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In spite of my illness, I've decided that it's time for a picture update. First up: PBS with overseer, SWS w/ demo charges, beginnings of PCS or CCS with some odds and ends.


Standard squad with sergeant with power weapon, melta/shotgun vets, SWS w/flamers.


HW squads, odds and ends (including snipers), more melta/shotgun vets.


Rough riders. I'm gonna have to do a few more of these. I know that they're fail on the tabletop but sucking never looked this cool. Definitely my favorite models of the bunch. The next batch will have a bugler.


The whole thing. I wish that I hadn't taken this picture, as I realize just how little I've actually accomplished so far. At 1500 points and above, I could just about manage a mechguard list...if I had 11 or 12 tanks, which I don't have.


I'm going to have to revise my estimations for my completion date on this. They probably won't be on a tabletop until the spring at the absolute earliest.

Looking awesome! Highly envious that you have so many painted, based and lined up in a pretty way - because lets face it that is what fighting napoleonic 40k is all about :p

I might need to get me some highland shotgunners.

You should be really pleased with yourself!

M

I need a change of pace. I also need Marbo. It doesn't really matter whether I go mech or foot; Marbo doesn't seem to be a bad buy for any list. If you're not getting your points back, you're not doing it right as far as I can see. It may not be competitive but it sure looks like fun.

I'm thinking about a veteran (i.e. Highlander) pushing a base-mounted small tree aside with one hand while cocking back to throw a spherical bomb (like the SWS demo guys have) with the other. The CC weapon is easily handled enough with a sheathed sword; the pistol, I'll figure something out for that. The demo charge is really the important thing, right? That's the reason that people take him. To make sure that he's not confused with anyone else (and to keep up with the spirit of this army), he'll need camouflage face paint - but still the red coat, and maybe some foliage on his hat. I'm looking for someone that's attempting camouflage and doing it all wrong.

The name doesn't work with a British-themed army either, but I appreciate the joke. When I think of a Napoleonic British soldier blowing things up and kicking people in the crotch, the name that immediately comes to mind is Sharpe. That may be more appropriate. I'll have to give this some thought in order to do it correctly.

You could do a Marlborough...of the famed Marching with Rochester (gave birth to Watlzing Maltida)...

A bold fusilier came marching back through Rochester
Off from the wars in the north country,
And he sang as he marched
Through the crowded streets of Rochester,
``Who'll be a soldier for Marlboro and me?''

I really like what you have done here, very outside the box. Its always great to see an alternate IG army and you have hit it out of the park. A whole grimdark army of these guys will look great. Paint job is nice too. Good work on the plaid kilts.

awsome new update noober...... normally i have seen the coldone conversion to RR a million times... but yours are different... thy look very cool... love the scheme of these...also i hope you feel as proud of these as i feel envious about them^^...

as for tanks... why not make your own? i have done so for now at least two times already and i only used cardboard atm...but will work with palsticcard to make a new tank soon... and if i can do it i think you are capaple to do so too...

very good looking army you have so far!!!

I'm not sure if I'm ready to start building tanks from scratch, but I'm investigating non-GW stand-ins.

In other news, Marbo (Marlboro?) and some heavy weapon teams are assembled and waiting for paint, with a few more that will be finished tomorrow. I'm now pretty much out of left arms and have used up almost everything from my first Victrix box, and I'm also out of 60mm and 25mm bases now. The last time that I bought 25mm bases, I got them from Elfball and they were ridiculously cheap, but Elfball doesn't seem to be in business any more. Anyone got a source on the cheapest of the cheap 25mm round bases? I'd like both slotted and unslotted but if I had to pick one, I'd pick slotted.

Stand-ins aren't looking good...as in, I could spend just as much money for something that's not a Chimera as I can for an actual Chimera, so it will probably be actual Chimeras. The fact of the matter is that while 1/35 scale will work with heroic scale, it's far too big for these. 1/48 scale is good but it's significantly more expensive than 1/35 (wtf?) and if the cost savings aren't there, I'm not going to bother. Half of the reason why I went with Victrix was the price. If Cadians were the same, I'd have gone with Cadians and I'd have two armies painted by now rather than a few squads. Building up a model-heavy army when every soldier is essentially a conversion that's a pain in the ass to paint can become tiresome at times, believe you me.

I'm currently completely out of bases and I'm in no mood to paint HWTs, so there likely won't be any progress until FRP sends me my new bases. This time, I ordered enough that it should not be a problem again for a long time, if ever.

In other news, I've been experimenting with press casting the last few days and am just starting on resin casting. The results so far have been, to use a term from across the Atlantic, brilliant. This will probably eat up some of my time from now on, but such are the wages of sin. I'm very, very happy with what I've accomplished so far.

FRP came through as they always do. I have enough 25mm bases for...well, forever I guess. Great price too.

I've delved further into the rabbit hole that is resin casting and I'm pleased with what I've accomplished. This will be taking up some of my time in the future. On top of that, I'm a bit burned out on the IG so I'll probably be shifting over to the Flesh Tearers for a bit. I recently had the opportunity to play a 500 point game (not a good area for BA rules, I know) and I was ashamed when I discovered that I couldn't even field that in a painted condition. It's probably time to work on this a bit. I'm further embarrassed because I don't remember my process for painting them, so I have no ideas to improve it. It looks like I'm back to square one here. I should start taking notes.

The vanilla SM idea is congealing, although I'm a long way off from starting it. My GF (and by extension, my wonderful ohana) is Hawai'ian and I'm settling on a Pacific islands motif. I haven't figured out a chapter symbol yet (or even a chapter for that matter) but I'm kicking it around. There will obviously be some conversions involved, but I'm all right with that. Hell, every model in my present army is converted. It doesn't help my productivity any but I'm used to it, so why not more?

As for the IG, their Chimeras will be in a standard woodland camouflage scheme. This is simply a matter of efficiency. I've been kicking around the idea of a GK henchmen army and generic Chimeras would work for both. I buy one character, a box or two of Cadians, conscript the rifleman Dreads that are already kicking around and we're there. It's always a bonus if a model has dual uses I think. While my IG army is predominantly non-GW, I'm trying to keep my others all GW for simplicity. Some people get weird about this stuff.

The most correct answer is to focus on one army and complete it, but I can't work like that...not as a hobby, not in real life. I need variety to stay motivated. The likely result of this is that I'll have everything done just in time for 6th Edition only to find out that my lists are gimped, but such are the wages of sin. I don't mind playing as an underdog, just so long as I look good doing it.

Working weekends again, so no time for warhams. No pictures or even contents, but I'm unwilling to abandon the projects. I figure that if I keep posting, I'll keep working when I can.

You know, this may sound silly, but I think what I like most about your minis is the flocking.

So many people just do grey sand (guilty of that with my current mini line), if they even bother at all. Seeing someone to a more complex scheme for the bases is refreshing.

Furthermore, I like your choice of scheme in specific. I don't see a lot of broken ground, and the way you combine static grass and big pieces of rocks looks really nice. Really gets across a highland theme.

It's not silly. I appreciate the comment actually. It was the absolute quickest and simplest thing that I could figure out that looked halfway decent. Would you believe that the base layer is two shades of railroad flock and some cat litter? I only bother with the static grass on the HWT bases. The RR bases got more attention because I had to conceal the steel rods that were necessary to base the raptors.

I burned out on the HWTs, btw. Hopefully I'll have some Chimeras showing up in the next few days to give me something different to work on. As much as I've simplified this paint scheme, it's still extremely frustrating and not a little demoralizing. I dread painting sessions right now.

So let that be a lesson to you potential IG players. I don't think that I need to tell Ailaros this (who also has an army that features a conversion for basically every model, and is painted much better and more carefully to boot!) but for people thinking about a crazy project, remember the numbers involved. A squad is fine. A platoon is tiring. But even with a mechvet list, you're going to be painting and converting a lot of models for an army that can't even be used in a GW store. I was a fool for starting this, but I'll get it done eventually and I'll be awfully glad when I do.

Oh, and the next (side) project? GK samurai henchmen spam with a samurai Coteaz. Yep - more conversions, because I didn't learn last time. This one should at least be GW-legal though.

Nice to see the flesh tearers about to start painting some of my own, so seeing others is inspiring!!

Napoleonics don't inspire me as much, but they do look cool

GK Samurai, though? That I could get into

n00ber wrote: So let that be a lesson to you potential IG players. I don't think that I need to tell Ailaros this (who also has an army that features a conversion for basically every model, and is painted much better and more carefully to boot!) but for people thinking about a crazy project, remember the numbers involved. A squad is fine. A platoon is tiring. But even with a mechvet list, you're going to be painting and converting a lot of models for an army that can't even be used in a GW store. I was a fool for starting this, but I'll get it done eventually and I'll be awfully glad when I do.

You speak the truth!

Started mine over a year ago. Painted 11 guys (still haven't based them) sat on a shelf gathering dust, just like my praetorian conversions....and innumerable unpainted. I'll stop there just thinking about how much I have to do is terrible!

You've done really really well to get as far as you have!

Personally I would recommend a few chimerias and a few victrix upper bodies as tank commanders...which is what i started to do. Many moons ago.

The samurai henchmen aren't going to happen.

The original idea was to utilize bits from the WGF Samurai set. While they're surprisingly detailed (especially for WGF!) and look very nice, they're just too far out of scale with GW to work. I'm particularly disappointed by this discovery because another poster on this board had implied that they were doing just such a conversion; either they lied or the result looks like canine excrement because it's not a match at all. Since I have no use for true scale 28mm samurai, this one's probably a write-off.

I still don't want to field stock Cadians with storm bolters so I'll do some looking around. There are plenty of interesting aftermarket heads, so I'm sure that I'll find something that'll work for me.

So for the henchmen, I wound up kitbashing some Cadian sprues and a box of Empire free company troops. I had my doubts initially but my girlfriend pushed it, so I gave it a shot. I like how they came out. I do not like how a stormbolter looks when held by something other than a Space Marine but that's a scale issue; they wouldn't look any better on Cadians or Catachans.







So here's my thought process: I needed a model not in the GW catalog (Inquisitorial henchman w/ stormbolter or meltagun or pistol/chainsword) and I wanted it to be GW legal. I also didn't want to use stormtroopers or basic Cadians or whatnot. Inquisitorial warbands are one of those golden opportunities for conversions and creativity. Also, I couldn't help thinking back to prior games of DH and how many characters, as acolytes, were Cadians or Catachans (to date, 0) and that an Inquisitor's warband would as likely be an armed mob or released convicts as not, so I didn't want mine looking like soldiers.

I went with SW storm bolters for their variable appearance. going back to DH again, acolytes die. A lot. I'd imagine that an Inquisitor would hire a crew of acolytes and procure storm bolters for them. After a few fights, some of them would be dead; not all of their weapons would be recovered depending on how things went. The recovered weapons would go to new recruits but eventually, there'd be more bodies than guns and then the Inquisitor would need to order more. Over time, patterns change or become more or less available, so the newest batch of storm bolters might not match the last batch. After a while, the weapons would not look very uniform...nor the armor for that matter. (I addressed that as well by using a few armored-looking Free Company torsos.) That, and the SW storm bolters are way cheaper than every other solution.

Also, my basement is dusty as hell and heavily contaminated with cat hairs to boot. Whenever anything gets painted or coated down there, I'll find things stuck to it. These pics were taken just after Dull Koting so there's some stuff stuck to them. Don't be alarmed. I'll pick all that off with tweezers after everything has dried.

I'm actually not done yet but I ran out of meltaguns; I need another twelve. No matter. I've got an inquisitor, some Dreadnoughts, and a whole slew of Chimeras to work on in the mean time.

And three weeks later I'm still making progress, slowly but surely. Even though I'm in school this week and not doing the 50 hour work week thing, it's still amazing how little progress I can make.

Okay, so my henchmen needed rides. I got them some rides.

As these will be used for an IG army as well, I kept them "sterile" on purpose. They have individual vehicle markings but no unit or other markings. The Napoleonic IG can't build their own Chimeras so this is how they're delivered. Coteaz jacks his right off the product line, so they too arrive without specific insignia. This is also why they feature a basic woodland camouflage scheme.

There's not much to stick in the GK FA slots. An interceptor squad w/ psycannon and hammer makes for interesting options and at the very least, provides for a last turn 30" objective grab.


Some Purifiers will be included too.


Both of these pictures suck and I apologize for that. I haven't done their bases yet either. I'm in the process of making up a decal sheet to handle their names and heraldry, but I'm not going to bother printing it up until I've got them all put together and painted. If your eyes are sharp, you may have noticed that the Purifier all the way on the left has a bare white sword. Yeah, bit of a problem there. It snapped off during routine handling (bit of a surprise, that...it's hollow) and the paint peeled right off. I'm not going to bother airbrushing just one sword. It will wait until the next batch of Purifiers are ready for paint and I'll finish him then.

Damn, almost forgot...you can't have a Coteaz list without Coteaz, can you?

This was a slightly unconventional color scheme by intent; the colors are meant to be significant. White is used in western nations for weddings and eastern nations for funerals; the reason is actually the same, as it signifies purity. Red symbolizes anger, action, or passion, and purple is identified historically with nobility. Everyone else paints his bird like an eagle and I liked the look so I figured, "What the hell? I'll do that too."

Just so you know, his eyes are damned small...basically truescale. I now know why most of the internet Coteaz's don't have pupils...you can hardly see them, even zoomed in. Rapidograph/Pigma FTW by the way. Along the same lines, Vallejo's gold finally broke me of my enamel habit once and for all. It still doesn't go on quite as smoothly as enamel does but it looks just as good. I'm very, very pleased with it, and Coteaz looks quite the player I think.

More warhams are inbound, so whenever the USPS decides to drop them off I'll have more to work on. I'm still burned out on Victrix for the time being. Sorry.

One last thing: scroll back to the beginning of this blog and look at my paint jobs. Now look at these. Now look back. Now look here again. Kind of apples and oranges to a degree but I've gotten significantly better, and do you know why? It's you guys. Seriously. Between the motivational responses and the various tutorials on this website, you all have made me a better painter. I'm not joking. I've improved more in the last nine months than I had in the decade before it. I have a ways to go but I no longer feel like I've hit a wall. I'm improving again, and if I could show the 16-year-old me what the 35-year-old me is doing now...well, he wouldn't have believed it to be possible.

I'm feeling a little younger tonight. Thank you for that.

And for those of you sharp-eyed enough to have noticed my name and address on that shipping label who feel an overwhelming urge to mail me something, Trappist ales, warhams, and ammunition are always acceptable offerings. Bombs are not.

For the rest of you, don't bother looking. I've cleverly altered the photograph with a highly technical graphics editing program known as MS Paint.

Wait! Didn't British artillery crew wear 'blue coats' instead of red?