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I created this P-M blog to document my hobby progress for foreseeable future. My painting is nothing special however, so this is more of a personal thing and if you like reading others' hobby progress logs like I do, then I'm glad to have you. I don't get to paint as often as I would, so this is my effort to rectify that.

I started off the year painting a couple of battlemechs from the a game of armored combat box set. They were my first mechs, but I like them. They responded incredibly well to layering, it was fun doing the cockpit details, and the miniatures required pretty much no cleanup and were incredibly high quality. I chose to paint the wolverine in the colours of the Legion of Vega regiment, my personal favourite as they mostly consist of
Mercs who have been manipulated into staying and Mechwarriors guilty of dishonor. They put up with the vast amount of hardship they are given, such as Repairs being delayed on purpose, and that's some Stoicism I can respect. I chose the Marik Militia because Purple is my favourite colour and I think the police siren colours look goofy but still work well on 'Mechs.

here they are. The shadow hawk has dealt 5 DMG so far to the Wolverine, in the arm area. There's something viscerally awsum about seeing your newly painted minis on the table. The BT minis are really cool in hat their poses never look out of place on the table. I haven't been able to finish the game yet, but I can't wait to get the chance.

I'm currently working on a Winter Soviet AT rifle team for BA. These are my first historical models, so if the coats are inaccurate then I apologize profusely, the amount of contradiction I found from googling the coat colours made me scared to paint these guys, but I think they're turning out fine. There are some paint flecks in the wrong spaces, most other errors are gone, but I figure I will layer over it anyway, so as long as the recesses are dark enough it's not the end of the world. I might have used too thick basecoats, and for some reason little spots seem to be flaking off, but I hope the skeleton horde wash will seal it in.

I also have a Clan Ad-Hoc star I will paint as Clan Ghost Bear. I know the Pack Hunter and Fire Falcon are faction specific, but I don't really care to be honest. The Kodiak is a really cool, imposing mech and painting it as any other clan seems wrong to me. it seems weird to have 1 assault and 4 light mechs, but knowing how much dakka clan mechs have I think they'll outpunch their weight class fine.



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The AT team will likely be finished soon...ish. Unfortunately, a little devil on my shoulder named S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl has been halting my progress. I do mean that in the literal sense, there have been times where I have told myself 'you have no obligations or appointments or anything today, why not paint a model?' and then sat on my ass and booted it up. Genuinely good game, but it's very hard to choose between painting models which is very fun, or playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which is also very fun. On a side note, that upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R boardgame looks really cool. The gameplay I could care less for. BG's aren't my thing. But the minis look INCREDIBLE, if they ever sell expansions seperately I will absolutely pick some minis up. The Snork mutant models look especially promising. I'm sure they could be used in Zona Alfa if nothing else.


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on the plus side, S.T.A.L.K.E.R has also given me more motivation to paint my Fallout wasteland Warfare settler minis, as something about the story of random NPC's in post apocalyptic games is very interesting to me, wondering what their story is is a lot of fun and getting to tell that story on minis is very fun.

I have been working on an IW plague marine squad that can hopefully double as normal legionaries when I please. Plas/Melta configuration is probably the best for both purposes, too.

I will hopefully finish the Land Raider Proteus I have basecoated since October/November and has sat there, pleading to be painted.
To anyone reading this, if you have any tanks half painted or primed, or worse- unbuilt and unloved, build them as soon as you can! Tanks are pack creatures, and need tabletop exercise regularly to function how they should... it's animal abuse otherwise. It doesn't matter what it is- T-34/85, Predator Annihilator, Schrek PPC Carrier, or even a lowly Trukk, they all need to be kept well and sane, and this is just part of being a Tank owner. I hope this PSA was helpful to all who saw it.

Worked on the AT team again today, thinned down skeleton horde makes a great wash for greenish-gray basecoats. and I'm sure you could finish an entire army with just a base and contrast on the coats. When it was drying I started work on a Commando battlemech in my Marik Militia scheme. It reminded me of how painful applying thinned down royal purple without creating tide marks or obscuring detail is.

 bullisariuscowl wrote:
If I may ask, I have started a P&M blog as well, and have uploaded images, yet, when i reply to my own topic the unrelated text renders above the images which they are supposed to be under. Would you know how to solve this problem?

As far as I'm aware, if you directly attach images to a post, they'll always appear at the end of the post.

If you want the flexibility of inserting images into your post wherever, might I suggest making use of the Dakka Gallery as a host? You can upload images into it, organise it into folders, then use the code presented under the "Forums" option to add the image anywhere within your post. See this most recent upload of mine as an example. Note - I normally do this on my laptop, and I don't know how easy it is to use on mobile.

 Dysartes wrote:

 bullisariuscowl wrote:
If I may ask, I have started a P&M blog as well, and have uploaded images, yet, when i reply to my own topic the unrelated text renders above the images which they are supposed to be under. Would you know how to solve this problem?

As far as I'm aware, if you directly attach images to a post, they'll always appear at the end of the post.

If you want the flexibility of inserting images into your post wherever, might I suggest making use of the Dakka Gallery as a host? You can upload images into it, organise it into folders, then use the code presented under the "Forums" option to add the image anywhere within your post. See this most recent upload of mine as an example. Note - I normally do this on my laptop, and I don't know how easy it is to use on mobile.

thank you, I think I solved the problem already, but I'll try using the Gallery system, I just find it hard to navigate.

Sorry for the lack of updates! I really have no excuse, honestly.
I finished the Soviet AT rifle team! The highlighting on the coats was quite fun but I might have bollocksed up the skin. It was hard to highlight cuz it was so small.

Last week I also primed my palette just to see what would happen. I would actually recommend it, it makes it easier to see the paint and how it affects a model with the same primer coat. It also means you can use a texture palette a little better and you can even use the freshly primed palette as a texture palette, as the paint will probably have an uneven surface, if you use the palette a lot.

I also worked on an Iron Warrior chaos marine for a squad I started painting in August, but I never finished this guy. So I guess those 9 marines are going to be usable as a 10 man squad now.

I also built a few models, but I'll just upload those to my gallery and show them when they're finished.
Also worked more on a Land Raider which has been basecoated since october. Was trying to go for a sponge highlight then a drybrush, as well as freehanding some chaos sigils from the transfer sheet, as well as using thinned down trollslayer orange mixed with a very VERY small bit of VMC german grey makes for a good grimey glaze, and thinned Trollslayer also makes for a good rust effect.

I, I see you're a stalker fan as well. I definitely recommend you download the free mod Stalker Anomaly when you have gone through the three official ones. Anomaly is really the sandbox/free roam stalker to complement the series, and it's actually sucking most of my videogame time nowadays.

I'm also waiting for the boardgame, though I can't afford the full version of it and only the basic one.

Have fun with painting, I'll follow your extravaganzas!

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I, I see you're a stalker fan as well. I definitely recommend you download the free mod Stalker Anomaly when you have gone through the three official ones. Anomaly is really the sandbox/free roam stalker to complement the series, and it's actually sucking most of my videogame time nowadays.

I'm also waiting for the boardgame, though I can't afford the full version of it and only the basic one.

Have fun with painting, I'll follow your extravaganzas!

first off, thanks so much for replying to my thread. It feels nice to know this isn't just me talking to myself, and I have heard of Anomaly, But I'm planning on finishing Chernobyl, then tackling CS and Pripyat, but I'll be sure to see if my PC can run it. I love the free roaming aspect of SoC so you have captured my attention there.
But yeah, I'm not sure if i have the money to buy big board games just for the minis (and I sure as hell don't want to) but the miniatures look awsum, especially the Snork and Bloodsucker minis. The Monolith (I think?) stalker looks cool too.

Looking at how the game is set up it actually does pique my interest but I think I'll wait til' it comes out to see how the gameplay works.



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 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I, I see you're a stalker fan as well. I definitely recommend you download the free mod Stalker Anomaly when you have gone through the three official ones. Anomaly is really the sandbox/free roam stalker to complement the series, and it's actually sucking most of my videogame time nowadays.

I'm also waiting for the boardgame, though I can't afford the full version of it and only the basic one.

Have fun with painting, I'll follow your extravaganzas!

also, what tank is that in your picture?
and thanks for the kind words about reading, it warms my heart to see someone actually want to look at my...less than stellar soviet face highlighting.

The tank's a Leclerc tank, I was tank commander on these the last few years and actually held the rank of maréchal des logis, ie, sergeant.

The stalker minis in the pack looked stellar and I hope they hod to that quality whenever I can get them. I've long waited for stalker to finally get a tabletop iteration and mash two of my passions together. Obviously, these minis would get action as count as-ed stuff in warhammer too - I mean, aren't those stalker absolutly perfect inquisitors!

Stalker anomaly has also the interesting feature of being a mod with add ons and you can really customise you're experience a lot.

Finally, don't worry about you painting or having an audience: you don't need to be a world superstar or a world class painter to be allowed to share your hobby journey -it's also part of the joy. You'll always find a few pals like me who are happy to have a chat in all simplicity, between casual, average hobbyists!

Cheers!

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
The tank's a Leclerc tank, I was tank commander on these the last few years and actually held the rank of maréchal des logis, ie, sergeant.

The stalker minis in the pack looked stellar and I hope they hod to that quality whenever I can get them. I've long waited for stalker to finally get a tabletop iteration and mash two of my passions together. Obviously, these minis would get action as count as-ed stuff in warhammer too - I mean, aren't those stalker absolutly perfect inquisitors!

Stalker anomaly has also the interesting feature of being a mod with add ons and you can really customise you're experience a lot.

Finally, don't worry about you painting or having an audience: you don't need to be a world superstar or a world class painter to be allowed to share your hobby journey -it's also part of the joy. You'll always find a few pals like me who are happy to have a chat in all simplicity, between casual, average hobbyists!

Cheers!

Cheers to you too mate!
have you heard of zona alfa? that's inpired by stalker and is supposed to be good but I've never played.
And yeah, I'm not trying to get famous or expecting followers or anything, i just like seeing people comment and read it, as it motovates me to post in this thread more.

And I must say, I feel greatly honoured to have a TANK COMMANDER reading my silly thread and talking S.T.A.L.K.E.R with me. Thank you for reading and being so kind to me on this platform.
Have a good one

To be fair, former tank commander, as I'm now welder, but still hard stalker fan. Never heard of zona alpha, although there was a little fuss about Into the radius that is a VR game but I haven't got VR stuff. I'll have a read at Zona alpha tomorrow!

Have a good evening, I'll stay tune for more pal!

Sorry If I haven't been posting, after finally being done with pesky important things that interfered with my hobby time, I happened to become infected with some Emperorforsaken Nurgle sickness. As soon as this corruption has been purged I shall post more hobby related news. Probably just going to shade the iron warrior I posted and maybe paint up a 'mech or two.

Sorry for the extremely long break I took there. I haven't painted too much due to the Nurgle sickness I caught. Maybe converting those IW Plague Marines wasn't such a good idea after all...

Anyway, I painted up an IW in a scheme I reinvented, using Army Painter Flesh Tone instead of Dark tone makes the gold a lot more eyecatching and fits the Chaos aesthetic, in My opinion. I will post a pic as soon as it finishes processing in the gallery system.

I also bought some Blood Angels Upgrades today, and have been eyeing a tactical squad and some death company, so I might just start a Firstborn Blood Angels army for the Craic.


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So far my Blood Angels starter list consists of:
-A captain with a plasma pistol and power sword
-An Apothecary (Sanguinary priest on a base extender, or just on a 40mm base so I can use him as both an Apothecary and a Priest
-A tactical squad (all boltguns except for a missile launcher, plasma gun, and a sergeant with a combi-weapon. I have two of the SM heroes blind buy guys I can just repaint as blood angels, one of which is a plasma gunner. These 2 will replace 2 marines which I will kitbash into said captain and a lieutenant, I already have the upgrades and some paints, so all I need to do now is buy the models)
the tac boys will be lead by the Captain and apothecary (his narthecium ability is something else)
- A Devastator Squad (2 Plasma Cannons, and 2 lascannons. I'll use the sergeant as a techmarine with the leftover servo arm backpack and the heavy duty torso, and I'll just buy another SM hero guy and use him as a boltgun sergeant.)
- A Techmarine (mentioned how I'll kitbash him already)
-5 Death company (all thunder hammers, I'll have to scout some on ebay or something as the DC kit only comes with one.)
-5 Terminator Assault Marines (just using the BA terminator squad. all thunder hammers)
-Furioso Dreadnought
-And finally, a Rhino.

That's it really, most of these guys I can find for pretty cheap due to the old-ness of the kit. Some like the Dev's or the Assault Termies are a bit too overpriced IMO, but I guess I'll still be saving some money anyway, so It's not that bad. That rounds out to 1010 points. I was going to go with normal terminators, but saw a squad of assault termies in my not-so-local game shop and that inspired me to look up the BA guys and I was surprised GW still made them, If nothing else horribly painted or half primed assault terminators go for a decent price second hand, so there's that.

Second hand is the way to go, nearly all of my GW minis are second hand

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Second hand is the way to go, nearly all of my GW minis are second hand

yeah i found a furioso in the right wargear configuration for near 40 euro, built and half painted. its crazy how cheap some of these BA guys can go if theyre primed or half painted

Buying whole armies in batches are also handy and can come with a' amazing discount

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Buying whole armies in batches are also handy and can come with a' amazing discount

Agreed, but even if I am purchasing second hand, I still like the feeling of picking units for my own army. Buying a whole one just seems a little like buzzkill to me, well, not if it's a simple Combat Patrol style starter army. Nothing wrong with doing that, saving money whenever you can is a great idea that should be pursued, but kitbashing and creating your army unit by unit is so much fun to me. That's probably why 'A Tale of Four Gamers/Warlords' are the best articles in White Dwarf, in my opinion. Seeing people just report on their progress and army is so cool to see and is a big reason for why I started this blog.


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Off to paint in a GW store today, been doing exactly that for the last few days. I will report more on today and the last couple times when I get back.

Oh yeah, of you start looking for that exact unit or stuff to convert later on in fact the search can become an activity in and of itself!

Just finished my last 4 conscripts and thus my IG army, have fun with the painting pal!

went to the previously mentioned GW store to paint again today. Met the same hispanic guy I saw the last couple of times talking about his guard army. Some ginger dude and his brother, I think? were at the store. The potential brother dude was just talking to the hispanic guy and the other ginger guy was playing with a bearded german guy. Ginger was playing Votann and complimented my iron warriors (I hadn't even finished them yet) and he said they looked 'amazing'. that was pretty cool. Bearded guy was playing Dark angels and had some AWSUM white deathwing terminators. I said they looked cool and they reminded me of the Space Hulk 1993 video game intro (with the deathwing terminators getting killed by genestealers). I think they might have been playing 2 games at once. Also, the hispanic guy invited me to the unofficial store whatsapp group, so my iron warriors can finally see the table. The ginger guy and me exchanged banter, and some crude jokes. He said he might play me sometime so that's pretty cool. i've been into 40k for a while now, but the guy who worked at the store said I could fill out the intro program booklet (probably intended for younger people, but I didn't really care) when he saw how I transported my half painted IW, and I gained enough points to bring home a small foam storage case, so I guess I can finally transport my models in a safe way. The guy who worked at the shop said yes to me bringing my models for a starter game.

Would be surprising if they didn't want to let you play! I've never played in a GW store, went once.only in Strasbourg and the atmosphere was meh at the very best so I never went back there and stuck to playing with my pals in my garage

Happy Easter everyone! (especially to Maréchal des Logis Walter, former tank commander and fellow stalker fan who posts here pretty regularly)
I've spent the day working on some counts-as cultists, getting the messy details painted first. These cultists are just leftovers from when I was getting into the hobby and bought the DKOK killteam at Essen '22 (great con, would recommend going if you can, however I couldn't attend last year due to family obligations, so I can't speak for that one, but the folks at '22 were great to be around) as well as the AdMech Combat patrol I bought. Funny enough, I painted up a couple of those guardsmen in an awful black and bone scheme, and only 3 of the skitarii vanguard in that CP box got painted (i used 1 as a techno-archaeologist and painted him, so technically 4) to a standard I still think holds up now. Eventually after almost a year, I started my IW army. I saw the modern GW cultist kit and felt a feeling worse than approval or even dislike, indifference. They just look really boring to me and the old DV cultists look so much better, but I wasn't about to waste 40€ on 10 meatshields, so to those skitarii and krieg returned, I primed over the old paintjobs and I had to sacrifice one of my first models, a skitarii ranger (because I was missing 1 vanguard, if you remember i used him for the techno-archaeologist), but it wasn't one of my first rangers painted, so I didn't mind.
That gave me 20 cultists, and after all that waffling, here they are now. I want the option to run 2 different squads as well as one big dumb block of zealot meatshields, so I have squad 1 (I call them Sect Dyatlov, they'remostly krieg models) primed white so I can give them red cloaks and black trousers, and squad 2 ( I call them Sect Lambda-Nox, as they are led by a Skitarii model. They're mostly leftover skitarii) primed black so I can give them the inverse of squad 1, black cloaks and red trousers. This will hopefully look coherent and will still differentiate squads on the table if I run them separately. [img]


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And yes, the irony of painting daemonic cultists on a holy day is not lost on me.

Happy Easter pal, Christ lives!

Good use of these leftovers, good middle ground between going for a uniform paint scheme for them as some parmilitary sect or going wild with colours to give them a more "rag tag" look.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Happy Easter pal, Christ lives!

Good use of these leftovers, good middle ground between going for a uniform paint scheme for them as some parmilitary sect or going wild with colours to give them a more "rag tag" look.

Thanks, pal! I'm not personally religious (used to be), so I can't comment on that last part, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. Hope your easter's going well. And thanks for opining about my cultists. I named them 'Sect___' because I think the old DV cultists canon names were Sect Anarkus and Sect Tetchvar, and I liked the 'Sect' prefix so I used it, and I decided to name the overall cult 'the Hounds of Chaos', because when painting them I realized I was basically just painting the Kell Hounds mercenary scheme from battletech, and I liked the memorable association with the name. The naming of Sect 'Dyatlov' however... If you know you know. Yeah, I was trying to go for a paramilitary, almost 'armed rebellion' look for them, so I appreciate that you understood what I was trying to go for visually, despite the awful resolution of the image, and cultists should always be rag-tag IMO (part of why I don't like the GW kit and prefer the older DV ones more), so I like the challenge of visual coherency and different equipment, it really makes them feel like a band of zealous bandits, more than a full blown large-scale military organization. They are just there to look cool, flood the battlefield, and die for their IVth legion Overlords.


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I just hope the skitarii don't just look like Forge World Mars ones, if you have any ideas to make them more 'chaos-y' (correct term should be 'chaotic' but 'chaos-y' is more fun to type) while retaining the red and black paint scheme I would appreciate it. I'm using a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone (think Agrax Earthshade) all over them, so they will look grimy already.

Oh, and before I forget, the previously mentioned Kell Hounds that my 'Hounds of Chaos' name comes from look like this.

Here's a 'Warhammer' 'mech drawn in that scheme.
So, yeah. pretty similar colour-wise.

Always like a good crossover in my 40k!

To counter that clean marsian skitarii problem, child play! Take chaos insignias of some sort in your bitz box and plaster them on your skitarii cultists. So that it doesn't necessarily look mutated or stuff, but the clearly displayed allegiance would make them unmistakable.

Maybe a few yellow lines here and there to link them up to there IW step daddies would do the trick too. Or instead.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Always like a good crossover in my 40k!

To counter that clean marsian skitarii problem, child play! Take chaos insignias of some sort in your bitz box and plaster them on your skitarii cultists. So that it doesn't necessarily look mutated or stuff, but the clearly displayed allegiance would make them unmistakable.

Maybe a few yellow lines here and there to link them up to there IW step daddies would do the trick too. Or instead.

great idea, however all my cultists are primed already, so that's out of the question, but I do like your hazard stripe idea.

Chaos Transfer sheets come to the rescue!!

Chaos transfer sheets for the win. Be sure to show us how they come out!