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.

Whoo boy it's that time of year again! Christmas vacation is upon me, and I have a pile of minis to paint.

Sadly I'm a little behind my original schedule because I've had the flu this last week, but I managed to get everything built regardless.



We're looking at 4x5 Brotherhood Terminators (plus some banners and extra dudes for swaps), 1x5 Paladins, Captain, Grand Master, Voldus and a couple Librarian Terminators. In the power armor section, a 10x Purifiers, 10x Purgation, 5x Interceptors, a Champion, Castellan Crowe, a Techmarine (plus some extras for swaps to make Strikes/MSU). In addition, two Nemesis Dreadknights, an Dreadnought Ancient, a Demios Rhino and a Land Raider (Proteus style). It's something around 3000 points the last time I checked!

As seen in https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/812066.page, the trial scheme is very user friendly but came out looking good. It's pretty much your bog standard Grey Knights Steel and Drakenholf Nightshade, not breaking any new ground here.




Note that this is a very halberd heavy army. Right now weapon choice doesn't seem to make a difference to stat line, but I had a GK/AM army back in 5th (sold off), back when halberds were the main weapon choice, so I'm going maximum halberd. If the stats do change based on weapon later on, I'll just paint up more minis.

I did have a bit of fun with illuminated script and some glowy crystal nonsense. Those are Green Stuff World's resin crystals. Today I spent over an hour sticking those things to tongue depressors, my fingers are sore!



But I think Doctor Dinosaur would be proud.

Still a bit in recovery mode from the flu, but I hope to get started on priming and basecoating tomorrow.

Just 20 days left, good luck with your project!

M.

Priming is done! That's enough airbrushing for today.



Grey Knight Terminators were too much for my painting sticks, they kept falling off. The power armor dudes mostly stayed put, except for one stick, for some reason.

Basecoating is complete! I'm always amazed how much less paint is required once a primer coat is on. I must have mixed around five bottles of thinned primer, but putting on basecoat only took two and a half bottles of thinned Grey Knight Steel (which used about 1 1/2 pots of Grey Knight Steel Air, but I have half a bottle of the mix left).

And if anyone's wondering, a ratio of 1 part thinner to 3 parts GK Steel Air is basically ideal, though 1:4 might work well too. For the primer (Stynylrez Black) I used 1 part thinner to 2 parts paint. I'm really glad I bought 100 12ml bottles off amazon, they're basically disposable and so darn useful for mixing paints for the airbrush.



The crystals are ready for contrast paint, followed by drybrushing. I'm not sure whether I should just do all the crystals at once up front or not, but it will probably save me a ton of time in the long run if I do. Much as I'd like to get models done, sometimes the set-up is worth it.

First up, Interceptors. I chose to do these guys first because they're probably my least favorite GK model. Bunny ear backpacks really aren't my jam.

It's just a 5 man squad.



These guys took about 6 1/2 hours to paint, not counting texture paint dry times. I prepped the crystals with contrast paint before I got into the models. That way, I can just drybrush a few crystals with leftover Deep Sky Blue paint, which is the basecoat for all the glowy bits.

I decided to try Vallejo GC Black, but I don't like how glossy it finishes. I'll probably use a different black going forward, but it's not a huge deal since I'm hitting them with gloss varnish (for protection).



And a back view.

Oof. I'm posting this today, even though it was painted yesterday, because I had to wait for the texture paint to dry before I could flock and take pictures. I decided to do 4 terminators to fill out the squad started by my trial mini, but then I went and got ambitious and did the terminator librarian as well. Ten hours of painting later I was done and regretting my decisions!



I resisted the urge to paint stuff on the Apothecary white. With the bright metallics, it would probably just get lost anyways. I really like the look of GK Apothecaries.

I started mixing GSW's martian purple tufts in with my Rival Crafts tufts, mostly to stretch the RC tufts because they don't make that color anymore. The RC tufts are brighter and more uniformly round, but they're close enough.



I probably could have been neater on the scripture, but it's OK. I thought about doing some glowy stuff on his face but faces are a pain so I chickened out. At least his eyeball turned out good.



It's kind of ironic that the Terminator Librarian has less glowy stuff on him than the regular Grey Knights. Maybe I should have just built my librarians from regular GKs, just giving them warding staves, but these guys come in the Combat Patrols, so I was going to use them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also finished a Nemesis Dreadknight!



Took about 6.5 hours of work. Would have been less, but I was sloppy with the wash, I should have pinwashed to minimize the corrections afterwards. Less necessary on the smaller models (though I do correct the upper surfaces), but the big ones need it. I had a bit of trouble with the GK Steel finish being so smooth I had trouble putting down paint overtop in some areas! Definitely one of the drawbacks to those smooth airbrush coats.

Anyways, with that done, I have finished my first Combat Patrol.

Love the bases especially.

The contrast between the pink and the silver is really nice.

M.

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
Love the bases especially.

 Miguelsan wrote:
The contrast between the pink and the silver is really nice.

Thanks! The funny thing is that the stuff I'm using for basing was mostly left over from a different project that didn't pan out the way I liked it. So I'm really glad that it's working out so well with the silver psyker marines.

Yesterday I spent about 9 hours painting up a squad of Purifiers (I got ambitious and did 10 models at once). Again I had to wait for texture paint overnight to finish varnishing/basing, and today I'm just mostly taking it easy after 40-odd hours of airbrushing and hand painting. Still, about 900 points painted up this week!



I plan on painting all PA Grey Knights pretty much the same so that I can swap models around squads. Technically these guys could be a Purgation Squad, but swap out two flamers and it could be a Strike Squad as well. Gotta keep my options open.

Lazy Sunday painting. I present a Failcast Techmarine! Awful model to clean and assemble. I didn't go crazy with the red because it would just blend into the base, and the model is really fiddly to begin with.

Not sure if GK techmarines are psykers too, but given they'd have to work on all sorts of psyker equipment, it made some sense.

Second squad of Brotherhood done.



It's somewhat frustrating how fiddly these guys are, I think it took about 8 hours.

I've been enjoying your progress and meaning to post some words of encouragement - so great work, keep pushing! I too really dig the bright blue + silver minis vs the pink basing, has some of that vaporwave vibe going on.

Good luck with the rest of the crew!

 Boss Salvage wrote:
I've been enjoying your progress and meaning to post some words of encouragement - so great work, keep pushing! I too really dig the bright blue + silver minis vs the pink basing, has some of that vaporwave vibe going on.

Good luck with the rest of the crew!

Thanks mate! Here's some more of the crew!



This was some lazy painting, only about 4-5 hours today. But I did some minimal freehand, something I really don't want to much of on a speedpaint project. But note how the GK Terminator head fits in so nicely.



Grey Knights struggle against tanks in 10th, so lascannons are necessary. I didn't assemble or paint the other weapons, but the arms aren't glued on, just friction fit.

Ladies and gentlemen, contending for the title of most purity seals on a single model, it's Castellan Crowe! He has ten whole purity seals (one on his leg is not in the picture)





Not to mention all the other crap his armor is covered with, Crowe is a beast to paint. You can't even leave him off his sculpted base because his sword hangs down too far. Didn't even really have room to stack some crystals on his base either.

But that finishes Boarding Patrol Grey Knights.

Great work on Crowe, a sculpt I quite like for how extra science-fantasy / epic it is but have almost never seen in the wild. Congrats on your adventure sorting out all his doodads

Dread looks the business as well, really dig the GK helm nestled in there. Looks like it should come with that helm actually, when you see the profile and how it echoes the chest armor.

Third Brotherhood Squad is finished!

Fourth and final Grey Knight Brotherhood Squad. Though I still have a few extras to paint to allow me to run 2x10 Brotherhoods, and I'm nowhere near finished painting Terminators for this army (I think I have 12 more in total to go once you count characters and Paladins). I'm up to 1810 points of Grey Knights finished! Nine days of vacation left and about 1300 points to go.



Edit: Also got some power armors done today (the Terminators were mostly Friday, the power armor Saturday). The center model is meant to be a champion, while the others are extra squad leaders (swords) or guys to swap out special weapons if I want to run Strike Squads.

Well it's almost Christmas in my neck of the woods, so here's an appropriately festive Grey Knight Rhino.





While I'm not super satisfied with my choice of color layout (generally the red and white on GK vehicles goes in those recessed side panels), at the end of the day every Rhino basically just looks like a brick anyways. To avoid lots of wash clean-up, I did a couple hours of intensive pin-washing.



So many nubs.

So I sit down to get some cheeky Christmas morning painting done and most of my family isn't feeling great (colds) and we decide to postpone Christmas dinner activities (me and my brother had dinner with our mom on Friday anyways) and I'm left with a whole day to paint minis.



Paladins!

Paladins are actually a brutal slog. You've got all the business of regular Grey Knights, only with extra tilting shields and books and crap. But hey, you can have 2 special weapons (3 if you include a banner, which I didn't). I gave them flamer because they're probably going to be piling out of a Land Raider with someone important, so close range Incinerators are probably the best bet.

Second Nemesis Dreadknight.

Nice work so far, John - looks like you're smashing your way through this project.

 Dysartes wrote:
Nice work so far, John - looks like you're smashing your way through this project.

Thanks!

Today I decided to clear out some character models.



Brotherhood Captain (I really wanted to use at least one of those swords), Grandmaster Voldus, and the second Brotherhood Librarian (which completes the second Combat Patrol box).

Great work here as usual mate. Love the pink and crystals on the bases. They're surely a tough army to paint on a deadline with all the extra details and gribbly bits but you're killing it.

Thanks for sharing!

Purgation Squad!



This is the last infantry squad that I had planned. Took me two days because I ran out of small (painted) crystals so I had to paint up a bunch more.

There are a few more stray infantry and a grandmaster, but I'm not super pumped about painting any more Terminators. I'm all Terminator-ed Out.

There is one more vehicle to go, however.

Shiny! Looking forward to the final group pics.

 youwashock wrote:
Shiny! Looking forward to the final group pics.

You won't have to wait long!

The Land Raider is finished!



Yeah, it's a Land Raider Proteus, but they come with the same weapons and the Proteus looks cooler, is easier to assemble, and actually available for purchase at the moment. You can even give it a storm bolter if you put a cheeky Grey Knight Techmarine in the gunner seat. Also, Nemesis Force Halberds are probably great at repelling pesky boarders.



Way too many rivets, but at least the treads don't have that fancy tread design the normal Land Raider has.



95% of the time I imagine it'll be hauling Voldus and the Paladins, but who knows?



But that brings us to the important part, I'm calling this project done. I still have 4 Grey Knight Terminators unpainted, but I'm burnt out on painting Terminators and last time I checked I had...



3170 points of Grey Knights painted!



So I'm declaring victory over this pile of boxes.

Excellent and shiny army! Love the clean look of that land raider, and all together with the purple hints in the bases look great.

Nice work, John - well done.

Another amazing project John! Super crisp and lovely all round. The black to blue of the swords is stunning especially on the dread knight. Well done!

Congrats! What a run, love how vibrant the army is all together. Grimbright ftw. The OG land raider is a superb center piece, on top of the other reasons you included it.