminator squads. Not sure if he will be assigned to a special squad or if he will join the squad that needs his assistance most at the time.

I have four (perhaps five if I win my last auction) metal terminators on their way in the mail. The idea is that the regular terminators will join the metal captain I have to form up a squad. One of these five is a chaplain and another is a librarian. There is also one heavy flamer, one assault cannon and one "regular" terminatior among the five. The last three terminators, along with my spare from the Space Hulk batch will go in to this unit.

I see that I get a lot of terminators, probaly too many if I want to field other veterans as well, but I will make them up and then decide from game to game what units to bring with me.

Where's the enemy?

I have received 16 of my 26 terminators, and I've been informed that the remaining 10 is in the mail from Russia. The remaining 10 are the ones that is most special, and they will be my 1st squad. The terminators I have finished earlier will, along with 4 others, form the second squad.

The last man of the squad will get his first paint today.

The remaining 15 terminators are primed black, I also have a box of 5 terminators that was laying on the shelves, and they are also assembled. Only terminator being partially assembled is the one with the augmettic eye and the heavy flamer, as the head needs some extra attention and the heavy flamer covers up parts of the armor that I won't reach if it is glued on.

I took a picture of the Marines I have in my mobile workstation. It's an element from the 1st company, all ready for action...

Marines comming along...

I have some more Marines on their way through the mail.

I just couldn't resist and placed bids on 3 5-man terminator squads. So far I've won 1 of the 3 auctions (the other 2 expire today and I am currently in the lead). I have found that terminators are quite easy to paint to a good standard even if you get them pre-assembled, as they have their arms out from their body, so you can access all areas. These come primed black, so that might work out quite well.

I've also managed to get one squad of Spacehulk terminators. I didn't get a sergeant at a reasonable price (have one bid that looks promising so far, but I expect it to reach the obnoxiously high price as the other sergeants before the auction is over), but I found that one of the regular terminators look quite "sergeantly" (first time sergeant is used as an adjective?) so if I don't get the sergeant he will get the job.

The 10th man for my first terminator squad is in the mail, so my metal captain is definitively out of the equation. I still hope to find a nice squad for him to lead as well, but there are a few challenges. First of them is the fact that he is assembled on a 25mm base. For some reason this is done with Dark Angels terminators. I will need him on a 40mm base, so if I get to use him I must use a knife and some greenstuff to give him a slotted 40mm base to stand on. This shouldn't be the biggest problem to solve, but all the other terminators I seem to find (plastic or metal) all look so much more beefy than he does, but I haven't given up on him yet...

Recently I got 3 terminators to go with my already assembled 6. These 3 were pre-painted red (quite well done too) and they now have the standard blue and dark blue of the Gatekeepers. What remains is to give them white heads, fix the gold and silver detailing and paint their weapons the right colors.

The 3 Dark Angels I received at the same time are now only missing the white paint on the helmets, the gold details and painting f their weapons. These arrived unpainted. I thought they looked really cool on Ebay, but when they arrived I found several faults with them. There were things that should have been trimmed better, and the shoulder guards and arms were assembled in a strange way sticking too much out from the bodies. Also the weapons were just resting in the left arm, and not being glued tight.

The result was that I started to squeeze them gently for a little while and all of a sudden parts started to come off...

I now have them with heads and backpacks attached to the torsos, while arms and shoulder guards are separate. This means I can do a much better job painting their tunics, and details and also get a better look on them upon completion.

Marines party...

I have all the marines being worked on lined up, and I must admit they look quite good. Standing on a small plastic lid is two Dreadnoughts (one venerable and one chaplain) surrounded by 6 terminators and 12 veteran battle brothers from the 1st company.

Counting the veterans I have found I need the two extra boxes. I have 9 Vanguard veterans and 11 Sternguard veterans. But with two boxes of Dark Angels Veterans that issue can be solved. That means I will have 30 robed veterans, 20 will be Sternguard and 10 will be Vanguard.

The robed Vanguard veterans will have a drop-pod as dedicated transport, and for the drop they will be joined by two more marines. One of these will be a chaplain, but I have not yet decided who the last marine will be. I will also add some other Vanguard veterans (probably buy one or two boxes from my local GW-store, to get some with jump-packs as well. These will not have robes, as the robes would cause trouble with the jump-packs.

The Terminators will need a 10th man from my plastics or from Ebay. The metal one doesn't really fit in. Still what I have found is that the metal one really looks more like a captain, so he will probably be the captain of the 1st company, and the plastic commanding model will be a sergeant.

The captain will go in to battle with (hopefully) 9 other metal terminators. I'm sure I can find some on Ebay or by reading details on the Games Worhsop website. Most characters are metal, so there might be a few out there to collect. A quick search on Ebay just now showed 5 metal Termies only on the first page of the search, so I'm quite sure that will work out fine one way or the other.

And with that I bid you all a good night, and hopefully if nothing very special comes up tomorrow will be an afternoon of painting delight.

one month since last post

I have not given up on my miniatures just because there has been so quiet, I just haven't been able to do much. There is no particular reason for this, apart from there being much to do in the daily life.
Today is the first day back at work after Easter, and I had such high hopes for getting a lot of painting done in my Easter break... Sadly though, I haven't touched a brush these few days off.
I have however received all of the miniatures I bought on Ebay, and I will start up the painting again this week. My first Terminator squad will be completed, with 10 Terminators, but I will see if I swap one of them at a later time, as two of them can be used as a commander. My idea is to have the Captiain of the 1st Company made up in Terminator Armour, and I have a metal terminator captain that I am thinking of using. Still the plastic commander I got from Ebay looks a little more warlike, so I will use him as a commander of the squad that looks most fearsome. If I remove the metal captain from this squad though, I will need to replace him with a normal terminator, but I have one or two boxes on the shelves so this should not be a problem and can be done when I start painting up my second squad.

I will also do a count of my robed marines, and see if they now can be split in to two squads or if I'm still missing something. I have enough marines to do so, but it depends a little bit on the weapons they are carrying as I don't like mixing swords and boltguns too much. There can be some mixing, but not more than looks natural.
If something still should be missing, the plan is simple, go from 20 to 30 robed marines, and make the last 10 in a way that they fill the gaps of the existing squads.

Grey Knights has been put on hold temporarily, as I don't have the cash to buy enough miniatures to make a small army. Instead I will keep working on my existing armies to make them ready for games. I did buy an inquisitor though, and I plan to paint him up to fit a future Grey Knight army, as I know I'm going to get a small Grey Knight army sometime in the future.

I have decided that the next Warhammer FB project will be to paint up a forrest. I will prime the base and the trees black and then paint it from there. I have long thought to paint leaves in differnt shades of green, and this Easter I saw a picture where this was done and found out that it could look very good. Not sure it will look just as good when I do it, but I think it will be quite nice once it is done. The idea is to make my two forrests look rather different. One should look very intimidating, and the other should look rather nice and inviting.
There are so many extra parts in the set that this should be quite easy to achieve.

Hey! What's going on?

At the moment, there is only planning activities going on. The Grey Knights will be upon us pretty soon (releasedate is April 2nd) and the latest White Dwarf is full of temptations. This photo is just used for illustration... The former White Dwarf was full of Orcs & Goblins, and last week I finally got around to pick up my new rulebook and my Arachnarok spider from the Games Workshop store in Oslo. This has also made me start to think on how I want to present the units in my Goblin army. I would like to find the combination of cool and classic that allows me to field Night Goblins, Goblins and Forrest Goblins (Spider riders) in a manner that makes them all unique while still appearing as a unified army. I know this isn't the most important thing for gobbos, but I would like to do something for my own part, to recognise the army as mine.

I haven't been able to do much new on my Space Marine army either, as they got stored away when we had a visitor a little over a week ago. Then on Thursday last week the wife came home with a new shower that needs to be assembled, and this came in several large boxes. One of these is now laying on the floor in our living room and blocking my access to the storage box. Last weekend I attended a seminar with my Big Band, as we're having a huge concert the comming Friday, so I wouldn't had the time to do too much anyhow. Hopefully we get to assemble the shower some time this week, so I can spend some time on my minatures this saturday and sunday. I will also continue to group already painted marines in to squads, using the useful tips I got from the GW store. I have bougth a few more minis on Ebay, so some of the units should be filled up. My 6 plastic Terminators will get 3 newcomers that needs to be re-painted (they are red if the pic doesn't lie) and along with my metal terminator captain (might use him as a sergeant depending on if I want him to be captain of 1st squad or not) the unit has 10 terminators and thus makes my weapon choises legal. My 17 Dark Angels are getting 3 robed friends, and hopefully I can field them as one unit of Vanguard veterans and one unit of sternguard veterans. This will depend a little on how many has bolters and how many have boltpistols & chainswords. I wil probably have more of these kinds of veterans anyway, so if the numbers don't add up I can add some more Dark Angels. The idea is that the Vanguard Veterans can join with a chaplain and one other marine to deepstrike in to the game with a Drop pod as a dediated transport as this is a choice available if I drop their jump packs. Then I can get some real Vanguard Vets with jump packs and still explain the difference between them (and that is that the Vanguard vets using the jump packs can't wear their robes)...

been to GW today...

Dropped by my "local" GW Store in Oslo today (has to be my local since it's the only one and just 50 kms away from where I live)...

Picked up my new Orc & Goblin rulebook and the new spider (GW's biggest plastic mini so far).

I look forward to start to assemble and paint it, but I will do a few other projects before that (at lest River Trolls and my ongoing Space Marine project).

Haven't asssembled or painted more Space Marines since my last post, and haven't gotten around to taking the promised pictures either. That's the problem with packing the minis away when visitors arrive, it's hard to find the motivation to unpack them again later... I'm looking forward to getting some time to tidy up my hobby room in the basement, so that I can start to sit more down there. At the moment there are some boxes, a lot of sheet music and generally a lot of stuff down there keeping me from getting the space I need to bring out the heater to make the room liveable. But spring is upon us, and soon I won't need the heater anyway. Hopefully I will still get to tidy up a bit even if I don't have that motivation for it...

Got some very good tips both for using my caped Dark Angels as veterans, and how to arm some of the units I have yet to assemble. I am more determined than ever to get a good lot of marines painted up.

I was also shown some of the new Grey Knight models in various stages of assembly, and got to see the codex and hear some about what is comming. This has made me decide that there will be Grey Knights in my future. The release date is April 2nd I think, but I will wait a little longer before I shop (payday ain't before the 15th). I will start off with a few sets and take it from there. I have some loose plans, but will need to read the codex and learn more about the Grey Knights before I make a big plan. But I think they do fit very nice in to an Apocalypse army beside my Space Marines and Imperial Guards. Might be some Sisters of Battle in there as well before I have enough points for an Apocalypse game...

More progress

The Venerable Chaplain Dreadnought is now 100% complete, the finishing touches was done just now. I will take pictures as soon as our visitors have left later in the afternoon.

It is quite different from the Games Workshop Venerable Dreadnought, so I will also take a pic of the two together.

It seems like 12 hours of rest has helped the superglue harden a bit, as I don't feel it is as wobbly today as I felt it was yesterday. Still, I will be very careful with it and will probably only use it in some of my games.

I hope to have all the Dark Angel minis ready before I call it a night, so that I can get them sorted in to squads and get their points counted. I think I will need a few more of them to make whole squads of them, so I will take a little trip on Ebay and see what I can find.

I also need 4 more Terminators to make a 10 man squad. I have 5 more boxed up on the shelves, but that way I will always have one too many, and I need more anyway. The plan is to have 40 Terminators in 1st squad to leave some room for both normal veterans, Sternguard veterans and Vanguard veterans.

Progress is steady

The Venerable Dreadnought got its final seal today, and will be photographed tomorrow with all 3 different right-arm solutions.

My 6 terminators have gotten the new chapter insignia, and new photos will be taken tomorrow as well.

I have almost finished my Venerable Chaplain Dreadnought, only thing missing now is to paint the Mechanicum symbol on its back and the muzzle of the twin lascannon and the tube from the tank to the heavy flamer.

Everything should be washed and ready, but I will look once more in daylight before I say it's ok. Had a little trouble with the washes blending, never had that before. Probably didn't wash the brush good enough between the different washes in my rush to get it done.

This is the first big resin model I have made and I should be careful to pass judgement after just one, still I found it rather hard to work with. My biggest problems was getting the parts to stay together, also I felt I had to do a lot of carving to get the edges off and the parts to fit snuggly together. I used the normal amount of superglue, and also pinned every piece.

I had some problems earlier, getting the assault drill to stay in its socket, so I ended up drilling through the frames and the drill and then putting a pin straight through the entire thing. With a paintjob after, it is almost invisible.

I also gave 5 veterans originating from the Dark Angels the new chapter insignia and did some general painting on them. There is still a little more painting and washing to do before they are completely done.

I am also writing down the points for the different units and assigning each single miniature to a position in a unit, so that I can recognize them and describe the ones that are special characters or just interesting enough to get a background story. This is also done so that the captains and sergeants can be named and recognized on the battlefield.

Also, it is a nice motivation to see how many points I have ready for action for my new chapter.

After today (if I count the two Venerable Dreadnoughts and the terminators) I have between 660 and 690 points ready for action, depending how I arm the Venerable Dreadnought.

I also have several models painted up but not given the new insignia, and some veterans who is painted up but not yet been assigned to squads. This willl happen in the near future.

More shelves to the glass cabinet

Got a very good tip on how to get more shelves in my class cabinets (Detolf from IKEA) this weekend.
Someone on the Warhammer Forum had seeen it done in another forum and tried it at home with success. I am very happy people post and inform about this! Thank you!
6mm wire clamps and some glass plates is all it takes, so I can stop thinking on how I am going to weld legs on to glass plates and make pyramids now...

This is a great idea, especially for the Space Marines and Goblin shelves as they are starting to fill up. I think I can get several low shelves for the Goblins, as there will be a lot of them and they don't take up much height. I will need to get my hand in an out, so there will need to be some extra room, but I should still be able to get several shelves in to each cabinet. Then one taller shelf to get the giant spiders and the giants in too.

Will do the meassures and then check the price for glass or plexiglass so that I can order that when I get the paycheck for February.

More Marines

I have decided to try and make the most of my Space Marines for a while. I'm getting real anxious to start playing and so I will paint Space Marines until I get bored, then I will get back to my strategy of one 40K project followed by one Fantasy project.
I will do a little Fantasy painting in between though, as I plan to paint up my first forrest. That is something that can be done while I work on other projects. I also plan to spray a basic paint (chaos black) on my Temple of Sculls so that I can start to paint this up little by little.

On my worktable in the basement, there are enough marines to assemble 3 tactical squads. At the moment I am missing heavy support weapons, as they all (except for 2 inteded sargeants) are armed with bolters. There might be one Marine with flamer, but I am not 100% sure about this. These are all missing arms, shoulderguards, backpacks and extra equipment if I would like to add that. The torsos are painted, already. I might have some extra flamers around, so for some of these marines it may be that I replace their bolters with flamers. I'll check with the rules how many heavy weapons are allowed and what sorts.

From the spare knealing legs from my command squad and spare bitz from my box I have assembled one marine with a missile launcher. He will probably join one of the tactical squads. He will be painted up together with the command squad I am working on at the moment.

I have 10 veterans for my 1st squad being worked on at the moment. 5 of them are only missing some paint here and there, and the last 5 are missing shoulderguards and backpacks.

I also have an assault squad in the works. The sargeant is assembled but is missing the new chapter inignia, a little paint and a good wash. The remaining 4 are in the same state as the tactical squads.

Telion and some captains are also under way. Telion (or McTee as he will be named in the Gatekeepers) is still in the basement, but 3 captains and an apothecary (originally Corbulo of the Blood Angels) are nearing completion in the livingroom.

Project Space Maries

A while back I declared loud and clear that my project this time would be to build one venerable and two ironclad dreadnoughts. The Venerable dread is done, with 3 different configurations for the right arm (as described in previous posts).

But getting started on the Ironclads has so far been a challenge. I have painted the bases and assembled the sarcophagi (except from the power plants).

Then I thought... "Hmmm, while I have the Space Marine colors out, why not do the changing of the chapter insignia on some of my almost finished marines?"

So I started with 7 marines from my 1st company. Changing the chapter insignia went smooth and rather fast. 6 more marines came up from the basement where I usually work and in to the living room (the wife was away for a few days...). Then I thought I needed to repaint the helmets as my marines are descendants of the Ultramarines. Veterans = white helmets.

When I painted white I managed to ruin the red lenses, so that had to be fixed...

Then I brought a command squad up, and started building them from scratch.

And what do you know, on my last trip to the basement 10 more veterans in different stages of completion came back up with me.

So far the first seven veterans are 100% done and ready for combat. I gave them some Asurmen Blue wash over the Ultramarine blue, and some Badab Black for the metal parts, and that did the trick.

The command squad are all partly assembled, all missing their arms and the champion is also missing the head. The Ultramarine Blue and Necron Abyss paintwork is done except for the arms and shoulder guards.

Will do some more tonight, and tomorrow the wife is going out again so the evening will be spent painting while casting a few glanses on some b-movies I have taped from the television this weekend.

I have promised you pics of painted stuff, and it will follow shortly...

Venreable Dreadnought complete

I'm glad to say that the Venerable Dreadnought is ready for action. I think it ended up looking very nice, and I will take pictures and post with all 3 available right arm options.
I haven't washed it with the different washes yet, but I will do that tonight or tomorrow, along with 7 Space Marines from the 1st Company that have been upgraded with the new Chapter insignia. Pictures will follow after that.
My plan is to upgrade all the painted Space Marines with the new insignia, and the ones that haven't been washed yet will receive a wash at the same time. When adding the new insignia I also need to repaint the legs of the oldest marines, because their legs are currently Midnight Blue and this looks very different from Necron Abyss when you get the two colours on the same miniature. Luckily it is a very simple paintjob to redo the legs, so it takes just a short time for each Marine.
I am looking forward to getting all the finished miniatures in to the new look, and while doing so I will also assign them in to squads and mark them so that I know what miniatures belongs together. The plan is to make it very simple, and just mark them under the bases, as I am not too found of the minis with a lot of text on the bases.

While I have the paint boxes for the Space Marines out, I will also try to complete some of the many half painted/half assembled Marines that are standing around on my worktable. Might as well make an effort now, so that I can get them over to the pre-basework stations and get a table that I can use for basework in the same process.

Space Marine commanders...

There are few good miniatres out there that can function as a Space Marine Chapter master without being instantly recognised as someone else.
Marneus Calgar and Captain Lysander are two very nice models that I would love to field as commanders of the Gateeepers, but I tried something else instead... Unfortionately, that didn't work out too well! I started out well enough with a plastic set called "Space Marine Commander" and painted him up to look commanding. But in my eagerness to make him look commanding I gave him a golden helmet. That didn't look good at all (not sure if it is the golden helmet or the way I applied the gold). 

I will see if I can repaint his head (or replace it with another from my bitz box) so that he can become Captian of one of my 10 companies. I do have some of the commanders already, but I don't have all 10 yet. The golden helmet will be left to the champion I think...

Instead I ended up buying Marneus Calgar with Honour guard on Thursday afternoon. Truely an amazing metal kit, but I am sad to think that I need to do some heavy carving. There are a host of Ultramarine signs on the troops that I will see if I can remove. If I can it's good and it will be done, if I can't I'll survive as my fluff states that there are some of the "old" symbols around.
The thing that hurts me the most will be to cut the top off the banner, as it is very good looking. But The Gatekeepers will never be the XIII Legion, that is always and forever the Ultramarines.
Still, I also got myself the "Space Marine Command Squad" box and in this lovely plastic set there are two different banner heads to choose from. So hopefully I will be able to use the one not being used here on the top of Calgar's own banner. I will see what I can do, this should be no problem at all if there is a possibility to use pinning, if not it might be a little more difficult but I am sure I can find some sort of solution before I cut the top off the first banner.

Along with my other projects going on at the moment, I will try to finish the Space Marines standing around on my work table and changing the chapter markings on the ones already in the glass cabinet. The cabinet contains 5 chapter masters (including the earlier mentioned golden helmet), 6 terminators, a whole lot of scouts, one scout on bike, a dreadnought, a rhino and a one of a kind (not nessessarily in a good way) Land Speeder that won't be used unless it's absolutely nessassary. I need to get some marines off my work table in order to get the room I need to base a lot of Warhammer Fantasy suff and some Imperial Guard units. Pretty soon there will also be a few dreadnoughts that needs to get some extra things added to their bases.

What is new?

As explained in my last post, the 12 first warrirors of "The Shining" are done. The entire unit is now sitting in the box togehter with 20 hounds and two knights waiting for the base work to be done. This will probably be quite simple. For my Chaos Army I'm thinking of using tainted grass, some stones, and if I find some sculls or other "chaosy" bits I will add them as well (just as my goblin bases gets mushrooms whenever I come across some)...

As custom is, after a WHFB project it is time for a 40K project. So I am working on 3 dreadnoughts at the moment (to read about this see the "Enter the dreadnoughts..." post).
This weekend I finally managed to take some ok pictures of the Leman Russ, and hopefully they will be posted here in a few days time.
I was planning to test my new light box for photography on the Russ pictures, but it was such nice weather that I decided to go without it.

I also managed to paint the shoulderguard of one of my marines to see if I could find a chapter symbol that can look more similar than the # that I use today. The problem with using # is that it never looks the same from one shoulderguard to the next, so I had to re-think it all.
I am not 100% convinced of my new symbol either, but I think it fits the fluff and it looked suprisingly good on the marine.
The new idea is to use Necron Abyss on the shoulderguard,as this matches the legs, then paint a strip of shining gold vertically down the middle of the shoulderguard.
It is very simple, but since using stickers didn't work out and I am a very bad freehand painter I need a simple pattern. I will try to paint a few more and see if I still like it.

Last week I saw the preview of a new spider for the Goblin release taking place on March 5th. It's a gigantic spider and it's sure to find it's way in to most greenskin armies in times to come, and I expect one or two will crawl down to my study as well this spring.
I must say I look forward to the release of the new codex, even though I didn't know a new one was needed.
But new releases often brings with it new models, and this is also the sitution here. Goblin assassins (nasty skulkers) will be cool to have in the army, it looks like there are more fanatics on the way (I really like fanatics). I will try to give my Goblins a more unified look, so they will fit together in one huge army. There should be some tribal differences both among the Night Goblins and between them and other Goblins, but it would be cool to have them quite similar still. Think I had a plan for this when I was working hard on the greenskins a while back, but I will revisit them and re-think the plan for my next WHFB project (this will probably be river trolls).

Enter the Dreadnoughts...

For some days now I've been building dreadnoughts.
After finishing off the 12 Chaos warriors to start off "The Shining" unit (12 more will follow at a later time), it was time for another 40K project.
Looking through my Space Marines shelf, I found one venerable and two ironclad dreadnoughts, and I thought they might be a worthy project.
My Venerable dreadnought is only missing his smoke launchers and the searchlight before he can march in to battle.
Games Workshop made the parts really tight, so the arms will stay on without the use of glue. This gave me the opportunity to use almost all weapon options on one dreadnought.
The left arm ends in a power fist, and it will do so on all configurations. Under the powerfist there is a stormbolter, and this will also be there for all three configurations.
The shoulderguard on this arm will match the one that is used for my standard configuration, and the standard right arm will be the assault cannon.
Optional right arm configurations are the ornate twin lascannon or the plastmacannon.
Originally GW has designed the dread so I can use the same shoulder for all weapons and just replace the weapons. But since there are slight differences in the needed equipment for the weapons to function, I decided on replacing the entire arm.

The Ironclads are still just in pieces. The sarcofarguses are mostly done, except for the powerplants as I like to paint them separately before assembly. I think the Ironclads will get permanent weapon placments,  but I will have to see when the project evolves a little further.
The first Ironclad will have permanent weapons for sure. It will be armed with hurricane bolters and a seismic hammer. I might add some hunter-killer missiles as well, I know one of the two will have it but have not decided which one or if both will have this. Guess I'll have to check a bit about the use and point values first.
The second Ironclad will (as it looks now) have a chainfist and a close combat weapon. The latter might be replaced with hurricane bolters, but I will have to see as the project evolves. Might be cool to have more of a close combat dreadnought as well, and the Ironclad is perfect for that role.

Chaos progress

Just now I have glued the banner to the pole of the standardbearer of "The shining", and in just a little while I will start to paint the last five warriors of the unit. I hope I will manage to have them ready in less time that it took both for the two test models and the five warriors I just completed.

This time I will do it a bit smarter I think, because I will paint all the same colours at the same time. Last time I started with the bodies, then did the heads and then the arms, but this time I will try to do it all at the same time. This takes up a little more space, but hopefully it will get the job done a lot faster.

The plan was to go straight into a new unit of warriors, this time warriors of Khorne. But I do believe the warriors of Khorne will have to wait one round as I feel that will benefit both the unit and me.

The unit because the more inspired I am, the better looking the unit will be. And me because I need the variation.

Haven't decided if I'll make river trolls or a unit from Warhammer 40.000. The proper thing according to my big sceme would be to make something from Warhammer 40.000 but I'll see what I end up with when the time comes.

new week again

As yet another weekend have passed, once again I have failed miserably when it comes to my painting.
Only thing I can truly say that I have achieved this weekend is that I have decided on the colour of the banner for my unit of chaos warriors known as "The Shining". The unit will be *drumroll* Kommando Khaki. This will be washed gently with Devlan mud. The golden symbol will be washed with Sepia as I do with almost all gold details I paint.

I have also arranged for my dad to get me a large cardboard box (he works in a store and get a lot of supplies in cardboard boxes) that I can use for a simple indoor paintstation. I have spoken of my mobile paintstation (the coca-cola cardboard box) before, but this will be for priming large models (and small models if I should decide to start priming them too).
I have a plan to start working on my Temple of Skulls this winter, and to make sure it is nicely primed I think it will be good to prime it indoors in a controlled temperature. I even found the perfect location (at least until I finally get around to paint the rest of my basement). I will need to find out some arrangement for making sure the very fine paint particles doesn't go all over, but I've got an idea for how I will do that also, and then we'll see if it is a good one after I've primed my first model this way. This can also serve as a station to coat the finished miniatures, as I haven't coated anything except my first 15 Chaos Warriors and a few test miniatures.

The Sisters of Battle will get a few reinforcements in the comming weeks, as I won a couple of auctions on Ebay. Won't be that many, but at least they might be spotted in a battle scenario fighting alongside the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines.

And speaking of Space Marines, I have once again started to doubt myself when it comes to company markings. It's stupid I know, but it's better to have doubts when 18 minis have gotten the new symbol compared to when all painted minis have it.
As of now the symbol is a black # on white background and between the company colours and the markings of the 1st Company there is a thin black line. I sort of liked the white shoulderguards, but I see that the # is impossible to get to look the same for all guards. So now I'm looking for other solutions.
I have a few general ideas, but nothing close to a desition yet. Hopefully I can find a symbol that stands well both in appearance and with the name Gatekeepers as I would like to keep that name for the army.
I'm thinking it must be a very simple symbol, as my freehand painting really sucks. Still it must be something that stands out as a little unique, still also easy to paint exactly the same for all shoulderguards. Updates will surely follow on this...

The pledge...

These last two years I have taken a pledge to paint more miniatures than I buy.
Two years ago I was way off, but last year I think I almost made the pledge. Only thing that tipped me over I think was the new towers, as they are much larger than a regular miniature.

For 2011 I will not take a pledge, as I see how slow I am with painting, and I know there are a lot of nice miniatures out there and more to come...

Just read yesterday that Grey Knights are comming in April, both a new codex and new miniatures. The existing ones are pretty cool, but all metal. Now they will be released in plastic, so I am quite sure that some Grey Knights will find their way to my basement worktable this spring.

Also, there seem to be some new goblin stuff on the way if rumors are right, and even though I have plenty of Goblins to paint, it is always nice to have a wide varitey of minis for the army as an all Goblin army can look rather dull if you have mostly the same minis. When you need units 40-60 strong it is nice to have something to break up the monotony.

Dwafs will probably also get some new minis, if the picures in the rulebook for 8th ed. is something to go by, and I like to think so...

Also, I saw a great post on the Warhammer Forum the other day, where a guy had built an entire town based on the scenery sets from Games Workshop. He had done a lot with the buildings, but it seemed to me that most materials were from the different GW scenery sets. That looked über-cool, and I have decided that I will try to get toghether a smal village during 2011 and take it from there. I have some buildings laying around, so why not assemble and paint them in such a way that they might belong to the same area... 

just a quick update

I have started to experiement a little with the colour of the banner for my Shining ones. The usual Chaos banners (or at lest the ones I am used to seeing) is black, but since the unit itself stands out a lot from the regular chaos warriors I thought it would be nice to do something "new" with the banner as well. 

Creating a shiny banner of silver or gold is not something I think would fit the fluff, as I don't think the chaos warriors have tailors that make fine quality banners for them from exotic fabrics. Instead I am now trying to see how it will look with a banner painted Kommando Khaki. By itself it looks quite ok, but I plan on painting the chaos symbol this weekend. This will be done in gold as with the other banners. Hopefully this will still stand out, at least if I use some washes both on the khaki and on the gold. If not, it's back to black... 

I will also do a small experiment with colours for the wash of the Mithril silver armour of the warriors. The two warrirors that are 100% finished looks like they come straight from a convenient-store, and even though the warriors have an interest in keeping their armour shiny, they should have a little shading. Iwill try to paint two spare parts with Mithril silver and wash one part blue and one part Badab Black, and see what looks best. The idea is to keep them shiny while still getting some shades on to them.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year to everybody out here in the digital world.

If I should have a new years resolution this year, it would be to update this blog more often, and with more interesting posts. Bear in mind that I do not make new years resolutions, but still I hope to be able to follow up better this year.

I managed to go through Christmas without painting anything (don't know how really), so I'm still working on my second Chaos warrior unit ("The Shining"). 2 warriors are done, 5 warriros are almost done, and 5 warriors are still just off their sprues. The unit will be 24 strong, but the remaining 12 will follow a little later after the first 12 of the unit of followers of Khorne are done.

Some projects to follow this year, will be Dreadstone Blight, Witchfate Tor, Temple of Skulls, a forrest or two, lots of Space Marines and Imperial Guard units, River trolls, Goblins, Dwarfs, and Chaos.
And there might be more, one never knows...