Thursday 28 March 2019

Dark Angels Techmarine TO-DONE!






Hi folks,

A couple of days ago I added the final touches to this guy's servo-arm, then proceeded to base him three times! I tried two other bases that were either too detailed or had detail that messed around too much with the colour pallet. I settled on a plain base with flock and static grass, which contrasts properly with the red of the armour and compliments the green of the purity seals and axe haft (I hope!).








I managed to scrounge a few of my old 3rd Edition Dark Angels shoulder pads, which saved me messing about with a decal. I need to just bite the bullet and get myself some Micro Sol and Micro Set; they make the whole "decals on a curved surface" gig so much easier. I decided to arm him with the classic 2nd Edition combo of plasma pistol and power axe. On the turn when the plasma pistol is recharging you get to use the axe two-handed for extra clobbering power.








Befitting the Native American theme, this guy's Plainsworld name is Walks-Like-a-Bear, which is a Miwok name ("Enyeto"). For his three wargear cards, I am going all out to give him a Power Field Generator (2+ invulnerable save, but counts as encumbered in close combat) servo-arm (negates encumbered in close combat and affords an extra attack) and bionic leg (another extra attack and a special kick attack). That gives him a wicked number of attacks for a Techmarine, but with only one wound I am going to have to be NOT unlucky with my 2+ saves!








With this guy finished it just leaves me with a Callidus Assassin and Predator tank to go. Then my 2000 point Dark Angels (2nd Edition) Army list will be ready for the tabletop. That deserves a stamp, I think!







See you across the table,

Marc


Saturday 9 March 2019

Dark Angels Techmarine WIP







Hi folks,

Being the hobby butterfly that I am, I spent a bit of time this morning working on this Dark Angels Techmarine for my 2000 point 2nd Edition list. I have pieced him together using parts from a different kits; the body is metal, the axe is resin, the plasma pistol is an oldish plastic one, the servo arm is from a less detailed 3rd Edition Techmarine figure and the shoulder pad is from the earliest Dark Angels upgrade kit.








My main challenge now is to figure out what colours to use on the axe. The easy thing would be to do everything in metallics, but I really would like to try painting the cog and skull in the same black and white scheme. I have also used some nice turquoise glows that would work well on the axe blade, but I am not sure how that will go with the black and white in the middle. Hmmm.... I'll have to think about it some more.







If you have any ideas, please drop them in the comments,

See you across the table,

Marc


Saturday 2 March 2019

Old Stuff Day!






Hi folks,

Happy Old Stuff Day! It has become a bit of tradition to share old blog posts and have a laugh about the good old days on March 2nd. I have had a look at my most popular posts of all time, and shortlisted five of them for blog-necromancy. If you haven't read them, I hope you enjoy them, or if you have, that you enjoy the trip down memory lane:


1) Van Dieman's World Devils Re-Looted Battlewagon


Have you ever wondered what an Orky vehicle must have looked like before it was looted, or what it would be like to get one back on them and loot one of theirs? Perhaps it would look something like this Re-Looted Battlewagon:






2) Iron Snakes Chapter Master Seydon


I am not a huge fan of Primaris Marines, or at least, grafting them into my existing collections. Still, I had to give this conversion a try, as Seydon is described as standing much taller than the average marine. I think the slightly larger scale works nicely.







3) Imperial Knight Warden "Perseus" Intrepidus


I won this guy in a terrain building competition run by Dave Weston over at Confessions of a 40K Addict (some great old stuff there, btw...). I worked on it for over a year, including some pretty hefty conversion work on the carapace weapon. I used a lot of different techniques I have never tried before to complete it, so it is definitely one of my proudest achievements in the 40K hobby.







4) Hive Fleet Numereji Flying Hive Tyrant


This monstrosity was inspired by the dragon Cloud Jumper from How to Train Your Dragon 2 (I did it for my little girl). There is no small amount of the Pitch Black monster in there as well, I think.






5) Wifey Speaks


I interviewed my wifey, to get her take on the whole hobby seen and what it is like to live with a tabletop gamer. It is a little known fact that she collected Dark Elves once upon a time. The conversation that we had was quite illuminating!







Finally, to leave you with something truly old, I present some photos of my 2nd Edition Space Marine scouts. I had been using needle sniper rifles in my list for a while, with no models to represent them. When these figures came out it was the first time I felt like I absolutely had to buy a thing. They had a level of detail I had not seen on 40K models before, being used to the simpler Marine models. I didn't have much painting experience at all, and, what I did have, did not involve painting eyeballs. This squad was going to be a first and all of my mates new it.

Now, I don't call myself an eyeball painting expert, but when I rolled these guys out during the next game my mates flipped out. Looking back at them now, I can only cringe a little (I can see where I just jammed a brush with black paint in and hoped it hit something). But I will never forget the look on my mate KuriboGoomba's face when he held them up to his nose and said "......duuuuuuuuuuude."











They are on my paint table at the moment having the minimum of repair work done to them; repainting would be sacrilege. Hopefully, I'll be able to show them off a little better soon, as they feature in my retro 2nd Edition Dark Angels list.

See you across the table,

Marc


Friday 1 March 2019

Squaduary: Iron Snake Centurion Combat Squad TO-DONE!






Hi folks,

I worked on these Centurions as hard as I could this February, but still only managed to finish three of them. At the start of this week I decided to split the project into two combat squads, when work really started getting on top of me. I think that was a good idea, because I managed to achieve some detail that would have gone missing had I pushed to complete all six. This squad is armed with non-standard wargear: assault cannon, heavy bolter, storm shield and hurricane bolters. I imagine them hunkering down behind the shield with the assault cannon protruding from the cut-out, BBBRRRrrrrtttt -ing a spear of tracers into the xenos horde.

Each combat squad leader has a helmet plume, whilst the others have no helmets for differentiation. I noticed after spending an hours or so doing freehand that I had painted this guy's snake upside down and back to front; the orientation of that shoulder piece is hard to judge! Dry fit before painting free-hand peeps. Anyway, I put a coat of grey over that top this afternoon, after giving myself a day at work to get over my mistake, and repainted it in about half an hour. 












The next guy has no helmet, which means painting eyes! I'm pretty happy how he turned out, considering the speed at which I finished all of the detail. I love the open stance of this model, this is a classic "shoot that guy" pose that I love maneuvering on the tabletop.
















The last model in this squad is the test model that you have all seen before, but I will include it here for the sake of completion. I love the pose of this guy, the stride is very purposeful and he looks like he is about to swipe something with his shield.














This squad has now been added to my growing Iron Snakes army, which I am hoping to push out to 2000 points this hobby season. Centurions are very, very expensive in this edition, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting to that point limit with another three on the way.










Happy Squaduary everyone!

Marc