Heresy Era Word Bearers - Army Complete!

Another army complete, and likely to be sold off without ever actually hitting the tabletop? Seems that way! The Word Bearers army that I'd initially planned for Adepticon proved to be thematically incompatible with the events that I'm participating in (hence the recent World Eaters). Nevertheless, in the background I have been chipping away at 'em and with the delivery and subsequent painting of some last remaining bases, the army is complete! Figure I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Argel Tal

Kor Phaeron and Erebus

Zardu Layak and his Blade Slaves

Legion Chaplain

Gal Vorbak

Cataphractii Terminators

Apothecarion Detachment

Cortus Contemptor Talon

Assault Squad

Tactical Squad

Ashen Circle

Sicaran Venator

The all important painting chart!

Pretty happy with how the army turned out, and am a little bummed that it won't get any table time at Adepticon. Such is life, however! They'll be going on the auction block soon enough to help fund the next project - What that may be remains to be seen, but there's a non-zero chance that it's going to be a return to the Benevolent Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor, if the recent upcoming release reveals are anything to go by...

Heresy Era World Eaters - Tanks in progress and command squad built!

Cracking on with the World Eaters over the last few days, and got some decent progress on 'em! Part of the plan was to build a command squad to accompany Kharn in one of the two Dreadclaws, which was rather fun:

Tried to include a mix of weapons and poses, hard to go wrong with a couple dudes with power fists and plasma pistols though. Thought one of 'em ought to have a pair of lightning claws, and it was pretty much a given that I needed to include one guy with an eviscerator! Pretty happy with the contained aggression the standard bearer ended up with as well. They should be a hoot to paint!

On the other side of the coin I did run into a slight issue when painting the tanks. As I'd feared, the recipe that works pretty well on infantry doesn't translate perfectly to the large flat panels of the tanks, and the wash step got pretty streaky. For the most part I'm hoping to play it off as weathering, and once I got some of the detailing and spot colors on they're starting to look reasonable. There's still a fair bit of mud and grime that I'm going to be adding, which should help as well.

I always loved the old Proteus Land Raider, and even through it's not an assault vehicle it still finds its way into many of my armies. It just suits the heresy-era aesthetic so well! For the purposes of the force for adepticon it will likely not even carry any troops and just act as a battle tank, though depending on the mission the five-man missile launcher heavy support squad might catch a ride in it as needed.

Trying out a new Sicaran variant with this army and included an Arcus. Not sure how it'll perform on the tabletop but on paper it seems pretty fierce. It can carry numerous missile types making it capable of dealing with a number of different threats ranging from infantry to aircraft and pretty much everything in between. It's not cheap to buy all the various payloads but I'm thinking it'll likely be worth it!

...Or it'll be blown to scrap in turn one every game. One of the two. Heh.

Necromunda - Brother Hameln of House Cawdor

Just a quick hit today - Among other projects on the painting table of late is some reinforcements for my House Cawdor gang in the form of Brother Hameln and his coterie of bomb rats!

These little critters are from Anvil Industries, and includes a little detonator hand for their erstwhile controller. Tons of character to the sculpts, I'll almost feel bad running them into harm's way!

Anvil also does some great rat swarm models, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with a few bases full for special scenarios. Hoping to get some games in over the upcoming weekend in preparation for a Necromunda event at Adepticon this year, pics to follow!

Heresy Era Word Bearers and World Eaters - The Shadow Crusade kicks into high gear!

The Heresy train has no brakes, and over the last month I've not only been cranking out Blackstone Fortress and Necromunda models, but also feverishly working on my Shadow Crusade force of Word Bearers and World Eaters! The original intention was to take a Word Bearers primary detachment with some World Eater allies to Adepticon in March, but due to a misunderstanding of the event that I signed up for, it turns out that the Word Bearers are a no-go. Turns out the event I signed up for is actually intended to be a Great Crusade era event, which means that the heavily-corrupted Word Bearers I have are thematically inappropriate (as all that chaos-y nonsense didn't happen until later in the Heresy), but more to the point, they're all in the wrong livery which is, as we all know, really inexcusable. Nevertheless, I pulled out the force to snap a quick pic of where things stand (minus the dreads and Sicaran Venator as they're not fully done)!

While that set me back on my heels a bit, I'm not one to give up so easily. Suddenly what was going to be a little 500 point allied detachment of World Eaters is now slated to become a fully-realized 3000 point army, and I have less than three months to accomplish it. Eep! Nevertheless, I've set to with gusto and have the first two squads nearing completion.

Pretty jazzed with how they're coming along thus far, still gotta get some weathering and blood spatter on 'em, as well as buy and paint up enough bases for the expanded scope of the force. So much to do!

I've more or less settled on a list for Adepticon, though some further tweaking will no doubt occur. While I don't intend to take the Angriest Ron with me to the event (hence why the list is 400 points over in the chart above), I do plan on painting up both him and Lorgar for the now ridiculously-sized Shadow Crusade force. 7000 points combined isn't too much, right?

Testing... Is this thing still on?

Rumors of my demise have been slightly exaggerated, and I must apologize for my absence over the last month.While it would be easy to offer up a litany of excuses, the main point is I've been remiss in keeping the blog up to date, and it's high time to rectify the situation - While I haven't been posting, I certainly haven't been inactive!

So over the next few days I'll be curating and updating a number of projects (as well as taking a lot of new pics as I'm finding several shots that look good on a phone screen are garbage on an actual monitor. Doh! First off will be one of my most anticipated recent releases, Blackstone Fortress!

Honestly the first 40k box set I've been excited about since Necromunda - Specialist Games, how I adore thee!

Gotta have the group shot first. While I liked the Rogue Trader and entourage that came with Kill Team, THIS is what a proper Rogue Trader group ought to look like with all the strange and esoteric members!

Gotta love stripey pants!

Possibly my favorite model of the bunch, I love the aesthetic and got a chuckle at the name-check nod to Lustram Locarno in the 1st edition Rogue Trader rulebook.

Gotta love a fat priest! Thoroughly enjoyed painting this guy's outrageous rainment.

Burn baby, buuuuuuurrrrrrnnnnn! Dig the model, though it's a bit overpowered in the game itself I'm finding...

"Beep boop. I am a completely normal Imperial Robot and not an abominable intelligence. No sir."

Perhaps the most characterful of the entourage, the ratling twins were a hoot to paint and are quite amusing in-game as well!

If I was only going to paint one Kroot, I basically HAD to paint him up like an archetypal farmyard chicken, right?

The Eldar Ranger was so stealthy it was only at this point that I realized the pic was way out of focus. Derp. Reshoots required!

Quite liked the shades-of-green cameleoline cloak, and took a crack at the Biel-Tan thorny vines thing with marginal success.

Really, really liked the traitor guardsmen, but was really disappointed to find out they didn't do full ten-man squads. Still, great new sculpts full of character!

The second seven got the reversed color schemes on pants and jackets, but it's sort of hard to tell. In game they're sorts of grabbed at random so they all end up hanging together aesthetically at least.

The two rogue psykers are simply exemplary models!

Who doesn't like beastmen? Well, a lot of people apparently but I for one miss having 'em in 40k and was jazzed to see 'em in the set!

The Negavolt Cultists are some very evocative models, and would love to see more of this sort of thing on the Dark Mechanicus side!

The Spindle Drones were a neat new addition to the mix, though it was at this point my cunning plan to trim the slotta bases off the models sort of bit me. Trimming and gluing them down to the new bases was fraught with danger!

Interestingly, the models I'm most proud of are the ones I was least excited about in the whole set. I did some experiments with washes and color modulation on these guys and really dug how they turned out!

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed painting all the models, and the game itself is a blast to play (though does require a bit of a time commitment)! Next up, diving headfirst back into the Heresy with a surprise shift in direction due to some late-breaking news...