Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Excellent work, that cloak is stunning, you really nailed it. These guys are huge really aren't they.

Nice work on Angron, he looks great, makes me feel guilty as I still haven't painted mine :/

EDC

Awesome work - Angron is looking really good! Can't wait to see some more progress on the Alpha Legion

No progress to speak of but wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and I hope to get some painting done in my downtime between now and New Year.

If I don't post up before then make sure you and yours have a safe festive season and will see you all bright and early for more painting insanity.

Thank you all for your support and following my progress this year (still hoping for more before the end of the year).

Thanks for reading.

Merry Christmas to you too! Looking forward to more cool stuff in the new year!

EDC

And a Merry Christmas to you, too mate!

Hi all, the New Year is very rapidly approaching, but I have kept the nose to the grind stone of hobby; that's a lie, the wife and I popped down to the Nation's Capital to take in a couple of exhibitions and very nice dining. But the angel that is my wife encouraged me to take some hobby gear with me and we did have a little down time to paint and because of that I have managed one more painting update for the year. So behold, the next addition to my Alpha Legion forces:


The first squad of Havocs. I know, I know, I should have all the same weapons to maximize their effectiveness. But I just can't deal do it. I am hoping that there is a cross over of effectiveness with the double Autocannon shots and Frag Missiles for infantry and they should be able to threaten light vehicles fairly effectively.


They are painted in exactly the same way as the previous Chaos Marine squads, which in itself is the problem with the Power Armoured armies as they don't really lend themselves to a lot of diversity (outside of Dark Angels and Blood Angels with their different squads). But it does take the thinking out of the army.


And here is the second squad of Havocs. I see the Chaos Marine Squads with the Melta Guns or the soon to be started Raptor Squads as my dedicated anti tank or heavy infantry squads. The two Havoc squads are to deal with light vehicles and infantry as neither of the heavy weapons does all that well against heavy infantry or the tough vehicles.


To identify them from the Chaos Space Marine squads all of the models in the Havoc units have top knots. I think it is a nice subtle way of making them different without doing something drastic.


The group shot of both squads. I hope that having six cannon fodder marines before i start losing the heavy weapons means they should remain a threat for a few turns. Especially as I can have the two squads in two locations meaning it will be harder for the enemy to concentrate on them.

Thanks for reading this year guys. It humbles me that I have an audience for my work. But if I could ask a favour and get someone to put up a cheeky post because I would like to do a bit of a year in review and it would be nice for it not to automatically attach itself to this one.

Lovely colour palette Archer, love the Alphas. Nothing like having hordes of Marines and Cultists alike.

Year in review away my friend

Cheers Warboss Dakka.

So 2016 has flown by in a blur of activity of which I can barely believe. It was only May this year that I started a new job (and am still loving it). I feel as if I have not had time to scratch myself and here I am looking back at the year that was on the Hobby front. I decided after seeing quite a few quality blogs taking the time to review their own year of hobby that it was a great idea. I did set myself some goals at the beginning of the year as well. I didn't keep going back to see if I was achieving them, as I want to never see my hobbies as a chore and didn't want to put added pressure on myself.

But as 2016 is soon to be a thing of the past, it is time to have a closer look at what I managed to achieve........

The first thing I wanted to do was to try and keep the blog rolling forward and I set the ambitious task of trying to grow it a whole 10 pages. Unfortunately I was perhaps not as active as I had hoped and therefore, my progress was a little stifled. But with the help of the community the blog has grown a full 6 pages and I am truly appreciative of the community popping by to see what I am wrestling with. I follow quite a few blogs and it can be hard to find the time to post comments. So I truly do value the feedback I receive. I may not have hit the 10, but will count it as a victory, 6 pages is definitely nothing to complain about.

The second goal was pretty easy and that was to knock of the pair of High Elf Dragons to finish that oh so tiny army. I still think thus far the High Elves are the best looking army that I have painted. (Which bought my yearly model count to 2!)

Next was the goal that is the driving force behind this blog and that is painting armies. In 2015 I had almost done 4 and I wanted to see if I could better that. The answer is a resounding no. I fully painted 2 armies this year, being the Tyranids and Bretonnians. Initially I was a liitle disappointed, but on reflection I feel that two of the armies in 2015, namely the Eldar (who I had a few almost already painted models) and the High Elves (who only had a 37 model count army) gave a somewhat distorted result to the number of armies I had completed. Plus the Tyranids had all of those damned Termagants that officially were not part of the army anyway and the truly individual nature of the Bretonnians meant I spent a lot of time on them. But with the Tyranids (110 models) and Bretonnians (48 models) my yearly count reached 160 models.

I am also 80 out of 116 models into the first of my Chaos Space Marine armies, the Alpha Legion. So I almost got them done. So again. I may not have achieved 4 armies, but did get a lot of painting towards my army goal done. (Plus the 80 Alpha Legion models brought me to 190 models for the year).

On another hobby side I really wanted to play more games as I feel I was being a little bit of a hermit and needed to get the models out and about more. I definitely feel I have done well here with regular fortnightly games of X-Wing in a very well written and fun campaign that unfortunately is drawing to a close. But this will hopefully lead to more games and fun. I have started regular games with a good friend and his budding Space Wolf army (and keeping him on his toes as I have so many armies to choose from). However, due to work commitments I did not manage one meeting with the games club I consider to be my local which was really disappointing as there are a number of new players now attending and it is great to see the club picking some more numbers up. 2017 will be different I swear it.

I also even managed some D&D which is my first true gaming love. One of my very long term friends out of the blue asked if I was interested and we managed half a dozen linked games with me as the DM and a regular cast of 3 (plus a couple of drop ins each game). I am super keen to do more in 2017 and would absolutely love to dust off my faithful Swordmage and get into it as a player. Anyone know of a D&D group with a spare chair?

Possibly the biggest gaming coup of the year however, came when my Wife sat down and played X-Wing against me. We started small with a couple of unmodified Z-95's a side and she flew surprisingly well scoring a victory against me and she is happy to play some more. Plus, she has put her name down to have a bit of a bash at D&D so that could be interesting......so 2016 has been a very good year fro gaming (albeit missing the club) so hopefully I can continue from there.

Oh and I almost forgot I played in a doubles tournament (which I definitely was hesitant initially). I ended up having a really good time and encountered a lot of different builds that I have never seen before. And as it turned out (mainly because of my legend of a partner) we managed to scrape first place by a single point. It all came down to the final game which ended in a dead draw which meant we managed to hold onto first place. It was a fantastic day with a really great finish.

I had intended to paint a second Blood Bowl team or do my Marienburg Warband for Mordheim that has languished in a box for years. But as it turned out I just didn't manage to get to them (plus I had other things that kept getting moved up the queue).

So for the things I had intended to do in 2016 I feel I was pretty successful, not 100%, but enough to make me feel like I had a great 2016 for hobbying. But of course I had a few other things that crossed my painting table which pushed my results along quite well.

I painted a further 4 Primarchs for my ongoing gift to my Brother; this time it was Corax, Fulgrim, Vulkan and Angron in the nick of time for Christmas. They are spectacular models and I have really, really enjoyed the break they give to the hordes of Termagants and Alpha Legionnaires. Looking forward to doing some more in 2017, his Brithday is happily positioned halfway into the year so gives me plenty of time to get some ready. Not that I have any models left. (Models painted for the year: 194)

I rebased my Iron Hands army this year to put them onto the 32mm bases GW has now moved their Marines onto. I have to admit that it makes them look a lot larger and I think it was a great decision to do them.

I painted a random Salamander Captain model, for no reason other than I kitbashed the model a while ago and felt a need to do something a little different. One day I will get to the army that he will lead. For now he gave a great scale shot next to his Primarch. (195)

I also knocked out an Objective marker that I feel sort of suits the Alpha Legion and their use of propaganda in the form of a reported and TV camera (196). It was a bit of fun and made use of a bits box that is now huge and so full of parts it is a little ridiculous. I think I could probably make 30 Space Marines and 20 Imperial Guardsmen out of the spare parts and I think there is probably a Rhino and Land Raider chassis in there somewhere too.

My final painting accomplishment is 104 Mighty Empires/Planetary Empires hex tiles form GW that will be pressed into service in an upcoming Campaign with my friend and his Space Wolves. Now if I counted them in the painting count (which I definitely will as I fully painted both sides of the tile) my yearly total arrives at a pretty nice figure of 300 models. I could add in the 33 Iron Hands I rebased, but feel a little dodgey if I did. So am happy to stick to the nice round 300. Not a bad total for the year.

I also need to put a special mention to Azazelx and his tale of Painters that he ran in 2016, having that little extra support to get models painted every month really, really assisted in keeping progress flowing. Thanks for the leg up Azazel. I have signed up to the challenge again, but this time around it will be Dysartes at the helm and I am hoping for a similar level of motivation.

In conclusion, 2016 saw 300 odd models painted, lots of games played and 2.69 armies painted. I put that down as a major win.

The question that remains now, is what does 2017 hold?

The first goal will of course to be to knock off the remianing Alpha Legion, that is two squads of 10 Chosen (using Betrayal at Calth marines), one Terminator squad of 4, two squads of 5 Raptors and 2 Chaos Lords to lead the lot of them. Hopefully I will have them done by March (that is only 12 models a month).

Then it will be back to fantasy and I have a lot of them available to paint already. I have the following armies fully purchased and ready to assemble/paint: Tomb Kings (again), Empire (again), Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs (yep Forgeworld beauties all of them), Bretonnian (again) and Beastmen. So if you are interested get your votes in for what are up next......

I would like to aim for three completed armies in 2017, not including the Alpha Legion who are so close to being finished. So that would be 2 Fantasy armies and 1 40k army........

Would like to grow the blog at least another 6 pages, that should be achievable if I continue my current level of progress.

Would like to try to sort out a modular, TRANSPORTABLE, gaming surface. I started a thread asking for ideas on this and had a lot of quality feedback. Just need to sit down and try to make something of the advice I received. I have a lot of terrain that I think looks pretty damn good, so it would be nice if I could get more use out of it.

So in short:
- Finish Alpha Legion
- Paint 3 armies (2 Fantasy, 1 40k)
- 6 more blog pages
- Modular, mobile gaming surface
- Start 40k campaign and post progress within the blog
- Get back to the NSW Northern Knights for some games!

Keep your fingers crossed for me and 2017 and I wish you all a happy and safe New Year. Looking forward to seeing you all on the other side.

Thanks for reading.

Sounds like you've got a busy 2017 ahead of you!

EDC

You are a maniac! Impressive project, and amazing to see how far you have gotten!

You should really link the first page of this thread to your completed projects so it is easy for new viewers to see your arrayed forces and be awed by your perseverance

Do you mean link the first page in my signature? Otherwise I am not sure what you mean about completed projects.

In the first post of this thread, where you list all the planned projects, the finished ones can link to the page where that project is finished: so the finished projects look like this:
Space Marine Army - Taskforce of the Garrsak Clan Company ‘Skythaal Incident’

You can use the "Direct Link This Post" to get the correct links.

Ok cool. Will definitely do that. Thanks for the lesson.

So I have now update the first post to have links for each completed army and the post that the finished photos appear in. thanks to Illumini for the idea and how to do it. Definitely gives a better feel to the first post. You may need to scroll down the linked post to reach the final photos, but I think I have them all correct.

Gee I had not realized that I haven't posted on here since the 2nd of the month. That is very slack of me, although I have been popping in on the other amazing work going on. But I have too been busy (mainly with dull real world stuff) and it's time to show some of my progress. The Alpha Legion is progressing nicely with now only two squads of Chosen, 4 man Terminator squad and the 2 Lords to finish off. That must mean I have knocked out the Raptors?


Wait, that's not a Chaos Raptor. That's a Bastion.......yup I also managed to get this painted. I went for a fairly drab and weathered effect as it is effectively terrain and didn't want it to stand out on the tabletop too much. It is a very imposing structure so when it is used it will still dominate the battlefield.


I am really impressed with how it came out with VERY little effort. Just slopped a couple of washes all over it and let them run and it formed some pretty nice water marks.


I did spend a little more time on the Icarus Lascannon though as it will be a focal point of the structure. Really like the contrast between the blue and the rest of the model.


The Lascannon still swivels up and down and the fact it isn't glued in can swing around as needed.


I picked the Bastion up very cheap with the Lascannon, but it had no Comms Relay, so I thought I would dig through my bits box and see if I could find some inspiration to create one of my own. As you can see I succeeded and now have an antenna festooned Relay to summon my reserves.


The hatch I have on the bottom as a happy coincidence fits the ring on the top of the Bastion so it fits snugly up top. Very happy about that. I do also have an Aegis Defence Line with Quad gun as well so I have the full choice of options for the Bastion, but the Defence line and Quad Gun are actually going to be part of the Imperial Fist army I will do so will be painted to fit that army (ie with yellow).


But I did promise you some Raptors and here is the first squad. I am pretty happy with them, they are large and striking and pretty damn obvious. They came together as a happy accident when cruising eBay for cheap Raptors and I was wondering what I should do when I came across a vendor selling 9 of these old school Batwing Raptors and I liked the idea of using them as other Chaos Marine armies will have quite a few Raptors so these will be quite distinct.


I got lucky as you can see and ended up with 5 with the gargoyle type head and 5 with the horned head, so that made breaking them into 2 squads very easy. The shoulder pads are also reversed between squads as per the previous units painted. These small units have a Melta gun and the Champion has Melta bombs so hopefully they will be able to slip around the enemy and take out some enemy armour.


A nasty close up of a couple of the gargoyle headed Raptors. An interesting side note was that I didn't read the eBay description on the Raptors and they were missing one back pack, after a lot of cursing and searching for a replacement and coming up with nothing I bit the bullet, pulled out my patternmakers cap and cast myself a replacement. But don't tell anyone. It is very hard to pick the offending backpack except for the weight difference.


So here is my January painting progress. The Alpha Legion colours are growing on me as I paint them so very happy having done them this way. Very easy to keep consistent and not hard to batch paint. The Bastion was a welcome diversion so I definitely think I will crack out a few buildings I have yet to apply any paint to and use them as a quick and dirty diversion when I need one. Slowly plodding away at the terrain backlog that I have.

So I am on the downhill run with these guys now so hopefully I will have them finished by the end of March. Then I will be moving on to an Engineering themed Dwarf army......

Thanks for reading and I will try really hard to be more involved.

Excellent stuff. The bastion looks great and the improvised comms relay is brilliant.

Love those Batwing Raptors, a really great find and the paint job is looking top to boot!

EDC

Fancy stuff, the raptors an bastion are great. Bit envious, I always courted chaos from afar, and the GW buildings are pretty cool.

You're secret safe with me

Like the Bastion colour (much more of a believable shade). Love the old school Raptor packs as well!

Thanks for the comments guys. I appreciate the feedback. I think I am going to do a similar scheme on a few of the GW buildings that I have had sitting around for absolutely ages. It is really quick to do and since they will be purely terrain (as the Bastion is a fortification and deserved a little more attention) I will probably avoid detailing them too much. Would be fantastic to have a full table of ruined buildings.

This lot is looking spectacular, really good job, and nice work with the scheme, they look right to me, not too silly. That is not coming out right, what I mean is so often you see SM looking ridiculous in silly bright colours, you have achieved a nice balance, not too silly, but still ostentatious.

So I have been pretty quiet over February, I cannot begin to express just how much stuff is going on in our household already this year and it has been causing all sorts of distractions. But I will hold off on any announcements for a little while yet. Suffice to say that I am in a very good place at the moment and really feel that this year is going to be a great one. Would also like to thank those who stop by and comment and keeping the blog rolling on at a nice pace. I appreciate you taking the time to stop in. But even among the movements of the real world I have managed to be head down and bum up with painting and I am now very close to finishing off the Alpha Legion.....


First up is the enigma of the army, the Terminators that do not have a matching squad. They are painted in exactly the same way as everyone else, except I have added a little bright orange to make them just that little bit different to highlight they are different to the rest of the army.


The squad is a mirror of itself in weapons. You may recognize the colour scheme of the unfortunate Tyranid on the Chaos Champions rack.....


So this is the first squad of Chosen. I think the use of the MKIII (or is it MKIV) really sets them apart from the traditional Chaos Marines. I like the idea they are pretty sleek and imagine they keep it that way for enhanced infiltration.


I kept them fairly simple in weapon loadout, a pair of Plasma Guns and Power Swords allowing them to engage effectively at any distance.


This is Chosen squad 2. Identical except the shoulder pads are reversed (just like in the rest of the army).


The Champions in both squads have the most ostentatious of all backpacks, perhaps showing them slowly losing sight of the Legions objectives and getting a little too chaosy.


So here you see my February progress. Another 24 Alpha Legionnaires. Very happy with how they have come together. Now it leaves me with just the two Chaos Lords to finishe the army. Or does it.......

I seem to have arrived at a bit of a problem. I picked up the Traitor Legions codex supplement that has rules for each of the 1st founding Legions and I am very happy that I can add rules to the themes of my Chaos armies again. The available Alpha Legion rules are very nice and I feel fit the themes very well. However, in looking at how to build the army my current list fits into it almost perfectly as if I new what was going to be necessary. Except, if I want to run the Alpha Legion Insurgency Force I would need to run a Core and Auxiliary choice to qualify. Looking at the choices available it turns out that I would simply need to add in a Dark Apostle and I would be right to get the extra Alpha Legion benefits.

So, the question being, do I drop a Chaos Lord and replace him with a Dark Apostle. Ignore the Insurgency Force (and the opportunity for a little more flavour from rules) or try to prune the list, keep both Lords and add the Apostle?


This is where I was up to with the Chaos Lords, I have used the plastic Aspiring Champion model and converted them to be a mirror image of each other. Removing horns and daemonic faces on the opposite side of each model as well as swapping the weapons and adding different shoulder pads so that just like the rest of the army they are mirrors of each other. Fluff wise they are twins (just like the Primarchs get it ;-))

But with the option of this extra Alpha Legion only formation I am super tempted to turn one of them to a Dark Apostle. So, what is the thoughts of those out there? I was thinking maybe convert the model again to have the power maul and some suitable pages of litany etc. to make him more Dark Apostley rather than buy a different model. That way they still look similar but one twin has followed the military route and the other has gone the path of the Demagogue. Any ideas on how to pull off the conversion? The mace is easy, surely I have some "purity seal" style bits in my collection. But would it be enough for an opponent to accept?

Thanks for reading and really keen for your thoughts as I want to get the army finished!

The Alphas look great, Archer.

If you want my advice, I'd say stick with the twin lords, and add in an Apostle. Then vary the on-table army to taste in each battle. That way you get to keep the twins as mirrors of one another, and all you need to do is add/paint one additional model above and beyond. Seeing the work you've done on the Primarchs, I'd imagine that you'd enjoy going to town on a hero like that - and doing so without the need to mirror - somewhat like the Termies.

I agree. The twin lords really fit the alphas, so if you can make room some other way I would do that

Both Lords look pretty awesome (even reversing the helmet, I think the theme is great), but one of them could always BE an Apostle. Plenty of brothers in media can look similar, but excel at different skills. Just my thoughts, I wouldn't waste those models you've made!

I will have a play around with the list tonight and see what presents itself. Then I will have a clearer idea of my real options.

I will also post some photos of a game I had a couple of nights ago. 2,000 points of Orks vs Eldar in 3rd edition 40k. The orks move back in editions remarkably well. I haven't reviewed the photos I took yet, but hopefully they are usable.

Nice job on the Alpha Legion. Really like the shoulder pads.

Looking forward to seeing your 3rd ed pictures. That is something I have wanted to do for awhile, as I cant stand where the game is now, but still love the models and story. I actually really want to try 2nd ed as well. That's the edition I started with when I was a kid and would love to give it another go.

Ah, 3rd Ed. I loved RT and 1.5. I enjoyed 2e, but 3e was a real renaissance and breath of fresh air where troops were supremely useful and superheroes took a back seat.

You motivate me bro. I could start a similar page with my table trials. The building of two tables total play area 8 x 8 ft.

8x8 would be spectacular. Make sure to provide the link to the progress.

Yeah troops are awesome. Ork Nobz are absolutely brutal but losing 6 Killa Kanz to that 80 point Avatar just made me want to cry. But I did then shoot him to death with a massive unit of 'Ard Boyz/Shoota Boyz/Slugga Boyz who had mobbed up at various points during them game and that was satisfying as heck.