Heresy Era Iron Hands - Proteus Land Raiders built

After a nice soak and scrub, I managed to get the pair of Proteuseses built! I was reasonably pleased with how the kits went together. I built one to completion first to see how it worked and beyond a reasonable amount of hot-water bending I found it to be relatively painless.

The only thing that I found it that you're better off starting attaching the tracks to the upper side and work down, which allows for any track trimming (of which there was some) is at least hidden on the bottom of the tank.

I did add magnets to the side sponsons for ease of painting and transport. While the attachment is far more robust than the original plastic kit's single thin post, I'd much rather they pop loose than break off when they are inevitably knocked about in gaming.

Definitely looking forward to painting 'em. ...Of course, one could argue that they're about half done already. Hah!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - So it begins...

A big ol' package showed up on my doorstep this afternoon - the first Box O' Joy has arrived!

I love the smell of fresh resin in the morning. Smells like... Victory!

Got everything laid out and verified that it's all present and accounted for - pulled out the two Proteus Land Raiders and have them in the soak as well. Hope to get them put together tomorrow night and jump in on the painting this weekend!

Iron Hands - Batch painting complete!

Whew! Twenty five guys done, and based on the notes I took while churning through 'em, the overall time spent was just a little shy of ten hours. Not too bad!

First up is the tac squad I'd shown previously, with the multi-melta being replaced by a missile launcher and a bit more dust and mud on the legs.

The second tac squad carries a plasma cannon and plasma gun, I figure with all the Gets Hot rolls, it just means they're more likely to get some extra bionics!

Next is a devastator squad with a couple extra heavy weapons to swap in and out as needed. Always handy!

A few extra characters were mixed in the assembly line as well, including a pair of techmarines and a librarian.

For what I thought would be a relatively simple paint scheme, there are 21 colors that go into it. How did that happen?

I'll be the first to admit this is not my best work, I was more focused on speed than technique - I will definitely be taking more time working through the heresy-era Iron Hands. That said, I figure even if the painting time doubles, I will still be able to finish up the upcoming army before January!

Iron Hands - Batch painting continues...

Another crazy week, and not a whole lot of time to spend painting. Did manage to get some brush time in this evening, though!

More or less got everything done but some minor clean up and the bases at this point. In the home stretch now! Keeping with the limited palette has been interesting, but I do have to say that I'm looking forward to painting up some Alpha Legion and/or Thousand Sons - something with a little more colour!

I'm a little behind my planned schedule, but I have nothing planned for tomorrow evening (here's hoping it stays that way) so they'll be done just a day or two 'late'. Still feeling confident I can get the heresy-era Iron Hands done by January - I finally got notification that the first order has shipped, and I'm really jazzed about the recent Iron Hands previews coming out of Forge World!

Iron Hands - Firing up the batch painting machine!

The waiting continues, and in the meantime Forge World has released pics of all sorts of cool heresy-era models. Darn it, this second half of the order I had planned is getting more expensive all the time! To pass the time I figured I may as well keep plugging away on the current era Iron Hands. Great practice, at least!

Haven't had as much time to paint as I'd like, work and Real Life(tm) have been eating up the schedul in a huge waye. Nevertheless, the initial black and metal tones went on super quick - shadow grey, boltgun metal, black wash and then walk away for at least an hour while the wash dries. I find it's a good idea to keep a couple reference models nearby to ensure I'm following the same recipe, nothing like realizing (for example) at the end when you're putting them away next to the earlier models that all 20 of the the guardsmen you just painted have fatigues that are a different shade of blue from the rest of the army and will require a repaint. Not that that's ever happened to me. ...On more than occasion.

I got a little free time after work today and laid down another layer of shadow grey on the areas that will eventually be white. Even though there's 25 of 'em going at once, I'm really rather enjoying painting them - will all the bionics and whatnot each model is rather different from the last and that helps keep me on task. The heresy marines will also have more bionics than your run of the mill army, though likely not to the extent of these current-era brethren...

I am pretty pleased with the progress thus far (hoping to have them done by the weekend), it bodes well for my ability to crank out the heresy force before January!

Iron Hands - Land Raider painted

Well, the forge world order has been delayed - Apparently the Iron Hands shoulder pads that I'd included in the order are pre-order only (thought they had already been released) which means the whole shipment is going to be on hold until the 30th. That's a little annoying as it means I have two less weeks to get everything finished than I had thought. On the up side that also means that the second half of the order (which I'd figured on making as soon as the order page comes up for Massacre) will likely arrive at the same time as the first. It's gonna be an avalanche of resin!

So, since I don't have any Iron Hands to work on, I figured I'd work on some Iron Hands. Heh. In order to 'get my eye in' on the paint scheme for the 30k models I figured that I'll just churn along on the 40k ones. I wanted to try out the vehicle scheme, so out came a conversion model that my friend gave me (along with the rest of the 40k Iron Hands as well). Needed a little TLC, but all in all I love the extended assault ramp and the big ol' mechanicus symbol!

 

Fairly simple scheme - prime black, give the whole thing a drybrush of shadow grey (hitting the upper edges especially), hit all of the metal parts in boltgun metal, then wash it all down with black. The white parts are then picked out in shadow grey followed by ghost grey, with the extreme edges hit with skull white. Ridged cabling in blue, smooth cabling in yellow, pick out lenses and headlamps and done! Of course, that means you end up with a sort of boring black brick. Time to bust out the sponges!

 

I'm still a novice at weathering, but I feel like I'm starting the get the hang of it. I've always painted my tracks in a dark flesh/earth brown tone, so those colors were then sponged on to the lower half of the tank, trying to mimic the direction the mud would tend to spatter (up and rearward). Then a light sponging of khaki just here and there was applied to push the color a little further.

 

Finally I went in and daubed some chocolate brown here and there where I wanted to represent places the paint had been worn down to bare metal - Places such as leading edges where it would logically be scraped away, around the sill of the doors where they'd hit the ground. Once that was on, they got picked out in boltgun metal (leaving some of the brown showing) and the extreme edges in shiny silver. I tried my hand at some long scrapes along the top of the tank, but they are less convincing than I'd like. Still, practice makes perfect!

All in all it took about three hours, and turned out looking pretty decent. I'm definitely going to be adding similar weathering to my guard tanks, it really helps break up the monotony of all that black!

Heresy Era Iron Hands - Choosing the army

In preparation for the Heresy 30k US events taking place this coming January, I needed to come up with an army list. In general most of my armies are created via the "Buy whatever catches my eye and then try and make a list out of it" method, but this time around I wanted to build the list first, then only buy what was needed. This would help keep costs down (relatively speaking) as I knew it was going to end up being a massive Forge World order.

Armies in 30k vary somewhat from the standard force organization chart, but the most basic "HQ and two troops" minimum requirement still applies. As shown in the previous post, the HQ choice was a no-brainer - a Praetor with the Forge Father upgrade, giving him all sorts of fun extra kit.

For troops choices, the stalwart tactical squad is a favorite. Unlike their modern-day bretheren however, they are capable of being taken in squads of up to 20, though they do lose access to any special or heavy weapons. To balance that out they do get the "Fury of the Legion" special rule which allows them to fire twice in one round, but losing the ability to fire the following round. Potentially up to 80 shots coming out of the unit is rather scary! Forge World does a 30-man bundle for the various armour marks, so I ordered up a set of the Mk.3 variety. That gives me enough for one 20-man squad and one 10-man squad, but that's not quite enough in my opinion, I wanted to do at least 40 tac marines (one 20-man and two 10-man squads).

Knowing that I am going to be kitting the tactical squads out with extra chainswords/close combat weapons I ordered several 5-man Mk.3 despoiler squads and some extra holstered pistols which will allow me to mix and match guys carrying chainswords, bolt pistols and slung bolters throughout the rest of the tactical squads, hopefully giving the units a bit more visual interest than just "a bunch of dudes with bolters". The guys who don't get chainswords will be getting the chainblade attachments on their bolters so it all stays WYSIWYG.

I needed transports capable of delivering the two ten-man tactical squads to whatever objectives they need to capture and weather the storm of fire getting them there, so a pair of land raider proteus tanks should fit the bill nicely. They are not assault vehicles like the more modern style phobos, but the Rule of Cool is definitely in play here; I absolutely love the nod to the original plastic Mk.1 land raider!

Next up was the Elites choices. In 30k you're allowed four elites choices which is nice, but I had an eye on a big ol' 9-strong unit of terminators in cataphractii plate which ate up a huge number of points. At the moment I haven't ordered them as I want to hold out to see the rumoured Gorgon Terminators/Morlocks. If the recent emperor's children terminator honour guard are any indication, they're going to be fantastic!

To carry the terminators (and the forge father who will be accompanying them), only one tank would do. The land raider spartan - another nod to the old school model shown in White Dwarf back when it was awesome. Weighing in at 340 points all kitted out, I was running out of points at an alarming rate, but had a nice solid core of four scoring units that were all hard as nails.

Rounding out the Elites choices was a cheap-as-chips Apothecary to accompany the 20-man footslogging tactical squad, providing them all with FnP. Hard to go wrong there! I had picked up the two-apothecary set a while back, and had given the Mk.4 dude to my buddy Dave for his Heresy-Era Salamanders force, leaving a Mk.3 model to use with the Iron Hands - worked out well!

On the Heavy Support front, I ended up with 5 'leftover' marine models from the mix of tactical and despoiler squads, so they got an autocannon upgrade set to allow me to field a small 5-man heavy support squad. I really dig how the autocannon set looks, and though I realize that 5 guys probably isn't enough, I'm hoping the sight of two land raiders and a spartan bearing down on them will cause my opponents to de-prioritize shooting at this squad!

In addition I definitely wanted to add one of the new Sicaran Battle Tanks, but not knowing points values means I've just pulled a number out of thin air, erring on the high side to give me some adjustment room when the rules finally drop. I love how this tank looks, and cannot wait to get my hands on one!

If I'm doing Iron Hands, i felt it was my duty to include some Mechanicum allies in the form of Calleb Decima and a small unit of Thallax. I think it'll be nice to add a splash of color to the otherwise predominantly black-and-white army. Doesn't hurt that they're already purchased and painted either! When the dust settled I had exactly 100 points left over, which made a defense line and quad gun a no-brainer. I was worried about what I'd do for anti-air, as I expect to see more than a few storm eagles during the heresy weekender!

The final step was to put together the painting chart, which helps me stay organized and figure out what exactly needs to get done. At the moment it's a sea of red, but over the next couple months it'll all be turning green! The first Forge World order has been placed and it's winging its way across the pond to me. I am really looking forward to it!