Risen Like Immortals

   I've just had two weeks off work after some really minor surgery and I had thought I'd get some jobs done around the house, but that my hobby time would sky rocket. This was not the case, however, ,the first day I did hide down my hobby shed and paint some something easy just to ease myself in, and two units for my Necrons were the chosen project.

 

The two units are a Hexmark Destroyer and a 10 robot unit of Immortals. Like the vast bulk of my Necron army all of these models came from past issues of various Warhammer magazines, I can't remember if it was Imperium or Conquest, so were so much cheaper than buying at retail that it is daft. I do have one or two things left on my shopping list for this project that I do need to spend real money on, but I've really enjoyed the fact I have a decent sized force for next to nothing.

Thanks for reading

Sweet, Sweet Caffine

   Every now and again I paint something that I feel the need to justify to myself, and this one is simple, because why not. As soon as I saw this model, I knew I had to have one for my wagon and baggage collection as I am currently a man who doesn't really work until I've had my first coffee of the day*.

*if I can even drink it before it gets cold

   This is a coffee wagon plus limber for my American Civil War Union infantry. It could do with a horse team like my other wagons, but as its modelled set up, I didn't have picking up the extra models as a priority.

Thanks for reading

The Heraclean

   Every space marine legion in 30k has/had a named elite terminator unit of some sort which were seen as far more elite than even their regular terminator squads. For example these included such names as; the Blood Angel's Crimson Paladins, the Deathguard's Grave Wardens, the Nightlords had two being the Contekar and Atramentar, while the Sons of Horus had the Justaerin.

   I like the idea that, while my chaos space marine warband definitely doesn't include any Justaerin, they might have decided that their top tier unit would have a name, aping the legions of old. Hence the Heraclean were born.

   These guys are just the terminators of the warband, no more, no less, but they sit at the top of the promotion ladder for the regular troops of the army and that's an important thing to have.

   This is the first 5, I do have another 5 that I need to tidy up from an old army but they will be a bit more work.

Thanks for reading

Chaos Space Marine Combat Patrol

   Speaking to my brothers about what games they want to play this year, they have both said that they would like to stick with Combat Patrol as their main way of playing as it allows them to dabble with armies and ideas without investing too much, plus neither has much painting or gaming time, so it keeps everything manageable. So I have been looking at my projects to see what needs doing as a priority and a combat patrol I should have finished a long time ago is my Chaos Space Marine one. This was supposed to be my big army for the year, so why was this basic part of it not done?

   The first model was the character - a master of possession. This model sat unfinished on my desk for ages as I just couldn't decide how to paint it. I'd finished the red armour but found myself stuck. Once I painted the bone detail, black coat and decided on grey fur (round the back) the bulk of the decisions were made and it went together much easier than my head thought it was going to do. I'm quite pleased with the blue flames as they don't look natural.

   The next thing was the squad of regular marines. I've got a fair few finished marines for this army but I wasn't sure I had the exact weapon options and as I had a spare set on the sprue, it made sense just to purpose build the right squad. This was also the first unit to get the new army symbol on their shoulder, which I am really pleased with.

Thanks for reading

Fjord Serpents - Karvi

   As a general rule I'm avoiding buying games on Kickstarter* as for the price a lot of them go for makes buying them blind and without knowing it is definitely being posted to you just seems too big a risk. However, when I saw the Fjord Serpents game on Kickstarter a few years back, I was in before I'd even thought about it. This became one of those Kickstarters that I was fairly sure wasn't going to deliver once the manufacturer they had lined up couldn't meant the quality they wanted for the price and they had to start looking elsewhere. I'm fairly sure the ships and figures were supposed to be plastic with resin hulls but I might be wrong, while what we got were resin hulls with 3d printed parts and crew.

*which means I've missed some amazing games that then haven't gone to retail

   For me the Dark Ages, or Early Medieval period as it should now be called, is just the most fascinating part of history and something I am always drawn back to, and a Viking longship game just had to be bought.

   Then when the backer kit came out and the rules were made a bit more open, it became fairly obvious that a "standard" game would be about 3 to 4 ships, I looked to add another pair so I can have two fleets of 3, before realising that those two ships cost more than just buying a second starter set - with the only loss by doing this of not having a the varied prows that come in the single ship sets.

   It's the crew that have completely blown my mind. As the warfare is basically land warfare but on water, with the crew doing the fighting in shieldwalls and not the ships (like in Napoleonic naval warfare for example), I knew I'd be painting some, but each box comes with 322 figures (on stands of 3-4), this might take some time. I've decided to give the crew more of a gist of a paint job rather than spending loads of time, I've based in brown, highlighted in brown then done quick layers in a limited palette with the idea being they look about right as long as you don't look too closely. This is going to be a long project.

   This test ship is a Karvi, the smallest war ship in the game, which has 32 crew. I've gone for the plain red sail you see in a lot of art online, but I plan to vary sails in the future.

Thanks for reading

The August Lion Patrol

   In the effort to finish a project, any project, I spent a few days making sure the last of my August Lion combat patrol was finished. I only had the terminator squad and the terminator librarian picked up from the magazine to do. I painted these vaguely the same as the rest of the force, with the librarian being blue as much for that being their codex colour as well as copying the Lego wizard he is supposed to be based on.

   The terminators should have white helmets to show they are veterans, however, I though the white would break the 50/50 split too much, so I decided to go with a black helmet to show their status, partly as it didn't add another colour and partly because the knight that came in this faction of Lego castle had a black helmet.

   The Librarian was slightly converted to make him a big more interesting, the joy of doing a lot of Grey Knight terminators at the moment is I have a lot of terminator sized interesting pieces. He got a weapon swap as it's a big part of the silhouette and a top ornament change.

There is every risk I will add the Dark Angel combat patrol to this project in time, but I'm not going to do it right now.

Thanks for reading

The Lion

   Considering how much Horus Heresy I played a few years back and how many figures I painted for that project, I have never painted up a Primarch, despite definitely needing one for a few of the games I have played. I've always kind of felt that the price tag for the resin ones required a better paint job than I could happily do, so I've never attempted it*.

   However, with plastic Primarchs coming out for 40k, it was always just going to end up being when rather than if.

*plus they always feel like they should be displayed somewhere rather than stored in boxes and that's something I also don't have

   The three chaos Primarchs so far didn't suit my chaos armies, so they were out**, then there were the loyalists. Guilliman being the regent of the Imperium, just didn't feel like someone who should be on the battlefield and character wise I just don't see him going anywhere without his chapter, which I don't have and don't plan to do. The Lion, though, is much more of a loner, and I can see him just joining any of his descendants to do a job***, so as I have a combat patrol of Dark Angel successors, I asked for one for Christmas as a project.

**the newly shown off 4th one also doesn't fit

***although I just can't seen the Dark Angels letting him out of their sight without a unit of bodyguards of their own which I do plan to buy and do at some point

All in all I'm pretty pleased with the model. I've spent a bit more time on him than I would a normal model and I think it shows. It's also given me a bit more confidence doing these more expensive character models and now there are a bunch of new Phoenix Lords on preorder . . .

Thanks for reading