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Hrm, where to begin.

I started 40k with Space Marines near the tail end of second edition in 1998/1999. Surprisingly, not Ultramarines but Dark Angels. However, what I was particularly interested in was the Imperial Guard, although I never got their codex until the great 2nd edition sale (more on that later).

I started off with a Demolisher, armed, of course, with 1 multi melta and 1 plasma cannon, with sponsons glued on upside down and a good 2/3rds of the tracks missing. - This is a planned repaint, but for hilarity value I might very well upload a shot of it after my attempts in 3rd edition to fix the sponson issue - ultimately tearing both of them in half. However, what I had also bought, was a basilisk and a (metal) sentinel - which are both still in use today and is not particularly horrible, 2 Mordian Iron Guard units and... drumroll... A box of plastic stormtroopers. Even today, these Mordians form the core of my army, only having slight touch ups for the hrm... 2007 Conflict Scotland and the Stormtroopers are now my Command HQ veterans.

The great second edition sale came along, and I returned to my Guard, managing to get my hands on enough Mordians to make 2 squads with mortars/flamers, some command squads, a hellhound (which has provided inspiration for my continuing army's color scheme) and 2 commissars. This brings us to (what will probably remain) my first 2 images. The aforementioned commissars.

I actually finally got round to painting a couple of months ago and was really my second 40k model I've painted since February 2007. I didn't do much painting of 40k for a few years before then either. When Lord of the Rings came out, I all but abandoned 40k entirely.




----------------------13/07/09------- The (very) Old Guard -------------------13/07/09------------





That Commissar Yarrick model is so old, I remember taking him into school being proud of my painting of him. So he was definitely a 1990's purchase/paintjob. Oddly enough, for a long while I never found I was able to equal his painting. I'll definitely not be repainting him though, some history you just don't wipe away.



Ah yes... The Demolisher. My first tank as I said. You can see I really didn't underestimate how bad it is. I'm almost certainly repainting this. I do however, still love that old sentinel. And he still crops up in games.





I had the bright idea back then that every squad would have its own unique uniform colour. One was painted lightning bolt blue, one emerald blue, one Festering blue and one Regal blue. I also decided that the command squads would be Ultramarines blue.
This has caused me no end of trouble over the years. I eventually tried to make my army more unified by having the pauldrons(?) be the same for each platoon. Platoon 1 gold, platoon 2 red. Then, for some reason for the 2007 tournament, I decided to paint goblin green trim on my original squads uniforms. So now, having bough 30 new Mordian Guardsmen, I have absolutely no idea how the heck to paint them without having to redo absolutely everything of my old models as well.
I do think the pauldrons = platoon colours is a good idea. But different uniforms is more than ridiculous. What I'm thinking for my new ones is, uniform trim the same colour as the pauldrons, then have the bands round the hat being different to signify the different squads.


The very old stormtroopers, with a metal heavy weapons team, 2 plastic squaddies and the old Cadian Lieutenant who tends to be my Colonel if I'm using a cheap command HQ. Unlike his food bill....

So, time marched on, after the 2nd edition sales bonanza I left my Imperial Guard behind again, resumed collecting my dark angels when 3rd edition game out. I even dabbled in Eldar ( Keeping in mind I was just getting out of the unsupervised-games-store-kid-phase). Until I believe it was 2000/2001 rolled around and Imperial guard got their brand spanking new codex and Catachans.

Of course, Catachans didn't fit in with my army at all, but they were guardsmen and in plastic. So.... I bought 60 of them (including the battleforce) and my first normal Leman Russ. I also had an incredibly bright idea then. I had decided that plastic models don't *really* need undercoating. I also got 2 'new' plastic sentinels in the battleforce. - Which I still have barely painted.

Um... yeah... Now I make every effort possible to not include my Catachans in my armies. You'll see why.


Ok, people take note. This above image is very important. This is an important example of how NOT to paint your army.
Always. Always. Always. Use undercoat. Preferably spray and preferably a dark colour (IE black). Otherwise your army might end up looking like that.

The final step of my journey for tonight (13/07/09) is my tanks.

Well, this is missing a Sentinel from the new Cadian battleforce, mainly because it's still on its sprue.
Now, the order the tanks were bought was roughly.
Demolisher first, then the basilisk, then the sentinel. Then hellhound while we were still in second edition (as shown by box). Next purchase was the Catachan battleforce, with a Leman russ (sponsons) and not one but 2 sentinels.
Then came the 2003 box set with the new Leman Russ and a chimera purchased shortly afterwards. Finally, bringing up the rear - my Vendetta.

The best way I can figure it, is that the Hellhound must have been repainted at some point because it looks quite clearly far too... acceptable when compared to ye olde Demolisher or even the later Leman Russ.

What I do find funny though, is my basilisk crew are quite possibly amongst the rarest models I own.

Well, that's me for the 13/07/09 update. Good night folks.


--------


2003 ( I think? ) and whoooo! Plastic Cadians and a non-crap codex. The same one I was using until a few months ago. Additions to my army here were the cadian battleforce (with a new leman russ - half painted!), 3 sanctioned psykers (still not painted), a squad of kasrkin (mostly painted, but not well (by my standards 6 years later) and a chimera - painted semi-decently I might add! Since resuming 40k in 2009, I've begun painting the models from this box and have some pictures of them amongst the models from the newest battleforce.


The painted squad in the foreground, and the unpainted squad in the background both come from this old battleforce.



Now these guys, I painted a few months ago along with the Commissar. I'm actually quite proud of the washing/highlighting on the gunner but, of course I forgot to do it to the loader.

The Guard sleep for a while after 2003, only coming out for a 4th edition Conflict Scotland doubles tournament (the 2004/2005? one). I only use my Mordians and the Hellhound. We come middlish - 2 massacres, 2 massacred - not bad considering I'd only played about 2 games of that edition before, having focussed on LOTR). However, the best part of it was the number of folk that had thought my Mordians were a scratch built / converted army - they'd never seen them before!

So, I play/paint LOTR for a while until the tailend of last year where my next door neighbours grandson, having seen my armies on my display shelf in my mothers craftroom begins 40k.
A move both his mothers and my own wallet probably regret bitterly.

I start teaching him, and learning 5th edition myself and manage to *avoid* buying any 40k stuff, up until I move away from home in April (whoo, job!), which, of course, coincides with the Imperial Guard codex being released shortly after. So, a new round of purchases begins.






With the battleforce, plus another squad, I began building up plenty of heavy weapons teams, since due to my catachans, I had more than enough basic men.

------10/07/09----Talk about the mortar team conversion here -----10/07/09-----

My Cadian forces that were assembled at the time, including the old(er) models.


Work has been progressing and as of last week(!) I've now completed these heavy weapon teams. One of the annoying things though, to make the army more playable, I had to do a fair bit of cutting and hacking of some of my 03 Cadian models, who were assembled into special weapons teams and the like. - So expect some rather dodgy loaders!
However, expect some rather cool ones too (in my opinion) from the newers ones (aka not undercoated yet).

I was struggling for original ideas on that one, and I had mostly ran out of parts. However it would probably fit better with a heavy bolter team than an autocannon. The giand autocannon nose isn't exactly subtle


Poor Jimmy the Loader. Someone has to do all the work why the rest of the squad are off striking heroic poses.


The Ammo Dump. Probably not the best place to put a heavy weapon. But at least it isn't a missile launcher.


My first attempt at making a greenstuff conversion since me attempting to make Aragorn the King from Helms Deep Aragorn in 2003. A simple one, but at least it makes him look veteran-ish.


Veteran Squad sergeant with a spare head from my Valkyrie.

Also, to treat myself and as a reward for doing some overtime, I bought a load of new Mordians with the extra cash. - 30 to be precise. My recent games at the club I've now joined have surprisingly often resulted in my guardsmen doing fairly well in close combat. The few survivors from a guard squad have semi-regularly managed to take out harlequins, a few surviving terminators and even a chaos lord!
Therefore, this conversion seemed rather logical.

- Yes, that is a bayonet on his pistol.

Alright, now we're really up to date, with my latest model who I just finished painting a few days ago. My mate wasn't too impressed with a commissar painted in army colours, so I decided to have a go at a more traditional one.
This really is the most up-to-date, best quality model I have (probably took around 6 hours all told) and I would appreciate any helpful opinions and criticsms of him.


Hopefully you will enjoy/find interesting this little tale of an evolving army over well, 10 years and might, just possibly, provide a counterpoint to a lot of the efficient tournament armies you see on these boards.

Wow, lots of pictures. Valkyrie head works well and I like the mortor team moving the equipment!

I like the individual look you have given to each of the Heavy Weapon teams, nice work If it makes you feel any better you have made more progress painting your IG than I have ever managed with mine.

I am very fond of Commissar #1 figure but I was annoyed with the hand flamer as it doesn't fit the equipment options ( and hasn't done for a long time). So I carried out a minor conversion by lopping off Chenkov's boltpistol and hand and replacing the Commissar's hand. With some careful cutting, snipping and file work it looks rather good and Chenkov's bolt pistol with skull shroud looks very appropriate for a weapon of execution.

Your washes seem to be detracting ALOT from the paintjobs of the models, it looks like you are using inks without watering them down alot and adding a small amount of soap.

I've not used inks for a very long time. Only 2 I ever bought was dark green and black. Neither of which I've used.

what parts of the models are you referring to? I thought washing the stormcoat with badab black helped (it at least made it go from grey to black!).

Aside from the faces I haven't used any washes.

You pretty clearly have used a wash on the boots and the face. Try watering your washes down, you want subtle shading and toning rather than random splats.

That'll teach me for posting at 1/2am. I'd clean forgot about the boots.


Going to be updating later today with a few group photo's of my old Mordians and my Catachans. I won't go into squad level cause (as far as the Catachans are concerned) they're 8/9 years old and very... poor

Always nice to see another Blog here. I like the Mortar Conversion a lot myself. The Vendettas a lovely job and I'm looking forward to the Mordians

13/07/09 update.

Updates include Valkyrie pictures, Mordian pictures, TANKS as well as the *shudder* Catachan pictures.

Just realised a lot of my pictures weren't showing, so time to split the blog up a bit.

----13/07/09----The Vendetta Comes----13/07/09-----

Well, it's late again, so I'll probably leave the writing until another day. However, here are some photographs of the Valkyrie as it progressed.



First of all, the obligatory work table link.



This is shortly after I first got my new camera. - The earlier photo's than this arn't much use. I had just begun painting the interior of the Valkyrie. The main thing I wasn't too certain about - and am still not happy with is the lights on the roof section. I still think they look like some kind of mutated pancake. I really do doff my hat to anyone that can pull off realistic lights.



Interior detail is beginning in earnest here. I'm glad I never threw out any of my old paints. The light greens here are from an old rubber pot of Jade Green from over 11 years ago. - They've lasted a whole lot longer than the majority of my 3rd edition 40k paints, I'll tell you that much!



It is (of course) tremendously important to paint the interior while it's separate.



Beginning work on the crew now. I started with adeptus battlegrey, then codex grey with a highlight of fortress grey. As you can see, this made it look very bright grey! Fortunately a wash of Badab black saved the day.



The interior is now assembled. - Big suggestion though, use a rubber band to hold the back together with the ramp closed, even though it seems to close fine. When you add in the roof (which doesn't *need* to be glued on), it forces the joins slightly apart so the ramp may start falling open.


The flash is a bit bright here for the crewmen, but it shows the detail on the cockpit. - It also shows my attempt at trying to paint something with the targetting computer. It didn't work perfectly, but it looks fine to me.



The plucky pilots now completed. I decided that grey would be a suitable colour for them and would differentiate slightly from the dark blue plane. Although, i was tempted to paint them bright orange.



Everything is coming together now.


The completed interior. Note, no matter how hard I tried, with no matter how much filing, the handles on the arms refused to slot properly into the heavy bolters.


It's complete(ish)! And, perhaps more importantly, is a not bad photo with the flash off, so you can see it's true colour.
Would it be worthwhile me trying to drag up pictures of the lascannon sponsons, or talking about the conversion a bit?

There are a few broken images that i can't see, the use of the dakka gallery is a great choice and maybe it could get rid of some broken images. The blue on the valkyrie looks great and it has some nice shading. Good luck with the rest of project

10/10/09

Alrighty, it's been a while since my last update. 3 months, flipping heck. Here was me thinking I had done a lot of painting since my last update. Well... rats.

Generally, I've been working on the somewhat tried and tested way of painting an army. Squad, character, vehicle. Since my last update, I've somewhat done one of each.

First up, is well, the squad. I think this is what has thrown me off a little bit, I probably spent way too long painting these guys. They only end up half showing it though. If I put them beside my older models, it took me a few second to recognise which squad was which. This wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.



Ok, well. I thought a lot of work went into them. The past few years, I've been working on learning your basic shading/highlighting/layering. It's been a pretty slow process to be honest. However, aside from the last 6 months, I have barely touched a 40k model. Anyways, enough excuses. With these guys, I started off with a black undercoat then a necron abyss basecoat. The main colour was regal blue, which I basically tried to paint over the abyss, leaving darker gaps, the same sort of thing I did with my Valk. Then I tried ye highlighty thing with Mordian blue, accepting that as the most 'visible' colour for the squad. Then I tried to go for another highlight with ultramarines blue on the model edges, like the rise of the tunic folds. I dunno, I guess that's me following the newbies guide to highlighting. I know I should try to do mixing more, my problem with that is I have no idea how I would get consistent colours for a surface as big as a tank, or something that would take multiple painting sessions.

I have however, tried following folks advice on the washes and watering them down a little bit. - Any better?

I've played a few games with them painted now, here's a shot of my most recent.



Well, with the squad done, I moved onto the next, a character. The single most regularly used character in my army and as a side note, the most awesome.



Pity the model isn't.

Well, I've been taking my time with him but I can't improve that annoying goldfish mouth of his.



I finished painting him last week, and he's already done me very proud. In his inaugural game, a 4 way 'king of the hill' battle. He pops up on the bunker in the middle, throws his demo charge at a chaos marine unit who just jumped out an exploded transport, and killed every single one of them. I think one of the guys I was playing with told me they were a 225 point unit.


What I'm working on right now is this.



It's still very much not finished yet. I had a go at 'blending' with the targeting array. - It didn't work. Well, maybe it did, up until the final one that required me painting a circle. Oh well.

The question is though, what else can I do to the main body? I take it you can't 'highlight' a flat panel, and I've already done a asuryan blue wash on it.

My rockets should turn out... ok though. I'm planning to give them lightgrey/white fins, a white tip on the nose cone and white banding between the nose and main body.

Well, that's it for this update. Good night.

Wow! Awesome trip down memory lane. Good luck with this blog, it's great to see such a diverse force being brought back into Imperial discipline!

Good luck!

Time for a new update

I've got an Apocalypse Gaming Day on Sunday, I was working out what exactly I had in my Imperial Guard army. The results were fairly surprising to be honest.



I haven't worked out the points yet sadly, it's probably not as high as I think.

For actual painting I've done recently. I've sort of finished my manticore. - Still needs some detaily stuff on it though, that I'll do... eventually.



I've also been doing a lot (too much) painting for a tournament that never happened last Friday (The guy organising it quit, then neglected to mention that he didn't book the coach for it. By the time the new guys found out, it was doo late).

So, my Colonel is decidedly less crap looking now. Not good, mind you... Just less crap.

So, I've been doing my share of repainting and we have, hopefully a before and after picture.





So, that's my update for the moment so far! Next stop, I think, as I'm sick of painting infantry for a while is finishing my Thunderbolt Pilot - 2nd from the left.


Then, possibly, getting started on my Vulture flyer. - I just need to figure out what guns to give it.

i am in love with the paint on the leman russ and hellhound and chimeras hulls...
its simple yet awesome looking...

glad to see your still into it after so long, this army should be pretty awesome when its done

It's really nice to see so many classic figures being put to good use again. I just love that line of figures in the last picture, in front of the tanks.

Well, I've not been doing too much painting for a while, however I've decided to add some details and finish off the odd model.

First off was finishing off my pilot. His face has proved to be a bit of a pain.

The problem I seem to have with painting the details on the face (mouth/eyes) is that the paint on the tip of the brush doesn't seem to want to come off onto the model, it's like it starts trying on the brush tip.

Also, I couldn't stop myself from going back to my Valkyrie to try to finish it off, still got some odd things to do - drybrushing on the eagle, finish off the sensor things, however I'm glad to say that it's nearly done! - I bought it in May, and have another 2 to build/paint + a vulture.

[spoiler]
I went a tiny bit overboard on the battle damage on one side, I'm quite happy with it in general now though.

I'm not sure what to paint next, I've started undercoating my Vulture, but I'm in a bit more of a space marine mood to paint something. I can't decide on a colour scheme for my Space Hulk guys though - Blood Angels is a bit overdone and the traditional successor choices are just variants of red and black.

So, a small update I guess. I've decided I'll paint a load of characters for now, particularly my advisors. Then have 5 guardsmen beside them to paint while they're drying. I've found that while tank > troop > character is good for variation, by the time I've finished painting the tank, I end up having to try to remember where I was practicing improving my painting. So, if I'm wanting to improve my painting (advice very welcome!), I think this new focus will help. So, without further waiting.



He's not quite finished yet, still some washes and highlighting to go (and I need to do something with his face). But yeah, for a mostly drybrushed model, I'm quite happy with him.

Not really a painting and modelling, but it does show my army together - AND, it shows off my opponents awesome, heavily scratch built ork army.

My focus right now for my painting has been on improving it. So I'm mostly working on single models, fortunately the one thing Imperial Guard does well is having everything in large numbers, including characters!

You've already seen my Astropath, so here's the other 2. Fun fact, I tried basing the colour scheme of the Admiral off of 'Grand Moff Tarkin' in Star Wars, as I felt the white uniform was a bit too commonplace.

In the couple of weeks since I've been back, I brought up a load of old models with me and have since painted my first one. A classic Eldar ranger, done mainly because I figured painting yellow would be an interesting exercise. Of course, I ended up using very little yellow, instead preferring colours like Tau Sept Ochre, Vomit Brown, Iyanden Darksun, Bubonic Brown then finally Golden yellow for a highlight.

The camera is actually kinder to me there than the actual model. The Gloss Varnish managed to capture the cameras flash a bit making the gems look FAR better than they do in real life. I'm tempted to try to practice them using a high elf gem painting guide on the GW's site. Not much use for a guard army though, except maybe for laser sights or somethign.

In the hopes that I'm going to get to a new page soon.

My current work has involved a lot of black paint!

My current work has involved a lot of black paint! I've been working on undercoating my forgeworld vulture. It's pretty much the only thing left after all my forgeworld models got stolen along with my suitcase last week! I'm also starting to work on the insides of a plastic valkyrie, which I'm planning to paint as regal blue followed by Mordian blue. This should end up being a shade lighter than my vendetta, which was Necron Abyss followed by Regal Blue. I'm just worried it's going to end up looking too space mariney!

I like the history of your army from beginning to the present.

Sad to hear about the theft your making progress mate

So, having gone positively batty again still painting my Valkyrie, I decided that for a change, I'd paint a Space Marine. I've got the 'Battle Brother Artremis' model from Inquisitor that I've planned for a while to paint up into a kind of mini statuette, however I figured I'd get some practice with colour schemes in first.

With the Space Hulk models, I've been inspired to try a Blood Raven (since Blood Angels are a bit overdone right now!) and I think he looks rather good!

I started off with a pretty simple Scab Red for the armour and Khemri Brown on the pads basecoat. Then it was a simple matter of layering Red Gore and Kommando Khaki followed by highlights of Merchite Red and Bleached Bone and assorted washes. Simples!

Though painting him still managed to take me 3 evenings worth of time. I think I just spent too much time watching TV while holding a wet paint brush in my hand.

Well, after 7 months of work and painting and it taking me way, way, way too long, I have finally finished my Valkyrie. I don't even know why it took me so long to be honest, considering I had finished the inside of it by the beginning of March and have only worked on a handful of models in between times.

One thing I really am quite proud of on the model, is using this guide as a major help for painting the assorted lights on my Valkyrie, especially when combining them with the Gloss Varnish. - I was trying to make the lights inside look like 'running lights' if that makes any sense. I think the red and green look a lot better than my 'pancake lights' attempt on my Vendetta (shown on the left).

So, with 7 months of work done, its time to go back to painting my Infantry. Though, I'm tempted to work on a Space Hulk Terminator first.

As my first post Valkyrie model, I decided to try to test my limits by doing a Space Hulk Terminator as a Blood Raven.

I'm really proud of him

I'm now dithering between going a scale up and working on Battle Brother Artremis from Inquisitor as a nice Desk Model, or working on some Guardsmen, or trying to work out my High Elf colour scheme....

Oh uh... Wow I really haven't updated my Guard blog in more than 2 years? Yikes...

Well, I did start a fully fledged Blood Ravens army in that time.

However, I have done some Imperial Guard painting since then. Such as Ursarkar Creed.



Though, the main reason for my current update, is my attempt at doing a shadowsword with a red/blue pattern using Spraypaints.

I had a go with some things from Hobbycraft, although they've ended up being far too expensive. However, this is classed as an experiment!

First, I sprayed the model with Humbrol Crimson Gloss Spraypaint.



Then I covered the tank liberally with some Tamiya Masking Tape.



I sprayed the model with some Humbrol Midnight Blue.



And here we go...



It well, sort of worked? I don't really know what to make of it, to be entirely honest... Any thoughts?

Nice mordian, those guys are known for having a lot alot of tanks, and i see that you got a nice baneblade up there, keep it up.
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