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You keep inspiring me to hit my old projects, which seem to mirror yours, but no Templar happening here anytime soon : nono:

Nice job on the Wight!

Mine sits forlornly in a box, with a big gap in his cloak my poor skills can't fill.

OK, so Theophony returns to 40k with a Templar army CONFIRMED here!

You could always mix in the bits with the DA parts, Grim? Or do a single squad to ally with if the fancy took you?

Thank you for the kind words, Aku-chan!



The next three models of “Book Two” of my Vikings. Once again these are from Wargames Foundry‘s, rebadged 1986 Citadel F8 Vikings. I’ve actually painted the duplicated axemen before, painted back in March/April, I guess the fact that he’s a dupe explains why Cannon was happy to pass the model on. Hopefully I’ve made the three of them look at least a little distinct from one another when they get used on the table.



Once again, nothing too outstanding, though the drive to keep using unique shield designs on these figures is keeping me on my toes…

Nice! Those shields are fancy

I've been gradually using the bits, the chained bolters and chainswords, and some of the details. Just the shoulder pads sitting idle now.

That's some good solid painting on the Vikings, but the shields push them over the top to fantastic.

I got to agree, the shields are really well done. They really set them apart from stock models and mass produced hordes that we normally see.

To echo what everyone else said, the quality of the work on the shields really takes these to another level!

Thank you guys, I'm glad you like them!



Officio Assassinorum. The Order of Imperial Assassins. The face of death to whomever is unlucky to see them, and many who never catch a glimpse of their killers.



This is the “Head 1” version of the model. I think I have the alternative version, unpainted, somewhere. It utilises the same torso and body, and given the “throwing grenade” pose of the torso, I doubt we’re going to get a radically different model when I do eventually find and paint him.



The Culexus Assassin, of course was released last out of the four (five?) Imperial Assassin types. The first, obviously was the Rogue Trader-Era “Ninja” Assassin, of no fixed temple. Now my memory is a little sketchy, but I recall the original being superseded over the course of three months worth of White Dwarf by the trio of the Vindicare (Sniper), the Callidus (Close Combat Shapeshifter) and the Eversor (All-out Psycho-Killer Berserker). Later on, with Codex: Assassins, they introduced the Culexus, who is a psychic “null” and a thing called the Animus Speculum bolted onto their gigantic, Xenomorph-like heads. When the eye of the Animus opens, focused “negative psychic energy” is unleashed and does a right number on any Psykers nearby, and in particular on its target.



Having read through Index 2 to see what this guy is like in-game, I can see he’s a bit of a glass cannon, and appropriately nasty against psykers. Assassins were a nasty surprise to anyone who came near them back in 2nd edition, which was when I most often employed Assassins – this fellow in particular against a friend who’s Slannesh army was fond of rather potent psykers.

I’m not sure how often a weapon like this will manage to see the tabletop in my games of 8th, which will largely be focused on smaller, friendly games for some time as the forces are built up. Perhaps he could be rolled out for especially large games? Certainly once we get to the stage of Daemon Princes and Greater Daemons being rolled out to the table, he’d have a place then.

I really like your painting on the black suit. I also happen to be one of the few people who really love this model!

I like the red of the animus. Makes me think Khorne, who are also not fans of psykers. I vaguely remember two of the other guilds of assassins from the books being a poison master and a cyber assassin (think hacker who also uses weapons).

Your right Venenum and Vanus. Cool model by the way.

He looks great. When these guys were released they bumped Callidus as my favorite temple.

I've got one of those metal Culexus Assassins myself, but mine has the other head. It's only partially painted; I really need to go back to it and finish it up. I do love the sculpt, and you did well on your paintjob on it.

Assassin is excellent. Bodysuit is well done. Creepy suckers

I think I had at least two of them. I converted one for a house rules spryer ganger that was a pyromaniac. Chopped the head nub off and added an elder helmetless head. The assassins were always cool. Even the original one.

The bodysuit on that assassin is great but i love the viking shields their awesome

Thanks guys - I'm now very much tempted to dig out another half-painted Assassin and get them finished. Just need to keep focus and get some more of these Power Armoured chappies done first to make some space on the desk. I should have some more Vikings tomorrow, Joe. In the meantime here's another blast from the past from before I started this blog - basically as I go through repairing the photobucketed pic in my blog I sometimes find posts of models that have never been seen here that I also think people might enjoy seeing.

So there's a couple more painted Bones this time. One from the Kickstarter, the Battleguard (Iron) Golem, and another pre-KS model – the Troll. Seems appropriate enough since I finally just got my Bones III (might open it soon), Bones IV has started, and I showed those Bones Purple Worms the other day...

When painting the “Iron” Golem (as he’s commonly known), I wanted to play with warm metallics (copper, bronze) and verdigris, so I happily disregarded the “Iron” portion of the model.





Much of the model was actually fun to work with. I utilised a lot of heavy drybrushing that worked well on the model to bring out all the slight imperfections of the cast, and helped to create a bit of a pitted, cast-metal look, which was perfect for my ends. The rear shot of the left forearm shows it pretty well. While I’m not especially happy with the way the sword blade turned out, being a cheap Bones model, I’m happy to call it good enough. The plastic of the blade was uneven and frankly an unpleasant pain to work with. The face was a bit of a mess. To sort of salvage it, I just painted it gold in the end, and gave it a hit of ink and a small highlight. The gems on the back of the shoulders and sword blade, and also the eyes were done using the usual GW-style gem technique and hit with gloss varnish. For what it’s worth, I think the glowing OSL effect on the Reaper website looks better, and if I’d seen it earlier I probably would have ripped it off, but c’est la vie.





The bags and chain on the back of his butt were a badly-cast mess, and so they got a very quick “good enough” job. The real highlight of the model to me was playing with some new mixes of paint washes along with the layered drybrushing to create the aged verdigris effect, which will no doubt make a reappearance later down the line on some venerable space marines of some description. I also did some dungeon furniture at the same time, which I’ll have to photograph down the line and show here as well. Base is my usual for this kind of thing – Proxie models 40mm round base with the plastic Bones base glued on top and a bit of acrylic putty to flatten it all out before sand and Army Painter tufts.

Anyway, as a low-stress learning experience and relatively fast model to paint, I consider this guy to be a success. Now he can sit on the shelf until Pathfinder or Frostgrave or something calls him to duty!





This guy, like the Purple Worms from the last post, was a Bones figure I picked up before the Kickstarter campaign who spent most of the last year part-painted until I finally finished him properly more recently. The “learning experience” with this guy was to practice blending from unnatural skin tones (ie, the green) to more natural ones (the flesh). I saw some fine work done in this manner on Citadel Dragon Ogres many years ago, and it’s also been used to some extent on the LotR trolls – which is one of the places this guy can do duty, along with Pathfinder and wargames like Warhammer and Kings of War.





The paint was originally a bit nicer, but it got severely messed up (in my opinion) when I hit the finished model with Army Painter’s spray (matt!) varnish. The model got a nasty shine, some sandy “frosting” on his limbs, and it also attracted a bunch of tiny little hairs. I’ve gone over it with paint-on Vallejo, but it’s still not quite right. The base used the same techniques as listed above for the golem, but not as successful, and being a cheap bones model I’d prefer to buy another one and do it again then spend the time to rework the whole base – ie “good enough”. His claws are badly defined, and the facial details are a bit soft and sloppy – picking out the eyes was not easy. Blending the pustulent and infected looking boils into his skin was fun as always, but despite my misgivings about the casting of the figure overall and especially some specific parts of the model (claws, face) – and even the messed up finish thanks to the Spray and my sub-par job on the base, I find it to be another successful practice model. Good enough for Roleplaying and certainly tabletop quality for wargaming.

More fancy models, nice stuff. Dudes I missed out on being a bones2+ individual.

I especially like the golem but the troll works quite well too. Between my bad eyes and the phone screen I can't get into the details as well as some people but they certainly pass muster from my POV.

Nice verdigris on the golem. I also like the speckled belly on the troll. I didn't jump in on bones since I don't play rpgs anymore.

I've been more and more focused with the later Bones campaigns - eyeing off the scenery items and those that would fit in with wargaming - so big nasties are usually a good choice. JUst opened Bones 3 and at a glance, stuff seems less awfully warped than ever before.

Looking good, I enjoy the challenge of blending weird colours or those that just shouldn't belong! the metal I did blending into flesh on Ferrus Mannus arms for example. and the lighter/darker blend on troll belly is great! looks good. I liked it on the worms too, they're cool quirky models and you have a good grasp of their aesthetics for painting them :-)

Verdigris is so much fun to paint! Very rewarding as well. I did my bronze bull from Bones II with plenty of verdigris and really loved it.

It's a page or so back, but I'm just back from a week away so catching up... I need to echo the praise for the BT with WH knight bits. I have some heads from the knight sprue and have tried converting them to 40K but never quite so successfully.

Yeah, it's enjoyable to do once it starts to look properly done. I always wince though - as I move from a lovely, bright, highlighted-and-shaded brass or bronze and start adding the blue-green to it. Usually wondering if I've made a huge mistake to start with. I found another Templar as well, so it looks like I'll have eleven. Maybe that guy with the standard will be an Ancient sooner rather than later. Unless I make the especially-blinged guy a hero of some kind, instead. hmm...

I do like blending odd colours together when it's an appropriate thing for the model. I have to say I like the challenge when it comes up on occasion and it's very satisfying to do a good job with it.

I need to go outside and photograph a Squad of Dark Angels that I've just finished the reinforcements for. Going from an old-school squad of 7 to a modern squad of 10. Still have the Sergeant to do the same for a second squad, and if it weren't such a howlingly-unpleasant windy day out there, I'd be able to varnish the last pair for a DA Assault Squad that got it's bump to 10, and an Old-School RT librarian finally finished after god only knows how long - also belonging to the First Legion.

Also trying to finish up a combat squad of Minotaurs, so I can move onto the more interesting half of that same squad...

Anyway - time for some more Vikings!



Here are the next trio of “Book Two”s Vikings. As you may have guessed, following the stuff I do en masse, like the chainmail – I tend to paint, and especially complete them in duos and trios based on a similar palette. While it might give these three guys a superficial feeling of being overly red-blue while together, once they’re all mixed in together with the other Viking models, it’s all much more varied.



But yeah, they do look very blue-and-red when presented like this…



And the shields. The one shield that appears to have a Union Flag design on it wasn’t originally planned to appear that way. The pattern I was copying had much narrower white borders and really didn’t have the appearance of the UK flag, but when you’re hand painting onto a tiny 25mm-scale shield, getting those white lines thinner while still remaining distinct is a little difficult. Having completed it, it took enough effort for me to give it the old “ah well, it was tricky enough to do and it looks decent, so it stays!”

Such nice shields. Fancy Vikings.

Those shields are awesome! Your freehand is certainly much better than my own crude efforts.

Thank you homies. And Zerg - just keep practising and you'll keep getting better and better.



Once again, Warhammer 40k 8th Edition takes the responsibility for inspiring me to dig these models out and resurrect them into a coherent force. Replacing about thirty kilograms of books, contradictory rules and scattered digital files with a Tabula Rasa has given me the opportunity to step back into an IP I’ve been engaged with since I was a young teen – when Rogue Trader was released and I stumbled onto a demo game being played at Games ’87 (Later Conquest) on a gigantic crashed spaceship put together by a bloke named Andrew B (and co.)



Stripping all of that convoluted mess back to a core rules of 12 pages, with the extra details to be added in via unit entries has annoyed many people who had been playing for years, as their very expensive book collections have been rendered null (excepting for the paint sections, photography and background) and while I understand their annoyance, 40k had grown to a bloated incomprehensible mess that was anything but friendly to new or departed players. The clean slate of rules gives us a very nice (re)entry point to the game, and hopefully GW can keep the meta and power spiral (known as Codex Creep) under control over time.



This force was originally inspired during 3rd edition, by Ed B of Powerfist fame (infamy?) when I was at his place one day and he showed my his Dark Angels. I thought they looked bloody nice – and not too difficult to paint. This was during the time when things weren’t yet especially blinged out. I did repurpose a Legion of the Damned backpack for him, inspired by Chapter Master Azrael’s own pack. You’ll note the models in this box are basically just regular space marines, with the exception of the Sergeant. The bright yellow fuel canister on the Melta is a bit of a 2nd edition throwback as well…



I also had a whole bunch of metal marine shoulderpads. I thought the Deathwing pad looked rather spiffy, though where to use them? The solution was to consider Veteran Sergeants (which were an upgrade option at the time) to be “Deathwing Initiates”. The background speaks of circles within circles amongst the Dark Angels, so I felt that the promotion to Veteran Sergeant justified that extra little bit of fluff – and bling. Hence the bone-coloured pauldrons and red Deathwing Chapter badge. Bone-coloured power sword? Why not!



This trio of Tactical marines were built with the notion of being part of the Sergeant’s Combat Squad. I used 3rd ed Assault Squad legs to give them some movement, given that the Sergeant is armed for Close assault and his offsider carries a close-ranged Melta-Gun.



Thus we have the first Combat Squad: 1 Section. Kitted for a close support role and capable of doing some damage. Originally, these guys were built as a seven-man squad under 3rd edition rules with the role of riding around in a Razorback (which I never got finished). I shall folllow up with 2 Section shortly.

Love the old-school Dark Angels!

They look awesome. Glad you pulled them out of the closet (because they dont come out willingly).

Sorry that's old school 3rd edition dark angels hate right there.

^ Yes but it's still viable for us older ones who love a good ribbing...... which I hear the Dark Angels do a lot :-)

Nice updates dude. Really like the undead hero from a couple of pages back.

Many other cool thing too, but the assassin really jumped out to me. Such great models that I don't see on the table enough.

EDC