40k Shirts - Custom Mordian 7th Banner shirt!

A while back, the thoroughly talented Eye of Error made a regimental banner for me, and I've long thought I'd like to have a shirt with the banner on it. Recently, my buddy Dave bought a very cool Ad-Mech shirt for me from a fellow in the UK as well as a really cool Salamanders hoodie for himself, and I popped over to the site to see what other shirts they offer. Lo and behold, they also do custom printing, so I'd contacted them about the potential for turning the banner graphic into a shirt.

There were some limitations on what he could do as far as color gradients and font sizes, but he came back to me with several options that I was really pleased with! It's a bit of a simplification of the original banner, but I have to say I'm really happy with how it turned out. The metallic gold is a nice touch (Of course I'm going to have to be incredibly careful when washing it and hang dry it to keep it looking nice)!

While I was at it I ordered up a couple other shirts (after all, shipping across the pond is expensive, so it made sense to order more than just one shirt), including another Thousand Sons shirt (which reminds me, I need to take some pics of the other two KSons shirts I've purchased) and a shirt with an Adeptus Arbites symbol that I quite liked. If you're interested in checking out his shirts, I would heartily recommend them - the owner was a pleasure to work with, and the quality of the printing and the shirts themselves are both top notch! At the owner of the shop's request, I'm not doing a direct link but drop me an email if you're interested and I'll point you in the right direction. :)

Relic - First three character busts painted

I've had my eye on Relic for a while, FFG's 40k-ized take on that old chestnut, Talisman. It finally released earlier this month and my FLGS got a copy in for me. While I haven't had a chance to play the actual game as yet, I have read through the rules and marveled at FFGs usual standard of excellence in their game's production values.

The game comes with a number of character busts to represent the various heroic archetypes, and rather than let them just sit in grey plastic, I thought I'd try my hand at painting them up (with various levels of success thus far, I'll admit).

 

First up is the ubiquitous Space Marine, and naturally it was an ubiquitous-even-for-marines Ultramarine. Not my favorite chapter by any stretch of the imagination, but simple enough to bang out. The busts aren't as crisply detailed as I may have liked, but well enough to get the basic point across. I'd say they're on par scale-wise with the old Inquisitor 54mm models, but nowhere near as detailed. Of course, there are limits to what FFG can do, and I totally appreciate the inclusion of the busts as opposed to the old cardboard standups one used to get with Talisman of old!

 

Next up is the Adeptus Sororitas model, and to be honest now that I've taken some pics of it I'm not really happy with how the face turned out. I can do better than this, darn it! She'll be going back under the brush to try and give her a bit more definition. This is the model that I felt was the most poorly cast, the face doesn't have much in the way of sculpted relief, so I'm going to have to fake some detail in with more shading and washes.

 

The last of the three I've painted thus far is the Sanctioned Psyker, and unlike the Sororitas above, I'm pretty pleased with how his face turned out. I'm trying to match the artwork of the characters provided on the cards that come with the game, which has been interesting. This scale is somewhat odd to work with as well, but has been an entertaining exercise. Three down, seven more to go!

MERCS - KemVar painted

Two posts in two days? Madness! Knocked out the KemVar models recently as well, and thought I'd share the pics. As alluded to in my previous post, I'm less and less happy with how the lightbox pics are turning out and will likely be doing another series of shots against my usual backdrops.

The KemVer are significantly more high tech than the previous FCC squad I'd painted, so I wanted to go with a more futuristic and flashy paint scheme. Since they're described as being members of a Brazilian/Venezuelan faction, I figured the colors from the Brazilian flag would do nicely!

They're definitely colorful! I still need to find the correct type of glue to assemble the 'optical camouflage' models, but they'll make a nice dichotomy on the table. They're either nearly invisible, or bright primary colors!

 

The Assault Leader and Assassin form the main hand-to-hand fighters of the KemVar. They both have rather nasty powered blades and pistols, which means while they don't do much at range, they're extremely nasty if they can get into close combat.

 

The Trooper and Demolitions are the mid-range support models, the former carries repair kits to fix up the armour of his compatriots, and the latter hurls some rather horrific grenades which contain a biological weapon in the form of a segmented worm that burrows through armor and into flesh. Nasty!

 

The Sniper and Heavy bring the big guns to the table. The Sniper carries the usual AP rounds, but also is capable of firing 'repulsor tags' which can prevent tagged opponents from moving within a certain distance of one another. Handy to keep the repair guys and medics away from the people they're trying to fix! The Heavy is capable of firing twin torrents of fire in multiple directions, or combine them for a real hail of lead.

The Shock Trooper is the most recent addition to the KemVar line, and is yet another hand-to-hand fighter. Completely bereft of ranged weaponry, depending on how far she charges when entering combat the more damage she's capable of doing. When charging from the maximum distance, there's not much armor in the Mercs universe that can withstand it!

All in all it's been refreshing to paint up some non-GW minis, and dabbling in some different color schemes has been rather entertaining!

Eldar - Eldar Corsairs painted

Spent some time over the last week working on the Eldar pirates that I'd built about a million years ago. They have been sitting on my painting shelves patiently ever since, but no longer!

They're built from a mix of Dark Elf corsairs and Eldar bits and incorporate some arms and weapons from waaaay back. My intention was to run them as Storm Guardians alongside an Eldar army that I'd planned but never really came to fruition. Not sure what I'll do with them now, worst case scenario is they come in handy for some 40k:RPG campaign along the way. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with the banner either. It needs some iconography, but I haven't found anything I like as yet.

I rather enjoyed the duality of the color scheme coupled with the way the poses turned out. From the front the models are very much purple and blue. From the rear, they're predominantly green. I had some trouble capturing the purple color in the lightbox, so I went back to my old 'on the table' shots which I think show off the colors a bit better. To be honest, I'm thinking about abandoning the lightbox and going back to this, as it seems as though the depth of field and focus ends up being a bit sharper.

Coming up, the finished KemVar models for Mercs!

MERCS - KemVar painting in process

A little more non-40k shenanigans today with an in-process shot of the next Mercs team I'm working on - KemVar. They are a conglomerate founded from a pair of Brazilian and Venezuelan energy companies, and are known for their high tech energy field manipulation. In fact, they utilize the field manipulation to generate an active camouflage stealth suit effect which essentially makes them tremendously difficult (read: annoying) to try and shoot on the tabletop.

Here's the team in a midway-painted stage. I decided to go with the colors from the Brazilian flag for the unit (green, blue and yellow) which gives them a bit more visual pop than the more 'realistic' khaki and olive drab of the FCC models I'd painted earlier. In the back you can see one of the "stealth" models that the company does, though at the moment I've only built the one (single piece) model. The others are all multi-part and it seems that the superglue that I use royally frosts over the acryllic so I need to find a better glue before continuing on...

Fully painted pics to come soon!

Imperial Guard - Mordian 7th Regiment state of the army

I've been spending some time clearing out some detritus from the Closet of Doom and getting things organized. My buddy Dave over at Ex Fide Vivo recently finished up his Blood Angels army and took some army shots so I thought I'd follow suit, and see what exactly remains to be finished for the glorious 7th!

There's a bunch of 'em! As I finish various units I tend to just pack them away in battlefoam trays and store them in the CoD, so it usually comes as a surprise to see how much there is once it's all laid out on the table. Of course, the Leviathan taking up so much space does feel a little like cheating. Heh.

  

Here's a few closer-in shots. There are still a few models that remain unpainted, but not all that many to be honest - a couple tanks, a platoon command squad, the Baneblade and the Leviathan (which isn't really ready to be painted, it still needs more build time and detailing if I'm honest).

I was pretty happy with how this 'ground level' shot turned out. Evin Eldro and his army of criminals, gangers and general scum, backed up by some serious firepower!

Dragged out the painting chart and got it all updated, as well as added in the points costs to see where things stand. 6315 points, and it's nearly all painted - not bad! Nearing the finish line, I'll probably have it done just in time for the new codex to come out and invalidate half of the army. Hah!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Sagittarii Painted

Chugging along with the painting - I wanted to get a few things done 'for me' before I dive into the more mercenary 'paint to sell' work that I have planned on the horizon. There's a mess of half-done projects and leftovers from prior armies that I just need to paint up and free up the space - Orks, Eldar and Chaos all will make their appearance over the next few months. However today it's the forces of Mars once again!

The Sagittarii are the heavy weapons teams of the Skitarii legions. usually incorporating some form of mobile weapons platform that bears the bizarre and arcane weaponry of the Adeptus Mechanicus. I went with a arachnid themed carrier to tie them in with the rest of the insectile models that seem to be proliferating throughout the army.

Whether this will progress into full-blown tech-heresy remains to be seen, but as I have a model representing Urtzi Malevolus, Despoiler of Mars it's probably a fair bet that there may be some dabbling in the Soul Forges in the future somewhere...

With these out of the way, I'm getting stuck in on a unit of Eldar Pirates I'd kitbashed almost six years ago and that have been sitting on the painting shelf for all that time. Time to break out the weird colors for a bit! Purple and Teal and Orange and Green! It's gonna be glorious! ...Or is that hideous? Guess we'll find out!