Imperial Guard - Baneblade painting begins

At this point there are only two vehicles left in the guard army, and they're both huge. The Leviathan of course is absurdly big, but the other one is only really large - the Baneblade! I am a huge fan of the Baneblde, and over the course of my hobby career I've built, painted and eventually gotten rid of easily half a dozen. From the old laughably hamfisted attempt to build one out of plasticard using the templates in an old White Dwarf, to the various renditions that armorcast made, through several versions of Forge World's creations to a few of the new plastic GW kit I've loved them all.

The most recent one is a fairly vanilla take on the current plastic kit, with a couple extra banner pole additions, an extra sensor from the command upgrade sprue and a respirator-masked crewman popping his head out of a hatch holding a laspistol. The absurdity of his pistol in relation to all the other weapons bristling on the tank makes me chuckle!

Once it was built and primed black, I started off by giving the tank a drybrush of shadow grey, and started blocking in the panels that will be red - I'm thinking it needs a bit more red around the turrets and main hull. Still a long way to go, but so far so good!

Imperial Guard - Medusa Emplacement rebased

Pressing on with the guard, and went back to one of the old models to start the touch-up process. One of the units that needed updating to the current scheme was the Medusa emplacement. That is primarily accomplished with re-basing it, taking it from the old concrete rubble style as seen in this old photo to the current grass and rock theme to match the rest of the army.

 

The Medusa is hands down my favorite artillery piece, and my favorite things about the emplaced version (in 5th edition at least), was that there was a rule that allowed immobile units to be deployed via deep strike. "Surprise! Medusa from the skies!" I've always wanted to create some parachute shrouds to add to the base, but I'm not sure that the rule still applies in 6th edition.

 

At this point however, the trooper's fatigues and the weapon's banding don't match the dark blue/black of the majority of the army, which I'm thinking of justifying as the medusa emplacement being from the 7th's A company, rather than D company which comprises the majority of my army and therefore have a slight variation on the color scheme. This is in no way a craven attempt to not have to repaint them. No sir. The Master of Ordnance and Bodyguard models I have (who are ostensibly from regimental command) wear the reversed colors with grey fatigues and red armor, so it all kind of works (if you squint)! This also raises the idea that when I'm done with D company, I can move on and start working on A, B and/or C Companies and explore some other color combos...

Just 5 days until GenCon! Woo-hoo!

Imperial Guard - Pask's Vanquisher and Medusa painted

As they were 90% done as of the last post, it was a simple matter to finish off the Vanquisher and Medusa!

 

Pask got the lion's share of the work - the flag got a little more color and detail, as did his skin and uniform. It turns out I'm apparently out of white 'mordian' waterslides so I went with a name for the tank on the turret instead, taken from a sisters of battle transfer sheet.

 

Went back and added some more red trim to the Medusa and re-painted the HK missile in yellow to match the rest of the weapons. I do still need to sort out some crewmen for this tank, though - that's been bugging me. In a pinch I can use a pair of gunners from the Medusa Emplacement (which I haven't taken a photo of since re-basing it), after all they're used to firing one! Heh.

While I had the paints out, I did spend half an hour painting up the 'active camo' versions of the MERCs KemVar team. "Painting them" being synonymous with "applying about five colors to the bases", it took virtually no time at all.

  

I'm planning on playing a couple games of MERCS out at GenCon, and figured I had better finish up the team! My buddy Dave and I threw down a game this past weekend and he did a great write-up about it - Definitely worth checking out!

Imperial Guard - Medusa and Pask's Vanquisher

The imperial guard is the runaway result on the poll, so I popped open the painting chart before delving into the Closet of Doom to see what there was to work on.

Not really all that much more to do with the guard. Well, at least not until they get their 6th ed. codex release, at which point I'm sure there's going to be several new additions to the army!

 

I decided I'd start by knocking out another couple tanks that have been languishing in a primered state for the better part of a year: The Medusa and the command tank for the burgeoning Vanquisher squadron, with my counts-as Pask and his infeasible banner.

 

I started off by finishing up the red sections, and started blocking in the yellow and metallic areas. After looking at the pics, I'm thinking about going back in and painting the hunter/killer missile on the Medusa in yellow to match the rest of the weapons.

 

A little more detailing work, finished up the yellow and started adding in the painted heraldry. Once they're painted and sealed, I'll be going back in to add some waterslide transfers as well.

 

Next up were the tracks, which got the usual dark flesh/leather brown drybrush to match the rest of the tanks. At this point they're about 85% done, a little more work remains before I can seal 'em and add the transfers. Once I have all the tanks in the army up to the same level of done-ness I'm planning on going over all of them and add some weathering effects using some of the sponge and wash techniques I'd experimented with on the Eldar. Looking forward to that!

In other news, the Eldar auctions I have going at the moment are going to be ending in just a few days. Check 'em out here if you're interested!

So what's next?

With the Eldar (more or less) behind me, it's time to consider what to work on next. I'm truly at an impasse as to what that may be so I figured I'd turn to you folks to find out what you'd like to see more of! I've put together a poll in the upper right that lays out the options from the (waaaaay too many) projects that languish in various states of incompletion in the Closet of Doom...

#1 - Imperial Guard. There's still plenty of work to be done on the Glorious 7th, numerous tanks and a handful of infantry. Of all the projects, this one is the nearest to completion.

#2 - Adeptus Mechanicus. There's always more work to be done on the Ad-Mech. There's several units of Skitarii that need to be built, as well as some fun tanks using the final pair of King Russ tanks that I have, and plenty of already-built stuff that needs to be painted.

#3 - Tzeentch Renegades. There's a burgeoning 40k Chaos army lurking on the shelves and in various states of assembly. While they'd be fun to do, they are predominantly blue and yellow, which I just got done doing a whole mess of with the Alaitoc gits.

#4 - Heresy-Era World Eaters. This is essentially not even an army, just a random assortment of units that need to be painted and sold. There's some cataphract terminators, an assault squad, some jetbikes... And that's about it. Would be simple to knock out, and would let me experiment on some new white techniques (I was never very happy with my previous method).

#5 - Orks. Lastly, there's darn near an entire Ork army left over from years and years ago, built and primered. including a Stompa with some FW upgrades. The only thing the army lacks is any sort of HQ choice, which would be easy enough to rectify. Downside: Batch painting ahoy.

What do you folks want to see? Please vote on the poll, or if you have other ideas please let me know in the comments!

Blatant Self Advertisement - Eldar on eBay

Time to stuff the pointy-eared gits into the webway and off to their next destination - the vast majority of the Eldar I've been working on of late are now up on the auction block to help pay for a new pair of glasses (boo!) and act as some extra spending money for GenCon (woo!). Note that as a general rule, I don't sell or ship overseas anymore due to the ludicrous price increases in shipping costs. However, if you are a follower of the blog in good standing and are interested in bidding please contact me via email, I'm willing to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis (just bear in mind that the actual shipping costs will need to be determined at the end of the auction).

A couple folks have asked for an army shot so I snapped a couple quick pics over my lunch hour. They certainly are... Colorful! All in all a thoroughly enjoyable army to paint, and I'm looking forward to applying some of the techniques I used on these guys in my future projects. The sponge effect really worked out well and I'm thinking it may be fun to use that technique to apply weathering to the dozens of guard tanks that are lurking in the Closet of Doom!

In other news, we finally got the recordings and video from a gig we did over the 4th of July weekend with the band. The mp3 recordings may be found here, and we have the whole show up on our YouTube channel here. Video quality isn't exactly astounding unfortunately - I'm the blur playing bass on the right. Heh. For the most part I just play bass and do backing vocals, but I'm singing lead on "Ozark Mountain Racer". Fun times!

Eldar - (subset of) The army going onto the auction block

With GenCon rapidly approaching, and the unexpected cost of a new pair of glasses cropping up last week, it's time to put the Eldar up for sale. I'd been waffling about what exactly was going up on the block as I did want to keep a small allied contingent for my guard. I finally settled on what that would be (Bonesinger, Wraithblades, Corsairs and the Crimson Hunter) but the rest is getting the chop. I went through and snapped a new set of pics of what all will be up for sale over the next couple days, and figured I'd share 'em here:

HQ

Farseer

 

Spiritseer

Warlock Council

 

ELITES

Fire Dragons

Striking Scorpions

TROOPS

Dire Avengers

Guardian Defenders

FAST ATTACK

Warp Spiders

 

HEAVY SUPPORT

Falcon

 

Wraithlord

  

Wraithknight

  

DEDICATED TRANSPORTS

Wave Serpent 1

 

Wave Serpent 2

 

APOCALYPSE

Tempest

 

All in all I really had a blast painting this army, all the various color schemes helped to stave off Army Painter's Fatigue and it was surprisingly easy to stay on task and keep cranking them out. Expect to see a lot more Hobby ADHD over the next few months as I ricochet crazily around the half dozen other projects that lurk within the Closet of Doom!