Okay, this is going to be mainly an image dump initially, with updates every once in a while... seriously, I can't paint as quickly as some of the outstanding folks on this forum, so bear with me.

(EDIT: Also, this is now becoming more of a general hobby thread for me, since I'll never be able to finish the guard, or the tyranids in anything resembling a less than glacial pace. I've decided to try to concentrate on my Imperial Fists for now.)

I want to start my own WIP blog for my Guard so I can gauge my progress. I've been out of the hobby for about 8 years. Divorce, getting some of my stuff stolen, and just feeling the need to break away from everything in my life led to me dropping this game. And I never should have. Anyway. I started fresh out of the Army with IG, and I always liked the snowtroopers in The Empire Strikes Back, so I chose Valhallans. I liked their Russian/German feel and really dug all the tanks. I chose a color scheme out of the second ed codex, which I wish I could find. I love looking thru all the codeci as they've evolved. Anyway, here are some pics of my army. First, older pics.











And this is what I have in total. All of it is pretty much assembled and primed. All the painted models are the ones in this pic that look like they have color on them. All the rest in white are what I still have left to do. After 8 years being away, I don't want to let this go unfinished.



Now, I mentioned before that some of my stuff was stolen. I suppose the silver lining is that I was able to get most of it back. So my Armageddon metal stormtroopers, my hellhound, all of my assault marines, some of my older stormtroopers, and my demollisher turret were all gone. But it could have been much worse. I still have the majority of my Space Marine stuff, almost all of my IG. But what hurt the most was the loss of that demolisher turret. GW came out with that bitz set of Valhallan tank riders and included it with several of my Leman Russ kits. I didn't use them, but wanted to. So when I bought my demolisher, I thought, wow, this is going to be it. It's going to look like all those WWII tanks with all the troops clambered on top. I was proud of the finished product. Like all my older stuff, it was lacking in skill, but I was happy. Anyway, he lost the turret, and one of the tank riders was broken off. I was disheartened. With everything going on in my life, I decided to just let GW go. It seemed like too much at the time. Not anymore. I finally finished restoring it.




Also, I quite like this one. I did an old Space Skeleton up to serve as a servior in my Guard army.



All this is shamelessly stolen from another forum's attempt at a blog, but I hope to do better here. Next, tyranids...

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I love the IG. But I don't want to put effort into them. So I decided after several day of not getting anything done to start on my tyranids. I really wanted to do up a carnifex. So I did. I plan to try some new things with them. Especially where basing is concerned. I may end up going back to my IG and rebasing the ones I have to fit my new idea. I plan to actually make snow, so the carni isn't based yet. I'll do up several at once.





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And my latest ADHD fueled project, a Space Marine Imperial Fist 8th Company assault force.



And that's as far as I've gotten. My IG are older, and from more than 8 years ago, so show some very limited techniques. I don't plan to redo them, as they should get lost in the shuffle, but going forward, I plan to employ new techniques and make them better. The commissar with the power fist and the old Colonel Chenkov model have been stripped to be repainted. And I plan to rebase them all in a more appropriate manner.

Welcome to having a dakka blog Valhalla! Very snowy army there.

Yes valhalla! I like it, alot. The jagged camo on the tanks looks great, I'm guessing you did it with low tack tape to get the edges so straight? Its a real shame about the stuff that got stolen, thats a real jerky thing for anyone to have done, fear not, whoever did it will have got their comeuppance. The stolen minis will have come alive at night a la 'indian in the cuboard' and pulled out his eyelashes.

Its bizarre, you can see in 8 years how much the bar has raised for painting in general, and how much you have improved too. The flag guy is my favourite, I may be stealing that!

I love the tank riders on the demolisher, looks awesome.

Your tyranid is also lovely, really liking the ice world theme. (and curious to see how the GW ice basing kit works for you.)

Looking forwards to seeing the commissar and chenkov redone, they are both lovely models, are they next or are the fists taking over? =]

keep it up.

The ADHD has set in again and I'm working on a Necromunda Delaque ganger for my penal squad. I seem to bounce from mini to mini.

Also, I'll probably rebase the tyranids to fit the idea i have now too.

Once I replace the newer stormtrooper models, I won't be able to complain about the stolen stuff. I'm past that now.

And no... the jagged camo on the tanks is freehand and you can certainly tell on any close up shots on most of them. Now that I have an airbrush, I'm thinking of stripping them and giving it another go too.

ADHD is a cruel master indeed, although I love delaque gangers so I'm not complaining, you going to do them in the same white coats as the troopers?

Looking forwards to to the new stormtroopers.

And as yes, having had a closer peer you can see the edges are slightly off, but from a distance its really convincing. If you do redo them with an airbrush maybe you could include grey random shapes too? to add to the camo? just a thought.

Nice to see classic range IG like Valhallans

This is a very nice force. Well done

@J-paint the grey shapes aren't a bad idea. Especially with an airbrush. It'll be no trouble at all. And it will help break up the monotony, and make them look less like cows.

@shasolenzabi I love the Valhallans. Wait until you see the Mordian squad and the Praetorian squad I have to paint up. They'll be quite striking in their brightly colored dress uniforms in the snow.

@swampyturtle Thanks. I appreciate it. I still have a ways to go.

@weetyskemian44 Thanks! You're blog brought me over to Dakka. I appreciate your support!

very crips looking force valhalla....

excellent painting... tho all models i think could benefit immensly still with a slight wash...just saying...

oh...and subbed

Subbed?

And yeah, they could definitely do with a wash. But back then, we didn't know what washes were. lol

subscribed = subbed. I wonder how a very light black or grey wash would look? Anyway when can we expect more of your hobbying efforts to appear?

Good question. I don't paint as often as I should. And medical reasons keep me from painting more.

or to put it in another way.... i am now a loyal follower

That's a lot of Valhallans!

Painting bunches of IG takes time and commitment. You just have to find ways to break up the monotony and look for ways to add extra details that keep it interesting.

My own army is feeling a bit neglected. Your blog reminds me that I need to paint more.

As for blog view, I think the reason that you may not have it available yet is because your blog is only one page. As it grows, the blog view should become available.

Keep it going!

I need to get back to the table. I still have 5 unfinished terminators staring at me. The arms are almost done! And there's the one Delaque ganger who's going to be part of my penal squad who's halfway finished. Ugh. If only I had some time off.

Please explain this airbrushing camo shapes on minis, I am intrigued..

I am not aware of one. It would be awesome if possible, and very fast. My airbrush is not up to the task though. It's a cheap one I use for basecoating.

Great to see a big force of Valhallans. Warlord Games 28mm Russians might be a good source of further recruits as well.

How did you paint the brown bedrolls and stowage? I really like the vibrant color of it, it reminds me of the brown overcoats from the old Studio Valhallans.

That's actually an old Ral Partha color called, imaginatively enough, "Leather." I figured they would be using waterproof oilskins or something similar to cover their bedrolls and things, and used the leather color for it. I'm not sure what I'll do going forward since that color seems to stand out, and those old paints are long since dried out. In fact, most of the Valhallans use a mix of Ral Partha Leather, Dark Blue and Drow Flesh. Trying to get close to that without having to mix is an issue. I was able to salvage one bottle of Dark Blue, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be better just to go ahead and switch over and do the majority of the force in some color I can buy now.

Great avatar - he looks really angry. I reckon you will be able to get a rough match for colours from one of the modern manufacturers - I recomend vallejo or privateer press P3.

I like the disruptive camo scheme on the armor.
I don't think the arctic camo on the troops works though, there's just not enough depth to it.
The best thing I could reccomend would be giving it a wash with badab black (or whatever its called now) in areas around where the folds in the uniform would create shadows. Without that it looks flat and two-dimensional.
The same can be said for the sentinels. They need highlighting and weathering, especially around the working joints of the legs. No combat vehicle is ever clean, not even when rolling off the factory line, there will always be grease stains somewhere.

FOR GREAT MOTHER RUSSIA.
Like the colours, very refined. No offense, but your vehicles remind me of cows. Very, very, dangerous cows that can destroy entire squads of trained soldiers.

Yep. The first time I laid those out on a table, one guy said "Hey, those look like cows." I haven't been able to unsee it since. So... I'm definitely considering a different paint scheme for them.


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 Novelist47 wrote:
FOR GREAT MOTHER RUSSIA.
Like the colours, very refined. No offense, but your vehicles remind me of cows. Very, very, dangerous cows that can destroy entire squads of trained soldiers.

OTOH, that last sentence there... makes me want to keep them that way.

YES! The Mad Cows!

OMG... I think you just gave my army their unofficial nickname. The one the grunts would come up with behind the commissar's back.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
OMG... I think you just gave my army their unofficial nickname. The one the grunts would come up with behind the commissar's back.

You are welcome! I see you have the old 2nd make sentinels, the metal one with the pilot manning the multi-las, awesome!

 Nowlan wrote:
I like the disruptive camo scheme on the armor.
I don't think the arctic camo on the troops works though, there's just not enough depth to it.
The best thing I could reccomend would be giving it a wash with badab black (or whatever its called now) in areas around where the folds in the uniform would create shadows. Without that it looks flat and two-dimensional.
The same can be said for the sentinels. They need highlighting and weathering, especially around the working joints of the legs. No combat vehicle is ever clean, not even when rolling off the factory line, there will always be grease stains somewhere.

Yeah, all this is going to be happening going forth. I only have about 20 or so guardsmen painted, and they may eventually get something done, but the rest are going to get it as I go. I also plan to go back and repaint the vehicles. Some of the paint has yellowed on some them, so they'll all be stripped and repainted one day. Especially now that I have an airbrush.

Although the first few images on the early pages were lost due to stupid photobucket issues, the rest of the thread is all Dakka galleried for the most part and plenty of banter, and helpful hints and such to cull from the thing: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/326377.page

Sarg: LEMME HEAR YOUR WAR CRY

Troops: MOOOOOO!

Hey! I went to the University of Georgia, where our war cry was "WOOF!!!"

lol so what happend with the dawgs against bama Valhalla

Let's not talk about that.

TBH, I'm not much of a football fan. I'm all about the 40k though.

eh just ribbibg ya sorry if it offended im not really a sports fan either.

OH have you seen rawson's vostroyan ogryn? whats on the3 work bench for your dudes men any way?

I wasn't offended. Lol.

I have not seen those. Got a link?

As far as my workbench? I'd have to clean everything off to tell you, but i have 5 Imperial Fist terminators waiting to be finished, another SM bike, and a Necromunda Delaque ganger that is part of my penal/Necromunda squad.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/370649.page half way down the first page.

nice cant wait to see them penal legionaires

I have added more camo to the trench assault transport tank.

Does anybody have any of the old beret-wearing stormtroopers they wouldn't mind parting with? Specifically plasmagun-wielding troopers? I'd be happy to pony up some cash for them.

Crisis of faith here.

I've been thinking of switching my Marines over to 3rd company, from the 8th company I was planning. I like the red shoulder trim much, much more. So I was thumbing thru the How to Paint Space Marines book, and came across a breakdown of how many squads are in each company. The 8th company has a command squad and 10 assault squads. The third company has Command, 6 Tactical squads, 2 Assault, and 2 devastator squads. That means I could include my bike marines in the third company and repaint those shoulder pads. So... my dilemma.

If they are in the third company, would they still retain the Assault markings on their other shoulder pad? Since they're assault marines? Or would they wear tactical markings?

Sorry mate, no idea.

Upon further reading of the How To Paint SM book, it appears that the tactical/devastator/assault symbol remains for whatever that squad is. The shoulder trim tells you what company it is. So my shoulder trim could be red, and stand out more, but the bike troopers can still have the assault symbol on their right shoulder pad.

EDIT: And here are some WIP shots of my terminators. I'll be glad to finish these guys. I had originally envisioned them as an assault company (hence the grey shoulder pad trim) but I think red stands out better, so I'll be redoing this one guy's shoudler pads, and going forward, they'll all be red. I know, I know. Everyone does red for IF. True, but this will be the only IF 3rd company around these parts.And they'll be the only one I have. And I like them better that way.

Also, I went back and redid the links in my first few posts, since I rearranged my Photobucket albums and didn't think what it would do to this thread.





Also, those Forgeworld terminator shoulder pads are nice... but limiting. I didn't realize all of them have purity seals in the exact same position, so the pad has to be positioned straight up and down on the right shoulder for the seals to look like they're flowing in the right direction. And with the sergeant's targeter on that side, it doesn't quite fit correctly. I had to jam it as far forward as I could onto the shoulder, then greenstuff the joint to make it look somewhat right. And even then, I can tell the slightly awkward angle it's at. I had to redo his big shield. Too much paint gummed up the eagle on the front, so a little simple green, and now I'm repainting it. It and the base are the last two things to do for him, so hopefully pics of a finished terminator sergeant in the next couple of days.


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And here's an Imperial Fists Deathwatch marine I did for a Penny Arcade group project:






The group project turned out pretty well. There were some outstanding painters in that group. The guy who started it, asked for volunteers to each paint one model, and he built a force based on the Grey Knights rules. Then he sent the models to each of us, we painted them, and sent them back. It took over a year and a half to get the whole thing back. It was amazing how long some people take to get around to things. Heck, I felt bad because it took me 6 months, and I was among the first to finish. But he ended up taking it to Wargamscon in Texas and winning best painted, I think. So it worked out. Here's the link to the thread where the army is displayed:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/155401/wh40k-pa-deathwatch-detachment-collaboration-project/p37

are those shileds sporting marble look? very dashing!!!

Thank you, Vik. It was a flash of inspiration. I tried to emulate it on the sergeant's larger shield, and it totally did not work out. I had to strip the shield and start over.

Here are some farther along progress pics of the terminator sergeant. Also, I changed the shoulder trim on the biker to red. I like it much better than the grey I had on there.

Also, I changed the shoulder trim on the biker to red. I like it much better than the grey I had on there.

couldn´t agree more to that!... looks way more in line with the rest of the modell that way!

and about that discussion about how to do yellow on my thread... seeing the pics here again... your methode works very good!

i like imperial fists...but for now i still have not enough guts to try this scheme on my own...

Now that I know about this thread..I can help Vik fill it Great Yelow work man!

*sniggers*

I'd like to know how you get the white teeth along with the nice dark shade in his mouth. When I do that, it goes everywhere.

I have no idea. It doesn't look right to me, in person, but I'm afraid to mess with it and make it worse.

I started off with white primer, then painted a wash of Ogryn Flesh over it, then Dwarf Flesh over that, then another wash of Ogryn Flesh. Then I tried to pull a brush over the 'teeth' with Skull White, just very lightly. I've seen really well done versions of this, and I do not consider my attempt one of them, but it seems okay.

My biggest thing here is the eyes. I usually try painting eyes, and they look okay or really horrible. This time I just left the wash in that recess and tried to add a little black to it. Then touched up around it. Looks fine and it is what I will be doing from now on.

i think what you should do is... don´t be too harsh to yourself... really that looks really good... i think you are doing a fine job here... yellow marines... that is still the pinnacle of painting for me...! and the face of the termie... he has personality... because he has real looking teeth and eyes... eyes is something i avoid under penalty of death

I finally finished something else!!!! WOOO HOOO!!!!

I had to break down and paint the individual black lines and white feathers on that eagle shield. I originally tried just giving it a wash, but the recesses weren't dark enough and just looked dirty, and so did the white. I had to physically do each line separately and it was a pain in the butt but it seems to have worked much better.

the only thing i have to add is...moldlines...

other than that... it is a fine looking model mister... really... thin coats all around and still such a crisp paintjob... really start acting a bit proud of your work!!!!

Yeah, the mold lines. Always the mold lines. I think the only one I can see is on that targeting array on his right shoulder. I swear it wasn't that obvious when I was painting it. I always seem to miss some big ones that show up really well in pictures.

the one i saw is on his hammer wielding arm... but i know whare you are comming from... i hate mould lines... really... what would the world be a happier place without them?...right... but nowadays i get rid of them with some religious fury^^...

Ah yes, the hammer arm. I was just coming in here to correct my last post to show that. I've been staring at that picture for hours now and just saw that arm.

yeah... but don´t be too mean against yourself... that is our part

now go and make a new one^^

As a matter of fact, I have four other terminators staring at me now on my table. They don't seem to have as much detail as the sergeant, and I feel much better about tackling them now that I've finished one.

All I need to do is make sure their base coat is even, which I'll do tomorrow, for all four. I'm going to try to assembly line these guys, since I've set a goal of having this squad done by the end of August.

I took my pretty well done Iron Hands/Knights Penitents, and threw a squad of them in the Simple Green to strip them and turn them into Imperial Fists. I thought they were done well, in the past, but the color scheme just isn't that great. And again, I've wanted Fists since the beginning. I put a land speeder in there too. I figure I'll strip my two speeders and a couple squads of tactical marines and with my bikes, I'll have a pretty good basis for an army list.

I'm kind of waiting for the new marine codex now, since it sounds like my all bike army idea might not be feasible any longer.

Let me find a pic of the old color scheme...

I'm currently rethinking my previous decision on how I want to approach army building. I had decided to build my force for an Imperial Fist bike army, reasoning that although most people want to play "fluffy" Fists with Vindicators and Thunderfire cannons, and such, they were still a codex force, and I could build an 8th company list with the assault company using bikes. I sort of petered out on buying what I needed though. With the changes the new codex appears to be bringing, I think this is a good time to rethink what I want to do, and diversify my army choices.

I like dreadnoughts. I like the idea of the Thunderfire Cannon, and after reading Legion of the Damned, with its puppy dog, killing machine Thunderfire, I'm stoked to get one.

The idea of basing a marine force on tac squads just seems right to me. And not including at least two squads of tacs seems wrong.

Unbuilt, I have:
one Predator
one Stormtalon
landspeeder storm.

Built and needing to be painted or repainted, I have
4 attack bikes,
about 15 bikes
5 terminators w/ TH/SS
3 ten man tac squads w/ 2 ML, 1 HB (sgts equipped with BP/CS)
2 landspeeders with MM
Assault Scout squad of 5
2 scout bikes
10 old metal sniper/bolter scouts (4 snipers)
Dread (old metal one, def smaller and not as nice as the new ones, I want to replace it.)

I could build a decent force. BUt I am thinking about including a Thunderfire cannon and another predator, or maybe another Stormtalon. I do love the look of the attack chopper Stormtalon. A vindicator might be nice, but eh. And I would like, again, to replace the dreadnought and use one.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

I'm almost finished with another terminator. There is a world of difference for me between having a job ahead of me, and having one I feel I can finish soon. I am much more likely to keep working if I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

And I was right. The other terminators are easier than the sergeant was. A lot less detail.

EDIT: Looking back at this, I need to go back and try harder on his eyes. I'm not done with him yet, I guess.

well a wash around the eyes and you are done methinks... the lighter highlights on the knees look very good to me...

I am almost finished with my terminators. I only have to apply some grass tufts and do a second coat of dullcote. Then I'll post some pics.

I am thinking I want to get a thunderfire cannon. It seems like an Imperial Fist kind of thing to field. Also, I'm really liking the new bearded librarian. But I still want to get that terminator chaplain. He looks awesome.

So, I still need to acquire one thunderfire cannon, possibly a librarian or chaplain, and maybe another predator or Stormtalon.

I also need to decide what I'm going to do about my landraider. It would be immensely easier to just buy a new one and paint it as IF. Stripping the old one might be next to impossible for me. But I might be able to just spray over it, then repaint it.


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Okay, I'm really excited. I finally finished some terminators! They're based and everything. I've been wanting terminators since I first started 40K and bought my first 3rd edition boxed set. The first ones I bought were the old static pose terminators, and they just didn't look right so I put them away and never got around to them. These new plastic ones are much nicer. Anyway, here are the pics! Some of the pics are with a flash and they look more golden yellow, which is closer to the actual color. The ones that look like they're tending to green (like a highlighter) are without the flash.










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I forgot to take pics of this one. I am pretty proud of myself for the freehand on this. It isn't artistic or anything. I'm just jazzed I didn't make a mess of it!

Like the man said, the skin needs a little something, but I'm no expert at painting skin... The Yellow armor is fething amazing though dood! Seriously! Love all the hues in there!

Omg...at first I read the name scroll beginning with a "p"...lol
The yellow looks faultless....and the basedesign loook very good, making this squad a stunning and highly enjoyable view.
Yellow always calls for the depest respect and envey in me. I look forward to your new or recycled landraider...that model always touches a soft spot in me...the thunderfirecannon tho I don't like...that I would always rather scratch built...

Nice looking termies you got there...man landraiders are kind of a pain if you dont strip them i should know i learned from exp...how ever your yellow is crisp looks great man. I like the free hand you accomplished also looks pretty sweet. glad to have stumbled on this...how is your ig doing or are we taking a rbeak from them for the moment.

Taking a big break from them at the moment. I feel like I might be able to get a playable army painted up faster from the marines.

Speaking of which, I'm making more progress. I've had about two squads worth of tac marines, five bikes, an attack bike, and two landspeeders soaking in Simple Green for two weeks and its just barely loosened some of the paint. I tried Dawn Power Dissolver for the first time last night on an old tac marine and it worked much better and much faster.

I dumped the Simple Green, rinsed copiously, and applied lots of the new stuff. I look forward to having them all mostly stripped by the end of the day. Then priming if they're dry. Then maybe tomorrow I can begin painting. I'll have to break out the cheap airbrush and make sure it still works (I wasn't the last to use it.) That is what I use to basecoat them. Then I can begin painting in earnest.

On the plus side. I think, if I do it right, using this spray stuff like this might let me strip the outside of my land raider, without messing up the interior that's already painted. That would be a huge plus. I'll have to see about breaking off all the old Fist icons though and reapplying the newer brass etched ones from Forgeworld. The only downside is not using the land raider doors from FW. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll need another land raider, and they can wait on that.

sounds good man...so how much is that dawn dissolver any way? and where could i get some wal-mart? or something?

man the best way i learned to use simple green was to let it sit till it can out of liquid then sit them back in it with water and all that concentrate it takes a very long time but it works i dont recommend it if your waiting them done in a hurry though...

yea i know what you mean and imnot even paiting cool stuff like vahallans im just painting plain old cadians and man are they a bugger dont get me wrong i love my guard army but i can only paint them in doses some times as thats a lot of dudes. took me over three months to do a single platoon it was worth it in the end but man that was rough it was only 35 dudes but still i couldnt paint for like two weeks after that adventure.

any way enough prattle...yea i play an imperial fist sucessor i play the black templars its pretty easy to paint yellow gives me a devil of a time.

keep it up your stuff should be good to go soon

I think a bottle of it runs around $5 at Walmart. It should last a while. I just sprayed it pretty heavily, but even then it didn't use much of the stuff.

hmmm i think i will either invest into some to try it our on some stuff...

I just found some at the Airport Thruway Walmart. Whittlesey was out. I don't know about the others in town. It's about $2.50 a bottle.

ill check out the one3 in phenix city and eufuala as those two are the closest ones for me

I found the boxed SM commander set at the local shop. I'm a little perplexed at the choices on shoulder pads. One is for Ultramarines. That makes sense. But instead of anything else like an other chapter, they include what appears to be a Deathwatch shoulder pad, and one with an eagle body and skull head, which just looks weird. I have one Fist command shoulder pad left which I'll be using, but I don't know which other one to use. Two of them are just blank with some kind of scroll on them. They don't look all that great either. And the last one is a terminator honors pad. I might use that one, but none of these are really ornate enough to be Captain shoulder pads. Except the Deathwatch one. I guess in the lore, if a marine worked in the Deathwatch, he wears that shoulder pad after that, right? But it will look like I'm making a Deathwatch army, not an Imperial Fists army.

Also, combi-plas or combi-melta? With my power sword.


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I am working on putting together my new SM commander. I went ahead and got the commander boxed set currently out, because it was about $8 cheaper. And suits me fine. Especially after adding the IF extras to it. I purchased a set of Fist command stuff a while back, with a head, and a few shoulder pads. The one thing from the command pack I'm not using, and I am unsure of this, is the banner. It looks okay, but it's not that ornate, and with the model being plastic, I'm afraid the banner being metal might be a little too top-heavy.

So, I'm going to use the banner that came with it, and use a decal for the Fist icon in the circle provided. It turns out the brass etch stuff I got from FW aren't the right size. They're either too big or too small. One thing I'm having trouble with is the leather strips loin cloth thingie. I cannot seem to get that thing to glue on. It doesn't seem to fit right. And I really like that look. That was one of the things drawing me to this model.

After setting the head and one of the shoulder pads to be stripped of the primer on them (I already had a bike captain put together and prime and took them off him,) I moved to another model I'm looking forward to, my librarian in terminator armor. I received this for the Penny Arcade Secret Santa this last year, and I've been waiting to get back to modeling to start on it. I opened it up and starting going over it trying to clean up flash and this is disappointing.

It's another example of Finecast and it's continuing problems. This brings the number of Finecast models I've had issues with to over 50%. The book banner thing that goes on top has issues and the arm that holds the stave has serious issues around the shoulder pad. One half of it is just a solid mass, where there is supposed to be that ridge along the shoulder with rivets in it. Half of it looks okay, but the half you would see does not. And the staff is unusable in my opinion. It doesn't just bend, it has waves in it.

I just realized on thing though. The good pieces, the weapons, I don't want to use. I want to use the outstretched hand, and of course it doesn't fit either. Ugh.

Stripping paint sucks. I've sprayed these things several times over the weekend and all the paint still isn't coming off. Granted, its better than Simple Green, but this is far harder than I thought it would be. And the discolored plastic on some of them makes it hard to tell when the black undercoat is gone. Ugh.

yea i picked up some of the dawn dissolve and it takes cheap paint off pretty good not too sure about good paint though. we will see i also been mixing it 1/3 water to 2/3 dawn stuff the results work pretty good.

i do agree that doing the simple green soak for two weeks is a slow going but it is the tried and true method.

happy day off none the least

I've mostly put together my commander, and I do not like the pose. I am trying to use the command shoulder pad from the Fists upgrade pack, and it's one of those shoulder pads that has the rim around the top edge that sticks up. I don't remember what you call those things. Anyway, it just doesn't fit well. In the pic below, it's the one on the right hand side.



Hmmm... looking at that pic, I just thought about it. I could conceivably model my commander with two swords. I have the command pack right hand sword, and the model comes with a left hand sword. It wouldn't fit the game rules, but it would look cool.

very true..rule of cool always applies...and i dont see why it would matter i mean if hes toting two power swords i dont see a problem with it since you can change his cc weapon and his chain sword just a thought there buddy.

The more I look at my bases, the more I think I don't like them. I wasn't quite sure why until I read this:

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-look-at-some-basing-color-concepts.html

Apparently, there are just too many light colors on the model. I need a darker base. Well, looks like I wasted my money on all those resin bases. Good thing I didn't buy enough for the entire army. I'm just going to use regular bases and try out the GW texture paint. So far, their system of paints, washes and glazes has worked well in making my Imperial Fists look like Imperial Fists. Seriously, I just used their yellow system to paint them up.

One good thing about the stripping, which is slow and tedious, the old attack bike, which was a hybrid of plastic and metal (and not quite as detailed as the new plastic attack bike) is now just a bike. A lot of the metal parts in this army were held together with superglue, including the shoulder pads, some weapons, parts of figures, and this particular attack bike. Most of it has come undone, so I can get to some areas better and strip the paint off, and redo some of them so they look a bit better. I really didn't need a fourth attack bike, so it will just be a regular biker from now on. Huzzah!

cool thats always a good sign. i look forward to your bike then

It occurs to me that I'm not going about this blog the right way. First, the way i paint my Fists.

I prime white, with Testor's Model Master spray primer.

Then I basecoat Iyanden Darksun with a cheap airbrush. I look forward to upgrading my airbrush and my airbrushing skills in the future.

After that, i apply a wash of... hmmm... this will be a placeholder until I get home and can check the names of the paints involved.

what ever the recipe it is pretty fantastic...now you should weather them lol

Actually, other than substituting a few older colors, I just follow GW's system now. Basecoat, wash, highlight, highlight, drybrush and glaze to blend the highlights into the rest of it. I guess that's really all I need to say about it.

I just realized last night, after getting 6 more tac marines stripped that I never cleaned the mold lines on any of these guys. So not only do I need to reassemble a plethora of arms, shoulder pads, and add brass etch Fist symbols to them, but I need to scrape about 30 figs worth of mold lines. My weekend is shot.

mate, the terminators look great. i really like the bases. well done on getting a whole squad finished...i struggle to do that myself.

I finished stripping the entire set of models I had decided to strip. I have a pile of darkened and mottled grey plastic on my desk. Some arms came off, shoulder pads fell off, models fell apart I don't even know if I'll bother putting the metal heavy bolter arms back on. IIRC, those were a PITA.

I feel pretty good about it. Now that I don't have that sitting in front of me. So I did the sensible thing and decided to strip the remaining squad, my chaplain and librarian and what served as my previous command squad.

Might as well get it all out of the way.

On the plus side, my one metal sergeant, with the bionic arm, is now completely paint-free. If I decide to strip my scouts with the snipers, which I think I will, because the newer ones look freakin' huge and Cro-Magnon-like, they should be a breeze to clean up. I am also thinking that if I decide to strip all my IG one day, they'll be no problem at all. But that's a future problem. Right now, I feel pretty good.

I now have this sitting on my desk. and it feels pretty good. I can go back and fix some of the mistakes I made with some of them. One sergeant is getting a better power arm. I can replace some of the funky shoulder pads with real ones, or new plastic ones with brass etch. I also plan to add some banners to the sergeants. It's like Christmas. And, with some of the black paint stuck in places I can't reach with a dental pick, maybe I have a little pre-shading?


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And thanks, San.. I appreciate your remarks.

Captain Hasdrubal is in the Dawn Power Dissolver, and may get a demotion to sergeant. He led my Knights Penitent well. Here's hoping he leads his squad of Imperial Fists just as ably!




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I have the codex in my hands, and a tactical squad boxed set and devastator squad on layaway. Pretty soon to have my grubby hands on those too.

I've stripped seven more marines. Just 9 left, and then I'll be out of tactical marines, and may or may not do the old scouts. I really like the look of the new sniper rifle scouts, although I really think they look too large for what they are. Then I just have the land raider I need to carefully strip. I'm worried about it, though. The marine popped out of the hatch firing a stormbolter has been pushed down before, and this stuff tends to destroy superglue or plastic glue bonds. So I expect him to come out again. And he was a hassle to get back in properly.

Anyone have an extra land raider hatch they don't need?

EDIT: I finished stripping 5 more. Just 4 left.

Wow valhalla, I havn't been on this thread for too long! The Fists are all looking awesome, the terminators are looking really good, congrats on finishing them all! and the freehand Dorn is awesome!

As for the stripping mountain your chipping away at, keep going! very nearly there! I have a feeling this is going to be simply awesome! Cant wait to see more!

Thanks, J-Paint. I had to take a break from the stripping, but I'll be finishing it up this weekend, then rebuilding models. I can't wait to prime them!

I think I have settled on a list, that will still give me some wiggle room for wargear and the like, and I will be purchasing to this list. Any suggestions are welcome.

HQ - Captain on bike with Teeth of Terra, combi-melta - 150
HQ - Chaplain with terminator armor - 120
Troop - 5x Bikes with 2x Meltas - 125
Troop - 10x Tacs with Plasma Gun+HB - 165
Troop - 10x Tacs with Plasma Gun+HB - 165
Troop - 10x Scouts with Cloaks, 9 sniper rifles and HB - 147
Elite - 5x TH/SS Terms + LR Redeemer - 465
Fast Attack - Stormtalon with Skyhammer missile Launcher - 125
Heavy Support - Predator with HBs - 95
Heavy Support - Thunderfire Cannon - 100
Heavy Support - 10x Devastators with 4 HB - 180
Fortification - Aegis Line with Quad Gun - 100

1937


Edit: Thorw in an Attack Bike with MM and I think this is my new list.

EDIT: Actually, after thinking about it and getting more feedback, I've decided to replace the HB's in the dev squad with LC's instead, and add in the attack bike w/ MM. That should. bring me up to about 1980-something. I have the list around here somewhere. But it gets me right in the range I want and gives me a good, well-rounded force, and stuff to paint that isn't all the same. Although there will be a lot of marine models.

I finally finished stripping the models I have that I want to repaint, and most of them need parts reattached: arms, shoulder pads... etc. Some of the shoulder pads are some messed up ones I tried to kitbash using the little round Fists icon and regular shoulder pads. Those all have to go. So, the majority is going to get a few days of love and attention while I put things back together and figure out what goes where.

I did mange to find 14 models that not only still have their shoulder pads intact, but so is everything else, and they don't seem to have an overabundance of paint on them, so I took them out and primed them. One sergeant with bolt pistol and chain sword, one plasma gunner, one flamer, and the others with bolter. A nice little reinforced squad awaiting its brethren to have the artificers repair their equipment and buff their armor.

I opened up the new tac box and I'm in love. And the devastator squad box too. Ah gawd at the number of weapon options. Gone are the days when I had to buy blister after blister to get what I wanted. I could probably take this tac box and this dev box and model up all the heavy weapons and assault weapons I could ever yearn to use. Although I need a lot more heavy bolters.

EDIT: And yes, I washed them all off with soap and water prior to priming. I'm still worried about the small bits of paint that might be stuck in there that may have absorbed Dawn Power Dissolver or Simple Green though. Or even dishwashing soap.

OKay, I'm an idiot. I bought two more devastator squad boxes thinking they only had one lascannon each, and no, they each have two lascannons, two plasma cannons, two heavy bolters, and one each of the multi-melta and missile launcher.

So two boxes would have been sufficient, but now I can mix a few parts in with the tac box. Also, sweet, sweet servo skulls. I love those!

well... you can never have too much heavy weaponry...

I have another dilemma. I've bought quite a few of those metal Fists shoulder pads over the years. But they're all different. I've been thinking that I'm going to have to use decals for about half my marines anyway. And... it might be better if all of them used decals and looked the same. Of course, that means I need to take off about 30 of them right now. Including some I just primed.

I have another issue. I don't know what it is about priming, but some of the paint on these models which did not originally come off, has begun to come off. It's mostly in those hard to reach places like under the head, or between the torso and backpack.

After priming, I noticed some areas where it seemed the primer had gunked up. I went to remove it, and started pulling off chunks and strips of black paint that I had previously tried to strip.

Somehow, priming these models cause that paint to loosen up from the model itself. So now I have quite a few models who have dark areas where the old paint and primer came off.

What upsets me about it (not really) is that I used a dental pick to try to loosen this stuff up, and it didn't all come off. But... at least it's off now.

Also... I tried to remove some of the metal shoulder pads I had glued on and the new glue I use must be a lot stronger, because those things are stuck. I managed to remove about 10 of them, but four of the models had their arm broken into pieces, with no way to repair or replace it unless I order separate arms to go on them. So, a few of those may become parts models in case something else needs to be replaced.

I had some stuff in storage, and had to clean out some of it today. I found a shoebox stuffed with GW stuff. Stuff I thought had been stolen, and although some stuff was stolen, about half of what I thought was stolen appears to be here.

I think I've found my stormtroopers. Umpteen Atillan Rough Riders. A Griffin! I was really sore about that Griffin.

My Nordian Berserker conversions that I absolutely have to paint now. Some undead stuff I was using for Mordheim.

I also found a box of the Armageddon Steel Legion troopers, with extra stuff in it. It has the sgt, missile launcher, grenade launcher and troopers that were in the box, but there is also a heavy bolter, at least one lascannon, and some Valhallans.


I also have an unopened metal chicken walker sentinel. Ha! Once the plastic sentinels came out, I didn't want to look at the old one again.

I'm gonna do an inventory tonight. This is gonna be neat!

EDIT: Okay, most of this stuff is parts. But I have parts for 6 rough riders, A couple of Cadian voxcaster troopers, and I only have three stormtroopers. Two flamers and one grenade launcher. So the majority of those are still gone.

And somehow I have 5 Eldar BFG ships. I have no idea where those came from.

I'm waffling on whether to strip and repaint my IG. I should definitely finish my Imperial Fists first, and I love the idea of snow troopers, but I've always hated plopping down winter based models on green tables.

Plus, I had an idea of building two city fight IG armies. One Valhallan and one Steel Legion, so I could reenact future Stalingrad in space. And for that, I'd want more urban camo type of a look. Sort of greyish for the Steel Legion, and maybe khaki or olive drab for the Valhallans.

valhalla,
thats a touch call really dig your ig...it would be a shame to see them stripped...but if you feel the need we will support you. i think you should finish in batches...imp fists one day ig the next and re do it that way...but thats my two cents on it...just a squad at a time.

The more I look at the Valhallans, the more I think I'll leave them as is. Maybe I'll do a small force of Steel Legion to accompany my SM's as an allied detachment.

sounds good man...jsut a thought maybe yous hould do a snowy city like Stalingrad that would be cool. mud snow and sulfer mounds. just a thought.

That was my original intention, actually. My plans for terrain though are on indefinite hold until I procure larger living quarters.

sounds good man, my city is coming together slowly need some more buildings and what nots for it...and to do some craters to make the "roads" looked bombed out when i get to that point

I would love to see an apocalypse game with two massive IG armies. It would be a bloodbath. Heck, the lasrifle appears made to fight other humans. No cover saves from your own weapon? Yeah, troops would die left and right. Basilisks, griffins, demolishers, flamers even? Can you imagine what two IG armies with flamers and heavy flamers woudl look like within a couple of turns. It would be awesome.

yea it would be very bloody...prolly a lot of fun too...my ig have recently got two leman russes and two chimeras so we are slowly getting there need more stuff thats for sure.

well like i said the 57th is always itching for a fight if you wanna throw down. and table top war gaming is on sundays at moxies. we could have an ig fight that way...you will most likely win but it would be a good fight none the less.

I haven't played IG in over 8 years at this point. You might win. PLus, the overwhelming amount of white primer would probably blind you. Thus securing my win by default.

i dunno you might beat me...im not that good with my ig yet however tau and chaos marines...im fairly compentant with so you might wanna watch out. lol

any new updates maybe hopefully this weekend?

Not yet. Been having back trouble.

that sucks man. hope your back gets to feeling better.

Get better soon Val! Aching back is terrible...

I'm still having issues with the paint not having come completely off the models. I've chucked every last primed model back into Simple Green. I assume a couple of weeks of that will completely remove any leftover Dawn Power Dissolver and allow me to reprime them.

Until then, I'm going with brand new models to form my first two squads. The old models will be done up as the two company devastator squads.

I use an old battery powered toothbrush for gentle scrubbing.

That's what I use too.

In other news, I entered a Hobby Contest at the local Hobbytown this Saturday and took 1st place in the Sci-Fi category with my terminators. I was pretty stoked about that so I started modeling again. I'm currently putting together my new tac squad.

I pulled out the cheapo airbrush I use to basecoat things, and it will not work. It's not the best anyway, but it can lay down a good basecoat. For some reason though, it will only pull paint, or even alcohol only about halfway up the tube. I think I got 30 seconds of spraying done with it before it stopped. Good thing I'm getting a better airbrush later this month.

I just realized I could field 9 squads of Valhallans, 3 of the older storm trooper figures, a Mordian squad, a Praetorian squad, and a Steel Legion squad.

Think that's enough?

Nah. It's never enough in the IG. Regardless of who tries to change their name.

I don't think I ever realized how many tiny holes these metal Guardsmen have in all the little nooks and crannies. Trying to get black paint in there so they don't show up is a horribly time-consuming process. But, at least I'm accomplishing something. I'm doing a little more than one squad. I chose one sergeant model, a heavy bolter crew and a meltagunner, and the running troopers of one type. This guy:

Sidelined by medical problems again, I haven't painted more than part of a guardsman before I was unable to even sit and paint, so I've taken this opportunity to instead surf the net looking at everyone else's Valhallans and question my chosen color scheme again.

Having snowtroopers is awesome, but at the same time, most terrain will be woodland if I go for random games, and this sea of white is not my favorite, to be honest. I've even seen some uniforms that were more all-white that looked better, and the GW scheme uses grey as the color for the folds and dips in the uniforms to represent contrast, and I think it looks better than my chosen blue.

Ugh. Indecision. It also doesn't help that I've learned how to strip models and metal models are so much easier to strip. I could have them all stripped and reprimed in a week.

I've also determined I need more. I don't think I have a squad of Mordians. I thought I did, but now I can't find them. And I'd like to have at least as many Valhallans as I do all the others combined.

So I played a game today. I finally decided I was not going to have an army painted any time soon, and waiting until I had a fully painted army to play meant I was never playing. I played with Alabamaheretic from this forum. . I went with this list:


He had Chaos Space marines, Iron Warriors, with lots of Marks of Nurgle, 2 Hellbrutes with multimeltas, 2 vindicators, a couple of squads of marines with flamers, a Havoc squad with heavy bolters, a squad of Plague Marines in a Rhino and a Sorceror casting from a Nurgle table.

I basically ran a gun line, and we played for kill points, no real mission, just so I could get a feel for the game, and he could bring himself back up to speed.

First turn I immobilized one of his Vindicators and stripped a hull point from the other. So that was one big gun stuck out of range. I also stripped a hull point off one Hellbrute.

Honestly, the whole game was him trying to run into a gun line, and getting shot up. I whittled most of his stuff down, killing one Hellbrute finally and stripping the weapon off the other. I blew up the other Vindicator, killed the squad with his warlord, then killed the warlord, blew away most of the other squad, and killing a few of the Havocs. He conceded at the end of turn 4, but he still had one Hellbrute, an immobilized Vindicator, his Sorceror, a couple of Havocs, and most of his Plague Marines and their Rhino.

In one turn he probably could have gotten into close combat with my squads, but he only took out my two heavy weapons teams and one infantry squad the entire game. Killing or immobilizing those Vindicators helped me out tremendously. Without that, this game could very well have gone differently.

But, yay, my first ever win with Imperial Guard. And that's sad, because I started playing about 14 years ago with the Imperial Guard. Of course, back then, it was mostly about whatever cool model I had and not so much trying to make a list.


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I also forgot to mention that I was lucky with my warlord trait, rolling for Master of Command. that allowed me to issue an additional order each turn. Lots of Tank Hunters orders to bring down those Hellbrutes and Vinidicators.

Val, it was a great game...next time you wont be so lucky on stealing the initiative. thats what killed me i think.

cant wait to play ya again. next time its either the cadians or the Iron Warriors again. the vostroyans aint quite up to 1,500 points yet. and maybe we will play a mission

hit me up soon so we can get a match in again.

Oh, and there were mistakes made as well. After going thru the rules, it turns out laspistols are Assault 1, not Assault 2 like they used to be. So that last wound on that warlord wouldn't have been stripped by my lieutenant.

But also, lieutenants can issue orders too, and I did not do that for the entire game. That could have had an effect as well on the game and definitely changed things.

yea the LT. issuing orders could of really put some hurt out. no worries on the las pistol flub it happens like you said in a previous post it was a refresher game for me and a learning game for you. rule mistakes are bound to happen. looking forward to a rematch this sunday thats for sure. the Iron Warriors of the 388th Grand Company shall have their revenge on them pesky valhallans.

Pfft. I'm loading the lascannons as we speak.


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I don't understand eBay sellers. I can buy a squad of ten Valhallans from GW for $35. Why then is that same squad "on sale" on eBay for only $39.59? And it's regularly $44.99?

eBay fails me. All I need to do is replace one missing Valhallan heavy bolter loader. Is that too much to ask?

so i have my list but im short like 50 points so random upgrades go for the iron warriors! oh are we doing 1,500 again? never know i might surprise you and bring my cadians.
Thats ok i was hunting ebay for vostroyan mortar teams and they are expensive too. looking forward to our game buddy.

So are you playing with 1450? I could put together a list at that points level to keep it even.


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I promise to have some actual hobby progress on this page. I am currently working slowly on about 14 guardsmen. That is a strange number because I wanted to do one squad, so sergeant model, heavy bolter team, and meltagunner, but then when choosing the other troopers, I decided to go ahead and do all of one pose of running Valhallans.

I'm currently applying the white, and willprobably move on to the flesh this weekend, then their dark blue if those old Ral Partha paints are still salvageable. If not, I'll substitute some more blue, less dark grey colors from GW, like Necron Abyss. Or Kantor Blue now, I guess. I still have a couple of unopened pots of Necron Abyss. So we'll try that.

the list i built is currently sitting at 1450. just need to fanagle some stuff around to make it better.


I can also make a proposition with you. If you want we can do a painting escalation to a point level. start with 500 points and work our way up to what ever point limit you want. And we can make it a semi escalation campaign too. so fluffy lists and painting.

since we played that game i been sorting out all sorts of odds and ends with my armies. my cadians need a 2 chimera, five guardsmen, hell hound and a basilisk painted. my iron warriors are good for now. so ill even start a new army for this escalation.. should be quite fun any way give it some thought and tell me what you think.

hope your paint is salvageable

take care man
Bama

If its not salvageable, I have options.

And sure, but... painting is so haaaaaaard.




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But I am working on about 14 dudes right now. I've got most of the white on them, and I want to be finished with that this weekend and start getting faces done, and start on their boots and trousers and trim.

Well good to have options. painting isn't that hard. just try to do a dude a day or batch paint like three dudes a day break it up into small manageable pieces thats how i get through it. looking forward to seeing the new guys painted.

They won't be finished this weekend. Like, not even close. I decided to go ahead and put the tracks on the second Griffin I found, and finding those took about an hour. Then I no longer had the T3 section of track I needed. I think I traded that to someone for something before I found the second Griffin in storage, so didn't know I needed them. That was the track piece that had four links as one piece, but I pieced together enough two link sections to make it up. It doesn't look as good, but it's not that noticeable. Then I slathered black paint on the mortar assembly. I'll drybrush that in boltgun someday. Or leadbelcher I think it is now. I also had to touch up my Demolisher a little bit. It's ready to go now. I know it's not modeled for current rules, what with it's lascannon, and plasma cannon sponsons, but I loves it.


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The one thing I love about Guard though... is that the army list you'll face this Sunday is completely different from last week. I like having options, yes, sir.

Maybe I'll put together my Manticore before our next game, too.

Wow, who would have thought playing a game would get me so excited to start painting again? Heh.

And yeah, we can discuss this 500 point escalation thing. Anything to get me dedicated to getting this Guard army done. Although I have to say, I think I have way more models than I need in one sense, and not enough in another. I ran out of meltaguns in my current list, and grenade launchers in another.

well my buddy nick is also gonna come up to moxies this sun and if i can get my other buddy mark out to we can have a two v two game.

yea man getting excited about painting for me is playing a game. speaking of valhallans there is a person trying to get rid of some on the swap shop. if you're interested. i think i might have an extra track piece at my house have to dig through my bits man ill look for it and try to get it to you this sunday. you said you need the t 3 section?

question now is do you wanna fight my guard or do you wanna fight my chaos marines?

I and three friends (two new ones,0 all of the same mindset when it comes to playing, fun first, got together today and played an IG on IG battle. Each of us brought 1500 points, Mark and I played Valhallans and Steel Legion, and his tanks and soldiers were wonderfully painted. He did a good job duplicating the Steel Legion camo scheme. Mine were mostly white (as usual, something I really need to work on.) Our opponents, alabamaheretic and NIck were playing Vostroyans and Cadians.

Let me start by saying that I would have taken a lot more flamers had I known it would be all IG.

As it was, we had an eclectic mix of units. From what I can remember, Nick and alabameretic had:


Mark and I had:


I won't go turn by turn because I am not good at remembering stuff that way, but I'll hit some highlights. It was a mess. Dudes dying left and right, although alabamaheretic has the best IG dice-rolling I've ever seen. He routinely made hits, wounds and armor saves that IG should have failed. It was completely the opposite of his Iron Warriors rolling last week. Just to show you, here is a pic of one of his armor save rolls:



They rolled and got initiative. The game only lasted three turns because we ended up having to leave, but in those three turns, my Pask Vanquishers was stun locked the entire time. I was able to fire normally only on turn three and whiffed big time. My Exterminator did a bang-up job again by wiping out a squad after my lascannon sentinels blew up their chimera. Nick seemed to be fixated on my Sentinels the entire game and only succeeded in immobilizing one of them. But they were carrying lascannons and had a good firing lane, so that didn't really affect them much.

heretic had two large combined platoons in the middle of the board and Mark and I spent the whole game whittling them down. He went to ground constantly, which was really annoying but with the orders he was giving them to Get Back in the Fight, worked really well or him.

Oh, and did I mention Nick made it a point to shoot my Rough Riders off the table first turn? Yeah, those poor horses didn't do nothin' to nobody, but he kilt 'em, he did. I would have liked to see how they faired in assault, especially since they had a real chance to hurt IG, but them's the breaks. He also used the sniper vet squad to come inform reserve beside my Wyverns and blow one up with krak grenades. Of course, it exploded, taking all of his squad but 4.

Surprisingly, most of the armor stayed on the board the whole game. We had some immobilizations, some weapons destroyed, a lot of shaken and stunned, but only a few explosions, and that was all Chimeras. Here's what the board looked like during turn three:


All in all, it was a fun game, but I'm taking flamers next time we play IG on IG.

It wasnt a bane wolf it was a devil dog but it didnt even see play which would of really wreck that tank line of yours and marks. I had a blast i think every one had a good time.
Paint mo of your dudes man!

I dunno if we will be doing another IG on IG fight any time soon but man was that a blast..

So whats your painting commitment this week? cause im doing up a havoc squad and some obliterators. so seven chuckle heads for me.

Still trying to finish that one group of 14 troopers. They're slowly coming along.

EDIT: I'm currently trying to recreate an ooooold Ral Partha paint for leather that finally dried out beyond all repair.

well least they are coming along slowly. i been sorting things and trying to build a 500 point list to come whoop up on you cause im writing a campaign and stuff and i'd like you to play in it. we can also invite mark and nick if you wanna. but im slowly writing things out. i bring what i have written up this sunday coming up.

Wait, do we need 500 pts this Sunday?

not really unless you wanna see the stuff i have written for the campaign. and then it would start off at 500. and go from there.

it really depends on how much i get done this week on stuff. ill let you know by friday ok?

All right. But just to let you know... 500 points for IG is going to a company command squad, 2 platoon squads, 4 infantry squads and a chimera. That's a lot of painting for 520 points, actually.

An all guard vs guard battle!

Game of Thrones 40k: Clash of Governors!

Oh, and I found out we totally did that Wyvern wrong. It's twin-linked, so I should have been rerolling those scatter dice.

Also, because it has Shred, I should have been rerolling the To Wound rolls.

You should have had to make a lot more armor saves on those things.

I wonder what they will do with the new edition effects on Forgeworld minis, I have a battery of Thudd-Guns, though they are not listed as twinlinked, they do lob 4 templates S5 AP5 and that there are 3 doing this......

I expect since they aren't twin-linked, they'd work similar to what we were doing Sunday. You roll your first one with the scatter dice and 2d6, then roll the scatter die for each template after that, and place it next to the previous one.

With the way they scattered all over the place, those infantry would have had to be tightly packed to do much, and they weren't really. I was disappointed, but now I know why. The Wyvern has rules to overcome those limitations, which I didn't use.

I re-checked the rules in the IA book on them, I also have more up-to dat Vraks campaign, but as long as they stay near each other,,,6" apart, One can do a spotting round which leaves a marker amongst the squad if it hits, and finishes it's 4 rounds , the other two can use the spotting round and just land no rolls needed, except for where the rounds all land past the first auto hit. as they are then a barrage of S5/AP5 3" templates. I did this before, also used standard mortars, grenade launchers and Basilisks and a Leman Russ with BC army

30 templates hit my opponents in one round of fire.

I counted up how many models I need for my 520 point troops and HQ list. It turns out I'm not too far from having a painted army. I'll still probably paint some more to replace the older, not-as-well painted models, but just to get painted models on the field, I only need to paint about 11 more troopers, my company commander, 2 lieutenants, 3 sergeants, 5 voxcasters, 5 grenade launchers, 1 Chimera turret, and about 4 autocannon teams. That's still a bit of work, don't get me wrong. But it's not having to paint all the models in my possession. And I could get around 500 points done, and my HQ and troops choices out of the way.

I still need to find and buy one more Valhallan voxcaster mini though. It would suck to have almost all of them, but the one. I'm also counting it already as one I need to paint. Are the voxcasters really worth it? Orr would I be better spending those points elsewhere? That's around 30 points.


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 shasolenzabi wrote:
I re-checked the rules in the IA book on them, I also have more up-to dat Vraks campaign, but as long as they stay near each other,,,6" apart, One can do a spotting round which leaves a marker amongst the squad if it hits, and finishes it's 4 rounds , the other two can use the spotting round and just land no rolls needed, except for where the rounds all land past the first auto hit. as they are then a barrage of S5/AP5 3" templates. I did this before, also used standard mortars, grenade launchers and Basilisks and a Leman Russ with BC army

30 templates hit my opponents in one round of fire.

The first article on Valhallans when they were released had the Valhallans coming equipped as a ten man squad with mortar team and flamer. I always wanted to field an all mortar list, with Basilisks and Griffons, and just use the mortars to guess range, then blast hell out of the enemy formations.

I had my 10 man teams all mortar equipped, and mortar hvy wpn teams as support, all squads had grenade launchers, maybe a few with flamers for close in, Basilisks and the Thudds, enemy had nids, and he lost heavily, his one team that made it close to me got Ogryned to death, as they had also been hammered on the way in. those that got hit and came to rifle range got "First rank fire, Second rank!"

That sounds glorious.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
That sounds glorious.

It was, My IG with this configuration were slaying Nids, Orks, other IG SoB's and even Marines and old GK as this was 5th pre latest codex. I had just gotten my 85dollar FW minis attached tractors to tow them and got them fighting ASAP My battle tables were getting steel rains from the skies with lasgun shots sideways. Of course Chaos Marines messed my day up though.

Yeah. That's the thing about playing just about any army really. With the prevalence of power armor, you basically have to build your all-comers list with that in mind.

With that in mind, I've decided on my first ~500 points to paint up. It comes to exactly 520 points the way it's configured.

Company Command Squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher, autocannon

Platoon Command Squad w/ voxcaster, 3 flamers, chimera w/ heavy flamer

2 infantry squads w/ grenade launchers, autocannons and voxcasters

Platoon Command Squad w/ voxcaster, autocannon, grenade launcher

Infantry squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher, autocannon

Infantry squad w/ grenade launcher, autocannon

EDIT: That means I would only have to paint another 35 models to actually have that all painted. That would be wonderful.


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I'm toying with the idea of putting all my Valhallan weapons teams on those nice new big bases. It might give me some modeling opportunities. And it would conform to the new standard, but as they are now, I can remove a model if a wound is applied to the team. So... I'm torn.


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Okay, just so you guys don't think I'm lying, here is some progress I'm making. I probably did more tonight than I have in a while. I've mainly been working on building up the white on these figs, but tonight I started working on the heavy bolter and I can tell my skill has improved greatly. My original model here is just plain white, no definition at all. The new HB model, I've tried to not only leave shadows in the folds of the cloth on the greatcoat, but I've used washes to leave lines around the edges of the HB itself, to make it look like grime has built up during a long campaign. I'm still a long way from weathering my tanks, and adding mud to my boots, but this is a start.

Looking good Valhalla!

nice looking dudes V! im slowly working on the vostroyans.

need to do some more stuff with the campaign before we get that under way and ask a few more folks see if they are interested and what not.

well im sure what ever you decide they will look great man. talk to you soon.

Company Command Squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher, autocannon

Platoon Command Squad w/ 4 meltas, Chimera w/ Heavy Flamer

Infantry Squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher and autocannon

Infantry Squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher and autocannon

Heavy Weapons Squad w/ 3 lascannons

Heavy Weapons Squad w/ 3 lascannons

Platoon Command Squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher and autocannon

Infantry Squad w/ voxcaster, grenade launcher and autocannon

Infantry Squad w/ grenade launcher and heavy bolter

That's 750 points. I like this set-up and thought it worked well for me last time I used it. I changed the flamers to meltas on the one PCS in a Chimera and gave them one more because I took out their voxcaster, feeling they didn't really need it versus having the extra melta. I would have straight autocannons across all squads except that I only have 5 and so used one Heavy Bolter. I feel like this gives me a good firebase, although I could make an argument for losing the HWS's and giving those lascannons to the squads, then adding in two more infantry squads per platoon.

I think from now one, I'll make lists using this as my base.

really digging that setup man.
that seems like a solid army base. lot better than my vostroyans atm. so i convinced the gf to play in the campaign as well shes running a slaaneshy chaos marine list. kinda different and not the norm thats for sure. if i get enough players ill just be the mod.

squad of vets with 3 meltas can hardly go wrong there! In city fight I used the manhole covers trick.

In trying out all my options here, I've completely forgotten about the vets. I may have to take a squad Sunday to give them a go.


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I've discovered I do not have the patience to edge highlight tires on Valhallan heavy bolters. It devolved into my slapping a dark grey on there, then slapping Devlan Mud on it to cover it up.


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I finally finished one model. One. But it's a start. And I really don't think the rest are going to take that much time. It's mostly just making myself sit still and do them. I really hope to have... more... done this weekend.



And I know this isn't perfect by any means, but I hope you can see the improvement from the one on the left to the new one on the right.

I finished the loader!

That's two completed models in two days. Of course, the main part of getting all that white done took the majority of three weeks of on again/off again painting, but it was worth it. I'm starting to get these guys done. And now that models are getting finished, I feel like I'm accomplishing something and that increases morale!

Just need to complete 9 more dudes and then start the next batch. I should only need about 26 more models, if I've counted correctly. That includes my army commander, 2 lieutenant's, 3 more sergeants, 3 voxcasters, 5 more grenade launchers, and 4 more troopers. Then I'll just be painting troopers to replace the older ones that don't look so good. I've noticed my new stuff looks decidedly bluer with that blue wash underneath all that white.


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One thing I've realized it that when I see the model on the table, and realize I need to work on it, I get this overwhelming sense o there being too much to do, so why do it at all. Once I start and get to painting, it goes rather quickly, but I think my mind conspires against me to prevent me from doing it at all.

good job man. cant wait to see them in person i bet they look great! keep up the good work.

I was painting, honest! But I got distracted. I decided to try out the GW snow basing stuff, which I bought before deciding how to paint my snow troopers and their opponents. Now that I used the snow texture paint on one model, all that has gone out the window and I'm using GW's stuff now. I broke out the Northern Wastes Basing Kit I bought, and am going to use some of that too to see how it works. Just so you can see the difference in how I based things 10 years ago, back in the hobby dark ages, versus the new stuff, here are some pics. And, oh yeah, those old models are all getting redone. No doubt about it now.

Old

New

I'm not quite finished with him ,although I've completely given up on painting eyes on these guys. But I'm going to use some of the snow to build up a little bit around a couple of areas, or maybe just one side. I don't want to overdo it. In addition to the GW kit, I also have a whole thing of Woodland Scenics snow. I am in no danger of running out anytime soon. I'm a little unsure how to use the plastic sheets, or the icicles which appear to be growing up.

It's not a lot, but this is what I finished this weekend. I spent some time playing around with some ideas for basing, and changing the colors a bit. But I think I'm happy with this look.



I've decided to do all the skulls silver, instead of bone, and that actually looks a lot better. And is easier to do.

Hvy Gunners, FIRE!!

I cannot seem to do skin at all. These are a lot less hassle without trying to paint the eyes, but they don't look right without eyes. And I can't seem to get the skin right with the colors GW provides.

Dont worry man i never do eyes. cause i usally end up making them crazy looking. Good lookin dudesmen. Mucho impressed good man.

Oh yea later today i have a surprise on my blog.

For Valhallans, a ruddy base with a pallid over dry brush

I'll give that a try. Thanks.

Also, now that 7th edition let's you take Lords of War, I finally have a reason to buy that Baneblade I've always wanted. I could never justify paying that much for a model I probably wouldn't get to play with, but I've wanted one for so long. Now I'll have to the option to use it, but I'll still get my opponent's consent first. I would hate to plop that thing down with no warning.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
I'll give that a try. Thanks.

Also, now that 7th edition let's you take Lords of War, I finally have a reason to buy that Baneblade I've always wanted. I could never justify paying that much for a model I probably wouldn't get to play with, but I've wanted one for so long. Now I'll have to the option to use it, but I'll still get my opponent's consent first. I would hate to plop that thing down with no warning.

Shame they jacked the price. I got one during the Apocalypse releases a few year back, got one for 95bucks

Holy crap. I think I figured out where the Valhallan GW camo scheme came from.



I am trying to decide how to paint my Manticore I am expecting to put together after I finish these next 8 Gaurdsmen. So, like in 2 years.

I sort of like my chosen camo scheme, but am always unsure about it. I wanted something like the WWII battleship camo, But I've always wondered if maybe I should add another color or something. Here's an example of my scheme:



I'm wondering if I should just do that "mad cow" look all over the tank and the rockets.

i kinda dig the mad cow look my friend but thats just me.

Chuck some weathering around and those would look stellar! :-) mad cow lol...Oh Bama!

well i mean i live by some cows and horses and they make a lot of noise so i guess they are mad cows...just saying

Actually, I really like it too. I have never seen anything else like it, that's for sure. I put the new rules and a new Leman Russ kit on layaway at the local Hobbytown. I'm looking forward to getting that. Going forward, my new tanks are going to have a little weathering on them. I've never done it before, so it seems this big thing to me. I'll figure it out though.

Mad cow winter tanks rock!

You gotta love that Russian winter camouflage!



I am seriously giving up trying to find a real world example of a missile launcher since nobody seems all that interested in hiding the darn things. I guess the expectation is that if the enemy has gotten that close to one, the gig is up anyway.

Had another game today with Bama. We went up to 1850 for some reason, but I just stuffed a bunch more troopers in my list. Here is my list:


I'm not good at battle reports, so I won't go into great detail, but it was a heck of a game. Bama brought his Iron Warriors, with three Vindicators, and two Hellbrutes, and three rhinos with 3 tactical squads in them. Plus a sorcerer. And some terminators.

He gave me a pretty good run. I pretty much spent most of the time using all of my antitank shots to see off the three vindicators. We played The Scourging with Hammer and Anvil deployment, At the end of it, I think I had one more VP than him. I had First Blood, and Slay the Warlord, and one of the objectives (the 4 point one.) And I managed to keep him off the other objectives with lots of shooting.

Highlights were him deepstriking his terminators into the middle of my lines, heavy flaming two squads away, then getting shot to death over two turns before he could get into btb with anyone else. One Hellbrute made it into assault with a squad which it toasted. Then both brutes were shot to death. My Wyverns slowly whittled away at the tac squad with his warlord until they weren't in range of an objective in the middle of the board.

Lucky shots for me were some weapon destroyed's on his Vindicators, and blowing up or immobilizing his Rhinos, meaning that once again, his troops had to march across the board to get to me.

But it was touch and go there for a while. His terminators gave me fits for a couple of turns. Those hellbrutes are tough. And I hate Mark of Nurgle. Ugh. I did whittle away his troops, but it was slow going because of that mark.

Still, it was a fun game. I still forgot half my rules, and I could have had more VP's, if I had remembered to move my Vets in the last turn and when I didn't do that, if I had remembered to use the "Move, Move, Move" order on them. Still, a victory is a victory, and he had only parts of two squads left by the end of turn 5 when he conceded.

My hats off to Bama for another great game and I look forward to next weekend's game.


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Some thoughts on my list...

I don't think the missile launchers did anything. They might be all right against another Guard force, when the frag missiles might come into play, but against the Iron Warriors? Nah. The one time the hit, they didn't penetrate.

Also, I could have used the vets and the melta PCS better. And I found the LRBT (again) and Basilisk to just scatter too much. Out of the 5 turns I was able to fire them, I think I hit twice with each one. My Exterminator didn't do as well this time, but I would really like to see what a Punisher does.

Also, flamers... I think they might be okay against, again, IG< but against CSM, I might as well have taken nothing.

I think one of the things I need to do, is sit down, decide which models I'm actually going to use in my army, then work towards getting just those painted initially. I can do other later after I have a fully painted army. Just getting 4 models done in a few months is not cutting it.

Against CSM, Plasma and meltas.

HW I have actually killed MEQs with mortars as weak as they are, but missile launchers against walking marines Krak, and more krak on tanks, but some las cannons may help.

Aaaaugh!!!!

The feeling after watching a trooper... that you've finally managed to get painted after 14 years, having done a really good job (compared to past attempts) painting him, having finishing him, and trying to get a whole squad done or a group shot... fall from shoulder height onto a concrete floor, is awful.

I just want to cry. I swear I keep having setback after setback here. Most are pretty minor, like layering gloss on, letting it dry, then realizing you glossed the model to the top of the paint pot its on, and while tying to gently lift it off, watching strips of paint peel off. Or having the gloss run over the edge, to create a lip, and no matter how hard you try, you end up carving off a slice of the base trying to remove it. Or noticing you've starte3d glosscoating, only to see that you didn't paint any of the belt buckles on these five mans.

It all adds up after a while, and really bums a guy out. But I'll soldier on. I'm almost there with one whole squad.

I recommend 10 deep breaths, slow inhale/exhale so as not to get dizzy. You can do it!

I just go back and touch up

Modeling crisis averted. Paint chipping repaired and ready to be matte sprayed again. The gloss coat does seem to have protected it pretty well. I was expecting a lot more damage from a fall of that height onto concrete.

EDIT: Pics should be coming in a few days. I have to go home and highlight the last model of the squad, then coat him in gloss, and then tomorrow matte finish him also. Then they should be finished.


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I just realizes I finally know how to strip and repaint my Vindicare. I could actually do that wonderful model justice, even though I can't use it in my IG army anymore. Maybe I'll get the Inquisition codex just to have a small Inquisitor warband in my army. I also found my Eversor I forgot I had, primed and ready for his snow camo scheme. I just need to figure out what style to use on him.I'm thinking I might go straight white with him. The way he looks now, where I basically slapped Devlin Mud all over his white primer, looks pretty good, the way it seeped into all the recesses. I might just do that, but with more white raised areas.

I still have my old codex for Ordo Hereticus

Pshaw, I still have my old Codex: Assassins from 3rd edition that was packaged in White Dwarf.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
Pshaw, I still have my old Codex: Assassins from 3rd edition that was packaged in White Dwarf.

That too, and Armaggedon and the Black Crusade one, as well as catachans

I have the Catachans and Armageddons 'dexes, but missed the Black Crusade one.

In other news, I finished dullcoting my last man of this squad. I know it isn't much compared to some standards, but for me, this is a milestone. This squad looks so much better than my older models.

I'll be taking and posting pics tonight, then starting on assembling my Manticore. I'm excited. Finishing things makes me excited!


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Here's the finished squad. Sorry about the crappy pics, but I tried.

Recently, due to another thread, I've begun thinking about trying out Mordheim again with my daughters, who are up for the summer.

Skaven never really excited me much, but imagine how excited I was when I broke out my Mordheim box, to try to decide whether to begin putting together the card buildings, when I realized I still had a couple of human mercenaries I could build, and all of my skaven just waiting there. Yay, new mini's!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'll need to purchase a couple of skaven models to round out a warband, but it will probably suffice for a starting warband. I even put together my treasure chest. I just need to finish putting these guys and their buildings together, and paint them up, and my daughters can choose from Marienberger mercenaries, skaven or undead. Then we can start the battle for the warpstone!

Nice ! those Valhallans do look good, so much better than the "Plain Plastic Platoons" or the "Shiny metal force" or the :Black Death" of armies I have had to face.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
I cannot seem to do skin at all. These are a lot less hassle without trying to paint the eyes, but they don't look right without eyes. And I can't seem to get the skin right with the colors GW provides.

There are a lot of good skin tutorials out there. I think if you use a wash of sepia to further define the resesses in the face. Then highlight with your flesh color lightened with a bit of white. It's simple in terms of the more complex methods but should provide you with a more defined eyes and features.

I really like the overall effect and the camo on the vehicles.

Actually, I just found out it was probably the paint I was using. I still had a couple of old pots of Dwarf Flesh and Elf Flesh and they were not going on well. I bought some of the new paints, and skipping the Bugman's Glow layer really works well. It's not as super-defined as the GW version, but I'm happier with it this way.

guys they look a lot better in person. just so you know me val and my girlfriend had a game this past sunday. believe it or not her slaaneshi matrines whooped up on 1k of ig. either way it was loads of fun and it was her first game and she won. i say it was begginners luck

500 points of CSM beat 1000 points of IG. If course, I washandicapped in that I chose weapons to handle other IG, not CSM. That's my story, anyway.

bama's side was taken out by one hellbrute. All by its lonesome. At least my side took out the hellbrute and most of the two squads and their rhinos of CSM. I think she had 3 models left.

I still had two full squads and a lascannon Sentinel. She got us on VP, though.

Congrats to her. Good time was had by all!

val
werent you ever a boy scout? their motto is be prepared. lol. she might be joining us again this weekend and most lijkely with her own dudes so prepare for CSM and more Vostroyan love coming your way. i hope she dont get too lucky this go around.

Still 500 points? The Rough Riders are staying at home, and I'm breaking out the anti-tank weapons.

EDIT: Also, that game showed why I didn't like reserves. You could have been putting rounds on that hellbrute if you hadn't left your second Chimera in reserves.

eh most of the times reserves work pretty good for me. just had some bad luck this go round. she only has about five hundred points painted...and im getting her in the habit of playing with only painted dudes men. we can dicuss how many points if ya want to.

Looking good there Valhalla130! at least a full company yes?

It's got to be close. I just wanted to take another pic of everything I have for IG.

This way, I can look at the pic and can zoom in on those megapixels to see what I have.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
It's got to be close. I just wanted to take another pic of everything I have for IG.

This way, I can look at the pic and can zoom in on those megapixels to see what I have.

Once all done, I have t take a series of pics, pose and assemble my "Parade of Strength"

This pic was organized by model type, so I could easily reference everything I have, without breaking out multiple cases from the closet to do it.

When they're all done, sometime in 2034, then I'll take pics of them organized by actual squads and platoons.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
This pic was organized by model type, so I could easily reference everything I have, without breaking out multiple cases from the closet to do it.

When they're all done, sometime in 2034, then I'll take pics of them organized by actual squads and platoons.

I presently have soooooooo many troops and vehicles. I certainly do collect a LOT

well my ig army looks tiny in compaitrison to the bucket loads of them goobers. either rate looking forward to seeing more done val!

Just warning him, one day he will awake to find his army hundreds of soldiers, and dozens of weapons and vehicles arrayed before him.

Nice Amy Shot.. It's always humbling when you see it all layed out.

I keep looking at that picture and seeing things I want to change, like the Ogryns. Although they'll be a much later purchase, since I have no real budget for this right now. I would like to get some of the new Scion models, but honestly... I could field a full platoon of the old ones, so... I just don't see the need.

Plus, I need to paint all the stuff I have first.

The square bases on the ogryn and the rectangular ones on the Rough Riders are killing me, though. I want to take the Rough Riders off and put them on the new bike bases. But... all that work for something I probably won't use again?

I might have a line on a very cheap Dark Veangance box. It'll be the old 6th edition one, but a local store is trying to move it out, and the owner has known me a while. She's not only going to hold it for me until payday, but let me have it for a very low price. I think its a pretty good deal for the minis alone. I've wanted to start a chaos force for a long time, and this will be perfect.

Anybody need Dark Angels?

ya know thats kinda tempting to say the least kevin. been wanting to start a new army up.

The Bikes are always useful!

And I've already sold them. Sorry, bama. Friend on another website replied before I saw this.

no worries man stuff happens

On a sad note, my kids leave to go back home to their mother this Saturday. I probably won't feel like doing anything for a couple of days after that, but then I plan to get back into painting, to try to at least have the troop core of my army done. Then I can save up for an airbrush, then do my IG vehicles, and work on my IF some more.

I also plan to start working on building a Chaos Marine/demon force soon, using the old Dark Vengeance set as a core to build on. I really like some of the Tzeentch demons, so they should give me a good, off-beat army to play with. I would also really like an airbrush to work on them, since the airbrushed demons I've seen online look so much better.

I think this might be how I run my Chaos list. This could drastically change based on actually being able to see a codex for either of these armies.

Cabal of the Burning Rune

HQ: Sorcerer
. . 1 Sorcerer, (Mastery Level 3);

HQ: Sorcerer
. . 1 Sorcerer, (Mastery Level 3)

Elite: Chosen
. . 4 Chosen,
... 1 Chosen Champion

Troops: Thousand Sons
. . 8 Thousand Sons,
. . . . 1 Aspiring Sorcerer
. . . . 1 Chaos Rhino

Troops: Thousand Sons
. . 8 Thousand Sons,
. . . . 1 Aspiring Sorcerer
. . . . 1 Chaos Rhino

Troops: Chaos Space Marines
. . 8 Chaos Space Marines, Mark of Tzeentch; Icon of Flame; Plasma gun; Veterans of the Long War
. . . . 1 Aspiring Champion Veterans of the Long War
. . . . 1 Chaos Rhino

Troops: Chaos Cultists (13)

Fast Attack: Chaos Spawn (2)
. .Mark of Tzeentch

Fast Attack: Heldrake
. . Baleflamer

Heavy Support: Maulerfiend
. . 2x Lasher Tendrils

HQ: Herald of Tzeentch

Elite: Flamers of Tzeentch (3)

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (10)

Fast Attack: Screamers of Tzeentch (9)

Total Roster Cost: 2000

looks good man...seems dead hard

Always so much more work to do on IG armies

I feel pretty darned good.

I just left Hobbytown. The manager let me have the 6th edition Dark Vengeance boxed set for $45.00 and the Chaos Marine and Chaos Demons psychic power cards for 50% off. I feel like I actually got some good stuff for a decent price, and I am am now on my way to building my long awaited Chaos army. I just wonder if I'll ever finish one army before getting the next.

This one is going to take a while though. I still need the codeci for both armies before I can decide how to build it. So I'll keep plugging away at my IG until then. If I can get an airbrush in the next year, then I'll try to finish my IF's first. They should go quickly once I buy another predator, the LR Redeemer and maybe one more tac squad. I'm more or less done buying stuff for my IG bar a flyer, and maybe a tank or two to update the army. The IF's are almost finished being bought for, and the Chaos is just starting. Luckily, some of the demon stuff is at the local shop. Not a lot though. I'll have to check the other game store in town.

For the new Chaos army, I pretty much need all the demons. Some flamers, some screamers and horrors, a couple of marine squads and a Thousand Son upgrade pack, a few rhinos... oh, and a helldrake. That's pretty much a must-have, right?

bah dont need that stinkin hell turkey i actually look forward to your chaos marines man. well i know moxies have some pink horrors.

Awesome. I'll have to see what they have when I can afford it.

I may be taking a break from everything for a while. My father passed away last Saturday night and I tried doing CPR but I couldn't stop it. I might read stuff here but I have no ability or inclination to paint or play right now.

Maybe in a little while.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
I may be taking a break from everything for a while. My father passed away last Saturday night and I tried doing CPR but I couldn't stop it. I might read stuff here but I have no ability or inclination to paint or play right now.

Maybe in a little while.

Sorry to hear about your dad. My condolences on your loss.

Just flipped through your thread. Your Valhallans are really cool. I've been have an attack of nostalgia lately, may start one of the old IG armies again. Your Fists look really good too. Looking forward to seeing that whole army painted.

I guess I'm coming back. It took me a while to get over my dad's passing and to help my mom, who is still having trouble with it. I am too, but I feel good enough to start thinking about other stuff again. I've decided that I want to paint my Imperial Fists, so I'm looking at my list, what I still have to buy, which... I think is maybe a landraider and that might be it. I bought an air brush and compressor, so I'm looking forward to trying that out for basecoating and stuff. It should go by quicker because of that.

I have the Sentinels of Terra book and thunderfire cannon and my coveted terminator chaplain on their way in the mail. Can't wait to get them done up.

Welcome back.. will be watching for updates.

I spent another hundred bucks at Forge World for Alexis Polux and some Fist torsos and the transfer sheet and Rhino doors. Now I'll be able to do up a proper squad of Fists and although I am not happy with Alexis Polux's load out, he looks bad ass. The Sentinels of Terra fluff totally explains that the Fists take to battle with older marks of armor because they ain't got time for resupply, they are too busy kicking ass for the Emperor! So that totally explains my new army leaders armor.

When my chaplain in terminator armor isn't leading the brothers into battle with his litanies and exhaltations to the Emperor.

I like the Polux model. He is supposed to be larger than the average for a SM. I however would like to see all the marines modeled in that larger size.

I want a chaplain venerable dreadnought. I suppose I can run it as a venerable dread. It just looks sooooooo cool.

I am soliciting opinions on builds. I'm running Imperial Fists and after reading the Sentinels of Terra book, I am going to run them as straight codex Fists. I like the book, don't get me wrong, but I think I prefer the bolter drill rule from the main codex.

So... Land Raider Crusader... can I reroll misses on the hurricane bolter? I so, I may purchase that. If not, I'm going Redeemer for those sweet Flamestorm cannons.

My tac squads are running with heavy bolters to maximise the bolter drill rule. I will have plenty of anti-infantry.

I also plan to build my Predator as anti-infantry, because I just like the look of the autocannon and heavy bolter sponsons so much more than the lascannons. I plan to have a small devastator squad with 4 lascannons to give me some anti-vehicle punch.

And now I've decided to squeeze in a Razorback. I'm wondering if I should build the Razorback with twin-linked lascannons, or spring for the Forge World las/tl plas turret. Or since it will be with a tac squad, just go with tl HB's

Yep, Crusader re-rolls the Hurricane misses, they are a "Twin-linked" weapon. Although, I have used the redeemer as well for the sweet un-trenching of enemies with the fiery death it provides in game. I had a battle where the enemy was in 2 buildings, well dug in, rolled the redeemer up between them, he had the squads in corners on either side......Both squads were reduced almost 100% due to his tight placement. The transported terminators finished off the squad that stood it's ground...T-Hammer/Storm shield version, My Crusader chased the survivors of the other fleeing squad down.

Then I may just stick with my original idea and use the Redeemer.

I just posted this to the Independent Characters forums, for their 2015 Hobby Progress Challenge.



I'm going to try getting these assembled, primed, and basecoated this month, and hopefully, have at least the chaplain and one tac squad painted. But we'll see. I am awful about procrastinating, like I am now with assembling the chaplain and that one tac squad that I was going to assemble today.

Redeemer will be a target, so have a tech-marine behind it maybe in a Razorback, cover ground fast, attack wit the flame storm cannons, ( went 6inches the last bit) used the one cannon as normal, Power of the machine spirit for the other. But you want nasty Terminators like I use for the assault. Either lightning claws, or my personal favorite, Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields with either Vulcan or a Chaplain in termy armor. The tech guy is in case you suffer immobilized or other weapon damage, keep that redeemer going as much as possible.

Yeah, I've already painted my five TH/SS terminators. the chaplain will eventually run with them.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
Yeah, I've already painted my five TH/SS terminators. the chaplain will eventually run with them.

Excellent choice!

I always thought the red stripe on the helmet was the 2nd Edition Imperial Fist way of marking veterans. At least according to the Bolter and Chainsword thread about it.

However, since then, because it looks kind of dumb, people have more or less used the Ultramarines way of painting Veterans and Sergeants helmets, with white for veterans, red for sergeants, and a red helmet with a white stripe.

GW has sort of painted to this standard too in recent years. However, they've never really addressed it since the 2nd ed Ultramarines book, which covered other chapters also.

The new Sentinels of Terra book does revisit this though, albeit very briefly. They have one picture of veteran sergeant Garadon, with a black helmet with white stripe. Which implies white is still used for veterans. Even though they have models in the book with red helmets.

And that black and white stripe looks good. I also think the red helmets look good. But this might be a little different and striking.

I just mailed a box full of tyrannids to someone I know who resells them. It's about $700 worth of models and a really good core of an army. I decided to keep the zoanthrope and carnifex I did. I may decide one day to actually delve into them, but I cannot do it now. It just isn't in me to do another horde army, and if I plan to finish one, it'll be the IG first. I really want these IF's done, though. I have wanted an IF army since day 1, and I think I would like to add more to what I have.

EDIT: I told him I insured the box for $700, which is more than what he will be able to sell them for, and that the best thing that could happen for me would be for the post office to lose the box. lol

Thinking about it i think i would prefer the black helmets with the white stripe on the veteran sergeants for your fists cause that just sounds cool. just my two cents man.

Apparently, they're called Sternhelms, and it's the vet sgt for the IF. I have seen a couple of people using the scheme and it is pretty neat looking. It will look different than the normal red helmets and I think it will stand out.

I finally got my Forge World order!



I can't wait to delve into it in about 5 years or so. lol. Nah, I plan to begin working on this stuff as soon as my... medical problem... is taken care of and I can sit down longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Don't get middle-aged, kids. Just... don't.

EDIT: This Alexis Polux model is the best looking resin figure I've ever seen. There is almost no flash on this thing and the details are crisp.

I'm not sure how to use him in 40K, but if I can proxy him, I will. He is an awesome mini. Someone said he was bigger than the normal models, but only really because o his base. And it separates.

I've decided I'm going old school. My sergeants and commander have back banners.

I never liked them when I first got into 40k, and I know most people don't like them now, but over time, as I've become more familiar with the lore, the idea has grown on me. I have some brass etch that I can add to the plain tac squad ones, and one from an IF upgrade kit I bought way back when that is metal. I just pinned it on my new commander, because as I put him together, the bionic sided figure became more and more less like a vet sgt and more like a commander. I have two other figures already put together as vet sergeants, and one more on the way, so I can have a few weapon options. I have plenty old models to hack up and put back together so I can have plenty of vet sergeants or just plain sergeant models. Pics forthcoming, but I still need to finish the rest of these tacticals.

Yep, the banners were to avoid confusion for the troops, this way they know if the sarge is up and where he is. Of course it also allows the enemy a chance to challenge the sarges and officers to a mano-a-mano duel!

Best fight ever was Captain and a Nid Tyrant, both took each out of the fight, took a few rounds of close combat, but suddenly they exchanged blows and knocked each other out!

I've learned tonight that FW resin torsos and plastic GW arms do not mix well. I always have trouble with arms, but these don't line up right, and getting them to hold while the glue sets is awful.

Just to prove I'm actually hobbying here... I have some pics of unfinished models. I'm slowly trying to rebuild my Space Marines, this time as Imperial Fists. My income is limited, but I did manage to spend some tax money on an airbrush, so I plan to start using that to help speed up the painting time. I guess I need to start practicing with it, huh? Anyway, here are some models. I wanted to show of the Forge World bits I've gotten.

The whole new squad+:


My character models. I'm not happy with all of them. The SM Commander boxed set, the first one, I'm not happy with the angle of his pistol arm. The one with bolt pistol/power fist, I may take that PF off and sub in an arm with a power sword. I don't have enough swords in my IF army.


I would have preferred to have a Mk IV head on this guy, but he turned out pretty good. The pistol is a bit off, but I think I might be the only one who will notice it. I love the power fist, and the plasma pistol is unique. I went all out on this one. FW bionic arm and leg, FW IF torso, GW IF command upgrade
kit shoulder pads and back banner, and I put a FW brass etch IF symbol on his power fist.


My five Imperial Fist torso models.


The inevitable dude looking at his auspex, which I'm going to try to turn into a neat looking screen, and a dude about to reload his weapon, and I imagine is saying his litanies of proper loading to appease the machine spirit of his magazine before jamming that sucker in.

Looking good man. Digging the progress.

I've always had trouble with mold lines. Always. No matter how much I scraped with a hobby knife, they always appeared.

So today I bought the really expensive GW mold line removal tool and this sucker is legit. I just finished removing all the mold lines on these models in about 30 minutes, and I'm halfway done drilling barrels. Imagine how much easier it is to drill the barrels correctly when I put a small starter hole in the middle.

The tool was expensive, even with the local store's 10% discount, but at this point, with mold lines removed from arms, guns, helmets, legs, and backpacks in no time flat, I am happy with that purchase.

I finally finished drilling out my barrels. Ugh. Why did our hobby need to get so anal? Anyway, only one was really done incorrectly, but you can't even tell. I drilled thru the side of the barrel, but the two halves still match up. And he's an extra marine anyway that would have eventually been in my devastator squad.

I am about to start using my airbush. I cleaned up my work area. Put a lot of bitz and tools away. Got out my cardboard box, the airbrush cleaner pot, and opened up the compressor. Oh man, it is super-quiet, and came with a moisture trap. I'm pretty happy with it. But I am super-intimidated right now. I haven't opened up the airbrush itself yet. I'm taking a break. But I plan to prime these gentlemen tonight.


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I have learned something about airbrushes. They have to be done outside. UNless you have a ventilation system. Which I do not. One mini has been badly primed, and will have to get corrected tomorrow., when I can take all this on the patio.

Also, is there supposed to be any primer in the airbrush at all when I've cleaned it? I even resorted to swabbing it with a cotton swab and there is still some white in the channel unde the cup, where the needle goes thru.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Woooooow.

I finally used my airbrush. The primer went on a little wonky. It seemed really watery and pooled everywhere in crevices. But I think I cleared that up as best I could. I may have been spraying too much, and I also think my primer is a tad on the old side.

But when I finally got around to going after the yellow, it was amazing. I had my technique down, just spraying enough to see color on the mini. I now have the best base coated marines I've ever had, about 24 of them. I don't know how to get the fine detail down yet. My compressor may be a little too strong for that, because I'm pretty sure I had it turned down all the way, and it was still putting out too much air and color, so the chaplain's shoulder pad is going to get brushed.

And since my Independent Character's March goal was to assemble, prime and basecoat one chaplain and two tac squads, I met my March commitment. Yay, me! Now I just have to actually finish painting these minis.

Also, Averland Sunset is way orangier than Iyanden Darksun, which was more of a mustard yellow. I hope by the time I get finished scaling up the colors with highlights and washes, these guys look about the same as the terminators. Oh, and just to prove my progress:

For Dorn!

Very Nice man. looking very good~! Love the progress!

Eh. I'm gonna have to spray them again. They weren't quite as well coated as I thought they were. I was so afraid of getting too much paint on, like I did the primer, that I shorted the yellow.

It takes a bit of getting used too but it works well and you should be able to use less paint and primer and coat more evenly.

I mainly use mine for priming and base coating, Working on using it to do some effects painting.

Like the yellow. On My lamenter I do a 3rd coat of a light yellow sprayed from only the top down to give it more contrast.

Okay, so I played two 500 point games against Eldar (alabamaheretic) and Necrons (his girlfriend). Eldar slapped me around. Necrons did too. I tried to charge the necron warriors in the last couple of rounds to try to use the chaplain's zealot special rule and crozius arcanum to some advantage and did nothing. Here is the last member of one squad trying to hold up the warriors for long enough that the chaplain's squad can get in position to charge, to no avail.



Here is the chaplain in the last round of the game, surrounded by the enemy and still whiffing mightily.



500 points of marines is not a lot. Two tac squads with heavy bolters, a plasma gun and a grav gun and a chaplain in terminator armor. When faced with warp spiders, who wrecked my stuff, and necron warriors with T5 due to Illuminor Szezar, they didn't do an awful lot. Even rerolling ones.

I think with higher point games, with more stuff to back them up, they'll do better. Oh, and better dice. My dice hated me in both games.

Yeah low point games I found the swarms of scouts and scout speeder worked well,

OKAY THEN!!! Maybe I can do some more after I recover from trying to slice my finger off. You win this round Xacto knife!

I was trying to remove some arms from my scouts, to replace them with bolters and a heavy bolter, and slipped. It sliced into the left index finger behind my first knuckle from then end. It sliced sideways, so, I think it mostly cut thru skin and no muscle, but it cut really deeply sideways.

I feel a little woozy, but had to come here to say, too bad I'm not building a Khorne army.

You have appeased the modeling gods With your sacrifice. Be Careful

My wound after a night of being bandaged. Went to the doc today. The purple half moon shape is where it sliced into the skin. Pic spoilered for the weak of heart:

Long way from your heart... back to the front for you!

Looks like you lost some nail as well!.. Like you it'll regrow!

Welp, looks like its better. This is how it looked yesterday, when I finally took the bandages off for, hopefully, the last time, and started modeling again. Only knicked my right thumb this time with the Xacto knife while working on the scouts. Lol :bigfrown:

Now that I finally finished the arms on the scouts (after a suitable recovery period,) last night and tonight I rebased my old Battle for Macragge space marines on 32mm bases. Tonight I also drilled out the barrels on my 5 scouts, and my ten man squad. So, I haven't done what I intended to do, which was paint my chaplain this week, but once I get these two squads primed and basecoated, they'll match the other two squads. Or the marines will. I decided to leave the scouts on 25mm bases. And then I can start painting in earnest.

I think tomorrow I might glue some brass etch Fist symbols onto some kneepads and backpacks just to make these guys fit in more. They look static compared to the newer Marine models. I wonder if I should mix them in with the other squads so they don't stand out so much, or just have one squad of static-looking marines?



I'll paint the chaplain next week. Oh, and in the background there, you can see the two marine casualties I did up on some leftover resin bases. I plan to paint them as Fists and use them as objective markers. Just one more to desprue and glue together.

EDIT: I didn't notice it before, but I have to find a banner to put on that sergeant so he'll match the others.

So I had planned to paint my chaplain by this Sunday. MY hobby ADD has sort of prevented me from getting started and I cannot still still long enough to actually get that done in this time frame, but I have come up with a list of things I want to get done.

I'm going to:

1. Add a banner to that Macragge sergeant so he matches everything else.
2. Add some Fist brass etch to that squad and possibly the scout squad.

That should get done tonight/ tomorrow afternoon depending.

3. Assemble the last space marine casualty.
4. Paint the chaplain.
5. Assemble the remaining bikes (unless i have to buy more) with special weapons.
6. Assemble the devastators.
7. Prime and base coat the scouts and Macragge marines, the devastators and bikes.
8 Then start painting all the marine models.

At some point after that, I'll start on vehicles.
.

Banner added to the sergeant and Fist brass added. Next in line is to prime and basecoat. That involves breaking out the airbrush, and I cannot do that right now, so that may be done later today. In the meantime, I was playing around with my list. I'm thinking of switching out the chaplain with a librarian. He would also run with the terminators, but have the added psychic powers to boot. I'm running Sentinels of Terra, so I can give him the Bones of Osrak which generates an extra warp charge each round.

I still need to shave off about 11 points to make it a well-rounded 2000 points. And I want to increase the number of bikes. I'm not sure what to drop. unless its this extra tac squad I just added in.

I've come up with a radically new plan. Instead of worrying about painting each part and then put it into play, I've decided to assemble as much as I can, then paint it. Granted, this won't follow my original plan of getting each part ready and painted before heading off to the table, but, and this is a radical idea, I will actually be able to play with my army in the meantime, while I'm painting it.

Crazy, I know. But I'm tired of passing up games just because I don't have my army ready. I really want it all painted before playing, but it will be a good long while before all this is completed and I want to play now. Not to mention, the local group is pretty good about this. They''re all working toiwards completing their armies too, and plenty of bare plastic is on the table, but they promote painting it.

With my rejiggered list, I only have a Redeemer, one bike (maybe) and two drop pods to buy, and then I can begin playing with the army as imagined now.

I plan to paint up all the troops first and see how the other parts work, because they may end up getting replaced.


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Today on my list of things to accomplish, I'm assembling a bike with meltagun, and popping off the torso of another so I can put the meltagun torso on it.

I recently gave away some bikes and now I'm kind of regretting it. I think I might need at least two more bikes to soak up wounds. Oh well. The guy I gave them to appreciates them and that's what matters. Right, Bama? lol

I may actually have another two bikes rolling around. I know i have one assembled and partially painted, and I think one more assembled and primed. And the sergeant assembled. Oh... and I have one fully painted. I have one new in box,which will become my meltagunner tonight. Then I just need to find one more, which I may actually have, if not, I can always pop off the attack bike outrider on on of the three attack bikes and use him.

I think I have one bike already primed though that I can remove the torso on. that will make a sergeant, two meltagunners, two regular bikes, and an attack bike. Then I just have to find that tac squad sprue and find that combi-melta and put it on the sergeant somewhere. I couldn't find it last night, and that's crazy, because I always keep old bitz.

Rummaging around to replace the bikes eh?

The 32m bases seems like GW is planing on bigger marine minis, or they just hate being left out of the loop as so many minis competing with them are also on 32mm bases.

Just means I have t order Battle foam trays that are at least 1.5" deep instead of the old 1' deep trays

Okay, I have just enough bikes. I have a sergeant, or more properly, my former bike commander model, two regular bikes, and now two meltagun bikes, plus the attack bike with mutli-melta. The bike squad is complete. I'd rather have one more to create an actual sergeant bike and leave the commander as a possible future HQ choice. But for now, it'll do.

I'm waiting on the glue to dry on this one before reattaching a shoulder pad, then beginning on the next one.

You might think about getting some Grav guns into the bike mix. They can be very useful.

Yay! My dice arrived! Now I can game it up in style!



And here is the bike sergeant I glued together today. Just one more bike to assemble, then I'm done assembling bikes.

Good looking val! Yea I do appreciate the bikes. My salamanders company approve. I'm glad you like the new group I like them as well. So I have a challenge for you val .The Brass Prophets seek blood and glory and only imperial fist blood will do. They seek to reap skulls For the skull throne they are coming for your captain and company.

You're on, buddy. Brass Prophets are going down to sustained bolter fire.

Yeah, I ended up with plenty of bikes. I forgot I had about 5 soaking in Simple Green for the last year. I just cleaned one of them up, and after I figure out this Green Stuff... stuff, then I'll have another bike added to the list to round them out.

I drilled out all the barrels on the bike bolters and the exhaust pipes. Overkill? Maybe, but I really want to push myself with this army.So I'm trying to do all the things.

I recently found out Forge World had event t-shirts for this year and one of them is an IF shirt. I really want one. I need to know how to find one.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!! Your skull will be added to my tally. - Khaladran the Merciless

I'm glad you are pushing you're self. I'm also pushing my self with my deamon kin army. Got most of it assembled need to do six blood crushers ten more letters a cannon and a hellbrute. Then that will be everything

I think I finally settled on a list. I just need a Redeemer and two more drop pods.

Wow those dice are bright. Bikes can be one of the few sucessful Marine builds. Looking good.

I do not like assembling the thunderfire cannon. I've already had the antenna on the techmarine's helmet break off just from handling it, and I've cut thru and broken off a support rod on the side of a piece that goes on the back of the cannon itself. The resin is too soft and the sprue attachments are so large they obscure parts o the pieces.

Thunderfire cannon is almost assembled. Some pinning required. I probably should have pinned more of it. I was going to break out the air brush today, but I'd rather prime and basecoat everything at the same time.

Right now, I've got a Predator and a Razorback, and the thunderfire cannon, once it's done, to prime. Then I'll have those, a squad of marines, a squad of devastators, and some scouts to basecoat.

 Valhalla130 wrote:
Thunderfire cannon is almost assembled. Some pinning required. I probably should have pinned more of it. I was going to break out the air brush today, but I'd rather prime and basecoat everything at the same time.

Right now, I've got a Predator and a Razorback, and the thunderfire cannon, once it's done, to prime. Then I'll have those, a squad of marines, a squad of devastators, and some scouts to basecoat.

Sounds like a plan! good to have the paint groove running eh?

Loads of stuff to do . show us a pic when you get a bit into it.

Pics will be forthcoming, I promise.

In the meantime, I'm getting ready or an Apocalypse game this Saturday, so I broke out the stuff that had been in Simple Green for almost a year. All I needed was to clean up a couple of marines to round out a devastator squad.

What I found is that I have almost an entire company of marines. I could probably field 4 full tactical squads, two devastator squads, and one assault squad. I'll have three drop pods soon, and can get some rhinos. I'll need a command squad, of course. I really just need to bulk out the tac squads and figure out what vehicles a company would have, and how many dreadnoughts it would have.

Next Apoc game, I know what I'm bringing.

Very cool man. Looking forward to it. So I'm on your team for the apoc game. The 482nd and and my eldar will be tag teaming this go.

Snap some pics for us less fortunate.

I'm not posting pics again, because honestly, I'm beat.

We had an Apocalypse game yesterday, and it was a lot of fun, but I wish we had more titan killing options. We pretty much were locked down to our side the whole game, and our one warhound was killed pretty quickly by their three. Still had a blast. Met some great people. A+++ Would game again!

Today, after mowing the front and back yards, blowing of all the concrete, and cleaning up the patio, I broke out the airbrush, to finally get some more yellow on my troops and prime some of my stuff. It seems a really big hassle having to move everything outside. and then in again. I really wish I had a setup indoors I could use. Ah, well... one day.

I did get some more yellow on some guys, but I ran out of primer and thinner halfway thru. So now I need to wait to get some more before I can finish. Also, my bottle of Averland Sunset was half dry, so three models do not look right. Much more thinner than yellow, so I'll need to do them again. And honestly, I'll need to do the others again too. I was trying not to put too much yellow on them, so it wouldn't run, and the coat isn't as even as I'd like it. I have more Averland Sunset, but I'll have to wait for the Vallejo products to arrive in the mail from Amazon.

EDIT: I forgot to mention my incredible good fortune last night. I've been thinking about adding in some centurions ever since having to go up against some one game, and last night, one of the players and I were talking, and he said he'd sell me some that hadn't even been opened for $25. So, yes. I bought those. I am so happy that just fell in my lap like that.

For those who want pics... I don't have much, but here is my second to last game:




I almost won that game. Ahhh, the victory that almost was.

And here is the big apocalypse game we had this weekend:

Ah yes, Apocalypse always uses so many tables and many terrain pieces! But cracking good fun!

I have actual hobby progress. After replenishing my supplies, I managed to finish base-coating my marines and vehicles. I may need to go over the Land Raider again, but overall, any spots not done, I can finish off with a brush.



I think I've gotten too used to playing IG. I still need three more tac marines cleaned off to complete that fourth squad. And what I will probably do is get one more tac box, and use it to fill out the dev squads, and do another proper dev sergeant. I'll use the sergeant I have in the pic as another tac squad sergeant. Then I just need to finish cleaning the other tac marines I currently have in Simple Green, And I should have 6 tac squads and two dev squads. After that I just need to get two squads of assault marines and a command squad. That will be my company.

Once the company is complete, I can play around and get some Sternguard or something.

That is a lot of Yellow, Imperial Fists eh?

I don't know if I would recommend the brass etch anymore. It does not paint well. They're so thin, the paint doesn't really go over it well.

I tried for an hour last night to get one symbol to look right. I'm afraid I've put somuch paint on it now, it will never look right, and I'm seriously considering trying to gently pry them both off the thunderfire cannon and glue on the Forge World fist symbols, which are much more raised and distinct.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm calling this thunderfire cannon done. I am severely disappointed in the model. I will not buy another one until they put it out in plastic. This thing looks like it was hit by a Rhino while in the motorpool. All the resin bits I glued together seem to fit the way they were intended to, but the cannon body is leaned over to one side, and the side armor seems off. I still need to paint the skull in the front, and then dullcote it.




I really don't want to try touching up that Fist symbol again.

I've been putting a lot of thought into who my Marines are. And I still need to come up with a lot of names for all the brothers, the Chapter Master's last name, and at least one of the sergeant names, but this is pretty good so far. It's hard coming up with manly faux latin names.

Imperial Fists 3rd Company – Sentinels of Terra

Chapter Master Tyndareo

Captain Venatus Tormod

Chaplain Ailred Thorne

Librarian Hunbrect Iero (iron)
-With Force Stave Daemomium Interfectorum (killed a Herald of Khorne in a challenge)

Apothecary Rawkin

Techmarine Malchus

1st Squad – Tactical
-Sergeant Drusus Gaul ( strong) – DeathWatch Veteran

2nd Squad – Tactical
-Sergeant Bennet Baracus (right-hand son)

3rd Squad – Tactical
-Sergeant Tomas Regulo

4th Squad - Tactical
-Sergeant Hasdrugar

5th Squad – Tactical
-Sergeant Kamala Chandra

6th Squad – Tactical
-Sergeant Lucretius Tacticus

7th Squad – Assault
-Sergeant Uther Cael

8th Squad – Assault
-Sergeant Tumelo Igwe (having faith)

9th Squad – Devastator
-Sergeant Rodrigo Salazar

10th Squad – Devastator
-Sergeant Gallus Lucanus

Scout Squad (attached from 10th Company)
-Sergeant Marius Dragan
-Neophyte Hamilcar (younger brother of Hasdrugar)

Veteran Squad (Attached from 1st Company)

Sorry about the finecrapst warpage on the Thunderfire there.
Maybe they will do it again in a good well formed plastic kit, and then charge insanely as it is a "much needed part of your collection! ,,,ah,.,er, Army!"

There is progress. Slow progress, as per my usual MO. But still progress.

Here is one of my tac marines after basecoating and a Devlan Mud wash:


Here is Drusus Gaul, my first squad vet sergeant after getting built back up from the wash with more Averland Sunset and then Yriel Yellow. I think he's almost ready to start getting details added in:

I prefer the sepia to wash my yellows. Not sure if DM was it's replacement. I still have some from the old paint names. However I have found several non GW suppliers that sell good sepia washes. I think the brown is more warm with the brightness of the yellow. It also allows the black for the joint seems to stand out from the armor seams.

Love the Mk8 armor on the Vet.

Devlan Mud is the old brownish wash. Cassandora Yellow (I think) is the new yellow wash, and it ends up looking orange-y, but there isn't enough of a contrast for me. I like to see my seams. I've used Nuln Oil before, which is the replacement for the old black wash, but it looks too dark.

Those marines sure are yellow.

And here is Drusus Gaul again, as my brand new Sternhelm veteran sergeant.



Still a lot of work to go. And painting white stripes is hard.

Imperial Fists are supposed to be a good shade of yellow like that.


The lighter shades of yellow are the Lamenters chapter,

My Lamenters are a bit more ' mustard' yellow.

Another good wash is the Earthshade agrex?.. It is currently my favorite for washing browns/ reds. Try some on the chest eagle then lightly drybrush red over the top. I use the same technique with my metallic.

I want them to be a bit more of a orangey yellow, but Golden Yellow has been replaced by Yriel Yellow which is more yellow than orange.

I have more to do obviously, like working on the chest eagle, and the banner, and his pistol, and a few other touch-ups.

I would recommend ordering some Reaper Sun Yellow it is rich yellow with the orange tones in it, much like Golden Yellow

I bought the new codex today and I'm trying to wrap my head around how these formations work. My usual Combined Arms detachment is almost the Demi-company. With a few additions like a Stormtalon and Predator and Thunderfire Cannon. Looks like if I want those, then I need to take other formations with the Demi-company and then I have to up my model count. I'll have to include more Preds or other flyers.

I'll have to think on this.


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I finally finished another marine. This is the same sergeant I've been working on for a week or so, but I feel pretty good about my end result. There are things I could do better and tighten up, but I am trying to learn when to let things go and count them done when they're at the table-top level so I can get more done. I do want to play a fully painted army one day. Anyway, here is the end esult of Drusus Gaul, my Sternhelm veteran sergeant who did a stint in the Deathwatch.




Wouldn't you know as soon as I felt confident to take the pics, while adjusting my camera above his head my hand touched the top of the banner and it bent right off? I about threw the camera against the wall in frustration. But then I climbed back up on that hobby horse, got out the plastic glue and a toothpick, and tried to glue it back on. Hopefully, that will be enough.

That's also why the lettering looks funny. I had planned to go back and redo it, before deciding to glue it after the incident.


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Dang it. I didn't finish the hilt on his sword. Guess he's not finished yet.

It can be fixed. Now to see, I have not gotten 7th ed so expensive

In looking at the codex, it kind of reinforces some beliefs I used to have. So when I'm making my company now, I can count my three Devastator Centurions as three members of a Dev squad, and have one full ten man squad, and one 7 man squad with 3 Dev Centurions. And I can have one Assault squad with bikes and an attack bike, and one with jump packs.

Sounds like a plan. And a way to keep costs down.

I just added up my force to fit a Battle Demi-Company and with the third and last drop pod I want to get, plus and extra Ironclad Dreadnought I've already been debating, to go into that drop pod, it comes to 1403 points. That's with my Terminator chaplain as the leader. I could then add my captain as my Strike Force Command for another 150, giving me a Gladius Strike Force and all the special rules entailed.

Then I could add in my librarianas an HQ in a CAD, with my Pred, a tac squad and scout squad, or two scout squad, my centurions, and a Stormtalon, once all that is built.


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But then I reread the entry and I need an Auxiliary formation to go with the rest.

Beautifully painted. I really like the black helm and the deathwatch shoulder pad. Awesome backstory for an otherwise very simple model.

Thanks!

I guess I need to go back and paint the helmets on my terminators white to fit the new codex fluff rules. Since Benn trying to stay as true to fluff as possible for this project, I guess I'll need to.

I've finished cleaning up the all over wash on my first squad. Now I can lay down some Yriel Yellow, then start on details.

Looking forward to the progress

So I just got thru playing a long-ass game against demons. It was 1500, I had a demi-company with two 10 man tac squads and one 5 man squad, bike squad with meltas, and lascannon devs (5 men). I had a CAD with my librarian, 5 man tac squad and 5 man scout squad, and TFC and lascannon pred.

He had 4 models. Three maxed out flying demon princes and Kairos Fateweaver.

The psychic phase was a joke and I could have dropped the librarian. He spent 20 minutes or more in his psychic phase each turn. The only thing he did that let me do something was summon demons, and then I could shoot them off the board, but I only did one wound each to two of his demon princes.

It was an exercise in frustration, and I felt like I accomplished nothing except getting psychic'ed and vector striked off the table.

I am very frustrated with this game. I don't want to be that guy, but nobody else seems to have a problem with that, and I feel like I have to completely rethink my position on how to play this game just to be competitive.

I've lost before, but when I went up against a normal army, even necrons, they knew they had been in a fight. I don't have to win, but I want to feel like I did something. This game was the opposite of that.

Some of your models should have had thinner paint but it looks good overall!

If you're talking about my early stuff with the Valhallans, I heartedly agree. If you're talking about my current stuff, oh god, what am I doing!?!?!

Seriously, I don't really thin my paint, and I know that's a problem, but I'm actually not sure how to go about it. I don't use a pallet, I just dip straight from the bottle and wipe most of it off on a paper towel. It's a really soft paper towel. lol

I hope me newest Imperial Fist stuff is better, but I think I might be regressing, honestly. It's been so long since I did my terminators that I may not be painting the same way. I need to watch some more Youtube videos.


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Oh, and thanks. I always appreciate kind words

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any spare these you'd be willing to part with?

I actually have hobby progress! I know! I'm surprised too! Still a little ways to go. I mainly have some touch-ups. which is a continuing thing for me. I spend more time doing that anything else. I need to do eyes and guns. And some more on the purity seals. And some other stuff I'm sure I missed. Anything you see, please point it out.

looking good man.

Just for everyone's knowledge they look better on the table. Played him this past Sunday friday. I forgot the camera so no pics of that battle.

Eyes and purity seals done. Just need to do guns now.

I finished my first tac marine, except for the base. And decals.