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.

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.

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.

The tanks keep rolling in...

Yesterday I finished the Hellhammer Super Heavy tank that will support the Walpurgian infantry when taking back the fallen cities of the Empire of Man from heretics, alien scum or even the ruinous powers.
The Hellhammer is part of the four tanks big Super Heavy Tank division, consisting of one Hellhammer, two Baneblades an one Shadowsword. In the future I might increase the numbers as I love the many different versions of the Super Hevy tanks. Right now they are all sold out from Games Worksop online, so it will be interesting to see if they will be replaced with new boxes or if they will be brought back. Games Workshop is about to release something they call "Chapter Approved" and in here they have new rules for Apocalypse games so they might plan to release new boxes for the Super Heavies.

Today I've finished the command Leman Russ tank from the Tech box, along with the first Tech-priest Engineseer of the army. I will need some more of those but they will need a little conversion as there are only two different models in the range."Luckily" I had an accident and broke off the Servo-skull on the backpack, so I will have to fin another one to use. I hardly ever use them on my minis, so I am sure I can scatter up a few if I get enough time to search. I think that will help a lot towards making them look like individuals.

I have started my Shadowsword build, and I have found that the tracks are especially tricky to build. This is because the front and back drive sprocket either mis-alligns, twists or just don't glue on straight. This happens even though you have a pin that goes in to the sprockets that can only be placed one special way. Luckily I have delt with parts like that before so I have found ways to get arund it, and on the Hellhammer it led to some cutting on the back of the tracks, while on the Shadowsword I glued the back sprocet on after I had glued the tracks to it.

In between doing this I have also started to work on the fluff for my army. I decided a long time ago that they are from the planet Walpurga, named after Saint Walpurga. The people there are called Walpurgians, so the army is the Walpurgian something. I will give the different units special names, and nicknames, and find my commanders for the army. High command are named after Generals from the American Civil War, but other officers and named characters get their names from all over.

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.

Armies on Parade - Part 6

There are some progress, but it should probably have been more.
I have started to paint up the tower, and that is coming along nicely. I have to paint gold and copper, and find out what color I want to use on the sculls on the bottom of the tower.
Then I need to paint the smaller building in the same style later.
I have primed the remaining five Devastators, and I will begin painting them tomorrow. This time I tried a different approach. I chose weapons that felt solid, one multimelta and three plastma cannons.All the weapons had one arm already attached, so I test fitted them and glued the other arm to the weapon. Then the backpacks are glued together, and with these weapons they are all just two parts.

I still haven't decided what captain to use, so I am still painting them both up.

I have decided to drop the Kastelan robots for now, I don't think I will have them done to a high enough standard and I know one of the other great painters will bring a Mechanicum army. So I rather paint them up in due time and use them in my Mechanicum army when I get the chance to sit down and work with that.
I have enough Marines to add some more of those instead if I feel I need more models on the table.

By not using the Kastelans I will get more room on the table for some Promethium pipes and the sludge pit I have planned to use.I still need to see how they will fit on the table, but I think I will need something to add more details to the board.
I have not decided on how I will make these things look on the board yet, but I will try and find that out as I get the buildings placed on the board so as I can see how everything fits together.

Armies on Parade - Part 5

Today I primed the bikes for the Armies on Parade board. Unfortionately the glue haven't set as it should and some of the riders arms fell off when I removed the riders from the bikes.
Apparently the process worked well for the first three bikes, but the riders on the attack bike lost one arm, and on the bike I built this morning both arms and he was also stuck to the bike. This bike was something I bought on eBay quite cheap, and either during transportation or during storage the kit had gotten some rough handling. Because of this there were some extra stress with getting all parts to fit like a glove.

This morning I assembled the alternative miniature for my captain. The mini is called Lord Executioner, and he might be a better choice as he will fit with the assault marines. He wears a jump pack, but according to the fluff he should be the commander of the eight company. That company is a reserve company with nothing but assault squads, but I think it will be a long time before I start filling that up in my collection. At the moment I'm working on the first four companies, and I will not fill up new companies until these are filled with the forces needed.
I plan to paint both captains up as far as adding the company colors on the rim of the shoulder guards, and then I will decide what mini to use.

The next step now is to assemble the last batch of Devastators needed for the parade board, and I plan to use three plasma cannons in the squad. If I remember correctly, that was the best weapon configuration to assemble, and they pack a mean punch on the battlefield. I love the plasma weapons as they add a little color to the units, and breaks up the monotony of blue and red. After the Armies on Parade is over, I will take a regular tactical squad and build the remaining five Space Marines needed to make the Devastator units into ten man squads for future use in games of 40K.
This unit will also have a commander, and I will arm him a little different than I did with the commander for the other five man team. I plan on giving him a grav pistol and he might also get a chainsword.
I have not yet decided what to arm the fifth man on the team with. I'll see how the other weapons I didn't use last time fits, and if I find something I like I will use it. If not, he will probably end up with a missile launcher.

I also need to assemble a Kastelan robot with phosphor blasters, as I plan to have two of those on the board.
So far I have one with each weapon option, but for the display I think phosphor blasters will have the best effect. I might build the second robot as well, but I think I will wait a little while with the handler, as he has so many small and intricate parts that will take extra time to paint and will need to be stored while painting. So to make sure I get everything ready for Armies on Parade he might have to wait as I have come a long way with the handler I have already started to assemble.

Armies on Parade - Part 1

Every year Games Workshop have a worldwide competition they call Armies on Parade. The rules have differed a bit from year to year, but the purpose have always been the same. Show off one of your armies.
Some people show an army, some build a big diorama showing an army in battle, and some do other things.

This year the competition is set for October 24th, and I have decided to participate for the first time.
I have been to Armies On Parade for two years and seen what people bring, and I would like to give it a go myself this year.
I do not think I will win anything, but hopefully some of the people in the event will like what I do, and more important it forces me to paint up my army and that is perhaps the biggest motivation to take part.

I plan to bring a Space Marine army (or part of it to be exact), with a little support from the Mechanicum.

I bought a base tile from Games Workshop at an event they had a little earlier, and also got to use their bit boxes to assemble what I would like to have on the board.
I chose a tile with a hill on it, and the idea is to have a tower on the hill, a bunker-like building below it and a partially underground passage between them to show that it is part of a bigger complex.

We were two people on the tile event, and while I was building buildings, the other man was building a big bridge, so I made my tower of the high tower from the Fortress of Redemption, and my bunker-like building from the curved wall tiles, while he made his bridgehead from the straight walls.
The passage between them will be made with plasticard, and the roof of the passage is floor tiles from a manufactorum set.
I'm also thinking of adding top wall tiles on the passageway, but I will see how it will look. If I do, I have plenty in my bit boxes to use.

In the tall tower there will be one or two chaplains (the one I know I will use is an Interrogator Chaplain that came as a special character in a Dark Angels box. I don't have the box, but I bought him on Ebay just because he looked so mean). Since I am leaning more and more towards that the Gatekeepers have some Dark Angels working with them, and not as part of the chapter, I will let him keep all his Dark Angels symbols. Then I might add another chaplain who is clearly a part of the Gatekeepers. And I will need a captain. I will see if I can fit three characters on the tower, hopefully that should be possible. if I have to sacrifice one, then it will only be one chaplain. I haven't decided what captain to use yet, but I need to decide quite soon.

On the roof of the bunker, there will be 10 scout snipers, and their leader Sergeant Telion (with a new name and without Ultramarines symbols). Looks like 9 sniper rifles and one rocket launcher, with the new rocket-bit with a rocket being fired (from the new devastator sprues).

Beside the tall tower on the hill, a Hunter will stand aiming for targets, and three bikes and an attack bike will be on their way down the hill in some manner (if it gets too much I will sacrifice the attack bike), to take the fight to the enemy.

On the flat surface, or maybe partially in the slope, there will be a 10 man strong assault squad lead by their sergeant. They will have two marines with eviscerators (big two-handed chainswords), one with a flamer, and one with a plasma pistol. The sergeant also have a plasma pistol. In accordance with the idea of the Gatekeepers, I used as many beaky heads as there was in the boxes for these units, and two marines also got studded shoulderpads.

Also on the ground there will be two five man squads of devastators. These are in the process of being built, so I have not sorted out their weapon options yet. But there will be beakies in these units as well, and they will be as heavily armed as possible, That is why I went with two five man squads instead of one ten man squad, as I can have eight heavy weapons instead of four this way.

Behind a barricade (hopefully in front of the bunker) will be two Kastelan robots and their handler from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Their presence hints that the base might have something to do with the Mechanicus as well, and I just wanted them on the board because they are really cool models. Both robots will be armed with phosphor blasters and their Cybernetica Datasmith will wear the robes of the Tech Priests from Mars.

I am also thinking of adding a Venerable Dreadnought of some sort from my collection to the board, but I will see what I end up with in the end.

I will also add some small details to the board to give it some feeling of a wasteland, like a small cestpool with some chemical spill (a small pond of Nurgle rot and barrels floating in it) some barricades here and there, and some rats on the slope. The rats are from some Skaven sprues that was available to raid when planning the table, and I will make one or two small bushes on the slope as well.

So far the table and buildings are primed, I will have to make the passage from plasticard (bought and in planning). The 10 man assault squad is partially painted (missing weapons and the final details), the first devastator squad is being assembled and painted, the 10 scouts is partially assembled and partially painted, and the Hunter is assembled and primed. The interrogator chaplain is also primed and partially painted.