A moral victory

Last week my ear started to hurt a bit, it turns out I have an inner-ear infection and I'm now on penicillin to get rid of it. Due to the pains I haven't been able to paint much.

In spite of this I went down to Aarhus last Saturday and played a game of 40k with Laurents and his friend Nicolai. The game was a blast! Nicolai was a beginner in 40k like me and Laurents acted like a game master and controlled a few neutral squads of Imperial Guard troops. The objective was to seize and hold a spy who may have important information, it was not known which of the neutral squads he was in (and it turned out it didn't matter much either :).

I made some horrid mistakes setting up, and in turn 2 my razorback and one of my rhinos payed the ultimate price for my foolishness - both were rammed by the ork vechicles - the rhino was destroyed and the razorback went up in a gigantic explosion. A few turns later my last rhino got blown to pieces too.

All this put my army on the defensive, well away from any objectives. they bravely fought the orkish onslaught and by turn 4 only the remains of my two tactical squads were still standing - one had 3 killer kan's inches away while the other one were being chased up into a building by a mad ork boss (a space marine dreadnought converted into an ork boss armor by Laurents - truely a horrific sight for my loyal marines).

But as the title states it was a great moral victory - in the closing moments of the game the ork boss lashed out with 6 attacks against my last 3 marines, but Nicolai promptly rolled 5 1's and a 5 to hit, meaning only one lost his life. Nicolai then went on to roll a 2 to get a sixth turn and the game ended with my 2 marines still standing. And Nicolai's last attempt at seizing one of the objectives with his last 3 troops failed, inches short of the spy.

All in all the game was draw.

On the painting and assembly front not much have happened, I received my pack of 3 scouts today and decided to assemble the squad. It's not the prettiest squad, the new plastic scouts definitely looks better but since I had 7 it was still cheaper to buy 3 more from the collectors range rather than buying 5 plastic scouts.

I wanted to bring a terminator squad to the game, so I had to to assemble them in a bit of a hurry Friday evening, I had the weapon loadout sorted so it was just a matter of cutting and gluing. The sixth terminator in the back I'm not really sure where I got from, perhaps it was included with White Dwarf at a time. The terminator squad didn't do much good in the game - on Laurents recommendations Nicolai made a point of wiping them out and the orks were up to the task, the one with the assault cannon went running off the board after one round of combat - he won't be getting any purity seals anytime soon.

Finally I managed finishing the first tactical squad, only some detail work was left. They still need some varnish and touchup on the bases but I'll wait for better weather with that, it is quite humid in Denmark at this time of year.

Tactical Painting, Part 4

I finally decided on a base design, I will go with the Obsidian Lava Field mentioned in the previous post. The first test base seems cool and I will be using it for a future model. Using this technique I will position a leg on the large "rock" in an aggressive stance. I'm not sure which model it will be used for, but one possibility is the devastator sergeant with combi-plasma I'll be putting together shortly.

Basing the tactical squad is a bit of a hassle, since they're already painted - usually I'll use a black ink or a thinned down chaos black to basecoat the flock, but with painted model it has to be done carefully. For the next squad I will glue the flock and make any green stuff moulds before the priming. After the black paint was dry it was just a quick drybrush away from the finishing line. I decided the tactical squad would only get a few large rocks and no lava flows at all.

All that's left for this combat squad is a touch-up with chaos black on the base (the rock, anything missed in the basecoat of the base, and the base border), a spray of varnish, some water transfers, a final coat of varnish and as a last touch, some gloss varnish on the big rocks. However I will wait until the rest of the tactical squad is finished so I can do the varnish in one go.

 The rest of the tactical squad on stage 3 of 5, its mostly detail work now and it should be done soon. As you can see I decided to base these models along with the rest of the squad, might aswell get it done.

The robed marine I'm working on for the command squad is coming along slowly - the paint job got a little thick from the first failed attempts but I don't think it shows much.
Next up is the green power armour, with a steady hand so I don't ruin the robes. He was based in the same manner as the tactical squad, but with the robes covering most of the base there's no room for special details - I guess I'll save that for the terminators and dreadnoughts.

I went to Silkeborg today and stopped by Asgaard Games, which was a pleasant surprise, It's quite a large shop with competitive pricing and a huge range of wargaming products - even a few games I haven't heard of before. I picked up a few brushes, a couple of issues of White Dwarf and two half-price blisters.

The Brushes are Rotmarder-Kolinsky, a size 1 and 0/3, they have a comfortable grip and a good price. I look forward to trying them out. The blisters were a "Tomb Kings Standard Bearer" set, that will go right in the Tomb Kings box of unopened goodies, and Dark Angels Chief Librarian Ezekiel - did I mention it was half-price? :). Of course I already had a standard librarian, but I like Ezekiel's model a lot, I may go all-out when painting it - to see how good I can actually paint a model if I really try.

I ordered some Forge World bits the other day, I want to start assembling my Land Raider but I'd like to use the Forge World doors and bits to make it stand out from any other Land Raider, along with that I ordered a Rhino and a Razorback for transportation - in hindsight I could have gotten them just as cheap from Asgaard Games as Maelstrom Games but done is done.

Tactical Painting, Part 3

The second combat squad of my first tactical squad is starting to take shape, I'm painting all five models in one go, applying the individual stages to all five models before proceeding. My paint guide is up to 5 stages with 4-5 steps in each, the guide is based on the Dark Angels painting guide, tips from Painting Tips for the Dark Angels and some of my own ideas.

I've also been working on some bases, my own tries didn't turn out too well and they were quite comprehensive, instead I turned to this article, in particular the Obsidian Lava Field. My plan is to use it plain for the troopers, and do something special with lava and such on the special models. Before trying it on a painted model I'm making a test base to try out the guide - if all goes well the test base can be use for a character later on.

I had to do some work on the bone-coloured robes of the veterans marines, I find it difficult to paint the lighter tones without loosing all the shadow and highlights, especially when the colour I'm aiming for is so close to white. I tried out a few guides, but they didn't really pan out, the one based on Bleached Bone and a Devlan Mud wash was especially bad - perhaps I'll never really get a hang of using washes :).

I went back to the Painting Tips for the Dark Angels and tried it out, so far it looks ok - perhaps a bit too much on the bone/skin tone but hopefully that will be fixed with the final highlights.

Tactical Painting, Part 2

The combat squad "Skull" of the 4th company's 6th tactical squad is almost complete, some basing is needed but that's about it.

I'm testing some different techniques for making ash/lava bases, most involve cork and a rather elaborate painting scheme. I may go for something simpler, perhaps an ash base for the troops and more elaborate bases for command and dreads - the trick will be getting them to match up as a whole.

Crashed Shuttle

I decided to try out a guide for making a lava base on my crashed shuttle scenery piece. The shuttle was painted in an Ultramarines scheme with battle and crash damage. after priming and basecoating the lava bits white it only took a few hours to drybrush the model up to a decent standard.

Clearly this mission should have been left to a more capable chapter...

Tactical Painting, Part 1

The tactical squad is coming along nicely, the first five models are almost done, while the rest have been primed and basecoated. The paint scheme is fairly standard Dark Angels, I'm planning to do something special about the bases to make the army stand out as a whole - I'm thinking a lava / ash theme but I'll have to experiment a bit before committing to it.

The first of the Command Squad marines is going to be a test for the cloak (and Deathwing Terminator) paint scheme, I haven't been able to find a guide that gives the look I'm going for so I'm improvising, basicly working from a bestial brown up to bleached bone mixed with some skull white. I am using G.W. paints exclusively, not because I think they are the best (I wouldn't know, never tried anything else), but rather because I got an almost complete set for no money at all in the E.B. Games sale.

As shown in the picture I will paint the inner-cloak in a red hue, making it stand distinctly out from the dark green marine and the very light cloak. I find that keeping a simple colour scheme makes the models look better and the army will seem more coherent when lined up. For my Dark Angels only the following colours are allowed: Dark Green (armour), Red (weapon casing, inner cloak, some details), Bone-white (Cloaks, Deathwing terminators and vechicles). I hope the lava / ash bases will compliment this scheme but only time will tell.

I also found a use for the Army Painter Spray that gave me troubles when I primed the tactical squad, I will use it for priming terrain pieces, if I get the rough coat there it will be useful for drybrushing effects. The first terrain I will paint is the crashed shuttle from the Battle for MacRagge box, I just primed the first piece today.

Completely unrelated to anything Warhammer I went to the dentist today with a chipped tooth, unfortunately it cannot be fixed easily so I have to get it crowned, setting me back 7000 DKK. This is a hard blow to my dreams of rhinos, razorbacks and dreads - but perhaps I can still afford some vehicles for the army (if we eat pasta for a few months anyway..).

Done with assembling, painting again.

I got a small bag of bits from my from my friend Laurents today, the bits enabled me to finish most of my squads - I'm still missing a multi-melta for one of my tactical squads but I'll get that when I buy a devastator box.
Laurents also recommend some changes for my army, most of these have been incorporated now.

Captain Eckhart (Relic blade, Storm Shield)

Command Squad (Eckhart's Retinue, standard bearer, champion with power sword & combat shield, apothecary, marine with meltagun, veteran with power fist & bolt pistol)

Librarian Ramirez

Tactical Squad (Sergeant, Flamer, Missile Launcher, 7 marines with bolter)

Tactical Squad (Sergeant with power weapon, marine with multi-melta (missing weapon), marine with meltagun, 7 marines with bolter.

Sternguard veteran squad (sergeant with plasma pistol, 1 lascannon, 1 multi-melta, 7 bolter)

Vanguard veteran squad (sergeant with power fist, 1 power fist, 3 power weapons, 1 lightning claws, 4 chainsword & bolt pistol).

I started painting the first tactical squad, I have done some work on five of the marines earlier, now it was time to get the rest up too speed. I lost one marine in the Army Painter incident but I got a spare from Laurents that fits the squad perfectly. I also primed one of the marines from the command squad, I will paint those separately and to a higher standard than the rank-and-file marines.
I'm working on a small painting guide for my Dark Angels, I will post it on the blog when its done. When I'm painting armies I usually make a note of which colours and techniques I've use, in case I need to revisit the army later on.

Tactical Troubles

Back when I bought the "Battle for Macragge" box I started painting 5 members of the tactical squad that comes in the box. after assembly I primed with the last of my Citadel Chaos Black Spray. I prefer to use a layering technique instead of using inks for shadows, I find that using inks for shades is more work than its worth when trying to ink the right spots - in my book inks are from the ancient past, back when we primed everything by hand with Smelly Primer (an old white primer from G.W.). I've read that the inks that are now on sale are much better than the old one so I may give them a go sometime but probably not for my Angels.


I decided to finish up the squad an assemble the last 5 figures last night, today they had to be primed and that turned out to be quite a task. I usually prime a squad of 5 models at a time, I fix the models on top of a nail in a piece of wood. This makes the models easy to move around while spraying.
I was using my brand new Army Painter black primer spray, unfortunately I didn't think to try out the spray on an old model before spraying my 5 marines and the result was .... bad.

The paint seemed to bubble up and left all the models with a surfaces resembling the Citadel "Rough Coat", this was hardly the result I was going for with my marines. Something had to be done, and quick, if they were to be saved, after some google searches and forum scouring I found a guy who recommended spraying the models again, this time as very close (10-20 cm) range and with long burst - there was a high risk of overcoating the models and obscouring the details - but it was worth a try.
The second spraying helped a lot, but one model simply got too much and looked even more horrid than before, nothing short of a paint stripping will save him now. The rest of the lot are usable, but still with some rough points on the legplates and such. Whether its a bad can, another technique, cold weather or something else I cannot say, I will try spraying something worthless and figure it out later - however the Army Painter product seems vastly different to the G.W. ones I used before, for now it seems the G.W. ones are more forgiving about distance and usage.

 

Update: I just found this regarding the issue.

The Unforgiven Veterans, part 3

I got my shipment from Games Workshop yesterday, unfortunately it seems I forgot to order the three metal scouts I'm missing - guess I'll have to make another order soon, I was really looking forward to assembling the scout squad. Free shipping from the Games Workshop online store to Denmark has been extended to 31/03/2010, I guess I can just order the scouts and a water pot but perhaps I should wait a bit and see if I need anything else.
With the 4 large sprues of Dark Angels veterans I'll be assembling tactical squads for a while, if everything pans out I will have enough bits for 3 squads of 10 along with bits for anything else I may wish.

While watching Alias last night I assembled my Space Marine Commander and his Command Squad, using bits from the Dark Angels Upgrade sprues of course. The commander is armed with a power / relic sword, the largest one I could find on any of my sprues.

I almost finished the Vanguard squad too, but even with all the new bits I got I'm missing a weapon for the last marine, it seems that right-handing lightning claws are quite rare. I might go for a chainsword & bolt pistol instead but alas I'm out of bolt pistols too.

Photo stand

I set up a small photo stand on a table next to my paint stand so I can take some better pictures while I create my army. Making a photo stand is pretty simple, a flat surface, glue some pieces of while paper together and hang them on the wall behind the stand and let them lie flat over the table and over the edge. Add some lighting (I use two halogen working lights from a cheap hardware store) and you're all set.
If you have a tripod, use it, if not you can do fine holding the camera in your hands.
You may have to adjust the white balance on the camera to your light, but most camera's do it automaticly.
The Gouged Eye was happy to line up for a photo shoot, wouldn't you be after spending the last few years in a box?

The Unforgiven Veterans, part 2

Yesterday I got some good advise on my army; the latest Dark Angels Codex is 4th edition, while the current Space Marines codex is 5th edition. While it is still possible to use a 4th edition army list there are many improvements in the 5th edition - even if I just use the standard marine rules. At some point the Dark Angels codex should be updated to 5th edition, but all we know for sure is that Blood Angels will be the next one.

For my planned army it didn't change a lot, the biggest change was to the veteran squads I am currently assembling. I decided to convert the two veteran squads into one sternguard and one vanguard squad.

The sternguard squad is completely assembled, however it still needs a sergeant - hopefully he should be arriving tomorrow, along with the Dark Angels upgrade kits. I've left out some of the shoulder pads for now, perhaps I will be using a few from the upgrade kits - I'm not really sure yet.

I decided to pin every joint on the models, joins between metal and plastic are usually quite fragile and pinning is very easy since you can clearly see where the center of the arm is on both parts and drill there.

Remember that plastic is very soft while the metal takes a little longer to drill, a good tip when drilling space marine plastic arms is to leave the shoulder pad off until you're finished - otherwise you may end up with a hole in the shoulder pad :).

Once the holes are drilled in both pieces I super-glue a paper clip into the model, when its dry I cut it off with about 4 mm pin for a plastic arm or about 2 mm for a metal arm. This is also a good time to drill out the gun barrel, the gun looks much more realistic if it got a barrel hole. for bolters and bolt pistol you can also carefully drill out the two side holes on the barrel. The arms are then fitted along with the gun, unless the arms fit perfectly I put a small ball of green stuff on the pin first. Once the arms and gun sits perfectly you can scape off the excess green stuff and do a little sculpting.

I tend to glue the left arm right away but keeping the right arm and gun unglued, this allows me to remove the arm and gun when priming and painting. The green stuff should be completely dry (24-48 hours) before attempting to remove the arm. Once the inaccessible parts are painted I carefully glue the arm and gun in place.
The method of pinning and using green stuff for covering gaps are mostly used on larger models where a simple glue connection would not be able to carry the weight, however I find it very useful for smaller metal models too. Plastic models are different, since the plastic glue melds the plastic pieces together the joint is much stronger than super glue on metal thus pinning is rarely necessary.

For my sternguard veterans heavy weapons I choose a lascannon and a multi-melta, since I had the bits and troops they would fit onto without much conversion. I'd like to do larger conversions but I'll save that for the plastic troopers.

To fit the weapons I used the method described above but adding a pin in the joins between backpack and tubes from the gun. I also glued the backpack on the model right away to make sure it would line up correctly with the gun

Well, that's it for assembling, now the tedious job of removing mould lines before priming remains. I've put the vanguard squad on the shelf for now, most of it is assembled but I need weapons for four of them, I'm sure there'll be some leftovers from my tactical squad.

I was in Århus this morning and stopped by Dragons Lair to see if they had some good deals, unfortunately the "cheap box" with older models only had some Ork and fantasy stuff so instead I got a new primer spray from army painter - I've seen their products before but this is the first one I'm trying out, from what I hear its just as good as GW's, if not better. A GW purity seal spray and a space marine commander had to come too.
The purity seal has a bad reputation, but from what I could gather from various forums the problems related to the matt variant in a blue can, I got a satin one in a tan can, a quick test on an old figure seemed to work fine.
When using any sort of spray varnish you should shake the can a lot and do the spraying at room temperature, the can should also be warm but i wouldn't recommending heating it like some people do.

The Unforgiven Veterans, part 1

The paint stand is up, the boxes of angels have been unpacked.

After some sorting and planning I've decided to start up by assembling two veteran units, made up of the oldest figures i have. These figures are the 4rd(?) edition metal ones with plastic arms and a bolter as standard equipment. I have a few blisters of Dark Angels veterans, a box of Veterans mk. I and some other blisters with heavy and assault weapons.

It adds up to 20 figures- perfect for two veteran squads, provided that i can model them into the weapon types i want. I never did a lot of modelling on the metal figures, when playing Warhammer the focus were to fit the models in formation rather than making the individual model's stance look good. Since i have a lot of the plastic figures i will only do minor modifications to fit the weapons.

I realised that the boxes and blister i got on sale is a odd mix of stuff, and all the plastic figures were just "standard" marines without any Dark Angels signature markings.
The metal  ones were somewhat better given that i had about 12 Dark Angel Veteran marines, unfortunately  these come with only 3 different stances and the mix wasn't perfect.

I decided to order some parts for the plastic marines (that will make up 2-3 tactical squads, a command squad and a devastators squad). The Games Workshop Online Store carry a "Dark Angels Chapter Upgrade" kit, it seems to be just what i need. The kit contains two sprues with a total of 10 marines - a good deal at 135 DKK, however the bases and special weapons that usually come with the Tactical or Dark Angels Veteran boxes are not included. I may have to find another way to get those when i put the squads together. In addition to two packs of upgrade kits I ordered a few other parts - more about those once they land.

Among the old stuff was a Battle for Macragge boxset, back when i bought it I started painting the plastic figures in a Dark Angels 4th Battle Company scheme. My plan is to continue this scheme for my army.
I will mix these models into squads made with the Dark Angels Veterans Upgrade kit to get a unique Dark Angels feel for the whole army, while still using every available figure i have.

I also installed a spell checker ;).