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Your army looks awesome all set up like that. Place, schmace. You should be proud of them, for sure.

Yeah, I agree. Place schmace - they look really amazing and you've done a great job on the table itself. It lets the models shine rather than overwhelming them as some other parade tables do.

also I am still very mad at your flowers

I’ll echo everyone else with the “don’t worry about not placing” Getting that built and painted is a massive accomplishment, and one you should be rightly proud of.

Good thing you got some more minis. It’s a well established fact that once you paint your last mini, you die. Piles of Shame are not just monuments to poor impulse control, they are our life insurance.

I think the army looks great. Never worry about placement in painting competitions, so much of the judging is subjective and there is always pressure to go with something that is massive with AoP.

Now is there a place you can store your display board at home?

Cheers,

CB

Thank you very much for all your kind words everyone. I won't lie, I am bummed out about not placing but I think what truly is under my skin at the moment is not knowing where I stood in the comp.

This year was different, rather than overall top three for the whole event it was divided into categories: young blood (under 15), first army, monsters and machines, best board, best theme, and best painted. Only the top place in each category got any award. For anybody who wasn't top of a category you weren't told where you placed in each. The category I care most about was best painted, the guy who won that absolutely deserved it too, his Death Guard were absolute leagues above my current skill level. I don't feel bad about losing out to him at all, it just sucks that since placement was not made available I could have been anywhere from second place to 18th. I really would have liked to know where I stood in the pack so I could get some measure of where my skills currently lie. Unfortunately my pessimistic mind tells me that since I could be anywhere from 2nd to 18th I must be 18th. I know it's wrong to think like that but it's a struggle I've been dealing with most of my life.

That's enough ranting though, the day was still a ton of fun and I got to meet many really cool and talented people. that in and of itself is enough to get me excited to try again next year.

@goblinpaladin: You're mad at my flowers? But what have they ever done to hurt you?

@Nevelon: Since unpainted plastic is our lifeblood I'm sure I know a few people who must be downright immortal by now.

@Captain Brown: I don't have any space to store my board unfortunately. My plan is to salvage the arches of the webway portal to make into terrain down the road but dispose of the rest of the board. It's just foam, corkboard and fish tank rocks so it's not a huge loss. Looking back at my first AoP entry two years ago to this board I've made huge improvements (though I'm still a long ways from anything I'd say I'm really proud of). Next year I'll start from scratch again and see how much better I can do.

I think your army looked great, but it would be hard not to know where you placed. Most of the tourneys I have been in they let people know what their score was for painting, any chance you can ask the judge(s)? The one thing you can take away from this is that you are still excited to try again next year. Keep up the great work man, I for one am inspired by your painting skills.

I think your force looks awesome. Congrats on getting so many models completed at such a high level.

@Yorkright: I did ask the organizer my placement in the best painted category but he refused to tell me stating that "he doesn't like telling everyone their placement and that we should all be proud of doing such great work in the first place". He's a great guy and super friendly but I get the impression he doesn't want to tell placement to those who didn't win for fear of having to tell someone they got last place when they ask.

And thank you for your kind words, I'm super pumped to hear I can be an inspiration to other painters. Thank you.

@complex57: Thank you very much complex, I did get about a year and a half to work on this army as I missed out on last years AoP so the extra time helped me to get this much finished. I hope to continues growing this force and to come up with new and interesting directions to take it in the future.

Well, I'm pretty confident of your second place dude to have painted so many models to the standard you've painted them is a great achievement

I can see why the organiser would be reluctant to do a full ranking for fear of discouraging the lower end, but a 'top 5' out of 18 would be a neat thing to do.

Really looking forward to seeing some of your new haul of models. Especially the Incubi. Love those, but I've been holding out for some metal versions to no avail for ages.

Captain Brown wrote:


This is why I always end my posts in my PLOGs "The long painting war continues..." Just like the wars in the 40K universe we love and enjoy, the painting is never finished.

Good luck on the next additions.

Cheers,

CB

Haha!

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor's model has sat unfinished on the WIP shelf of Games Workshop. He is the Master of mankind by the will of the writers, and master of a million fans by the might of his unpainted armies. He is a blu-tacked proof of concept writhing invisibly with unfulfilled potential. He is the Primered Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand painting sessions are procrastinated over every day, such that he might never truly be finished.

Yet even in his prototypical state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Vast armies are glued together and placed on shelves to gather dust throughout the world. Greatest amongst his unfinished works are the Adeptus Astartes, introductory models to the 40k franchise and thus most often started but never finished. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless other high-model-count armies, the conversion-heavy Inquisition and the fiddly detailed tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from legions of indistinguishable grey plastic.

To be a man in such times is to be one who has a to-do list numbering in the untold billions. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for airbrushing is the realm of a might few. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only primer. There are no 'finished armies' amongst the stars, only an eternity of paint and poly-cement, and the laughter of thirsting shareholders.

I'm so happy this post is the first thing I read this morning, you've set my mood for the whole day Ynneadwraith with that unpainted minis post. Seriously man you're a genius. Thank you for that. :laugh:

Thank you for the vote of confidence on my AoP entry, you guys have all really helped me out of the post comp slump.

I'll have to go through the pile and see what's salvageable since I know this guys is "rough" on model storage. Looking at the Incubi I'll definitely have to rob parts from them since many have broken klaives and trophy racks. I'm waiting on some spare bitz at the moments as the scourges are mostly heat lances (ewwwww) and shardcarbines (good but I don't need ten of them). I'll go through the box here one day and give a mission report on what will need to be done to put these guys back in service. In the mean time I haven't been idle, I have another raider in the works as well as doing some work on a couple Taurox Primes. Pictures will hopefully be up tonight time allowing.

Haha I'm here to serve

Votes of confidence deserved my friend

Are Heat Lances no good this edition? Bummer. I wonder if the pending Dark Eldar codex (provided we get one of course) might fix that...

Heat lances are in a rough spot right now yeah. They are only better than dark lances in very specific circumstances. They lack range, and strength 6 isn't great against most of the targets you want to shoot them at (toughness 7/8 tanks and monsters). Most priority targets for them won't benefit from cover either so the extra -5 ap vs the dark lance -4 ap is mostly wasted. The only real advantage they have is melta but within the DE codex there's no good way to get them in that range. They're easiest to take on scourges but they're so fragile that you're not likely to get them in range and even deep striking them puts you outside melta range. Overall it's too hard to get that golden range to work.

Melta treated them better under 7th too as they're strength 6 wasn't a huge issue against tanks (rolling 2D6 instead of 1D6 for penetration and lance guaranteed no armour value above 12 so all you needed was two 3's to glance). The new melta and lance rules don't make it easier for this thing to hurt stuff as much as they used to. All this added to the fact that if you play using points instead of power levels its woefully expensive to equip them.

TLDR: No heat lances are not good right now.

I'm not holding my breath for the release of the DE dex, I think it'll be one of the last ones to release unfortunately. On the other hand I'm cautiously optimistic that it may be a very good dex for us. Not speaking power wise but rather fluff, can the DE fluff have been more gutted than it already was in 7th and the index? We can only go up from here

Oh, man, don't tell me that. I have all these heat lances planned!

The chapter approved coming out may make them viable again, though that's no guarantee. Likely it'll just lower the points cost on it to the point it's possible worthwhile.

On the hobby side of things I've gotten another raider sail almost complete, just have to do the metal bits now. Sorry I haven't been posting photos, opening a business is draining to say the least.

Small update. Got some progress done on a new raider, sail is nearly complete and one side of the main body has the first edge highlight done. I hope to have this ride finished in about a week before moving on to the next model. On that note what do you guys thinks I should do next: finish building and paint up my voidraven bomber or go through my box of newly acquired DE to find how many models are salvageable and assemble them into usable units?

Looking good.

I vote rummage through the new guys.

Is anything in the box going to be cooler then the voidraven? Is such a thing possible? Do the flyer.

That said, what’s your overall painting queue looking like? I know I like to mix up projects to help prevent burnout. So it might be worth doing a squad of refurbished guys, then the bomber, then more old guys, etc.

Raider is coming along nicely.

Rummaging is a fun way to do hobby stuff that doesn't involve eye strain and stress about messing up a highlight, so do the rummage when you're feeling a bit of burnout & otherwise do the vehicle.

Thanks for the input guys, terribly sorry for the super slow response, starting this business is still eating at every spare minute I have. I haven't been totally idle, mostly just super slow and after some consideration on what to do I opted for (insert drumroll here)... none of the above! That's right I got 100% sidetracked with a completely not space elf related thing and did that instead. Truth be told I'm having a bit of burnout with the DE currently, I need to paint some new colours for a little bit and it's also tough to stay motivated to paint an army that I'm having trouble playing. The gaps between codex and index armies just feel like they're getting wider and wider and especially after the guard and tyranid dexes my poor DE just feel like they belong in a different game all together. in a world of double-tapping leman russes (leman russi perhaps ) and super fast in your face hyper-dakka rippy teary nids I just feel so... inadequate. To still play and break outta that slump I've been playing my small force of Tempestus Scions (some of you may remember that one yellow test model I painted a ways back) and they've been loads of fun to play as well as being competitive. Seriously look no further than the Taurox Prime and compare it to the Raider, both for 6 power the Prime outclasses the raider in literally every possible way while still keeping a transport capacity of ten. And in what world should a Taurox move the same speed as a Raider too? That's ridiculous... Anyways. Motivation just isn't there for the poor DE, hopefully chapter approved can help it out a bit. Ok enough griping, time for the actual update.

Here is my latest little concept, a kitbashed Primaris Psyker to throw in as an extra HQ choice for my scions (bringing them up to the next detachment level for those 3 extra sweet delicious command points). I have him here with his coat off for ease of painting. My question is: how's the pose look? Notably his right arm, should I chop it off and put the coat on as it's meant to be (covering his right arm) or keep it as is with he modified coat? Thanks in advance for your advice guys, kitbashing and conversions aren't my strength and I'm always second-guessing every change I make, hopefully you guys can steer my right on this one.

For reference here's the "closed" coat version.

Nothing wrong with changing it up from time to time.

I vote closed coat.

I think I vote open coat, although it's a bit hard to see his right hand in your photo. Are you married to the coat? I like the coat-less officer up the top, although if everyone else has a coat then so should he.

I think it's great that he has a beret and a staff but otherwise looks like a regular officer. I find the temptation to make psykers so weird and over the top a bit frustrating; I like your low-key look a lot.

Is his beret going to to be the colours of his unit or do the Psy Corps have their own beret colour (purple, it should be purple, heck yes)?

I couldn't throw shade on someone getting distracted by side projects even if I didn't think it was a great way to avoid burnout. My Dark Eldar thread has so many space marines in it now!

Looks good, I’d go with the closed coat.

Side projects happen and are a good thing. Keeps it fresh.

Hopefully the Chapter Approved book tosses some gems your way to help with the codex gap.

Thanks for your advice guys, I really appreciate it.

goblinpaladin: So far he's the first model in my scions force with a coat. I did this to help differentiate him from the rest of the force and make him easy to spot on the table. I'm glad you like the low-key look here. I really didn't want to make him too "magical" or what have you since the rest of the scion force is very tactical and utilitarian it felt odd to have an over the top wizard in the ranks. The plan for painting is to do some research on the Scholastica Psykana and paint him mostly in those colours, gunna try and throw their logo on his coat too.

Hum, I vote closed coat (perhaps with his pistol-arm replaced by one that disappears into the coat itself).

I think without the coat at all he'd make a great lieutenant, but the coat sells him as a psyker more

That sounds like a good plan. I'm keen to see it develop!

Looks like closed coat has it. I went with the pistol hand to keep him WYSIWYG Ynneadwraith, contemplated some alternatives but in the end opted for it. He's off to be primed and I should be able to put him to the brush later today.

I can't wait to see him painted, Btw yes i'm new in this thread so I hop by once in a while.

Good point as someone who doesn't really play I never really think of WYSIWYG :S

Can't wait to see him with some paint

Nice, dynamic posing- very well articulated. Looking forward to seeing how this guy comes out!