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 kavika0311 wrote:
I think once you give the red a wash it’ll help tone down that garishness quite a bit.

For the heraldry on the banner, are you not going to go with the 3rd Company’s sword through a Nid head?

I wish my freehand could do that justice. I was just planning basic iconography on the banner itself. But the center bottom panel has a little divided field that needs colors.

The stabbed nid head will be on the base. You can see it WIP near the biovore.

The biovore looks good. I agree the wash will take some edge off the red. I also found that planning the order you put the Contrast on in is fairly important if you want to avoid too much touch-up.

The extra tentacles are a great idea!

youwashock wrote:The biovore looks good. I agree the wash will take some edge off the red. I also found that planning the order you put the Contrast on in is fairly important if you want to avoid too much touch-up.

Nulan helped a lot. I need to iron out my process for these guys. Shouldn’t be hard, there are not a lot of steps.

Gitsplitta wrote:The extra tentacles are a great idea!

One problem with metal is it tends to weaken if bent back and forth a lot. These guys spent a lot of time loose in boxes. Which is why a third of them snapped off. Hopefully the GS will be stong enough on it’s own. At the very least it’s another contact point to help brace them from bending. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably put a wire core in each one for added strength. These are just rolled GS.

So the first of the new swarm formally done. Not counting the zoats, Tippy, or the old genestealers, as they are all different patterns and schemes.


He’s a lower standard than what I’ve been doing lately. But solid table-top work. Which frankly is the only way an army of nids is going to hit the table before the sun burns out.

Here I think is how I’m going to paint the army:
Prime white
Basecoat Grey Sear
Hard carapace Shysh Purple
<touch up here>
Fleshy bits Guilliman Flesh
Claws & Guns Blood Angel Red, then a Nulan Oil wash
Tounges, mouth insides also BA Red.
Eyes in Sunburst Yellow, with a cat’s eye/snake vertical pupil in black
Teeth picked out with bleached bone
Base, stock winter as other armies.

As I paint things with more detail, I’ll have to decide what colors to use for those parts moving forward.

Works, I think. The eyes are a nice touch. Any plans to black out that muzzle?

 youwashock wrote:
Works, I think. The eyes are a nice touch. Any plans to black out that muzzle?

No?

I’m not drilling it out, that’s for sure. Hadn’t given thought to blacking it. It is a giant flat spot. I could give it a shot. Might do a mock up on the computer and see how it looks. Or wait until I have more models, specifically new scuplts, and see how their big guns look.

Put the grey seer down on the next one and did a little more painting this morning.

Spore mines ready to prime:

Hopefully the tentacles will help them from snapping off. If not, always more glue. Or cob some together out of something more sturdy and lighter, which is pretty much everything.

Some WIP:


Biovore #2 done. I’m liking this contrast paint thing. Once the wash dries I’ll move him down to the ready to base stage and start on the 3rd one. I have a feeling the speed I get the little guys done is going to be limited by how many painting handles are free at a given time. The end of month gap, where I am done with my competition project and looking for something to fill a few days/week is going to be full of gribbly bugs.

Ancient is ready for his second blue coat. Banner still needs it’s first black, and the lower center basecoated. And then the many cleanup and highlight passes. Nid head needs 2 washes for the knife, and then highlights for same.

Sisters and trooper 1 need their clean up grey seer pass. Then the white wash. After that the sisters get a higlight pass, and the marine gets his camo, soft armor wash, and the blue shoulder finished.

Trooper 2 already had his clean up pass, waiting for the white.

Working on different projects at the same time badly fragmented my focus. I feel I was just dithering around slapping random layers down. Sure, they eventually all got done, but felt really inefficient. End is in sight (ish). Next time I think I’ll try to keep it more focused. If I had done these guys sequentially, rather then together, I think I’d be done. (well, pairing the like models)

Another Biovore done already? Awesome.

 youwashock wrote:
Another Biovore done already? Awesome.

As I said, really loving the contrast.

They are only really 6 steps, plus the eyes. I could probably do one a day if I was diligent about it, even weekdays while working. One layer before work, one each on my 2 15 minute breaks and another at lunch, finish up after work. Plenty of dry time.

I did mention how fast and easy these guys are?

Just need to base them. And maybe look into something with the flat guns. I think once I get the army more up and running I might go back and do a detail pass. Edge some armor plates, maybe gloss the eyes. But I’d like to get a table-top force out there eating people first. It would also help to tie some of the older scuplts in with the new ones. But I’d need some fresh plastic first. Even the hormagaunts are pretty old at this point.

I do love the old biovore over the newer sculpt. With them horseshoeing in the different races being used for biological material for certain Tyranids I think they overdid the Orc look way too much.

Living artiller-iffic. Quick, easy, and the more you paint, the better they all look together. Heck of a deal.

Theophony wrote:I do love the old biovore over the newer sculpt. With them horseshoeing in the different races being used for biological material for certain Tyranids I think they overdid the Orc look way too much.

I liked how they were subtle nods to the other races, but agree that I think the new biovore moved too far away from the general Nid aesthetic.

youwashock wrote:Living artiller-iffic. Quick, easy, and the more you paint, the better they all look together. Heck of a deal.

Glued some rocks and tufts to them, so just need to smear some flock around and they can be formally done. Then I get to buy another box. Next will be a box of termagants.

So with the state opening up again and no signs of the corona in our circles, I’ve started taking my weekends with The Boy again. Project for yesterday was breaking everything out for an army shot.

So hard on the lighting and focus. While we were transitioning everything from the shelf, I took advantage of the opportunity and grabbed units pics of everyone who didn’t have one. I’ll process and upload those to the gallery. Also took the time to readjust the shelf. It was getting cluttered, and needed some work. One thing was swapping the 2 BaC tac squads up into the company shelf, replacing the 2nd and 3rd ed squads. Sad to do it, as they have history, but how many tacs do I need in the ready space? Doing this let me move another 20 bodies down into the spare bits drawer. I should probably thin out a few more things, maybe move all the swap shelf spare weapons down there as well. But a drawer is not the best place for that sort of thing. Things are getting cramped though, so actions might need to happen. Although no rush, as nothing new is going to be moving in until the YTD shelf transitions at the end of December. I might need to take another shelf from the stemware, or get a new cabinet. If I could move the motor pool somewhere, it would decompress the infantry a LOT.

Hopefully get a game in today, we’ll see how that works out. Right now puttering with pictures and cleaning up some aggressors.

Happy Father’s Day to all my fellow dads out there.

Happy Father's Day!

Killer army shot. Ultras for miles.

Very nice shot of the full army. Are those your scouts on the far right?

youwashock wrote:Happy Father's Day!

Killer army shot. Ultras for miles.

Thanks.

I like this one better for the “Blue Tide” shot, but it looks a little fuzzy, and doesn’t actually show off the collections very well.

kavika0311 wrote:Very nice shot of the full army. Are those your scouts on the far right?

Yup. Scouts are part of my recon exchange program with the Eldar. They wear forest camo to infiltrate the maiden world base scheme of the foul Xenos, while the Eldar rangers wear white. Although the roots of the choice got back to 2nd edition where I was still on the fence about switching fully to Ultras, or keeping up my BA. So painting them in camo without chapter markings let me use them for both armies. I’ve got 4? more scouts to paint, and then they are done. I am still expanding the 10th company, but it’s with phobos units who are being painted in arctic camo.

Those are some awesome looking army shots. Makes me miss my own Ultras You have a lot to be proud of with your collection!

 brushcommando wrote:
Those are some awesome looking army shots. Makes me miss my own Ultras You have a lot to be proud of with your collection!

One problem with being proud of my collection is it makes it hard to shuffle stuff around. I don’t want to just box stuff up and/or stash it someplace unseen. All my Ultras, even the 2nd ed bolter huggers, deserve a place in the sun. But space is becoming an issue. I had hoped to pick some some nice Ikea shelves this summer, but the whole pandemic thing put a kibosh on that. The shipping costs on display cabinets is murder. I think end of year some stemware is going to go hide in the dead space above the fridge. But I’ll burn that bridge when I get there.

So I got a game in yesterday <wild applause>

As I’ve been painting up a bunch of RT stuff, I decided to make an army of it:

There are a few things less then 20 years old in there, but not many.

The Boy brought a mixed bag:


Mission was gain a VP for each objective, each turn, and for killing units. Nice mix of goal.

Deployment:


I start holding 3 objectives (there is one under the midfield rhino) He’s camped on one (the infiltrators being proxied by reivers in the middle runs in his zone). All my terminators in reserve, I seize and go first.

I move my rhino up to grab the middle objective (my devs in the ruin can still cap the one it was on) I shoot him up a bunch, but don’t kill anything.
He responds my moving the razor up the hill to claim that objective, and vaporizing my rhino camping the opposite objective. Other light fire across the table.



Turn 2 the hammer comes down. I DS all my termintors behind his tanks. And do a whole lot of nothing. Mostly due to my screwing up. I forgot the repulsor has the -2 charge range things going on. Woops. Not going to eat that much dakka overwatch on an attempt of a 11” charge. I had given my TDA captain the relic RF4 bolter that re-rolls wounds, and the warlord trait that causes MW’s on 6’s, but forgot the re-rolls didn’t work vs. vehicles, and positioned him poorly. And my dice just sucked in general. I did slap a bunch of wounds on the replusor, mostly via MWs from strats and psychic powers. But one shy from bracketing it. My midfield tacs deply behind cover to help pour fire into the building to dislodge the snipers. Didn’t do well their either. All and all poor showing. I do however still hold 4 objectives.

He unloads his captains from the transports and some intercessors. His firepower doesn’t do a whole lot, but CC gets ugly fast. He avoids contact with the assault terminators, but cleans up both my HQs and all but one of the tactical termis. Ouch. He’s got 3 captains armed for bear, including the new named Salamander guy (proxy while he paints his) who hits like a truck. I use the “Bite Me” strat to swing before dying to carve most of his wounds off.

He screwed up moving things around, and left an objective unclaimed. But did get a bunch of KPs. I’ve still got a lead.


The assault cannon falls back out of combat and with some slighly lucky rolls, mows down his named captain. (who tried to get back up with the Sal resurrection strat, but failed the check, even with a re-roll) My assault termis charge in and snuff his gravis captain. A slow attrition firefight continues across the rest of the table.

At this point I didn’t take any more pics. So you get a summery.

The giant tangle of death continues in the south. Most of the terminators are killed by weight of numbers, but take a heavy toll before dying. The sarge takes a swing at his remaining captain in a final act of defiance, but the Shield Eternal and his wounds prove enough to endure. His captain staggers out of the mess the sole surviver, and joins the champ on the hill to survey the final acts of the battle.

His sternguard disembark from the razor and storm my tacs on the hill, clearing them and taking the objective. The weather the last rounds of fire from my ensconced dev squad and hold fast.

Up north my tacs are slowly wittled away, with the last marine dying on the final turn. His intercessors moved up, but never managed to seize it.

Eventually he moved his forces to take the center from me. His last sniper fell back to hold his objective, freeing the infiltrators to move up (and preventing me getting the KP from killing him) with their support fire no longer needed to deal with my deep strikers, his squad of intercessors also moved down. With more guns to bear, and swords and knives to finish off the survivors, my tacs are swept clear of the central objective. He leaves the infiltrators to hold the center, and with a good advance roll, gets an intercessor boot on the the objective my Devs have been claiming all game.

I had a strong lead for most of the game, claiming 4 objectives a turn for most of it. But he had a strong push at the end, polishing off more units and seizing objectives from me. At the end he won by a single point, which was from getting that last intercessor to my lines.

Victory Salamanders!


Fresh paint report:
In an army composed entirely of RT stuff, it feels odd to do a fresh paint call out. The tac squad that held the middle was the freshly painted one, and they did fairly well for themselves. Popped some fire around, held fast until overwhelming force was brought to bear on them. Good show.
I don’t know if I’d fielded my RT ML dev squad before, but they were the MVP of the game for me. They were the bulk of my AV fire, and downed almost all his armor. Can’t say it was single handed, but they did the lion’s share. Lot of Flack missiles went into the repulsor, but they were also handing out krack missiles like candy. Didn’t take any casualties until the very end. Even got an extra missile off at the end from the ancient who otherwise didn’t do a whole lot.

Quick progress update: Finished baseing the Biovores, all 3 finished. That’s a unit, ordered a box of termagants.

Those army shots

Had a silly idea , It's me, so only silly ideas, and should never be taken seriously . I know you can buy those gigantic hissing cockroaches at some pet shops pretty cheap, you should get a few just for army shots, have them be a new strain of Tyranids rampaging through your lines .

 Theophony wrote:
Those army shots

Had a silly idea , It's me, so only silly ideas, and should never be taken seriously . I know you can buy those gigantic hissing cockroaches at some pet shops pretty cheap, you should get a few just for army shots, have them be a new strain of Tyranids rampaging through your lines .

I am starting a Nid army. The odds of them being posed dramatically against my Ultras once I get a few more done is quite high.

Also need to work on more terrain to help set the scene.

Yes, I love the work on your Nids, old metals , just saying watching the real bugs climb on the marine rhinos and grab tank things would be neat ......but should absolutely not happen .

 Theophony wrote:
Yes, I love the work on your Nids, old metals , just saying watching the real bugs climb on the marine rhinos and grab tank things would be neat ......but should absolutely not happen .

Maybe if I was painting 2nd company. But we are the 3rd. Scourge of Xenos. No giant bug is going to run rampant through our lines.

Fun thought though...

Congratulations to your son for actually winning one this time! Must have been fun playing a game with all those classic models!

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Congratulations to your son for actually winning one this time! Must have been fun playing a game with all those classic models!

He’s won games before, Just not the best W/L record out there. It’s not entirely his fault. He’s going up against a lot of experience. Maybe in a few years when he’s more independently mobile he can hit the FLGS on his own and play different people. But right now it’s just me. What I like about last weekend’s game was that I was ahead for most of it, but he came from behind. A lot of the time if he feels that he’s loosing, his interest wanes. Now I have had a few runaway victories, but there were some games where if he had stayed engaged and focused, he might have pulled out a win. This game I was ahead on points due to objectives, but he was murdering me on KP.

I do love a game with the classics. Of course, I try to get the 1st of the 3rd on the table as often as I can, but this was a whole army. I was hopeing the TDA captain would do better. Once the new plastic gets paint, he will probably never see the table again.

Speaking of paint.

Sisters are ready for the white contrast, ancient is ready for his blue ink. Infiltrators just need the blue ink on their shoulders, and then final cleanup (and baseing/transfers/etc) Banner still needs some work, lot of touchups, a few more base colors on the heraldry. If all goes well, should be doable this weekend.

Edit: Just inked the blue on the ancient and the infiltrators.

Better pic of the contest entries. Almost there.


The infiltrators are joined by the first test marine to check for compliance. I think they pass muster. Flock and decals left to do.


So rumor has it a lot of people are breaking out old metal terminators. Now if you have to ask “Hey Nev, you have any kicking around the Pile of Shame?” you don’t know me very well. When taking the army pics last weekend, The Boy was wondering how to put the terminators back. Normally I rank things up by squads, but my TDA collection is a little eccentric. I have 5 assaults (3 TH/SS, 2 LCs) but my tactical terminators are a mixed bag. 2 sarges, 2 assault cannons, 1 HF, and 7 mixed troopers, some with power fists, some chianfists. If you look carefully, you will also notice one of the troopers has a magnet to take a cyclone launcher. So it looks like I need another 3 guys; 1 sarge, 2 troopers.

<insert rummaging noises here>



Running out of stormbolters, going to have to file the DA iconography off this one. I could use a better scaled power sword, but I’d have to crack open a DW sarge blister, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

I forgot everything I had in that box. Some inquisitors, old GKs, some deathwing, a librarian. Odds and ends, some very old. Good to go digging from time to time.

Edit:
Put the decals on and flocked the infiltrators. They get to move to the done shelf. Put two Termagants on the handles, and slapped their base coat on. Having painted and stripped two as the test pattern, I’d like to get them back up and running, just to get credit for painting them.

Ah, yes! Those will be good. How many old Grey Knights?

Ancient's banner is looking swell, as do the Infiltrators.

 youwashock wrote:
Ah, yes! Those will be good. How many old Grey Knights?

Ancient's banner is looking swell, as do the Infiltrators.

Looks like 4.

2 inquisitors, a whole bunch of deathwing guys, an old mark, CML. chaos guy, Lib. More heavy weapons then I need, not enough regular ones. If they ever go back to 2 heavies per 5 guys, I might break out some magnets and do some arm swaps.

The only stuff likely ever to see paint in this box is the inquisitors, just as a fun side project. Or if they switch things so HFs are the cat’s meow. Due to scale creep, the assault cannons would probably work for rotor cannons, or whatever those things they gave Chaos are called. If loyalists get them I might pop a few on some PA bodies. Or if 30k ever takes off locally, make some for there if I can.

So nice.

4 GKs backing up an Inquisitor would make a cool looking little squad...

 youwashock wrote:
So nice.

4 GKs backing up an Inquisitor would make a cool looking little squad...

Might be a fun project. Not sure the rules allow it, but honestly, half the stuff (more?) I do these days is just fun painting projects. Something for the back burner.

So termagants. They paint fast. And it’s OK to be a little buzzed. Had a long week, had a G&T and decided I didn’t want to do any detail work. Little bugs don’t care.


I’ll tidy up the bases when I get a few more done. In theory a dozen of their friends should be here Monday. Moved a pair of Hormagaunts down to the empty spaces. I figure I’ll paint them between the rest of the stuff on the bench. Which I want clear by the end of Sunday. Stuff has been lingering too long.

On the building front I want to clean those terminators and finish the arms on the last aggressor from last weekend. I left the guns and ammo belts off for painting. Not sure if I want to bother to magnetize. But at this point all it would take would be just building the other option and figuring how to sink magnets. I might just wait till 9th drops and see if it’s worth it. Once I finish those two projects, it will be time to find a nice day to prime. Although if more nids get built before the weather clears, thye can join the pile.