Final units painted (Bulwarks need a little more work but playable). A late one with basing, which took longer than expected (and will have finishing touches at a later date).
Right, time to pack and see if my men spend longer on the table than I fear they might!
Pulled a little bit of a late one but both tactical squads are painted and everything else just requires markings and fine detail adding. Then it’s on to basing!
Seemed to spend most of Wednesday evening prepping the missing tactical company, a couple more Trojans for command vehicles, and some old GW objective markers. Managed to get them undercoated this afternoon, but its going to have to be a paint fest this evening!
Hectic day at work precipitated a short snooze on settling the children to bed. Productive couple of hours though with everything having been highlighted and all the infantry weapons have been re-blacked. One slight oversight is I thought I already had one painted tactical company…… and I don’t. So tomorrow’s first order of business is to prep another 30 marines. On another note I also managed to undercoat a pile of blast markers I picked up many years ago from Irregular Miniatures.
Been a while but I thought I would share a project in rapid evolution! It’s 5 days to go until my first Epic competition ‘Full Scale Assault’ on the 20th!
Some rapid painting is needed as I have decided to put together a Vanguard Miniatures (old TMG) Affray force for the competition which I will use as Codex Astartes force. I could of course use my old GW force, but heck that would not be a challenge!
I had a rough idea what force I was going to field but finalised my list on Saturday. Having finished cleaning off the models I got around to undercoating them black yesterday (along with some extra stands I thought I may have need and had cleaned up).
So five days to go and working late this evening. Even so I managed to watch ‘The Walking Dead’ and then put the base wet brush of Valejo 105 Lufwaffe Uniform on the models.
Plans for tomorrow night is to get the highlights on and then progress a couple of units to completion of painting.
Time for bed, early start at work in the morning….
A quiet month on the gaming and modelling front due to the annual November appraisal yet again loosing me 2-3 weeks of my ‘spare time’. A big thanks to Dr Shipman for his psychopathic tendencies landing us with that one!
Anyway I was working on a couple of command figure conversions for a decent fellow in Belgium. Managed to get them finished recently. A little remiss I did not take more photos along they way, but then There are others I would like to do.
First up was a straight clean up of a metal Chaplain from the Character set. This is sat next to a character with jumpack.
Simple enough conversion with the base of a Seargeant marine, with a liberated backpack from an assault marine, sporting a ‘stormshield’ liberated from a beastmen.
Slightly more involved was the three bike conversions.
Chaplain
Essentially a chop shop job. Torso of a Chaplain onto waist and legs of a biker. As I have started doing the Chaplains mace handle has been replaced by a 0.53mm pin as they break far too often.
Commander
Another half and half chop shop with a commander and biker. Cloak sculpted over the rear of the bike, and right arm to handlebars sculpted.
Librarian
Slightly more involved. Half and half chop shop as ever. Neither hand really works as a biker so both hands been reworked. The right sculpted to the handlebars. The left recieved a new staff and left arm, the staff topped with a raven (I assumed use with Ravenwing as these are off to lead their Dark Angel brethren).
After a couple of distractions last week I have got around to painting some of the Affray support weapon teams. Think they make ready proxies for Thunderfire cannons and Rapier Quad Lasers.
Same painting scheme I used previously.
Again very clean casts although something is not quite right with the casting of the lower two barrels on the quad lasers (not that you would notice from above and at gaming distance!).
I am a bit remiss as I clearly need some normal squads to expand this force, but those quad bikers have a certain draw…..
On other news TMG have farmed the selling and distribution out to Vanguard miniatures (http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk). Already ordered some more sampler packs of the Onslaught range to show my support.
Earlier this year I undertook what I later called an ARK project. So first up what is an ARK project? To quote Morgan Freeman in Evan Almighty it’s an “Act of Random Kindness”. I guess the scene was set through a number of very sad circumstances which left me considering life and mortality. My own hobby interests had entered a bit of a limbo and lacked a bit of motivation about what to do next.
At the time I happened to be selling off a couple of previously acquired basic painted Epic 40k forces on e-bay. I was asked if I though the figures would come off their bases so they could be used to play ‘Pocket 40K’. After a few messages to and from and it became evident this was a young lad who clearly had never painted 6mm before.
I felt this was an opportunity for me to give something down the line so to speak. After I had an idea of the scale of the project he had in mind I offered to paint him a playable Marine force for his preferred Dark Angels chapter. There were already a few ideas knocking around my head.
So the force he was after was three Tactical Squads with Rhino’s, a Devastator Squad with Rhino, ten Terminators and a Land Raider, some Bikes, a Land Speeder, dreadnoughts, and Drop pods. Unfortunately no photos of the in the process infantry conversions I did (but I plan to do some more anyway soon). Each Tactical Squad was done with individual converted Sergeants, a flamer conversion, and a heavy weapon conversion (all in MK7 armour). The devastators had their own sergeant conversion and four heavy weapon conversions.
Here they are mounted on painting strips with their basic painting completed (with my Leman Russ Tank Company sat in the background as they had been for over a year, fortunately now finished!).
With Rhino markings done.
..and a couple of shots of the finished infantry.
Next up I did a little pimping of the Bikes and Land Speeder to give them a more Dark Angel look. Putting broken Eldar Exarch and Swooping Hawk wings to good use.
I went OTT with the Terminators in number and conversions. Here they are just starting out….
…. and painted.
Next up for painting were the bikes, dreadnoughts, and drop pods.
… and a few shots of the finished force after varnishing.
Needless to say the lucky lad was rather overwhelmed when he received them for little more than the postage cost! I understand thus far they have performed well against their Orc opponents.
Now a few friends have struggled to understand the whole concept of what I have named an ARK project, as they have suggested why did I not just paint up some more of my own figures. It’s hard to explain but primarily I would hope that it will inspire the beneficiary to somewhere down the line do something completely selflessly for someone else just starting out in the hobby.
I have to admit that I found it immensely enjoyable and rewarding and helped fanned the flames of my own hobby interests. It was something well defined and not as open ended as my usual grandiose plans to collect several entire Marine Chapters. As such it came with a sense of achievement and completion.
…..and before anyone asks I have no plans to do another ARK project, as I’m getting on with my own armies and grandiose projects!!!
Having initially posted on the ‘Tactical Command’ forum I have been asked by a couple of people about how I had painted the models I had posted there. Rather than posting the painting guide on the Tac Com forum I decided it’s best placed here, given the volume of posts and information that was ‘lost’ in the Baccus website/forum redesign. Tactical Command can be found at :-
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/index.php
Without further ado here is a blow by blow account of my painting of a Heavy Weapons Detachment, Support Trojan IFV’s sporting twin lascannon turrets, and anti-air variant. I also took the opportunity to throw in doing a command stand because I really wanted to see how they painted up. The figures are all from Troublemaker Games (TMG) and are largely from their 4th indigogo campaign (not yet available on general release at time of writing). Their homesite is :-
http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/about.htm
…and if you are interested the Wave 4 Indigogo Campaign history :-
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6mm-scale-armies-wave-4#/story
Having painted up one Trojan IFV as my test model I needed a further 3 Trojans and a single anti-aircraft variant. For the Heavy Weapons bases I used the Wave 4 Heavy Weapon Affray infantry (from the Affray Specialist set) along with standard Affray Marines already available from TMG. As per my obsessional personality I cleaned off the moulding lines prior to painting. Both the 3rd and 4th wave models are good castings. However, the first difference I noted was that the Wave 4 models have certainly benefited from a slightly different production method. They are ever so slightly bigger than the standard Affray Marines and there is an appreciable improvement in casting.
…and mounted on 40 x 15mm Steel bases from PWS. Why steel? Low profile, durability, and storage options mainly. Why 40 x 15 – close enough to the 40 x 12 commonly in use and gives a little extra space on the base. I plan to do my more organised armies on long bases and the more mobbish / swarm armies on more square 30 x 20mm bases, with increasing bases for the more oversize models.
Next up they were primed in black, did not quite get full coverage in the deeper recesses so went over those ares with a thinned down black.
The next step was a wetbrush of Valejo 105 Lufwaffe Uniform using a large (size 3-6) scraggy brush. Don’t be fooled by the pots – I’ve repotted all my Valejo paints! For those not familiar with wetbrushing – it’s like drybrushing but you leave more paint on the brush. You still use a flicking action but it’s a little bit heavier. The aim is to almost basecoat the model without going into the recesses. You still have to reduce the paint in the brush which is where I use a piece of card. Less is more as you can always build the layers of paint up – it’s not so easy to remove a splodge though!
Next up its a highligh of Valejo 107 Light Green Blue. This is applied as a more traditional drybrush to create the effect of hard lining. This two stage effect works very well on the vehicles, OK but slightly less well on the infantry. You can get an idea of the difference in wetbrushing and drybrushing from the card I use to get the right amount on the brush, note how it fades away to the left of the highlight colour. As with wetbrushing go light on your application and build the effect up, which can be clearly seen on the second photo.
Next I blacked up the guns and tracks, with no surprises Valejo 169 Black. This is the first time I pick up a semi-decent size 0 or 1 brush! I also using an old size 0/1 brush stipple black around the exhausts for effect.
Parts of the guns and the tracks are then gone over in Valejo 179 Gunmetal.
Now we get onto detailing using a very fine detail brush. First with white to indicate unit 1, heavy weapons explosion, and start of badge with a white dot.
Then we add the red flashes with Valejo 028 Vermillion.
Finally various bits of detailing with commanders cloaks (v070, db v067), plasma guns (v052, db 067), and brass on the standard. Bases painted in some of the last remnants of GW scorched brown, but any dark brown will ultimately do.
The unit all based and ‘Mikey mud’ applied. Not sure what end effect I will go for so leaving them at this stage until I am certain which way I am going. Leaning towards a North Africa look as I think I might want to tie them in with my new TMG Desert Infantry 😜 to face off the Skinner Orks….
Painting guide
Black undercoat
Wetbrush v105 over main tank body and infantry
Drybrush v107 over main tak body and infantry
Flat paint over weapons and tracks
Drybrush v179 over weapons tracks and ‘wheels’
Symbols in v001 and v028
Command cloaks v070, drybrush/lined v067
Plasma guns v052, drybrush v066
Additional flag and commander crest detailing v174 brass
Next up :- ‘My ARK project’ from earlier in the year……
Hi folks,
Well overdue to resurrect my blog and at the same time resurrecting my passion for Epic Armageddon courtesy of Troublemaker Games latest wave 4 offerings which are ideal proxies for Marines (and Orcs).
As always I have too many projects on the go which I will hopefully tough on in coming posts. For now I’ll try and focus on the latest ‘new shiny’!
Epic has always been one of my favourite all time games since its inception in 1990. As if I needed to add to my existing collection I just could not resist these latest offerings and in all honesty got a little excited in my level of backing (just don’t tell the wife!).
Anyway my parcel arrived a couple of weeks ago and I have cracked on with painting a few units, which I have already posted on the ‘Tactical Command’ forum. The models are very clean cast and a real pleasure to paint. The vehicles are much more real scale – at first you might think they are for 10mm but they are designed such that you can conceivably get ten guys in power armour in the transport! I really appreciate Ben from TMG for adopting this approach and hope he sticks to his guns with future releases.
I could not resist taking some along to paint at Derby Worlds. The Saturday was fairly quiet from a painting demo perspective so after doing a test vehicle I cracked on an did a MRLS (proxy Whirlwind) detachment, followed by a Affray Elite (Terminator proxy) detachment. I managed to do the first stage of the bases in the evening, so they could be varnished and put on display on the Sunday. I am not sure what basing effect I want at the end so have left them for now ‘au-naturale’. They generated quite a bit of interest on the Sunday and I had one of the busiest painting demos I have ever done! There are a lot of potential 6mm Sci-Fi gamers out there.
Very impessed how easily these painted up (painting guide to follow in next post). Excited about the rest of the range I painted up a detachment of Land Speeders armed with missile launchers the following week.
…and the latest offering a Heavy Weapons (Devastator) detachment with IFV support, along with a command stand. The infantry were a mixture of the wave 4 heavy weapons from the Affray Specialists set and the existing infantry. Ben has made some changes to the production process which has improved the level of detail and quality of these latest castings.
So here is the force thus far…..
Next up by request on ‘Tactical Command’ is the painting guide for these…..
Dr Mike aka Cranium27 