Adeptus sororitas army update

 Greetings all.

I only touched upon these with my last update post, but this past year a lot of my hobby time / budget has been sunk into adeptus sororitas. I have long awaited a plastic sisters range and GW did not disappoint! I love everything about the new range and seeing as there are only 2 new units (as opposed to models) in the new codex I hope the 9th edition book will bring some more units / models also. As mentioned, I have been holding off investing in the range until plastics were released, painting only a single test model years ago in sacred rose colours (mainly as I lived in Yorkshire for 15 years, for those who don;t know the white rose of York is what the sacred rose symbol is based on) but have ultimately decided to go with a very unique colour scheme for them.The collection is pretty comprehensive at this stage, consisting of every model in the range released to date. 

 

 

 

For the colour scheme I wanted something unique. I am increasingly finding one of the challenges of having so many different armies is coming up with a unique scheme for armies in order to keep things interesting. I decided to utilise both contrast and clear paints to achieve a unique, purple look to the models painted over a silver basecoat. The first layer was simply eidolon purple clearcoat and the subsequent 2 layers were mostly eidolon but with some of each of the two contrast purple colours mixed in. I applied by brush on the infantry and airbrush on vehicles. It took a bit of experimenting for me to come up with a scheme that I was happy with in terms of the additional colours. My experiments can be seen below:

 

 When I finally settled on a scheme I liked I set myself a hobby challenge to paint up as many as I could over a month in order to make some headway with the army. I was reasonably successful managing to get 25 models to the point where I was happy all they needed were decals and a varnish, with the rest of the army undercoated and ready for attention further down the line. Sadly, I had a disaster while undercoating about 1/4 of the army (too hot outside so they ended up furry) and so I'm left needing to paint strip them and respray before they can have any attention. 

 

There are a few models on the painting desk still (as below) but I am mainly focusing on other projects for now and hoping to revisit the sisters sometime next year. Ultimately, my hope is to use some water effects and resin on the models in order to make them appear to be standing / running in shallow water but I would need to experiment with this extensively before committing it to finished models. Cheers.

Ryza adeptus mechanicus army takes shape.

Greetings all.

Thought I would share my latest hobby offering. I decided to go with ryza for admech - I like the fluff, the name and, most of all, the colour. For the cloaks I went with a layer of troll slayer orange over jokaero and then shaded and highlighted with fire dragon bright and carroburg crimson. Lastly, a glaze with an old lava orange ink brought it all together. For the robots and other vehicles I used alclad candy lacquer with an airbrush. Tricky to get right as the coverage has to be total but worth it. The airbursh was also useful for the plasma effects. Lastly, they were all ryza transfers apllied then based with the martian texture paints, varnished (gloss for the bots). They are complete aside from some highlighting (ran out of time) and thus I will probably now move on to assembling the rest of the army. Very happy with the results and how they performed at the tournament, 

Cheers.

Tyranid hobby update

Hi folks,


Very brief post as hobbywise I'm engrossed with finishing all the astartes projects on the table at the mo. Nearly there. To make room for those projects on the display shelves I cleared away some big nid beasties which needed a few things finishing on them to get them to tabletop standard. Thought I would sneak in a few pics before banishing them to a box.

More hobby updates to come very soon, including flying bases and the third Eldar super heavy. Cheers.

Hobby pledges - 2nd half 2015

Hi guys, 

July is rapidly fading and my hobby output these past few weeks has been decidedly poor. I've been playing catch up with the SM/DA releases since getting back from hols and now seems an appropriate time to start thinking ahead to what the rest of this year may hold. 

New releases:

Now that the pace has slowed a little with the GW releases, it's nice to have some breathing room to actually get on top of things. That being said, there are sure to be some new codex (or even wave) releases this year with Tau being tipped to be next. As always I will try to keep up with releases finances permitting and use it as a good excuse to dust off and give some attention to said army. If a Horus Heresy set does indeed land this year that will be the signal to get Luna Wolves finished off finally.  

New purchases: 

If the new releases are a bit slow between now and the end of the year, there are a few things I'd like to invest in instead. Most of my armies are at the stage where only one or two units would finish them off and so adding the finishing touch to a couple would be great. Plus another Primarch, but not until....

Horus:

Lupercal has been sitting ready to paint on the shelf in front of me for a couple of months now and I hope to finally give him the attention he deserves. Once he's complete it will be time to move on to the next Primarch.

Astartes:

Hot on the heels of the last releases I've added a few fellas here and there. 5 sniper scouts to the Raven Guard and a general re-shuffle in several armies to grant the Salamanders, Ultramarines and Imperial Fists a demi-company each. (courtesy of the new devsstator/assault kits). I've also added a third tactical squad to the Dark Angels for the same reason. These guys are all about halfway through assembly with painting/basecoating to follow. 

Loose ends:

A few loose ends remain from my previous pledge, most notably the final licks of paint on the Eversor/Vindicare assasins, a couple of Tyranid Items to paint and, of course, that darn Ork Naut which still isn't quite finished. They'll be living on the desk until I pull my finger out and sort them.

Heroes of Badab:

While huge progress was made on these guys this year there is still a way to go. The vehicles still need the last of their basecoating and once that's done I aim to move on to painting up individual squads fully. I was hoping for end of this year but we'll see how it goes.

Necrons:

Still at the top of the pile, the crons will need a bit of assembly and then spraying with chrome / brass spray to get them rapidly up to scratch. However, I'd like to take it a step further and get them on some new, larger bases (which means getting rid of the old, resin ones) with translucent green crystals on. This leads nicely onto the last pledge:

Basing:

Hopefully the next 6-12 months will be overshadowed with basing. The new round and oval bases have allowed a lot of scope for reinventing my armies, most notably the abundant Marine armies. I've already started the process of updating them and hope to continue this until ultimately they are all sorted. My criteria is pretty simple: tau/eldar/humans/scouts go on 25mm, Marines/Necrons/Nobs (undecided on boys) go on 32mm. Some of the armies (Salamanders, Iron Hands) are on resin bases, and so for the sake of uniformity I'm going to get ahold of some 25-32mm ring converters to bring them in line also. Quite the undertaking, but as I've already seen (most notably with the Heroes of Badab) it's well worth it for the effect.

While on the topic of bases, the other basing project I hope to get on top of is the flyer basing project I'd envisaged some time back. About half the flyers I own still need interesting bases to live on, and I'd like to commit a weekend sometime to sorting them out. Tau I'd like to have an Arizona-style rock formation to rest the flyer atop; Space wolves a snowdrift; Orks a swamp of dead trees and mud; Dark Angels a forest; Grey Knights some Imperial ruins; Necrons an obelisk and Imperial Guard some vehicle ruins. 

That's all for now. On the surface of things it doesn't seem that unachievable, but when you factor in exams, unpredictable releases schedules and general life bits n bobs we'll just have to see how it goes. Nice to have some targets set though. Cheers for now.

Guest spot army showcase: Nurgle marine army by 'Old Two Eyes'

It's been a while since Dan (AKA old two eyes) last posted some of his work here and so I am thrilled to be able to once again show off his disturbing talent for all things Nurgley. His previous work can be found HERE. I'll hand over to Dan now to explain a bit more about his latest brainchild. Cheers.

'Since my last chance to post here I've been busy with plenty of plague marines- my first experience building or playing with any kind of space marines- lots of fun. They look great alongside my nurgle daemons and are the start of a project to have armies of both daemons and c:sm for all of the four chaos gods.

 

First of my Lord of Nurgle, a stern character, based upon the classic warhammer kit with a few additions. Not sure if he's survived a game yet (4 goes so far) but he has killed a Wraithknight and an Ork Warboss so I've no complaints.

Next up my Sorceror, basic FW kit with the spare axe-blade from the warhammer nurgle lord. Dynamic and obese at the same time- the model is a real favourite of mine.

Four squads of five plague marines- plenty of green-stuff,  weathering, typhus corrosion, a plethora of washes and  shiny varnish. Just the way I like to paint- forgiving of mistakes but with an atmospheric end product.

Mutilators! Ogryn bodies and centurion siege drills. First saw action last week and chewed up a Morkanaut before falling under a tide of killer kans. Again a pleasure to build and paint.

Obliterators- centurion bodies with landraider flamestorm guns and zombie heads. Whilst the mutilators look grim and determined, these guys are cursed living relics and look suitably rotten and squalid.

Sneak peaks of works in progress...

 

A forgefiend (have another like this half-built), a Heldrake and my counts-as Eversor, a hyper-infectious mutant. The latter fits the assassin's rule-set like a glove- he'll barrel in spewing bile and smashing heads before probably exploding. The 'come the apocalypse' rules may be detrimental but again are supported by the fluff- his own allies know well enough not to get too close to him! I've also got 4 rhinos, 3 vindicators and a bunch of cultists on the go. Plenty to keep me busy... Thanks Jamie for posting up my stuff!'

Eldar army gallery

Hi chaps,

Finally got around to getting some decent photos of the Eldar contingent I painted up for Blog Wars 6 last year. It represents about 1/3 of my Eldar so there's a fair way to go in terms of finishing the army but obviously some of the units are pretty core to the army, such as Wave serpents, and so are likely to see action more frequently. Without further ado here's the photos. Fingers crossed I'll have some necron to add in about a weeks time. Cheers.