Happy New Year

Best wishes for the new year!

I will not take a pledge for 2013 as I rarely seem to keep it, but I will certainly try my best to get more miniatures painted than ever before. I will try to paint up a lot of what I already have on my shelves and don't just buy new stuff and paint. I have several sets for all my armies on the shelves (also a lot of Fantasy scenery), so I don't really need to buy much new unless there are some new models that might be nice to use for my existing armies.

I ended 2012 by receiving several minis bought on Ebay.

The most lovely stuff I received was 9 heavy weapon teams for my Imperial Guard army. 3 teams was Cadian and 6 was Catachan. It appears they have been painted before, then basecoated black again. But either the paint has been stripped first, or they have been assembled and put on bases and then everything has been basecoated but never painted. I knew they might have been previously painted before I bought them, so that came as no supprise. The supprise was instead that they had all their ritch details intact.

I plan on having black rocks as a base for both Space marine and Imperial Guard, so black rubble on the bases suits me fine.

The teams are all mounted as two soldiers and one heavy weapon one one base, just as I like to have them (I also guess that this is the best way according to the rules).

3 Catachan teams are armed with mortars, and the remaining teams are all armed with missile launchers. They also have some extra bits and bobs glued to their bases, some of the Catachan units have trees or plants, and this is nice as it gives a jungle feel. I plan to use my Catachan troops as terrain specialists anyway, so this will fit my fluff nicely.

I will have to add some ammo pouches and grenades and other equipment to some of the teams, as they are pretty basic, but I have plenty of that stuff in my bitz box, so that will work out well. One of the teams has a Space Marine helmet, a backpack and a bolter added to their base as decor, and I will see what I will do with that. The helmet can have been destroyed and tossed away so the Marine could regain his sight and continue to fight, but I know of no marine that leaves his backpack or his bolter, so I might have to use some greenstuff to change a little on that base.

Also, some of the teams with missile launchers seem to have spare mortar ammunition on their bases, and I'll see what I'll do with that. It isn't really wrong, but it do look  just a little out of place.

I also got a team of Assault Marines (5 minis) and these have been stripped of their original paint and then basecoated black. There are 3 with boltgun and chainsword, one with a meltagun and powerfist, and one with two chainswords. Not sure about the legality of the two chainswords, so if I don't find that the rules allow this I will have to see if I should chop one arm or just one hand off and replace the one sword with a boltgun. Hope I can find it to be legal though, as it looks mighty cool. 

Two of the Marines are beakies, and I really love those helmets. 1 Marine also has a studded shoulder guard that usually came with the beakies according to pictures of the different generations of armor at Forge World.

I also bought a Tactical squad (10 minis) and a Devastator squad (10 minis), but here I was a little disappointed. The Devastator squad has 4 Devastators, and the rest are just regular tactical marines. The leader of the squad is wielding an axe that probably is supposed to be a power axe, but it looks like it is taken from Warhammer Fantasy and looks a bit Chaos to me. Still, if I paint him up right, I am sure he can become a sergeant in one of my tactical units.

Most of these marines appear to be previously painted and then basecoated black, except for two of them that are blue and green. 

So basically what I am left with is a Devastator team of 4 Marines, missing a sergeant. It seems that these comes in boxes of 5 with some spare equipment, so I will take one Marine from another box (or maybe I have enough body parts in the bitz box to assemble one from there) and use spare parts from the Devastator squad boxed set that I already have to make them a sergeant.

Then I have 15 Tactical Marines, including 2 typical sergeant types, that can be completed with 5 more regular Marines to make two 10 man squads. I know Games Workshop sells both a squad and a team version of these, so if I should need it I can always buy 5 troops to make them in to 20 in total. But I am sure I have so many Marines already, that I either have such a box on the shelves, or have built Marines from spare parts before to make up the remaining 5. 

Merry Christmas everyone, and an IG update

Merry Christmas everyone!
All the presents are opened, and no new Warhammer stuff is in the house.
Got some other great gifts though, a cool laptopbag and 10 Lego minifigs (series 8) a Lego train and a station area. That's for another blog though (I have a Lego blog in Norwegian for the Lego stuff).

The first three Imperial Guard Heavy Weapon teams are now completed and washed. Still waiting for the wash to dry completely, but it looks very good so far. Was a little tricky to get wash everywhere because of the diorama bases, but all in all I am quite happy with how they turned out.

The next target now is to finish the three Commissars, they are just missing some detail work and their wash, and the 15 troopers that are more or less missing most of it (at least 13 of therm that are just torsos at the moment). But I will work with that in the next few days.

update December 23rd

It's one day until Christmas Eve, and amongst cleaning and tidying so that me and the Mrs. can decorate the house later today I have to fiddle a bit with painting.
While tidying the house earlier this week, the large sword for my Empire Witch Hunter was mysteriously cleaned away, as it was idling on the livingroom table by itself.  So I have ordered another mini from Games Workshop. Luckily the Empire Witch Hunter comes with two options for the weapon carried on the back. So I can still make him a Whitch Hunter, even though he doesn't get my preferred weapon choise. Still if I am going to have two of them, then it is ok that they look slightly different. Most of the mini will be leather color, as he has a large coat and big boots. But I will try to vary the colors a bit where this is possible.
As of now I need to paint the weapons on his back (not yet attached), his face and hair, the gun, the gloves and the metal parts. He's looking good so far, and that's good as it is probably my favorite mini from the Empire miniature range.
As I might have written in an earlier post, I don't plan on building an Empire army (at least not yet), but I plan to build lots of towers and buildings and I would like to have some "town folks" to go along with them. This includes the Bretonnian miniatures I have bought when I still thought I would build a glorious Bretonnian army. Ok, I have a thing for knights, I admit that. But I do not like all the "weird stuff" you would need to make a really competitive list, like pegasus knights, hippogriffs, and those kinds. Also I am not too found of metal minis, and whooosh there goes my plan of a hard hitting army.
I do have some boxes of the plastic knights, the Men-at-arms and the Peasant Bowmen, and they will make great "town folks". Add to this two Empire Whitch Hunters, and some Empire troops, and you have a nice little army.

For the Imperial Guard, the three heavy weapon teams are almost done. Just need to fix some sloppy silver paint on the guns by doing some black paint cover-up. Then the last team needs to get their ammo pouches and water bottles glued on. After that it is just a matter of doing the washing and since almost everything is going to be washed Nuln Oil, then this will go rather quick.
The 5 infantrymen that needed completion have not seen much progress since the last update, but out of the blue there appeared 10 more. These 10 has gotten their pants and boots painted, and torsos attatched. Will paint torsos later tonight, and then start to do the arms for the 13 remaining troopers and equipment for all 15 during the following days. I'll do as much as I can tonight, but I also need to clean the house and decorate for christmas, and wrap a couple of presents.

Return to the Guard

Got a good buy on Ebay last night, won three pre-built Cathachan heavy weapon teams, so I thought I would finish my first three Cadian teams.

The three teams had the weapons painted and assembled, and also the gunners were assembled and glued to the bases.
The spotters were assembled and painted, but they were not attached to the bases yet. So I had to find out what spotter to assign to the different gunners, and then glue them to the right base in the right position.
When this was done I started to add the extra equipment. I had almost finished painting up 4 belts with bayonet holders, water bottles and magazine pouches, so I finished that and glued it to two of the fireteams. The remaining fireteam will have theirs in a couple of days, I have the equipment but need to paint it up before I can glue it on to the troopers.
I will also add small details like field showels and a bayonette to the bases. And I will add lasrifles.
The bayonette is half painted, as are the field showels. The lasrifles are primed, but needs to get the metal parts painted.

There are also four troopers and one sergeant that are awaiting completion. These five Guard soldiers will join a unit of five previously assembled troops to make up a unit of ten.
The status on these last five is as follows:
All five torsos are painted. The sergeant and the heavy weapons expert have both arms attached to the torso, but the three riflemen are missing the arms. During the long storage in the livingroom I have managed to loose one arm, but I will have to think of something extra for that trooper anyway as I have thought him to be the communication expert, and then it would be nice to find some way to keep one arm free. I think I have some spare arms in the bitbox, so I will find a solution for him.
I have all the extra equipment I need (backpacks, etc. and this just need to be painted). Then the five troopers needs their wash.

Also on my table there are three Commissars with most of their skin and uniforms painted. There are some details left though but this will be relatively fast to paint. I think I will take them in between the other troopers while the paint dries on those.

River Trolls completed

I am happy to report that the river Trolls now are completed.
Just finished adding the three different washes or glazes on them. First I used Nuln Oil on the metal hook that the barfing troll holds in his hand. The second layer of wash was Agrax Erthshade that went on the wood, rocks, finns and the ragged beard on their bodies. All the green on their bodies were finished off with Thraka Green.

I'm quite happy with the brown wash on the rock, and I think i will use that for other simple weapons in the future. I would also love to use it on all my towers, but somehow I don't think that is very economic. I will have to do some calculations when the time comes...

That's it for now, tomorrow I start to work on finishing up some 40K projects.

Forgive me people, it's been too long since my last blogpost...

First a little update on the buying front.
Renewed my White Dwarf subscription and got the exclusive model. This year I do not have any plans at all for the mini, a Peter Jackson director dwarf is not something I feel I can fit in to my dwarf army.

Also walked out of the store with two Imperial Guard artillery pieces, the Basilisk mobile artillery platform. One old box and one new, only difference between them seem to be the size of the box (the old one is a little bit bigger).
And then I brought with me an Ogre Thundertusk/Stonehorn model. Not sure what it will be yet, but I will get to that when I get to building it.

and now...
Trolls! They are finally all painted up and all glued together.
I am sad to report that the deep water troll face (the dangling light) broke off while the trolls were being stowed away. Makes me a bit sad, but then at least I am 100% sure what I should use as one head for the next 3 trolls.
All I am going to do with them now is to let the glue dry, then give the trolls their wash.

I finally got around to pack up my lightbox, and my wife have used it with some success on taking some scrapbook pictures. So I will take pics of the trolls in that, and post them here this weekend (maybe even before that).

My plan now is to do my 40K project, as I do one Fantasy and one 40K and then one Fantasy again, one 40K and so on...
For my 40K project I will try to finish off some of my half painted stuff, like the imperial Guard Heavy weapon Squad, the Kommissars, and some Space Marines.
I have a bunch of Space Marines just needing a shoulderguard painted and some wash added, and I will see what I can do about that.

Troll update

I'm sitting here working on painting my trolls, while my wife is working on painting the windowstill in the kitchen. I'm not sure she feels that it is the optimal sharing of work, but it works fine for me and she was the one wanting to paint anyway.
I have finished the troll torsos and painted most of the arms. Working on details now, and hope to start gluing arms on to the trolls tomorrow.
What I see right away, is that I will need to use some liquid greenstuff on the arm sockets in order to make it look smooth, but it won't be too much work. Will need to paint some base color after that, so I might not be done with the trolls until the beginning of next week.
I'm still pretty happy with the colors, and feel confident making another batch of 3 Trolls with the same color scheme at a later time.