The Eternal Struggle....over?

I would imagine that most of us like to sit down of an evening and paint solidly for a few hours with perhaps our favorite audio book on, a podcast or TV show. I'd like to do this as well but unfortunately my 7month old little girl doesn't yet understand why. As such I find that my painting time is restricted to a half hour here and there as my little girl naps/before work when she's still snoozing.
Painting in this manner means you learn to break a task up into many small steps, choosing to paint one colour on everything then moving onto the next colour or calling it a day as time permits. Doing things this way takes time though, which is why it's taken about 4 weeks to get my Eternal Guard painted to what I think will do as a tabletop standard

Gotta say I'm very pleased with how they've turned out. One of the disadvantages of painting piecemeal in the way I've described above is that you don't see the big picture and it can feel like you making not progress at all. The irony of painting "eternal" guard as a result wasn't lost on me don't worry!

Here's another close up of my intrepid band of wanderers, I've stayed pretty close to the standard colour scheme to keep thing simple and so that they fit in with my Glade guard (finished last year).

There's probably still more work to be done to really finish them. Off the top of my head I could do with looking at some of the hair colours again, maybe highlight up the gemstones and have another go at painting the wood of the spears. All said and done though I need a break from them at the moment which is why I'm moving back to this guy!

That's right the Glade Lord has finished his back and been suitably scrubbed clean of the old paint job. I'm hoping to get this guy painted in the next week in time for his debut in a game I've got planned for next Friday evening. Here's hoping I can convince the little one of the importance of that!

The Eternal Struggle

Rich here, so despite my plans to paint Night Goblins this month as part of the Malign Portents muster I find myself drawn back to my Wood Elves (well mixed order Wanderers if we’re getting technical). I can't help but feel like this is something to do with playing through the season of Revelations campaign on Warhammer total war recently...

For the most part I’ve finished the actual forest dragon, I just need to get an appropriately sized base as well as thinking up an appropriately wood-elfy name. Meanwhile the Glade Lord that will serve as dragon rider is still enjoying a leisurely bath in some white spirit. This is something I'll have to get round to sooner or later but the fact the legs don't quite fit on the saddle of the dragon mean I'm putting it off...

So this brings us to today's update and continuing with the wood elven theme I'm painting up some eternal guard. 

These were yet another eBay purchase and rather "conveniently" all 18 came without any shields. Im unsure yet if I'm going to purchase the shields separately; I always liked the lore behind the old eternal guard where they were supposed to be that skilled with their spears they counted as having shields. Sadly thats not the case anymore so it leaves a tough decision....

In any case here are some pictures of the Eternal Guard painting progress:

Once again my photos are taken using a smart phone in poor light. I'll try to take some better photos when i finish them. Being honest that's also the reason I've not posted any pictures of the forest dragon. Anyway, all comments and criticism welcome. Let me know whether you think they should have shields or not as well, it's a tough choice for me at the moment.

Bearers of the Word

My final army that I intend to work on this year will be my Word Bearers. Chaos space marines we're what originally got me into this hobby and I still remember clumsily daubing regal blue onto my first chaos marines when I was 11 (some would say my painting hasn't advanced much from there). My chaos marines have been through various incarnations since then, first night Lord's, then Black Legion and Sons of Malice before I've finally settled on Word Bearers. The excellent Word Bearers trilogy by Antony Reynolds was what converted me to the teachings of Lorgar and is well worth a read if you get the chance. The fact that the Hours Heresy series has them as the original traitors is even better! Plus it helps that a member of my gaming group collects the hated sons of guilliman...

I'm keeping the goal easy with these and only aiming for 1000pts this year, plus with space marines being elite troops the model count won't be as extreme as my moon clan grots.

My aims behind this force are for it to consists initially of marines on foot supported by Daemon Engines and mobs of cultists and daemons. In my mind they implacably advance chanting verses from the book of Lorgar, led by a fiery Dark Apostle. To achieve this my first 1000pts will consist of:

1 Dark Apostle (first choice for Word Bearers!)

1 Aspiring Champion 

10 x Word Bearers, aspiring champ with powerfist and plasma pistol

20 Cultists ( because word bearers without cultists should be illegal)

10 Daemonettes 

5 x terminators with powerfists. 1 with heavy flamer

1 x Chaos Decimator with seige claw and butcher cannon

Thats roughly 1000pts and represents a pretty good variety of stuff to paint. We've got heavy armour, a walker, some daemons and basic humans so should keep me interested. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. Not having played chaos for years or even owning the codex I'm going to need all the pointers I can get! 

Something stirs within the woods - Forest Dragon WIP 2

Work continues on my Forest dragon whilst I wait for the goblins I've ordered here to arrive. 

As you can see I'm almost finished blocking in the main colours. For those that care these are the colours and steps completed so far:

1) Undercoated with chaos black spray (thinks its abaddon black these days)

2) The scales and rougher parts of the skins are painted in Loren Forest

3) Horns and other bony protuberances were based in Rakarth Flesh. 

4) Smoother skin and wings was painted with a mix of Loren Forest and White Scar

5) Mouth and tongue based with mechrite red (an old base paint I still have)

Next steps for me are generally shading, highlighting and tidying up the model as a whole but what you see there is a basic approximation of the how the beast will look when it's fully painted. Hopefully I'll have it finished before the goblins arrive but who knows...

40k Salamanders...again.

So, A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

No wait, that's not right. It's been done before. Much like this army (see it's all loosely connected, or, you will see by the end I hope). 

Let's start at the beginning. Back in 2008 I decided to begin a Space Marine army. My second (if you can count the Ultramarines I painted as a 13 year old back in 2nd edition). 

My eyes were drawn quickly to Salamanders, whether or not it was the paint scheme, back ground. Whatever (it was the paint scheme). Within that year, I feverishly bought as much as I could. 

If I say so myself, I was proud of this army. I painted it was and it's probably some of my best paint jobs I've done (I was especially proud of my Dread and Captain). 

However, as an army it was also very slow to paint, owing to my lack of spare time and other armies and projects. (I have a rather large Ork army I shall perhaps show one day). and I played it even less, having it appear on one games day outing and one, very, very unlucky doubles Tournament. 

So in 2013, I decided to sell my army up. I was spring cleaning, they hadn't been out of storage in 2 years, and they weren't the only army to go.

 I received a fair price for them and my mind was cleansed. I didn't think about my Salamanders for 3 years...

Fast forward to 2016 and modellers guilt sets in. We've all known it and had it. The 'what if' moments; 'I wish I'd built this', 'I wish I'd not got rid of that'.And for me it's my Salamanders. I don't regret anything I've got rid of or sold. My Salamanders I deeply regret. 

It took me a long time, but I was able to track down the guy I sold them to. He was very polite and I explained my situation but he didn't wish to part with them. And you know what? that's his right. I'm not here to moan about the guy, I gave up my claim to the army when I sold it, regardless of how much I missed them. 

So in 2017 June when 8th edition of 40k. We all looked up and took notice of the new Primaris Marine. 

...My wallet and heart also took notice. (So did my wife, but she's been kind enough to know when to reign me in and when to let me go, this instance was a latter situation). 

So it's January 2018 and this is where we've got to. This is the first in a series on my new Salamanders. I've done some painting already: 

This army is all Primaris, all the time. Next time I'll drop a projected army list, as well as my Christmas haul (in which my wife shows how much she supports me and this plastic crack hobby).

I'll also be adding a few other blogs on, about opinions on the meta in game, other projects.

If you want to get in touch, drop a comment below or follow me on instagram @bigbot70 where I usually post nerd related gubbinz.

H

Malign Portents - The Muster Begins

Now some of you may be aware of something called Malign Portents that's about to start for Age of Sigmar. Im really looking forward to this fleshing out the lore of the setting as so far fluff has been pretty scarce (in my opinion). Fingers crossed this is the first of many such events for AOS and that GW can really develop the lore.
Now back to business. The reason for today's post is this:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/01/13/malign-portents-the-muster-beginsgw-homepage-post-1/

Rather conveniently for me the Destruction harbinger is none other than a moon clan shaman. As such I think it would be rude of me not to at least have a stab at achieving the muster, plus it'll get me well on the way to achieving my aim of 1000pta of moon clan this year. My only problem is that, as yet, there is no start collecting box for the Moonclan, requiring me to think out side the box (see what I did there?). Looking at the other start collecting sets they seem to generally consist of a core unit for the race, some cavalry or special unit, a leader, and then maybe a big nasty or chariot. With this in mind I think a moon clan start collecting would look something like this:

Moonclan warboss
20 Moonclan grots
3 fanatics
Mangler Squigs

So sticking to the muster requirements the aim is to get this painted by 10th February....bit daunting but let's give it a go. Let me know what you think, what would you put in a moonclan start collecting? Are you also participating in the muster for Malign Portents?

Something stirs within the woods - Forest Dragon WIP

So today I wanted to show you what I'm currently working on:

Ive wanted to own a dragon for years. They're the archetypal fantasy monster for me, even better when it's the mount for an Elven Lord. Yes, even though this is the Carmine Dragon model I've decided that I'll be using it as a forest dragon (at least whilst it has it's warscroll!). I'm intending to use the old Wood Elf Noble on Eleven Steed model as the basis for the rider but as things stand am slowly painting the dragon. One thing I didn't realise....the damn thing has an awful lost of spikes and spines to paint....