Last update of 2024

I have my dog again this week and will have her to after New Years Eve, so this will be the last formal update for this year. I think I have been fairly active this last period, and I look forward to finish some of these units.

Last update I told that I built 3 Rockgut Troggoths and Boss Snikrot, and they have now been primed and are ready to be painted up. Snikrot is primed white and the Troggoths are primed grey. As I have already partially painted up 6 of the Rockgut Troggoths I plan to paint this 3 the same way, or at least as close as I can remember.
They will be painted mostly with regular paints. Boss Snikrot will be painted in a mix of regular paints and contrast paints.

I have maneged to build several figures and units, and everything I built I also had time to prime.

First out was the Commemorative series of the Red Gobbo called The A-Bomb-inable snowman. This is the Christmas special model for 2024. Lsst year we had two of these, one with the red gobbo on a rooftop (that is about 97% painted on my desk) and one where his sort of nemesis, a blak dressed santa-gobbo, was riding a big squig (standing primed on my desk). This years second model was from Age of Sigmar and was two Witch-hunters (Galen and Doralia ven Denst) that can be used as separate figures or as a diorama on a larger base. I plan to build them as the diorama, and I just got the set yesterday. 

For the Necrons I built and primed Orikan The Diviner who is a so called master Astromancer who gides the Necrons to their future of his own choosing. I haven't painted Necrons for a long while, but I look forward to painting him up, and I expect he will have quite a lot of golden details (well yellow/brown contrast aint really, but it looks sort of golden on the shiny silver below). As my Necrons have more of this the more important they are I figure this one will be pretty golden.

The Tyranids got a medium size figure built and primed, a Neurolictor. This is a mind destroying saboteur and one of the more stelthy tyranids according to the description. It has lots of details, and I think it will take a little time to paint it up.

The final single figure that is built and primed is the Bloodpelt Hunter from the Ogor Mawtribes. This is a rather weird hunter with small elk or moose horns on his forehead. I haven't seen those horns on any monster figure yet, but who knows what the future might bring. 

I also built and primed two units, the first one is a unit of 7 figures from the Inquisition, the box is just called Inquisitorial Agents. They come in the army called Imperial Agents, where everything from the Inqisition, including inquisitors and their retinues (so said to be the Deathwatch as well), Adeptus Arbites, Imperial Navy breachers, and not to forget the assasins.
These 7 figures will be joined by an Inquisitor, and I think that will be either my version of Eisenhorn or Greyfax as they are the two inqisitor minis I have.

The last unit I biult and primed I also started to paint up, and that is another unit of Hernkyn Yaegirs. I am painting this up along with the single Yaegir I got as a miniature of the month last month. 
I have gotten most of the base colors on, only missing a few facial detils like hair / facial hair and some cloth used to cover up the lower part of their fasce. Then I will need to add layers and drybrushes and do the bases.

I also got to do a lot of painting on my Trugg the Troggoth King figure. He is still some way from being finished, but he has gotten along quite nicely. Most parts have gotten the basic colors on, but he will need some drybrushing and detailing before he is done.

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...

Deathwatch characters

I thought I should write an update on the work with getting the Deathwatch force together.
According to the codex, a typical Watch Fortess have four Watch Companies that each are led by a captain. And a typical company have four killteams, but this do vary a lot.
Watch Fortress Alamo de Béxar have 6 companies. 4 regular ones, one primaris and one special company (that will be explained towards the bottom of the post). The Companies are usually just called one, two and so on in high gothic so Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quartus, Quintus and Sextus.

Watch Company Primus have a Watch Captain called Aramis and he is a Mortifactor. Aramis is the character that comes with the Start Collecting box under the name of Artemis, but I wanted to be able to give him his own story.
The watch company have four killteams, each consisting of ten marines and each team is led by a Watch Sergeant. The Sergeants are not named yet, but they hail from the Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, Raven Guards and Black Knights chapters. Kill team two also have a champion from the Dark Angels.

Watch Company Secundus is led by Watch Captain Athos of the Silver Skulls. He also have four ten marines strong killteams with sergeants leading them. The Sergeants are from the Raven Guards, Dark Angels, Iron Hands and Novamarines. The first killteam have a Blackshield champion.

I have put in some charchters from the Deathwatch range in the third killteam, they are led by Sergeant Ennox Sarlacc so the team is called Killteam Sarlacc. This is actually Ennox Sorrlock from the Cassius box, but to change him in to another character I took the name of the monster in the Star Wars movies that swallowed Boba Fett as it was kind of similar.
His killteam also have several other known charcters that I need to find alternative names for. They are Vael Donatus, Rodricus Grytt and a company champion named Zameon Gydrael. These are also from the Cassius box.

Watch Company Tertius are mission specialists. Their leader is Terminator Captain Porthos. Porthos has served the Deathwatch for as long as anyone can remember and don't wear any chapter markings. He has three five-man Terminator killteams under his command. They are all led by Terminator sergeants, two of the teams are made up from Dark Angels Terminators, but the first team have a Terminator from the Salamanders. This is Garran Branatar from the Cassius box, and he also needs a new name.

The third team is a close combat team, and are all Blood Angels.
This company also have a killteam using bikes, they are led by White Scar sergant Jetek Suberei, but he will get another name at a later time. He is also from the Cassius box. He leads a team of four Raven Wing bikers.

The final two teams are both ten man Vanguard teams. They are led by sergeants Antor Delassio of the Flesh Tearers and a yet un-named Raven Guards sergeant. In the latest of the two teams Edryc Setorax of the Raaven Guards serve. These two characters are also from the Cassius box and will be renamed.

Watch Company Quartus is led by a currently un-named Utltramarine captain. He has for killteams under his command, and the sergeants leading them are Brazen Claws, Ultramarines, Black Templars and Black Consuls. The first killteam has a Blackshiled champion.

Watch Company Quintus is a primaris company. The Company Captain is Ultramarines Captain Octavius. He has two killteams consiting of regular primaris marines and they are led by lieutenants from the Ultramarines.
He also have  team of Hellblasters led by a Dark Angels primaris sergeant and a team of Reivers led by a Flesh Tearers primaris sergeant.

The captain also has two three man Agressor killteams led by Ultramarines and Dark Angels primaris sergeants.

Finally there is a contingent of Space Wolves that have sworn themselves to serve in the Deathwath to repent a failure of a mission. They consist of two ten man squads of regular space Wolves and a five man Terminator team. They are led by a Wolf Lord who now serve as a Deathwatch Captain. His name is Asgeir Frostbite, and I have a larger backstory for him that can be told at a later time.

Did you get the literary reference in the captains? If not, I will explain... Aramis, Athos and Porthos (the captains of my first three wach companies are the names of the three musketeers from the classic book by Alexandre Dumas).

Deathwatch

While documenting my Deathwatch army on paper I found out that I was actually missing one killteam (10 man squad) so I had to get one more start collecting box. That also gave me another dreadnought, so now I have one for each of the original five Watch companies. Four Dreadnoughts (think they actually are Venerable Dreadnoguhts) for my regular Companies and a Redemptor dreadnought to go with my Primaris company. The new killteam is built and primed, and ready to be painted up and sent in to action.

While priming my Redemptor I think I got a little too much spray primer on the hinges on the front, so now he top panel is stuck in an upward position. Because of that I am considering sending that Dreadnought to serve with my Gatekeepers and building my second one to use with Deathwatch. Or I can just close the lid and glue it shut. I will see what I end up doing.

Now all that is left is naming some of my characters, and painting the entire army up  to a good standard. I have no hurry in getting the army ready, so I will take my time and paint them to the best of my abilities. As I paint one unit at a time I will also make sure I have a name for the sergeant (or lieutennant if it is a primaris squad) and other members of the squad if they stand out for some reason (an example here is the characters from the Cassius killteam box and also special troopers like Champions and such).

I have named my Watch Fortress  Alamo de Béxar, and I am trying to think up a natural place for it to be located in the universe.
The commander of the Fortress is Watch Master Barret Travis.
After he was made captain in the Deathwatch, he knew he would serve the Deathwatch for the rest of his life. Rumors have it that he then got a Techmarine  to bless his armor and send the shoulder guard with the chapter insignia back to his chapter to serve the chapter with honor. Other rumors say his chapter has later turned traitor and that this is the real reson he has removed the insignia from his armor. Only the Watch Maste himself knows the truth, but now he only wear Deathwatch insignia and he serves with duty and dedication. 

This is the only finished and based model that I have in my army for now, and he stands on my desk so that I can use him as reference for all other Deathwatch models that will be painted.

The Reclusiam is lead by Chaplain Deus, an Ultramarine who trained extensively under Chaplain Cassius and has followed in his footsteps. For this figure I am using the Cassius model that came in the killteam box, but I don't want to use him as Cassius as he has a lot of back story in the existing lore. 

I want to have someone I can make up a story for myself. Deus is a latin word and is often used for sky or heaven, so I thought it to be a fitting name for a chaplain.  

I also have three Chaplains that are missing names for now. One Mortifactors Primaris Chaplain, one Dark Angels Chaplain and one Blood Angels chaplain with jump pack. Of my Reclusiasm models, the Primaris chaplain is the only one that has gotten any paint. He is more than 50% done.

The Librarius is led by Chief Librarian Voldus who like the Chapter Master doesn't show any other loyalties than to the Librarius and the Deathwatch. This model is the model for Grand Master Voldus from the GeyKnights, but I like him so much I decided to use it as Deathwatch. The shoulderguards fit, and my story for him will be solid. I also have two other Librarians, an Imperial Fist Primaris Librarian and the Blood Ravens Codicier Librarian Jensu Natorian (who I might re-name as he is from the Cassius box).

These are the models I have specific names for as of now, but I am working on finding fitting names for the others. I want to have names that sound correct according to what chapter they hail from, but I do not want to use names that is used in official lore. However if a character has two names, I might take two well known names and add them together in a new way to create my character.

Mostly Knights

This post is going to be mainly about the Imperial Knights, but we'll start with one more update on the Deathwatch.
I have now just the Interrogator-Chaplain to add to my 247 man strong army to make it complete. Then I need to build the Redemptor Dreadnought and the vehicles, but I will do that at a later time. Before I do I will need to get to work on my Armies on Parade entry.

I was going to work with painting Da Punisha yesterday night as my wife went to work for a night shift, but instead I started to work on an Imperial Knight. I built both the legs, and this afternoon I have built the hips and put the entire leg assembly together. I have not put on any armorplates, as I've been told the best way to paint a knight is to to the armor plates separate from the torso.
I've also built most of the main body on the torso. What is left now is the head, the arms and attaching the top armor and doing all the details on that.
I've started to think on what color scheme I would like to have on my Knightly household, but haven't landed on something yet. At the moment I am thinking of a brown and green combination to indicate that they come from a forest world, or maybe just two shades of green. I like Caliban Green a lot, so if I use two shades of green that will be one of them. Death Guard Green might be the other shade but I will have to do some tests to see how all the colors will work together.
If I go for green and brown, then a light brown might look good with Death Guard Green, but time will tell what I end up with.
The only palette I know so far, is that the window on the hatch to the cockpit will be in the same pale Lothern blue as I use on the globes for the ships of the Overlords.
Then the legs and arms will have to be metal, and to keep it a little muted it will have to be basically done with the Leadbecher and after washing everything with Nuln oil I can use some of the lighter metallics on certain areas. Also I think I will use either Stormhost Silver or Retributor armor on the edges of the metallic plates.
Another idea I have is to have hazard stripes on the middle of the top plate for some of the knights, and one the side of the top plate for some others, and for the Reaper chainswords and the Reaper chaincleavers for the Armiger Warglaives


Next week I will finish my first Knight, but I will also do a lot of painting on my Stompa and get the hatches glued on. Then it is a matter of painting the big areas like metal armor plates, the big gun, the chainsword and when that is done I can go in to the details.
I will also need to paint up my Grot tanks, vehicles and some Ork boyz. I know how to paint the boyz as I have some that I am very happy with. I plan to use some of them, but I need to have the right weapons and poses.

I will also need to build my Morkanaut, but I am quite sure that will go rather quick even though it is a big model.

In between all this I also hope to paint my Deathwatch, and prime all the models not yet primed.

Imperial Knights, Orks and more Deathwatch

Lets start with an update on the Deathwatch. I am just missing one killteam of 10 Marines, and a few characters now, and then the entire army is assembled. It's far from finished, but it is assembled and that is a good start and also a first for me.

The last killteam is still on sprues, and I will start to work on them after work on Monday. Depending on how much else there is to do around the house, they will either be done Monday or Tuesday.
Then I have a Primaris Apothecary left to assemble.
I am missing one Chaplain, and he is ordered from Games Workshop so he will be built some time next week.
I would like one more Apothecary, but I'm not sure who that should be. I have the Primaris one and a Terminator, but would have liked one in regular armor as well. I am sure I can find a command squad box to take him from somewhere in my storage, but I also have two resin ones from Forgeworld that stands partially assembled in a box by my workspace. So maybe I will take one of those. I'll figure it out in the near future I guess.
The Terminator Apothechary was quite fiddly to build, as he had a shoulder guard already molded on his shoulder where the Deathwatch one should be. I spent a lot of time with my knife cutting away, but I had to mind some bits that needed to be there and because of this the new shoulder guard going on needed some modification too. Hopefully the flaws I see on him now will look less obvious after he's primed and painted. I might have to use a little Greenstuff on the new shoulderguard to make it look good.

About half my Deathwatch army (probably a little more) is primed and ready for painting, and the rest are waiting to be primed. So I have a lot of painting to do in the coming weeks and months.
In between the painting I will also build some of the flyers and vehicles for the army, but they are expensive, so I plan to add to these nice and slow in the future.

When everything is primed, I will go over the killteams and make sure that they all are legal according to the rules, and that they fit the fluff for Deathwatch. I know I will have to move some Marines around, as I've been told that the Space Wolves usually operate in pairs in killteams. Also I will try to spread the special weapons equally around in the army unless I have a killteam that I would like to give a special mission.

While working on painting my Deathwatch army, I will also work on painting my Orks. I am thinking of making an Ork layout for Armies on Parade (AoP) for 2018, so I will need to paint up a bunch of them.
I will describe the idea closer in a later blogpost, but I'd like to use some of the units I have modified myself like the Grot tanks I have built and primed and the walkers I'm planning on making in the near future. Also I plan to have Da Punisha, my Punisher inspired Stompa, as a centerpiece for the board. Maybe I should also add another Stompa, with modifications on the weapons and with a belly-gun. I think time will tell if that will happen or not. I know I will have such a Stompa for my Ork army in the future, but I am not sure if it will be on my AoP board or not.

Also there is a new Imperial codex out. This is for the Knights, and there are also some very nice new models that have been released for this codex. I have bought a few of the new Knights, and plan to have an army built in due time. The knights are really big models and will almost certainly be seen as centerpiece models when put on the table, so I will take my time and practice on some of the smaller and older knights and built the army a little over time. My idea is to find a colorscheme that will look great for several knights, so that I can have my own knightly house. I know there are so many people building the knights that are described in the codex or in official 40K canon, and a lot of these people will do this better than me. So if I come up with my own house then nobody will be able to compare mine to others directly. And most of the existing houses are white, red or blue, so those colors are not my ideal choices. White is really hard to paint, I have a lot of blue in my Marines and Grey Knights (don't ask) and red needs to be very layered and "shiny" in order to look good on the big areas on the knight armor.
The one thing I know about the knights so far is that I will have yellow and black hazard stripes on the canopy on all of them, so I will work that in to my color scheme.
The only knight that might not get this is the Freeblade built on the Canis Rex model. This I plan to paint black and call him the Black Knight.

Deathwatch and Orks

I got the new codex for the Deathwatch, and there are some nice things there, but also some I don't like that much.
The best news is that they can now field vehicles like Landraiders and Rhinos. So I plan to paint up a couple of Landraiders of some sort (not decided what version I will build yet) to use to get my troops in to the action. I look forward to fielding my battered white Landraider (used by an Inquisitor and his retinue, maybe with Sisters of Battle or Grey Knights) beside two black ones with Deathwatch troops.
I also have a flyer that I look forward to using, the Corvus Blackstar, but how I should arm it is yet to be decided.

Another good thing is that it is possible to mix Primaris units so that you can have killteams with several of the different kinds in it. This gives a lot of opportunities as you get to utilize the best of the different Primaris models.

One bad thing is that the regular Marines and the Primaris Marines still aren't able to mix. They can't use each others equipment and can't fight together in the same team.
This means that the Primaris Marines are unable to use any of the Deathwatch special weapons that come in the Deathwatch boxes. This means that I have a 10-man killteam of bastards that will need to pretend not to be Primaris Intercessors if I want to field them in games. But I will paint them up and field them no matter what the rules say.
But because of this I will make another unit of Primaris Intercessors and arm them only with what is available in the box they come in. I will also make a Hellblaster team, and I am thinking of making a team of Aggressors if I have enough shoulder plates (looks like they might need the Terminator ones).

I have just started to assemble a squad of Reivers, and I have a Primaris Apothecary that will be built (just like the regular Primaris Apothecary except he wears black armor).

In other news I have started to work on painting my Ork Stompa - Da Punisha!
I noticed when looking at it in the daylight today that the priming with the black spray hadn't covered as much as I wanted. Probably there was some angles that it should have been sprayed from that it wasn't. So I used almost a pot of Abaddon Black to paint it, but hopefully I have a good base for the details now. I need to decide how to paint all the details, as I can't leave everything black.
I'm thinking of adding some Khorne Red or maybe a purple of some sorts in to the black and white scheme I have figured out. I have started to prime the loose Grots and the armor plates that are made to look like they are opened, and will do the final priming tomorrow. After that I can add these pieces to the Stompa, but the figures I will hold off with until everything is painted and glue them on with superglue.
Tomorrow I plan to start on the metal pieces and plates, and when they are painted and washed they will be given a light drybrush of Ryza Rust. I plan to see if I can use some of it on some of the black armorplates as well, to make everything blend a little better together. And some of the plates will also be scratched up a bit with a metal color to look like battle damage. After all, an Ork Boss does not use his war-machine gently and carefully on the battlefield. An Ork Boss will use this big machine to take out as many enemies as possible, any way he can. Walk them down if weapons don't cut them down, so scratches and dents are to be expected...

I have already started to think about how to assemble my second Stompa, and I know I will fit a belly-gun on it. Only thing I'm not sure about at the moment is how to build some variation to the big weapons that the Stompa carries. I would love to have the second one look a little different there. I was thinking of maybe finding a way to use some spares from the Knight sets, but I need to build a Knight first to see how big those weapons really are. I suspect they are quite a lot smaller than the big weapons that a Stompa usually carries to war. One thing I would love to do is to replace the sword on the second Stompa with some sort of very orkish looking flamer, and maybe replace some of the extra weapons on the big shoota on the other arm with parts left over from a Gorkanaut or Morkanaut and bombs or rokkits from flyers. I will see what kind of spares I get when building these kits and see how I can add them together.

Still working...

It's been a while since I posted (and that isn't exactly unusual unfortionately).
However I'm still working on my armies of small plastic, resin and metal figurines. Just like I've always been...

So what's new since the last update?

I have almost finished the first Gunhauler for my Kharadron Overlords army. There are still a few details to paint, but not that much. I will glue the pilot and the gunner to the ship next, and then glue the dome to the poles sticking up from the ship.
I still haven't figured out 100% how I want to do the bases for this army, but I am really leaning towards doing them the same way as I do my Deathwatch and Custodians as I think that looks  little bit like clouds. And it will look more like that if I use more of the drybrush in certain areas on the big base like on the Gunhauler.

I've been building and priming a lot of Deathwatch models, and I'm really looking forward to buying the new codex that came out this weekend to see what I can legally field. I still have some spare shoulderguards left to add some more troops to the army if the codex lets me do it.
I had planned to add a unit of Devastators to my army, but they come with shoulderguards attached to their weapon arms, so it will not look good if I do it. So I'll try and find another way to add some more diversity to the heavy weapons. It's not like I really need a designated Devastator squad, as the Deathwatch can field almost anything when it comes to weapons (or at least that's what it looks like before reading the new codex). But having the same two heavy weapons in all killteams can look a bit monotonous.

I've been watching 13 episodes of Season 1 of the Netflix series "The Punisher", and a few episodes ago Frank finally put on his very famous "uniform", the black clothes with the white scull on the chest, and that reminded me I have an Ork Stompa to paint up like that.
Da Punisha will be painted mostly black with some metal colored plates where the plates look like raw metal. They will be painted Leadbelcher and then washed with Nuln Oil and drybrushed with Rysa Rust. The rest of the Stompa will be black with some details in other colors.
There are some places where you can see under the black plates, so I have painted the "inside" Eshin Gray. And the big scull on the belly will be painted in a sort of off-white color.
I need to get a few more pots of Abaddon Black, but I will buy that when I go to the Games Workshop store.

I have also built some mechanized troops for the Imperial Guard. I made a unit with one Devil Dog and two Hellhounds. The Devil Dog is the command vehicle of the three, with a commander in the turret. The other two have closed turrets. They have not yet been primed, but will be primed and painted up just like I have planned for all my other vehicles.
I need to think up how I like the unit markings to be, as I would like to start to add that to my vehicles.

Deathwatch Watch Master - pictures

I have finally finished my Watch Master. He's gotten the same base as the Marine I sent to join the European Deathwatch, and this will be the base design for all my Deathwatch and Custodes bases.
The Watch Master is a senior officer in the Deathwatch, and this specific Watch Master has been given command over several Captains. He has not yet been given a name, but I am trying to think of something fittingly humble but noble for him.
The pictures are not of a 100% quality, as I don't have my lightbox, so I tried to set one up.

As one can see from the pictures, he is armed with a Guardian spear, this says something about his rank as this weapon is usually only seen on the warriors of the Adeptus Custodes. On his left arm he has a Clavis (a very special gadget that even the Mechanicus does not fully understand) that lets him unseal magnetic locks and that tells all servitors (both friend and foe) that he is a friend, so they stand down in his presence.

For once I managed not to break any flimsy parts, so he still have the servo scull attached to the backpack. 

The back of his cape has a fancy pattern. I am about 90% pleased with how it turned out, as I would have liked to get it to look more crisp, but the more I worked with it the worse it got.

This Watch Master will soon be joined by Captains and kill teams. I have one Dreadnought, two captians and two ten-man killteams primed, and I will start to paint them up shortly.

In the pipleine are also one Dreadnought, two captians, two ten-man killteams (one of them an all Space Wolves team)  and two five-man Terminator killteams standing waiting to be primed.

And yet there are more waiting to be assembled...

A little bit of variation is a good thing...

I have assembled yet another unit for my Deathwatch army. This time it's ten Primaris Intercessors, where one of them have been given the Deathwatch shotgun, and the remaining nine have the weapons the Intercessors normally wear to battle.
They have been given spare shoulder guards from the Deathwatch sets, so now they come from a number of different chapters.

I had originally thought of having a unit of Primaris Reivers in my army, to use as scouts and ambush specialists as I find it strange that the Deathwatch recruit regular scouts as they are inexperienced Marines in most chapters and not the Veteran troops that the Deathwatch is supposed to be. Some chapters have veteran scouts, like my Gatekeepers, but they are not very many. But the current rules don't allow Reivers in the Deathwatch, so I will wait for the new codex to come out (probably within a few months time) and see if they are added there. I have a sprue of Deathwatch shoulderguards that I don't have any plans for yet, so it should be no problem to wait.
Instead I will make one unit of Primaris Hellblasters, as they are mean looking. A ten man unit armed with plasma incinerators can do a lot of damage to big xenos scum. I plan to check the rules as to how many can be armed with the different types of incinerators, but I hope to have all three variants represented withing the 10 man squad. Hopefully I get around to building them this weekend.

I bought a second Start Collecting box as I wanted another Dreadnought. There is so much more value to the Start Collecting box that this made perfect sense. In the box I also got a second Captain Artemis, and there can only be one of him so I used my trusted clippers and clipped his head off (ouch!). I replaced it with a battle scarred one from the Primaris sprues, and armed him with a mace and stormshield .
Them I will make another captain a little later on and give him the combi weapon and backpack Artemis usually wears.

But it's not only the Deathwatch that see some progress these days... I have finally started to paint my first Kharadron Overlords. I started with an Aether-Khemist as this is a single figure, so I can use him to get the look that I want to give to all my Kharadron troops. So far I have painted his suit Eshin Gray, some of the heavier metal (like the tip of his boots and the equipment he is wearing over his sholulders) Warplock Bronze, and his gloves and  boots are Mournfang Brown. For the boots I am debating with myself if I want to keep them Mournfang Brown or paint them Dryad Bark as I did with my regular Dwarfs.

I have also started to paint my first sky ship. It is one of the smallest, the Grundstok Gunhauler. I have decided to go for black panels, and paint the top board as a silver stripe. Where the official pictures use some sort of gold on the globes, I plan to use the same silver as on the side of the ship.
I like to use gold details and I am not that happy with some of the gold paints in the GW range. The one I feel I get the best result with is Retributor Armour, and I can't have that both for the globes and the details. So I hope it will be a good look when it is done. It will be something that stands out in a crowd while it still is well within what can be considered "normal" and within the lore and fluff. I already have quite good idea as to why the Kharadrons of my Skyport use the silver instead of gold.

The ship was not primed too well, so I went over it with some of the primer I have in pots, and I also primed the crew with this primer. The plan is to start painting the crew this afternoon and use the same colors as I do on my Aether-Khemist. The crew is quite simple compared to him though.

While waiting for paint and primer to dry, I also started on the bases for my Deathwatch Watch Master and the Custodes Venerable Contemptor Dreadnought. I plan to make both these armies the same way when it comes to bases, and that is exactly like the base I made for my Deathwatch figure that I made for the GW Deathwatch army (as can be seen in an earlier post).

As always, pics will come in the future when everything on the models are done.

Building and priming

I've had a week of Easter Holiday now, and last Monday I was at Games Workshop in Oslo and collected my Forgebane boxed set. While in the Store I started to work on my first Amiger Warglaive (baby Knight), and on Monday afternoon and Tuesday I finished it at home and also built the second one.
Then I went to my Cabin where I don't have a workbench, but I built a lot of Lego instead.
Got home yesterday, and primed the Amigers as well as two Killteams for the Deathwatch and some Orks.
Before I went to the cabin I had primed all my built Custodes minitures, a bunch of Orks, and a box of House Esher gangers from Nectromunda. One thing I've learned from that experience is that the House Esher Gangers are really frail. The bases was quite stuck to the box I had them on when I primed them, and one ganger standing on one leg broke her leg clean off and another with the same pose got it badly bent. So I need to do some repair work before I start to paint them up sometime in the future.

After I got home from the cabin yesterday I sat down and started to work on the Space Wolves from the Stormclaw box that I talked about in my last post. Luckily they had loose shoulder guards, so it was easy to just replace the left one with the one for the Deathwatch.
After building the five Terminators in the box I just had to build my five other Terminators. They are from a box of Dark Angels that can make regular Terminators, a Command Squad or Terminator Knights (a special kind of Terminator only available for the Dark Angels).

I made up my five Terminators as a little bit of everything. After all, they are representing the Deathwatch and because of that they are basically allowed to be armed with anything they like. So I gave one a two-handed halberd that the command unit champion has, and I made him up like a Champion too. Then one got the powerfist with a plasma cannon that only the Dark Angels terminators can have. The remaining three were more traditionally armed. Both the Wolves and the Angels are armed both for close combat and ranged battles. They also have a healthy amount of heavy wepons.
When that was done I made the rest of the Stormclaw box, that is ten regular Space Wolves and a Wolf Lord. Some of them got weapons from the Deathwatch sprues, an Infernus heavy bolter, a shotgun, I replaced a regular Spacewolf shield with a big shield from the Deathwatch and I gave one Marine a two handed Thunder hammer.

I have decided that as many of my sergeants as possible will have the special helmet with a metal crest that comes on the Deathwatch extra sprue. I gave one to my Spacewolf sergeant too.

I have two killteams, a Dreadnought and a captain primed and ready for painting now, and I am almost done painting up my Watch Master. Then I have two five-man Terminator killteams a 10 man all Spacewolf killteam and their leader Krom Dragongaze, and a little Watcher in the dark (a small figure unique to the Dark Angels, so he can't join the Death Watch) ready for priming. And at the moment I am working on assembling my Primaris Intercessor unit.
In the not too distant future I will add a unit of Primaris Marines, probably Reivers, two five man boxes of Deathwatch killteams (will probably run them as one ten man team), a box of five Devastators, a box of five Assault Marines and a box of ten regular Marines.
This should give me quite a versatile force to bring to the tabletop, and who knows if I'll add more in the more distant future. There is a new codex for 8th edition coming out in a few months time, and I'll see what that gives me of options for troops and vehicles.

First Deatwatch finished...

I was at my local Games Workshop store yesterday a sat there all day building and painting my minis.
I finished my Deathwatch model that's going to the Store Manager meeting for Northern Europe. I hope the Store Managers get White Dwarf to feature the army as I think it will look awesome (and it's probably the only way for me to get a mini featured there).
It was a lot of fun painting him up, and I'm working on an entire army of Deathwatch to fight along side him. So far I've only finished this one model, but I am a few sittings away from finishing up a Watch Master. I have also assembled the Start Collecting box with a 10 man kill team, a Captain and a Dreadnought, and I plan to prime them a little later today. I also hope to assemble some more Deathwatch minis during the day, but I need to get some painting done too to prevent my work area being overflown with primed and half painted minis.

I really liked the way the base of my finished Marine turned out, and I have decided to use that as the standard base for the Deathwatch. I am also considering using this on my Custodes Army as I think it will look good on them too. For other armies I might use the same technique but with other colors, and I think I will start to always put some drybrush on my bases after I have applied technical paint and a wash.

Here are some pics I took at the Games Workshop 40K table of my finished model.

The first real challenge was to get the Deathwatch shoulderguard to look good. There is a lot of letters on there and this creates lots of small areas to get the shade into without pooling too much. I am sure I can still improve on this for future minis, but I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

This is an Ultramarine, but I decided to keep the colors a little muted, so I didn't use pure white on the Ultramarine symbol as I think that would stand out a lot against the dark model. I think I will keep on doing this for future Ultramarines models, and maybe on some other chapters as well.

And here he is from the front. I like his stance, the way he sort of leans forward as he walks, with
the intimidating shotgun in his hands.

The shotgun might be my favorite weapon from the Deathwatch range, and I plan to feature this weapon quite often in my killteams.  There are two on each sprue, so I get some spare to use on the teams I build from regular Space Marine boxes. I will at least make two teams from regular boxes, but I might make more as I have lots of boxes of marines in my storage. I think I have 4 or 5 spare sets of 10 shoulderguards so I might as well use them as I needed the sets to get enough shoulderguards for my terminators. I plan to have 10 terminators, 5 will be from the Space Wolves (from the Storm claw box) and the remaining 5 will be made from a box of Dark Angels Terminator Knights as this box have lots of different weapons. I think I have 3 of these boxes in storage as I wanted to make all the different options that is available in the box (regular Terminators, Command Squad and Knights) and the Terminators will be a mix of the different types. I will make at lest one Knight as I can't field them in my Gatekeepers army and I would like to see how they look.

More Deathwatch

Just as I posted the last post about my beginning Deathwatch army, and how I don't plan to expand it  much, I remembered that I have the Space Wolf part of the Stormclaw boxed set in my storage.
I had originally thought  of selling them, trading them or just give them away to get rid of therm, but after my last post I had sort of an epiphany...
I can join them to my Deathwatch army. That way I avoid my two dislikes with the Wolves of Fenris while still getting the option to use the models.
I have disliked the Wolves because of some of their back story and rules, but now I will use Deathwatch rules and what they did before they joined is of no interest to the Deathwatch...
I also don't need to paint them up as Wolves, and this suits me fine as there are so many purists out there with a meaning of what paints to use to get the correct color on them. Now I will only paint up the one shoulder guard, and the rest will be Deathwatch colors.

If I add the Stormclaw Wolves I get 16 more Deathwatch troopers, increasing the number from 42 to 58. This box have 5 terminators, 10 regular Marines and 1 Captain (being a Space Wolf he is not called Captain though, but Wolf Lord). His name is Krom Dragongaze, and it is said of him that "For every moment of shining heroism in Krom's past, there is an instance of bloody-mindedness or needless barbarism that overshadows it..."
Krom and his Wolf guard lost a battle against Orks on the planet of Alaric Prime, and because of this he's asked his chapter master (the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar) to be allowed to take his remaning warriors and serve with the Deathwatch for a given period of time.

Because of his reputation and the amount of marines, they get to work together instead of being split up to other kill teams. But they sometimes work with others if it is required. They can work as one big group if it is required, or as up to three small kill teams if required.

One of the things that intrigues me a bit is the so called "Black Shields". A Black shield is a Marine that has renounced his chapter and come to join the Deathwatch. The reasons can be many, but if his intentions are pure he will not be sent away. I plan to add several of these warriors, and some of them will come from the Knights of Oblivion. They have renounced their chapter because they want to keep serving the Emperor. The origins of the Knights of Oblivion is not known, some say they are fallen Dark Angels, some that they are a successor chapter gone bad, and some even claim that hey are one of  2 original 20 legions that have been erased from all records. We may never know the truth about this, but they do have a few marines in the Deathwatch fighting the good cause.

I need 5 more Terminator Deathwatch shoulder guards, so I will check what comes in the 10 man box that I have ordered before I get one more upgrade sprue.

The Deathwatch are here...

After reading about the creation of the Deathwatch in "The Beast arises"-series from Black Library the idea of having a "small" force has grown on me.

The last time I was at my Games Workshop store to sit and paint for a day they had this event where you buy one single figure (pick the body parts you want to use from the Deathwatch sprues) and paint him up. There are some rules, as the entire army should have the same bases and so on, but apart from that you are free to do as you like.

I opted for an Ultramarine with a combat shotgun, and gave him a helmet (as I don't think I'm too good with painting skin and hair).  He was quickly assembled and primed, and now I have spent some time painting him up to the best standard I can. 

I put the last color on him yesterday, so tonight I need to do a little clean-up work, wash his combat knife with Nuln Oil, and do his base Astrogranite. Then I will take him with me to the store next time I go there and put on a blue wash and a stone colored (don't remember the name of the paint, Karak Stone maybe) drybrush on the base there.  I will take a picture of him when he is done, and post it here.

I've decided to make a small force and have both as a stand-alone army and as troops to assist my Inquisitors. I would love to field my different Inquisitors with different support troops. I have a very small band of Grey Knights (painted dark blue), I have the Deathwatch and I have the Tempestus Scions. The Tempestus Scions will usually be part of my Astra Militarum army, but they do lend out troops to the Inquisition on request. I have painted up a command squad so far, but I might revisit them to do their pants again if it is in a different color than what I use for my Imperial Guard units. I would like to have as much unity as I can while still showing a distinct difference between the different branches of service and my two different infantry regiments.

The plan for the Deathwatch is to make enough to use as a stand-alone force, but not an entire chapter. I have one Dreadnought, and at the moment he is the only heavy hitter. In the future I might add another, I will see what I have in my boxes of unbuilt or unpainted miniatures and take it from there.

I have one Watch Master to lead my army. He has a trusted captain that leads the troops on missions, that is Captain Artemis, one of the few if not the only named special characters that the Deathwatch range have.

I have two boxes with 10 Deathwach troops in them (one of these are from the Start Collecting box that also included the Dreadnought and Captain Artemis). I also have a box of 10 regular tactical Marines and a box of 10 Primaris Intercessors that I will convert to Deathwatch by using some spare special weapons from the Deathwatch boxes and the shoulder guards from the Deathwatch Upgrade sprues. On these sprues there are also 2 Terminator shoulder guards on each, so I plan to have 5 terminators as well (or maybe 6 if I have a spare one somewhere that I can use). I haven't bought the Terminators yet, as they were out of stock at the Games Workshop store when I was there, so I will get it next time. 

I could probably dig some up from my existing boxes too, but I do love these models, and the fluff for my Gatekeepers explains why I have so many of them. If GW don't have them in the store next time I go, then I will take a box from my storage. 

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.

General update

Since the last post I have had a period where I haven't done much building and painting, but now I am at it again.

Since last time I have done a little work on the two Dwarf units that I have started on. My first unit of Longbeards have their armor painted now, and after their boots are painted, I will go on to paint heads and arms before glueing it on. This is a unit of ten figures, but I will paint up my other Longbeards in the same way, and will probably end with two units of fifteen with full command, or if I want smaller units, three units of ten where only two have full command. These warriors are quite different from previous Dwarf minis, so it will not be natural to mix them with older versions.

I'm also almost done painting the torsos of my oldest set of Dwarf warriors, the unit I have decided to call my Imperial Dwarfs as they have gone to live in the city amongst the humans, but come back to the keep to fight with their brothers in the upcomming battle that they are all mustering for. I will start shortly to prime and paint their arms and heads.

I have also come quite far in painting a unit of regular Warriros, and have started to paint and assemble my first Gyrocopter. The Gyrocopter will take some time still, as I have to prime all small parts manually since I neeed to paint the insiode of the Gyrocopter during assembly. 

Since my last update, I have gotten hold of some Genestealers for Warhammer 40.000 and so far I have assembled a Goliath Rockgrinder (a truck with a huge shield with a huge shield with rotating saws that grinds up rocks), a box called Broodcoven (sort of the 3 leaders of the clan with two small accolytes), and I am in the process of thinking out what colors to use on their skin to make them look almost human while still having a hint of alien on them (so far I am leaning towards Cadian Fleshtone with a purplish wash). 

The Rockgrinder will be painted in light gray (Celestra Gray) with an orange stripe down the front. The orange will be the same as in the uniforms of the troops to match it together.

The regular Genestealers will have orange uniform jackets (Jokaero Orange) with dark grey (Mechanicus Standard Grey) pants, black boots and light grey (Celestra Grey) armor. This will be the same for both miners and soldiers, but with the changes needed to make it work. The Genestealers in other clothing will probably get some sort of red or yellow clothing to fit in but still look different enough that they stand out on the battlefield. 

I have also started on a few test models from my Daemonettes of Slaanesh and so far it seems they will be a little darker and a lot more purple than the ones in the regular art from Games Workshop. I mean when they have a paint called Deamonette Hide, isn't that the natural color to use on their hide? I'll drop by Games Workshop later today and see if they can help me with a color to use on the hair.

Pictures of the things mentioned in this post will be shown as soon as I have anything worth showing.

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.

Inquisitorial Landraider Redeemer done

This is the Landraider that I painted up at the white paint masterclass at Games Workshop.
Before I went there I had to assemble it, so I started with painting up the interior. Lots of panels, and quite a visible engine...

The idea at the masterclass was to paint the vehile white then make it grimy and look like it had been on the battlefiel for a long time. The entire tank was based white, painted Mechanicus Standard Gray and then sprayed white at an angle, and then heavily washed and then sponged with white to create paint chipping, and brown and black to create rust and dirt.

Here are some closeups of different angles.First up is the front. The doors open, and reveal the painted interior. And on top of the doors are the twin linked assault cannon to lay down suppressing fire as the troops disembarks the vehicle. The Front gate looks like it has hit the ground hard on several occasions.

The Flamestorm cannons have been painted to look like the metal's been really hot.

The same effect has been painted on the exhaust pipes, but here I used a little more purple wash.

 And the parting shot is from the top...