Dark Angels - Assault Squad - MOAR SHOTS

OK, the 'good' shots were a bit poor. Luckily the phone cam shots came out a bit better. These first few are in the light box. I've two 1500 lumen daylight LED bulbs now so it's pretty bright.

And a bit of filter jiggery-pokery make sit quite dramatic.

I'm really pleased with the finished models, they have so much character for an otherwise generic squad.

The use of the Sanguinary guard legs adds so much and I love the idea that for the Blood Angels these are for their elite and crafted in gold where here they're used by a standard Assault Squad in their traditional green :)

These were the simultaneous day shots, so again the colours are a bit ropey but better than the digital camera.

The 90° rotation of each model, yep there's a shed load of pics to follow, get a cup of tea!

And individuals as well, in case you want to look in detail?

Moar filter shots.

I'd been quite worried about the dark skin tone on the sergeant, I always do, and his human eye but I really like how they turned out. I think I managed to create a different skin tone altogether than my previous efforts which is good as making it up every time means there's more diversity

Given just how busy the models were with detail I kept the litanies to a minimum. With all the purity seals and tribal making it just seemed too much. The company numbers were a bit of a variety too - each of the three came out OK but ranging from tiny to 'mahoosive'!

Here's the clearest look at the jump pack glow effect. Not entirely sure of it's what I was after but there are some bits I like and most of the gaming views won't get to see them anyway so it'll more than do.

Again the Blood Angel chainsword really helped here allowing me to put an Assault Squad marking on the hand where his Heresy era shoulder prevented it. And yes the squad do not feature the Dark Angel chapter badge, just the white blade and on the wrong shoulder. At this minute I cannot explain it but that Heresy shoulder pad I think is the key to their fluff.

Perhaps they removed their chapter 'wings' until they've captured the Fallen half of their squad and only then will they add them back in and return their Chapter shoulder pad to their left?

Although the second from the left with his re-purposed Space Wolf left shoulder pad probably isn't going to switch it to the right ;)

Still love the genius of those quartered knee pads perfect for the 5th company :)

This guy is such a bad-ass.

OK, enough already, next up lets get back to some hybrids, see you next week :)

Dark Angels - Assault Squad - TO DONE!

The Assault Squad is TO DONE! The 'good' pictures are however a bit grim [and dark]

I mean this is why GW say not to photograph using daylight - it was just too bright so the shadows are super dark but there's nothing like persisting with it despite the poor results.

I have taken some phone pics simultaneously that manage to mitigate the shadows that will be in the MOAR pics, so look forward to them.

Luckily I think I've also got the light box set up almots right so those pics may well become the defacto standard, we'll see how things go.

I love this guys pose.

I don;t know how many people saw on the Facebook group but I did manage to drop them all on a rough concrete paving slab as I went to do these pics.

Tehy were balanced on a take-away tub lid and there was a moment before I moved them I thought it was going to end in tears. Then one tipped over, what with them all having weird high centres of gravity. Another tipped and as I tried to compensate my hand spasmed and I practically threww them all in the air.

To add insult to injury my wife had seen me setting up the back drop and made some sarcastic comment about having to watch me take the pics, she soon scarpered when she realised this was not a funny situation anymore.

So, two back packs needed gluign back on and all of them had some remedial damage somewhere or another. The worst was the chips on the base edges :(

Still, about 30 minutes later they were all sufficiently repaired to have poor pictures taken of them!

Anyway, 90° shots of each of them now.

Sergeant - 2 chainswords means he gets 2 extra attacks, you should see the rage on all the Tyranid forums that three pairs of Scything Talons only get +1 extra attack and he gets 2!

These Flamer guys should be pretty cool.

So there we go, only on my Great Build list but started and pushed through to completion. I'm not sure if that's a good thing but certainly shows how it can be beneficial as although they've been in the pipeline for a good few months it felt like they were turned around really quickly over the last few weeks as I kept chipping away with the build, the basing and undercoat, then basecoats and metallics. Suddenly there were only the green highlights and all the remaining hurdles were 'fun'. Fingers crossed I'll be able to repeat the process in the future.

DIY dice box

We like a good dice box/rolling tray in our house. It's funny, when I first got back with my gaming crew rolling dice in a box was what I did with the kids to avoid arguments, the fact Ben, Liam and Otty were also operating the same system, probably for the same reasons goes some way to illustrate how fraught those games could be. I like to think there's a more relaxed approach nowadays 'win at all costs' is no longer an issue. That said the box still has it's place and I was really impressed by Ross Graham's tutorial on how to make one and then Nick over at the Burning Eye did something similar.

However, good as they were they weren't quite what I was after. We're used to rolling in box lids, bigger and wider than thos box frames with plenty of run-up like a craps table. So I'd been looking at a variety of options [detailed at the end] but have created this option as a serviceable solution. We'd nipped to Hobbycraft recently and they had these 'Photo boxes' for just £2, which was a perfect price point for me. This was the best patter on the outside, the rest being pastel polka dots and gold embossing, shame they had now darker more urban looking one but ultimately it's a £2 shoe box!

I also picked up four sheets of felt for 55p each [three was enough]. I chose black because I thought it'd show up my yellow dice beautifully.

I then cut them to fit, layed on PVA glue, smoothed it out with a coffee stirrer and attached the felt. Now I'd done a few rolling tests and even with the felt there was a certain loudness to the dice I still wasn;t happy about. So I glued a sheet of my laminate floor foam underlay into the base first.

I then glued another sheet of felt on top.

So the sides are reasonably muffled but then the base is perfect. Ultimately if I wanted a noisy dice roll late at night I'd still be rolling on my Realm of Battle board! I got so excited I did some videos, because all the cool kids use the YouTube.

And then I went and did a slow-mo

OK I got giddy again with the slow-mo

So I was really pleased with the results. As you can see from Ross, and Nick's interpretations, including my own there are plenty of ways to do this so here are the 'also-rans' for boxes I was considering if you want to try and make one yourself...

This box from the Works was my original contender and at £4 was nice prize but it would require painting on the outside too as well as getting the felt to line it.

However I'd been distracted by a crate similar to this at Home & Bargain that I was going to remove the upper slats and then repin lower down and trim the bits poking up to make it an enclosed box. It was only £2.99 but they stopped selling them in the end, which led me to look at alternatives and seeing just the £2 box at Hobbycraft and the felt being right there too I just snapped it all up.