Heresy Era Heroes of the Imperium - Master of Mankind painting (almost) done

Well, sometimes a hobby session just doesn't go the way you want it to. Set about working on the Emperor model a bit more and got all the way up to the end and then flubbed the face. Not super noticable until I took pictures of it but man, the eyes just didn't come out right! Nothing like a cross-eyed Emperor.

 

So, that'll need a little work to fix I think. Other than that I'm pretty happy with how the model turned out, though I think once I get the face re-done it'll go up on the auction block - I'd like to take another crack at the model, but utilizing one of the Primarch heads instead. I think if I could get my hands on a Rowboat Girlyman or Ferrus Manus head it might look a little better.

After that bit of frustration I was excited to come to grips with the Gothic KV-2 tanks that (finally!) arrived from MaxMini. Got 'em all washed and was in the process of getting things clipped off the casting blocks that it came to light that two of the kits were missing tracks. Highly irritating after I'd waited just shy of two months for them to arrive. Sent a note out to 'em to see what could be done. So that was a bust, I figured that I'd pull out the armored Proteus Land Raiders I'd uncovered for use with the upcoming Thousand Sons.

Throne of Terra! Missing a set of tracks for these kits too?! Even more annoying than the KV-2's, I'd ordered these kits back in March of 2015 prior to the FW site rebuild, and the order details that these came from have been deleted from their site. I was able to dig up the PayPal invoiced from the order but they don't have any line-item details. I sent off an email to Forge World but don't really hold out much hope that they'll be willing to send replacement tracks after such a delay. Guess we'll see how it goes.

All in all a rather frustrating bit of hobbying this weekend. On the up side I did manage to get in my first game of Infinity and had quite a lot of fun playing it!

Heresy Era Heroes of the Imperium - The Master of Mankind painting begins

Been pretty quiet on the hobby front this past week, but I got a little time in to start laying down the gold on the Emperor. I'm rubbish at the NMM technique, and figured this is not a model to experiment on so the ordinary metallic methods it will be!

Started off my laying in a basecoat of Brassy Brass. Generally speaking I find most gold paint to be rather translucent, and laying a gold in directly over a black basecoat tends to make for a dull lifeless color. The brass is a bit more opaque so covers over the black well, and will 'shine through' the gold making for a richer, more vibrant color.

Glorious Gold was liberally drybrushed over the brass, leaving the deepest crevices to show the brass coloration.

Next up the upper surfaces were given a light drybrush of Polished Gold, making sure to only draw the brush down the model from overhead, leaving the under surfaces in the previous gold color.

Once that was done, the model was given an initial wash of Reikland Fleshshade. This helps add a rich reddish-gold tone, and helps define a lot of the details. At this point the model must be left alone for a good hour or so to properly dry (you can see it's still wet in this photograph), so further steps will have to wait until a later day. Next up comes the more painstaking part, going back in and with a fine detail brush start selectively highlighting the various details and scrollwork to brighten it back up again and help it 'pop', followed by a further selective pin washing. As far the model itself goes, still feeling the head is a little small, but overall I'm quite happy with the sculpt. Lots of neat little details that I'm catching now that I'm really looking at it up close!

In other news I'm finally getting the Rogue Trader campaign I've been working on off the ground starting in a couple weeks, so there's a good chance there may be some more 40-themed RPG minis crossing the painting desk in the near future. The Geno Five-Two are down to the last handful of colors as well, holding off on pics until I can finish 'em up and lay out pics of the whole infantry group, though!

Infinity - Morat Aggression Force (mostly) Painted

Another long week attending a training class so not much in the way of hobby time, but my plans fell through for Saturday morning so suddenly there was a flurry of painting! More or less finished up the Morat Aggression Force, though as is always the case it is when manipulating and cropping the pictures for posting that I notice all sorts of little things on the models that I've missed or forgotten. This is especially true on these models, having never worked with them before it's only in retrospect that I realize "oh, that's a pouch/ammo clip/whatnot" or more distressingly "oh, that's actually a piece of flash". In any case, on with the pictures!

Kornak Gazarot, Superior Warrior-Officer - One of the better leader choices for the MAF, Kornak provides some extra leadership/order bonuses, and is a surprisingly effective combatant on the table. In many armies it behooves the player to 'hide' his army commander as there are penalties for losing the Lieutenant, but the MAF's special rules essentially allow them to ignore that. Pathetic cowardly humans, it is true and right that the officers should lead proudly by example!

Med-Tech Obsidon Medchanoid - Otherwise known as "Dr. Worm". The one non-Morat unit in the force, Dr. Worm and his attendant drones were must-have models just for the aesthetic, in my opinion.

Morat Vanguard Infantry - The backbone of the MAF, the Morat Vanguard are the most basic troopers, primarily there to provide Orders to the force. Treitak Anyat is a character that can join up with the Vanguard models to form a surprisingly flexible fireteam.

Morat Vanguard Specialists - The Vanguard have a wide array of equipment options, including a number of various heavy weapons as well as a functional but somewhat uninspiring hacker (not something the MAF excels at).

Raktorak, Morat Sergeant Major - The Raktorak are described as being the second-in-command/bodyguards to the MAF officers, though in-game they lack any rules that allow them to effectively do so, so unfortunately while they're some of my favorite models in the range, will likely never actually take the field.

Yaogat Strike Infantry - The Yaogat are the medium infantry of the MAF, with far heavier armour and better stats than the Vanguard. Quite a bit more expensive and lacking the heavy weapon and specialist options, they're nonetheless handy to have due to their multispectral visors which allows them to see through smoke and chaff which are common on the Infinity battlefields.

Daturazi Witch Soldiers - The Daturazi are the scary close combat units of the MAF, with a predilection for charging their opponents and carving them into little chunks. The MAF utilizes a range of different types of close combat weapons (AP, Shock, etc), so I tried to color-code them throughout the force to allow me to tell at a glance what type of weapon is cleaving into the opponent's forces.

Suryat Assault Heavy Infantry - The Suryats are the smallest of the power-armored units in the MAF, generally toting special or heavy weapons and being generally burly. Sadly there's just the one model available currently, but there's nothing wrong with a couple heavy machine guns! Generally these two will be backup up Kornak as he rampages around the table.

Sogarat Tempest Regiment - The heaviest power armour suits in the Morat Aggression Forge prior to the massive TAG suits, the Sogarat are extremely nasty. Mounted on 40mm bases and carrying heavy weapons similar to the Suryat, they are also capable of wielding scary close combat weapons as well. Very expensive however, so it is rare that I'd field all three at one time.

There's a few little details and things to clean up that have become apparent looking at the pics, but overall I'm reasonably pleased with them. It was quite interesting painting non-GW models for a chance, the aesthetic of the models provided a number of interesting challenges (not all of which I feel I was really able to rise to).

Now it's time to delve back into the Heresy! Bits have begun arriving for the upcoming Thousand Sons force and I'm itching to finish off the Geno Five-Two...

Heresy Era Heroes of the Imperium - The Emperor of Mankind, part one

Got frustrated trying to batch paint line highlights (madness!), so as a respite I returned briefly to the grim darkness! Another box arrived on my doorstep yesterday, a small package that I'd ordered from Kabuki Miniatures back in late November and had almost forgotten about. Just a small package...

In point of fact it was disconcerting how small the package was - that box is about 5" on a side. I hadn't purchased a Kabuki model in something like five years, as the 'Angron' model I'd purchased ended up being barely space marine sized, let alone suitable as a primarch stand-in and I was supremely disappointed in it. The measurements on the website suggested these models should be more appropriately scaled so I figured I'd roll the dice (and take advantage of a sale they were running). With some trepidation I cracked open the box and was relieved to find that the models were sized far more appropriately and so bustled everything in for a soak and scrub.

The models were virtually free of flash, though were several different colors of resin which isn't a dealbreaker but does give off that 'garage kit' vibe and makes me worry somewhat about quality control. That said, everything appeared to be crisply cast and there were almost no bubbles to worry about filling in. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the Custodes sculpts (they're neat but I'm holding out for the Forge World models which ought to be spectacular), but as it's been mentioned a few times that FW doesn't intend to do models or rules for the Emperor any time in the foreseeable future, I thought the Kabuki version of the model would be a fun little art project, and give me a large-scale model to try and really lavish some attention on.

The model comes with a two-headed cyber-eagle that I'm saving for another project, which allowed me to alter the pose somewhat. I don't have a primarch model on hand to compare sizes with, but he does seem to stand about a head taller than the ones that I've done in the past. Large enough to warrant a 60mm base at the very least, and towering over the alpha legionnaire!

I'm going to have to do a lot of research on painting gold before I ever put a brush to this model. Definitely want to do it justice, and really push myself to get beyond the "decent tabletop quality" I usually accomplish. Should be fun!

And Now For Something Completely Different - Infinity Morat Aggression Force painting begins

Happy new year everyone! Had a good time over the holiday, saw Star Wars and spent some time with some old friends visiting Colorado over the past week. Finally getting back to the painting desk after a break and I thought I'd give something else a try for a bit as a little breather. Brace yourselves for HERESY.

...Well, not Heresy, but you know what I mean. Hah!

At the urging of a couple friends I've taken another look at Infinity, not as a replacement for 40k/30k, but rather as an interesting skirmish level game akin to my much beloved Necromunda. As I'd alluded to previously the anime aesthetic of the models when the game first came out didn't really wow me, but in the intervening years they've come out with a several interesting new factions including several alien races - the opportunity to paint up some filthy xenos had some appeal after all the humans I've been painting of late. The crimson-faced murder apes of the Morat Aggression Forces caught my eye, so I picked up a number of boxes for a screaming deal from a fellow hobbyist, waited for a warm day and got to primering!

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, so I ended up with way more miniatures than will ever hit the tabletop at one time. Does give me a number of options for force composition though! Started off by laying out all the models, getting the basic skin and hair colors laid in and really getting a chance to give the figures a good once-over to decide what needed to be painted what colors. At that point I figured "what the heck, may as well just batch paint the whole group, right"?

I decided to stick fairly close to the 'stock' color scheme, with the armor plating being a grey-ish hue and basic tan cloth. A number of the models are in powered armour and many models have exposed cabling, which got the electric blue treatment, which sets off nicely against the red skin tones so far. Tons and tons of line highlighting awaits, need to re-hone my fine detail brush skills - not a lot of hard edges to drybrush on these models. Definitely a different aesthetic from the angular 40k stuff I've been working on of late!

These models are what initially caught my eye in the Combined Army miniature line. Turns out this creepy fellow is the chief doctor for the force. "Dammit doc, not every medical procedure calls for 'a thorough probing'! Get away from me with whatever that is!"

So far so good - Was very interesting working with metal models again for the first time in years. Once these guys are done, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled Heresy - almost done with the remaining Geno Five-Two infantry as well, but they're in that middle stage of "these look TERRIBLE" where only the base colors have been blocked in and no detailing or highlighting has been done. Definitely not picture-worthy in their current state!

Hobby Retrospective: A reflection on 2015 and plans for 2016

As we approach the end of the year, I thought I'd take a look back over 2015 and see how things went hobby-wise and take a look at the plans for 2016. Buckle up, it's gonna be a long one! I have a gallery page on my website where I organize all my pics and have started keeping track of dates on the armies, makes a post like this easy to do, I suppose. Turns out it was a pretty productive year!

FINISHED PROJECTS:

(links go to the relevant blog posts about the various projects)

Heresy-era Thousand Sons - At the beginning of the year I was in a race to finish off the Thousand Sons and get them battle-ready for the Las Vegas Open. They performed admirably, and then they went on the auction block. Definitely dialed in the paint scheme, and learned a few things that I'll be doing differently in the next incarnation (see below)!

  

Knight Household Krast - I had wanted a group of Knights to accompany the Thousand Sons, and thought the original heraldry of House Krast (boo to GW for making all the mechanicum-aligned schemes red in the reboot) would be fitting, a not-so-subtle nod to the yellow-and-blue scheme usually associated with Tzeentch. Sadly, they too went on the auction block to cover some unexpected expenses but over the past year I've picked up a couple of the new expanded knight kits so House Krast will walk again!

  

Heresy-era Mechanicum - This project never really coalesced into an actual army, and ended up being sold off piecemeal to help fund the Imperial Fists. Really enjoyed working on them, but in mid-project the updated Taghmata rules dropped and invalidated a number of builds. Would likely do a small Cybernetica-only allied force at some point in the future when FW releases the next round of Robots.

Heresy-era Imperial Fists - This was a challenge project for me, wanted to see if I could pull off a yellow army. Tried about a dozen ways to paint yellow and settled on a recipe that yielded rather good results! That said, I never want to paint another Imperial Fist marine again as long as I live. Hah!

  

Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation - When GW dropped the new Adeptus Mechanicus it was enough to briefly snap me out of my all-heresy-all-the-time mode, and I have to say early on I found the models to be at once brilliant and frustrating. Loved how certain models looked, while others left me a little cold - the same can be said for the FW mechanicum line to me as well though. Once I got my hands on 'em however I found I loved the whole line - took a bit of adjustment to the aesthetic but once I came to grips with it I really like how they tie into the Knights design elements. Another small force may come into play as vassals to the House Krast redux (with the new plastics in the yellow and blue heraldry to match).

PROJECTS IN PROCESS:

 

Heresy Era Prospero Spireguard - With the Thousand Sons going up for auction earlier in the year, the associated Prospero Spireguard allied force I'd been working on was put on hold with a bunch of models assembled but few actualy painted. It too suffered from codex drift as the much-more-appropriate Imperial Army list came out in Book 5: Tempest, and certain units were invalidated. At some point I'll need to pull out all the models and see what is actually viable. Essentially the whole project was an excuse to warrant the purchase of a Stormhammer...

Heresy-era Geno Five-Two - A project that has been simmering in the back of my head for years, I finally was able to start getting them down on the tabletop. Coupled with the allied Alpha Legion section it forms a tidy little boutique force. I successfully managed to avoid it blooming into a 5000 point monstrosity, wonder of wonders! The infantry side of the force is rapidly approaching completion, though the tanks that I'd ordered over a month ago have yet to ship, which is a point of frustration. The force has recently been pre-sold, so I have a fire lit under me to get them finished and out the door to help fund the upcoming Thousand Sons!

  

Heresy-era Alpha Legion - The other half of the boutique fluff project is a small allied Alpha Legion force. Very experimental inasmuch as it was my first exposure to the Betrayal at Calth plastics, as well as going with the purple scheme as described in the book. Now that I'm about 2/3rds of the way through them the verdict is I love the plastics, but I am not enjoying the paint scheme. I have a feeling that they may be mothballed/sold piecemeal before ever reaching completion.

5 projects done and out the door in 2015 and two more nearly complete - not a bad output for the year! With that out of the way it's time to look ahead...

UPCOMING PROJECTS:

More Heresy-era Thousand Sons - With the recent release of the FW bits coupled with the awesome and (comparatively) cheap plastics released with the Betrayal at Calth box, the Changer of the Ways has been whispering in my ear to go back to my first love in the heresy, the Thousand Sons. I spent some time putting some lists together based on the BaC sets and the inevitable leftover bits and kits from previous projects, and it turns out that I have nearly half of the planned 5000 point army on-hand already.

...What, you thought I'd do another boutique army? Hah! The plan is to try out some things that I didn't do in the previous incarnation, though with the rules still a year-plus out I'm trying to keep it fairly generic (as I'm forever having units/builds invalidated it seems). Every self-respecting heresy force has gotta have a couple big 20-man tac squads, and the missile launcher team performed admirably in the previous incarnation so they make a return in the new list as well. Want to try out the new Leviathan Dread so that goes in, and the Venator was absolutely the star of the Imperial Fists army for me so one of those is a must have as well. While rooting around in the Closet of Doom I uncovered a pair of Armoured Proteus Land Raiders that were initially intended for use with the Imperial Fists but completely forgot about (along with a 20-man breacher squad that I have no idea what to do with). It's like finding an extra $20 in a coat pocket from the previous season, except it's 15 pounds of resin!

 

Still in the bits-gathering stages, but plan to use a mix of kits as I have in the past. While I absolutely love the shoulder pads and torsos that FW has released, the heads leave me somewhat cold. They're neat, don't get me wrong, but I think I'll continue to use the MaxMini Steam Knight heads, the one on the far left just matches my vision of the look. I have a couple leftovers that will be used to build some test models with the BaC plastics, pics to follow on that front. There will be the usual Kromlech Khopesh-style power weapons and some Wargame Exclusive upgrades here and there as well, for the most ostentatious of the characters for the force.

DOUBLE EXTRA HERESY - For those of you with weak stomachs, look away now.

Infinity Morat Aggression Force - Occasionally I'll dip my toe into other game systems, and I have had a couple folks tell me that Infinity is worth checking out. I have to admit the overall anime vibe of the minis I saw when it first came out didn't do much for me, and I hadn't subsequently given the line much further thought. Spent some time going through the now surprisingly expanded catalog of minis and found there were a couple 'new' (well new to me) factions released in the intervening years, and I quite fancied the look of the Morat Aggression Force - crimson-faced murder apes from beyond the stars? Sure, sign me up! As the total buy-in for the game hovers somewhere around $150 and consists of less than 15 models I figure it's worth at least giving it a try. The game rules are free to download, and from what I'm reading it seems like it could be a fun little skirmish game to tide me over until Necromunda is re-released!

That's the extent of the plan for 2016 so far, no real resolutions or anything like that - other than the usual "try and get more stuff out the door than you're bringing in" plan! Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday, and best wishes for the new year!

Merry Christmas!

...Or based on the minis should that be Merry Fishmas? It's been hellacious in Real Life(tm) of late, but I have been puttering away at the rest of the Tau Hunter Cadre for the Inq28/Rogue Trader RPG minis when I could steal a little time behind a brush, and after a couple hours this afternoon I got 'em more or less finished up!

When all is said and done it ended up being a nice 10-strong unit, that breaks down into essentially 2 mirrored teams. The miniatures all came from Wargame Exclusive and they all really have a ton of character. albeit a little on the cheesecake side.

 

For leaders there's the cigar-chomping Big Shas, and a jet-pack equipped fusion gun-toting Little Shas.

 

A pair of techs/trackers - the more cheesecake-y of the two got the 'buns out' treatment, while I went with a bodysuit for the other.

 

Similarly on the snipers, one is quite risque while the other is a bit more modest.

 

The pair of gunsliners were quite dynamic, went with the red cloak on the male to tie him in with the red hair on the rest of the unit.

 

Lastly are a pair of swordmistresses, went with the jade green swords to tie the spot colors back to the other models here and there. Was pretty fun working with the muted/limited palette!

Definitely a fun little artistic palate cleanser, now it's time to dive back into painting more of the Geno Five-Two. Hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season, and a wonderful new year in 2016!