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...