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Cheers lads!

I spent most of yesterday working on getting the Taurox Prime done! Well, aside from some minor tidying up and a decal or two. It comes with a somewhat upgraded Taurox cannon (again, courtesy of Zinge Industries) and a coaxial autocannon, as I'm not that big a fan of the side-mounted weaponry myself, plus the datasheet does not clearly state where the weapon is supposed to be mounted, sooooooo.. don't mind if I do then eh? Overall though, again really happy with how it turned out, aside from the vision blocks. The technical paint did not turn out as expected, plus the green may be clashing a bit too much with the rest of the vehicle. Oh well, live and learn I suppose.





Alright! Next up.. squad Dasha, on whom I've already made a start earlier last week by block painting the gold and the blue of their armour, leaving me with a shed load of work still to do, but a begin has been made. These will be one of three "add-ons" I'll have handy for when I submit my final list for the tourney in two weeks time. Squad Dasha is made up of a Tempestor, another hotshot volleygun and a meltagun, for the odd vehicle that may crop up in this setting. Though chances are, it will more often than not be used to nuke the gak out of some tough bastard or another that people bring along.

After squad Dasha is done, I'm going to follow it up with commissar Aurélia Delacroix, who I've decided to give a French name, to take a break from all those Russian names, even though there's russian gak written on the back of her coat, but whatever. The base model will be Raging Heroes' admiral Olga Kurganova, who has a certain vain look about her, not to mention the arrogance some of their miniatures have become known for. She'll be a nice diversion from all the light blue and khaki I've been painting until now, though chances are she won't be a regular black-clad commissar. Not sure yet what to do with her, but we'll get to that when we get to that.



And with the commissar out of the way, I'll get cracking on both Sentinels! I've been putting it off for long enough by then, so let's save the most annoying for last. Their deadline will be Friday the 14th, so they're also done in time for the tourney, should I feel like fielding them instead of the Taurox and squad Dasha.

What lies beyond?

Maybe another one of these boxes! I've found myself enjoying the assembly and painting of these models immensely, plus it seems like a great oppertunity to expand from a Kill Team into a proper combat patrol, or even a small 500 pts force for smaller games to come. I also really want to build a medic, just because. And a Taurox with a missile launcher installation, again because I wanna more than I really need one.

I really like the green vision blocks. Reminds me of the Ratels and other South African APCs and their armoured glass windscreens.

The Taurox looks sweet - looking forwards to seeing how Kurganova turns out - and definitely going to shamelessly copy this female Scions thing of yours.

Many thanks, by all means, do copy about, but be sure to credit the third party bits suppliers once or twice when you do so, more business for them is always good!

That said, all good things must come to (a rather abrupt) end, as this is my last vacation day. They're so low on bodies at work that I've been approached and begged to me to cut my vacation short, for proper incentives of course. But starting tomorrow, I'm sadly back at it.

Bit of an arse really, as yesterday I got a second Start Collecting! box of Militarum Tempestus and a Leman Russ Demolisher (unrelated project) that I wanted to work on next week. So, in a bit of a rush I built the Taurox last night and did five Tempestus this morning, though painting will probably have to wait until the first week of November, when I plan on taking the rest of my vacation.

On the bright side, my Kill Team is done for next week, yay.

I've also dug out a pair of Ork Nobs from my pile of models, one of which (da one on da left ya git!) will become the leader of the kill team of my brother, BOSS GUTGRAB CURBSTOMPA, so named because well.. those poor Space Marines and Tau in our practice sessions suffered just that.



The current plan is try and get it painted up for Sunday, when we're going to play a proper game of Kill Team at around 120 pts per side, so we can ease him back into the game, all the while slowly introducing more rules. Will be a challenge, as it has been years since I last took a stab at painting an ork!

Orks benefit from flat base colours and lots of washes, as I recall...!

That's a very cool Taurox. For the green glass, would painting the effect paint over a darker metallic base give less of an iridescent appearance?

Both the Scion squad and the Taurox look fantastic, Brook. What colour paint did you use for the turquoise armour?

Green armourglass might best be served with a coat of Dark Angels Green (or whatever it is now) and then a coat or two of gloss varnish? But either way I like the current effect.

 Turaxa wrote:
That's a very cool Taurox. For the green glass, would painting the effect paint over a darker metallic base give less of an iridescent appearance?

This is something I do want to experiment with next time I've got a few weeks off, which should be around the start of November, fingers crossed. The application of this stuff is limited, but certainly something I want to play around with more for sure.

 Azazelx wrote:
Both the Scion squad and the Taurox look fantastic, Brook. What colour paint did you use for the turquoise armour?

Many thanks! For the armour I used chaos black undercoat -> the Fang -> Reikland Fleshshade -> Thunderhawk Blue -> Fenrisian Grey (final edge highlights and the lines running down their arms. This is also more or less what I used for the Taurox.

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
Green armourglass might best be served with a coat of Dark Angels Green (or whatever it is now) and then a coat or two of gloss varnish? But either way I like the current effect.

For the canopies of my Knights and some of the screens on my Scions I've used Caliban Green -> Warpstone Glow -> Moot Green -> White Scar to make it look glossy, but my hand is nowhere near as steady as I want it to be, so I took the easy way out.

+ + +

Right now on the desk are.. a half done commissar, five Scions I made a start on, a primed Taurox with missile launcher and ten assembled, but unprimed Scions. Weather permitting I'll be priming those ten tomorrow at the very least before being reclaimed wholly by work again.

I've also gotten around to buying a pot of technical paint to base the ghouls that are already done, I'll be taking a picture or two of those tomorrow for the "Tale of Many Gamers" thread because after all that lurking, it's high time to actual submit some progress myself!

At least on the bright side, I got one of my three Kill Team lists done for Saturday, so not all is lost!

Got a chance to base the models using a technical paint (an older one, so it took some practice to get it just right so that it didn't crack and flake off en-masse) and a few tufts of Army Painters stuff.

On the desk right now, awaiting my newly planned two weeks off in November are..



Ten unprimed Scions, enough to make two more squads of five strong, plus some models for a future command squad, five partially painted Scions, an early prototype from a batch I bought a year ago (ignore!) and a partially painted commissar, who still has a long, long way to go before I consider her done.

And not shown, a partially assembled Taurox with missile launcher, already primed.

So, commence downcount: 2 weeks, 3 days, 7 hours to go until the world ends I've got time off again.

You did a great job on that Taurox.

Scions are looking great, and I'm really digging the Taurox with wheels. Very cool.

EDC

Had to do something yesterday and today in between the downtime, so I stuck together one of my Solar Auxilia troops that I bought at the open day aeons ago. I was sitting on these since last Tuesday when they finally showed up, but only got around to it yesterday.

I do apologize for the potato quality photos, but the weather has been quite rubbish here as of late, so natural light is gak at best.

Solar Auxilia lasrifle section Troop Master, with laspistol and power weapon, though in gaming terms it will most likely represent a charnabal sabre, because striking at the same time as that mean space marine is better then splurging on a power weapon and dying before even getting a jab in!

Quite happy with how the colours have turned out, good bit of contrast between the armour and uniform underneath, unlike my previous Auxilia squad, which has grey uniforms and boltgun metal armour. Chances are I'll do the Auxilia flamers in the same colours as well at the very least, to denote that they belong to the same Tercio.











All in all, I still need to improve the steadiness of my hand for the edge highlighting and I need to find some easy to apply tutorials on doing hair in two or three easy steps.

That said though, one down, nineteen more to go though..

Though one more week of work and it's back to the Storm Troopers first!

Your plog is good and you should feel good.

Nice work on your latest figure. Head is from where?

Soooooooooo, this place. Right, I knew I forgot something.

I kid, I haven't forgotten this place, I just had jack all to post in the last few months, due to work being extremely busy and personally being quite bummed out for various reasons.

I did do some stuff in the meantime, including getting another Start Collecting! Storm Troopers set, making it the third one:



The excellent wheel conversion kit is from Zinge Industries. Nice, sturdy and cool looking to boot.

I'll be buying at least one more of those sets, so I have everything I need for my planned 1000 pts list, so I can partake in a future doubles tourney again with something other than a tank wall and well, also because I quite like the idea of having a small army of Tempestus Scions for 40k, a part of the hobby I have been neglecting an awful lot in favour of the Horus Heresy.

I also painted some odds and sods when I felt like it, including these three:



The model on the left will be a gift to a Sisters of Battle enthusiast and as such, not so much a functional game model, but more just a fun conversion that I've been sitting on for well over a decade now. Never quite knew what to do with her until recently, with both husband and wife birthdays soon over and done with, I've decided to paint up a custom mini for the both of them alongside more conventional plastic crack gifts (Celestine, her posse and Cawl).

Parts used:
- Imperial Guard Enginseer power axe + hand (cut down from its original two-handed size to a more compact format)
- Space Marine grav pistol
- Servo arms and small servo backpack unit from Anvil Industry

Model in the middle is another scion, but with a new, slightly smaller head from Statuesque Miniatures. Still need to base and name her, but that's another scion down, about thirty more to go..

And finally, the pig. Another gift model, though this one is for my bestie, who has a thing for pigs. We both don't know why, but she absolutely LOVES them. So from my Astropolis kickstarter pledge, the pig for a pig.

Then there's the progress I made today:



Again, that darned pig, still need to highlight the leathers, pick out the metals and glue it to its base, but so far, so good. If I'm feeling brave enough I may add some pattern or splotches to its skin, like some pigs have.

Model in the middle is nurse Layla from Hasslefree, sadly OOP as of right now, but a cute model I had to have, despite not knowing what I needed it for, or how to best paint her up. She spent most of the year on my desk, primed, awaiting paint and / or some extra conversion bits, as I've always felt she was missing something. Equal parts inspiration and guilt struck today, so I painted her up in more or less the same colours as the armour of my Scions, along with latex gloves and a pulled down face mask. I may put her on a bigger base alongside this thing, as that right hand is just begging to hover over that tool tray.

Finally, the girl on the left. Tillie, fighter pilot from Bombshell miniatures. A model I've been wanting to get for ages now, but until recently didn't have a good excuse to get. Last month I ordered a Thunderbolt for my Auxilia army and what the hell? Why not throw in a pilot model while I'm at it?

That Solar Auxilia Troop Master is very nice! The Statuesque head completely transforms it

Great models there. Both the SA and the Sister look fantastic. I wish I could find my order of Statuesque heads. Porkchop looks pretty solid as well.

 Azazelx wrote:
Great models there. Both the SA and the Sister look fantastic. I wish I could find my order of Statuesque heads. Porkchop looks pretty solid as well.

I seriously envy people who have such an amazing never-ending hoard of stuff.

To go with the awfully punny subject title today:



I was worried that this would be a problematic build, due to its age and all that, but some warped parts aside (flaps, always the flaps) and some extra sanding & snipping here and there, it went together over the course of a morning, with the cockpit section and wing-mounted weapons left off for ease of painting. I still need to fill out some of the gaps that weren't hidden away by the panels and decide on what type of missile to put under the wings: either the bulky plastic Hellstrikes from the Valkyrie kit or a combination of classic plastic Hunter-Killers and a pair of resin Hunter-Killers from an old aircraft weapon kit.

But this will be the priority project for the time being, so long as I don't get distracted by Wildlands or something else. Deadline is the end of April, when (hopefully) the HH tourney will take place.

Ooh.. that look sexay.

What are you playing Wildmans on? I'm considering it for PS4, since my Master Race machine is getting on in years now.

It's a flying brick and about as heavy as one as well. But it's one of those pieces of 40k lore that I've been itching to get for quite some time now.

Wildlands on the PC for me, I used to own (several) 360's, but after number four died I decided to instead pump a good chunk of tax money into a proper rig again, which has to date not let me down yet, aside from last year's DOOM, which will require an upgrade sometime next year, as what I've sampled of it so far has me itching for more, if only for that rocking OST.

Wildlands has me genuinely looking forward to its release next Tuesday though, so much so that I pre-ordered the whatever edition with DLC and pre-order bonuses over at CD-keys. The open beta simply blew me away with how much fun there was to be had, especially when my brother hopped in for coop, replacing the decent AI with a semi-decent human team member, which made the challenges presented by the missions all the more interesting.

Open world stealth (or just go loud, though the game does make effort to steer you clear from this course of action, as you are not equipped to deal with that easily) with character customisation, unlockable equipment & skills, collectibles and all that, all in all the game really brings nothing new to the table that we haven't seen before by now (especially those by Ubisoft), but it runs smoothly, looks gorgeous and has the basics down just right for me not to be too arsed by the stuff that does bother me, like the piss awful controls for helicopters or the awkward over the shoulder cam that's a bit too close for my tastes.

I'm in the enviable(!) position of needing to supply the hardware for my group's 4-player co-op, so even if I upgraded my own rig, I'd have to upgrade my wife's and the third PC. (With no option for P4), so consoles have become the go-to.

We all played co-op in the Closed Beta, which was pretty fun, but my wife and I had a horrid time trying to connect to one another in the open Beta after the first night when it worked ok. We just couldn't get it working together. Ubi naturally had instructions on opening router ports and blahblah because it's a problem on all of the consumers' end and not them at all but I refuse to do that sort of thing for a console release, especially when it had all previously worked - and so did/does every other MP game including The Division, Far Cry 4, etc.

So as much as I enjoyed it in co-op, due to the horrid network issues, I'm sadly going to wait for the bargain sale on PSN instead of going through with a pre-order. (Which I basically never do). In the hope that they have sorted their crap out by then...

I can certainly understand the appeal of consoles over PC's when it comes to coop, been there myself in the past. Our only problem was I had the 360, whereas most other people had a Playstation and I was a bit too stubborn (not to mention, not made of money) to buy into another gaming system.

We had the same problem on day two, or well.. my brother would host, I'd join and after a few minutes his game would shut down, migrating host duties to me again. Though I am more than willing to put that down to his junker PC than anything else. The amount of gak he's got running in the background is just ludicrous. Whether or not the problem will persist with the release next week remains to be seen, but as far as I am concerned I'll be more than content to play this game on my own until stable coop is available again, especially because of the collection aspect found in this game, which is best served for solo play IMHO, as nothing is quite as wasteful as getting a group together and having the whole group chase after a box here or a medal there because some guy missed it last time around. Plus, I'm usually the weakiest and poorest player in any group my brother pulls together, so any edge I can have over the others, be it in skills or equipment, will be most useful to me.

I want to say I hardly ever pre-order but looking back at the most recent games I bought.. Thankfully more hits than misses though. Though this was at a good discount, €66,- instead of €100,- so I feel a bit better about myself with that one.

Let's see if the old attachment system works and I can up my post count by +1.

On Monday I primed it black, then several thin layers of grey and now before heading off to work, I did first thin layer of red on select panels and worked nuln oil into some of the more prominent panel lines of the left wing and fuselage. Still got ways to go, but this is a rough idea of what I've got planned for the model as a whole. Just need to dig through the box of decals and see if there's any white Aquila / birdy ones in there to go over the red bands.

Looking good so far, Brook.

The last game I "pre-ordered" was the digital copy of The Division which I did digitally about an hour before the game went live, as I'd really enjoyed the Open Beta. Before that... I can't even remember. LOTR War in the North SE (with statue)? Wrath of the Lich King SE (which wasn't fulfilled - I got screwed!)?

Aside from some minor touching up and weathering (something I will tackle when I feel confident enough to do so), "Elysia" is done.











With the flyer out of the way, my 2500pts tourney list is painted up and good to go, quite scary! Though now starts the next stage really: touching up my tanks and giving them a bit of grime and dirt, so they look less flat and more used. Though seeing as Wildlands is coming out tomorrow..

Now that's a plane.

You did a great crisp and clean paintjob with that.

Yeah, very cool Brook. And finished so quickly as well. Do you plan to weather and stain this one as well?

She looks very nice

Many thanks chaps, at least one place gives some feedback other than "Just how OLD is that keyboard?" or "FFS, change that background already!"

@Azazelx: weathering is something I'll be researching later down the line before implementing it. I've got some spare Valkyries I need to paint up for my Tempestus somewhere down the line, so I can practice on those first.

But for the time being, between a lot of work and spending my spare time in Bolivia, it'll be a wee bit before I pick up the brush again.

If only they could fix the Tarja issue instead of throwing it back onto the users, I'd probably also be spending a bit of time in Bolivia. Instead, I've returned to Middle Earth after seeing the Shadow of War trailer...

Okay, been a while, wish I had a good excuse, but I've been busy with work, been down in the dumps and whatnot, but lo and behold, two weeks vacation kicked off today, with some things I'm itching to do or at least get started on!

So, everybody is talking about Armageddon, one way or the other. I've been quite hyped for the release myself and had been biting nails so to say hoping that my FLGS would receive its copies as well. But thankfully, due to me hyping it to the store, he managed to get his full order in and thus, I managed to secure a box for myself along with some other items as an early birthday present (if you want something done right, do it yourself, lest you receive gak!):


Of special note is the novel, which took forever to get to the store, mainly due to whoever has been appointed to process the orders for the store fething up consistently. Here's hoping that after such a long wait it won't disappoint.

Also decided to get a box of containers, crates and drums, as Armageddon is a game that needs quite a bit of scatter terrain to really come into its own. Plus its been on the list for some time now..

The box of Scions is for well.. Armageddon! My friend the store owner was surprised I wanted yet another one of those boxes, as I had previously already purchased four(!) Start Collecting! Militarum Tempestus boxed sets to create a 1000 pts army. But these will serve nicely as conversion fodder for my Shadow War Kill Team, which will be using my Militarum Tempestus as a core with some one-off conversions rounding things out.


So, the Armageddon terrain, all set up and built. Nothing too fancy execution wise, the walkways have been clipped together, the taller structures have also not been glued into place, to make it easier to re position everything and for ease of storage. As of typing right now everything has been primed black, followed by a coat of leadbelcher. Tomorrow I may start giving the metallic pieces a few washes of brown and black to dirty things up a bit, then look into giving some of the furnaces and whatnot a bit of colour to break things up a bit more. I'm thinking of giving a drybrush of yellow a try for some items, as recommended in the latest White Dwarf.

As for the terrain kit: nice and sturdy, the tiles are chunky and have a nice feel to them. At first glance it doesn't seem like a lot of terrain, but what you do get is big and useful. Mind, this is all IMHO, a so-called GW cheerleader. But I like it, it's nowhere near enough to properly play the game with, but it's a good start and with some scatter terrain thrown in makes for a good basis for smaller games with just two or three models per side. The tiles are also chockful of detail, meaning people who enjoy painting terrain can go nuts on every pipe and fan you can find. On the other hand, even with a simple black and metal primer it already looks really good as is, making for excellent fast terrain when in a hurry.


A pair of Militarum Tempestus conversions and Rogg the Ogryn, best of friends. Rogg was something I had started on earlier last week before work intervened again, having finally found a good reason to paint one of these guys up as a special operative for Armageddon. Just your basic Bullgryn with carapace armour, power maul and brute shield, the perfect melee weapon to complement my girls in the underhive. I've mainly started work on him because of rule of cool, though a later rule read through has revealed that this guy will almost certainly rock hard when he gets into base to base contact with whatever crosses his path.


Crappy, blurry WIP picture of a kitbash specifically made for this game: Scion with shotgun (from Victoria Miniatures). Sadly many shotguns and sets of pointing hands were lost before I got to this stage, which still doesn't feel 100% right, but at this point it was take it or leave it. Name still pending and yes, shotgun has been given a reflex sight from Anvil Industry. Head with beanie is from the always excellent Statuesque Miniatures. While most of the team will run around with hotshot lasguns (actually regular lasguns with hotshot power packs), I wanted at least one of the ladies to pack a shotgun, as it's a cool piece of hardware and it's a whole lot more ammo roll friendly in the long run.


Another kitbash specifically made for the game: Scion with a sniper rifle. I decided to remove the mono-scope and smaller communications aerial in favour of the larger vox unit, to represent an operative who has been off the grid for a long, long time. Almost completely vanilla, with night vision goggles from the sniper scouts. Name still pending, rifle is from Mad Robot Miniatures and scope is from Anvil Industry. This one will run as a carapace armoured operative with sniper rifle, red-dot laser sight, telescopic sight and toxic rounds. Quite a point sink, but I'm hoping this one will be of use to me in those games where I manage to secure the high ground or a clear line of fire.

Tomorrow I may need to pop round the FLGS for new cans of black and leadbelcher primer, as I still need to do the containers, ammo crates, fuel drums and my other scions. I've also started laying out a five-ghoul scout squad for people who want to play, but don't have a team of their own just yet.