Hey everybody,
I was off work last week, and it’s been a very exciting week off, as I’ve gotten through quite a bit of painting, as well as being able to get a whole raft of stuff primed up when we had some nice weather at the end of the week.
To start with, I have now finished the Tomb Blades that were begun way back in the mists of time. Some of these models are from my very first Necrons army, and indeed at least one of them I have directly painted over the green and silver/gold, rather than trying to strip the paint from such fiddly models. I know these aren’t going to win any awards, and if I’m being truthful, I could probably spend some more time with them and actually make them a lot better, but I think these are the type of models where I would just never be finished tinkering with them, so needed to call it a day now. They look fine, I think, anyway, so I’m happy to play with them as they are, and that’s basically the whole point – to get my miniatures painted ready for games!
I’ve also finished painting that Raider that I started on a few weeks ago. I may have mentioned it before, but it’s been so nice to be painting a Drukhari vehicle again. It took me right back to the heady days of 2017 when I was painting up nothing but dark kin, and I really enjoyed it! I do kinda feel like I might have done a slightly better job on this than the rest of my fleet, so I might well find myself trying to make the vehicles look better as well as the regular Kabalites when I eventually get round to that little side project…
I still need to apply the transfer to the sail, however, but I seem to have lost my micro sol and micro set, so don’t want to attempt to do this part without them! But that’s a very minor thing in the scheme of it all. On an adjacent note, I was watching a video from Mediocre Hobbies about this, and I was quite taken with the idea of applying transfers whenever possible. Now, I barely use them at all, so have sheets and sheets of the things up in the loft somewhere, but I think it might well be worth looking over them to see what I have, and to see about maybe using them more. Sisters are a prime candidate for this, I think, but we shall see what else I can do!
Two sort-of surprise projects from the week have turned out to be kill teams. I started to paint the Traitor Guard kill team following all of the excitement about the new Cadians coming out, and decided to try and use a really simple scheme to get them done quickly. The uniform is Baneblade Brown and the gloves are Gorthor Brown; the boots are Rhinox Hide with a messy highlight of Doombull Brown, then all three of these areas are shaded with Agrax Earthshade. The fatigues are Dawnstone, then “shaded” with Basilicanum Grey. The pouches and any wraps are Mournfang Brown, then “shaded” with Snakebite Leather. The armour is Leadbelcher with a coat of Militarum Green to make it seem green metal. The weapons are then Leadbelcher shaded with Nuln Oil, with the top of the lasguns having a coat of Black Legion contrast paint. The photo above also has the Traitor Commissar, Ogryn, and Unsanctioned Psyker models that I had already painted a while ago. I’ve based everything with texture paint (I used Lustrian Undergrowth, because I seem to have a lot of it) and then painted with Skrag Brown, shaded with Agrax Earthshade, and briefly drybrushed with Ushabti Bone.
The reason why I’ve gone through everything here is that I have already primed up the 14 additional Traitor Guard models from Blackstone Fortress, and I definitely want to get another box of them – I built the kill team with quite a few fancy weapons, thinking (I think!) that the BF models could fill in for regular troops, but there aren’t that many regular troops in the BF lot! At least I have the Traitor Chieftain, if I were to go into playing these in kill team.
I’ve also primed up some Negavolt Cultists, as I’m quite excited to paint those chaps. Whether we get Dark Mechanicum or not, they’re still really nice-looking models!
Finally, I’ve also painted up the ten Death Korps of Krieg models from the Octarius box, using the scheme from Stahly of Tale of Painters fame. It’s a scheme that really reminds me of some kind of World War II army uniform – I wanted to say Russian, before googling that and finding that I was wrong! The light grey greatcoat with the darker grey trousers and the shiny silver armour is a really nice combo, I think. I did cheat a bit with the scheme, principally because I didn’t have a couple of the paints used in Stahly’s scheme. So the leather is Snakebite Leather rather than Cygor Brown, but a couple of coats of that paint did seem to produce a nice effect, regardless. The gun case was just Black Templar contrast, too, rather than the more traditional scheme. However, I think it’s come out looking really nice, and I think it’ll be good to get some more of these guys painted up in due course! Much as with Traitor Guard, I had built these models with the very definite idea of picking up a second box within short order, but so far I have yet to do so!
I don’t think getting 20 models painted, with a further nine models finished off from previous stages, is an entirely too shabby way to spend a week off – especially when you consider I was in charge of the kids!
I have been able to prime up a whole bunch of stuff when the weather decided to finally be nice and dry at the end of the week. So I have now got the Traitor Guard ready, all of the remaining Sisters models are now primed as well, and the remaining Tau models. I have been able to prime the whole Ash Wastes terrain, after having built it almost a week prior, so I’m hoping to get on with painting that in due course, as well. I’m not sure when I’ll actually get round to painting the other stuff, but the intention with my Prime Day was basically to get as much primed and ready as possible, so that I can then paint over the winter and hopefully get somewhere with the backlog! I have plenty of Grey Knights and Necrons already primed, of course, so they shouldn’t be too much of an issue for me!
Finally, I’ve been having some funny ideas since yesterday, about potentially painting up some of the Tactical Marines that I still have lying around. After a quick trip up into the loft this morning, I have taken stock and have found that I have about 20 of these things, mostly still on the sprue. I built two marines up about a year ago, with the vague idea of making a small Ultramarines army, but the more I think of it now, the more I’m thinking that I might actually do something different with them. Precisely what, I don’t know, but it might be a fun little project, so stay tuned for more on that!!
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