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Cheers for the follow Ezki! Some great looking stuff in this update, your cork bases look excellent and your converted dread breaking was a blessing in disguise! Painting in sub-assemblies is definitely the way to go for models like dreads, sometimes it can be boring to do each and every piece individually but it's worth it.

Good job on grabbing a small light box too! You get some great looking images!

Cheers all! Really appreciate it.

mcmattila: Thanks for the suggestion! It's not supposed to be concrete, but rather something like stone or "harder ground".
But a valid point nevertheless. I might need to add some more rubble on top of them, so the there would be more texture.

Bellerophon: Glad you like them! Still have to actually finish the Lootas though.
Wow that's a lot! It's surprisingly easy to keep buying more models if there are already tons of unpainted stuff laying around
I'm actually thinking of using the Looted Wagon as a trukk, as it's pretty much the same size.

Tyranid Horde: Usually I paint even the larger models fully assembled (mostly because I have assembled them years ago without magnets).
It might actually turn out to be more interesting to paint ths dread piece by piece, as it felt a bit overwhelming when I tried to base coat the whole thing at one go.
It was hard to choose which panels would be red, which ones would have checkers on them etc. Something I might be doing more in the future if and when I hoard more miniatures...

As requested by Excommunicatus, I decided to do a calculation for my Eldar force as well. I have not made one for a while, so might as well get it over with.
I will divide the force in two: one part consists of the models that I have bought and the other from the models I got from my friend a year ago.

To prevent this post taking too much space, I put the model listings in spoiler tags.

So first my own models. These are pretty much all painted, mostly to the "new standard".


Then to the models I got as a donation. These are also "mine", but we agreed that if he wanted to play 40k again some day, he could use these models.
He did not hate the game, but did not like painting that much so pretty much all of these are unpainted or just basecoated.
The ones that are painted are done following the Biel-Tan craftworld.
I don't usually count the following as being part of my army, but I'm allowed to convert / paint them to my own needs. If I intended to sell some of them, I would give the money to my friend of course.



I might have forgotten something lurking somewhere deep in the storage.
Points wise: holy moly ~3600 points without specific wargear or upgrades (not counting the harlequins). A bit more than I would have imagined.
If I combine this with the models I got as a donation, this would go up to ~5400 points.

So, quite a lot. But again, almost 2000 points worth of models are something I might or might not finish, depending on which units I'd like to add to my army.


--------------------

Modelling wise there have been no progress, as christmas shopping has taken most of my time. Will try to do some stuff tomorrow!

I managed to play my first game with Orks in 8th edition last sunday though!
As this post is long enough as it is, I will try to keep it short.

We played a 2000 points game and decided to go with one the Maelstrom of War missions.
Classic match up against Tyranids. When I started back in 5th, I used to play nids almost every game.

We both had pretty different kind of lists. My friend had 202 drops on the field consisting mostly of cheap troops.
I had only 7 drops, as everything was hid in vehicles. I also had the three dreads deep striking with tellyporta.
This was close to the list I used to play in 6th and 7th. Without the Dreads of course.

(Very dark images, sorry for that)




The new battlemat really makes to board look a lot better. The on made from plywood is a bit wonky, so this thing hides it pretty well.

The Dakkajet moved with full throttle to snipe out the enemy's big guns from the back field.
It did not manage to do significant damage and was shot down pretty quickly. The other one almost managed to kill one of my enemy's primes, but he saved it with a command re-roll.


Boyz hurling towards the bugs eager to lay some dakka on them!


The lone survivor from the first Battlewagon surrounded by dozens of bugs.


"Cavalry" to the rescue. These guys managed to do pretty well actually. One of the dreads wiped a full squad of three Hive Guard and the other killed the Broodlord in a single round of combat.


At first I felt a bit overwhelmed and thought I would not have enough of killing power to destroy all the bugs. Especially after losing both Dakkajets and one Battlewagon with it's occupants during turn two.
I however managed to score quite a few objectives and as the Dreads really did some great work I was able to turn the tide.
Game ended in Orks victory by 9 - 4 in victory points. My opponent conceded at the end of turn 4.

Again a bit lengthy one, but thanks for reading!
Will be updating with some progress as soon as I can.

Looked like a fun game and I've never seen an Ork Army that isn't a horde! Playing the mission is always super important these days, especially if you can't table your opponent effectively.

That shot of the dreds coming in is pretty sweet.

Tyranid Horde wrote:Looked like a fun game and I've never seen an Ork Army that isn't a horde! Playing the mission is always super important these days, especially if you can't table your opponent effectively.

I like to play a bit different kind of Ork lists. Either everything hidden in vehicles or a walker based shooty list.
Not the most competitive, but I fare okay against the lists I usually play against. Might try the horde list in 8th though, as it seems to do pretty well from what I heard.

youwashock wrote:That shot of the dreds coming in is pretty sweet.

Cheers! They looked intimidating enough to draw almost all of the enemy heavy weaponry!


Been a few days, so I decided to do a small update before moving my focus towards the holiday at hand.

I finally finished painting all the Lootas. I meddled around with different paints and color combinations trying to find an efficient way to finish them as quickly as possible.
Tried to cut corners where ever I could using drybrushing and ignoring too small details (like the belt buckles where they would not be seen from the board etc.)
I think I found a way to finish basic Ork infantry models pretty quickly, but I still need to work on it. I got stuck a few times fighting myself whether I should paint or ignore some minor details.

It occured to me more and more, that painting very quickly is not something I'm good at. Or to be more precise, I tend to spend too much time on stuff that is not at all important.
I find it hard to cut corners and paint the highlights on a troop model with one color when I could do it with three. This is also something I wish to work on.
A friend of mine who works at our FLGS paints amazing looking "tabletop standard" models really really quickly. He actually has to, as he needs to paint the promotional models over a day or two when they are released. He jokingly said that he "has to school me a bit" on how to actually finish my models from time to time

I will of course reserve more time when painting characters, vehicles etc. They are after all the centerpieces of all the armies and offer good challenges to improve my painting.
So as a somewhat a "new years promise", I'll try to improve finishing more decent looking models rather than painting each Ork boy for an hour or two

I think the reading glasses I got last summer are part of the problem, as I can actually see all the small mistakes I make

Again, enough jibber jabber and to the pictures.
Just a couple of shots from the workbench before going away for christmas:




An example of where I "cut corners". Up close looks pretty sloppy, but from a feet away it looks actually pretty decent.



I also worked more on the looted Dread. All the arms are almost done and the body is basecoated.
Will post more pictures after the holidays!

Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for reading!

Those Lootas look sweet Ezki, the only minor gripe I have about them is that you NEED TO DRILL THE BARRELS!!!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Those Lootas look sweet Ezki, the only minor gripe I have about them is that you NEED TO DRILL THE BARRELS!!!

Heh, you are absolutely right. Need to make that adjustment ASAP!
Have done so on my DKoK vehicles, but this time it just sort of slipped my mind

Hey guys, just a quick progress update.

The arms for the looted Dread are pretty much done.





Decided to do some metal chipping on the red areas after all. I found a technique that makes it look pretty decent, so going with that.


This one's a bit dark, but hopefully you get the idea.







I intend to finish the Dread tonight, or by tomorrow morning at the latest.
The body itself will need some more red on it, but not at all sure about the face at this point. Don't have time to strip it anymore, so I might have to go with that color.

C&C is very welcome!

On a side note, got my foldable gaming table from Urbanmatz. Will give it a go over the weekend as I'm hosting sort of a "40k party".
Got some friends coming over and we are going to batch paint some troops (I will do my shoota boyz and others will do whatever) and play a few games!

Arms are looking great - metal chipping looks spot on. It's going to look great when complete.

Thanks! Glad the effect was successful.

Managed to finish the Dread and even in time for the contest!

Bik Mek Skalgrakk was observing a Space Marine Dreadnought mowing down his freshly created Killa Kans to scrap. Enraged, he ordered every rokkit launcher in his command to fire at that machine.
Dozens of rokkits flew towards the apparatus, mostly missing or bouncing off of it's tough armour. Altough, a one lucky shot managed to find a weak spot and penetrate it's hull rendering it immobile.
Excited from the large explosion, Skalgrakk led the remaining walkers to rip open the smoking hulk and drag what was left of it back to his workshop.

Back in camp, Skalgrakk started tinkering with the captured machine. Being a piece of "unreliable umie tek", one of it's remaining engines caught fire. The sudden burst of flames burnt Skalgrakks left arm to smolders.
Unfortunetaly, it was his good "tinkerin' arm" which would be irreplaceable.
Swearing for vengeance, he was left with only one option: to entomb himself inside the newly looted Deff Dread, where he would lead his older creations to battle and yell orders for his inferior Meks.



Turned out pretty nice.
Still don't like the color choice in the face plate. I think a light grey or rusty shade would have looked better. Oh well.

Took a while, but learned a thing or two which is always important. I think I would be able to paint something similar a lot faster now.


Now I just gotta think about what to do next.
I think it will either be some Tankbustas, Mek conversion or mass producing some Shootaboyz.
The urge to go back and do some Eldar or Dark Eldar stuff keeps growing, but I'm trying to keep up the Ork heat a while longer to finish a playable army.

Edit: added a small fluffy bit.

Great looking finished piece! Especially like the bit of fluff with it, really cool. The weathering looks great too, not too over the top but enough to feel Orky.

This turned out amazingly, beautiful work with both the conversion and the paint job.

Great work on that Dread Ezki! I kind of agree with you about the faceplate, it kind of gets lost a bit in the rest of the model. Light gray could work as you said, or maybe a brighter red?

Awesome work as ever - loads to catch up on but all top notch stuff. Eldar looking fab as ever

Tyranid Horde: Thank you! The fluff was something that came to me while working with the piece. Glad that the amount of weathering was right.

Syro_: Thanks! Was an interesting project indeed. Maybe one of the biggest conversions I've made so far.

mcmattila: Cheers! Might try the lighter shade of red, it would be easy to do. If that does not look good, I might remove the plate, strip it and try a different color. That will be a project for some other time though.

IGtR=: Thanks for tuning in once more! Glad you liked the Eldar, was fun working with them! Will surely return back to them when I've finished a few more orky units and conversions.


As said earlier, I'm currently hosting a 40k party with some friends coming over to paint, play and have a good time. It's something we used to do a lot when we were younger.
Played one 2000pts game with the same orky list as seen above against a Battlesuit heavy Tau. Had a blast! Managed to snatch a victory, but with only three units remaining.

I will most likely post an update after the weekend showing some game pictures etc. from the weekend!
Keep tuned.

So the year has changed and it's time for new adventures.

What better way to end the year than host a 40k party with good friends, some beverages and tons of little plastic soldiers!
The weekend before the new year's eve we gathered in our home (and drove my girlfriend to have a girl's night somewhere else) to paint and play a few games.

We turned the whole apartment to a 40k nerd cave, with four painting stations for some social brush work.


We each had a project of our own that we were supposed to finish over the weekend: assembling battlesuits and mangetizing them, painting a bloodbowl team or finishing a squad of guardsmen.
Mine was to paint 20 shoota boyz that I had base coated years ago.

WIP image from the saturday night.


Completed on the sunday morning. A really quick paintjob to get them to the board.


Painting these fellows took something like ~7-7.5 hours including the bases. This comes down to 21-22 minutes per boy.

The kitchen area was filled by the new gaming table.


It proved to be quite handy, as I used to have to take the top off from the cupboard seen on the left and combine it with the table seen on the right.
This way it takes five minutes to get the table ready for some gaming!

Speaking of games, I played three during the weekend: two with my Orks against Tau, and one with Death Korps of Krieg against Nurgle.
All the games were played following the new scenarios from the Chapter Approved 2018 - book.

I have very limited pictures due to bad lighting and the fact that I forgot to take them during the intense battles.

The first game was the one mentioned in the previous post, but here's one picture from it as well:
Taken during the second turn. Orks are making things hard for the battlesuits!



In the second game we had 1000pts of Krieg vs Nurgle Daemons:
(Most pictures here)


The last game was again Orks vs Tau, 2000pts.


Good times were had by all. Have to do this as soon as possible.
It just seems to be hard to get more than two people to match their schedules, with all the boring grown up stuff that we are supposed to do.



The last year was a bit hard for me personally, but hobby wise I managed to finish quite a lot of stuff.
Finished a playable Eldar army with a new color scheme, built a board for armies on parade, painted two gangs of Necromunda, did some terrain, loads of conversion projects and even got pretty much painting done with the Orks.
Painting and playing with friends also helped me a great deal when trying to cooperate with all the bad stuff happening.
Writing this blog also keeps up my hobby motivation and it's always nice to get some feedback. It's also good to give something back to the community: be it techniques, color or conversion ideas etc.

As I'm writing this, I realized that it would be cool to do some kind of collage from the past year. Might do that if I can get myself to browse trough all the pictures.

I'm aiming to finish even more hobby stuff during the year 2019, as I'm not going to have a 5 month break from the hobby. At least I don't intend to.
One of the upcoming projects will be to rebuild my Dark Eldar army. Already talked about it one of the previous pages, but the idea is to make a vampire themed force.
I still have to think about the color schemes, conversions, whether I want to have undead kabalites or not (from skeleton warriors or something) etc. I want to do it right.
If you guys have any suggestions, I'm happy to listen.

In the meantime, I started working on some more Ork conversions, but that has to wait as I had to order some more bitz and kits to finish those.
As I'm waiting for those kits to arrive, I have to find something else to do (paint).

Hope you guys had a good year, and will have an even better one this time around!
Thanks for reading!

That is so cool! It's really great that you had that painting get together, and then played all those games. I hope you had a great time, it sounds like so much fun.

Syro_: We had a really good time! It's amazing how much you can get done when getting motivated by the people around you.


So as I'm waiting for my conversion parts and a few models to arrive, I started working on a different small project for a while.
Couple of months ago, I promised to paint a Bloodbowl team for a school mate for some hobby funding in return. Decided to cross that off my list.
Seemed like a good time to do it, even though I still have a ton of Orks to paint. Just wanted something a bit different after painting twenty regular boyz in a one sitting.

Still keeping things Orky though.

This was the only model he had painted so far. I'm to follow the same color scheme.


So the "comission" was to paint these guys with red and blue color scheme, somewhat following the same scheme shown on the box cover.
He did not want any metal scraping or "battle" damage, so I decided to go somewhat comicy style with bright highligths etc.

First had to do some assembling. Most of them were already done, but the troll was still in the package.
This had to be one of the worst models I've ever build. The instructions were horrible and the parts did not have very good fittings.


Had to pin the leg so it would hold the model well enough.



This is where I'm now. Been working with them for a couple of days.




The models don't have to look pro painted or anything, just good enough to field on the board. So it's not stressfull to paint these guys.
They have a ton of details though, so it really takes some time. Especially as I have been a bit hooked on Total War Warhammer which I bought from the Christmas sales. A ton of fun when playing a campaing with a mate!

Hopefully I'll get these guys done soon enought and get back to my own projects.
Thanks for checking out!

Wow! Game-a-palooza looks like it was a blast. Good work on the BB orcs, too.

 Ezki wrote:

As I'm writing this, I realized that it would be cool to do some kind of collage from the past year. Might do that if I can get myself to browse trough all the pictures.

Seeing all the cool retrospectives done by many fellow hobbyists motivated me to do something similar.
So, if everyone else is doing it, might as well so you guys have something to see / read while I'm really slowly working with the Bloodbowl team
It's also an easy way to show some earlier stuff for all those, who have just tuned in and don't necessarily want to browse trough the older pages.
Mind you, most of the images have been shown in this blog already, so no new stuff yet.

So, just as a brief note: I started writing this thing back in 2012. Seeing all the cool blogs around here made me want to start my own. That lasted for a two or three updates, as the 18 year old me was not patient enough to keep on writing. I tried to kick up this blog up again a few times, quitting after a post or two. Even had a few breaks from the hobby every now and then. The longest one was something like ~3 years I think. That ended on October 2017 when I suddenly felt like wiping the dust off from my old models and started to relearn how to paint.
At that time, the interest to start writing again hit me. I'm happy it did.

The year 2018 started quite slowly hobby wise. I had started repainting my Eldar army in the autumn, but got stuck working with the vehicles. The task felt so daunting, that I quit painting for a few weeks. Every time I picked up a brush, I tried to force myself to finish those tanks. This went on for a few months until some really bad things happened in my life. While trying to cope with it, I found that making miniatures and doing other hobby stuff helped me a lot. I also realized that if I wanted to get motivated again, I had to do something else than force myself to paint those tanks. Even though I managed to finish some models and play games, I did not feel like writing, so once again a nine month break from the blog.

The first thing I started working on in 2018: The Swooping hawk conversions


The second project was to convert some Wyches. These still remain unpainted.



Come September and the sudden realization that I really wanted to make a board for the Armies on Parade.
This would definitely be the biggest single miniature hobby project I've ever done. As I realized that I would have to document the techniques used in the project, I thought why not make a thread about it. After a month and a half of updating the project thread I wanted to keep it up with this one, once again.

The actual board. Placed in 4th place out of 6. In my defense, the quality of all the boards were exceptionally high this year.
Some images of this thing have been featured in the front page and once even on the Dakka facebook page. Hobby goal achieved



To finish things off, I will list the other stuff finished this year. As most of the updates on this thread are from the last twelve months, there will be quite a lot of repetition.













These guys were finally finished, after 10 months of hanging around half finished in my bits box.















My vitrine is getting filled bit by bit. I change the minis shown on the top shelf quite frequently depending what I need for gaming.


Also managed to play a lot of games. More than in the last 3-4 years combined actually.
All in all, was a pretty good year hobby wise.

I aim to keep on writing this thing, as I've finally found the motivation to do so. Most of the motivation comes from you guys.
So thank you all who read, comment, offer feedback or watch the pictures. It all means a lot!

Keep on warhammering!

Edit: added two more pictures from the Necromunda gangs.

Man, that's such a cool way to spend your New Year's eve, the games looked sweet and the boyz you painted up look great too!

The Bloodbowl team is great too. It's a game I kind of want to try, but there's a lack of people playing the game where I am, let alone Sigmar.

Cool retrospective, the hobby really does help in so many instances and it's good to see you've got your motivation back!

Thanks Tyranid Horde!
Well it was not quite the New Year's eve, just the weekend before it. I might have wrote it down a bit wrong.
I'd like to try Bloodbowl too. Maybe after I'm done with this group the owner will let me play a game or two.
Painting and modelling really does help when going trough hard times. It's somehow soothing and offers you something else to focus on.

Finally got the Orks in the team done! Took a good while. Hopefully the "customer" is happy.


I will take better pictures when the group is completely ready, including the Troll and the random accessories.

Speaking of the Troll, already started working on it as well.





This thing is pretty fun to paint. Especially after doing over a dozen almost similar looking highly detailed players.


In addittion, I worked a couple of hours with my Tankbustas just to get some variety. These guys have not seen any action since... well pretty much never.
In 8th edition however, they are a lot better. So I decided to gather them all and finish their conversions.

Four of these guys are the oldschool metallic models. I got these as a birthday present from a friend of mine back in junior high (~2006-2007).
Since then couple of them have been somewhat painted and then left in storage. Almost all the arms had fell off, so had to patch them up.
I think these are cool in a way, so wanted to finally add them in my force.


Couple of these guys have their weapons converted from Deff Dread rokkit launchers.


Found an unused squig piece and I thought it would be appropriate to have an Ork releasing a bomb squig with a detonator in hand.
However I did not find a way to plant any explosives on it so that it would not look bad, so I can say that the Squig just swallowed them or something.


Half of the Tankbustas are just regular 'eavy weapon boyz with rokkit launchas, but they work well enough IMO.

Just a quick one this time, will get back to you after I get more progress!

Good job on the Orc team. Blood Bowl minis are always fun.

I will always massively approve of anything relating to squigs - that looks really cool. I'm also really enjoying the troll, it's such a characterful model. Looking forward to seeing the finished piece.

Thanks for the cool retrospective, it's easy to forget how much we have accomplished in a year. I'm glad you decided to get back to working on the blog. It was also fun seeing that armies on parade piece again, that is definitely something to be proud of!

A very nice round up the the year. Great to see all the stuff you have done and a bit of the background to your blog

The Death Korps of Krieg Display board looks great, the others must have been to a really high standard for that to only get 4th. The little extra details like the map, gun rack and all the boarding really bring it to life I'd love to do one of those myself and its on the list of things to do but getting the time is the main problem.

The dreadnought came out really well great entry to the painting competition

Thank you for the comments guys, really appreciate it!

Midget Gems: Thank you! Glad you like it. The board was all about small details. I watched a ton of documentaries about WW1 trenchlines to get some ideas, like making small holes in the trench walls for ammunition etc.
And yes, the other boards were simply amazing so I don't feel bad. Just need to ramp it up even more next time! It was time consuming though. Luckily as a student I hade some "leisure" time, but with a full time job it would be a lot harder to accomplish something like this in two months.

If I did count right, the Looted Dread finished 3rd in the painting competition. Did not expect that at all!

I did finally complete painting the Blood Bowl minis.
It really took a fair amount of time, as I tried to tidy up some small mistakes that I might have left be if they were my models.













The close ups came a bit blurry as I used the wrong camera lens. Did not notice until uploading the images
You can also see that the small lightbox I have is way too small for a group of minis. I think I need a bigger one in the future.
In the last image the accessories can be seen attached to models. I don't know any rules for the game, so I just bolted them temporarily so that it would look cool.

Turned out okay in my opinion. The bases did not come out just the way they were ordered, as the texture paint I was provided did not crack. Did some washing and drybrushing to get some definition though.
My school mate AKA the customer was more than happy with the result after seeing the pictures. Hopefully he won't change his opinion when seeing these guys live.

As an addition, I worked a couple of hours with the Tankbustas. I will follow the same procedure as with the Shoota Boyz. Just a little more details added.
I will provide some images when they have a bit more color.

The Blood Bowl Orcs look great! Really nice highlights on the red armor panels. Did you by any chance use the GW crackle paints for the bases? I haven't gotten them to properly crack either..

Great looking team! The blue cloth works wonders with the red and green

Those guys look awesome! Very cool of you to do for your friend.