WIP Swooping Hawk - nebula/star pattern

I have hit that point where I have too many projects (several of which are just in my head for the moment) and so I need to work through the paint queue and clear the decks.

Next up - Swooping Hawks.

I'm back! WGPL and GH special weapons done

Its been a bad 4 weeks, involving two trips to hospital for me, my daughter being home with one of those child hood viruses, and my dog passing away. Not fun, so not much blogging from me.

But I'm finally coming out the end of that bad patch, and have gotten some hobbying in for my space wolves.

Drop pod finished - Death from Above!

The third, and definately last drop pod is done, and so I'm now ready to rain power armoured little mens down upon my cunning and dastardly opponent's back field.

I have previously only ever fielded a single pod, which is more useful as a distraction than a solid threat.

Fire Dragons done

The 3rd drop pod is going sloooowly, but is progressing. To alleviate the boredom of painting the same 5 panels repeatedly I decided to do something with my friend's old school Fire Dragons looking at me from the painting queue.

I'm quite happy with the result, particularly the OSL on the eyes as a balance to the dark red/brown of the body. Thanks to DaveG for introducing me to basic colour theory concepts!

Dire Avengers

I confess to having alot of fun painting my friends 90's era Eldar.

Here is the second squad of aspect warriors I've done - Dire Avengers.

SW Drop Pod #2 of 3 done

Given Space Wolves are my first 40k love, they haven't gotten alot of painting attention from me in the last few months.

With the Knight done, it was time to crack through the painting queue of grey plastic in my cupboard of shame - I bought 2 drop pods in September last year after the new SW codex dropped to bring the total number to 3.

Oathsworn Knight

I have finished the Imperial Knight, after about a year, and am pretty happy with the result.

Battle Report: SW+IK vs Squat Hearthguard (SM) 1500pts

My friend and I finally got a chance to play - first 7th ed battle of 2015 sadly. We had both been painting up units for the game: me with my Imperial Knight, and him with his awesome custom Squat Hearthguard (counts as space marine).

The actual game itself turned into a bit of a pantsing - it was my friend's first game using the SM codex and his army and we were both a bit rusty. So I won't go into an in depth battle report but will let the pics give an overview. Lists and stuff after the break!

Skitarii & Decals

The Imperial Knight is getting closer and closer to being done. I headed into my FLGS on the weekend hunting for microset and microsol, which they didn't have and picked up some Vallejo gloss varnish, decal fix and decal medium. more on that later!

While I was there I completely gave into temptation and picked up a Codex: Skitarii and a set of Skitarii data cards (which in hindsight I probably didn't need as I only plan on running Skitarii as allies).

WIP - IK ready for decals & weathering

A slight delay to blogging this month, mainly due to my camera being broken - my daughter loves playing with it and I don't think the zoom was designed with an excitable 2 year old in mind. Photos this week are via a tablet, so apologies in advance for photo quality.

Work has been insane the last few months, so very little actual gaming has happened this year, but I'm continuing to make progress on the painting front.

IK - Does Sir dress to the left, or the right?

I still need to clean up the detail on the Knights body (so many wires) so decided to do a test fit of the plating to determine at what point the detail became hidden from view.

WIP: Imperial Knight rises

More progress - I'm pushing through the lack of motivation a little at a time, and as I started going beyond jut the Boltgun Metal and Tin Bits I can start to see him taking shape.

Imperial Knight progress & motivation

The Imperial Knight continues. Slooowly.

I've passed through stages 1 and 2 and caught myself veering into 3 and possibly 4 recently. I recognise the signs because I don't think I've ever painted or kitbashed a mini without even a 5 minute "this isn't working, OMG I suck waaaaah" moment.

Blast from past - my Blood Bowl team from 90's

Work has been pretty intense the last month, so hobbying has been slow (although there has been some progress on the Imperial Knight).

Last weekend while decluttering my man-cave I unearthed my 2nd edition Blood Bowl - trip back in time both in terms of very silly & fun rules as well as some pretty awful teenage painting skills.

 

While I continue on slowly painting the Knight, here for your entertainment are some fine 90's minis that deserved better.

WIP - Imperial Knight based and paint applied

The Imperial Knight reached a big milestone this weekend, in that it was actually based and then undercoated black.

Nekkid Knight. The plan is to undercoat the plates white so the yellow in the heraldry (House Hawkshroud) is a bit easier to paint. That's the theory anyway.

Terrain - Ruined barricades finished

Last weekend I managed to get a few hours free to finish off the ruined barricades terrain. Same approach as last time - dry brushing and some weathering pigments to finish.

I'm reasonably happy with how these turned out and they'll hopefully look good on the table. More importantly hopefully they will give a little bit more cover.

I have been planning to use 2 of the 6 resin pieces on my Imperial Knight's base, so this little side project gave me a bit of a feel for painting the resin. This helped me get off my butt and make some progress on the Knight this weekend. I'll post some WIP pics of that later in the week.

More ruined barricade pics after the break.

Oldhammer impulse buy

Nostalgia is basically the main reason I am still into little painted mens.

Ironically I never actually played 40k until 2008 (being primarily a 2nd ed Blood Bowl player which was cheaper), but during the 90's would read through White Dwarf and drool over the 'Eavy Metal pictures and the battle reports, and most of all wanted a Space Wolves army of my own.

Striking Scorpions done

The wraithbone bases were the final ingredient, and I'm declaring the Striking Scorpions done.

These guys were a lot of fun to paint after 6 years of shadow-grey power armour and green skin. For me, the 1990 Jes Goodwin sculpts (prototypes shown in WD125 May 1990 - coincidentally the same WD issue announcing the GW Design Studio was joined by a scruffy Andy Chambers) are full of character.

Terrain test piece - Ruined Barricades.

Despite completely failing in our goal to play 1 game a month, my fearless and cunning opponent and I have actually been making some hobby progress.

After the last Ork vs Flesh Tearers game, we decided we needed more terrain on the board, particularly LOS blocking terrain. We held a late night terrain building session about 2 Fridays ago, and managed to avoid cutting off fingers, asphyxiating ourselves on fumes or setting anything on fire. Flawless victory.

Wraithbone bases arrive from Poland

A small package of nerdiness arrived around lunchtime today - the Microart wraithbone bases for my friend's Scorpions (and perhaps one or two other eldar?).

I placed the order just after Christmas, so that's about 3 weeks via the cheapest shipping method from Poland so I'm pretty happy with that turn around.

WIP: Imperial Knight right arm magnetised

I was given a free morning by my lovely wife who took my daughter out to visit a friend, so I chose to spend my few hours of freedom being very mature and responsible and playing with toy soldiers!

I want to be able to field my Knight with either the thermal cannon or battle cannon, as I'm only ever going to be buying/painting one of these babies - so playing with magnets it is!

Battle Rep: 1500 point Ork Kan Wall vs Flesh Tearers (new BA codex)

In the last week of 2014 my regular opponent of awesomeness managed to catch up for an actual game of 40k.

He was taking the new Blood Angels codex out for a spin by updating his Flesh Tearers' 5th Ed Descent of Angels list (changes mainly involving swapping out the Reclusiarch for Astorath, replacing his Devestators and Whirlwind for a squad of Scouts and a Vindicare Assassin).

Having finally completed my Morkanaut, my Kan Wall was finally hitting the table about 6 months after the new Ork Codex was released.