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Fantastic to see you are busy, and still knocking it out the park on quality. Beautiful work. As always!

@Gitsplitta: Thank you! Yes, I love me some white/parched Death Guard/Apostles of Contagion. My own few figures are pretty white, these here (Apostles of Contagion) are a little bit more colourful. I've done figures for these for several years; I'd love to see the whole army all at once some day. Not likely, but maybe it'll happen.

@Captain Brown: Thanks very much!

@Camkhieri:Many thanks for the continued nice comments and checking the plog!

Hey hey, I'm still a live. Sorry for the lack of updates the past weeks (ehem); here's an overview of some of the things I've done.


Starting with loads of pictures of Blade Runner-y figures by Black Site Studios! Big, tall 32-35mm figures.





























The main challenge was that I was to add another vehicle to the collection of vehicles I'd done a year prior, and it was a bit of a magic moment in which I got these done.

Just as a reminder, becuase it's been a while, those were the ones:


So I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get it to fit in, but I think that it worked out OK. Hope you like them!



On I went to a commission job for Conquest Games! They contacted me to work on their upcoming range of Elementalists (28mm, metal casts) and some interesting fantasy creatures. The latter are available now as far as I know, the Elementalists are still being worked on, because they're getting elementals to go with.















Air, Earth, Fire, Void(!) and Water. Really nice figures. When I first read "Elementalists" my mind wandered to hovering, shapeless, raggy demon things, with lots of 'spell effects' because that's the direction many fantasy figure designs take. When I unpacked these figures I was rather delighted to see that they look like people. In fancy wizard clothes. 28mm in size, chunky where it counts. This is the sort of fantasy figure I enjoy.

Now for their creatures. Here's a giant sand snake!



65mm tall, sitting on a 50mm base (and filling it quite nicely). I painted it to look proper crusty, like those sand vipers and desert lizards and so on.

Grendel and a small group of Bullywugs:


The cool thing about Conquest Games' fantasy range is that it's heavily inspired by folklore on the British isles, and there's some really interesting interpretations and figures you're not likely to see anywhere else.

Speaking of which, here's some elves:


See? Interesting interpretations, going back to the roots (no pun intended).


Right, here's Napoleonics, because I paint quite a lot of 15mm Napoleonics. 5th, 13th, 15th and 20th French dragoons:




And a bunch more 15/18mm Nappys!

Chasseurs á Cheval of the imperial guard and the 4th French hussars:


Chasseurs á Cheval of the imperial guard again:


Austrian Uhlans:


I have to admit that I never was a huge fan of Austrian uhlans; I always found their uniforms to be a bit much. But once I Painted them I got around to liking them. So that's good.

Bunch of Prussian hussars:





I also did a bunch of 28mm Napoleonics for the Peninsular war, starting with Spanish Grenadiers!







Look at those hats. Big in the front, fancy in the back. As it's supposed to be.

Early this year I go to add some Spanish hussars...







Perry Miniatures hussars from their American War of Independence range, but in the first years of the 19th century, Spanish hussars looked just like that. Half of them are armed with lances, the other half with sabres. Accounts of lance-armed hussars aren't uncommon (at least for the first rank or so) in all sorts of armies of the time.

Here's a Spanish general with hangers-on and an officer for the aforementioned hussars:



..and THEN I got to do a bunch of wagons for the British Royal Horse Artillery!






Ammunition and tools wagons:










...and here's a limber that got stuck in a muddy hole.







What's often overlooked is the logistical workings behind an artillery battery. Getting the stuff from A to B, tools, crews, supplies for hose, machine and men, ... it's quite the production.



Here's something slightly different - a 1:1 replica of the Captain America shield from the MCU films. It was given to me to make it look like it's been in combat and a bit less pristine in general.





The direct sunlight eats away at the effect, but I hope you get a general impression.

...and of course I painted a bunch more Marvel crisis Protocol figures:

Venom and Carnage...



...Gamora and Nebula.






Silver Surfer:








I'm willing to admit that there are superfans who are more well versed in the multiverse of the Marvels than I am, but if there's one superhero I can always identify AND name correctly it's Silver Surfer.


Black Panther, Black Widow, The Vision and Hawkeye:



...and here's the latest batch! Deadpool, the Punisher (RIP Ray Stevenson. Do watch Punisher:Warzone. My favourite Marvel film.), Iron Fist and Luke Cage!









"Boo, show us some GW figures!" I hear you yell-a. So here's some more yella Eldar/Aeldari:


(did a little self-indulging funny there. But it looks cool, right?)












Hope you like them!


Yes, I painted an Eldar warp gate, for me own collection. For taking the pretty pictures. Here I put it in somebody's back yard as they're away on the weekly shopping trip. Their reaction when they return is PRICELESS!!1




Sticking with the 40k...
I painted some Blood Angels test figures for - what I hope - will be a ginormous BA army in the not too distant future:




...and then there's some more finished Goff Orks of course:




Killkoptaz, Big Mek in Mega Armour (later on the gentleman I paint these for realized he put the figure on a too big base to put him into transports, so I'll have to rebase him to 50mm. Yikes.) and 10 Kommandoz.



Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy:




What a great little vehicle kit. GW really got the vehicles ALMOST right with that latest batch. There's just too much faff on them. Luckily the gentleman who sends these to me for painting is a man of taste and thus files/cuts off some of the faff.


Dakkajet (all freehand! No decals or airbrush stencils or stuff like that):






I painted Dakkajets before, for an Evil Sunz army. So I definately didnÄt want to go with all too much red on this one and instead opted for a very 2nd edition (one must not deny their own roots!) look, which I was delighted to see works very well with the Dakkajet model. Sadly that means that the weathering and such doesn't come out quite as nicely on the upper side. But there's always a downside to anything, as my old grandma always used to say (that's a lie.), and I love painitng the underside of airplanes either light blue or white. As it should be done, right? And on these colours you can go proper crazy with soot, dirt, rust, damage, and so on. Hooray! If you read the glyphs on the wings on the lower side you can see the regular "grim" glyph as a sort of army emblem, but on the other wing there's the Ork glyph for "friend" (or favourite enemy), to remind friendly flak crews NOT to fire at the plane when it returns from its mission.


Now for the main event - the heavy Kill Blasta (or Kill Bursta, see below) assault tank:





Alternate weapon load out:


Commander (or Kommander?):


Again, I added some fitting glyphs to the top hatch, saying "Watch Out", "head" and "danger". That could either be there to remind the commander not to stick their head out during combat or as a reminder that one could bump their head on the hatch when closing.

As always, great working with Ork figures. That tank did give me some headaches though, because it's a bit older and from the time when Ork vehicles were just a pile of junk ("lol."). which I'm not a fan of at all, be it from a background or aesthetic standpoint. This model gives you nothing as a painter. There aren't too many painted examples online, and the ones I found were basically a broad base colour, some weathering and a random checkerboard pattern across the side spray-painted on via stencil. That of course neither fit my own preferences nor the way this army is painted, so I went for something slightly bold and slightly "high concept", with that huge maw. Because as I said above - there are no lines to this model, with the exception of one diagonal line running along the sides and of course the big dozer blade, shaped like a jaw. So I opted to use the diagonal line to denote the upper jaw, and add some nasty fangs. This was followed by the usual 'beating up' of the vehicle, details, glyphs and checkerboard stripes. At first I was VERY unsure about this, but I didn't want to do the generic junkyard look, especially on such a big centre piece. So I pressed on, played around with the size of the painted-on teeth and the balance of black, red and metallics and pulled though. And now I'm pleased with the result.


Most recently, whilst still working on when to tackle those Blood Angels, I started working on an Imperial Harbingers army. Test figures are done and green-lit by the fine gentleman I paint these for, mass production has commenced.

Here's the test figures (with a figure in the centre I was sent along with the collection so I know what they're supposed to look like). Now this is a chapter you don't see done very often. Very little is known about them, they don't feature much in illustrations. They're a 23rd(?) founding Codex crusading chapter. All we know is that they don't like Death Guard. Who can blame them. This should be a very cool, unique army. Looking forward to seeing them all finished!

The GW goodness doesn't stop there though - Who's ready for some Blood Bowl?











Phew. These are a fair bit more work than the regular human team I did earlier. Loaded with detail and individuality and all. A fair bit of effort was put into adressing the problem that the team is bascially two copies of the same sprue. I also tried to put the figures together in a fashion that makes the half-clones even less apparant. Pretty figures though. Huge. Oh, and the Yhetee star player is good.

And here are some fancy photos:

Right, on to the Dark Sould board game, shall we?

his time it's the Vordt of the Boreal Valley and Phantoms expansions.














By accident I painted one of the phantoms white instead of red. I only noticed that after taking the photos. So you can have a guess which one of those freaks is supposed to be red rather than white. White of course being allies, red ones being nasty baddies invading the players' plane of existance.

The Vordt of the Boreal Valley of course it a particular favourite of mine since he's the first proper big boss in Dark Souls 3, the first of the series I played (since then I played them all, except for Sekiro). Anyway. Hope you like the figures! Maybe I get to play the DS board game over the holidays as well. It's been a while, and it's a fun game. Of course all the figures in my box are unpainted. Which takes away from the otherwise magnificent experience of playing painted.

The Last Giant (who's had a rough day apparently):








The Executioner's Chariot (plus friends):









Certainly a very memorable boss fight.


...and here's the Gaping Dragon!








I suspect that there may be some subtext going on with this one, but surely I'm wrong there.
Working with that one was good, good fun. I mean making the base and simply removing mold lines from ALL the teeth and filling gaps took several hours. And then the painting had me doubt my approach once or twice. But in the end he turned out really well I think. I'm happy with that chap. He's a big'un too, on a 15cm base, and overlapping quite considerably to the sides and back, as you can see.

Manus, Father of the Abyss:





the challenge here was making a huge, seemingly all-grey thing look interesting. So I looked at pictures and videos and so on and tried to figure out where to add colour.


Four Kings:




Tricky, to say the least. You can watch the bossfight on youtube. These chaps are basically half-translucent fairies. Which is hard to translate to board game figures (which usually are cast less than filigrane), and the chaps are pretty darned big to begin with. Then you have to do the thing four times. The coloured blades I added myself, just to make the dudes appear just a little different from one another and add some sort of colour. As I keep on banging on, I put effort into getting the bases right with these figures, because the boss arenas especially are very much a part of the whole appearance and vibe of the Dark Souls bosses in the video games. the fight against these chaps takes place in a black hole. All I could do really was adding a tiny little bit of texture on the bases with a very slight purple hue.


Guardian Dragon:




{img]https://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2023_04/gd4S.jpg.8b02d5d94d478f7e58f0d6820af754c1.jpg[/img]



Now this one's a different calibre. In my mind, a red dragon is the single best fantasy figure you can get. Everyone should own one. The more classic the better. None of that 90s flat-nosed D&D things. Alright, this figure out of the box looks slightly goofy. I asked the gentleman I paint these for if I was allowed to give the dragon a little rhinoplasty to turn his snoopy nose into an impressive beak, he allowed it, the dragon turned out lovely I think. Hope you like him as well! I had this one with me at 2 conventions, people really liked him.

Around last christmas the probably last print run of Charlie Don't Surf was announced, so I treated myself to a copy, and since then I've been rather taken with the idea of running CDS at company level. Probably in 15mm, because that's what I got already, at least one platoon and some support. Now Battlefront are coming around with a re-issue of their Vietnam range, which of course made me think of that plan from a few months ago again.



Apart from that all of this happened while I was painting some of Empress' great Vietnam figures for a gentleman. The results of which you can see here:




It's mostly civilians and Vietcong/Insurgents. Great figures by the equally great Paul Hicks.















...plus four US Marines:




Similarities to fictional characters are purely coincidental. Anyway, great sculpts, and especially the civilians look like proper characters, with some very strong faces and concepts in there. The one-legged, angry man holding the rest for what looks like an MG34 is particularly striking.

Hope you like them!

So that got me thinking again about that whole Vietnam idea. And I don't know what even draws me to doing that. First I thought I could do the whole thing more cheaply using just my 40k figures (Orks and Catachan Imperial Guard) as stand-ins, but I'm rather sure that getting CDS on the table in 28mm is a bit problematic. 6mm probably would make more sense (as it usually does), as would Pendraken's great 10mm offerings. But then again I already got some 15mm stuff, right?

So yeah, I'm pondering the whole affair, and I'm not sure it'll go anywhere any time soon, but that shouldn't stop me from oogling at those 15mm Battlefront figures, right?


At the other end of the size spectrum, I painted another 1/9th scale bust and commenced painting a 75mm-ish snek lady:









I love painting larger scale figures in between things.


And I wrote some reviews too of course!

Shrine Luminor review: https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2023/04/mini-review-shrine-luminor.html




TTC Dinogas Filling Station Deluxe: https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2022/12/review-ttcombat-dino-filling-station.html



Empress Miniatures WW2 Germans: https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2022/09/review-empress-miniatures-ww2-germans.html



Warlord Games Opel Blitz/Maultier kit: https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2023/03/review-bolt-action-opel-blitz-maultier.html



Rubicon Models T34/76 AND SU85/122 kits: https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2023/01/review-rubicon-models-t3476-su-85-and.html





Right, let's see what else happened. I've been to shows again! In the spring I went to lovely Klagenfurt to visit Harucon for the first time. It's a general "nerd convention", but with a HEAVY anime/manga bent. Which is nice. Different. I learned a lot about competitive cosplaying from the lady who sat next to me over the two days in "artists alley". I didn't write a show report for this one, because there wasn't much wargaming-related to report really. Venerable Gilead tabletop/RPG/LARP club was there, so it was cool meeting these guys for the first time.

Then I went to Tabletop Knights' Gaming Day in Bavaria. The report can be read here:
https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2023/05/show-report-tabletop-knights-gaming-day.html




...and a few weeks later I was at Austrian Salute again!

https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2023/06/show-report-austrian-salute-2023.html



Lovely trips, both of them. It's just great to see wargaming shows happening again after 3 years of hiatus. There really is a buzz in the air there, which is really great.



While I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked to, I did play a few things as well. First and foremost of course the Chain of Command campaign "29, Let's Go!", which I posted about last year. We concluded the thing too!

Chain of Command - 29, Let's Go!: Game 5 https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2022/11/29-lets-go-game-5/




Chain of Command - 29, Let's Go!: Games 6&7 - The Finale https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2023/01/29-lets-go-games-6-7-the-finale/




I also played Song of Drums and Shakos again. First time my 28mm Napoleonics collection saw some action, if only on a tiny little scale: https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2023/01/song-of-drums-and-shakos-aar/



Also got to play some Sharp Practice with Cpt.Shandy's collection and a handful of games with his American Civil War ironclads collection, testing his river warfare rules. Oh, also a Blood Red Skies test game (impressive rules), one or two naval wargames set in the Spanish Civil War (how's that for a niche?).

And then, a weeks ago, I got to play the game I've been working towards for many months. It's a scenario I found in Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine 121. Somehow it grabbed my attention and it was a great opportunity to get some Eastern European terrain done. Here's my battle report: https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2023/06/big-chain-of-command-crossing-the-berezina/








That was pretty cool. I'll have to take a lot more pictures of the buildings (it's a lot more) and do a proper big article about the buildings, because they took quite a while to do and almost cost me a bit of my right little finger.


Either way, I hope that you like the pictures and find the reviews/game reports/show reports interesting. I didn't post everything, but a good bunch. I think it's a good mix of stuff I think, so I hope that there's something for everyone in there!

And now we all can take a toilet break.

Sigur,

Just exalted three massive posts of beautiful work.

Cheers,

CB

@Captain Brown: Thanks very much, Cap'n!


Here's a WIP shot of lots of grey and yellow space marines:


I also painted 226 butt cheeks today; more on this later.

Wow, your paint work is truly great. It's well blended with soft colors.

Every time I drop by your threat Sigur, I realize that I have to set time aside so that I can go through it carefully and just enjoy the spectacle!

Amazing work as always. So varied, so detailed, such a joy to look at! Bravo!

Excited to see 226 butt cheeks soon

@Tommygun1918: Cheers, friend! I do try.

@Gitsplitta: It was quite a load all at once now, I have to admit. I'm just glad that I get to do so many (relatively) different things.

@Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll: Here's one to raise the excitement - they go along with 113 1/100th scale metal winkies! They're part(s) of a pretty huge Gallic army I've been working on since ages. But I thought they wouldn't be of much interest without shields and bases attached.


Right now I'm backing up files like crazy because I'll move my system to a new PC. All the while I'm painting more Dark Souls boardgame figures (Painted World of Ariamis expansion). While the material is getting a bit better, it's still a shame they make these figures in that cheap material. I get it, it's just boardgame toys, but why bother drawing up these digital models and then cast them in that material? It can't be just to mislead people who consider renders attractive, right? Just a bit of waste of potential, I think. And just not as nice to paint as they could be.

Oh well. Apart from that, not much new. Earlier I read about those Epic marines GW will release. Now that's interesting. IF they fit the original Epic figures somehow I may use that as an excuse to buy some of them so I can finally add to my Epic UM army.


Not sure I'm going ahead on the 15mm Vietnam project. Right now I'm a bit torn between "best to save money!" and "figures will only get more expensive!". Due to the heat and weird stress (hopping between 4 different projects right now) I didn't get to play any more Chain of Command in 28mm. I'll be playing with friends on Thursday though, so that should be fun.

Great to see you busy as always. All mind blowing as usual as well.

@Camhierhi: Thanks for your comments, as always. Glad you enjoy the photos.


Right, here's another update. First off, more Imperial Harbingers. Bladeguard and Characters, all WIP:




Then I did another Dark Souls board game expansion (second to last batch! You'll miss it when it's over. ) - the Painted World expansion.



..featuring Crossbreed Priscilla, a big old knight miniboss, two snow rats (always fun), 5 of the Phalanx guys, 2 Engorged Hollows (kinda fun), Crow Demons (these are rather cool) and two of these annoying skeletons who got weaved into a wheel. I like the little dust clouds around their heels though. They're in mid-brake, preparing for another attack.



The years haven't been easy on Miss Kitty...


Here's Priscilla:


If you're interested in what the more ...interesting 2% of humanity are up to, I suggest researching the fandom around her tail.


Right, that's that. I also finally finished the 15mm medieval figures!









Now that's a pretty cool project. All 15mm figures, by a lovely Polish company named QR Miniatures: http://qrminiatures.pl/. A bunch of Bohemian infantry (loads of crossbowmen, swordsmen, billmen, pikemen, etc) and 30 Serbian/Hungarian knights. One knight by Essex Miniatures snuck in as well. The heraldry on the knights is all based on historical coats of arms, which the gentleman I painted these for supplied.

Now one of the big things about this projects were pavises. There's several suppliers for decals in 28mm available, none for 15mm though. So I freehanded them.






All based on historical designs to fit the time and the geopgraphic area, and all of them unique. Because people back then went proper berserk with painting designs onto these big shields. I assume that the really elaborate ones we can still see in museums were more used for show, but even the ones used in the field most likely were proper elaborate and little works of art. Of course you gotta shrink them down to really fit 15mm figures.


Last but not least about 30 of the crossbowmen miniatures carry the pavises on their backs. Which I also gave the freehands treatment, but due to a.) them being on their backs and b.) them being smaller than the free-standing ones, the freehands are a little simpler.




Hope you like them!



..and then something weird happened - I saw that GW put up the rules for the 10th edition of 40k online for free, along with index army list files for every army. I haven't bought a codex since 5th edition Orks and 7th edition Dark Elves respectively, and for my personal gaming I just don't want to put up with "keeping up" any more. Haven't played 40k since two games in early 6th edition (once my first tournament game against an unpainted Orks army, the other game was a pick-up game vs. a Necron army consisting of cardboard print-outs). However, I always like the hopeful little phase every few editions in which GW ditch all the former codices and put up the interimistic army lists. They aren't overladen with special rules, they aren't meant to outplay the core rules, they all seem to be at a level playing field.

So I got this idea in my head about running a test game of 40k and writing a rules review at https://tabletopstories.net/language/en/. Should be fun, right? I sat down, read the rules a little, wrote army lists for my 40k armies (SoB, AM [i'm trying to use the new name now], Orks) and then I had a look at the figures and what sort of work they required to get them somewhat playable.

Started with Astra Militarum (see? New name. I'm down with the youngsters!), because without a doubt these would require more work. It was rather nice to get out the old army cases, having a look of the collection, remembering every little detail, and all. When I started playing 2nd edition 40k the army of my choice was Blood Angels (of course). As well as Chaos Space Marines. And a little Orks (but not beyond the ones from the starter box really). But then I swiftly went on to playing Imperial Guard, because "there's something about an underdog that really inspires the unexceptional". . I did some hard thinking on the matter and in the end went with Catachans, with basically black bandanas and the Cadians colour scheme. Born was the 24th Turan, blue company, yellow platoon. Of course everything but Stormtroopers and vehicles was metal then, but I slowly collected a little force.

Due to lack of patience (and possibly brain cells) as well as opponents I didn't play a lot of 2nd edition (now there's another one for a potential test game and review. Actually I've been thinking of doing something like a review of 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th edition 40k as well, just to get a historic overview of how the thing developed. Skipping odd numbers mainly has the advantage of not having to buy a 9th edition rulebook. And a "review" of 3rd edition would be an endless wall of text of me ranting about how it ruined everything. ). Funnily enough I played the most during 3rd edition, the edition I liked the least. But around the time people who were playing were around me. And plastic Catachans had rolled around. Even then they weren't pretty as such, but I got a bunch of them. The ones which are still in their original 2000 state tell the story of a boy who on Friday after school RUSHED to Vienna, bought a box of Catachans (and 2 Magic:The Gathering boosters), got home and very, very swiftly put the figures together before very, very swiftly after school on Saturday painted them (mold lines and all) to have them ready to play in the afternoon when the guys came around to play. With the plastic figure came the "Whatever, it's just Plastics" attitude.

In the latter 2010s I partook in several of the excellent motivational institutions that was the Tale of [x] Painters on Warseer. The 2010 one I partook in was about my Imperial Guard, getting it repainted and also focusing on the fun bits - the diversity of the Imperial Guard. So lots of Abhumans and so on. These figures is what I base my refurbished AM army on. I dusted them off and took some new photos.






Not sure I ever uploaded pictures of the Imperial Beastmen with their bases done to the internet.




I also did a bunch of Squats back then and so on. But I also (barely) started repainting some metal (and some plastic) infantry:



This picture shows some of the ones I painted back then, as well as some I painted the other week. In 2020 I'd already painted a handful more for my short 5150:Citizen Soldier campaign (https://tabletopstories.net/language/en/?s=5150. I really have to get going on this one again, but in a world without lock-downs I'm incredinbly short on time now for some reason. ).


So once that all was done and several base rims have been painted black, here's the infantry part of 1000 points worth of Imperial Gua- Astra Militarum for 40k 10th edition:



All painted to "good enough for a test run of the game". Tanks are a different story to which I will get once I got the buggers done.


THEN I immediately went on to an inspection of the Orks army. Now my Orks I collected later on, between 2004 and 2008, and I painted them between 2006 and 2009-ish. This was the army of my dreams; which I never could have during 2nd edition. It's all figures from between 1987 and 1995. Proper Orks. Going through the foam trays of painted figures and then the boxes of unpainted stuff I realized that I have a LOT of painted and unpainted Orks, that Orks rock and that by some sort of miracle I haven't lost anything between moving houses. Can't be said for the Imperial Guard side of things, where I lost (by my own stupidity) my Baneblade, a Griffon(!!) and god knows what else from one box.

Anyway, the Orks required much less work, because they were already painted to a nice enough standard (for a test game). So here's 1000 points of Orks for 10th edition 40k:



The great thing of course being that Boarboys are back! Sure, GW officially may call them somethig else because of that weird conspiracy that GW try to deny the existance of boars, but they're boarboys. And I have a lot of those fellas. And the other feral snaga fellas make for a great statline for Skarboys. Cool stuff. So yeah, good times. I even realized that I have way more Ork jump packs than I thought I did, so I finally got to build a unit of Stormboyz as well. I got a LOT of Stormboys, but for a long time only had 2 jump packs, Then I had 4, and then, much later on, I bought a batch of Orks which came with 8 Stormboys with 8 (!!) jump packs.

Oh well, that's that. I feel a bit silly, but it's also good fun being in 40k again, even if it's just for a bit. And I got playable armies now (Sisters of Battle are also in a pretty OK state, I just need to do the bases again on some of them, maybe repair the canoness and finish painting some of the tanks), so if I wanted I could test a bunch of 40k iterations, One Page Rules, maybe even Xenos Rampant. Let's see when all of that actually happens.

Great update Sig. As always, love the historicals.

The 2nd edition Perry Brothers Ogryn are my favorite rendition of that unit.

I'm in the same boat as you vis-a-vis 40k. 2nd edition was when I jumped on board and played the most games, with each edition resulting in less and less games played. It's gotten to the point where I can't even be arsed to download and look over the rules for 10th even though they're free! I still think 2nd edition strikes the right balance between rivet counting and playability since the most egregious parts of Herohammer can be tuned down with a few simple house rules/gentleman's agreements.

@Das_Ubermike: Oh, hey, thanks for dropping by! I really like the Ogryns, yeah. Somehow I'm not sure if I don't like the 1st edition ones better. I like their big ski goggles. But the 2nd edition ones of course got the faces! Yeah, I should play 2nd edition as well. Just to see what I think of it now. One more for the "to do" list of things I could be doing to avoid things I should be doing!


Right, for completeness' sake, here's photos of the Astra Militarum tanks I swiftly redid the past few days:




Ah yes, the chimeras. I added the stowage around 2011 when I wanted to try out a new colour scheme for the tanks. There is also a third, and a fourth Chimera, with Forgeworld parts and so on. But who needs that many? That's a thought that went through my head a lot in general when going over my AM collection(s).






Two Russes:


Painting an old and a new Russ at the same time is an interesting experience. The new one really feels like a "later in the war" variant of the Leman Russ, on which they left off a few angles and extras to save material. The Russ in the left might be the first Leman Russ I ever built, although there's a second one which is a candidate for that.

The Russ in the right is completely magnetized: The main turret weapon can be swapped, just like the sponson and front hull weapon, and the sponsons can be taken off as well. I also painted an extra Forgeworld Exterminator turret which I forgot to take a photo of.

..and some support:


I couldn't help myself adding the red to the Hellhound. I knew that I had to, just to see what it looks like. And I like it. You can also see the little extra armour in the front, because a.) mines and b.) 40k is full of people running up to tanks and hacking at them with magic swords and whips and whatnot. Gotta keep them away.

On the Basilisk you can see the little miscast on the gun shield. First ever miscast I had from GW and it took a LONG time until I saw another one. But this one here will stay forever, because that's what my first Basilisk is like. Also: Stormbolter. For close-quarters defence or whatever.

Not a single dozer blade on my tanks though I think. That's a bit weird. I'll have to go check.


Right, so here's the vehicles to round off the 1000 points of AM of which I posted the infantry above:




I've been struggling with an AM tank colour scheme for a good while. For the past over 10 years my tanks looked like this:


This is just a selection of course, but funnily enough the ratio was pretty much 1:1:1. Which of couse wasn't that good.

Left: "classic" scheme I used since the dawn of time
Middle: New scheme I've been planning to do around 2011. Never finished any of them though. In general I like one-coloured tanks, but maybe with 40k AM camouflage work better? Either way, I'm rather sure I'll ditch that one.
Right: The 2004 scheme for vehicles of the Turan Capital Militia (ie plastic cadians). Not bad, but I think I'd rather have all my vehicles be the same colourscheme, right? Oh well.


For now I decided to do a sort of neatened-up version of the old colour scheme, which goes best with the infantry I did as well. And I'm perfectly OK with how they turned out. At least everything is "good enough for a test game" now!

Sigur these look awesome. Great to hear that you getting into 10th, hope you enjoy it, from personal experience it is alot easier to get a grip of then the last couple of editions and a lot less time consuming.

Looking foward to seeing more

Amazing miniatures, great updates overall!!

Fantastic work as always Sigur. Dark Souls stuff looks great!

Exalted as always Sigur.

Cheers,

CB

Great work (as always) Sig'. Particularly the Ork vehicles a few pages back, the cyberpunk cars above and the various tanks.

@BarryScott: Thanks very much! Yeah; I did a solo test game now (well, the first night my brother helped out by playing one side, the second night I was solo). After having not played 40k in about 10 years I didn't find it exceedingly easy to get into I have to say. Of course the fact that I only got a PDF rulebook didn't help. Real books are rather easier to navigate. But the game itself had several memorable moments!

@muette: Thanks very much for commenting!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, much obliged. The casting and material isn't great on the DS figures, but I do try to get them to look pretty.

@Captain Brown: Thanks very much, Sir!

@Dr H: Thanks for dropping by and commenting! Yeah, I'm a bit proud of those cyberpunk cars.


Since GW made all the new 40k rules available online for free I thought it would be fun to review the 10th edition rules. Which also means test game of course. You can find my review and test game battle report of Warhammer 40,000 (10th edition) here:

https://tabletopstories.net/language/en/2023/08/warhammer-40000-review-and-test-game/



I'm sure I made many rules mistakes in there, so bear with me.

I love your table setups, Sig. 40k in particular is a silly game of silly characters waging war in silly ways but dang if it doesn't look good on a sensibly laid out, thematic table.

On the painting side, those cars with skylines on their windows are a nice touch.

Great battle report, always enjoyable when you've got two beautifully painted quirky armys. Really great stuff man, next step now just got to get a game in against an opponent

@Sherrypie: Thanks very much!

@BarryScott: Yeah, 40k isn't very solo-friendly, is it. In fact - and much to my surprise - my brother agreed to drop by for the first evening of this game, so half the game I actually played with an opponent. The second half I played solo.

Heyhey, here's army shots of the Imperial Harbingers Space Marines:








Bladeguard Veterans:



Outriders and Inceptors:





Aggressors and Eradicators:



Commander, 2 Lieutenants, Ancient:



Chaplain and Judiciar:



Retributor Dreadnought:







Intercessors:



Assault Intercessors:



Hellblasters:



Chaplain on Bike:



Repulsor:












Jou, and that is that. Hope you like the pictures. Interesting chapter, these Imperial Harbingers. The color scheme is quite simple, with the Blade Guard I tried to get a bit more out of it, but in general they look like these future soldiers of a young order without big traditions or fanfare. They come across a bit more pragmatic.


A word about the decals - the symbol of the order with the burning skull was home-printed. That means you had to cut it out exactly (ok, no biggie), and the symbol was coloured a flat white skull and a light yellow (decal, yellow is often a problem), single colored flame. That means I gave each of the skulls some higihlights and shadows and shaded down all the flames in the back. That was a lot of extra work, but it paid off a lot, I think.


Have a great weekend!

Since we're here anyway... why the heck not. Here's more MCP figures: She-Hulk, Daredevil, Kingpin and Doctor Strange!






Hope you like them!

Heyhey, here's another update - Nobz Mob with their sweet ride:
















Hope you like them!

After about 1.5 (or was it 2.5?) years of sitting on a shelf, in nothing but a basecoat of paint and a thick layer of dust, I finally got to finish this terrain here:





Hard foam, sold by Micro Art Studio. All I did was paint on the paneling on the building in an attempt to break up the big blue block somehow. But basically they're all as they come "out of the box", just with some paint added. Hope you like them!

I made something whilst stuff I should be doing was drying.




Should I group them together on two bases or keep them just as separate pieces for flexibility? What do you think?

How about making a base but not gluing them into it? Just having "slots" in the base for them to sit and be a "forest". That way you can remove them as needed to allow units to enter the forest.

I would keep them separate, easier to place models around, easy to change them for different games.
(finding all that inspiration to paint terrain now you can use it in playing games great stuff)