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Making the edges of the drill look worn is a really good idea; not particularly surprising given that it drills though rock though
Engineers also look pretty cool. Are those shotguns?

Meer_Cat wrote:I really like how you weather the steel on your vehicles- that burnished-bronze-brass look that says that corrosion or oxidation has been removed through the laborious and constant application of Brasso or Never-Dul; takes me back indeed! Really nice work and a great effect.

Thanks! To be honest I didn't even think it like that. Just tried to add different "layers" of corrosion and wear. Valid explanation though. Maybe the krieges do care about the condition of their vehicles after all

Auroch wrote:Making the edges of the drill look worn is a really good idea; not particularly surprising given that it drills though rock though
Engineers also look pretty cool. Are those shotguns?

Cheers! I tried to think which parts of the vehicle actually hit the rock and other matter when the drill goes under ground. Glad it worked out.

The weapons are indeed shotguns. They do pretty nice damage on the tabletop
Thinking about converting another melta engineer, not sure yet. Deepstriking 2 meltas plus those shotguns sounds tempting though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some work in progress updates:

As I said before, a few of my models have taken some damage over time. Found couple of pictures I took before starting the repairs.

Few of the lasguns were bent like this. Or even worse (already fixed the worse ones before realizing that it should be good to take pictures).
Just apply some hot water to soften it up, then carefully bend it to right position and "freeze" with cold water.


And the worst scenario:
These guys are equipped with the less known carbine version of the lucius pattern lasgun. Luckily I had quite a few spare weapons to steal parts from.
EDIT: image lost :(

Also small improvements on the painting side. Decided to add some more detail to these chainswords. Previously these were just drybrushed grey, the same color as the rest of the models.
This is what happens when you try to finish too many models in too little time.


There were many more mistakes like this, which I'm now fixing model by model. Nothing too big, just some small details that bother me.
These things did not bother me as much before, but now that I have improved a little bit on the painting side, I'd like to put these guys in order.

Also found few kriegsmen from the passenger model:
EDIT: image lost :(

These are the leftovers from the cutting project. Need to figure out what to do with these guys. Making a squad out of these is a bit too much work, because they are casted pretty well together.
Maybe I could create bodies or something to the tabletop from them.

Objective markers or terrain with tastefully sprinkled Korpsman corpses maybe? They'd look pretty dead facedown

 Auroch wrote:
Objective markers or terrain with tastefully sprinkled Korpsman corpses maybe? They'd look pretty dead facedown

Something like that

Finished the paintjob on the Company Commander. For once I really tried my best rather than making just tabletop standard on a single infantry miniature.
Tried a slightly different highlight techique and tried to find every single unpainted detail this model had.

It transformed from this:


To this:
For once these images are linked from the gallery itself, so they can be zoomed there.








Learned a lot and it was nice to see where my painting is at the moment. I discovered that I have lot to learn regarding small details and highlighting. Also I maybe should have thinned the paint even more, as some thickness is present.
I noticed that painting black (boots) or white (the collar) clothes are not my best skill, so I will need to work on those.
Still I'm fairly happy how it turned out.

Next up the Platoon Commander (or field officer) and the rest of the command squad models.
Already started the base colors on the plasmapistol which I'm going to swap onto him. As I want this army to be WYSIWYG.


Playing my second game in 8th tomorrow (2 games in one month, is this even happening??). Let's see how these guys fare against battlesuit heavy Tau.

Picture heavy update with shots from a recent game and some terrain I mad long ago.
Probably not going to post pictures from every game I play in the future, just a couple to show my latest projects on the battlefield

So I played a 1750 pts game against Tau this time. Managed to table my opponent at the end of round 5, which really surprised me. Usually I have lost pretty much every game with Krieg back in 7th edition.
Basic infantry seems to be a lot more useful and I really love that ws3+ with these guys. Basilisks also did fantastic job this time destroying loads of battlesuits and the enemy commander.

Game images inside spoiler tags, as they are somewhat "off topic".

The whole army:


Gunline prepares:


Greta in big trouble:


Fix bayonets!


Table after 5 turns. Space marine tanks are used as terrain:


Before the game me and my friend managed to find a box that contained pretty much all of my old terrain and a gaming table we did like 6 years ago from plywood.
Wanted to share some pictures of those too. Some of these terrain pieces are 5-6 years old, some are made more recently (2-12 months ago).

A more recent project that I made to rehearse my painting skills after a break.






A piece of ruin. This terrain piece is more of a visual thing rather than giving any real cover.




An old silo made from a peach can:




There were a lot's of others too, but they were pretty much just non converted buildings from the Imperial Sector just drybrushed grey. Looked too boring to take pictures from.
Need to work on these pieces too and create some more terrain to make the gaming table look even better.
I might make a terrain blog at some point if I feel up to it. Need to finish my armies first though, as they are the first priority.

In any case, I think I have painted enough of grey for a moment, so next up some eldar. Continuing my Krieg also when the I get to order some more infantry for them.

Great pics!!

I need to work on my own terrain as well actually. I don't have too many pieces and they look grey and boring. Any tips?

Also pleased to hear that Eldar are next. Craftworld Eldar hopefully?

Glad you liked them

Yeah craftworld indeed. Also have a Dark Eldar (drukhari I believe they are called these days) army, but that can wait until their codex is released.
I have a ~3000 points of craftworld Eldar, but first I'm going to enchance, fix and paint a ~2000 points worth of models to be used on the tabletop.
Luckily most of them are in pretty good shape, which means that I don't gringe when I inspect some of them.

As for terrain, I like to use bases for buildings as well. Plasticard or a piece of hardboard works well. They really make the buildings look more realistic and part of the battlefield.

Usually I cover the whole base PVA glue, then add pieces of normal kitchen roll until the whole thing is covered. After that, mix a 50/50 mixture of water + PVA glue and "paint" over the paper.
As it dries, it will be easy to paint. Prime it black and drybrush different shades of brown, it will look pretty realistic. Just add some debris and parts from vehicles / buildings and it's pretty much done.
Adding some details to the buildings, or even painting them with different colors (red, blue etc. have worked for me), make them really stand out.

Sprues actually make pretty good bent metal pieces from buildings. Cut a few of them, add some dents with hobby knife / clippers, roughen up the edges and maybe bend them a little bit.

As for those oil silos, they are made just by using a tin can. All the details are cardboard which was cut to the right shape and then glued on top of the can.

And most of all, use your imagination!

I was thinking of grabbing some Eldar some time in the future. I love Aspect Warriors How are they in 8th? Haven't really checked out the codex

Not a fan of the new names though... The Dark Eldar will always be the Dark Eldar just like the Guard will always be the Guard for me

 Auroch wrote:
Not a fan of the new names though... The Dark Eldar will always be the Dark Eldar just like the Guard will always be the Guard for me

My thoughts exactly.

 Auroch wrote:
I was thinking of grabbing some Eldar some time in the future. I love Aspect Warriors How are they in 8th? Haven't really checked out the codex

Go ahead! They have quite the cool looking models and are pretty fun to play.
Most of the Aspect warriors seem to be decent. Haven't tried them on tabletop yet though.
What I read, Dark Reapers are pretty much the "favor of the month" - unit at the moment with their great firepower and relatively low cost. Looking at the codex I see lot of improvements with the other units too. They may not be competitive, but still pretty good.
Banshees can actually get to close combat these days, as they have improved mobility and they can't be overwatched!

Wall of text incoming!

And as the Eldar project is kicked up and running again, I started once again by fixing some broken models. This time I also made a few army lists, which work as a base for the models I'm going to finish first.

Beginning of the new edition is always a great place to try out some of the units that have been sitting on the self for too long. Few of these are my Raners, Howling Banshees, Wraithlords and Swooping Hawks.
They used to be quite bad in recent editions (atleast compared to other simply better units), and I also used to play a little more seriously so these guys stayed in the figure case without seeing much daylight.
I won't be buying new models before these are completed, so the following lists are made from the units I currently have. The armies are completely composed from the Craftworld Ulthwe, as I'm not too keen about the trait mixing and matching shenanigans.
I only listed the models and the weapons, as I'm yet not sure about all the loadouts etc.

So the first list is more or less composed from the units I want to try out. It is not competitive by any means, but looks like fun to play.
I have always wielded a mech army with loads of wave serpents etc. This time I'm curious of trying the good old "footdar".



This second list is something I'm more familiar with. I have been playing pretty lists more or less similar to this one in the previous editions. The biggest difference is that I replaced all the Dire Avengers with Guardians.
I have never used the Eldar flyer and now that it looks actually quite good, it had to be included.



I know myself well enough to know that after a few games my lists will always shift to a more competitive style (especially with eldar and dark eldar). But I will try to avoid it when playing casual games with my friends.

And then for some pictures!

Project started with actually washing most of the tanks. They were so dusty that it was impossible to paint small details without making a mess.
Maybe not the best way to do this, but as I'm a busy man this worked out just fine.


All washed up!


Paint has been cracked off from some of the models:




And some are bent (and missing their wings)


Rangers have also lost their rifle barrels to some unknown dimension (vacuum cleaner? under the carpet? who knows..)

Summary: pretty much all of the finecast models are bent in some way and most of the metal ones (which I have quite a lot) have lost some paint.

Quite a lot of unnecessary work that could have been avoided.
Young and stupid is not a good combination when it comes to storing models. Some of these were just quickly dumped to the miniature case after a game and then forgotten there for a few years
If only I could go back in time and smack my younger self to the face

In any case, let's continue:

My friend donated his Eldar warhost to join my craftworld. Got ~1200pts worth of models practically for free (we made a deal that he could still play with them, but I would paint them and own them).
But these guys were primed twice (if I remember correctly) and then painted with a very thick layer. Rookie mistake, we all have done those.


So swimming they go!


Trying to get rid most of the paint, so they can be repainted. They are drowned in a mix of water and a traditional finnish cleaner "Mäntysuopa" (tall oil soap).
It takes a few days for the paint to dissolve, but atleast it's a safe way to do it without damaging the models themselves.
I tried some acetone to an old test model of mine -> the paint dissolved pretty quickly, but the plastic on the model also suffered. Might work for metal models though.

This project also got me wanting to finish my storm guardians!
They were in pretty horrible shape, as I never actually finished them. I was enthusiastic to build them, then realised how bad they were gamewise and left them in a drawer.


These guys also deserve a fighting chance. So added some new parts and bases:


And primed them:


I have meddled with different color schemes for these guys and will post pictures when I'm happy with it.
I will also repaint my other guardian squad, because they are painted BLUE(?). I thought it was a good idea back then, but they do not fit the aesthetics of the army at all.

So, keep tuned for some pictures from actually finished models in the future!

Loving the Kriegers and the scheme for the Eldar is pretty rad

Good start to the Eldar! I don't think I could bring myself to put painted models under a tap though

IGtR= wrote:Loving the Kriegers and the scheme for the Eldar is pretty rad

Thanks IGtR=!

Auroch wrote:Good start to the Eldar! I don't think I could bring myself to put painted models under a tap though

Yeah maybe it was not the best of ideas
But according to my experience, the paint does not care about small exposure to water

Just a quick update:

Messed around and tried a bit different paint schemes for the guardians.
I finally came up with something that is relatively quick to paint, but still looks decent on the board.

The final (hopefully) color scheme will be something like this. Works better with the rest of the army, atleast compared to blue.




Still need some work to be done with highlights and of course the bases. I'm really trying not to spend too much time on these models, as they are "just troops". I want them to look decent, but also want them to finished and ready to fight.
Just seems to be hard for me to ignore some small mistakes and details that no one will ever even notice, except for myself

Removing the citadel paints works fairly well with the tall oil soap. ~48 hours of soaking and some toothbrushing results to something like this:


The hard part is the spray primer. That seems to be very hard to remove, and the models I got from my friend have been primed atleast twice, so I might need to try something different on those guys.

Interesting contrast, although it seems a bit jarring to put metallic gold right next to black armour IMO
Could go with the traditional Ulthwe scheme, although the white helmets might be a bit of a pain

 Auroch wrote:
Interesting contrast, although it seems a bit jarring to put metallic gold right next to black armour IMO
Could go with the traditional Ulthwe scheme, although the white helmets might be a bit of a pain

Do you mean the weapons? Tried different colors with them, not yet decided whether I'm happy with those or not. Also tried more of a beige/black style with them.
At the moment they are painted with Ushabti Bone and washed with black and/or orange wash.

Traditional Ulthwe scheme is something I tried a few years ago. It looks good but somehow I did not manage to do it correctly. And you are right, painting white armor is a pain.
Also I did not want to "copypaste" an existing color scheme, rather like to experiment with new styles.

Ushabti bone? Oh I see I thought it was a metallic paint somehow sorry
I do like the raised purple areas though

 Auroch wrote:
Ushabti bone? Oh I see I thought it was a metallic paint somehow sorry
I do like the raised purple areas though

Yeah the light I used for these quick images is a bit yellow, so the effect seems a bit too strong.
In any case it was a good point, yellowish color does not fit at all.

After pondering (and getting some more feedback) I decided to try out a few things. Liking the direction more.
(Mind you, the paint job is really thick on these, as I have painted them over and over with different colors. So they need some paint stripping too.)

Original purple:


Lighter purple:


Decided to try painting the weapons with grey (still need to play with different shades) and added some purple to the kneepads.
This maybe fits the darkish cold scheme better without popping the weapons too much. Just need to go easy on the shade, so they won't look too metallic.
I might choose the shade of purple from somewhere between those two pictures.

Sometimes it's really hard for me to figure out a color scheme. But one thing I like about these communities: Feedback from fellow hobbyists. Really helps out quite a lot.
Many times one can be blind to certain things, and getting other opinions is very valuable

Been a really busy week, so no much other progress.

I think the grey for guns definitely looks better
I do prefer muted colours to bright colours (probably because I've been doing guardsmen) so I'd probably say that the first purple looks better, but the second might make the models stand out more on the tabletop which would be good

Ohh nice yeah I'm definitely one for muted colours, especially on Eldar which tend to be a little bit dazzling

I'd encourage having a go at weathering on them too I've got a real thing for gritty eldar schemes

Auroch wrote:I think the grey for guns definitely looks better
I do prefer muted colours to bright colours (probably because I've been doing guardsmen) so I'd probably say that the first purple looks better, but the second might make the models stand out more on the tabletop which would be good

I actually grew to like those grey guns so much that I decided to paint the weapons on the vehicles like that too! Even though the white/beige looked alright, it was a pain to paint + they looked a bit messy as there were no visible highlights.

Ynneadwraith wrote:Ohh nice yeah I'm definitely one for muted colours, especially on Eldar which tend to be a little bit dazzling

I'd encourage having a go at weathering on them too I've got a real thing for gritty eldar schemes

After painting a few more models, I noticed the darker shade looks better. Will go with that.
I share my opinion about Eldar with you. I always wanted my army to be a bit more grimdark.
Before allies were a thing, I actually bought some dark eldar models to convert swooping hawks etc. Then the rules for allies emerged, and I was really happy. Later on that of course got out of hand, and now I own a ~2000pts worth of dark eldar
Also checked out your Eldar conversions, really nice! Might lend an idea or two in the future if you don't mind. Especially the conversions with dark eldar parts were very inspiring, as I have quite a lot of those.

Some quick updates too. Got the storm guardians pretty much finished and started to mass produce the other squads.

Guardians on different stages:


Storm guardians (the model on the right has a bit too bright body armor, need to darken it a bit):


Will take some better pictures when they are all finished and I have more time. The next few weeks are really busy as the semester is coming to an end and I have a ton of school projects to finish (some game and demo programming etc.) + quite a lot of shifts at my workplace as the christmas is closing by.
That being said, I still try to paint whenever I can.

I tested the new codex today against Tyranids. The urge to try this army was too high even though the models were not finished (shame on me).
No pictures this time, as they would not have been very good with half painted models.

Went with the more familiar mech list. Pretty much the same I posted above, but without the flyer (it was just primed, so using it would have been a bit lame) and used storm guardians instead of howling banshees.
Falcons with bright lances seemed to work very well, they pretty much wrecked every monstrous creature they fired at. Also guardians did some very nice damage combined with stratagems.
I'm also happy they nerfed the serpent shield, as using that in previous editions was a bit too strong.
Still though playing a mech list is fun only if the opponent has at least a decent competitive list, as it tends to be a bit too strong for casual games.
Maybe will try footdar next as it needs a bit more tactical decisions.

Yeah that dark purple scheme is looking great the more models that are in it what's the plan for Aspect Warriors? Rainbow or craftworld-colours?

Also, how did the Storm Guardians fare? They're about as fluffy as you can get for my craftworld, and I love the conversion I've got going for them, but was a little disappointed that they still seemed pretty sub-par...

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Yeah that dark purple scheme is looking great the more models that are in it what's the plan for Aspect Warriors? Rainbow or craftworld-colours?

Thanks a lot!
Most of the aspect warriors I have painted have been using purple as a main colour, with a little bit different spot colors to distinquish them better. As they all need repainting, I think I'll keep the scheme pretty much the same with the guardians.
Don't want to go with the usual "all colours of the rainbow" - mentality. Except for howling banshees, they might stay close to their original bone colourish theme.

Also, how did the Storm Guardians fare? They're about as fluffy as you can get for my craftworld, and I love the conversion I've got going for them, but was a little disappointed that they still seemed pretty sub-par...

Well to be honest, they are still not very competitive.
That being said, they still are a bit better though than in couple of previous editions given that they actually hit well in close combat and low strength is not that bad anymore. With two fusion guns they did some nice damage and finished of two ravenors in close combat, but other than that nothing special. They met their demise charging a broodlord (game was pretty much over at that point, so decided to have some fun).
I think you'd be better with regular guardians and their superior firepower.
Still going to give them another chance, as they are a fun and fluffy unit.

Yeah I'd go with Guardians too except that they look pretty unbalanced on my running conversions of them with their bulky shuriken catapults, that and it's supremely fluffy for my craftworld to be throwing clone-conscript Storm Guardians into the meat grinder

You and I definitely think alike on colour schemes too. Variants of craftworld colours for aspects, different enough to stand out but similar enough to look cohesive

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Yeah I'd go with Guardians too except that they look pretty unbalanced on my running conversions of them with their bulky shuriken catapults, that and it's supremely fluffy for my craftworld to be throwing clone-conscript Storm Guardians into the meat grinder

You and I definitely think alike on colour schemes too. Variants of craftworld colours for aspects, different enough to stand out but similar enough to look cohesive

Indeed we do

Loved those Storm Guardians by the way! Got inspired so much that had to continue my old kitbashing projects with eldar/dark eldar parts too
Always thought of them more like "eldar citizen militia" rather than specialized close combat warriors, so making them look a bit crude works very well imo.

Still been very busy, will try to get all my guardians and vehicles done during this week or the next...

Models look great. Glad you got to get a game in. I've only played one game in my 17 years of hobby-ing so yeah...and I lost... >_<

I like the purple color scheme- have a unit a friend would like me to paint for him and he wants purple as the featured color, so I'm watching your progress closely, as I intend to rip it o---, I mean, emulate your distinctive style!

bunnygurl wrote:Models look great. Glad you got to get a game in. I've only played one game in my 17 years of hobby-ing so yeah...and I lost... >_<

Thanks bunnygurl! Well gaming is not for everyone, or time does not allow that sometimes. During my earlier hobby years I focused more on playing rather than painting, and actually played most of my games with unpainted / unfinished models.
That has changed to quite the opposite.

Meer_Cat wrote:I like the purple color scheme- have a unit a friend would like me to paint for him and he wants purple as the featured color, so I'm watching your progress closely, as I intend to rip it o---, I mean, emulate your distinctive style!

Glad you liked it!
And go ahead, emulate all you want. I do it all the time using google search when trying to figure out how to paint this and that.
It's nice to be a source of inspiration for someone

Finished the paintjob for all the 2.3 squads of guardians. 7 / 10 of those I received from my friend were not salvagable, even though they swam in different paint removers for a week or so. The spray paint layer was just too thick.
Mind you, the bases are not done yet as I run out of basing materials. That is also the reason there are some spilled paint all over on the edges of the bases.







All of the storm guardians.


1.3 squads of guardians.


A little dark picture from the whole posse.


Paintjob is little messy here and there, as I tried to finish these pretty quickly. Counting for them to look better when in a group on the tabletop

These guys will be stripped for parts, as the paint layer is too damn thick and the trouble of removing all of it is not worth it. Rather buy a new box of guardians.
As you can see, I started painting couple of them and realised that they will just look horrible.


Also started painting more details to my skimmers and swithced the weapon color to the same grey theme as the guardians have.
On closer look, there were many small mistakes / unpainted areas I need to sort out.



Did some kitbashing with dark eldar parts to make couple of more storm guardians.


Found some of my old kitbashing projects. Couple of years ago I thought to combine dark eldar scourge parts with guardian parts to make some better looking swooping hawks.
Then I got lazy and just bought the box.
I really don't like the static look of the original models, so I want to continue that project and try to make these guys a bit more lifelike and different.

Here are some of the stuff I found:

Parts from scoruges (painted ones are donations from another friend of mine), some guardian legs etc.


The idea behind this project was to create a winged autarch. Never finished it.


+ tons of eldar / dark eldar hands, weapons etc.
Maybe I will figure out how to combine this stuff to make a squad of decent looking Swooping Hawks!

Neat your guys are looking better and better the more of them you paint

Part of the reason I don't have many Aspect Warriors is that I've never managed to do a conversion I'm 100% happy with for them. They're so iconic to my mind that it's really hard to capture their look with other kits. Not that Scourge-based Swooping Hawks don't look awesome mind you just that I've never managed to make them fit right to my mind.

I did have a little luck with combining Harlie legs and torsos with Scourge wings, helmets and guns though. You might like those



Autarch looks great though

True, and the outdated models for Aspects don't quite give enough credit for them.

But damn, those are some fine looking hawks you got there!
I had something similar in mind, but looking at those made me realize that harlequins actually have a plastic kit now. Opens up so many possibilities.

The Guardians look great. I especially like the heavy weapons platform.