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Thanks guys, I'm quite happy with how they turned out. Getting the models from GW was indeed a fething nightmare, so I dread finding the last Numenorian (and did I even have that last model, or did I miscount?)

I finished the RPE Skeleton Ballista and crew last night/early in the AM, so it's drying after a spray varnish outside. Supposed to be hot today, so it should all hopefully be dry this afternoon so I can add flock, etc and get some photos up tonight. I've still got the unrelated RPE Skeleton model that I intend to use as the Ballista Commander (for now at least) to finish - hopefully today, and then hopefully the 4 test Minos as well.

Para - I guess the preferred "look" of my marines comes from when I was your age and younger - Rogue Trader era, and then a resurgence of imperfect but pretty clean marines when 3rd Ed came out in my mid-20's. I reckon the "FW look" of the last couple of years has imprinted on you in the same way that the "RT look" imprinted on me. While I can really like and appreciate more heavily weathered marines (and your Howling Griffon looks great), I don't think I'd enjoy painting marines to look smooth and clean(ish) and then dirtying up and chipping the paint to that extent.

Imperial Guard, on the other hand, or anything "realistic"....





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It's unusual that I actually manage to start and finish something this quickly, though it helps that both of the kits I reviewed last week are pretty simple, and fall into two of my natural "speedpaint" categories - that of skeletons and simple fantasy war machines. Even though I was out of town for most of the week, I still managed to finish them off today - the ballista and crew in the early hours, and the Mage Knight model that I'm using for a commander just after lunch. Add a few hours for varnish, flock and tufts, and they're done! My second unit of Undead for the month's challenge. Now I better get some Gondorians painted in the next fortnight!



The Mage Knight model has a very "Oldhammer" feel to him in terms of his sculpt, pose and details, such as the integral shield. He really feels like one of the undead from late 2e WHFB to me, and is a lovely sculpt that I have no hesitation recommending that interested parties pick up. Especially given the cheap price of only £2.50. I really do like this guy. As his shield is smaller than the usual plastic add-on, I wanted to do something a little different with his shield, so went for a red field and a simpler, "scratchy" skull painted on using Dorn Yellow with VGC Off White over the top. I gave his cloak a per chevron field, (with a little red trim at the top edge) without a device to maintain a strong link to the colours of the Undead army (Black, Red, Brass, Iron and a bit of Aqua via the verdigris) especially since the other models in this batch don't really have much gear with which to maintain that link. The per chevron is also a little more interesting for a cloak than the usual halved or quartered that I've done in the past.



The Ballista had a little secret that I only discovered while working on the metal bracings and studs on the wheels - there's actually different detail on both sides, with a slightly more ornate side and obversely less so. I guess you can make the machine itself a tiny little bit more or less ornate, or simply have the less florid details on the inside of the wheels. Naturally, I only noticed this when it was way too late, so mine are mixed - not that anyone will ever notice, so it's cool. I'm not tearing the bloody thing apart! I've gone for woody colours here, keeping in the overall colour scheme of the army. If the model itself was more explicitly "undead" then I might have painted the "bow" as bone (like the Skull Chukkas) but this way it's a little more generic, so with a simple crew swap it can be used in almost any army on the table as needed. Both the "firing rope" skeleton and the ballista needed some height adjustment (via bending and a 60mm GW base) to ensure that his rope could slip onto the firing peg of the Ballista. The two crew are quite finely detailed, though simple. The Ballista crew are very “flat” or 2-D castings, if you know what I mean – with very little that can be bent to make them more 3-d (as I have pretty much always done when it’s been an option).



The faces don’t have the “evil eyes” of the “oldhammer”-era GW skeletons, though I’d hesitate to call them especially realistic either. I’d say that they were someone’s best attempt at doing “realistic” at the time, though – and that’s the better description of the style. Hopefully you can judge for yourselves via the photographs. Still, it's a great little kit for £6.95, especially when you're used to GW prices. These models have a nice, old-school vibe. Apparently RPE have a small-scale 28mm dwarfs Kickstarter coming up that looks like it'll be worth my time to back, as I'm quite liking the look of their preview models.



And as a tight unit. You can also see just how "flat" the crew are.

And I finally found those Brigade Skeletons this morning, too! I've now got 2 units of spearmen to clean, base and prime for March's challenge. Well, I only need to finish one of them, but we'll see if I can do better...

Finished the first four Minotaurs on the weekend. Just need to add either some flock or tufts and then photograph them - probably/hopefully tomorrow. Also started a dozen vikings (well, cleaned 'em up, glued them down to round Renedra bases and added some acrylic paste to build up the bases levels to the integral round ones.

Dude, you really knocked that ballista out of the park. Is that really a Ral Partha model? I may have to spend some more time looking around their webstore.

I love the stripes on the boltguns. Boltguns should always have stripes.

Yep, a Ral Partha model. I was surprised to see it as well. I was actually buying some old Bob Olley Ogres when I saw it and decided to grab it as well. Given the price it was an easy impulse purchase.

Here's those stripes again for you, Weety.

Something unrelated to painting challenges today - some Proof of concept models for the Minotaurs Chapter that I've been wanting to get around to painting sometime for the last several years. One of quite a few Space Marine projects that I've had percolating in my head in various ways for the last decade or so: Legion of the Damned, Mentor Legion, Iron Warriors, 30k Iron Warriors, Rogue Trader-style Crimson Fists, Space Wolves, Flesh Tearers, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Deathwatch. A couple of those have been started in some form or another (LotD, Mentors, Iron Warriors, Space Wolves, Flesh Tearers) while others have had a lot of parts gathered (the started ones, the rest, plus more).

So anyway - Minotaurs!



I wanted to try a reasonably quick "wash based" scheme inspired by Sasa0mg's Minotaurs. I've been going with a spray black, spray silver, zenithal spray of a brighter silver, 2 coats of Seraphim Sepia wash, and then a highlight of Vallejo Model Air Brassy brass. Later on, I've given them a subtle wash of watered down Coelia Greenshade for a subtle verdigris wash based on the Forge World Badab War books' artwork. I went with Silver/Iron for the chest eagles and such, along with red for eye lenses and gems. I wanted to minimise colours other than brass/bronze, red, black and "steel", so leather straps and bags are done in a red-brown, and only rarely green appear on lenses or on specific things like wreaths in green, or (some) skulls in bone.



I used a pair of Marines from the 5th Edition starter "Assault on Black Reach", though they seem near-identical to the 4th Edition starter models from "Battle for Macraggae". Clearly I wasn't paying a lot of attention when various Space Marines got dumped into figure boxes. The other two are from the 2nd Edition 40k starter. I'm actually not especially fond of them as models, but as cannon fodder/squad filler they'll be fine. This is why I decided that these guys would be V squad (also, fitting the transfer onto the embossed tactical arrows). Mino transfers are from Forge World and the squad number markings are from some very old (90's era) Ultras transfer sheets. Obviously everything has been rebased on 32mm round bases.

Anywho, I'm pretty happy with them and will continue with the same scheme. I've selected the rest of a squad worth and have started on a pair of them - using one of the many, many 2nd ed metal captains as the squad sergeant, and a metal 2nd edition flamer marine. The others will probably be additional plastic starter marines.

edit - deleted weird doublepost shenanigans....

Excellent skeleton warmachine

Very nice Mino's Az. Amazing how even the Macragge Marines look suited to 32mm bases. The freehand on the chapter symbol is superb, and brave of you to do it on the Tactical grunts.

I eagerly await some of the older metal Marines to come. All told, given the amount of Marine projects you have planned, how many unpainted Astarte's do you think you have?

Your wash based paint scheme for the Minotaurs sounds quite time-consuming, but the result is great.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Very nice Mino's Az. Amazing how even the Macragge Marines look suited to 32mm bases. The freehand on the chapter symbol is superb, and brave of you to do it on the Tactical grunts.

I eagerly await some of the older metal Marines to come. All told, given the amount of Marine projects you have planned, how many unpainted Astarte's do you think you have?

Oh no, the chapter symbols aren't freehand on these models - transfers! I did use Micro Sol and Micro Set on them to get a "realistic" look, and the Minos transfers were printed slightly off-centre, so they were "touched up" but they're transfers here still. Consistency and perfection with the markings is my priority with things that need to be uniform like Space Marines, so the only freehand will be on personalisation stuff. How many unpainted marines? It would easily be in the multiple high hundreds, and possibly over a thousand. Probably not 2k+, but I honestly don't know... it might well be. I was collecting each individual sculpt within my means for a long time, and still kinda do that - and then there's endless numbers of grunts.

Thanks Josh, it's actually pretty quick and painless by my standards. I can often get a bit hung up on things like that, so these are an easy, fast and straightforward way for me to do armour that comes up pretty decently, if a tiny bit rough.

Wow, that's a lot of marines. I generally find them fun to paint, but not a whole chapter's worth.

Just a lot of accumulation over the years. Plus wanting to do a bunch of different chapter-armies with them as well, I guess.

Any suggestions for an army list for these guys? Aside from these Tac marines, I've got a Dread, a Contemptor, the Minos Contemptor, the Minos Special Characters from FW, a Spartan LR, a captain's torso with a shield and a librarian model picked out to go with them so far. I'll also want to add a second Tac squad, probably some Terminators.. Sternguard? I can do a rhino or razorback, etc, but I'm not really keen on the whole "5 sternguard squads each with a rhino, 2 assault squads in drop pods" level of list building/uniformity.

I'm far more interested in fluffy and fun then "competitive" as the primary concern.

Well, the Minotaurs are pretty much anti-Astartes, and are quite melee oriented. Very well equipped and have a lot of MKVIII armour (which sadly, isn't particularly common in SM kits) and terminators. Also pretty good at siege warfare. So maybe have your boxy dreadnoughts as Ironclad? Dreadnoughts can now be taken in groups of 3 IIRC and that would be pretty frightening.

Nice job on the minotaurs Az

Thanks Jan. They're really nothing special individually, but they should create a nice group effect once I start getting full units and some heroes and specials done.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Well, the Minotaurs are pretty much anti-Astartes, and are quite melee oriented. Very well equipped and have a lot of MKVIII armour (which sadly, isn't particularly common in SM kits) and terminators. Also pretty good at siege warfare. So maybe have your boxy dreadnoughts as Ironclad? Dreadnoughts can now be taken in groups of 3 IIRC and that would be pretty frightening.

Yep, I've got/read the IA Badab War books. Getting Mk8 armour is difficult. I've got to find all my Anvil Industries parts that I ordered ages ago, but I might do a new order as well for a few more. I'm planning to have at least 2 Tac squads - the one made of older figures to "get rid" of them and one with lots of Greek/Spartan-style aftermarket parts. The boxy dread is an AoBR one (again, to "use" it) but the Contemptors will be Hekaton Aikos, with an option for one "Normal" Contemptor that can be armed with pretty much any options. I could use either a resin Contemptor or a Calth one. So probably a Vanguard and an Assault Squad rather than the Sternguard, you reckon?





I've got a metal torso (sans head, pack and weapon) of the guy with the terminator-honor tower power shield here ready to be assembled as well. I guess I could save him for a Templars (there's another one of those Marine armies I've collected models for!) force and use a different model as a base for a Minos hero. I do have this boxed set at least twice to play with. I chose him because of the leather crotch-straps,

Yeah Assault and Vanguard would be pretty nice. I have the tower SS guy as well for one of my many Company Master options. I was of the impression the axe was already part of the model? I may be wrong here as it's been a while since I put him together. Think he'd look ok if you had a spare round shield, then bling it up a bit and paint the chevron on it.
What weapons would you give your Contemptor dreads then? Already got multi-melta and assault cannon options covered with the Calth set, so what else do you have?

The axe hand is a separate piece. I was just going through some of my marine figures and parts and found that guy's torso with shield attached. I've got lots of the smaller historical-sized Greek shields from the Warlord kits, but they might look a little weedy on a marine Captain. I'd have to have a look. The termie shield is definitely attached to that sculpt's torso, though.

I'm not sure what to give the contemptors. Well, Hekaton gets the default plasma and CCW with bolter/flamer (I forgot which one's in there), but the other(s).. I've probably got all, or at least most of the contemptor options somewhere. Actually, after looking at the FW site, I don't have the Volkite and not sure about the Conversion Beamer. I'm 50/50 on the lascannon and don't think I have the chainfist, either. Huh. I've got fewer options than I thought... though I can always buy more as needed, I guess (once I've got enough stuff to make up another order) and just paint "around" any missing arms.

Basically, I've spent the past 3? years almost exclusively painting fantasy figures while slowly continuing to buy 40k in the background. The bloodthirsty nature of Minos doesn't seem to go with a

They look great!

I think Moloc needs an Honour Guard to ride in the Spartan with him and Ivanus. No need for more than about 5models. but they could be oh-so-awesome. Given the Spartan shields to simulate the Artificer Armour, Power Spears, Anvil do some awesome capes...

I really like them!

Hekaton dread has a built in heavy flamer on his ccw, just zoomed in on the pic, and you can just about see it. Might wanna put him up front in a game, or drop pod him since, if I remember right, he's pretty indiscriminate when it comes to killing things. Pretty much Kharn the betrayer if he was in a dreadnought lol.

For the 300esque bodyguard you could have them as TH/SS terminators maybe?

Thanks Slinky!

Angel and Para - Yeah, I figure that sometimes he can be Hekaton and other times just a regular nutter contemptor. Now I'm torn on whether to kitbash some blinged-out Vanguard-style marines or use Terminators. Hm...



And you've given me an idea. I'll need to check my bits, bigtime - but if it works it should be quite cool. I'll keep it to myself in case it falls apart.

Here's the WIP of the next two - 2nd edition metals. With luck, I'll get them finished this weekend. My actual first use of brass etch on the (former) captain. I've got to work out whether to paint his braid and gems red, or try to mix it up a bit more. I really want to keep these guys pretty hard to the core army colours with very little deviation, though... I might also do his kneepad in red and add a lambda - except I've been considering doing a different Greek letter on the right knee of the whole force as a campaign badge. Not sure which one, though. Have to do some more thinking....

Those actually look great for older minis, I'm not generally a fan of 2nd Ed type stuff but the painting sells these as minis that can definitely stand alongside the newer stuff. Love the bionic leg on that Captain.

Awesome. Really digging the Minotaurs.

EDC

Cool, more space marines, looking forward to them. I can't really advise you on the colors, markings, or game usefulness, but I'll be in the background here cheering you on just the same

You're not trolling me there, are you Grim? I'd usually have said "teasing" but I understand you've officially been labelled a troll, so I'm following protocol. Seriously though, I know you're not too fond of the Adeptus Astartes these days...

I actually don't have anything against space marines, I just haven't had fun painting them lately. Much better to left folks like you who will do a better job of it

No worries, Grim. I wasn't sure how much they were in your "bad books". Some people around here seem to have a bitter-breakup ex-girlfriend attitude towards them for some reason.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Yeah Assault and Vanguard would be pretty nice. I have the tower SS guy as well for one of my many Company Master options. I was of the impression the axe was already part of the model? I may be wrong here as it's been a while since I put him together. Think he'd look ok if you had a spare round shield, then bling it up a bit and paint the chevron on it.

As it happens, I was going through my Minos stuff tonight and saw the model again. 100 derp points to me - the ace is part of the model - the shield not so. I don't know how I managed to screw that one up, especially given that I had the thing in my hand just the day before - but I did.

At least it means that I can easily give him a nice Greek shield and helm and he'll be set. I ordered some Scibor shields and stuff last night, so 2-3 weeks and I can work on him. I guess I could do all but the shield, but I should finish some of the others first.

On the subject of Space Marines, have you seen the Deathwatch: Overkill minis? SO MUCH AWESOME.

Thanks Para, and evildrcheese. I'm not especially fond of a lot of the 2e metals, but mostly because of metal bodies + plastic arms is a bit painful, though they do tend to scrub up well. I guess the metals will still blend in decently as anonymous members of squads while the piles of sergeants and captains from the era have enough interesting points to them that they can still look good - as long as they're not painted in a 2e, overly-garish style. Well, Blood Angels in 2e style can still pass, but the rest look a bit worse for wear these days.

A pretty unspectacular update this time. More of a post to document the completion of more figures than anything else. I've just finished the last of these eight archers to form either a bunch of archers in LotR SBG, or a troop of Kingdoms of Men archers in my Gondor/Minas Tirith army for Kings of War.


Archers of Minas Tirith in SBG/Skirmish formation. No need for commentary or musings of paint descriptions. I've painted a pile of these guys and I've got another pile still to paint. Job's a good-enough-'un, so these few are now done and dusted!


Archers of Minas Tirith - Kings of War "Troop" formation. Another month's tally done (just). Now onto March's units!

The armour looks really impressive in them.