Deathwing Progress and eBay Rescue

 

Hi folks,

With the family away looking after a friend's horse ranch you would think I would get some more time to paint. The start of the new school term has pretty much nixed that, unfortunately. Last night I managed to work on my Deathwing Terminators for a while, getting all of the arms and weapons done.

I am going with the classic white OG Space Hulk scheme for them, with some grey shading to make it look a little bit more like they have just coated themselves in ashes. As you can see, I have fiddled the arms around to allow one of the terminators to carry a cyclone missile launcher, to help alleviate some of the vehicle/monster issues my 1000 point list has. I have also used the powersword from the Deathwing command squad sprue, which is a controversial choice in some circles. To make up for the fact that the sergeant is clearly not respecting the machine spirit of his blade by sticking it straight down in the ground, I have placed a Tyranid Warrior head on the base for it to fit into, with a whole in the skull for the sword tip and a lolling tongue for lols.

The head is another 3D printed native Aamerican sculpt from Puppetswar, to help fit the Last of the Plains People theme. I spent the last bit of my painting session painting the sword, hopefully adding some ghostly colours in there; I was inspired by the colour scheme of the Army of the Dead from LoTR: Return of the King. It is not as neat as I could do it, but my mind at the moment is awarding big points for "finished". You can see I have chopped the bottom of the blade off a bit as well, just to really sell the idea that it is deep in the warriors head. 

With the rules for the Vanguard combat patrol army being released in the last White Dwarf, I spen a bit of trolling on eBay to see if I could score a cheap squad of Suppressors. I didn't realise at first that there is no actually box for them yet, only the full Vanguard set, so prices were ridiculous! I managed to find two squads being sold by a person I have ordered from before and snaffled one with the flying stands intact. they sustained a bit of damage in transit; three grav chutes broke off the backpacks. I was kind of expecting that this may happen and fixing them wasn't too hard using polystyrene glue and some superglue later to strengthen the join. You can see some frosting on the backpacks from the superglue, which I will sort out during the painting step.

With the addition of these three models I will have everything I need to field the combat patrol in the White Dwarf, which gives me a handy option for smaller games with my mates. All I have to do is finish painting them...

See you across the table,

Marc

Dark Angels Intercessors Combat Squad 2 TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

Last week I headed up into mountains west of Sydney for a family holiday. I usually don't take any hobby thigs with with, as I find that they never end up getting done. This time, I managed to get another squad of Intercessors done in between bushwalks and cafe visits.

Even though these models are speed painted, I still really love how they turned out. They aren't remotely perfect, but nice from a tabletop perspective and their finished.

I keep re-jigging my 1000 point Crusade list, but the one I have settled on recently only requires three more units to be painted, all of which are in various stages of completion already. I won't get them all finished before I had back to the new school term, but I feel very close to having an army ready to play with. I also have plenty of options for expanding on force, up to at least 2000 points.

Here are a couple of closer ups of the finished models:

I had all kinds of lightning effects on the powersword, but finally settled for plain leadbelchers. With the rest of the squad, simpler was certainly better.

Considering these figures all came from Imperium magazine, I feel like I have managed to make each one unique; there is a lot of pointing goin on though! For an outlay of $9 AUD + bitz I had floating around, a full squad of 10 Primaris Intercessors isn't a bad yield.

That's it for now, I need to get back to my Deathwing squad and... other units...

Dark Angels Intercessors Combat Squad TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

The year rolls on towards its conclusion and I find myself barely keeping things ticking over. The school year here in Australia has just finished and I have stumbled over the finish line. The past couple of nights I have been trying to do a bit of painting to help reset my mojo. All I can say is that it has been a slog, but I have to start somewhere.

These Intercessors have been floating around for a while now, I think they were originally part of a Birthday care package one of my mates dropped over during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Intercessors form a big chunk of my 1000 point crusade list, so they are a logical place to start. With only five of them, it doesn't feel too much like batch-painting either, which I don't think I could stomach at the moment!

The theme of my army focuses heavily on the original background story Deathwing, which identified some Dark Angels as having been recruited from amongst the native tribes of the Plains World. To represent this I have used some Native American style heads from Puppetswar, to represent marines that still feel ties to their ancestral origins. In the story Deathwing, there is a great tension between fulfilling the duties to the Dark Angels Chapter and honouring the people they left behind. The beauty of the story is that these goals end up being mutually achievable. I really want to tap into that vibe and avoid the modern Dark Angels tropes. 

With the philosophy of "less is more", I am only going to use ~ 8 custom heads across the whole army. Enough for 1 or 2 per squad and perhaps a character. 

I have some Hellblasters lined up to do next, as a bit of a reward for completing these dudes. I am still a sucker for plasma.

See you across the table,

Marc

Dark Angels Ballistus Dreadnought: TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

If you have been following the DreadTober blog for the past month, you will know that the challenge is finished for 2023 and I managed to finish my project off just in time. This project was a labour of love from start to finish, as I tried to pay homage to the old school 2nd Ed. Dark Angels Dreadnought box art. This was a little tricky to do due to the additional design elements the new Ballistus dreadnought has when compared to the old castraferrum. The model is a lot busier, so I had to make some careful colour choices to make the old scheme still work, i.e. figuring out what to do with the missile launcher so that the red casing still contrasted nicely against the nearby shades.

I added a couple of freehand Devastator symbols to reflect the fire support role this Dreadnought will assume on the battlefield. You can't fit many anti-armour units in a 1000 pt list, so it will have some heavy lifting to do in regard to removing high toughness targets.

Overall, I am very happy with how the finished product. Having the pressure of the challenge deadline and the support of so many hobbyists really helped to get this one over the line. I really want to get my army ready for the Christmas break, when I will have some time to play games. Hopefully, I can set myself some deadlines along the way and maintain the little bit of momentum that I have.

See you across the table,

Marc