sons of orar milestone reached

Brief update all. My aim beginning of the year was within 6 months to get 10% of the army fully painted with representation from each squad. This was more of a background project while I continued with other projects from month to month. I’m happy to say I hit that milestone and am very happy with the results. My next aim for this army is to complete some of the squads and some more vehicles so by the end of the year 25% of the army is fully painted. Cheers. 

sons of orar update.

Hi all. 

Wanted to update regarding my sons of orar project. Exclusively primaris project which I’ve assembled, basecoated and based 95% of the models (210 by last count) and am setting myself targets to paint my way through the army, having started beginning of the year. This won’t be a quick project but I’m hoping to have 25% of the army fully painted by end of this year. The first 10% was to experiment with one test models from each type of squad and the results thus far can be seen here. Thanks. 

Tabletop Tactics homage project

Hi folks,

Following on from my hobby update I wanted to share some pictures of a project that took a fair chunk of my hobby time over the Summer. I'm a fan of Tabletop Tactics having started out watching their youtube channel and later signing up for their subscription service. Links to both below for those who haven't come across them. The quality of the production and entertainment value is amongst the best in my opinion when it comes to Warhammer battle reports, tactica and articles. Definitely worth a look if you've never watched.

https://tabletoptactics.tv/

https://www.youtube.com/user/tabletoptactics

Anyway, it's been a while since I've worked on a one-off conversion / painting project and as soon as this idea flashed through my mind I realised I needed to see it through to completion. It was inspired by a t-shirt available on their shop, which has caricatures of the original TT cast as RT-era marines. I love the t-shirt and decided what would be a great project would be to make a deathwatch kill-team in their honour, representing the 6 current members of the team as marines. I contacted the studio and proceeded with their blessing. 

 

All in all the project took a few months and was based on a 5-man veteran kill team with an artemis model. Unifying features incuded the bases, for which I used industrial floor plasticard leftover from other projects as it resembled the filming studio floor. I also added name plaques for each member through versatile terrain (link below) which were able to be customised. I tried to add a squad marking in the form of TTs logo of two dice on the knee-pad. This was customised for each member and is detailed below. The faces were loosely based on the staff members themselves.

https://www.versatileterrain.co.uk/

SPIDER

Head honcho at the studio and based upon the Artemis model, Spider was customised with a grey knight falchion (his SM faction of choice) and some xenos tech in the form of a shuriken catapult, given his love of all things aeldari. What can't be seen in the photo is that the DW logo is modified to resemble the TT logo. His chapter shouder pad is a popgoesthemonkey shapeways black dragon logo from their deathwatch set (as below) painted to resemble Roku, the mascot dragon. Speaking of which, the D.R.A.G.O.N and S.A.C.R.E.D tactical teachings from their site are emblazoned on the shin parchment. Base decoration is a, well, spider, painted in the colours of the studio Tyranid hive fleet. Lastly, his dice number is naturally a double 6 given his uncanny ability to roll 6s in battle reports.

CHEF

The chef has a raven guard primaris head to give him his iconic silken hair and comes equipped with a necron phase blade (given his passion for the croissant-bots) and a combi-melta seeing as melta is so hot right now. His chapter pad is loosely based on his Ashen Huntsmen white-scar themed marine army and also grants the dice number of 5 to his knee pad, seeing as they are the 5th legion. 

BONE

The studios resident Aussie if depicted here as a space-wolf chapter brother, sporting a head from the wolf-scouts upgrade part of the pack set. He packs not only a deathwatch bolter, but a CSM terminator chainaxe, emblazoned with nordic runes spelling out both bane (his wolf-lord character on the tabletop) and kharn, everyones favourite chain-axe wielding psychopath. His dice number is 7, seeing as it is the blessed number, and on his base is none other than Grotty, the studio mascot Nurgling, packing a shotgun ;for close encounters'. 

BEARD

The bearded one sports a head from the series 2 space marine heroes set in an attempt to do his facial hair justice. The chapter badge is a silver skulls one in iron warriors colours complete with chevrons - not quite heretical enough so as to still be acceptable to the deathwatch. He is packing an infernus heavy bolter and is accompanied by non other than the bone-cherub carrying a melta-bomb to the fray. (what a team!) This completes the holy trinity of bolter/flame/melta that the Adeptus Sororitas so covet, hence the gift of the order of our Martyred lady icon awarded to him. His dice number is double 1..... the reasons for this will become apparent if you watch any of the battle reports.

STIG

Accompanied by a servo skull carrying ammo, the Stig carries a Guardian spear into battle reflecting his love of the Custodes on the tabletop. His other go-to army, the ad-mech of Stygies VIII not only grants is a bionic left arm, but also an ad-mech shoulder pad and the dice number of 8. The head is from the space wolf thunderwolf kit.

SANGA

Last but not least, the behind the scene one-man painting army that is Sanga is represented by a jump-pack equipped brother sporting the classic Blood Angel smash-captain combo of thunder hammer and storm shield. The hammer is adapted from the deathwatch and death company sets and the shield from the Space Hulk terminator kit. I can't honestly say which space marine kit the head came from and naturally, being a huge blood angel fan, a BA shoulder pad is present on the right arm. His dice number is 9 for the Blood Angel legion and one last little feature is a shackle and chain on the leg, in order to keep him chained to the painting desk.....

That's the lot. A thoroughly enjoyable little project which, once complete, was gifted to the TT studio team. Big thank you to Lawrence for supplying the photos and giving me free-reign to use them and also to his lovely wife Rachael for her correspondence throughout the project. I hope you have enjoyed the tour through the project and please give the above links a look in. Cheers.

July hobby update - Sons of Orar Primaris begin.

Greetings all. 

As always, it appears my plans to keep up regularly with the blog have failed. Hobby time is extremely limited between the shifts I have been working and recent holidaying but the good news is my shift are about to revert to a more civilized pattern and so I'm hoping to get on track. Not much to add from a non-marine perspective sadly. My original plan for this year was to wrap up all my imperial marine plans by end of second quarter to focus on non marine stuff the second half of the year so I could make a clean break for chaos in 2018. 

Suffice to say this hasn't happened…..

To my credit I have it a damn good go though. In honesty I have found that an enjoyable hobby can sometimes turn into a chore if you set to restrictive targets, whereas having no targets to aim for at all can result in making no progress whatsoever. The past 6 months have allowed me to make great progress, but have taken away some of the enjoyment from things. Therefore more recently I have been less focused on meeting rigid deadlines and have allowed myself flexibility to just pick up a squad here, assemble some xenos there and it has made things a lot more enjoyable. However, I am drifting away from the goal somewhat so need to reestablish some focus. 

I have 17 (now 18) loyalist marine armies and getting them all up to assembled, basecoated and based (rebased in most cases onto 32mm) was no small feat. As it stands, I have finished all but a few of these tasks. The main outstanding ones to me are rebasing all my salamanders (about halfway there), some centurions for imperial fists (1/6 done) and, always pushed to the bottom of the pile, finally sorting out the entire luna wolves army. These in themselves pose an interesting question - now 40k and 30k have different rule sets how would I ever run them on the tabletop? For now I'm happy to carry on as if they are 30k on the assumption they will be unlikely to ever get a game regardless. 

It became apparent with the leaks that some of my squads would need a little tweaking, such as command and honour guard squads with the new changes to squad numbers and also I might swap a few scout squads around to spread the sniper love between armies. I am waiting a little longer though to see precisely what the lowdown is on things from the official marine codex. Initially I was a bit annoyed that after almost 2 years of trying to get all of the above armies to fit into the new detachments (some swapping and purchasing involved) that it's now all invalid. However, the newer way to build armies is much more flexible and allows fw units to be easily incorporated so I'm more than happy with it. 

I mentioned army number 18 above. I always had a pipe dream of making a small sons of orar force to represent the forces from my one attempt at fan fiction. The arrival of primaris marines gave me 4 options:

1. Don't collect them (obviously never a real option)
2. Integrate individual units into existing armies
3. Start a new faction
4. Change my sons of orar idea into a primaris faction

As my fan fiction didn't feature primaris marines it would mean giving up on that aspect of the army build but ultimately this is what I chose to go with. As can be seen below I have made a test model and intend to gradually incorporate the new range of primaris marines into the army once I have an idea of what units will be available. I wasn't a fan of the idea of simply adding one unit per existing army as it would look a bit odd and at least this way I would have a unique army on the battlefield. The rest of the models are basecoated and ready to go and I need to settle on a basing theme also. Although I promised not to touch chaos just yet I couldn't resist assembling the death guard also and having a play with some washes.

 

 

Test model done aside from the weapon

 

Dark imperium sorted

A stab at plague marines

My Original Sons of Orar test model who sadly has no place in a Primaris army. Any takers?

It's been a while since I have done any decent codex reviews or tutorials. To be honest the pace of 7th was just too overwhelming to keep up with reviews in the end and, as I haven't even managed a game of 8th yet, there seems little point in me trying to review anything. I may drop a small review in once the marine codex hits but that will be more comparing old to new rather than analyzing what's best in 8th as I don't feel qualified to comment. I may do some basing tutorials as one thing rebasing all those marines has taught me is how to make a few nice lava bases. 

That outlines where I am and what I'm likely to do on the blog but states very little about actual hobby intentions over the next 6 months. One thing that my relentless drive to completeness has taught me is that it's very easy for a pleasure to become a chore. I realized after a while that it had been ages since I'd actually sat down to paint a squad or individual model. Plus there's only so much basing and power armour assembly you can do before getting fed up with it. To this end I have been painting the odd squad here and there and even assembling some admech and harlequins ahead of schedule in order to stave off boredom. Therefore my hobby targets have shifted somewhat but remain overall similar. New targets to be interspersed over the next 6 months are as follows:

1. Finish basing salamanders
2. Finish assembling imperial fists centurions. 
3. Any loose ends for marine stuff i.e. Scouts
4. Finish assembly and basing of luna wolves. 
5. Continue with collecting/assembling new primaris army
6. Aim to paint one unit every 1-2 weeks
7. Assemble harlequin army
8. Base harlequins/dark eldar in same scheme as craftworld eldar. 
9. Assemble admech army. 
10. Loose ends with other Xenos bits i.e. Necron characters, phantom titan. 

Now that's more than enough for a (less than) 6 month period. And this is not including the inevitable curve ball that will be thrown with new codex releases. If it's a simple matter of a new release or two accompanying a release I may use it as a reason to focus on that faction for a week. For example, the grey knight codex we know is coming (and I recently rebased and got the army up to scratch) but around its release I may use that as incentive to paint up another squad and generally give them some attention. A release like say sisters of battle on the other hand would need a change in approach…….

As for imperial guard and chaos, I am growing less enamoured with my ‘counts as’ mantic guard as time goes on and so am putting them on hold for now - no point going to a huge effort assembling them if they will ultimately be replaced. As for chaos, I intend to get the codexes and have dabbled worth the starter set death guard but ultimately am still waiting until all my other armies are where I want them before getting stuck in. Though the call is strong. (Heresy!) Below is a selection of things I have been working on the past few months. Cheers. 

A selection of Salamanders on new bases.

My Imperial Fists infantry in all its yellow splendour

The legion as it currently stands

Lysander and pals

The task ahead

Based blood angels assault squad

Based blood angels devastators

Selection of Ultramarines basecoated

Smurf infantry

Grey Knight purifiers basecoated

Testing out the citadel white texture paint

Flying bases project part 1 of 2

Hi folks,

Getting through the hobby pledges at speed lately, mainly as I'll be limited on hobby time with exams towards the end of this year and beginning of next. As promised I got down to business with the flying bases, which I calculated I own a whopping 24 of. As of now the 12 pictured below are finished and the remaining 12 are in various states ranging from finished to unstarted. More on them in a few weeks time, but for now here are the first 12.

 First up are salamanders and grey knights. The Sallies have a lava theme and so I used corkboard surrounded by greenstuff to achieve the lava field effect. After a coat of pva to smooth and seal it was ready for spraying. A gloss finish over the lava adds to the glow. Grey knights have slate and ruins for their theme and thus I used one of the honoured imperium pieces (teal highlights for contrast) in amongst slate/rubble and a token dead 1k sons chap.

The nid base is one I made a while back effectively by layering and sanding decorating filler and greenstuff over a flying stem before adding cracked earth to make it look like it was bursting out of the ground. Technical nurgles rot and gloss also added to the finished job. This tau flying base was made with two sanding blocks hacked to shape with a bradall and glued together before drybrushing. Some greenstuff was added to the base before fine sand to give the dunes more dimension.

The eldar webway is also an old one with foamcard making up the gate itself and greenstuff for the majority of the base textures and gems. An old paint pot lid adds reinforcement to the webway. The Necron obelisk is a shampoo bottle with a flying stem inserted and cork/sand surrounding the base. Once painted I glossed the obelisk to make it stand out, added some decals and then some green crystals I got from my local hobby store.

The first base is the slate and grass theme from my heroes of badab, in this case representing a marines errant stormtalon. It's simply slate and sand which are basecoated and drybrushed with static grass added later. The ever contraversial whitescars aquarium plants are simply stuck onto this whitescars base.

For the imperial fists Martian base I considered going to town and building a 3d rock structure similar to that of the crimson fists one next to it, but ultimately kept it simple with stones and sand. The aforementioned crimson fists base (one of 3, the other two will feature next time) is insulation foam cut to resemble rocky outcrops then drybrushed.

Last but far from least are space wolves and raven guard. The wolves have a snowy outcrop made from a galeforce 9 tub glued to the base with a plasticard ramp atop it. From there I built up the structure with decorating filler with cork stuck in for rock. Before it set I also stuck in the flying stem to leave an imprint for it. Once set I sanded it a bit before spraying the rocks black and painting them up. I then sprayed the whole thing corax white leaving the rocks looking frosted. the show area was then covered with PVA and snow scenery mixed together. For the icicles I cut triangles of plastic from a gw blister, covered them in UHU glue and later glossed them.

For the raven guard base (industrial/night theme) I dug out an old model kit and used it to encircle the stem, which was removed for painting. After texturing and undercoating I drybrushed the ground blue grey and weathered the industrial parts before reattaaching the stem.

That's it for the first run folks. Very happy with how they all turned out, with some being clear favourites. Next time we have pairs of bases: 2 more crimson fists ones, a pair of chaos heldrakes bases, 2 ork bases, one each for the angels of death, 2 dark eldar and imperial guard / black templar battlefields. May be a few weeks but they'll be done. Cheers.

Dark angels 1850 army pics

Hi folks,
 just a quick one today. I got in a game with Alex the other night as we missed out when we went to WHW. Suffice to say his Tau decimated my Dark angels, but it did give me the opportunity to get the army out of boxes and take a few quick snaps. All tabletop standard only but pretty from a distance. Cheers.

Mephiston: Lord of Death. Conversion finished and painted.

Hi Guys,

Later than promised but here is the Blood Angel character conversion I've been working on this past month. I had hoped Mephiston would get a new model with the codex release and had made a pact with myself to sell my old metal model and convert one if he didn't get a release. My starting point was a piece of second edition artwork which has always been the iconic Mephiston art in my mind:

When compared to the mephi model, this chap is obviously much more dynamic, with the cloak flowing, head repositioned, right arm sans pistol and raised and left sword arm lowered. I had oriinally thought about using astorath as a basis for the conversion, but then along came the sanguinary priest model and I knew I had to use that as the basis for the conversion.

So, effectively what I did was chop mephis head off, removed the right arm at the shoulder and painstakingly cut out the entire of mephis legs while leaving the cloak intact. The head was replaced with one of the new fanged sergeant heads, and guitar wire used to attach the psychic hood cables to his head. In the case of the right side I replaced the entirity of the cable with guitar wire, the left only the part inside the hood. I later GS sculpted some hair to flow in the direction of the wind blowing the cloak. I also decided that as well as a BA backpack he needed a banner to later have his heraldry displayed on.

As for the cloak, I heated the finecast in warm water and made it appear to be flowing more towards the right as if blown in the wind. Between removing the legs and heating the cloak it did split a bit so I had to fill the gaps with GS. The legs were replaced with a painstakingly shaved down set of legs from the priest model. I was tempted to try and seal up the gap at the front and make it more like the original image, but decided I quite liked it with the parting and so saved myself a job. The left arm was repositioned using a bit of generic space marine elbow and greenstuff. Likewise, pretty much the same was done for the right, with the hand modified to look like mephi is about to lick the blood (to be added later using technical paints) from his fingertip, with the plasma pistol presumably holstered. 

 As for painting, I went with a similar colour scheme to the Mephiston model in the new codex, with dark red robes/gauntlets and a black cape. I'm very pleased with the conversion (which stands slightly taller than a Space Marine) and although it's not my greatest paint job it still does the model a decent amount of justice. Cheers.

Novamarines test piece plus Iron Hands gallery

Hi chaps,

Quick update, I've finished the Novamarines Terminator test piece which has turned out beautifully. I've also taken some decent shots of my Iron Hands army which is probably my most finished army with only a few pieces unpainted. As a bonus there's a Sergeant Centurius piece at the end also. Cheers.