Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 5

Not sure why but the Cerastus is getting the love at the moment. Progress on the Bastions were goign strong but he snuck in there and I had my first painting session in the 40k man cave where I laid down some more metallic stippling. Once again this is a bit weird because the mottled metal effect is really cool but quite bright, this will be toned down with subsequent washes and the obligatory verdigris but it's always a gamble at this stage I just have to have faith that'll come right in the end, well that IS the most important rule of painting afterall.

The funny thing is that the metallics are actually something I've done a lot of and should be confident about but every time I hit these milestones where I think, that actually looks nice, I should stop there when I know the end result will actually look just as good if not better. Doubt seeps in and that will cause procrastination and perhaps make other projects seem more appealiing leaving this in the doldrums. When you add in the doubts that appear that there is still loads more to do, despite my best efforts to convince myself the 'metallics are actually really easy', which then evolves into 'yes but there's loads of them'... You see that's the problem with painting, too much time to THINK! and those thoughts are often a barrier to progression.

Yet another internal debate is the actual House colour scheme of the Knight. This will be house Corvus, an off-shoot of house Raven. But I'll still use the supplied decals [which I may live to regret] just because they're awesomely detailed. It may result in a rather incongruous finish amongst my freehand symbols elsewhere but they're too good to pass up. However, there are elements of the Corvus scheme I don't like, mainly the black quartering but also the chevrons. With my issues painting the Ravenwing I don't particularly want to paint black if I can help it. Of course as it's an off-shoot of Raven I can do whatever the hell I want which means I can switch black to Bonewhite and not include the white lines in the yellow black Chevrons

But I have just rediscovered this blog http://musingsofametalmind.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/imperial-knight.html which has a pretty cool take on Raven that I'd like to follow. It has the level of weathering I'd like to do and more importantly think I'm capable of.

The legs have received a little more attention than the body, I'm thinking I may need to add a small amount of gun metal as extreme highlight to match up with my long in gestation Dark Angels drop pod [now that's something that'll never get the verdigris treatment].

But the gold is just a little too 'flat' it needs some more tone on top to create more patination in it and add depth and texture. There's a lot fun doing metal like this, there's no real skill involved it's mainly stippling with a crappy brush and adding washes in places to create that depth.

And of course knights are full of metal underneath the carapace so that's why it's deceptive because the process is simple, it's just there's lots of it and then there are details I'll want to pick out to make the mass of metals more interesting and then I have to paint the carapace which isn't just red but all the other colours [not to mention the special FX afterwrds] and that's when the task ahead looks insurmountable and my Blog Wars to do list unlikely. I'm confident I can manage one of the three outstanding elements, perhaps two but the Ravenwing seem doubtful...

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 

1,000 posts

Welcome to yet another arbitrary milestone celebrating my continued blogging enterprise. The funny thing is these begin to feel like award ceremonies, y'know when a winner will say 'this award is great because it's voted by the fans' and then at the next ceremony 'this award is great because it's voted by my peers in the industry'.

Anyway, this milestone is great because it's all about me! I've created 1,000 blog posts, sure some have been much like this, self serving gratification but 1,000 posts is still a big deal. But I can't sit here thanking me for being me and writing so much because once again without you there wouldn't be a blog, well there might be but it's doubtful I'd have persevered to produce 1,000 posts in such a time. So thanks, and I promise that aside from my up-coming blog birthday the next milestone will be all about you, so you can feel pleased with yourselves like I currently do ;)

Armies on Parade 2015

 

I hadn't really been keeping up on the Armies on Parade news, apart from hearing it would follow the same format as last year from the awesome Taro modelmaker. So I didn't know when the date was but I guessed I'd still be throwing the nids down. Sure they've placed 1st and 2nd for the last two years but I keep adding to the army so I'm just not going to give up on them just yet. But I did figure the new board would still be unlikely given the timescale and all I had on my plate.

Then I suddenly had a thought about the date and it does transpire that Parade day lands on the weekend of our first ever family holiday abroad [Hallowe'en in Disneyland Paris, in case you were curious]. That would obviously preclude me from entering but I nipped to Southport at the weekend and spoke to the manager and she said she was fine me setting up on the Thursday so long as I accepted they take no responsibility for the safety and security of the models. So I'll still enter and by the looks of it there are considerably more entrants than last year, between eight and a dozen. So it should be a hard fought contest, no guarantees this time but I will try and throw all my nids at my board so hopefully it can speak for itself in my absence. Meanwhile I took this picture of the manager's Lamenters which will be parading on the day. They looked really clean and bright, not to mention Red Planet BASE! Can't wait to see the finished articles.

Whilst we were in Southport I did see Avro Vulcan alongside some of his little mates, sad to see it go but an awesome spectacle and if you want to see what a Tau Barracuda might fly like then check this out: https://www.facebook.com/dwez1/videos/10153620755548497/

1850pt NOT a battle report - 'nids v Craftworld Eldar

I had a battle with Otty the other nightbut for one reason or another I decided not to take too much notice of events to make it a battle report but I still took a few pictures because who doesn't want to see my nids versus Otty's Star Wars Empire themed Eldar fighting on the ice planet of Hoth? And boy does that snow effect Realm of Battle board bounce light back up at ya.

Otty was trying out his Blog Wars army list so we did the mnission with three objectives, your own is worth 5pts, the middle one is worth 10 and your opponents is worth 15pts to you. Now obviously the nids I took wasn't a legal Blog Wars army, because I had two Tyrants and no named character, although the Spawn of Cryptus is present he's not one of the special characters available to use, which I may petition Alex to look into for future Blog Wars. I also took a Sporefield Formation to see how it works. I was up against Otty's 'undead' list made up of many Wraithguard and a Wraithknight so, lots of D.

The first turn was pretty ineffective for both of us although my Flyrants happily dodged almost anything that was shot at them on some nifty Jink saves usually 6's, much to Otty's annoyance/amazement. I was equally flummoxed by his Jink saves, failing to destroy a Vyper with my Flyrant. It would take two turns for first Blood to finally be scored by Otty.

 

I also found his battle focus a major annoyance, it was like the Edlar get two goes each turn and when you add in psychic abilities that convey twin-linked when everything moves, shoots, re-rolls shooting and then moves again quite often it takes longer than moving my horde army! Obviously that's not Otty's fault, that's the way Eldar play now it's just part of me is hankering after a no frills gaming approach where constant re-rolls are not the order of the day but a rarity. However, re-rolls seem to be the defining mechanism now with FnP, twin-linked, re-animation protocols all being used to beat the odds of a single set of dice rolls. Maybe an Age of Sigmar simplification is about due [not that I've read the rules for AoS].

The Spawn of Cryptus got smooshed by the Wraithlord/seer but his children stepped up and avenged their daddy. I really like this unit now, they make a nice second chepaer option instead of Manfactorum Genestealers. Their greater numbers and Stealth mean they're more durable and the added Scything Talons ups their assaults to make them more killy too.

It was round about this point that I finally started to close on Otty's line and suddenly the D-weapons started to hit home. After the Venomthrope was killed pretty much all my big gribblies folded one after another - flyrants, T-fexes, Carnifex and then the Tervigon blew up.

Most of my Deep Striking spores managed to mishap, one did get to assault ssome Warp Spiders and kill two or three but as first outing I was particularly underwhelmed. I'll still have another go with them but it seems a real pain just having them to draw fire because it almost always feels like your giving him things to shoot at when ordinarily they wouldn't shoot at anything. I may not be losing VPs to them but it still feels liek a pointless exercise.

All I really had left at the end was termagants and Spore Pods. We were at the end of turn 3 iut was 1am and I couldn't foresee how I could actually achieve any type of comeback so I called the game. I'm not sure what I could have done better, perhaps kept my flyrants together to maximise their output. I knew that all that D was quite tricky, Ben and PeteB have been discussing the horrors/benefits of it for a while now. This was clearly evidence of how effective it can be because it all happened at once, which is a relief in a way because the game had been really entertaining up to then. Otty couldn;t seem to do anything and I was just Jinking all over the place, we had a great laugh.

So a disappointing result but a really fun game, what more can one ask for?

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 4

I continue to split my time between a number of projects. I doubt this makes the most efficient use of my time but I am just trying to fit stuff in so even if I just paint for five minutes I feel like I've moved things on just a little bit. Sadly I've not yet taken pictures of the bronze/brassy progress I've made. That's actually quite exciting but despite my confidence that most of it will be resolved thanks to verdigris and other metallic techniques I've adopted I'm still trying to be neat and tidy when in fact rough and ready stippling looks even more effective at the end. I'll get my head round it eventually, most likely as time runs out.

However, this update is all about the base, not rubble. Yes I've Red Planet BASED! the Cerastus and I'm really quite pleased with the results. The exposed power conduit had a coat of gun metal, devlan mud and now Typhus Corrosion before I try my hand at rust effects again, like the Chaos/Genestealer Cultists. My only disappointment was that I'd planned to also do the bases on my Genestealers. I know they're not priority but they are on my To Do List and 20 stealers based would give me a warm fuzzy feeling as that's 20% of the paint job right there. But I never got round to it so never mind, no harm no foul.

I did however continue working with the metallics on my objective markers. These are the Force Field Pylons and Teleport Homer from Battle for Macragge, and a couple of standard Teleport Homers to make the six. Still not sure how to differentiate the maelstrom numbers but I'll cross that bridge further down the line.

They're all a bit bright at the moment as I've highlighted up to gold but I have washes to add to tone it down again and then verdigris and any lighting effects on the pylons and homers.

I do have some other 'objective-type' bits knocking around that I could throw in as alternative objectives, that might help in the numbering stakes, but these would work in a pinch. They're definitely a quick win for Blog Wars at this stage.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 

40kaddict Towers - We have power!

The electrician came the other day an fitted all the electrics. The original quote we got was £500 but this was a guy who used to work for my mother-in-law and he arranged for one of the lads to come and do it. I spent around £100 on the materials and and the day-rate for the electrician and a few more bits came to a further £180 but it's all done.

I got a double socket on the right and two double sockets on the left.

You can also see I've 'laid' the carpet. I had various offcuts from my son's bedroom and our loft and landing. Unfortunately there wasn't enough of one to make it uniform but the two tone element is OK, I did consider having the beige stripe down the middle but that's in two parts so I thought it was best to have it nearer the door as I'll step over the join anyway.

I only stapled the carpet down, it's probably a major trip hazard but I'll mitigate that with a few rugs to add on top which will make it, warmer, more bohemian but a little more grungy and tatty

There are two 2' fluorescent tubes in the apex of the roof and and LED spotlight with PIR sensor above the door so I can see what I'm doing when I try and get inside. The lights were a bit dim when I tried them the other night but it could have been them warming up for the first time. I'll no doubt be needing more illuminations at some point. I've still to add the draft insulation on the door frame though.

And the first load of crap has been installed. I've so much stuff to move, my wife is already muttering under her breath it won't fit. She may be correct but I have to put in the computer desk first and as I've removed all it's contents and they're taking most of the back room I could agree that it looks like it's taking up twice as much  space as it eventually will.

Also some of the boxes on the shelf are actually empty. I'll be organising them a little better  once I've moved some of my stuff over but that'll be a job in itself.

'nids part 175 - Tyranid Void Shield Generator part 3.

I could be showing you pictures of my updated Cerastus but I'm pretty sure you just want to see a Tyranid Void Shield Generator right now, am I right? Or am I right? Here's the base, another spare piece of hardboard, this time from an old TV cabinet. I'm rapidly running out of these spare bits, I might actually have to buy some MDF soon. I scored through the template with a knife so I'll know roughly where each piece goes when I come to stick it on.

I've trimmed the noodle bowl, it would later transpire trimmed too much but  nevermind.

And the bowl in place, although the numbers don't match up.

I then realised I would need to fill the hole in the ring, preferably before I glued the ring in place. Initially I thought I'd fill it with newspaper but then remembered I had a load of high density foam in the garage from my brother's vivarium. And amzingly there was a circular core cut to form a ventilation hole in the viv. This was a perfect fit and I hollowed out the inside a bit to better form the 'trumpet' shape at the base of the VSG emitter.

And a lot of hot melt glue later and we have the basing structure, with a mechanical pencil tube for the emitter support.

I screwed up a bit on the floor, it's slightly tilted and even worse tilted up against a wall that was cut too deep but hopefully the sculpting on top will fix that, not that it matters as anything on the battlements gets a save, regardless of how much the walls obscure it.

Next step is to fill out the chitin spines with tissue and PVA and then make the chitin spines. This step and all subsequent steps are all things that require me to sacrifice Dark Angels time though, even this step was one too far, we'll see what price I'm prepared to pay...

Tyranid Void Shield Generator Chapter 1. | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. | part 7. | part 8. | part 9. |

Tyranid Void Shield Generator Chapter 2. | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. | part 7. | part 8. | part 9. | part 10. | part 11. | part 12. | part 13. | part 14. | part 15. |