Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 16

As you can see it was decals, there was some solid reasoning behind it in the end. Yes, I can freehand these symbols but I needed them to be consistent. It's already difficult to put them in a similar space but the same size and thickness. The Euronymous symbols illustrate that's a difficult task. So you can see here I've gloss varnished where the decals were applied [luckily that's all gone now thanks to Lahmian Medium]. I slightly scuffed the Dark Angel symbol on the left but I think I can cover it with battle damage. The other one is random mechanicum sybology and numbers - '69 dude!'

Construction date on the other shin and another Dark Angel badge. The orignal plan was just to have the badge with one wing, but it looked odd. Ultimately the relief I feel from making the decision and moving this forward is reward in itself. My newly minted progress chart is giving me a focus. I can do some proper battle damage on these, add in the patina on the front and then they can be glued to the legs.

That's real progress when I'm gluing the parts together! I can't wait to see this done, I love the model and the very essence of Imperial Knights. I hope with renewed focus and overcoming these hurdles I can crack on with it and finish once and for all. I also painted a little bit on a Bastion too ;)

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |

Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 15

As I debate the further use of decals I decided to add my own 'Gerantius inspired' heraldry. Given the Dark Angel affiliation and exisiting symbol I decided to replace the portcullis with a broadsword. I was a little disheartend by my efforts, but only insomuch as they were far too bulky looking, whereas the proper Gerantius symbol is quite lean in it's execution. Also what do you think of the Forgeworld mark on the hatch, too distracting?

To that end I trimmed it down again which has offered up further issues with how to render the eyes in such a small space. I also need to do the top of the head and perhaps decide if I need to put the portcullis in?

Quick Photoshop later, what do you think?

I've also been wodering about the back of the pauldrons and the legs. As you can see the shin pads feature the crown from the main symbol. I have a number of Dark Angel decals I could use but I'm already wary of mixing the decals and freehand. Freehand on its own works for me but put it next to the clarity of a decal and it really highlights any deficiencies in the quality. I can free hand the Dark Angel symbol but I have the decals... find out tomorrow.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |

What's on my palette?

Bless me readers for I have sinned, it's been just over 4 months since my last confession and I just need to evaluate where I'm at to keep track and focus.

 

To be fair  I did a 'Where’s my head @', my Hobby Season Review and the To Do List, so they cover some of what What’s on my palette achieves. That said there’s a lot coming in the last quarter of the year. The biggies were Fluffageddon and Armies on Parade, the sad news is that unfortunately I’m not going to make Fluffageddon. The same day is one of the infrequent Southport Floral Hall Rock Nights. The wife wants to go and as it’s harking back to our early days together, where we’d rock out to the likes of Skid Row, Ozzy Osbourne, Faith No More and many others I’m not about to disappoint her by not getting back in time [literally and figuratively]. Hopefully some of my gaming crew will also be at the Floral as we always played and partied hard back then, given we all went to these things. In fact that's were I reconnected with them way back in 2012. Not to mention our last visit in 2015:

I’m really disappointed not to get in on the first Fluffageddon, Alex was always keen to point out those who’d been to Blog Wars from the beginning so I was imagining Matt would do the same. It would have also made a good recce of the Outpost in case future From the Fang events happen there. However, that did leave a bit of a hole in my Winter tournament schedule but luckily there seems to be a wealth of alternatives. Caledonian are holding a number of events over the next few months, both one and two day tournaments. Additionally Wargames has a couple of events, 40k GT heats and there’s also Armies on Parade, the calendar looks a bit like this:

• Autumn Onslaught 9th October - Element Games
• Armies on Parade 15th October - Games Workshop
• 40k Store Championship 22nd October - Wargames
• Heat 5! 40k GT 29th & 30th October - Element Games
• Fluffageddon 12th November - The Outpost
• Caledonian Highlander/Unbound 19th & 20th November - Element Games
• Winter Warm Up 18th December - Element Games
• Last Chance Open 40k Tournament 14th & 15th January - Wargames

Obviously I’m not going to all of them and this is not everything that’s going on nationwide, there are plenty of other 40 GTs happening but these are the ones I was interested in and trying to fit them around my wife’s work. The end result is I’ll be attending Armies on Parade and the Caledonian Highlander. The Caledonian is new to me, hence why I chose Highlander, I’m not sure the Unbound is my bag and luckily Liam and Ben are going to go too. It’s two days, which I’m less keen on, I prefer just a one day event but it fits around home life and as the wife has given me a pass I’ll make do. I’m particularly intrigued about the army lists that can be made with the limitations but I’ll be taking the nids and as it’s only 1500pts and 3 hours to play I think it should be quite relaxed. The only thing I need to worry about is perhaps making my Acid Spray for my Tyrannofex, I'm in two mind between it and a Carnifex... We may also look at Wargames in January but that’s a long way off just yet.

AoP is a different matter though as that's just over 4 weeks away. I still have to prepare a couple of things to be happy with my display:

• Imperial Knight Paladin
• Imperial Bastions
• Quad Gun

This is the bare minimum, I'd hoped to add in  some of the Deathwatch but I'm realistic that's highly unlikely even if I did want to simplify how I paint them so they're quicker than my Ravenwing. I just don't have it in me to compromise and rush them... Still the Paladin is progressing and I can limit my efforts just to the one set of weaponry so I can then shift focus back to the Bastions and pick up the remainder after Parade day.

 

To that end I'll be setting myself a new schedule to keep these tasks in mind. It's a rough guess on how long I can allocate to each part and if I complete them ahead of schedule so much the better.

The tale of 5 Kill Teamers [or 4 Kill Teamer and 1 cheater!]

I don't know what celestial alignment occured to get 5 of the hobby crew in one room but we only went and done it. Ben hosted Liam, Otty, PeteB and myself for a night of Kill Team, even more surprsing when you take into account PeteB has moved over to Age of Sigmar! So we set up on a 4'x4' playing the Supply Drop mission.

Ben chose the typically orky position of facing off against everyone in the middle of the board. Nobs on bikes and his tank busters.

Otty brought his Inquisition Force and it was round about now he realised he'd cheated and brought a HQ - his Inquisitor. We let it pass on the udnerstanding that he would never live it down, forever!

Liam brought evil space pixies.

PeteB had some Chaos Space Marines hiding in a shoe box, next time I imagine it'll be Khorne Daemonkin. I brought four Ravenwing bikes and my Sniper scouts, with a Missile Launcher.

We rolled off for who went first, I think it was Liam, PeteB, Otty, Ben and then myself. Realistically it was a nightmare to follow what was going on for a coherent battle report. Pretty much everyone scored a 'first strike' [First Blood in their first turn] Liam took out PeteB's lone Missile Launcher marine in the tower next to him. PeteB picked up a valuable supply drop and we all seemed to target and kill a specialist so we were each 2 or 3 VPs up each by the end of turn 1.

Personally I was able to take out the nearest threat to my scouts - the three Chaos Marines. Then I charged my Ravenwing at Ben's bikes. I'd killed one biker with the plasma gun then the Warlord charged his Warlord and was cut down in overwatch which thanks to Ben's Warlord trait netted him 3 VPs for almost no effort and left my army worse off than I'd hoped. Other amusing things included Liam's Venom getting stuck on a crater [or immobilized by Ben's bomb Squig] meaning his Incubi had to foot slog across the board. Otty's Servitors kept on getting mind-locked so hardly advanced out of their DZ

My Scouts remained pretty much steadfast for the game, while PeteB was morale checking quite early on. His shooting seemed to be always spot on but his 10,000 year old ammo couldn;t wound for toffee. While my Ravenwing entered into combat with an Ork biker, we had 3 rounds each at combat with me getting 1s and 2s to hit and then getting 5s for Hit & Run it was ludicrously comical. The deadlock was only broken by a Deathcult Assassin getting in on the melee and killing both parties!

The end result saw Ben, who was currently out of reach on at least 10 VPs being tabled, so he was out of the scoring, with Liam also with no models on the board. We then got points for other forcess that routed or killed. Otty was the only faction not to rout so PeteB and I got 3 VPs each bringing us both up to 9 and Otty was on 5 but got 4 VPs for the other factions.

That left the three of us in a three way tie for first place with PeteB and I taking a moral victory as we did not cheat :) Bottom line we had an absolute blast and we were done by 11:30. A great night was had by all and although it;s crushingly bad when any model dies in this game it's also highly amusing. Everything is so valuable, the stakes are so much higher and although a 5-way game skews the game into weird territories I think it worked out OK. I'll look forward to our next game.

Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 14

With the Land speeders in the bag it's about time the Imperial Knight got finished. It's been pushed ot one side for far to long, granted everything else were perfectly valid contributions to my armies and my hobby exploits but they really have been avoidance tasks. Which is odd because as I actually start doing more on the Knight I can literaly taste how quick I can finish this thing. Sure it's not goign to be done next week but it seems straightforward and certain elements once done - patina, will have a massive impact on progress.

Anyway, greens and highlighting the banner.

Weapon options.

Carapace and the back of the banner, which was roughly dry-brushed to get cross hatched lines to make it look like fabric.

Pauldrons, I'll need to do all the battle damage before I do the verdigris. But before all of that - heraldry markings...

Choice of helmets, the one on the right is traditionally the Gerantius faceplate but I can't decide just yet.

I gloss varnished the access hatch and banner for some decals

and I'm a little disenchanted with the results.

The construction mark has warped thanks to the decal softener. I did keep re-postioning it thoughso it's partly my fault. I just couldn't get it to align in the dead centre of the hatch with it's top and bottom parallel to the window and edge. I'm also dubious about the big 'red thing' drawing attention to itself on top of the carapace. Hopefully some battle damage will tone it down.

And this! Well I always assumed it fit in this side of the banner - it does not! I had to trim off the bottom and replace it with the triangle  to make it fit. Some shading did help but as soon as I applied Lahmian Medium on top, to tone down the glossy decal finish, it rehydrated the pigment and washed it off. I'm hoping some subsequent coats will help.

Bottom line the whole project has become a bit schizophrenic, flitting from visions of the 'the end is in sight' to 'couldn't care less'. I'm sure it's not helped by fatigue but it's becoming less appealing to do. That said the other night I was not going to work on this at all and managed to put in an hour or two and get one leg and the waist completely weathered. When I get the second leg done that'll be about a third of the model complete, which is awesome butt tempered by all the other hurdles yet come. I've no doubts on the painting it's just elements like the decals, I'm half a mind to do an alternative banner...

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |

Dark Angels - Land Speeder Typhoons - moar shots

These are the 'cinematic shots' i.e. the ones with a shedload of filters on to try and make them more interesting. Unlike my pic of the Dark Talon I'm not sure if there's any improvements but I always need some pics on my phone for various social media platforms so it's always worth doing.

Sure all my other To Done! pics are in the cloud but for 'reasons' it's nice to have some stored locally too.

These actually look really ropey, nevermind.

There seems to be a bit of a furore over the use of Prisma, certainly on Facebook folk are getting pretty steamed about it. Personally I think it adds another dimension but there's a knack to it and certainly little benefit of using it on WiP shots with all your hobby table in the back ground.

I can definitely recommend dialling back the filter sometimes, it helps bring back definition of the model but retains the artistic styling.

I could imagine this being useful in making a 40k comic, if I had the time I'd do it I'm sure some bright spark will take the idea and run with it though. Certainly make the headlight OSL work though.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics.

GW on the TV

We've all seen a big change in GW recently, from their embracing social media, push for more games and return of Specialist Games, but when was the last time you saw them advertise on TV?!

That time is now (according to the wife, who just sent me this picture).