Heresy Era Iron Hands - Sicaran painting in progress and Praetor build

Made a little more headway on getting the Sicaran battle tanks painted, got the edge highlighting done and started blocking in the areas which will be white on the weapon housings and icons and put the first brown on the tracks to help define them a bit. So far so good!

Not sure if it needs more white, I'm considering doing the sensor housing on the front of the turret in white as well, though that sort of goes against the "weapon housings in white" theme I've been going with so far. Thoughts?

  

Started building the legion praetor as well - Iron Father Vladek Kraal. Pretty straightforward build using the FW praetor in Cataphractii terminator armor and the thunder hammer from a modern era terminator. The servo arm came from Bitspudlo, and I'm planning on replacing the hammer head with one from MaxMini once my friend Dave's order arrives and I can pinch one from him.

The army is really starting to come together now - I'll snap a couple army pics soon to see how it all looks laid out so far!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - Sicaran battle tanks built

Crazy busy week once again, however I was able to squeeze in a little more painting time on the Iron Hands here and there and they're really starting to look like something at this point! Still another session or two to go however, need to highlight and shadow the bases and add in the squad markings on the knees and greaves. Once that's done they'll get a hit of sealant and then I'll add the waterslide clan markings to the right shoulder pads. Not far from the finish line!

Having gotten that far I decided to reward myself with a little build time and banged together the pair of Sicaran tanks. The kits went together like a dream - by far the easiest FW build I've done in a long, long time. Looking at the pics it appears I need to give the cannon barrels another hot water bend treatment, but other than that they're pretty much ready for the paint stage. Really looking forward to putting a brush to 'em!

The side sponsons are once again magnetized for transport and damage mitigation, and I added a tank commander to one of the turrets to represent Spearhead Centurion Castrman Orth - he's very similar to Sergeant Chronos in 40k, it seems. He grants the tank BS5 and tank hunters which coupled with the 6x Str 7 Rending shots the Accelerator Autocannons put out makes it hell on light vehicles and potentially even to the AV14 so prevalent on the 30k battlefields!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - Proteus Land Raiders (mostly) painted, and more batch painting madness

Little more forward motion. Took a break from the infantry to get the Proteus Land Raiders up to the "just off the assembly line" stage - I'm planning on getting all the vehicles to this point then weather them all at once so they stay consistent. They haven't been matte sealed yet so they're still pretty shiny - lots of reflections from the lamps...

 

Have to say I really like the Proteus kit, whatever legion next strikes my fancy will definitely be getting a couple of these tanks as well! Looking forward to trying out a more interesting paint scheme on 'em than the black and white of the Iron Hands...

I also made a little more headway on the tac marines, with the whites finished and the initial earthtone laid down on the bases they're really starting to come into focus! ...Well, the picture itself is a little out of focus, but still!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - Firing up the batch painting machine

While I naturally want to dive in and paint a mess of new tanks (Sicarans and Caestus arrived, woo hoo!), I know that I will regret leaving the infantry for the end and have vowed to get a good chunk of 'em polished off before I work on the fun stuff. In a heresy army, there's usually a fair wedge of infantry to do - big units are the order of the day and the Iron Hands are no exception. I'm still waiting on bits to make the sergeants, vexilla and vox bearers, but there's still a goodly chunk of basic marines to be done. 31 of 'em, in fact!

Started off with a basic black primer, followed by a shadow grey drybrush to catch the upper edges of the armour.

After that was done, all the metal areas were picked out in boltgun metal and then the whole model was given a black wash. Helps to tone down the grey highlights and gives the metal a little definition.

Rather than go entirely black with the armour, I decided the loricated rear leg sections would also be done up in metal. Gives them a little extra visual interest beyond just the basic black armour plates.

Next up was to lay down a basecoat on all the areas that will end up being white - the weapon housings and the legion symbol. As a little reward I'm also painting the two dreadnoughts at the same time, giving me something different to look forward to every 15 models or so!

So far so good!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - Contemptors built

Not much hobby time this week I'm afraid, though I did manage to build the two Contemptors which was fun!

  

The first one is running a pair of kheres assault cannons, which just pours out a ton of shots and with the addition of the mortis rules in Massacre, it's also an effective anti-air model which my army was definitely lacking.

  

The second contemptor is the jack of all trades variety, with a power fist, and a magnetized weapon arm allowing me to choose from an array of weapon options. At the moment I'm going with a twin linked lascannon, but I do want to pick up a plasma cannon and multi-melta as well.

Here's the pair of 'em, reasonably pleased with how the builds worked out. The iron hands contemptor models have some rather serious gotchas in the build process, all those hoses and conduits hanging down from the abdomen and torso look great but really interfere with the waist and hips. Overall though, great models - I love all the pose options you get with this kit!

Imperial Guard - Apocalypse at Feast of Blades 2013

Massive picture dump today! My buddy Dave and I attended Feast of Blades this past Saturday and threw down the glorious 7th in a massive apocalypse battle that raged all day. At any given time there was about 12-15,000 points on a side, with players coming and going throughout the day. Overall the Mordian 7th was hopelessly outclassed and they were blown off the table quickly and brutally. We were allowed a sort of 'meatgrinder reserves' and as such the overall attrition rate of the army hovered somewhere around 300% with units coming on in one turn and being annihilated in the next, only to repeat the following turn! Here's some shots of the chaos from the event:

Phew! That's a lot of pics! All in all a fun time even though the guard were butchered to a man (several times over). While it was amusing to plonk all of the guard down on the table, it was rather obvious that it's not a viable Apocalypse army. Good times nonetheless!

Imperial Guard - Mordian 7th Regiment at Feast of Blades

Just a quick hit today - My buddy Dave and I are planning on attending Feast of Blades down in Denver this coming weekend to participate in the big narrative Apocalypse game on Saturday. I'll be wearing my Mordian 7th shirt, and should be easy to spot. If you're attending the event, stop by and say hello!

I'm planning on taking down the whole regiment which (with the exception of the Leviathan Command Carrier) will be the first time the whole army will hit the table, and be entirely painted! I plan on taking a bunch of pics at the event, should be a really fun time!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - Tactical Squads build commences!

The back half of the Forge World order is now inbound, so I spent some time last night clipping, cleaning and starting to assemble the 40 tac marines that will form the backbone of the army.

Laid out the 40 bases (slate style from Back to Base-ix) and started clipping and cleaning all the legs and torsos. The intent is to do two ten man squads with extra close combat weapons, and one twenty man squad with basic bolters.

The two ten-man squads will primarily be shown carrying bolt pistols and chainswords, with their bolters on slings (once they arrive). I'm planning on picking up a couple packs of the Iron Hands Legionaires they showed off to use as sergeants in the squads (hence the empty bases here and there).

The twenty-man squad is just torsos and legs so far, I'm holding off on adding arms until the Phobos-pattern bolters arrive and I can see how the arm spacing/leveling needs to go.

So far so good, though!