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.  

Luna wolves near completion and start of 72 hour hobbby/blogathon.

This post marks an end to a very longstanding project and a beginning to a very short one. Firstly, I am almost done fighting the ‘long war’ that is my Luna wolves project. This one has dragged out for a long long time for various reasons. I thought it would be nostalgic to recap the project from its inception. 

I first decided I wanted to make a Luna wolves army when I had been back in the hobby for a couple of years, circa 2008. Main reason for this was that I was starting to branch out into other armies other than blood angels and orks and had just finished reading my first Horus heresy novel: Horus rising. I loved the idea of portraying the Luna wolves prior to the fall with loken’s company being the one of choice. 

At that time the best way to portray them seemed to be using a counts as chaos army and with second edition era vehicles to look the part. As for the look of the marines I decided to try  and go for a look that would be consistent with the cover of False gods, meaning mk7 legs, the cross strap and vent chest pieces, studded shoulder pads made with tiny beads and some custom green stuff heads. I even toyed with the idea of using an old school robot as a chaos dreadnought. 

Suffice to say this idea lurked in the background due to the challenge it represented; that is until the heresy started to arrive. Now suddenly the very models I wanted had started to appear. I got ahold of a few of the forgeworld infantry kits and started to incorporate them. Later followed things such as characters, weapon kits and a contemptor dreadnought. I kept the old rhinos tho, for cost reasons and nostalgia. 

Somewhere in there I picked up the first Horus heresy forgeworld book which gave me a new structure to work with for the army. The Horus heresy gw games (bop/bac) gave me an infantry boost, second contemptor and plenty of bits. The addition of some rapiers, a spartan and xiphon marked the army as complete. Now everything just needed final assembling, most notably the marines I still had who were going by my original design and needing green stuff cast custom helms.

This poor project kept getting pushed to the bottom of the pile but now, finally, we have almost done with things. All the bases have been sorted in 32mm to represent a city under siege during compliance. Everything has been base sprayed in corax white and is ready to go, save for a couple of rapiers which I still need to sort out (can see their gunners on the bases). Sadly, so long as 30k and 40k have a different gaming system I will no longer be able to port them directly into 40k, but could proxy most things as chaos marines once again. Very happy / relieved to have finally got it sorted. The army is only lacking a primus medicae (and I would love justerein one day) but other than that stands as:

Horus

Loken

Abaddon

Centurion (champion)

Command x2

Standard bearer
Chaplain

Contemptor x 2

Tartaros terminators x5

Indomitus terminators x5

Veteran Tactical x10 (locasta)

Tactical x20

Tactical x20

Assault x10

Special weapon x7

Missile launcher x5

Autocannon x5

Bolter Rapiers x 3 

Spartan

Xiphon 

Predator 

Vindicator

Rhino x4

This brings me on to the next, brief project, which is only slightly smaller in scale. I'm in the unique position of having a few days off for my birthday with little on the cards for those days. You may have seen my fledgling primaris army elsewhere on this blog. My wife has kindly bought me the other half of that army and so I thought it would be fun to do a ‘live blog’ of sorts over those few days. This effectively means that tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday I'll be posting a brief progress report to show how far I've got. 

The aim is to assemble 14 intercessors, 1 captain, 1 repulsor, 15 helblasters and 6 inceptors, as well as spraying them red/white and putting them on finished bases. This should be possible in the space of that time frame with some discipline and the only thing that will slow me down is some of the conversion work I will need to do with weapons.  Here's the army as it stands to date; tomorrow we'll take a look at the new additions and the task ahead. Nothing to it but to do it! Cheers. 

5 minutes of fame - 2 models get featured in this month's Visions - Loken and Mephiston!

Greetings chaps. This was, as Dan put it to me, a hobby milestone for me. This month I had the honour of having not just one but two models of mine featured in Warhammer visions. I stopped buying the magazine after the first year but had to invest in this months after Dan alerted me to it. The pictures were taken at the open day at WHW end of last year. I saw one of the models get taken off to be photographed and so secretly hoped it would turn up in print one day. The models in question are my Mephiston conversion on page 93 (labelled with a typo as Jamis rather than Jamie - I blame my poor handwriting) and my Loken (page 89), which was entered under Dan's name as you can only enter one model at a time. So, although my name isn't against either of them technically I did get two models in print. Very proud and love the way they look in studio photographed conditions. Cheers. 

FIRST post of 2016 - much belated hobby progress and musings

Hello folks.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated! It only just occurred to me the other day just how long it has been since I shared a blog post. This will be my first post of 2016 shockingly, due to many factors. Firstly, 40k has been a bit dry first quarter, and thus there's not really been much to comment on. More importantly things have been super busy in non-40k related terms and I have in that period sat exams, got a new job, sold and bought a house.

All in all pretty nightmarish, and though I have found time for hobby sadly the blogging side of things has suffered. The vast majority of my stuff is packed away with only a few armies and models being left out to work on over the next few months around the time of the house move, but at least that brings some focus to what I'm aiming towards. Now that's out of the way, I'll run through what's been going on these past 3 months.

 
Raven Guard:

I've added the last elements to my battle demi-company and have also given these chaps a Command squad made from the FW kit. Most importantly, and something I'm working towards with all the SM armies, I have rebased the entire army onto 32mm and pretty much basecoated every model except for about 10 stragglers. Very happy with how these chaps have come out - I only have a couple more purchases planned for them in the form of the two 30k squad types to use as vanguard / sternguard respectively.

Space Wolves:

I added 5 Wulfen to the army, which as it turns out are gorgeous models. I am currently hoping to spend a couple of days on the army both updating them to 32mm bases and also updating my original wulfen models to be wolf guard using some spare parts from the new Wulfen kit - seems that particular pack is more influenced by their presence. I do love the new Ulrik and Iron Priest models and have added them to the never ending wishlist.

Blood Angels:

Couldn't resist adding the gorgeous new Chaplain model to the army and at the same time I invested in another tactical box, replacing 10 of the older more static members of the army with newer models. I also went all out and replaced 90% of the marines onto 32mm bases, leaving just a few chaps (DC and characters) on 25mm for now until I spray up some more 32mm bases. The Blood Angel army is my largest and most beloved but sadly never quite gets to the point where I'm happy with it. My new policy is to focus more upon getting models to tabletop standards (i.e. one coat on everything) so from a distance they are respectable, rather than painting up squads to a high standard, which takes a lot of time. To this end I am trying to paint up a demi company to those standards as a starting point. I'm about halfway there and hope to be done by the summer in between other things. 

Luna Wolves:

The last real project army amongst my marines. These chaps got the final piece to the puzzle when Betrayal at Calth (still not played it) came out. With a couple of exceptions, every model was donated to them and thus the ranks of the wolves swelled to almost double the size. As well as these models I also added both a Spartan tank and Xiphon Interceptor to them. My main aims are as follows with the army between now and Summertime. Firstly, get all the models assembled and sprayed white. (or black in the case of Abaddon and his Justerein) Secondly, as none of the models are on bases and the resin bases I have for them are all 25mm, I'm going to have to either use 32mm adaptors to make them al up to size or buy/make some 32mm bases for them. This in itself is a massive undertaking and will take some time. Once all this  is complete, the army will still be a few models away from completion, needing some accessories and a couple more tanks, but the back of the beast will be broken.

Deathwatch:

What a treat this set was. Beautiful and characterful minis galore. I had to restrain myself from getting two sets for conversion potential. Ultimately head won over heart though and I stuck to the one set. I have a dozen deathwatch that I have made previously and so will be great alongside these chaps. Saying that though, when I built the new deathwatch models I gave them industrial bases to match the board, so now they have a similar theme to my Iron hands (need updating to 32mm) and are out of synch with my old deathwatch models, which are still on 25mm 'alien' bases. The bases incidentally were easy to make using a pair of dividers and some textured plasticard. Not only some glorious models but also a fantastically fun game - Dan and I are about halfway through the campaign.  

That's all for today folks. Will be posting on other blog in 2 days then here again with an exciting post on Friday. Cheers.