Chaos Lord Umbri Zul

   I am 3 and a bit weeks into my marathon training block and I am finding free time has become a luxury that I am struggling to locate much of. Between the pressures of work, having kids and now pushing myself to run ridiculous distances weekly*, something had to give and the decision I have made was to drop wargaming for a bit.

   If I am being honest, a lot of my recent games had already felt a bit like a chore, and my continuous painting targets haven't helped on that front. So, I have stopped booking games for a bit to let everything die down, while I am also restricting my painting to only what I fancy, when I fancy. 

*I am one week away from weekly half marathons for fun . . .

   When the new Red Corsair range came out it included a Reaver Lord, a model I have picked up in the shops so many times it got ridiculous. With my what I want, when I want philosophy in place, I actually bought one and got started.

   During the late stages of the Heresy, I had fluff that the illustrious but often neglected, 523^rd Expeditionary fleet of the Sons of Horus, had failed their primarch one too many times and been severely punished. They already had the title of The Sacrificed Sons but their whole leadership cadre had been beheaded with their skulls covered in gold and displayed on the Vengeful Spirit as a warning to others.

   With a void to be filled, a sergeant rose to lead the, what was at this point, warband and has done until the present era of 40k, leading them away from the Sons of Horus legion and refusing to join the Black Legion. This man became Chaos Lord Umbri Zul.

   I have a model of this character that has been my chaos lord for the past few years, but I was never really that happy with him. This version uses the Reaver Lord as it's base with a few minor amendments.

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Test Slaaneshi

    After 11th edition warhammer 40k was announced my gaming group really picked up on excitement with various new projects being planned and figures being bought. I ended up with half a plan of an Emperor's Children Chaos army - starting with a White Dwarf Combat Patrol.

   I duly bought the marine elements of it as a test project to see if I even wanted to go further with this plan, and found I really enjoyed painting them*. Then I toyed for a few weeks about whether I should finish buying the last couple of units before becoming a bit illusioned with having to buy into a new edition.

*in far smaller batches than is normal for me

   I have since written a list that I do really want to get onto the table, but it is currently sitting in a pile of to buy stuff as I am trying not to spend any money for a while to focus on other things.

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Lords of Mordor

    As mentioned in my last post, I was painting the Armies of Mordor for a Pelannor themed game and slowly adding in models that I had no plan of using but that I knew would get into his head. The last big model in that category was a Nazgul on Fellbeast.

   This has been sitting gathering dust on a shelf for far too many years - it was caked in a thick layer, slowly maturing - so I dusted it off, dusted it again and then got painting.

   For a model that I thought would be really quick to paint going in - its just black isn't it? - it turns out the fellbeasts are barely dark grey, let alone black. I went with various layers of beigey-browns to build the wing colours and underside, adding in various browny-greys for other bits to get something that feels alive, while the Ring Wraith is just black highlighted grey.

This model I specifically got a mutual friend to drop a passing comment that the Nazgul on Fellbeast I had posted was only the first I was painting - and that got a panicked message.

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The Armies Of Mordor

   One of my mates messaged me to ask me if I wanted a game, as he only plays Lord of the Rings I knew I was going to have to tidy up/add to one of my collections, however, when he told me the points limit, I knew I had a fair amount of work to do.

   I spent about a week trying to decide what direction to go in - mostly looking at my old Isengard force or my slightly newer but very unfinished Haradrim, but when he told me he was using a list based around the Grief of Eomer, which happens towards the end of Pelannor, I did a hard left into my to do pile and pulled out my sprues of Morannon Orcs.

I painted three warbands (a sprue each) of Morannon Orcs along with a Morannon Orc Captain for each - this would be the vast bulk of my army*.

*Although, I also proxied in a Isengard Troll as a Mordor Troll for some hitting power

It was at this point where I was posting photos on Istagram where he follows me, that I decided to use this as a chance to get more of the backlog painted and start to get inside his head pre game by painting models that I wasn't going to use, but that he might worry over.

The first model was a Mouth of Sauron, partly as it was an easy model to paint and partly as it's rules are quite good.

Then came Gothmog as he really helps Morannon Orcs out and he was only going to sit in the backlog if not.

I didn't stop there but that's enough for one post.

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Traitor Kasrkin

   Having lined up a couple of games in quick succession, I decided to use them to push myself into finishing more elements of a project that had fallen by the wayside - my traitor guard. I split the elements into NEED for a game and units I can proxy in the meantime but replace before the second game.

   The units I decided I needed were the Kasrkin and a Primaris Psyker. The Kasrkin were half painted, so that was a fairly easy thing to achieve with a few hours work, while the Primaris Psyker was a model from another project that was built and waiting for more models before I started the painting.

   I went with the traditional red unit for the Kasrkin, which was something I had avoided on purpose for my regular traitor guard. These guys it felt right for.

They have a painted unit icon of a bronze hand print - as I'm going to call these guys something like The Pacted.

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Eldar/Aeldari Dire Avengers - Blade Blizzard Shrine

   I started writing this post when the unit featured had just been built and had the first layers of paint done, before they were put on a shelf as they bumped down the queue - that was a year and a half ago . . .

   The unit are Eldar/Aeldari Dire Avengers and are my second unit. I have a bit of an idea of having the option of a full Aspect Warrior list and a core of 2 or 3 squads of Avengers felt right for the plan. This is the second.

   I changed the colour scheme on these compared to my others, to show that aspects don't have a set scheme, each shrine does what it wants - but the basic theme is similar even if shades and where the colours are varies.

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Sir Tom

   A couple of weeks back we lost our oldest rabbit, Tom. He was 11 and he died peacefully at home with his rabbit friend, which is probably how he'd have wanted to go if you had asked him.

   Losing someone who I have lived with for so long always gets me wanting to do something and this time it was to name a big tank after him, the Sir Tom.

   The tank is a Rogal Dorn battle tank, a vehicle I have been meaning to add to my Hervictus tank regiment since it was released. Weirdly, I was supposed to have one from eBay delivered on the day Tom actually died, with Royal Mail somehow losing it somewhere on my street, so it felt right that the two should go together.

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