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. 

Blog update - very long overdue! What I have been up to the past 2 years

 

Hello everyone. I have been off the radar for almost 2 years now it appears from the date of my last post. Many a reason for this. Exams, new baby, new job, working on the house and garden, COVID etc etc. the blog(s) just fell by the wayside sadly. Hobby output is less now than previously but I’m still plodding on through the endless backlog. Sadly not gaming at present due to COVID (my last game was 8th edition). Still, today I am sitting down for a few hours and updating some things on both sites, as well as clearing out the spam comments. Hopefully this will be a more regular thing from now on but as my hobby output is less, there'll be less to share. 

It looks like the points I had got to before my hiatus was to have all the marine armies were at a good point - I had all the models I wanted base coated as a minimum. Since then the collections have migrated from the house, to the garage, to the loft. My only real updates have been to expand the primaris content of the sons of orar / deathwatch, as well as adding in the occasional unit, such as my black Templar assault terminators and a few iron hands characters. I did add a few painted items to my blood ravens and salamanders too. This has allowed me more time to focus on non marine armies for a change so be sure to check for updates on my other blog.

The sons of orar have seen some expansion with 9th edition and I am hoping to further build on this, as well as adding to the deathwatch, once the rest of the marine releases land in the not too distant future. Aside from Primaris named characters I'm not going to be expanding the existing armies, save for these two. I also need to sort some custom decals for the Sons - here are some examples of the fully painted models so far. 

Much of my hobby time the past 3 months has been taken up by a marine side project which I have now completed. I will save this for a post of its own in the near future as I';m anticipating some studio quality photos I will be able to upload. In addition I will put up a post talking about a brief youtube venture and some warhammer world trips prior to covid. For now I’ve added a compilation of hobby pics from my phone since the time I last posted. Cheers. 

Sons of Orar Showcase

Dear all,

I'm trying to get my act together with the blog and so here is the latest marine army showcase. It's worth noting that I expect by June latest to have a full army showcase posted for every Marine army which signifies a turning point in my hobby. It will mark a departure from collecting and putting together themed Space Marine armies and instead focusing on assembling other armies, most notably of the Chaos variety, which will in turn shift more focus to my other blog. However, this will mean that I will be able to focus more on actually painting my marine armies to a higher standard and blogging about that on here instead. I estimate that now all my marine armies are assembled and basecoated (aside from the half dozen still on my desk) that only around 10% of that is painted to my highest standard. Anyway, onto the Sons of Orar.

This army was my latest marine venture. As you can see, it is an army purely comprising Primaris Marines. I thought to go down the avenue of incorporating Primaris into each of my other armies but ultimately decided I preferred to keep them unique. Sons of Orar were chosen for several reasons - firstly as I had written some fan fiction about them a while ago, secondly I liked the paint scheme and lastly I wanted to make the army an Ultramarine successor. 

The theme is fairly straghtforward as they are simply made up of every Primaris release to date. Save that is for the ETB Redemptor (may make an appearance one day) and that fugly super heavy (will never make an appearance). Overall very pleased with them and will try to persist with making them a decent force on the tabletop (minimal success so far) - no doubt more Primaris units will come later to help with this. Cheers.  

Finally some hobby updates.

The heroes of Badab laid out in their glory

Greetings all. An update at last! I have finally almost wrapped up my Astartes projects and am progressing to other things, namely xenos, imperial guard and a few others. I have hardly ever dabbled with assembling anything chaos related and so the time I reach halfway through this year I want to turn my attention to them. This leaves all things not chaos and not astartes to focus on in the meantime. The main aims are as follows:

1.   Finish assembling and priming any tau
2.   Finish assembling and priming any genecults

3.   Finish assembling and priming any necrons

4.   Finish assembling and priming and mechanicus 

5.   Start an imperial guard army. 

6.   Re-base dark eldar to fit with harlequins and craft world. 

7.   Sort out imperial agents. 

8.   Assemble a few craft world eldar tanks. 

My box'o'Primaris in the for of the now complete Sons of Orar.

This looks like an extensive list to deal with in a 3 month period, but actually isn’t as bad as it looks at first. Reason being as follows:

1. Done 
2. Done
3. Only a few scarab bases and new cryptek to do
4. Army half assembled
5. Large project - barely started. 
6. Shouldn’t take more than a day
7. Shouldn’t take more than a day
8. Shouldn’t take more than a day 

Complete Tau army, which will get its own blog entry on my other blog shortly.

I generally class the extensive range of armies I collect into 3 categories based on their codex:

1. Multiple whole factions from a single codex ie space marines, chaos marines
2. Multiple smaller factions from a single codex designed in practice to be used together ie eldar, guard. 
3. Single army from a single codex designed to be used independently ie tau, blood angels, necrons. 

In the first category my space marine armies are all pretty much done and the plan is to move onto chaos daemons and marines over the course of the next few years. Category 2 is probably where I will gradually expand over time, adding in say a small tallarn task force or adding a Saimm-Hann contingent to my alaitoc. The third category contains mostly complete armies with the exception of my tyranids, which I also want to gradually expand. 

A few Custodes and Mordians. The Custodes are now complete.

That pretty much outlines where I am with things now. After a decent push with the Custodes, tau and genecults recently I’m going to turn my attention to mechanicus, necrons and dark eldar alongside boxed set and codex releases. The main project then is imperial guard before my soul turns to chaos. The next few post on here will show my tau sept army and genecult insurrection. cheers  

Genecult army based and complete.

End of 2017 look back plus 2018 hobby targets

Hi everyone. 

A belated merry christmas. As per usual I thought I would post a rundown of my hobby throughout 2017 and hobby aims for next year. My aim for this year was to finally get all the marine armies finalised, make headway on the non-marine/non chaos armies I have and then start the turn to chaos in 2018. Despite a promising start I didn't quite get there. In no small part this was due to the release of Dark Imperium which threw yet another marine collection into the mix. If that wasn't enough, the new marine codex shook up the organisation of my armies and made me go back to the drawing board with some things. I have also been spending more time playing 40k with the advent of 8th. Here's a rundown of my hobby targets I hit. 

Whitescars were deemed complete fairly early in the year having been rebased onto both 32mm and oval bases for the bikes. I added a Jump lieutenant towards the end of the year and now consider them complete. Blood Ravens too were deemed complete earlier in the year but will need a brief revisits since the codex dropped, as will space wolves. We're only talking about adding a couple of infantry models so no big deal. A small aside was assembling, spraying and basing the Legion of the damned as a nice little side project. 

I finally finished my Luna Wolves army, which for me was a tremendous milestone as I never quite believed I would get there. Grey Knights also got some refinement and were brought up to standard. The Crimson fists are also now deemed complete having been slightly restructured and had time spent on basecoating the infantry to tabletop standard to go with the half of the army that is fully painted. A last minute hobby session (literally today!) also brought my Raven guard up to spec with a few characters and bases being added. 

Sons of Orar were a wishlist army based on a fanfic I wrote. When Primaris Marines dropped, I decided to keep them totally seperate from my other collections and draw a line under them. This left me with a Chapter to make fully Primaris and the Sons fit the bill. They are now complete save for a few characters I still haven't assembled which will be addressed in the new year. Sticking with red, Blood Angels were another milestone for me as they too have sat in their boxes for quite some time and desperately needed the last few models organising, building and magnetising to call them done. Now this is complete, I just want to add a land speeder storm and stormhawk to them which Claire kindly bought me for Christmas. 

So all in all a productive year. I'll be sailing into the new year by finishing up the last few models for my blood angels and then continuing to fight the good fight updating all the other armies as I go. Dark Angels will be the first on that list followed by the other in turn. Some, like the blood Ravens, require only minor attention, swapping out some scouts and adding an ancient models. Most require some form of updating to their command squads / now individual characters and having a lieutenant adding. One other thing I am trying to do starting with my marine armies is to change models that are on clear flying bases to sit on oval bases with a clear stem in the middle. Some xenos armies such as nids and eldar will be a lot of effort, but marines usually only need land speeders addressing. 

Three armies will give me a bit more of a headache and these are Salamanders, Ultramarines and Imperial fists. The Salamanders really only need the above updates but in addition still need about half their bases to be done - as these are scratchbuilt and need painting before the models are added they will take a bit of time. The Ultramarines are missing a dozen models, which were used to fill gaps in other armies, the idea being to replace them with the amazing looking Japanese exclusive models. If I ever get my hands on them that's the plan. Lastly, the Imperial Fists need a few models (command and Lt) adding as well as their land raider being refurbished to an achilles pattern and 5 centurions being put together. 

Well, that's about it for now. Undoubtedly there will be more Marine releases to come as time moves on, perhaps more Primaris and special character focussed going forward. This has been a real labour of love for me and a grand ambition that, with a lot of time, dedication, ££ and paint I have against the odds nearly brought to a conclusion. There's plenty of detail painting to be done on them in the years to come but it's extremely satisfying to know that I have the armies all converted, themed and basecoated sitting in boxes ready to game with or paint further whenever I choose.  2017 is almost over and 2018 looks set to be the year I finish all the marines armies off by halfway and branch out towards chaos marines. 

Here's wishing everyone a happy new year.