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

2nd Edition Army Challenge: Master Gabriel of Deathwing TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

The goal of the 2nd Edition Army Challenge is to paint 200 points of 2nd Edition goodness every month until January, with one month free to accomodate the way real life tends to jank with these kinds of challenges. That would give as a 1000 point army ready to play with come January. This month, I planned to paint my commander, a Master of Deathwing armed with a stormbolter, auxiliary grenade launcher and lightning claw. I knew I was going to be a little under the goal of 200 points, as the Master clock it at 148, so I resolved to retouch my old school heavy plasma Dreadnought to fit the army scheme as well. To complicate things, August happens to be the last month of my yearly Hobby Season, which is full of last ditch efforts to tick off projects I had planned for the year. That in mind, I really pushed myself to get the Master done in my ~ 30-60 minutes of free time every night. If you have been following my #hobbystreak on Twitter or Instagram, you would seen the progress over the past couple of days. Here is the final product!

The paint scheme is really, really old school. The stark white for Deathwing was really introduced during the Space Hulk expansion and in some artworks; by the time the dedicated figures for GW had been released they were already shifting to the modern bone-white colour. I am seeing more and more old paint schemes popping up in the current edition, so look forward to painting some of the newer Terminators in this scheme.

I was a bit jealous of all the people painting stripes in the challenge, so managed to fit one in on the left side of the storm bolter. You may think that is a strange place to put a big red stripe... but I have reference material suggesting it was a good spot...

The Deathwing symbol is a decal from a huge sheet I was given as a gift many moons ago. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Some decal setting solution helped soften it to fit the pad. The feathers were painted in my usual green/red fade, instead of the white/red/black of the GW scheme. White white already in the scheme, I wanted to double-down on the spot colours. With green robes, I also painted the stormbolter black to avoid it blending in. I may end up doing this with the other stormbolters as well (which would usually be green).  The auxiliary grenade launcher is a piece of sprue from my X-wing model!

I love how the lightning claw turned out; even if the join isn't the neatest. That conversion is over 20 years old, so I was loath to fix it up for the sake of nostalgia. I always wanted to painted my Deathwing claws red, but never had the guts to do it; now is the time!

The flock on the robes is loose and I'll be brushing it off. I probably should have done that before taking photos, but there is always something I forget before taking photos :-)

So, 1st month of the challenge is done in record time, leaving some room to paint some more Space Hulk figures before the end of the Hobby Season. Considering the detail on the Master, with the addition of the Dreadnought, I am really pleased with the progress so far. It will be interesting to see how I go next month when I start work on the squads!

See you across the table,

Marc