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...