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Welcome back Inevitable_Faith.

Cheers,

CB

Good to hear from you! Life has certainly been weird lately.

Cool scheme on the sister!
I really like the contrast between the cloak and the red armour.

I would maybe highlight the edges of the armour a bit more to give it a little more definition (if bright highlights is something you like).
You could also try to change the tone of the red just a bit on the different panels, or even try adding some black here and there.

Just a couple of ideas.

All in all the sister looks good. And even better when she has some friends beside her!

Thanks for the comments guys, I really appreciate it.

youwashock: Thank you, I'm actually quite happy with how the tabard came out and I'm looking forward to seeing how a whole unit comes together with the scheme.

Ezki: I think you're right, some final brighter highlights should help to make the armour pop more which I think it could benefit from. I'll start there and see how it helps. Thank you so much for your advice!

Overall looks pretty good. Maybe a little more highlights.

Not really sure how I feel about the mud base.

Thanks Nev for the critique. Others have noted the highlighting as well and I completely agree, another highlight or two would really help this model pop.

The mud base was done real quick just so I could call it "done". It' matches my other Imperial army basing but ultimately I don't feel it does these models any service. I'm going back to the drawing board on this one to find a way to match the mud bases of my other army but still stand out and help my SoB force look their best.

On that note I will be starting to showcase my latest project here starting today. I never updated Dakka during the process much at all but now that it's done I finally got it all together and have started photos. First post incoming shortly.

A while back I had posted some build progress shots as well as a test mini for a Tempestus Scions force I was working on. Then I went radio silent because I'm very good at disappearing for long stretches of time without warning. (Should I become an international criminal with that skill set?)

Anyways I'm here to say that not only have I continued working on that force; I have completed it! I'm very excited about this as 1) It means I have a fully painted army which is always exciting. 2) I can move on to other projects and 3) This is the first time in my entire hobby life (like 15 years) that I have painted every single model from an army I collect and have none left on the shelf or boxes. If I want to add to this force I literally have to go buy more models and that is a completely alien experience to me.

Some notes about the force:

-One of my primary goals with this army was to practice a more "tabletop ready" standard of painting. It's not my best work but it isn't meant to be. There are LOTS of mistakes (which I tried to mitigate but I didn't bust my ass to correct either) and cut corners.
-This is also a gaming force. My goal was to have an army that gave me several build options whilst allowing me to play almost 100% WYSIWYG as much as possible.
-After years of Aeldari and especially Drukhari play I really got sick of transporting my fiddly and easily broken models. This force is built to be easy to transport and convenient to just throw in a foam case and not worry too much about possibly breaks. Scion models are fairly durable after all and I got creative with the vehicles on this front.
-I wanted a force that was also fairly "beginner friendly" should I loan it to a player who may be thinking of joining 40K and wants to try it out or someone new to the game that wants to learn against an army that doesn't have a million "gotcha" strats or unit rules. Scions are reasonably strong to put up a fight without feeling overwhelming against newer players with just enough tools in the belt to help me go toe to toe with our more veteran players.

Ok with that out of the way on to the first models! Here I have my two Tempestor Primes. I stuck to my initial yellow scheme with a few minor changes. I opted for a more "Scion" aesthetic instead of using the big overcoat. At the core Primes are still a Scion and I wanted leaders that still looked like the men and women they command. The overcoats would later get used but on a completely different model. To make these two stand out I did put on the chained gorget(spelling?) to bulk them out a bit and I came up with my ranking system within the force. Tempestors have a white arm(left) and my Primes, being higher rank, have two white arms. To further simplify distinguishing models I painted one Prime to have a white helmet, for the purposes of any game mode where knowing who your opponents warlord is the one with the white helmet and arms outranks the one with just two white arms. These are my two models however that are not WYSIWYG. I run them with command rods which take up their pistol but truthfully I thought they looked stupid with a sword and a stick. I want soldiers not parade dancers. So I ditched the stick and gave them a bolt pistol (of which there are none in the rest of the force). I like to think they get to issue an extra order now because their pistol is bigger and scarier than the others. Ork logik I know. I still struggle to get white to show up properly in photos (though I feel this is my best result to date) so please just trust me when I say the white arms actually have more depth than what is showing, they have a pale blueish tinge in the recesses when you see the models in person. Same with the guns and swords.

Anyways thanks for looking guys and I hope you like them. As always comments and critiques are much appreciated.

These two look great. Looking forward to seeing the rest.

Thank you so much youwashock, I'm very much looking forward to sharing more. I just got them in the glass display case next to my Craftworld and Drukhari cases and I must say that room looks so much better now that all three display cases are filled.

Continuing today with a single model from the command group is my Tempestus Medic. He doesn't see much table time as Scion medic rules are... underwhelming to say the least. He was still a fun little side model to paint and hopefully he finds a proper place in my army lists in 9th once the new codex comes out.

He is a cool model, with all his sweet medical gear like the gunsaw. The mud on his first aid kit is a nice touch.

The yellow and white are a great combination, and an interesting choice for an experiment in quick painting! Still they came out great, though the Sgts barrels could do with drilling . What are you using for the mud? It looks good

A belated welcome back, and my total agreement that times lately have been interesting!

Liked the Sister you posted, but am very much taken with the color scheme for the Scions- highly effective and visually very engaging. I don't reckon I've seen anyone else try anything quite the same- high marks!

Rock on!

@gobert Thank you very much! I agree that drilling the barrels would make them look much better, for the purposes of doing a speed paint on this force however I opted to skip that for simplicities sake. The mud is GW Stirland mud applied liberally straight from the pot. It's a great technical and were I more ambitious I would add some highlights to it to make it stand out more but as is it's passable particularly for tabletop. The only thing I'm second guessing myself on is if I should have left the edges of the base black to add contrast on the base. Having them brown top to bottom maybe makes them too... brown?

@Meer_Cat Aha thank you very much Meercat! Glad you liked the sister. I'll be updating her to version 1.1 shortly after getting some of the helpful critiques here. As for the scions I'm thrilled you like them. I wanted to make sure it was something that stands out and doesn't lose itself on a table too easily. I did see someone that did an orange with white gun Scion squad (not sure if it was ever a full army of them) that looked fantastic. For the most part however I do see a lot of GW studio colour schemes as well as black or green schemes. All of the look great in my opinion but I am glad to have attempted something that hopefully stands out from the crowd.

Alright now we're getting in to the meat of the army. The scion squads themselves. I've divided my models by role so today is the leaders of each squad, Tempestors! To denote rank they have only their left arm painted white, one down from the Primes. I have 4 with chainsword and hot shot las pistol and 2 with chainsword and plasma pistol. The plasma pistol Tempestors lead my two melta gun squads so they can help damage the big guys. The others lead my other squads to grab objectives and harass enemy infantry. It's a shame that Tempestors can't take a hot shot lasgun as well or in place of the chainsword. Especially on a 5-man squad I really feel the loss of the extra hot-shot lasgun in terms of firepower. At least they were kind enough to allow the vox caster guy to carry a lasgun instead of just the pistol, that's one step in the right direction.

Cool looking bunch. I like the guy in the back charging in.

Another great looking bunch! As for the bases, I’m a fan of clean black rims, but the brown looks fine too

Thanks guys, I appreciate it! I think I may try testing a black rim on one. It'll be easy to do and easy to revert back if I don't like it.

As for todays update we have the absolute core of any scion army: Tempestus Scion with Hot-shot Lasgun. Simple, effective, deadly on to wound rolls of 5+

Since these guys have no real rank (other than being a Scion which in itself makes them outrank most Imperials) they don't have any white other than their gun. I apologize for the light flaring in the second photo, I struggle with balancing that on the best of days. Hope you guys like them and as always let me know what you think.

The larger blue areas on these guys make for a bit of extra visual interest. Looks good. I think switching up the rim color is a good idea. Black is nice, but you could also try a darker brown for something less stark that still contrasts with the mud.

Love these. The armour especially is well done.

Thank you very much for the comments guys. Yeah I'm quite happy with how the blue piping helped to make a pop of colour on these guys. Worked better than I had anticipated in my opinion.

I’ve always held to the theory that at the end of the day we are painting markers for a game. You want visual pop, you want them to stand out. If you paint them “realistic” you end up with more subdued minis that blend into the table and are hard to distinguish at a glance.

I think you did a great job making a coherent force that looks real, but still has some pop to it.

Well done.

Your paint job on them really reminds me of dusty Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers. Specifically the sandtroopers with sandblasted armour when they were shot with yellow filters.

Thank you Nevelon and Gwyn chan'r Gwyll. I never considered the Imperial sandtroopers before but now that you mention it I do see the similarities. Having one Imperial war machine compared to another Imperial war machine sounds pretty apt to me

On to todays update: Vox Casters. It's always seemed odd to me that in 40k troops were never equipped with meaningful comms equipment as standard (barring SM I suppose?) and that for a unit to receive orders they need this massive bulky radio pack. That is part of the charm of 40k I suppose, but then it makes me wonder what the wrist computers and antennae on every Scion shoulder is for... At the very least I do find it strange that a Vox Caster only lets you send orders 3 times farther than you can yell. You'd think those things could at least reach to the borders of the engagement area. Oh well they're still worth a chuckle to "fire on my position" when the opportunity arises!

Another nice group Inevitable_Faith.

Cheers,

CB

These guys look great, we’ll be needing a group shot soon!
The large radios are an odd choice. In many ways 40k is quite backwards in its tech, but as you say that’s part of the fun. After all if everyone had high tech self targeting rounds what would be the point!

I agree that the seemingly backwards tech is part of the charm of 40k, it just sometimes hurts my head from a gameplay perspective. I do have some group shots planned, will do them after the vehicles get showcased.

Today we have Volleyguns. Man it's amazing how much firepower just 2 of these things in a 5-man squad can pump out. If you're not playing to capitalize on FRFSRF within 9" range then these things are the way to go for volume. Sad they're a heavy weapon and suffer on the move.

Since I'll be leaving today to head outta town for the weekend and won't be back until tuesday I'm going to post up the other special weapons as well. First up we have Grenade Launchers, I really want to love these things but I do feel they are the weak link in my army. They don't have volume or damage potential to threaten vehicles reliably, nor the AP and volume to threaten elite infantry (probably their ideal target) and S3 on the frag portion is underwhelming (especially if you roll a low number of shots). Having said that I still put them in because they just feel like a very guardsmen weapon to use given they are fairly unique to them. They've done some work for me and I'll continue using them but I often catch myself thinking 6 extra volleyguns could do the same job better especially after our PA boost with point-blank efficacy.

The meltaguns are next. Between the Valkyrie drop strat from PA and and the weapon boost to being D6+2 in half range I've put these things to excellent use. Four shots can feel like it's not enough oftentimes thanks to how many high-priority targets have invuln saves but overall they still tend to at least cripple what they need to then die valiantly as a terrifying little distraction unit that can't be ignored by your opponent.

That’s a nice amount of firepower, all looking spiffy in their yellow and white! Safe travels!

Specialists all look cool, IF. Looking forward to the big army shot.

Thanks guys, appreciate the comments

So now we're on to vehicles. I have three Taurox Primes and I must say these things are what makes the force work. They're fairly fragile but they bring much needed mobility and speed to the force. So many of my matches have hinged entirely on if these things can get the kill or snag that objective. I've magnetized every weapon option on these three and even came up with a handy transport system for taking them to games. Every piece of gear tucks nicely inside its respective Taurox and the roof just slips right on top. Hopefully you guys like them. Sorry for a bit off a photo explosion on this one.

They look great, if I ignore the double tracked wierdness . The paintjob is superb and the weapons storage, ingenious! Where’s Number 2?

Paddy wagons look good! Nice weathering and detail. Each one serving as its own storage is neat, too.