Raven Guard - Mor Deythan

Next up, a ravenguard signature unit, Mor Deythan. I went for the sniper variant initially but if I can ever get back to painting the odd extra squad I’d lover some combi weapons/shotguns for a more mobile unit. These guys are nice figures but the initial price was high, I believe it’s been reduced now. Either way I bought mine as part of a deal with a dark wing storm eagle so saved a little bit.

Worst part about these models is the barrel of the rifle bends all the time, everytime they’ve been in the case! So hairdryers at the ready. In game these guys are pretty cool, I found that they are surprisingly resilient due to the stealth rule. Never be afraid to go to ground, these guys do damage but if you weight them against what’s shooting them you can gain benefit from drawing fire and surviving. I once had three units shooting at them, but they had a 2+ cover save I only lost one marine and drew a lot of fire.

My long suffering Blood Angels

Thought it was about time to put up some of my Blood Angels.

The original test model

These guys were started about two years ago after I hit a wall with my IW, painters block or something, but I remember when I decided to start Heresy in the first place I was torn between both IW and BA. I chose IW in the end cos they are my favourite, and at the end of the day Heresy isn't cheap so you should do what you want and what you love.

But anyway, these guys turned out to be the most important figures I had ever painted. At the time everything I did was drybrushed gun metal, effective yes but simple and uninspiring. So out came the layer paints and I did a test model.
He was done neatly and at the time he was the best figure I'd ever painted, but still he didn't look like Daveco or Stonedrose's stuff. So i went and got advice. That basically involved Stonedrose showing me step by step how you paint a FW/GW model. But it was totally worth it, and he give me some great advice which was "if you want to get better at painting, buy models you like and paint them. The stuff you like the look of not just what you need to play."
So a Wright King, metal Saint celestine, and a load of old reaper miniatures later, I was happy with how I painted.
Still learning of course but the WE and BA have really helped me!

I say thank you to my long suffering toy soldiers, the Blood Angels have finally delivered you!

These are but a few examples, the army is just under 2k at present

Note that I'm now very excited for the Heresy weekender, it'll be great so see some more stuff for the BA, hopefully I'll get round to finishing the two Landspeeders, the dreadnoughts and the 20 assault marines I have...sigh
And on another note it'll be good if they actually make a distinction there between Lutharian and the Lion's Dark Angels...me and Abe will let you know about that very soon ;)

Thanks guys
JB

Merry Christmas! Here’s a Pro Elf Team

Been waiting for these for a while, whilst I’ve painted my humans, we have a new Bloodbowl league about to start at the club. I’ve been practising online and love the new pro elf models, so here is half the team. I bough two boxes as I want to start with a vary particular line up.

Even the linemen look cool

Ready to “fend” off the opposition 

All figures are at least ten pieces, which is awesome! Faces strangely are separate and allow for customisation, I wasn’t sold on the idea until i saw them, but I’m sure you’ll agree this is a great idea from GW. They’re also very tall and lithe, making them all the more elfy.

Blitzer

Thrower

Catcher

These are some of t(e nicest figures I’ve painted in a while, I know I’m always saying that but I really mean it this time! I’ll get the other half of the team sorted soon. Bonus points for anyone guessing the team the colour scheme is inspired by!

Raven Guard- Tactical Marines

This is the third Heresy army I completed, after my iron hands and world eaters. I’ll show those armies another day, however these guys are my go to loyalist army at the moment so pretty current.

The paint scheme is amazingly straight forward as you might imagine with an all black model:

1. Black undercoat using UPOL matt black primer

2. Xentihal highlight using FW air Corvus black, this is an off black/very dark grey. 

3. Dawnstone edge highlight.

4. Lead belcher to the metallic areas followed by null oil wash

5. Highlight the steel areas with Runefang steel for a good contrast.

6. Pouches were added to most models for a well armed infantry feel, these were painted rhinos hide, highlighted steel goon drab and washed to a duller shader with agrax earth shade

7. Helmet lenses were mephiston red and then a highlight of evil sunz scarlet

Voila! Really easy to do, but hopefully a nice clean cut but dark and shady ravenguard.

I have thirty tactical marines altogether, drop pod ready!

The Jarraburg Crusaders

My human team is now finished so here they are, this is the basic team from the boxed game. I have a second team which Abenormal kindly gave me to flesh it out. I also have a couple of the star players just to add a bit of variety to the team, I tend to use these are regular players.

More of a close up, I’m pretty happy with the colours 

Blitzers and catchers

Throwers

Bonus point for anyone who understands the significance of the team name!

House Delaque Gang

Necromunda is out and over at Section 8 we’ve been getting ready. I’ve been in the hobby a while, so I have some of my old necromunda gangs. I’ve decided to paint my Delaques as I suspect there will be a lot of Escher and Goliath gangs kicking around.

I love the aesthetic of the Delaques, super sneaky and dark. Some of these classic figures still look great, rebased on t(e new necromunda themed bases and they’re ready to go!

The Boss- Reet Sai’d’fred



One shifty looking bloke...







I love this figure, he looks like he’s sneaking around a corner

Fingers crossed some of the others will have their gangs done soon and we can play some games!

Magistus Amon, equerry to The Crimson King

So, I need a fitting leader for my force, I have Magnus but I take my time over Primarchs and Magnus is a biggie. So Amon comes out and solves my problem. Really love the model, would prefer it if I had some hidden ones to go with him, but t(e best comes to those who wait.

Great posing, painting the cape inside green wasn’t easy but I reckon I’ve got it to work

The outside of the cape, badly cast, bit of a nightmare

The only gripe I have is the outside of the cape was badly cast, I’ve heard this from others who have the model. My solution was to file and cut it down. Becase of this the paint didn’t lie as well as I would like. I wish like others I had used some modelling putty to fill the gaps and instead of sand it down, bring it up. 

Either way, top model to paint, shame about the cape!

Hobby Management part 2- Smaugs Hoard

So, what about the stuff you don't or can't get rid of? What about those models that scream "BUT BOSS, THERE MIGHT BE A NEW EDITION IN FIVE YEARS, USE ME!!!! USE ME!!!!!"

The horror, the horror Well it's all about the storage isn't it? I always think there are a few watershed moments in a life as a hobbyist, one of these is storing your figures correctly. It stops chipping as often, you don't need a tube of superglue everywhere you go for those inevitable breakages (after all most figures are plastic now) and you can store more stuff if you store efficiently. NUMBER ONE- Hobby cases,  look after your stuff, protect your figures, respect your work. Most of us put a fair amount of time into what we do. In fact I was once part of a brief look at how long we spent painting vs gaming in a group of GW staff (I was young and needed the money...). Turns out that regardless of whether someone saw themselves as a painter or a gamer, everyone spent more time painting, other than one guy, who realistically did neither! You need a good case (or cases), there are many brands; GW, KR, Figures in Comfort... I could go on. I go for KR, they're cheap, easily accessible to me and I can store them easily, but more on that in a bit. I tend to try and use 1-2 cases per army, this is fine for infantry and tanks, scales have increased in size over time and some oversized models are harder to store, boxes and your own custom packing seem to be the way forward to me, you can never plan for universally shaped larger models.

You can always go with the odd makeup case- JB is a fan


NUMBER TWO- Display cabinets show off your best work, store those awkwardly shaped figures, guilt trip yourself into painting undercoated models. Display cases are good, I used mine to show stuff off, from epic single models like Primarchs, to whole armies. Ikea was my choice for this, I paid about £150 per cabinet. They also do CD racks with glass shelves which you can mount on the wall. Obviously other retailers are available, but I like my cabinets.

NUMBER THREE- I have loads of cases! What do I do with them? Eventually you get here..."What are all there cases?" "Why are they here on the floor?" "Why has the cat got a lasgun coming out of its mouth?" I've heard the lot, again plan ahead, have a safe space, somewhere a case fits well, ideally a few fit well, maybe a level of organisation, maybe....Ikea again. So, turns out Ikea do some low level units which store exactly 2 KR cases (or GW) on a shelf. So I have two of these, all full of cases, with all the cases labelled for organisation and to satisfy any level of OCD I'm feeling that day. Again any retailer is find, but be thorough in your choice here, you may need a fair amount of storage over the years and it will need to be durable.

Mine looks like this but it's on it's side

Thousand Sons Storm Eagle

So, all those Sekhmet need a ride, after all the landraiders I didn’t fancy a Spartan and it seems a bit cliched, given the whole, “Primarch with a terminator tor bodyguard in a Spartan” plague you see in Heresy. So, Magnus can walk! There’s no space for him and ten Sekhmet in a storm eagle!

Again, lots of symbols and transfers 

With lots of black and gold to break up the red

So, really getting there now. The army has a lot in it, of the games I’ve played (maybe 8), I’ve lost one, which was to JBs iron warriors in zone mortalis. Seems the rota guns and veterans are the real cutting edge in the army.

Knight Errant Nathaniel Garro

Another heresy series figure today. I wasn’t planning on buying Garro, but he’s a nice figure and my brother got me him for Christmas as he remembered him from the Heresy novels. Nice one!

A bit different this one, all about not going over the top with the armour, it’s meant to be dull

I wanted his face to look intense, like he’s trying to find purpose through his actions

Another nice figure to paint, highly recommended. A bit of “base creep” going on and I’m not sure it needed to be as big as it is. However, he 2s nice to paint and can even join a few of my armies. I probably like Rubio better so maybe I’ll get him at some point!

Warhammer RPG's

Recently I'd been running a Rogue Trader Campaign. The characters spending most of there time being chased across the galaxy by all the horrors the warp and beyond could throw at them. Cue the follow on adventure.

The Deathwatch would revisit aforementioned horrors and give them a good old battering. For those who have played the systems will already know, going from a soft (but very wealthy) mortal to an Astartes is quite a jump. Marines are how they are in the Black Library. Nigh on unstoppable.
The kill team proved to be a force to be reckoned with.
Usually when I play RPG's I don't use figures, I prefer folks to use their imagination. But this time I couldn't resist doing some figures for the characters, especially given that I already have a Deathwatch army for 40K. So I added 5 new veterans to the Watch. Please see below.

Brother Validius: Raven Guard
Brother Isacc: Ultramarine
Brother Lupus: Space Wolf
Brother Octavius: Imperial Fist
Brother Faultran: Iron Hand

So we recently finished the Deathwatch adventure. The team went out the way many marines go. In a blaze of tyranid and bolt filled glory.
With that adventure done we moved onto a pathfinder campaign. Good old swords and sorcery.

But another Warhammer adventure is just around the corner, and this time it's 30K!

Thanks
JB

Thousand Sons Landraiders

Here we go,  standard Legion rides. I don’t think you see enough landraiders in Heresy armies, it’s all Spartans. Maybe it’s due to cost or the small cost difference between a resin landraider and the awesome Spartan. So, the back ground says that Thousand Sons have lots of landraiders to ferry their tactical squads around, ever the diligent follower of any background, my Thousand Sons were always going to have landraiders.

First one, lots of symbols and gold lines, ala book VII

These were painted in similar fashion to everything else. Weathering was done with a metallic dark green to create contrast with the red, it’s not obvious to most but I see a difference and you are your own biggest critic!

Two together 

I have a third one all done but I’ll save that for a full army shot as I now have one hundred infantry along with support vehicles. Onwards and upwards, this army isn’t finished yet!