From the Workbench

Here are a few snapshots of what is going on at my workdesk at the moment. Before I say anything else, I know I need to tidy up, and I will. My challenge is that I have such a small workplace so I have no place to store ongoing projects so everything ends on the desk. But I plan to get some more shelves and that will solve some of this problem.

First picture is of a Chaos knight in the making. This will be a Knight Tyrant, the biggest of the Knights awailable from Games Workshop (Forgeworld might have some bigger, I haven't checked). The main idea is that my Chaos Knights will be fighting alongside my Chaos Space Marines (The Knights of Oblivion). Originally I had planned to have one knight, then all of a sudden they were two as one of my Knights of the Appocalypse had fallen to chaos as part of the back story, so I needed an Imperial knight that was slightly corrupted and not a full on Chaos one, and now I think there are four Chaos Knigts plus two Chaos versions of the smaller Armiger type. So I might actually be able to field the Chaos Knights as a force of their own (I do have the rulebook to do so), but I will see then they are done how many points I have.

Here are two pictures of The Great Unclean One. There is a little bit of work remaining, as I need to paint the rim of the base in green and also use some green tones on the top of the base as drybrushing to give it some depth. This will make the base identical to the style I have on my Sylvaneth. I don't think all Age of Sigmar bases will be exactly llike this (there will be some moutntain bases for my Duardins for sure, and some snow bases for my Ogors), but I try to make basework quite similar for all my armies to show that they fight on the same battlefields.

I will also add some Nurgles Rot on a few places on the Great Unclean One, like the intestines and some of the deepest wounds.

To the left we have an ongoing Necromunda project. This is the start of one of the three factions I have decided to have for this game (with a hope to also be able to use them for 40K in the future). This is a unit from the Ash Waste Nomads. The other two factions are Squats and Enforcers. I have finished the "fleas" but the riders are only primed as I am trying to figure out what colors to use on their capes.

I plan to do some more with the bases (washing and maybe add som tufts) but I need to do some planing first, and I need to paint the rim of the bases dark brown..

Beside the "fleas" is an Empire Steam Tank with a Duardin Engineer as a commander. This tank is primed and I am debating if I should paint everything as it is now, or glue the remaining parts on and paint everything after. 

To the right of that is a Chaos Space Marine Warpsmith (their equivalent of a Tech Marine) that I glued together on Monday, and next time I have enough models to fill a boxtop I will prime him. He will go in a box awaiting priming the next time I sit down as he is glued solid to his base now. 

To the right of this is a unit of Empire Greatswords with some Bretonnian Knights in the back. The Knights are still being painted, while the Greatswords are just waiting to get a little tune-up before they get their bases painted.

Here we see more Bretonnian Knights and the Greatsword unit, and together with the Steamtank they are the beginning of my Cities of Sigmar army. 

Among the Greatswords is a Cyclops Demolition Vehicle (from Forgeworld), a small remote controlled vehicle filled with explosives for my Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) army. 

In the background is a unit of painted Duardins that I painted several years ago as I was making a Dwarf Armies on Parade board, but I couldn't fit them on the board so I left them for later. But all their arms has been put in a little plastic box, and that was laced in a storage box when I moved and I have not found them yet. If I don't find them I am sure I have plenty of spare arms to use on the sprues of other units.

To the right (just behind the torso of the Knight) are three River Trolls for my Gloomspite Gitz army. Like the Great Unclean One they are missing paint on the rim of the bases and drybrushing with green on top of the bases. 

That is all for now. I will present the units in separate posts when they are 100% finished. And next time I make a workbench update, I hope it looks a bit more tidy.

More Chaos Marines built

I have just finished a unit of Khorne Berserkers, and I am quite happy with the way they look.

It is a little weird that half of them have a standing pose and the other half a running pose (6 of each), but I am considering getting one more box so that I have one unit of each, but I will have to see how it fits with the amount of heads I need. As I mentioned in a previous post I decided to use heads from the Age of Sigmar Chaos range, and I ended up with heads from the Chaos Knights box and the Chaos Warriors box (about half of each). The heads fitted well and they give the Berserkers a unique look in the army.

I also decided the Berserkers should have a banner, so I took one of the two banners from the Chaos Warrior box and just cut off the hand and glued it together. The arm is a tiny bit loner because of it, but not so much that someone will notice it when you see the unit together. If I end up with another unit as well, that unit will not get a banner, as it is probably enough to have one banner for all the Berserkers. 

The Berserkers are armed with chainswirds or chain axes and poltpistols. The Stanfdard bearer only have a bolt pistol. I am still considering adding some seremonial swords, but I might use them on various command models in my army instead. as there are not enough to go around to all of the Berserkers.

The next unit out now will be my second Chaos Space Marine box with 10 Marines. That is also an old box, so they come on 25 mm bases, but I have just enough 32 mm bases in my spares for this unit. And I have a lot more bases waiting on my at Games Workshop, and I plan to go there early next week and pick them up.

Space Marines progress

Let us start with something else. I have primed all the remaining Sylvaneth I own, and now remains the huge task of painting everything up and basing it. I might need to prime the base on my Blood Bowl Treelord, but I have not built it yet, and I have to see how it looks when I do if I need to paint it or not.  

My plan is to build a pile of rocks that the Blood Bowl Treelord can stand on to get some height, and depending on how this will look when glued together I am debating to either leave the rocks looking like natural rocks or to paint them and try to make them look like rocks to fit in with any plastic moulded rocks that should be on other bases. But because it will not be any sculpted rocks on this base I really don't think it matters, and it would save time and work to leave them natural. From the rockpile there will be a little stream as I have some water effects I would love to try out, and I also plan to use some spare pieces from the Sylvaneth sprues as brush to give the base a little more life.

Then let us get to the progress of the Space Marines. 

I have finished assembly of the Dark Vengeance Boxed set and both the Space Marines and the Chaos Space Marines are ready for priming. Most of the figures needed new bases ,so I had to cut off the handle that goes in to the slots on the original slotted bases as the new bases didn't have slots. Only unit that went straight on existing bases was the Chaos Cultists as they are still on the same size (25mm).
For the bikes I actually drilled holes in the new bases and stuck the pegs in them as the bikes was supposed to be slightly tilted (at least one of them) and that was easiest to achieve by using the pegs provided. Everything is placed in cardboard trays and are ready for priming.

I have also assembled a box of the current Chaos Space Marines, and armed them according to the rules in the codex. A leader (Sergeant?) with boltpistol and chain sword, a standard bearer with a very cool standard with the skeleton head of an Imperial Guard soldier (helmet still on, that's how I know) stuck to it, two heavy weapon dudes (one with a plasma weapon and one with a flamer), and 6 regular Chaos Marines with boltguns. I was a little unsure about how to arm them, as there were enough chainswords to go around, but from what I understood in the rules the regular Chaos Marines can'tt use a boltpistol and chainsword, but they can replasce the bolt pistol with a chainsword. The marines that can use boltpistols and chainswords are the Khorne Berserkers.

And Speaking of Khorne Berserkers, I have a box of them as well. They come 12 in a box it seems.
I do not like the heads that come with them as they have very wide "horns" made of the same material as the helmets apparently. So I have decided to have some fun and do headswaps. Originally I thought about just using spare heads from the regular Chaos Space Marines but I figured that would make them hard to separate, at least if I find out later down the road that I can actually have boltpistols and chainswords on the normal Chaos Space Marine.
So what I ended up with was going to my other Chaos faction, the one in AoS that is. I got a box of Chaos Warriors, and I plan to use horned heads from that box to build my Berserkers. The set has something like 24 heads for 16 warriors. This means some of my Warriors will be headless, but not for long as I plan to substitute the missing heads for the Chaos Warriors with spares from the Chaos Knight sprues.

So I guess I will build the Chaos Warrior box when I have finished my Berserkers. I have so sickly many Chaos Warriors that is partially built/painted (at least 20 in a block, could be 30 or more, and there are 3 different blocks). So maybe this will give me an excuse to finish some of them as well. I don't remember if they are missing heads, but I know they are missing arms as I didn't want them to get int he way of painting the bodies. I have sealed plastic bags for each unit, and the arms (and maybe heads if they are there) need to be painted. I think the bodies are about done, but since I painted them Games Workshop has come out with Contrast paints so maybe I will use some of them to brighten them up a bit. I'll have to see how toned down the colored metal is after all these years. I already know that the red ones (followers of Khorne) are almost pink because that was the color of the red wash I used. Also I have purple tinted armor and green tainted armor for (Slaanesh and Nurgle). The Slaanesh warriors I planned to use alongside the old metal Sigvald The Magnificent figure and I plan to paint him up in the same way. I think he looks good and that the new plastic miniature looks a bit "much", wo I will not upgrade him to the new model.
I have not decided what kind of leaders there will be for the other two factions yet.

Of course I also have the Slaves of Darkness Chaos Warriors, and they will be the traditional black armored warriors they are in the pics from Games Workshop. I have a paint scheme I liked a lot when I worked on them last (way back in the days) and I intend to use that for most of my warriors.

Space marines

I felt it was time get rid of a big box, so I decided to assemble some Space Marines.
I've had the Dark Vengeance boxed set with Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines laying around for ages. From what I have been able to find out my box was released back in 2014, and I guess I must have gotten it about then as boxes like these usually sell out quite fast. Seems like the base sizes for some of the units have changed since then (from 25mm to 32mm bases) so I will have to fix that.
For some reason they are on slotted bases and not just bases with holes to stick their legs in, so I will have to do like I did with my Night Goblins and cut the "taps" off them and glue them on bases that aren't slotted. Luckily some of the models like the Terminators and bikes for the Dark Angels and the Chaos Cultists and the Chaos Hellbrute can use their original bases.

It seems like the Chaos Space Marines are followers of Khorne originally, but I figure if I just paint them up in the same scheme as the rest nobody will need to know. They will just look a bit blood-thirsty. I don't think I can explain that my Chaos army has a third faction, it was hard enough comming up wtih a story explaining why I have two so different types as the regular Chaos Marines and the Nurgle stuff so I don't want to even try to explain why some are red and worship Khorne. So I will paint them the same dark green as the rest of my regular Chaos Marines and just say they are blessed a little bit more by the Chaos Gods. Or maybe it is the other way that the regular Chaos Space Marines have not been blessed by the Chaos Gods (at least not yet). But no matter I will find good explanations why it is so as I would like to use all the models I have. 

One thing that I really like about the Dark Angels in this box is that they have printed shoulderpads both with the Dark Angels symbol and the unit designation. There are two small problems though. The first is that the shoulderpds are molded on to the minis as they are snap/fit and monopose. The second probleem is that I don't have a Dark Angels army, so I will either have to cut it awway, explain why there are regular Dark Angels in a Ultramarines successor chapter, or run them as Dark Angels. The Dark Angels I have in my army todayhave given up their colors to have their armor painted like the Gatekeepers. This is in agreement with the current leaders of the Dark Angels and is a rather complicated agreement that I will try to explain in the back story and it has to do with The Fallen and where these Marines were at the time when those events took place. But even though they might have a shield or a weapon with Dark Angels symbols on them, they look like Gatekeepers in most matters. This will not work with the Dark Angels in this box though. It would be a shame to cut away the symbols as they are excellent. I will not think too much about that at the moment as I am sure it will take some time before I get around to painting them and things might look different by then. I guess they could be a separate Dark Angels army just fighting alongside the Gatekeepers on the same battlefield or something like that. Well see when we get there.

I have built my Aspiring Champion for the Chaos Marines today, he was the only model in the set that was not snap/fit, and I believe he was a special character added to the box to give it more value and give the box something exclusive. I know they did the same for the 2012 version of the box, when they added an Interrogator Chaplain. I remember getting him off Ebay as it was awesome. Now you can get them in the regular range though, but back then you couldn't. Next up will be to build either the Chaos Cultists or the Dark Angels Terminators or Bikers as they will go on the bases that are in the box. The main reason for this is that when my wife has to go to the office we get up a bit earlier than when she can work from home, and then I have some time from I have walked the dogs to when I have to log on to to my work, and I have found working with miniatures in that time is a good way of getting stuff done. 

Goblins for the Gloomspite Gitz army

I was over at my cabin in Sweden today to check that everything was ok there and it was. But while I was there I also rummaged through some of my boxes and brought home some fun.

I took with me two units of Chaos Space Marines (10 Marines in a unit) and a Hellbrute.
I checked what is left in storage for this army, and there is not too much. I have two boxes of terminators, one box of resin Obliterators, two boxes of Raptors (if I remember the name correctly, they are the ones with jump-packs) an Aspriring Champion and then there was one more blister that I don't remember what was.

I also have two boxes of the Horus Heresy boxed set that came out some years ago and I think one of those boxes could be made up as chaos. If they don't look very "chaosy" I will refrain from adding them to this army and instead make everyone up as Gatekeepers, since they have a lot of old warsuits still in use. I plan to bring these boxes with me back home next time I go over.

But it wasn't just Chaos Space Marines that came home with me from the Warhammer 40K range, I also found a box from the Ork range that I took with me. That was a special box with Kaptin Badrukk and his Flash Gitz. I think that box was just available for a shor time, and it contained the Kaptin and ten Flash Gitz and some quite cool looking Grots I haven't seen before. I had planned to have some Flash Gitz in my army, so I look forward to building and painting this box. I also found I had two mor boxes of five Flash Gitz each in storage, so I will at least have twenty of them in my army. I also found one Morkanaut, a box of Boyz, four boxes of Mek Gunz, two boxes of flyers, a Big Mek, a box of Nobz, a box that can be Burnas or Lootas,  two boxes of Big Meks in Mega Armor and finaly two boxes of Deff Dreads with one in each box and a box with two in one box. I also have a box with a Stompa standing  in storage. 

I also went through my Greenskin army and brought with me some goodies to build and paint. What is left in storage now is three boxes of Night Goblin, a few small plastic boxes with Night Goblins with spears from the Battle of Skull Pass starter set (these are monopose figures) and a box of Night Goblins without arms. 
I have lots of spare arms, so adding arms to the ones that are missing them is no problem, although I am sure somewhere there is a plastic box or a ziplock back with their arms. I think I will bring these boxes home with me next time I go to the cabin.

There are also a few weird metal figures that I will take a closer look at. Some of them I believe are old Netters, and some are cool but not from Games Workshop.

What I did bring home though is some blisters. A Goblin Boss on a big spider, a boss on a giant squig, a boss on a wolf and a blister with squigs. I also brought home a bag containing what looks like resin Gnarly Cave Squigs, or something like that. I look forward to putting them together and adding them to the ones I already have assembled. 

The last two boxes I took with me was a box of Goblin Regiment and a box of Goblin Wolfriders. The sprues are identical, in thee boxes, but the Wolfriders have wolves added to the box.

I have started on the Wolf riders first. Tuned out I had three extra wolves in the box, but their riders is either from another range or non Games Workshop so I need to replace them. I have thought a lot on how to do that, and the only solution I can find is to take some of the troops from the Goblin Regiment and turn them in to Wolf riders. This means I will get an odd number of Goblins in the Regiment, but I think that will be the best solution. I plan to use the Regiment box together with the Regiment box I already built as one unit and the numbers will just have to be what I can make them.

For both the Wolf Riders and the Goblin Regiment I will end up with a weird number of troops, so I am thining I could make a few Unit fillers to even the numbers. I am not sure if that is allowed in the AoS rules as of today, but I will check with the staff at Games Workshop Oslo if they recommend doing this or if I should just keep the odd numbers. Not sure what I will end up with for the Goblin Regiment, but for the Wolf riders I will end up with 13 and the normal would be 15. 

Plans for 2021 - Warhammer 40.000

The main army I will work on for Warhammer 40K is my Imperial Guard (or Astra Militarum as the range is called now). They have the highest priority in this range. I have lots of both tanks and infantry built and primed and still lots to build. This is one of my two main armies for 40K, and I have all my models at home so it is "just" a matter of finding the time to work on them. Most of my color schemes are quite clear for this army, but I am still considering how to do the airborne part of the army as I haven't built any of those yet. But I think I know how I want them to look, so it is just a matter of building and giving it a try. I have another army I can use both as a separate army and as allies to this, and that is my Imperial Knights.

I have Imperial Knights that will serve on both sides of the conflict. So far I have built and painted one for the good side and one for Chaos. My plan is to have two Chaos Knights. The rest of the knights will be Freeblades, and some will have Imperial symbols while others will have the symbols of the Adeptus Mechanicus. They will fight as backup for their factions, or together as one army of Freeblade Knights.
I plan to give the knights many different paint schemes and all knights will have their own back story. I might paint some in the same scheme to be remnants of a once mighty household, but I will see what I end up doing as I work with them. All of a sudden I find a paint scheme I really love...  This army will take some time though,  the models are big and require a lot of work.

My other main army is the Space Marines. Unfortunately Games Workshop has started to face out all the old units to replace them with Primaris, so I don't think I ever will be able to field my dream of an entire chapter of 1000 Gatekeepers. I have thought out a back story to allow Primaris Marines in to my chapter though, so I will try to field those units eventually. I still would like to finish all my Marines and make an entire chapter though, but that will not be finished by the end of 2021...

Another Space Marine army is The Deathwatch. I have all my Marines assembled and primed for this army, except one little group of Space Wolves that need their shoulderguards with a wolf symbol (they are primaris marines). But I only have my Watch Master done so far, but the five commanders of the Watch companies are on my table being painted, So far I have done the base color on their capes and the silver arm, and I have also done the base color of the silver arm on four Dreadnoughts. This is an army I have some hopes of maybe finishing in 2021. They might need a little support in the future, and I have two Corvus Blackstar flyers that I would like to build, and they should probably get some drop pods and Landriders a well sometime further down the road.

If we stick with Space Marines, we get the third individual army, my Chaos Space Marines. I have no idea if I can play them as one army (but I hope so), but no matter what they will all be the same chapter, the Knights of Oblivion. I am not sure this army will be done by the end of 2021, but I sure hope I will have gotten to paint up a sizeable army. I am still arguing with myself what colors to use exactly, but I think I am getting there. I'm painting up a few test models to see how the colors I want to use will work with the marines that are originally Deathguard, and also to see if I need to change my original plan.
I have some regular Chaos Marines to do the changes on as well. The army is one part regular Chaos Space Marines and one part Nurgle. Both have a Chaos Knight to fight along side them. This is mostly an infantry based army, at least in my mind, so I am little uncertain how they will function on a battlefield.

The fourth big army is the Orks. I love the Orks for so many reasons, one of the big ones are the possibilities of doing modifications and kitbashing and make new and crazy stuff for the army.
This is an army that actually have some finished units already. One of the finished units is my monster sized vehicle that was built by the staff at Games Workshop Oslo, and I also have the units I built for the Armies on Parade in 2018 including a Stompa called Da Punisha. I have several units primed, some are painted almost to completion and some are just primed. I have lots of units to build for this army, and like the Chaos Space Marines I hope they will have grown to a bigger force by the end of 2021. Actually I am quite sure they will...

Another slightly weird army is the Adeptus Mechancus. I have some finished units for this army as well, and several units still to assemble and paint. I know how I want the paint scheme to be for this army, but I have a long way to go before I can call it an army. I hope that I might have sort of a battleforce done by the end of 2021.

My Genestealer cult army is a lot like the Astra Militarum, so I don't think that will be a full army in 2021. I will need to buy more units to field it as a stand-alone army, and I am not entirely sure where I want the army to go. But I do know I want to paint this army and play it some day, so hopefully I will finish something this year

Then I have the armies that are separate entities, but maybe too small to be fielded as separate armies. For now they will sort under the Inquisition. They are the Sisters of Battle (they might be a separate army in the future though), the Sisters of Silence, the Adeptus Custodes (might be able to field them as a small army), some Grey Knights and some Inquisition models. Some of these models are partially painted. I have a fully painted Land Raider I plan to use for them, and lots are still on the sprues. 

Then we can wrap it all up with an army I want to work on during 2021, and that is the Necrons. This is an army I want to see grow slowly but steady during 2021. I know how I want my them to look, and some minis are almost complete (just missing some basework). I hope to be able to put a lot of work in to this force, as I think there are so many great models in this range. They should not be too hard to paint up either as it is quite  simple but effective color scheme with just a few colors and washes needed. After all, they are metal skeletons. The big problem with this range is actually having enough hands to hold everything together as you attach the arms and weapons, but I guess that gets better as you build a few batches of troops. I do not have all the units I would like for this army yet, but I do have quite a good start. As soon as I get the new rule book (sold out from Games Workshop at the moment) I can start making these models in to the beginning of an army. 

As for Necromunda I have put that on the shelf for now. I do love many of the models for this range, and I have enough Escher models to make a nice gang to start with, but I just got a big turn-off when I broke several models trying to get them off the cardboard after I had primed them. I have put the starter set in my pile of models to sell, but I am not entirely sure I will stay away, so it is just in the pile for now. Maybe when I sum up 2021 it will show that I have a small band of Clan Escher models... I will paint up the Enforcers though, as they might be used in regular 40K in some way. And even if I decide to sell my Necromunda figures I will keep the Enforcers.

General update on Warhammer 40K

In the last post I talked about my Age of Sigmar armies and the status of those. So as a natural follow-up, here is the same sort of status update for my 40K armies.

Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle) has now been released as plastic models, and I have always said that I would have a small Sisters army when that happened. So far I have a few special characters, and two boxes of basic units, and I look forward to painting these up to look like they com for m my own invented order. They will all have blonde hair instead of the white they usually have. Why, you ask? Just because I can, and also because I really suck at painting white. I will work out a backstory that explains why they don't have the white hair.
I don't know how big the army will be yet, but I aim to get an army that can be used by themselves on the tabletop. I have some old metal minis and I will buy more of the plastic models when the ones I have now are built and painted. I will look into the new rule book and then I'll decide what units to get. There are a few I really want...

Adeptus Custodes are the Emperors own guardians, and I have some of these golden warriors. I think one or two are almost done, but I have several units that are primed black and then sprayed gold, and more of them still in the boxes waiting for assembly. I do not have a big Custodes army, but I plan to field them alongside other armies like the Sisters of Battle, Sisters of Silence or Space Marines so I don't need the biggest army. They might also show up backing an Inquisitor, that would probably raise some eyebrows. I have made up my color scheme, and I'm currently working on their back story.

Adeptus Mechanicus is an army that will have quite a nice size. I love all the weird vehicles they have, and plan to use this as one of my main armies but also as a support army for other armies. I don't like all the units from this army, so I am making a back story to explain why my units deviate from the standard and why the units I don't like is not part of the army. 

The main reason for this is that my army is part of the vast Mechanicus Exploration Fleet. The army is designated Cohort 9-1 Alpha and is under the command of Magos Explorator de Orellana, and the Cohort is serving aboard the ship The Gloria Inveneris that is under the command of Arch Magos de Sousa.
I love the Kastelan robots, so my army have a lot of those. They are part of the Legio Cybernetica, and the leader of the Legio is Magos Dominus de Vaca.
I also plan to have some of my Imperial Knights army made up with marks showing allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Astra Militarum (who used to be the Imperial Guard and are tagged as such in this blog) is one of my three main armies for Warhammer 40K.  I have made up my own planet called Walpurgia (named after St. Walpurga who is a real Catholic saint) and my army is the Walpurgian 3rd and they have everything from the tiniest Ratling snipers to Super Heavy tanks. They are built up mostly by Cadians and Catachans, with some special forces made from Militarum Tempestus and some modified models from the Genestealer Cult range.
I have some of the units done, and lots of units both soldiers and tanks that I am working on at all times and they are in all stages of the building process from in the box to almost done painting. Most of the stuff is quite standard out of the box, but I also do some conversions and among the things I have made is a recovery vehicle for recovering damaged tanks from the battlefield as I feel this is a must have. Also I wanted the Earthshaker cannon to use as a bellygun for an Ork Stompa.
I hope I can post several units on the blog in the near future as many vehicles are only missing small details before I can call them done.

Deathwatch was not supposed to be a big army but then something happened and I now have a lot of them. I have all the troops that serve from the Watch Fortress Alamo Bexar. They are all primed except for two Corvus Blackstar ships that are still in their boxes. This army has a lot of different chapters as the Deathwatch are supposed to, but some chapters are represented more often than others. 

They all have the etched shoulderguards that came in the Deathwatch boxes, and I plan to try and paint several different successor chapters to put as much variety in the army as possible. I have only one figure that is truly done and that is Watch Master Barret Travis. I had one regular marine as well, but he was sent off to Games Workshop to be a part of the Deathwatch army of the Northern Europe Store Managers and was supposed to come back to me when they were done with it but he is still out there.
I have an extensive back story for this army and some of the characters, but still working on more as every one of these Marines is some sort of character or hero. I have these Marines standing in boxes on my shelves with one unit in each box, so hopefully I will be able to get some progress on them in the near future. I recently watched a video that gave me tips for their eyes, so I am quite interested in seeing how that will look, and if it works then I might use the same color for other eye lenses.

Grey Knights is something I bought because I loved how the figures looked. I don't intend to ever play a Grey Knight army, but I would like to use them as support for my Space Marines or Inquisition forces. I painted my first unit dark blue as I wanted them to mix with my Space Marines, but I might go back and strip them and paint them again unless I can think of a real good reason why they are blue. It seemed smart at the time, but now I am not so sure...

Imperial Knights was an interesting supplement as support for Imperial armies, but all of a sudden they got their completely own codex and rules to field them as a separate army if you would like and I was lost. I wanted to make my own Knightly House and have quite an extensive army, but then I got cold feet along with an idea to build four of them as the Knights of the Apocalypse (inspired by the Riders of the Apocalypse from the Holy Bible and perhaps even more in Good Omens) and that idea led to me scrapping the plans of my own House and instead planing to make a vast army of Freeblade knights fighting together. Some will have markings that say they are Imperial, and some will have the markings to say they swear allegiance to the Mechanicum. I plan to use some Knights as reinforcements for other armies when called upon, but I will also like to field them as a Knight army.
I have one Knight that is done, but it is not built or painted by me. However I will keep it just as it is, as it is a masterpiece made by one of the kind former staff members of Games Workshop in Oslo who has given me lots of support and good advice over the years. I will not be able to replicate his work, but his Knight (I will always think of it as his even though I own it officially) will be a guide and inspiration for me when I make my own Knights and hopefully I can make it look that they fight on the same battlefield. I will have to make some sacrifices though as I also would like them to fit with my other armies.

Inquisition was never intended to be a big army, but more of an addition to other forces. Imagine a Space Marine Army with an Inquisitor and a band of Grey Knights fighting alongside them. I have several Inquisitor models, and I like making small warbands to work as their aids. Also they are able to call on the help from any army when needed, so they can fight alongside any of my Imperial forces.
If the Inquisitors join forces they will be lead by Lord Inquisitor Van Dorn.
So far the only thing finished is a Landraider that was painted up as a masterclass in learning how to add battle damage and how to paint white vehicles. I don't know how many more specific vehicles they will get, maybe the rest will be requisitioned from other armies as needed.

Sisters of Silence is also just a small thing. I got some when I bought a collection box of Custodes and sisters way back when they were first released, and have not started to assemble the sisters yet. My plan is to have them fight alongside other armies, and I am working on a back story for them. I just build and paint the units I like as they will never be a stand alone army.

My Space Marines chapter, The Gatekeepers, was originally supposed to be my main 40K army.
At the moment they are second, behind Astra Militarum, but I still have a dream of building an entire chapter over a long time.Now that the regular Marines are slowly disappearing from the stores to be replaced by Primaris Marines, I might revisit this idea. I've already designated two of my companies to Primaris due to heavy losses in a well known campaign where The Gatekeepers fought hard.
The Gatekeepers is an Ultramarine successor chapter, but they do have some other elements within their ranks because I have a lot of different Marine models, but that is all explained in the lore. 

The chapter has their home in the distant stars on a planet named Luminus Prime, and the Chaptermaster is a former Ultramarines Champion by the name of Otho Vitellius.

Chaos Space Marines is not supposed to be a main army for me. I do love the name I came up with for them, The Knights of Oblivion, and I would love to get them built up to an army I can bring to the battlefields. The chapter master is Arch-Commodore Falstaff.
My original idea when I started this army many many years ago was that they would be all infantry because they were stranded on a planet far from their home in the Eye of Terror. One idea was that they were a small warband left behind when the rest of their chapter left the planet for some reason, and another was that their ship was shot down in a big battle above the planet, and that they crash landed here. But after the Death Guard miniature was re-released some years ago I ended up with them too, and they do not look anything like my original Chaos Marines. This can be explained with the fact that the Death Guard Marines have been on an expedition farther in to the Eye of Terror and have been exposed and warped or mutated much more than their comrades. Being away from the others for so long has also opened their eyes to the Chaos God Nurgle, maybe they have fought alongside other Chaos Marines who worship him on their mission. I guess the lore will give a hint if not an exact answer to this question. They might get some vehicles in the future, but for now they are infantry. Sometimes they fight alongside a Chaos Knight that has fallen from grace. His name is Plague and he used to be one of the Four Knights of the Apocalypse, but he got seduced by the powers of Nurgle.

Genestealer Cults is an army very much still in the making and planning. The main reason I started with them was that I wanted to make some Planetary Defense Forces (known as PDF-forces) for the planet where I think most of my armies clash, and that led to using some Genestealer and small Tyranid models I got in a boxed game, and so the Genestealer Cult was born. I do like a lot of the models that Games Workshop has released for this range, and especially the ones looking like miners or Imperial Guard soldiers, and as of now I just have a few ideas of where I will take the army. I have a color scheme that I will follow, and I have started to paint several types of units both characters and vehicles.

Necrons is my newest army. They got to be an army because I bought a boxed set with Mechanicus and Necrons in it. For a long time the Necrons were just left as pieces, but I got a good idea with the new Contranst paints from Citadel and decided to give it a try. I use the Contrast colors over metal, so I get colored metallic look, and I liked the result so much I decided to make a small Necron army. I have no idea how big or small this army will be in the end though as it seems to grow from time to time. The regular Necron warriors are a pain in the butt to assemble as the two-handed weapons and the wobbly shoulder joints are hard to keep together when gluing, but I do like the models, so I guess time will tell... No matter how big the army will be, it will have its own lore and I am quite sure the Necrons will come form some unknown dynasty.

Orks is the final army, and one of the big armies I have for 40K. One of the main reasons for having this army is that it is a crazy army. I can do lots of funny or cool conversions and generally just have fun with it.
The leader of this army is Hazza Hoff (sometimes known just as The Hoff) and he has his Big Mek Mek Gyvver who creates lots of crazy stuff for the army. He has a lot of tech Grots that work for him, and they are dressed in red robes, just like the Mechanicus and Techpriests of The Astra Militarum (and also Space Marines even though they don't wear robes as such but have red armor instead). They build everything from weird weapons to Stompas. This army contain the figures I won 3rd place for in the Armies on Parade in 2018, and the main "vehicle" there was the Stompa Da Punisha! There is another Stompa in the making now, with a big (or at least long) bellygun and a plan to replace the big chainsword with some sort of flamer, and the big guns on its shoulder will among other things be replaced with a big Deathstrike Missile. But I will rant more about that in a later post...

Fall is over us...

The fall is here, and with that comes "Armies on Parade". After receiving 3rd place last year with my Ork Mek army with Grot mechanics, I've decided not to take part this year. But I hope to be back again with a new board next year.

I have five Super Heavy tanks in various stages of painting, as well as lots of regular tanks and vehicles. I had planned to finish some of them off, but got a little tired of all the gray and big panels, so I started working on some of my other armies.

I have taken up work on my Mechanicus army, and the plan with this is to make it into a Cohort fighting as part of a large Exploratory fleet. It will not have all the units the Mechanicus range offers, I don't like the Electro Priest models, so there will be none of those. I plan to field lots of Skitarii, both Rangers and Vanguards, but they will all have the hooded Ranger heads. Instead I will separate them and keep them apart by using different colors on the inside of their robes.And they will of-course have the designated weapons of their type so that will also keep them apart. The spare heads from the Vanguards I hope to use for some special forces troopers for my Astra Militarum army.
The army will have both Scorpius versions and Dunecrawlers. So far I have built one Dunecrawler with an Icarus array, and it is waiting to be primed and painted.
I will also have quite a lot of Kastelan robots and some Kataphron units. There will not be any Knights in the standard army, but I plan to have some Freeblade knights that can assist when needed. These Knights will also fight alongside my other Imperial armies when called upon.

I have re-planned my Knights army, from being a proud Knightly Household to being the remnants of a Knightly Household fighting alongside a lot of Freeblade knights. Four of these Freebldes are working together as a unit known as the Knights of The Apocalypse, and will be painted to fit the classic Biblical tale of the Riders of the Apocalypse with a modern twist from the Pratchett/Gaiman book "Good Omens" adapted to 40K. At the moment I am looking for parts to use for the specific modifications I need to do to them, but it is not too much that needs to be done.
I also plan to make one or two Knights to fight alongside my Chaos Space Marines chapter, The Knights of Oblivion. One of them will be a knight that used to fight as one of the four Knights of the Apocalypse before it was corrupted by Nurgle, and will be a specially hated enemy of these knights.

I am also working on building and painting my small force of Necrons that I started because there were Necrons in a box with Mechanicus forces that I bought to get the Knight Armigers when they were released for the first time. I am using a base of Leadbelcher with some green and yellow-brown paints to give a metallic look to them. The force is just a "Start Collecting" box with a few units added, but I believe I might add to this quite a lot over time a there are some very nice flyers in this army. But for now I will build and paint what I have and see how far that gets me.

But it is not only 40K that I dabble with, I've also taken out my Sylvaneth army from semi retirement and decided on how to paint them up. Games Workshop have released a new range of paints, and along with a light primer they say that this will make painting large armies go a lot faster without loosing anything to the quality of the old paints. So I have decided to use two colors, one dark brown and one more yellowish brown for the bark. Then I will use "fall" colors for the leaves mixed with a little bit of green for variation. I'm thinking rather dark colors for most of the trees an very light colors for the little creatures that live among the branches.

A bit about names

After writing a little about the names of my Imperial Guard officers in my last blogpost, I thought I would take s little time to write about how I name my characters, why I do it and who gets named.

I generally give names to the leaders and characters in my armies. I also name miniatures that stand out in certain ways and sort of demands to be known.
In addition to naming, I like to make a little background on the miniatures to say just the basic things abut them.
A good example of what kind of background I make is the background for Sergeant Bastion. I read a background in one of the old editions (4th or 5th ed I think) of Warhammer 40.000 about Sergeant Luc Bastonne, a Cadian of Noble heritage that takes every loss of his men personal. Inspired by him I made Gunnery Sergeant "Luck" Bastion, a veteran sergeant leading a squad called Bastions Bastards. Sergeant Bastion have been promoted to higher ranks several times, but have refused to accept the promotions as he likes to be on the ground in the field with his men. Once a colonel took it so personal he reported Bastion for insubordination, but the Senior Commisar in the Regiment felt it was for the right reasons and let it pass. Bastion and his Bastards are made from a Cadian squad set, modified with bits from the Forgeworld Cadian Veteran set.

For my Sergeants I just like to use names that sounds good. One will be called Remagen, but I am not sure who he is yet.
For the commissioned officers I use names from the American Civil War. A lot of them were generals in real life, but I have to demote them in my army. I do not care if they fought for the North or South, but I will not use persons I find inappropriate like Quantrill, who was a guerrilla leader fighting for the southern cause. I don't use Lee or Grant either as they are too well known for that special period (they are probably the only two names Norwegians can name along with Abraham Lincoln when asked about the American Civil War). The General in charge of the Walpurgian 3rd Brigade is Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

For my other armies I have chosen other areas to get names from. My Space Marines chapter, The Gatekeepers, have Roman names for the Chapter Master and Captains. Now that Lieutenants have been introduced, I will use Roman names for them as well. The Apothecaries  and probably the Librarians will be named after Greek philosophers. My chapter Master is called Otho Vitellius.


My Mechanicus army, the Cohort 9-1 Alpha from the Mechanicus fleet ship Gloria Inveneris is Magos Explorator de Orellana. His commander is the commander of the entire Mechanicus fleet, and his name is Arch Magos de Sousa (I will use the Belisarius Cawl figure for this one).
They are named for famous explorers, at least explorers that come up on Wikipedia when I search for Famous ones.

I also give names to my badguys, and my Chaos Space Marine army is called The Knights of Oblivion, and their commander is Arch-Commodore Falstaff. All the named characters in this army will be Shakespeare characters of some sort.

My Orks gets their names from famous people, and they get "orkyfided"   The warboss in charge if the army is Hazza Hoff (as in David Hasselhoff) and he has his pet squig Hoobie. The figure is Grukk Facerippa, a huge Ork.

My Inquisitor army is led by Lord Inquisitor Van Dorn, a name that just came to me and for this army I will just use names I like.

I have not found any names for my Genestealer army yet, but I need to try an find out how a Genestealer would be named. Also my Chaos Daemons are without names, as daemon names should not be spoken.

For Age of Sigmar, I have no names for my Chaos Warrior armies yet, but that will come.
Like in 40K the Daemons will get no names.

My Duardin (or Dwarf) army are led by Thorir Thorgrimsson. The characters in this army will all be Icelandic or old Norwegian sounding names. The choice of Thorir for the King is a tribute to the coach of the Norwegian female handballteam Thorir Hergeirsson who is a great leader and sort of short (not saying he is a dwarf though).

The Fyreslayers are sort of cousins of the Duardin, and I figure they should have old nordic sounding names too. Maybe Icelandig sounding for them too, but at least sort of viking names.

The Kharadron Overloards are also related somehow, but maybe a little more distant. I will see how many Icelandic sounding names I can think up, if I get enough they will get those kind of names too, if not I will see if I can find some other sort of cool idea to use on them.

My Sylvaneth army are named after Latin names for all kinds of trees. So far I have named the ancient Treelord who leads the army, and its name is Quercus and this is Latin for Oak.

My greenskins army in Age of Sigmar will all get sort of querky funny sounding names, and for my leader I use the Skarsnik figure with his big squig. In my army the Leader is called Turnip, and his squig is called Blabla.

I have yet to pick a way to name my Ogres, but hopefully I can find something fitting for this nice army of big miniatures.

Space Marines from both sides... and a little dwarf update too

There has been a while (again) since my last update, but from now on there is no excuses for not working with miniatures and updating the blog regularly.
Since my last blogpost I have moved to another house, and even though I still have to find out the best way to organize myself around my workplace, I am up and running.
I have the same sideboard/desk that I had before, but my storage facilites are a little different at the new house, so I am trying to find the best way to set up how I want to have my desk organized regarding building new models and painting existing ones.

Since the last blogpost I have finished assembling all miniatures in the Dark Imperium Startbox.
When I bought the box I didn't really plan to ever field the Death Guard traitor Marines, but when I built them I really got a liking to them so I have decided to field them in my Chaos army. They will probably be their own command, as my original Chaos army is not tainted by any of the Chaos Gods. They will probably field as allies, but I am leaning towards painting them all the same, but add rust and Nurgle Rot to the Death Guard minis. The regular Chaos Space Marines have Chaos Cultists fighting alongside them, and they will also keep their distance to the Poxwalkers fighting alongside the Death Gruard. A possible back story can be that The Knights of Oblivion have been fighting in two different warzones for a very long time and one of the forces has been lured to join Nurgle. I think I can make that work when it comes to fluff, and this will also add a little more backstory to the Chaos Marines.

I have also painted up a smaller starter set called "First Strike". This is a start set with a lot less figures than the Dark Imperuim box, and because of this it is also a lot cheaper. The miniatues in this set can also be bought in four separate boxes, but then they cost a lot more. There are six Primaris Marines in the box. Three Intercessors (the Primaris version of Tactical Marines) and three Reivers (mix between scouts and Assault Marines without jump packs). The box also includes three Death Guard Plague Marines and six Poxwalkers. These models are designed to just snap-fit together, but I glued them anyway as I don't plan to take them apart and I don't want them to loose bodyparts on the battlefield or in transit.

These figures comes in colored plastic, and the Primaris Marines are blue and the traitors green. They still need a good priming and painting though...

The Gatekeepers have also gotten some heavy fire support with a Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought. This Dreadnought is a lot bigger than the classic ones, and was a fun but frustrating build. There are several parts that are supposed to be moveable. Some I understand, others are getting glued together later in the building process anyway... I built mine ending up with one arm that can't rotate, but apart from that all moveable parts work as intended.

I will now take a small break from my Marines to work on my Dwarfs for Armies on Parade.
I assembled two cannons and crew these last days, and I plan on building some scenery for them as part of the Armies on Parade (AoP) board. One cannon is an Organ gun, and the other is a regular cannon.
I had originally planned to field them on top of the wall I have, but they are so wide they will have to go on the ground instead, and I will use two other cannons on the wall.

I hope to find a good place to stand and prime my models in the near future, so I can get started on the painting.

8th edition is out

Saturday was the official release for the new edition of Warhammer 40.000. We have reached the 8th edition now, and the storyline has been moved forward a bit through the last releases in the 7th edition with the resurrection of Robute Guilliman, the fall of Cadia and all the other things that happened.

For the relase there was a new boxed set called Dark Imperium. With this box Games Worskhop have done many great moves.
- They have included the rulebok with all the rules you need to play 8th edition right in the box. -this means you can atually play after just buying the set, no hidden costs to start. They still want you to buy the codexes and other books though.
- The box is really beautifully packaged
- It introduces the Primaris Marines, a new type of super-Space Marines made to keep the Imperium safe and destroy the forces of Chaos.

I had to get this box, and spent the entire day yesterday at Games Worshop in Oslo building Primaris Marines and trying out the new rules in a game.

I hope I can prime my first models later today (weather permitting), so I can start painting them during the comming week. I plan to paint them up just like my other Gatekeepers. Since I started painting my Space Marines chapter many years ago, Games Workshop has replaced their paints a few times. But I am armed with the colors that will match the best to what I have used before.

The Dark Imperium box includes two types of Marines. You have the noble Ultramarines with their new and improved Primaris Marines, and then you have the foul Deathguard with their Plague Marines and their minions and partners.

Today I assembled 13 of 22 Primaris Marines from the box.

I assembled 2 Space Marine Lieutenants. They are something new, as we only had Captains and Sergeants before. This has made me think that we will see Guilliman doing some exceptions from the Codex Astartes and that we will have chapters with more than 100 Space Marines soon. After all, what else would we need Lieutenants for?

The Captain I left for building the way I usually do (painting as I build), as he has a cape that needs to get special attention,

The Standard Bearer is a veteran Marine called an Ancient with some pretty nifty rules. He was the first Marine I assembled from the box. I had to glue his backpack twice to get it to sit tight, so hopefully there will be no future issues with it.

Then there are 2 5-man Intercessor squads, and I have assembled 1 of them. This is the equivalent of the regular Space Marine 10-man squad, and the basic troops of the Primaris Marines.

The box also contains a 3 man Inceptor squad and this is the buffed up version of the assault marines. I have not built these yet. This edition GW want the flying troops to be in the air, so they come with some new flying stems that makes it possible to field them in the air. I am not sure about how I like these compared to the old assault marines, as their weapons look  little weird with shields on their barrels. But I am sure I'll grow in to liking them as I build and paint them up.

Finally for the good guys the box contain a 5 man Hellblaster squad. This is four marines and a sergeant armed with plasma rifles. They will fill the role of the old devastators. They look mean, and pack a great punch. Only problem is that plasma might blow up in your face from overheating when firing it. In the game we played, my squad ended up in a firefight with a Helldrake, and I lost 2 men to overheating in my first round of shooting.

I have not started to look at the Deathguard models yet but they include 10 Marines, 20 humans and 1 mean looking drone.

I will put pictures up here as I get everything assembled and painted up. I plan to paint at least my good guys up alongside my other projects, so I can use them if GW Oslo holds some gaming events in the future where I can participate.

What is planned for the future - all army update - Warhammer 40.000

This blogpost follows up the one with the almost identical name, but this time focusing on my Warhammer 40K armies.

As with the Age of Sigmar update I'll start with the chaos. Chaos daemons have been covered in the Age of Sigmar update, so I will leave them out of this.

I have a small Chaos Space Marine army planned. It will consist of Chaos Space Marines and Cultists. It's not a huge number of models, but the Chaos Marines have quite detailed power armor, so it takes some time to paint them. I plan to keep it quite simple, but still make them look nice.
The first thing to be finished here will be the miniatures that I have painted already (ten Chaos Terminators and a Terminator Lord). They are just missing their bases, and I will do them the same way as with the Space Marines I fielded in Armies on Parade 2015. I will have to do some variations on the bases to break up the monotony in the future, but that is the same with the existing Space Marines that I have. I will also try to finish Cypher - The Fallen Angel, as I have assembled him but not primed or painted him yet. The idea with Cypher is that the Chaos Marines can be used as fallen Dark Angels if I like to.

This will not be a huge army, but it will be stand-alone. It might be an army that I get some trouble winning with as I don't have vehicles, but I know that if I start to buy that then this army will grow rapidly in to a new army the size of my regular Marines, and I don't want that. I want to have a small band of warriors on a mission or stranded on the planet, and then they have gotten some cultist followers who originally were inhabitants of the planet where they are. I will see where the fluff goes, but I like the idea of a small, hardened warband.

Space Marines is perhaps the biggest army I have and also plan to have. I have lots of unassembled units and many assembled in need of painting. I am always working on the fluff for my Marines, but basically I have my own chapter (The Gatekeepers), and I build it with Dark Angels and regular marines (Ultramarines) as an Ultramarine successor chapter. My original dream was to have minis for the entire chapter (1000+ troops), but I have modified that a bit. Still it will be a big army when I have built and painted everything that I have, and I might buy some more some time in the future (but not until I have built a lot of what I have already). I have plans for how I want the units to look, so it is just a matter of sitting down and working to get them done.
I also have two boxes of the "Betrayal at Calth" board game, and one of them will be painted as Chaos Marines and the other as my Gatekeepers.
In one of the campaign boxes there are about twenty Space Wolves but I have not decided if I want to build them or if I should try and sell them. At the moment I am leaning towards the latter as I don't think I will ever field them. They don't go too good with Dark Angels, and I plan to be able to use the Dark Angel miniatures as a Dark Angels successor chapter in some games as they have some special rules that I might like to use in some games. But for the most part all Space Marines will be Gatekeepers and played with Ultramarines rules.

There is a small contingency of Grey Knights on the shelves, and I have decided to paint them dark blue to blend in with my Imperial Guard special forces (Militarum Tempestus) and my Space Marines. When it comes to fluff this is done because they do not want to make their presence known among the population on the planet.They are very secret after all... A unit of five is already painted and just awaiting wash and basework.
They will mostly be played as a retinue for my Inquisitors. They have one Landrider Redeemer that is assembled and painted white with a lot of chipping and dirt, but for the reminder of vehicles I plan to just use regular Space Marine vehicles. I originally had a plan to give them their own white vehicles but I think the price is too high considering how rarely they will be fielded as a separate force.
This force will also include a handful of Sisters of Battle (Adeptus Sororitas) that I have picked up from Ebay way back in time. I just plan to paint them up and have them in the display case to break up the blue of the Space Marines. Still, I have the rules for them, so they might also join some Inquisitor on occasion, or see some action in a game of Apocalypse.
I have a few Inquisitorial Retinues as well, and they will serve alongside the different Inquisitors as I find fit depending on the missions.

A loyal and trusted ally to the Space Marines are the Astra Militarum, or the Imperial Guard as they used to be named.
I have almost as many units here as I have of the Space Marines, and among them are the super heavy tanks (three of them) and I do love tanks. My big goal is to build and finish enough tanks to field one super heavy tank company and one regular tank company. With the new sprays that have been released (that I already have) painting them is quite easy. All it takes is priming, spraying, painting tracks and details and washing the entire tanks. It should be possible to get a lot done in a short time, especially on the Leman Russ tanks, as they are very easy to build.
The Imperial Guard is split in to three different series, with the Militarum Tempestus as the one that sticks out the most. They are the elite soldiers, and have their own figures and vehicles. I am not sure how to paint their vehicles, but I have painted up a unit of troops so I know what color to use on them. The vehicles will probably be quite similar to the regular guard units, as this binds the armies together. The Imperial Guard is split in Cadians and Catachans and I have both. They have a lot in common when it comes to colors, but some small variations too. I have a general idea as how I want all my units to look, and a unit is added to the finished army from time to time. They will have the same bases as my Space Marines with a few modifications here and there, and I think I have several painted units that just needs their bases done.

Mechanicus is also a small army in my collection, and they also serve as allies for other armies, especially the Space Marines. I am not sure exactly how to paint these up, but I have a general idea. The idea here is that they are a small force on the same planet as the other armies, with a mission to solve. I look forward to building and painting their Dune Crawlers as they are some of the coolest tanks released lately.

Apart form the Chaos Space Marines there are mostly good guys in my Warhammer 40K armies. The exception is the final army in this blogpost, the Orks.
I originally got in to Orks because I wanted to convert stuff. That is still my plan, and I have several projects on my shelves that's just waiting for me to find the time to start that. Among the plans here is making the old, small Trukks in to mobile weapon platforms and fielding them with warbuggies rules. Then I will field the Trukks as troop transports and trucks.
The Orks are a little fiddly to paint as there are a lot of details, but they are also very cool. I have several ongoing projects at all times, and I plan to finish some of them soon. Some are just missing their bases, while others just miss small details before they can be completed. There are also a lot of units still in their boxes waiting for assembly. This army is something I do in between everything else, and I do love working with them, so I expect some units to be done in the near future.
I also hope to be able to start with my Stompas in the not so distant future, and when I do I will not build them in between other projects but see them through.

Female guards, deamonettes and more

My first three Plage Drones are now completely built and waiting for warmer weather so I can prime them before painting. Before I start with the paintjob I will have a look at pictures of other peoples work to get some impressions of how I can paint them up. The minis need to look nicely painted but nurgly at the same time and that is a challenge I have not faced before. I have also found the second box of drones and will put that together in the near future so when I start to prime and paint there will be six drones to do as a batch job.

I have also assembled a unit of ten Deamonettes of Slaanesh with full command. I was not very happy with the musician, because the instument didn't stay in the air as I had planned. But that's what you get when you're not watchng the minis dry. I think it was quite fiddly to get the arms to sit right on the tiny sholuders, but apart from that it was a nice and fun little box to assemble. And I am quite sure that the unit will be expanded in the future. I have a few ideas about painting these, and I will go for purple and black clothes with gold details.

I have just made a conversion I've been wanting to do almost since I started with Imperial Guard, and that is to make female troopers. First time I thought about it was after seeing Starship Troopers. I've read the old fluff that says that only very few women join the Guard, but I feel some need to be represented. And with the spares from the Deamonettes box right in front of me I had the perfect start.
While assembling the Deamonettes I had this plan in my head, so I saved two heads that didn't look too deamony (is that even a word?) and today my first two female troopers were born. One of them is quite inspired by one of the characters in Tanya Huff's Confederation series. A non human with high purple hair (don't remember the name).
I might call her Sergeant Kerr in recognition of the series, as she will get a "normal" hair colour in my army.
The other female trooper have a pony tail of the hair she has left, and she is a regular trooper. I sort of figue most enlisted men to have very short hair, so in that way the deamonette heads with hair only in the middle of the head will fit nicely. You can't see that the enisted men have mohawk hair too, as they have kept their helemets on...
I had originally thought of using elf heads earlier, but on those heads the pointy ears were too visible.

I have also made snow bases for the entire six man unit of Ogres, and I will use some time later today or tomorrow to drybtush the technical paint with white to make it look even more like snow. On other bases, like cavalry and monsters I will try and add some grass turfs to break up the monotony of the white, but I don't think I will do that on these bases.

I also assembled Cypher - The Fallen Angel yesterday for my Chaos Space Marines warband. He is a metal mini but still quite nice with some nice details. This will give me a choice to field my Chaos Marines as fallen Dark Angels if I like, or if I choose to have my own chapter Cypher can have joined them for a duration as he is known to do such things according to the official fluff. This also says he attract fallen Dark Angels, so we'll see what I end up with in the future. But since all my Chaos Space Marines will be Dark Angls Green, then they might be fallen angels...

Long time without painting

There's been quite a while without painting now, and I don't really know why. Life has just gotten in the way I guess.
Yesterday I finally got to sit for a little while, and got a little painting done.
I painted almost everything on my heavily modified Nurgle Chaos Lord. I need to do some cleanup and detail work, but everything except for his hair got the first layer of paint yesterday.
He is modified away from Nurgle, but I am not sure if he is modified away from chaos itself or not.
The idea is that he is a blacksmith (or the son of one), and that he's been fighting and lost his left arm in battle. His big axe is replaced with a staff that should be easier to work with one hand.
If all works according to plan he will lead an Empire flagellant warband to battle, at least for diorama purposes, as I don't have an Empire army.

I worked on my dwarf fence, and got the stone in the right color, so now I need to wash and do a drybrush or a careful layer to get the details to stand out.

I also did some more work on Grimm Burloksson, and my next step with him now is to glue his head to the torso. Then I need to paint his metal arm and special gun, and his entire backpack-thingy.

I got some paint on my two assembled Rangers for my new Ranger unit as well. They have gotten a little bit of paint from before, but yesterday I painted the skin, so they are slowly coming along. I plan to paint them up as test models for the unit, but it will be a few challenges as they are glued up and ready. The rest of the unit is just ready to assemble, so I will not get as many problems with reaching the details on them.

For 40K I think I know how to detail my Chaos Terminators, and I will start that very soon. It will be detail work to avoid getting green paint on all the silver bits, but I will just have to take my time.

I have a plan for the base of my first Ork flyer too, and I will try to detail both the plane and base according to the tips I got from the Games Workshop staff after the last painting competition I attended. I will also try to give the plane some details, where the entire plane is lightly washed and highlighted, but the parts that needs to be worn or grimy will be heavily weathered and washed.
If it work out nice, I will use it for my competition entry for the flyer category when that comes later this year.

Another week, another project

I never got around to basing and washing my chaos space marines, so they didn't go to the competition with me. Instead I brought an Imperial guard heavy weapon squad (yes, I know it's Astra Militarum now, but Imperial Guard just sound so much better...).
They are the first completely finished heavy weapon team for my army, and I will post pictures of them next week when I get them back from the Games Workshop store. They wished to have the entries in the store for a week, so I'll post pics next weekend.

Today I've been working more on my Tempestus Scions, fixing backpacks and the vox caster, and painting some details. Next sitting with them I think I will be ready to glue the backpacks and the vox operator's arm on.

I did the basic work on one of my buildings today. I made up my own brush-technique that I call wet-brushing. It's very similar to drybrushing, but with a brush full of paint. This sets the standard for all my buildings for the future, but since I use a lot of paint I will try to learn drybrushing and see if I get the same kind of result. The building is painted Mechanicus Standard Gray, and the door and pipe as well as some smaller details will be bronze. It is not finished yet, just a work in progress...

The walkways are painted in the same way with metal (Leadbelcher), same color as I will use on the ducts and the small pipes on the top of the building.

The final project of the day is two new heavy weapon squads. These are Catachans  and will serve with 2nd Platoon.
I have painted their pants, the metals and the plants. If you look closely you will see that the trees have a lighter color on their leaves than the meat eating flowers.
I like the Catachans, and look forward to finish these units. I haven't decided on the color on their scarves yet, but the rest of the colors are going to be my standard army colors.
I have not assembled these units, so I will not take credit or blame for the way they are set up. They were bougt used on Ebay and are probably painted up, tripped and re-primed. I like some of the things that are done with them, but there are also some things I would have done different. We'll get back to that once the units are done and ready for a better presentation...

Chaos is coming

Had a good session Monday afternoon with the Chaos Space Marine Terminators. I got to clean up the mess I had done earlier, and painted in all the colours where I had forgotten to paint before.
I have a few Terminators that still needs a little green paint on their trophy racks, but I had to leave that for another session because I had painted so much other stuff on the racks.
The next step is to make the bases, mostly with black aquarium rocks, but I will try to add some small pieces from the basing kits if I can to make the bases more exiting.
I was thinking of entering the unit in a competition at Games Workshop this Saturday, but I don't think they will be done in time. I had planned a painting session yesterday but that got "cancelled due to other activities in the home", and for a couple of days now we will have guests in the house and I won't get much painting done while they are here.

I have attached the arms to my Tempestus Scions, and one thing I am sure of after that is that I will not paint up too many command units. I love the Tempestor Prime with his greatcoat, but getting the standard bearer together was not an easy task.
I will look in to the possibility of using the greatcoat on other miniatures, as there are one in each box. Perhaps a few high ranking Astra Militarum officers can wear the same kind of coat, as I will need several officers for my Platoons.
I also started to look at a setup for the army, and think up what kind of units to add to the different platoons.
I know the army will have at least two companies, one with Cadian troops and one with Catachan troops. Then I will have an abhuman auxiliary, cavalry, artillery and an airwing.

More progress

Ended the day yesterday with basing 3 Cadian heavy weapon teams. I used Stirland Mud texture paint, to make some nice and muddy bases. The teams have built up their fortifications with Tamya 1:35 sandbags that they managed to find (think I need to keep my warhammer stuff away from my scale models from now on), and I had originally given the sandbags a wash of nuln oil, but that does not look too god after it has dried, so I will repaint the sandbags and give them a devlan mud wash instead.

My Chaos Space Marine Terminators are done, all that remain with them now is adding bases (black aquarium rocks) and going over the models to fix flaws in the paintjobs.
Hopefully I can have them ready before Saturday, as I would like to show them off in a painting competition at Games Workshop (but if it is allowed I might show off my heavy weapon teams instead).

I went a little crazy with my Chaos Black spray yesterday, and all the scenery I have built is now basecoated black. Well, almost everything as some of the small corners remains unpainted. There were a few spots I missed, but I am now all out of black spray, so either I will have to live with the basing I did yesterday, or I will have to redo some of the scenery when new spray is in the house next weekend. I'll probably redo it, as I ned to spray some tanks anyway.

I have also assembled my first Hellhound, and that was a mixed experience. The set is beautiful, but I had some issues with getting the top to sit right, so I will need to work some greenstuff magic on it.
I have three more to make, so hopefully it was just a flaw on the one I assembled yesterday...

Pictures will follow as the basing is done and the tanks and buildings are painted up.

The first units of Bullgryns are done

I've managed to get some work done this last week, and I have now finished both groups of Bullgryns that I have been working on.
The three Bullgryns with grenadier gauntlets and slab shields will be part of a larger unit in the future. They are a legal unit as they are now, with one bone 'ead and two regular Bullgryns, but since I can have up to ten in one unit a larger unit will look really cool. I am thinking a unit of nine.

The five Bullgryns with battle mauls and suppression shields will probably be the only ones with this armament, and will work as one unit. I might have to add one more Bullgryn as this unit doesn't have a Bone 'ead yet, but I am not sure if that is a must (but I belive so). I will look in to that and build from there. There are two small details left on these, and that is painting the tips of the power generators on their battle mauls and on the shields and painting a circle in the middle of the shields a lighter blue (need to decide on the blue to use before I do that).

The remaining boxes on the shelves will be made in to Bullgryns with slab shiels (two more boxes and I have a unit of nine) and regular Ogres.

The Abhuman Auxiliary command squad is also comming along. The uniforms are painted, and the armour for the ones wearing that is also done. I have also painted the banner, but not attatched it to the pole yet.

The Chaos Space Marine terminators are also getting close to completion. I have added everything to them, and painted six of ten with all the silvery bits. The remaining four will be done shortly.
I have also started on their trophy racks, and so far I have painted the leather pouches and the "pompoms", and the next job will be painting skulls and helmets before I finish with painting the tips of the racks metal and do a clean up. Then I plan to add rust to some of the chainmail and the broken trophy racks.

I have also done a little painting on my first Inqisitor. I'm missing a lot of details still, but he comes along slowly. I have not decided what unit to use him with yet (might be mainly for display purposes), but I am leaning towards a unit of Tempestus Scions. He's armed with a plastma pistol, and I think that might fit well with either Scions or Space Marines where the unit maxes out on their plastma weapons.
The second Inquisitor is still waiting to be painted. He is armed with an Inferno pistol and power sword, and he will fight alongside a squad of Sisters of Battle, but I might also use him with other forces if I want to add him to a game. These two Inquisitors look a lot like old witch hunters, and that is probably why I ended up getting them, as I love that look.
The third Inquisitor I have, looks a bit more special with a rather special helmet and armed with bolter and powersword. He will be accompanied by two Crusaders, as I think these figures fit together.

I have also dived in to fantasy for some experimental basework. I decided to base my Ogres with a snow theme, and I used texture paint for the first time on the base of one of my Ogres. I used the one called Mournfang Snow (if I remeber he name correctly). The idea is to use both this texture paint and the snow powder (same as static grass only white it seems) to make some snow effect on the bases. Still all bases will not be completely covered in snow, there will be som mud, some rocks and some small forms of vegetation as well.
If the texture paint works well, then I will use some of that on my Dwarf army, but then with mud and rocks. The only Dwarfs based so far are my miners, and they are based mostly with gravel, and I think I will use that for my remaining Miners, maybe combined with texture paint.
I also plan to use texture paint on the ground of my Citadel woods, both the two regular forrests and the haunted forrest.
If the temperature is kind to me, I hope to basecoat a lot of buildings, the haunted forrest and the one finished regular forrest this weekend.

New month, new progress...

I still haven't finished any more minis since the last update, but hopefully this will change soon...

I have painted the uniforms and boots of my Abhuman command squad, and the next step will be to paint the skin and weapons.

My Ogre standard bearer has also gotten his standard painted, but I am still wondering about what kind of text or image to paint on to the base colour.

I haven't painted much more on my Scions, but I have glued the servo scull to the Tempestor Prime. The plan is to work more on these in the following days.

One unit (or rather two) that has gotten a lot of work though, are the Bullgryns. I have five of them armed with battle mauls and suppression shieds, and I have come a long way on these. Their pants, boots and armour are done, and I have just a few more details left to finish their shields.

Then I need to paint their skin, the heads with gas masks, some singlets (wife beaters) and belts. I also need to find out what colours I'd like to have on their battle mauls.

The three Bullgryns with grenadier gauntlets and slab shields are even closer to completion as they already have their skin painted. All I am missing there is the singlets, belts and straps and eight yellow stripes on each slab shield.

Then all the Bullgryns will get extra equipment like ammo pouches, water cans (jerry cans) and grenades. This will be fitted after the painting is done, and depending on how the poses make this possible.

The Chaos Space Marine Terminators are also comming along. They all have at least one arm attached to their torso, and the painting of the weapons are almost complete. I have one more session with the metallics before I can add the second arm to all of them, and then I have to add and paint shoulderguards and some spikes and do some detail painting of chains and some silver details on the outside of their gloves.

I have also gotten well on my way with the Commissar that's assigned to the Abhuman Auxilia, he has his torso assembled and painted in base colours. I need to do some detail painting in his chest and shoulders, and paint and glue on his arms and head.

Progress slowed down again, but still...

In the beginning of January I had quite a good progress, but sadly things have slowed down again. Still, I have done a few things.
I have made a command squad for my Abhuman Auxilia, this is assembled from my bitz box, and because of this they don't have a coherrent look. But this was exactly what I was going for, as the fluff indicates that the human officers and veterans serving in the Abhuman Auxilia have been transfered to this unit because of mistakes the have done or because their commanding officers haven't liked them much. Being a human in the Abhuman Auxilia is considered a punishement, all though some people actually find it rewarding, like their commisar that have found out that abhumans are much more easy to send in to battle. No one needs to be shot for being cowards, and especially ogryns and bullgryns have such a high respect for commisars that they obey his orders without question even though it will cost them their lives.

I have legs both from Cadian and Catachan sprues, and the commander is probably from the Baneblade kit. The bodies are also from several different boxes, some look like tank commanders and some are Cadians.

I think it is only fitting that the abhuman auxilia have an abhuman as a standard bearer, so I have converted a Bullgryn with a spare arm from my Ogres bitz box.
The standard is also from the ogre-range, so it is quite crude, but so are ogryns so I am sure that is ok. The idea is that the standard is something the Commissar has made to boost moral further.
In case I need to make it in to an all human command squad for games, I have also made up a human counterpart with a standard from a box of Cadians or Catachans.
When I made my bullgryn standard bearer, I made the remaining two miniatures in the box in to bullgryns wearing gasmasks and being armed with battle mauls and suppression shields, so I now have a complete unit of five. They will now be painted up before I make the final assembly of the head and the shield arm to the rest of the torso.

I have also started to paint up the second crewman for the Hydra Flak tank, and he is comming along nicely.

The Chaos Space Marines have gotten all the shafts of their power weapons painted, the only thing missing on them now are metal paint and a wash.
The guns and chain fists have gotten one side of the weapons painted with black, and next time I will paint the other side, and then I suspect it will be two more sittings with the metal, and I will do the finishing touches after the arms are glued to the torsos.

My first Inquisitor (the one where the arm was impossible to attach) is also comming along. He now have most of the letaher painted, as I found out that what I at first thought was a shirt probably is the front of his leather frock. I will paint these parts as leather too, and then I will paint his armoured chestplate like I have painted the armour on my Tempestus Scions.
I will also find some nice color to put on his pants for the very small places where they are visible.

Found this head in the ogre bitz box, and I think it has the quite fitting look of dedication and anger. 

From this angle, the fit between the arm and hand is a little off. I plan to fix this and make it a little smoother  with some liquid greenstuff.