Beware of angry dwarfs...

Last week I found a guy on the web that was giving away his Warhammer miniatures and some old White Dwarf magazines.
The way I read the description it looked like it was about 30-40 dwarfs and a few cannons, but when I got everything home yesterday it was so much more.

First it was some very nicely painted Bretonnian knights, and there also was an unpainted metal Lady, sitting sideways on her saddle and a plastic horse that was unassembled. There were also two bases with poles from the men-at-arms or archer set.

I also found a Vampire Counts batallion box, with some skeletons, and what I immediately took for being zombies but might actually be Crypt Ghouls. Still it is a chance that what is in the box now is different from what came in the box originally so I guess I'll find out what it is as painting gets done. The reason I'm thinking zombies is that the weapons on the sprues matches the weapons that the zombies have. Might be a mix, I'll find out for sure as I assemble in the future. Whatever I can build from these sprues I am sure I can work it in to my Chaos warrior army as the mages can summon the dead. And what is more dead than ghouls, zombies and skeletons? This will be really nice sometime in the future...

One little box included several wood elves, and at least one pack of dryads. These are all assembled and looks to be expertly painted. I will not start to play that army, but since the minis are so lovely painted I might keep them either for diorama purposes or just for taking pictures.

Then it was the dwarfs, and oh what a sight... A solid mix of old and new. Some beautiful metal dwarfs and some just as beautiful in plastic. They came in the Battle for skull pass box, so I guess a lot of the plastic dwarfs came in that box. Among the metal dwarfs were some Miners, some Thunderers with really nice weapons, and some cannons and crew.
I just got to brows the content a bit yesterday night, but I will use the afternoon today to look more closely and see what units I have.
Some of the dwarfs were unpainted, some were primed, some partially painted and a lot of them were quite expertly painted.
I have decided that I will not repaint the dwarfs just for the heck of it. If I can create units of the ones that are painted I will use them as is, and then I will do my very best to paint all my future dwarfs up to that same standard.
If the dwarfs can't be used in a unit as they are, I will try to repaint them so that I can add them in to existing units or in new units with the dwarfs I have on my shelves.
I also got some converted dwarfs that has hoods and looks like men of the forest, so they will form a ranger company. I'll see how many dwarfs fit this bill, and if necessary I will try to convert a few more to make up one ranger unit.
But no matter what I end up with I have gotten a lot of very nice models for free, and I look forward to incorporating them in to my throng.

More dreadnougts

I decided to add more dreadnoughts to the mix.
On my desk now stands five dreads primed and awaiting painting and the adding of some small parts like like the armour on their legs and heads for the dreads where heads are visible.
I have two Venerable Dreadnoughts for my Grey Knights, one armed with a twin linked lascannon and the other with a plasma cannon. They both have a powerfist for their other arm.
The third dreadnought is really a Blood Angels Furioso Librarian dreadnought, but I have removed his blood drops, so he can be used either with the Grey Knights or as I have originally planned with the Gatekeepers. There he will stride to war alongside my Venerable Chaplain dreadnought.
He is armed with a power claw and a force weapon (spear like thing). In the Gateeepers he will be a Venerable dreadnought.

Then I have two dreadnoughts that definitely are for the Gatekeepers, and that is my two Ironclad dreads. I am not sure how their arm configuration will be yet, as I need to check the rules as to what are allowed to use in combination with each other But I have one arm with a seismic hammer ,and one with a hurricane bolter (if I have understood it correctly, that is the arm with six bolters). Then I have a chainfist and a close combat weapon.

One of them has two hunter killer missiles, and at the moment the other one have none. I might add one though, as the other side is used for the search light.
The one with two hunter killer missiles also have what I like to call "reactive armor", same as are on the front of my one finished Landraider, and a banner.

Dreadnoughts and tanks

I finished my Eradicator for my Imperial Guard Tank company. It got a lascannon in the front turret and heavy bolters in the side sponsons. After I had assembled that, the tray I keep my tanks on before I spray them was full, so I decided to call it a day.
Still, I didn't want to stop building, so I started on my next Grey Knight project. I wasn't sure if I assembled a venerable or a regular dreadnought, but now I have decided it will be a venerable one.
I decided to use the panels with all the planet names on them, and I would think that a name was added to the dreadnought for each conflict it was involved in, and because there are a lot of planets I figure it has to be a venerable one. This will give me the chance to paint a lot of golden areas, and that will make it stand out from the Dreadnoughts of the Gatekeepers. The venerable dreadnoughts I have for my Gatekeepers use gold and white as detail colors, but the Grey Knight one will just use gold.
The heads for the dreadnought was not the same shape as the grey Knights themselves, oddly enough, but I guess the manufacturer just used the regular dreadnought sprues and put it in a new box. The instructions just said Space Marine Dreadnought. Still I found a head that looked a little special, so I will use that and paint it gold and blue as I did with the heads of my Purifiers.

While I was assembling one dreadnought I figured I might assemble one more, so I found one of my two Furioso boxes, and put together a Librarian Dreadnought for my Gatekeepers. I also looked on the shelf where I keep figures that are bought assembled and projects that are started but for some reason left unfinished and found two bags with Ironclad dreadnoughts that I prepped for assembly a long time ago but never manged to actually assemble. So the plan is to paint up all four sort of like an assembly line, but I will assemble the Ironclad ones on my next sitting.

The Grey knight Venerable dreadnought is missing the head and sarcofagus, but apart from that everything is assembled. The arms are not attached, but they're not supposed to be glued on anyway. The Librarian dreadnought is also armless, but everything else is glued together and ready for painting.

The five Grey Knight Purifiers are all done now. I added some extra details to three of them, and I am happy with the way they turned out. I will go over them to see that everything is painted up neatly before I take pictures of them and post here.

Before I called it a night, I also painted the gray on my first Demolisher. I think I have found a nice paint scheme with black and gray, but that remains to be seen when it's painted...
The idea is that the side sponsons and part of the back of the tank will be black, and the rest will be gray. Then I will take time to paint details like grills and filters in metallic colors and add some rust to the plowblades and maybe some other parts. I think I will try to see how the rust special paint works for this, as I would like to have several techniques to use for my different models.

The Easter holliday is almost over...

It's Sunday, so time for a weekly update. Since Friday (last update) I have bought and started the assembly of a Librarian in terminator armour to be the leader of my Grey Knights.
The mini is finecast and came with several options for the left arm assembly. I decided on using the same as on the box, a hand with the fingers slightly curved, as it looks like he is in the middle of casting a spell. It was a lot of cleanup on this model, but it was worth it. The casting and details are really nice. I have not attached the right arm to the body yet, as it seems smart to paint the back of the arm and the side of the neck before assembly.

I have done some production line building of tanks, and have assembled two finished Leman Russ tanks, and built the hull for the third. The two tanks that are finished are built on the Demolisher chassis and ended up as a Demolisher and an Executioner. Both these tanks got dozer blades. The third hull is a battle tank chassis, and will end up as an Eradicator.

I have four more battle tank chassis to assemble, and the plan is to make one or two as Eradicators, to make up a full unit with them. Then I would like one more Vanquisher, and the rest will be battle tanks.
Most of my tanks have heavy bolters as a support weapon in the front and also on their side sponsons. The exception is the Vanquisher with my Knight Commander, that has a lascannon in the front and meltas in the side sponsons and my lead Demolisher that also have meltas in the side sponsons.
I'll see what the remainder of the tanks will be outfitted with...

Whirlwind finally assembled, and some more updates...

At the same time as I built my Vindicator that I finally finished last week, I started on a Whirlwind. This was just partially assembled, and it's been standing on the shelves for a long time. But after seeing the finished Vindicator I was inspired to fix the Whirlwind as well. So this morning I took it down and did the final assembly on it. So it's now ready for painting.
I plan to give it a basecoat of black, and then paint it up the same way as the Vindicator. It will not be as dirty as the Vindicator though, as these vehicles usually stay in the background and send rockets on to the battlefield from a safe distance.
I chose the version with the most rockets, but reading the rulebook I can't figure out what version that is (Vengeance or Castellan missiles). Maybe I'll find it in the older books...

I have also gotten quite a long way with my Grey Knights. They ended up Kantor Blue (the darkest blue in the current Citadel paint range) with gold details, and I think they will be quite cool. I am still working on the fluff as to why they are blue as "i suck at painting metal" probably won't work.
They have all the Grey Knights insignia, so there are no doubt that they are real Grey Knights, it's just that their armour is painted differently.
They are all assembled and painted up, but I need to attach extra stuff like purity seals (I expect they have quite a few) and inquisitorial icons.

My first tree is just missing paint on the top of the leaves (underside is painted) and a wash. The base is almost ready, just need to fix the edge. Before I do that I need to figure out if I want it to be one color (probably black) or if I want the colors on the top to come down over the edge. I am leaning towards the last solution at the moment as I think that will look best when put on a table.

I have also found the other Inquisitors that I have and placed them on their bases, and cleaned them up. Except from one acolyte that is metal, they are all resin. Resin means a lot of cleanup in the beginning and that is done now. I also fixed one more metal Commissar to his base while I was on the roll.

This means I have some minis to spray, so I thought I should take the opportunity to spray some more tanks at the same time, so I think I will assemble the last Demolisher with plowblade, and then I'll see what other versions that comes out of it. I have two boxes of Demolisher bodies, and five (I think) of the regular battletank version.

First Vindicator ready

Last week I spent most of my Warhammer-time trying to get my competition entry ready.
I had a Space Marine Vindicator that was assembled but not painted, so I painted it Kantor Blue, gave it a heavy wash, and then used a sponge to add chipping paint, rust and some battle damage.
What I learned right away was that there is a lot of difference in the kind of sponge you use. I used one from an old Blister pack on my white masterclass, but this time I used a makeup sponge that was a lot finer. This meant more paint on the same spots and not that chipped result.
I also learned that you need darker wash on darker sufaces, so next time I will go directly to the darkest wash to avoid getting to many layers of wash on the model.

I had to make a base to put it on, and I worked with cork for my first time. I got a picture frame, took out the glass and replaced it with a cork sheet. Then I build the base up on that.
The Idea was to make a grimy battlefield where the Vindicator would fit in, and that worked quite well. I would have liked to make a battlefield with a lot more debris, so it would look like the Vindicator had blown up a wall or driven straight through one, but I only used two ruined top wall sections in the end. I also glued down a few iron girderes and a drainage pipe. The pipe was half of an industrial chimney, and with the help of some technical paint I managed to make it look like poison was coming out of the pipe. That part of the table was perhaps the one I was most satisfied with.

Just like last time I didn't get to the top three in the competition, but there were nine very nice entries, and I can see why the top three got their places.

This time though, I took the pictures before delivering the entry...

Here is the base seen from the top. You can clearly see the different height levels on the cork, and that is something I will work on for future bases. At the top of the picture you see the two wall sections.

My favorite part of the base, the pipe with toxic waste flowing out. This is something I will try to use on other bases as well, it leaves a nice contrast point for the brown base.

The Vindicator making its way through the breech. Notice that the plow blade has the same dirt as the base.

The Vindicator seen from the side.

Just a pic taken with flash to show that the interior is painted up as well. Here you really see the dirt on the chassis of the Vindicator.

Picture taken from a little more distance without the flash.

Here is a detail of the front plowblade. I think this picture gives a good impression that the Vindicator has worked its way up the slope. You can also see the rust on the blade, and it does not look like something you want to see attacking you...

And finally, a pic of the diorama from the top.

First building painted and washed

Since I was on the roll with the pictures, I felt it was about time to show this building as well.
It is mostly done with parts from the Manfactorum set, but since I mix up building parts a lot I can't be 100% sure. This pic is taken top-down, just to show the wash effect on the walkway.

Here is a picture of the front of the building, showing a little detail as well.

 This pic is in here just to show how the other wall looks like.

And finally a pic of the back or inside of the building, just to show that it is painted there as well...