Hobby Progress, week 39

Hey everybody!
We’re swiftly approaching the end of the year now, and I’ve been thinking on how I actually want to make some effort to finish off some projects that have been started this year, so that I’m carrying over a minimum of bare plastic, though this hasn’t actually seen much fruition this week! But you should all probably expect this by now!

So what have I been doing since the immensely productive week last week? Well, not a great deal!

First of all, let’s talk about my board for Armies on Parade this month. I’ve been trying to get the effort to paint this bad boy for pretty much two weeks now, having sprayed it Zandri Dust and pretty much done nothing else! While I was off, I painted the cracks with Naggaroth Night, and the metallic circles there with Warplock Bronze, but that had been the extent of my work on the thing really. So after casting about for some inspiration, I recalled that Duncan has done a video on exactly what I’m trying to produce with the exact board! I’ve therefore decided on a bit of a scheme for it, and have now painted all of the paving stone areas with a mix of Karak Stone and Baneblade Brown – that is, some are one colour and some are the other, mainly to add interest. I’ve also shaded the metal areas and all of the skulls with Agrax Earthshade, which alone has allowed me to feel much further along with it than I have been!

Parade Day is less than two weeks away now, though, so I need to make sure I can actually pull my finger out with this!! At least I have some Tomb Kings to put on the board, and the main feature is my Stormcast, which of course have all been finished already! I still have no illusions of winning anything, but I do think my army can look quite effective when it’s all on the board there, so we’ll see!

I’ve been building more than I’ve been painting, otherwise – starting with more Alpha Legion chaps! Last weekend I decided to look at my current batch of legionaries in terms of what I can do with them in the game, and have worked out that I needed the four pictured above in order to create three actual squads of five-man Veteran Tactical Marines:

So, all together I have 610 points of Alpha Legion – or I will have, when these last four are painted. Let’s take it clockwise from the top-left then:

Squad One has the sergeant kitted out with a combi-flamer (+10 points) and another marine has a meltagun (+15 points) Total: 150 points

Squad Two has the sergeant wielding a power fist (+15 points); one legionary carries the legion vexilla (+10 points) and another is wielding a missile launcher (+25 points) Total: 175 points

Squad Three has the sergeant wielding a plasma pistol and power fist (+30 points total), and another marine is using a plasma gun (+15 points) Total: 170 points

The Centurion has been upgraded to a Chaplain, who is wielding a plasma pistol (+15 points) and crozius arcanum (+15 points) Total: 115 points.

I’ve still got the Contemptor Dreadnought waiting in the wings, but that’s roughly 200 points from what I remember, so I’m hoping that by the end of the year I will be able to have 1000 points ready so that I can start playing games with them, so stay tuned for that!

Speaking of buiding more marines:

I’ve had these other five marines waiting in the wings since I built up the five Novamarines at the beginning of the year! So I’ve taken some time to kinda kitbash some really fancy-looking marines together: most obviously, the sergeant out front has got the power fist from the Devastator kit, and the power sword from the Ultramarines upgrade kit. That upgrade kit is widely-used for shoulder pads on the other guys, too. I’ve already talked about using Devastator parts on the missile launcher guy, who has been built up a few weeks ago. The only other bits are a right arm from the Vanguard Veterans kit that allows the marine on the right to wield his boltgun one-handed.

I’ve also finally built up the apothecary that I’d started to work on months ago, but couldn’t find a right arm that I wanted. Well, once again the Devastator kit has come through for me, there! What an awesome and versatile kit that is!

So I have five fancy marines that I’m thinking I might field along with the Novamarines, if they do indeed make a legal squad – there’s every chance they won’t, so more thought might be needed here! But still…

While I’m still on the subject of Ultramarines, I thought I’d share this picture that I put up on instagram last weekend – it’s the tactical squad I posted about last week, but arranged around the novel Nightbringer, which I did purely for a bit of fun, but has swiftly and inexplicably become my most-liked photograph on instagram in the history of me!

So there you have it! Other building projects from the week consist of:

The Genestealer Patriarch from Overkill is a lot of fun, even if it is the third iteration of this pose in, what, eighteen months – I should try to get my Space Hulk and Shield of Baal Broodlords together with him for a comparison… But it’s still a badass model, and I’m looking forward to getting it painted up along with the rest of my cult.

As I said in yesterday’s blog, whereas I’ve dabbled with models like the Electro-Priests or the Grey Knights, I’m actually going to build a Genestealer Cult army, so that will be (eventually) three full armies for 40k. Hopefully, by the time I retire I’ll actually have them painted up, too!

Finally, I started to build some more Tomb Kings last night, after winning some lots on ebay! I’ve got two done thus far, and while they are fairly simple to put together (the horsemen themselves have a body that’s all-in-one, so that’s useful) I’ve only managed this pair. I’ve had to leave the slotta bars on the horse feet, as the surface area is otherwise too small and I’d worry about them. I’m confident that I can built it up with basing material though, so they won’t be obvious! I don’t know if I’ll be pushing my luck to get even these two painted up for Armies on Parade, but it would be kinda cool… We’ll see!

So that’s the extent of my progress for this week! I’m planning to focus my attention on the board, with the Alpha Legion marines for a bit of light relief, so hopefully in next week’s blog, there will be some exciting times to talk about!!