Long awaited update

A long time has passed since my last update. I will once again try to get better to use this blog for what it was intended.

I thought I would use this update to give you  little update on all my armies, and next time I do the same then hopefully things will show that I have achieved something...


We'll start with Age of Sigmar (Warhammer FB in the labels in this blog), and what they call The Grand Alliance of Order

The Sylvaneth army has been primed again, this time with a light primer, and I will paint almost everything but the leaves with the new Contrast paints. I have a dark brown and a dark yellowish brown that I will use for the wood parts and then I will see how I will paint the occasional weapons they have that is not wood. I will use autumn colors like orange and browns for the leaves with an occasional green leaf in the mix. I have quite a lot left to build, but I also have some of the models painted with the contrast paints. I have an idea on how I will make the bases look like Forrest, and I will try it out on a few of the smaller trees. I name all the characters in this army for the Latin names for different trees,

Duardin (Dwarfs) this army is an old one, and I have several painted units of Dwarfs that are ready for games. Some of them are not legal units in the game anymore as the Duardins have been robbed of most of their units in the latest years. Most of the painted Dwarfs were painted up for my Armies on Parade entry a few years back (2017) and this is an army I would love to revisit and finish more of. I have a big box of old metal Dwarfs that are painted  but that I would like to repaint to get them in my own colors and style, and I also have lots of boxes with units still on sprues. I even have several units that are partially built or partially painted. When I started this army they were called Dwarfs, then they became Duardin, and now the army is included in Cities of Sigmar where they work together with former Empire troops. I don't think I have much Empire stuff, but I have several Bretonnian Knights that I can paint up and use instead. 

The latest addition to this army are the old metal Slayer figures, they are in the mail from different sellers in Europe.
I have an old fortress that I could build and with a few modifications use as a home town for this army. I just need some plasticard or something similar so that I can have some cannon emplacements along the walls. The leader of my dwarfs are The Low King Thorir Thorgrimsson, and I will eventually also make a human General for the human elements.

An army that is sort of a steampunk spin-off from the Duardin are the Kharadron Overlords.
I plan to have a little army of them, but it might grow big over time. I have several boxes of these short dudes to assemble and paint. So far I have started to paint some characters to try and find the look for my army, and I have also painted up one of their smallest sky vessels that I just have to add the two parts together and do the base to call it done. But I will wait a little bit with the base until I have decided on how my army will look overall.

Another duardin race is the Fyreslayers, and they were something I had planned to build a lot of, but now I am thinking of selling what I have as I don't think I have the time or the interest to make this in to an army. For now the boxes of unbuilt minis is in a big cardboard box in my basement. Instead of having a Fyreslayer army, I will have a unit of old Slayers in my Duardin army.

From The Grand Aliance of Destruction I have two armies.

Ogor Mawtribes is what was called Ogres when I started with the army. I have not planned for a huge army here, but I do have quite a lot of units still. So far I have only finished one unit of Ogor Gluttons (they too had a completely different name when I stated) and I have a unit of Leadbelchers that are assembled and awaiting priming and painting. I look forward to working more with this army as they really appeal to me.

The second army I have from this alliance is my Gloomspite Gitz. The idea for this army was to make a fun-to-play Greenskin army without the Orcs as I tried making a Black Orc unit that ended up looking like they all had chronic back-pain. Like all my armies it has taken me many years to not finish, and in the meantime Games Workshop came out with rules for just such an army that I wanted to play, called the Gloomspite Gitz.
This army do have some finished units, but still most of the units needed are in boxes. I have lots of Night Goblins that are assembled but not primed, but I also have several of the newer units that are primed and just waiting to be painted. The army will consist of lots of Goblins (and most of them Night Goblins) at least one Giant (Aleguzzer Gargant as they call them now) and this one is fully painted and based. I also think I have one more still in his box, but I might make that one to fit with my chaos army but I have to see what happens. Might be cool to do some conversion stuff and use him in this army.
I also have different kinds of Trolls (or Trogoths) that will fight along side the Gloomspite Gitz.
The leader of the army is the old figure Skarsnik with his giant pet squig. In my army he is called Turnip instead, and his squig is named Blabla.

Finally I have what could be used for several armies from The Grand Alliance of Chaos.
Personally I would love to use everything as one big undivided army, but they can also be used as smaller armies worshiping one specific Chaos God.
I have several of the newer stuff for Khorne and Nurgle, and they are made to look like they worship their specific god. But I also have regular Chaos warriors painted up that worship these Gods.
I have a small following of Slaanesh, and they can either fight with followers of other chaos gods or alongside Deamonettes. I even have quite a big fortress for the Chaos forces.

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.

Some more Super Heavy progress

I've managed to get some more progress on the Super Heavy tanks. The first Baneblade is now almost finished. What remains now is some details on the people in the turret and then I need to figure out how I want to paint the shrine at the back of the tank. Since this shrine is the same on all the super heavy tanks, I've decided to move on to the Stormlord and come back to it once I figure out how I want it to look.

In my last blogpost I said I had an idea on how to add company colors for the tanks but that I was unsure on how to do it for the tanks not having a traditional turret. I tried out a solution on the Stormlord, and it worked just as I wanted it to, so I will do the same for my Shadowsword. At the moment they are the only two tanks with this turret construction.

When it comes to the Stormlord I have painted the thread guards and the sides of the tank, and all of the grey have been re-painted from a paint bottle. The tracks are also painted.
What is left now is a lot of details both big and small, and I will start working on that tomorrow. There are no people in the turret on this tank, so there are not that many intricate details as on the other tanks. I will also start to work on the Hellhammer. It is only primed with grey spray, so it will need the full treatment. It is the same with the Shadowsword.
The Baneblade that has been painted before, but that I need to give a touch up to make it in to the right colors was originally primed black and then painted grey so that "only" need the Caliban green and black treatment along with new details. It will take time to get everything done, but it is nice to see that there are progress even though it is rather slow.

Alongside the Super Heavy project, I also work on my smaller mechanized units, and I have finished a Hellhound and almost finished a Manticore. It was while working on the Hellhoud I found out just how good the Khorne Red looked with black and dark grey, and I think I will have to get two more to paint them the same way.

The next small unit I'll work on is a Chimera, as this is the only vehicle that I will have many of that I haven't painted up yet (well, the Taurox is also such a vehicle, but I don't plan to have that many of them).

From before I have finished two Basilisk tanks and a Hydra, but the Hydra needs to have the guns on its left side glued back on as it broke off just in the thinnest rotating part when it fell to the floor in a tragic accident.

All my smaller vehicles and Leman Russ tanks are either primed black or grey depending on when they were primed (some were primed a long time ago), but the newest ones are primed grey with black turrets as I plan to paint them now.
I think what I need to do now is to establish the look of the Leman Russ sides. I have not painted them like I do with my super heavies, so I need to paint the side sponsons on one of them in Caliban Green to see how it will look. Hopefully it will work as good as with the super heavies because I would love to have a strict uniformed look for all my vehicles.
I am also trying to think up what parts to paint black and green on my Tautox vehicles to give them the same look. Maybe I should try to paint up the one I have primed to see how I can do it.

Super heavy progress, and a discovery...

My wife's working nights this weekend, so I decided to take a trip to Games Workshop in Oslo and sit there for the day an work on painting.
The good thing about being there is that if I get distracted from my painting it is to build a new set and that is also helping my armies grow. If I get distracted at home I might sit and read a book or watch something on TV or on my computer and that does not finish armies.

Today I brought with me the hull of my second Baneblade Super heavy, Steel Fury, and managed to get a lot done. I would say the tank i about 75% painted now. There are just a few details left on the hull, but there are a lot of small details on the tower and this will take some time to do.

While working on the hull I discovered there was some places where the grey spray hadn't covered the black primer well enough. So I took out a pot of the same grey color and started to paint, only to discover that the grey spray called Mechanicus Standard Grey is a lot lighter and a little more blue than the pot with the same name. So I ended up painting the entire hull again with a brush trying to make it a thin coat.

I have also done some work on the turret, painting the top and the top hatches. Tomorrow I will start to work on more details on the turret, I have some plans to paint some of the armor panels on my tank turrets in different colors marking their designation in the squad, and I will look for a way to do that with my super heavies. I know how to do it for the Baneblades and the Hellhammer as they have normal looking turrets. But the Shadowsword and Stormlord have turrets that just extend up from the hull. 

I think I have an idea how to do it for them as well, and I will try it on the Stormlord tomorrow.

Progress on th Super Heavies

I started to paint up my Super Heavy tanks this weekend, and decided on the color scheme for all my vehicles. The sides will be black as they have been for a little while. The hinges at the bottom will be Caliban Green, this has been decided for a while but not implemented before now. Also this weekend I decide that the side sponsons also should be painted the same color. This will be done for both the Super Heavies and the Leman Russ tanks (all my Leman Russ tanks have side sponsons). For the vehicles based on the Chimera chassis, there is a square plate where they have the Imperial Eagle or the winged scull and a banner where you can add a vehicle name, and this plate will be green on these vehicles.
Also all the turrets will have a black background color, but then some parts will be painted in other colors. For my Super Heavy tanks I think the top of the turrets will have the same color as the main body of the tank, and that is Mechanicus Standard Grey.
For the Chimera style chassis I have used XV-88 to paint the soft cover around the front gun. I will also use that for the seats in the cockpits on the Valkyries and the driving compartments of the Manticores (if I choose to make them open topped).

For the Baneblades and the Hellhammer the armorplates between the hull and the turret will also be painted black. I have not yet decided if the curved cover over the viewports will be painted black like they are on the picture below or if they will be Caliban Green. The part of the viewport that is supposed to be the armored glass will be painted in a very light blue, but I don't remember the name of the color right now.

This is the front of my only Stormlord. This has a different tower that is raised directly on the hull, and here the armorplates around it are all painted black, and this will also be done on my Shadowsword.
I've added a green shield on the front of the main gun, as I just thought it would look good. Here you can see how the turrets on the side sponsons are also painted black like all other turrets.

The light is not the best, but here you see the side of a tank with the side and sponon painted.
The Imperial Eagle will probably be painted silver, and the ladder at the back will be Leadbelcher.
I will also use  Leadbelcher for the tracks, and I might use it for the "wheels" as well but I might also fin another metal color for those.

At the same time as I am painting these, I am working on my first Manticore that is not done anything with from before, so it is being painted from the primer as the Super Heavies. And I am also putting my final touches on the first Hellhound I built.  

Pics will follow (hopefully in better light) when the vehicles are done.

New Super Heavy tank in the making...

This is the hull for my second Baneblade Super Heavy tank. I had sort of forgotten that I started writing this post, so now it is waiting to be painted up after I primed it this afternoon.
This Baneblde has been given the name "Steel Fury" and will be commanded by Captain James Johnston Pettigrew. This picture gives an impression of how big these tanks really are as there are Imperial Guard officers standing on each side of it.

On the left of the tank is Captain William Joseph Hardee, he is nicknamed "Old Reliable" and is the commanding officer of the 1st Ratling Auxillia who is part of the 1st Abhuman Regiment.

He is armed with a sniper rifle and is an expert marksman. One needs to be in order to have the respect of the Ratling snipers. 

On the right is a fellow captain, but I am not yet sure who he is or what regiment he serves with. 

Astra Militarum recovery vehicle

I finally got around to build my recovery vehicle for my Walpurgian 3rd Army. I am not sure if I can use it in a game, but if so it must be with Forgeworld rules for the Trojan that they produce. 

After all I've made my own because I can't afford buying from Forgeworld and because I am not too happy working with resin.

I originally wanted to use the big crane from the Galvanic Servohauler set, but it looked too big no matter how I tried to fit it. I thought of cutting it down, but I would have to cut it so much it wouldn't be functional so I gave it up and decided to use that crane on another build in the future instead. There was an article in last month White Dwarf on how to use it as part of the industrial scenery so I might do that instead.

At the front, the vehicle has a big dozerblade that will help it to get to the stranded vehicles that needs service or recovery. It doesn't have lots of weapons as it needs to be light and carry a lot of equipment. But they do carry a heavy bolter mounted in the front and a heavy stubber by the hatch that can be operated by the driver when the vehicle is standing still.

This is what it looks like from the sides. It is mostly identical on both sides except one side has a pick and a tarpaulin that is folded up, while the other side has a shovel and a missile.
On both sides there are heavy chains so that vehicles can be rescued.

Here is the view from behind. I wish I could have found a better back gate for the vehicle, but I think I found an ok solution to it. Because of the grappling arm you can't see that there also is a towing hitch on the back. 

Here is a view from the top of the vehicle, details are sort of hard to see at the moment, but when it's painted up then hopefully everything will be visible. In the back there is a big toolbox on the floor and on the wall hangs a hook for when they need to tow a vehicle and a lasrifle for personal protection.

On the other side there are an oil barrel and fuel cans for refueling vehicles to get them back to base or just refill missing hydraulic or motor oil after damage. There is also a smaller lasweapon (the one that comes with the Basilisk sets) for personal protection for the other man in the back.

On the back wall I added an industrial sawblade that I believe is part of an ork set originally, and a fire extinguisher that came in the Galvanic Servohauler set. The middle section that the crane is connected to is the middle section for the Manticore missile rack that you don't use if you build the Deathstrike missile.

Here are the two men working in the back of the recovery vehicle. The man on the left is still missing rank and name, but he will get it before everything is painted up. I suspect he is a sergeant.

The fellow on the right is Captain Thomas Egenton Hogg, and he is a Squadron leader in the army all though he doesn't have much of a squadron to lead yet. But I might add some other vehicles at a later time, maybe a tanker of some sort, and he is probably also in charge of the crewmen working on repairs at the base.