40k day

Played some 40k today!
Marines and Marines vs the new Dark Angels, Orks and a Knight. Massive amounts of destruction on both sides. The new DA psychic powers seem pretty good.

After his Thunderfire cannon was destroyed, the Techmarine attempts to claim his vengeance on the Knight. He is not very successful.

Ironclad Dreadnaught and Drop Pod

A lot of my hobby time recently has gone into a Space Marine army. For various reasons I decided this time I'd go with a self made chapter. The main reason is it allows me to use miniatures from multiple other chapters and fight other Imperial factions, as I can tweak the fluff to suit whatever.

I went with a silver and blue scheme, inspired somewhat by the Astral Claws scheme. It's fast to paint, looks pretty good and is fairly bright compared to my previous Iron Hands marine army.

Chapter name and symbol are still TBC.

I've made several attempts to photograph my progress, but capturing the blue has been difficult. Today I had some time and there was a bit of sun so I used natural lighting. Much better! Not perfect, but not too bad.

Dark Eldar Venom

After the first squad was done I knew I needed to get started on the vehicles. I hate painting anything bigger than infantry, but I quite enjoyed the venom. I think I was a little heavy on the washes so it looks a little strange on the large flat surfaces, but overall it's not too bad. Fairly quick and easy to do! Hooray! Venom spam for everyone!

 More pics after the jump...

Dark Eldar Warriors complete!

Well, I finished my first squad of 5. Adding the extra bit of purple to the leg really solidified the scheme I think and they look pretty good all finished and with snow on the base.

More pics after the jump...

More WIP Dark Eldar Warriors

I've just got the base colours down but so far I'm liking the way they're turning out.

Dark Eldar - More test schemes

Since last post I did a bit of shopping and picked up a few new purples (you can never have enough!).
I'm getting close to a scheme I'm happy with.

What do you think? Lighter or darker purple?

Dark Eldar - New scheme test mini

It's been ages since I painted any Dark Eldar. Literally 2 or 3 years. I dug them out again recently and discovered I had more painted than I thought, maybe about a quarter of the army.
While I'm sure you all compulsively memorize and catalog all of my armies and schemes, here's a reminder of what they look like.


Anyway, that scheme has a couple of problems.
1: It takes ages to paint. I'm under far fewer illusions about how quickly I work now than I was when I started, and I basically want to get stuff done as quickly as possible (see, my tau)
2: This is the important one; GW changed all the paints, like, twice since I did this scheme. So, I'm not sure I could replicate it on new miniatures even if I wanted to.
3: I recently unloaded my 'crons so I'm down a purple army (*)

The purple came out SUPER glossy which I am totally not on board with, like, at all. It's also a little darker in real life, but bad camera phone etc etc.

so, questions:
1) Should I just attempt to continue with the old scheme?
2) What do you think of the new scheme?
3) What shade of purple would improve it? My Emperor's Children are kinda light/pastel-y purple so I want something a bit more blue I think




* I'm far more serious about this than I should be

Tau custom objective markers WIP

I've only played a few games of 7th so far but it's a lot of fun with the Maelstrom missions. It really makes the game much more dynamic and keeps things interesting until the end.

Who doesn't love a dead Tau? The pic quality isn't so good but I really like the way his pistol ended up posed in his open hand.

Anyway, so far we've been using dice to mark objectives but they inevitably get picked up, rolled, knocked over or whatever. So, I thought it was time to make some custom objectives to give something more interesting to fight over.

Necrons - Full army shots

Well, here they are. While they're not my best work and far from my favourite army I have to say they look pretty nice all laid out together. Sorry for the less than great photos, I was in a bit of a rush when I took these so some are kind of crappy. If you click through the "necron" tag you can probably find better photos of individual miniatures and units.

As I mentioned in past posts, I'm getting rid of these guys. I have too many armies and the desire to play and paint more with the Necrons isn't so strong, so I hope they can find a better home. My friend will be selling them for me, and he's in the States (rather than here in Japan with me) so shipping will be from America. If you're interested contact him here.

The whole army. Click for big, and a few more pics after the jump...

Unit finished - Necron Wraiths

Here's my unit of 5, both with and without the obligatory Destroyer Lord.
Why only 5? Well, number 6 went missing somewhere in my bitz box before I could build him. Maybe he'll resurface one day.

They just want to be friends. Whipcoils and Mindshackle scarabs for everyone!

Necron Annihilation Barges - unmanned conversion

"Converting" these guys was much simpler. Just leave the pilots off.

Necron Nightscythe - unmanned conversion

Continuing my quest to finish off my Necrons so they can go off to a better home comes the Nightscythe.
There are elements of the Necron aesthetic that I like and elements I don't. One thing I'm not a fan of is piloted vehicles. For me it's much more sinister to use huge soulless drones, so I made sure all of my vehicles had no visible pilots. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure this was a pretty basic conversion using only the bits in the box. It's possibly the pilot's chair flipped upside down, or something like that.

Battle Report: Bu'Kuro Sept Tau vs Yme Loc Eldar

I rolled some dice today and also took some (poor quality) pictures. 2 (mostly) painted armies fighting it out over (mostly) painted terrain. That's what this game is all about!

We played 1750 using the Maelstrom mission cards. I really enjoy using that mission type. Very fun and dynamic and really changes the flow of 40k. I won't bother typing out army lists because this isn't really very in depth but I can if anyone is interested.

Broadsides survey the Eldar flank.

Longstrike takes a pot shot at the distant Wave Serpent but the Eldar shields prove effective

Necron Triarch Stalker

I haven't touched my Necrons in ages, so I decided it might be time to send them off to a better home.
As such I'm painting up the last few minis for the army so I can hopefully sell them as a painted lot.

Is that a heat ray slung underneath your terrifying metallic thorax or are you just pleased to see me?

Nothing special but looks good on the tabletop I hope. It's good to be painting something purple again though!

Anyway, here's the Triarch Stalker. As with all my vehicles it's been converted to get rid of the pilot. I like to imagine Necron vehicles are like drones or AIs or something.

Dirty Tau - Bu'kuro Sept

For the past year or so of hobby time I've been focusing on the Tau. As I type this they're a few units away from finished (1750 points with some extras), which is pretty great for me. I'm usually both slow and easily distracted, which is not ideal in this hobby.

Fire Warriors take cover in an Imperial ruin

I started the Tau for a paint and play escalation league which I was running with my group. My main goal for this army was to keep it quick and easy to paint. Having a beautifully painted squad doesn't seem so impressive if the rest of your army is grey plastic.

At the time I'd been painting scenery using rust weathering powders and loved how it looked, so I decided to apply the same stuff to these guys.

The idea behind the army is that they were an explorer fleet from a distant Tau Sept named Bu'kuro. The Sept was used as a staging ground for deep space exploration, and these guys were sent off on one such mission. However, their homeworld was was lost while they were away, abandoned and sacrificed for The Greater Good, and so they've been cut off from the Empire. This had the benefit of encouraging a quick and dirty paint style, having them all look beat up, as well as giving them a vague justification for fighting the other Tau player in the group. If they've been forgotten by the Empire, maybe they wouldn't be too friendly towards their old brothers.

More pics after the jump

Imperial Fist Sternguard

It's been a long time since I updated this thing, and I'd like to get back into posting on a regular basis.

To start with, here's some nice shots of the Imperial Fist Sternguard squad I painted on commission for a friend.

Unit Finished - Destroyer Lord

Imotekh the Stormlord wasn't going to be used so I "upgraded" him. I think I like him better this way.

Here's my finished Destroyer Lord. He was a lot of fun to paint. I think I'm getting better at the glowy bits, too.
He was actually a last minute addition to my army, added in because he cost exactly he right amount of points.
I've used him in 2 games so far and he's been fantastic in both, slaughtering his way through a bunch of stuff. Hooray!
My pictures are kind of crappy. I think for Christmas I'll buy myself a nice light box or something!

Necron Deathmark

Here's my first Deathmark. I love these guys. 5 of them with a Harbinger of Despair never fails me, teleporting around the battlefield and shutting down people's brains.

Most of my weapons have purple glowy bits, so I went with blue on these guys with a black carapace to make them stand out a little more, being elite assassins and all.

Unit Finished - Harbinger of Destruction 2

I'm not sure which Cryptek is the current Internet favourite. Maybe the Harbinger of the Storm? Either way, I like a few Destruction Crypteks in my army. They can deal with vehicles, they add some ranged threat beyond the standard Necron 24", and they bring some high strength low AP for chipping away at Terminators, Monsterous Creatures or whatever. They have nice utility. Plus, huge laser-lance gun-cannons! That's always good, right?
Anyway, I have 3 in my list and here's the second.

Bzzzt bzzzt zap zap

Destroyer Lord WIP

When I started my Necrons, one of the first figures I picked up was Imotekh the Stormlord. He was a cool figure and I thought I might use him.

Well, time has progressed and I'm pretty sure he won't see the battlefield any time soon. So, rather than have him sitting around on the shelf doing nothing I decided to put him to use and re-purpose him as a Destroyer Lord.

A WIP, I'll be adding a Warscythe and jazzing up his back a little. It looks kind of plain without the cloak.