2019/20 Hobby Season Review

 

Hi folks,

When I was preparing for the 2019/20 Hobby Season I was coming off the back of a pretty hard year, so I wasn't too ambitious with my To-Do list. I was a bit disenchanted by 40K, so focussed mainly on aiming to get my Space Hulk set painted. As you all know, this year really has been balls. I spent most of summer in Tasmania, which was amazing, but when I came home I always had one eye on the horizon and the other on my Bushfires Near Me app. With some time spent working from home due to the pandemic, you would think that there would be some extra time for painting, but it just wasn't the case. As a teacher, I found my workload more than doubled; things that I could usually do quickly were taking me a lot longer. Despite that, I did manage to do a whole of bunch of stuff I would have never imagined when I wrote my To-Do list. And, no, I didn't get my whole Space Hulk set painted...

Here is a trip down memory lane:

Warhammer 40K

Iron Snakes

A big year for my Iron Snakes, I managed to finish a 2000 points army that included some new Primaries figures. Squad Damocles, a 10 man Intercessor squad equipped with boarding shields, was completed for Squaduary.

Imperial Knights

For DreadTober I completed the second knight of my Walls of Ithaka detachment. This is "Theseus" Ferrum Fortis (Strong Punch!). 

Dark Angels

For Armour in April I finished this Landraider Excelsior, just in time for it to be relegated to "Legends" (or whatever they call those things now). Ah well, still a cool model, and very likely to be used in my casual games.

2nd Edition Army Challenge

Recently I have embarked on a 6 month challenge to complete a 1000 point army using 2nd Edition sculpts. I have opted for a classic Dark Angels scheme, starting the challenge with a repaint of two of my oldest figures; a Deathwing Master and Dreadnought.

Age of Sigmar

This year I managed to finish some figures that my daughter had chosen for herself. I also caught the Age of Sigmar bug and dove into Sylvaneth. To help motivate me as I started I entered some painting competitions along the way, all at my local Warhammer store. I won the Brushmaster title for the Treelord Ancient and the Kurnoth Hunters, with both the Kurnoth Hunters and my daughters Sisters of the Thorn featured for a short time on the Age of Sigmar Facebook group! Small wins, but they sure did keep me going during the tough initial slog through isolation. To be honest, the Treelord is probably my best work, it really, really, challenged me. 

Space Hulk

Well, this was meant to be the focus of my season. If you have managed to get to this stage in the post you can see just how distracted I was! I did manage to get the commanders done for each of the teams apart from the Fallen, which I painted the full team for. Calistarius, the Blood Angels Librarian was the real highlight, completed for The Jewel of July community challenge. The Broodlord was my Monster March entry.

Kill Team

I managed to speed-paint a H. R. Giger inspired Kill Team, as an alternative to my 4 Lictor murder list. I haven't tried it out yet, but I sure am looking forward to the Aliens quotes.

BattleTech

I know most of you are here for the 40K, and perhaps meander into Age of Sigmar like I do as well. But I also play a couple of other systems that do a great job of dividing my attention. With the delays to the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, BattleTech hasn't drawn my attention as much as it could have this year, but I still managed to paint a neat lance of mercenaries and a larger scaled piece for my mate Wade.

 

Phew, that's it, I think. 2019/20 has been crazy busy. I managed to get a lot more done than I ever intended, but I am still glad to put this year behind me. Tomorrow I will post my To-Do list for 2020/21!

See you across the table,

Marc

Space Hulk: Fallen Angels Boarding Party TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

I have juuuuust managed to squeeze one last project out of the 2019/20 Hobby Season. This is a squad Fallen terminators I will be using for Space Hulk, Kill Team and perhaps a small 40K army. The paint scheme for Fallen is pretty simple, so I made it harder for myself and added some checkered patterns. If you look close enough at them you can see they are not quite as neat and even as they should be, but in large amounts I think they are a cool addition.

Well, that's it for this season. Tomorrow I will post a season wrap-up with all that has been achieved and some of what could have been. After that I'll have a new To-Do list, full of interesting projects for 9th Edition, 2nd Edition, Kill Team, Space Hulk and Age of Sigmar. I have not decided what I will work on next; with the release of 9th Edition, the current 2nd Edition Army challenge and DreadTober around the corner, I am spoiled for choices! But I am getting ahead of myself; here is my last TO-DONE of the season!!

See you across the table,

Marc

Space Hulk: Fallen Angels Test Model

 

Hi folks,

Just a quick update today, as I am knackered from work and have a couple of hours of work lesson prep to do before tomorrow. Last weekend I worked on a test paint-scheme for my Fallen Angel boarding party and came up with this guy. I have used a combination of the checkered patterns on the Forgeworld 30K Dark Angels with the red helmet stripe of old school Dark Angels.

 

I am happy with how neat the job turned out, especially considering how fast I cranked through the free-hand parts. They are far from perfect, but at this stage I just need to get them finished. The bases are 32 mm, which is perfect for Space Hulk but a tad small for 40K; I doubt anyone I play against would care though.

With the test model fairly successful, I'm happy to commit to the next four over the next couple of days. With 11 days left in this Hobby Season I may just fit a squad of Blood Angels in as well! Fingers crossed!

See you across the table,

Marc

Horus Heresy: Dark Angels

Hi folks,

A few weeks ago, Rob from 30kplus40K ran a competition to celebrate the Birthday of his blog. The prize was a squad of Tartaros Terminators, a 30K era unit that had caught my eye previously (I am a complete sucker for Terminators). To win, we had to post which Legion we would collect and why, to which I replied:

Slippery slope indeed! I was lucky enough to win a squad and my already bursting To-Do list has now erupted volcanically. Having skated on the edge of 30K for a few years, secretly yearning to explore the Dark Angels pre-Heresy shenanigans; this random act of kindness has finally pushed me over the edge. After a fairly rough day, I came home to this little package of awesome. It literally made my day.

So, expect to see some 30K Dark Angels Terminators some time in the near future. I have promised myself not to work on them until my first Imperial Knight is painted, which doesn't actually look that far off at the moment. I have been researching schemes and something like this looks like fun to me:

These Terminators were painted and posted by someone going by the username of Forward Assist on The Bolter and Chainsword forums. There is something about the shiny black beetle look of the armour that I really love. I am going to try for a scheme like this, though perhaps with some more weathering. I am also on the hunt for some detailed resin bases or inserts. I haven’t settled on a theme yet, so if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments.

A BIG thanks goes out to Rob; the Terminators are seriously cool and being rewarded for reading an excellent Blog seems like it should be illegal [insert joke about Australia's convict heritage here].

I am planning my own competition for a little later in the year, after the new edition hits. It will be based on scenario/mission writing, which is something I really enjoy doing myself. If you would be interested in competing in something like this, let me know.

See you across the table,

Marc

30K Painting Competition: Death Guard Marine TO-DONE!

Hi folks,

I just finished my entry to a 30K painting competition organised by the Google+ 30K community, a loyal Death Guard marine of the 7th Company. The 7th Company included quite a few notable characters that survived the virus bombing of Istvaan III, including Nathaniel Garro himself.

In this model I wanted to try and portray the marine's resistance against the encroaching pestilence. I don't think any Death Guard marine looks genuine without weathering and corrosion, but I wanted you to think he was clean compared to the base :-)

The closer you look to the base, the worse he gets, as the crapulance spreads.

The base is primarily Citadel textured paints (Astrogranite Debris), with an olive green river of slime that I coated with Noch water effects. I tell you, waiting for those water effects to dry on the day of the deadline was excruciating. Usually I would shade and highlight the skulls carefully, but I wanted these to look dirtier. I have seen a few exhumed skulls recently (purely academic, I assure you), and they weren't neatly highlighted either. Around the edges of the slime I painted a light brown and orange crust. Ewww.

If I had a bit more time I would matt varnish the decals to knock off that shine, but I'm not touching them again tonight. I would also lay down another 1 mm of wet effects. If I had more skill... well, that's another thing. I haven't done all that much weathering before, particularly over white. I would love to perfect the kind of subtle weathering of white I have seen around the place. I would also like to learn how to free-hand skulls, which seems to me like a handy skill for a 30K/40K painter ;-)

See you across the table,

Marc

30K Painting Competition: Death Guard Marine Progress 2

Hi folks,


I have been struggling to find the time to paint the past couple of weeks, which doesn't help when you have a painting competition deadline looming! This weekend would usually have been prime hobby time, but instead I whisked the family away for a weekend at the beach. I can't complain, the fact that we can still go to the beach and have a swim at the end of Autumn is something to celebrate. Tonight I had a go at some of the details, managing to get the head, bolter and backpack mostly done. I still have a few highlights to do here and there, as well as the jewelling on the bolter's laser sight.

Tomorrow night I need to tackle the weathering/damage on the white and brass armour, highlighting the brass, company markings on the right shoulder pad and the Legion symbol on the left. I also need to make a start on the base, which is going to be a simple grey rubble with perhaps a pile of skulls and a pool of pus. Maybe. That's a lot to do!

I'll probably also run a careful black wash to pick out some more details in the white armour. We'll see if I get that far. Assuming all of that gets done tomorrow, I should be able to knock off the base detailing on the day it is due, just in time to post my entry. Best laid plans and all that :-)

See you across the table,

Marc

Sculpting Rivets: What NOT to do!

Hi folks,

Last month I entered a 30K painting competition with a bunch of great guys from the 30K Google+ community. I pieced together a Tactical Marine out of odds and ends I had floating around the place, which led to an interesting mismatch of MkIII armour and... something else (my bet would be MKVI). It was suggested that I could add some rivets to the legs to tie it all together. Yup, I thought, I can do that...

After hitting up some tutorials and forums I decided to sculpt them out of green stuff. To begin with I rolled a thin cylinder of green stuff out. I contemplated letting it set and cutting rivet shapes from it, but decided against that. Instead I cut small portions of it and formed them into tiny balls which I gently placed on the end of a plastic toothpick. This made the balls easier to apply, particularly in those "hard to reach" places. The plastic of the toothpick was also more attractive than my skin, which made transferring the balls off my fingers easier.

Transferring balls from the toothpick to the model was tricky: they really liked that toothpick. I overcame that problem using super glue. I dipped a pin in the glue and tilted it so that the tiniest amount of glue would pool at the tip. The trick was then to touch the tip onto the model exactly where I wanted it. 30 times. From there I could touch the balls lightly onto the glue and they would stick. Which was great, except for the 30 or so times I squashed them and had to re-do the whole process, or try to sculpt them out of their misery. When it was all done I put it away and slept on it, waking up to this:

The tiny balls I was rolling, at the limit of my ability to roll balls, were about 4 times as big as I would have liked. Thanks to all the squashing and the sculpting, they were also quite irregular. So, lesson learnt, I spent 30 minutes or so tonight scraping them all off again! After some careful knife work I got it back to exactly how it looked 24 hours ago: no more balls. Suffice to say, I will not be doing it that way again, and with the deadline looming, this guy is going to get painted as is, balls-free.

See you across the innuendo ;-)

Marc

30K Painting Competition: Death Guard Marine Progress 1

Hi folks,

In my spare time, I have been dipping my toes into 30K. This has mainly involved digging through my bitz box and separating out all of the MkIII bits that I have left over from my Iron Snakes sternguard. There were just enough bits for me to scrape together this tactical marine for a painting competition being run by the Google+ 30K community. All of the entrants have been assigned a random Legion to paint: I drew the Death Guard. I am a big fan of the book The Flight of the Eisenstein, so this pleased me no end. Painting-wise, I was hoping for Blood Angels, but this will give me a great opportunity to work on my weathering technique.

I didn't have any MkIII legs, so I scrounged some from a Devastator sprue. The boltgun is from an Attack Bike sprue and the head is an old Masters of the Chapter piece. I even drilled my first barrel!

I haven't decided what to put on the base, though I have a nice big pile of skulls that I think will go well.

So this guy gets added to the top of the to-do list, as the 30K community is one that I really want to support. I have three other projects that are also hovering up there at the high priority level, one of which I will finish tomorrow (...or go crazy trying).

See you across the table,

Marc