Modeling

Modeling - Painting - Warhammer 40K

Lots of model building and some painting

July 31, 2018 by 1 Comment

The month of July really flew by. While my hobby time was not as consistent as I’d have liked, I did make some progress on a few fronts. I’d been doing quite a bit of painting and I think I got a little burned out. Also, looking at the boxes on my shelves made me realize I’ve got a lot of stuff in the backlog. So I decided to build some stuff.

Model building - group one

I’d ordered a couple of the Shrine of the Aquila kits since it looked like a bunch of Games Workshop’s old 40k terrain was getting mothballed. This was a kit I’d not gotten before so I was looking forward to building it. The Shrine is a bit of a different kit from the other Sector Imperialis kits in that you really don’t have a lot of freedom to build the kit in a bunch of different ways. There might be a couple of slight variations you can perform, but you aren’t getting two or three small buildings out of the kit like you could do with, say, the Basilica Administratum. It really is just one giant building.

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Modeling - Painting - Warhammer 40K

Taking some older models off the shelf

May 18, 2018 by 0 Comments

I wasn’t able to get the white primer I needed right away for my next batch of Plague Marines. So I took a look at my shelf to see what stuff was still a work-in-progress and what needed updating. As it turned out, I had a set of Warp Talons I’d been meaning to complete, as well as a couple units I needed to add my base adapters to. I decided to get cracking on those rather than sit and wait until I could get the primer I needed.

Warp Talons highlights

First up was my unit of Warp Talons. These guys were started back during the Fate of Konor campaign. I did them up in at least three colors just to score points during one of the painting challenges. They’ve been languishing ever since. But I’ve wanted to roll them into my Black Legion force and so I got working on them. I’d already done the base colors I needed as well as the washes. I just needed to do the highlights – though they are pretty detailed models which meant quite a bit of highlight work.

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Modeling - Models - Painting - Warhammer 40K

First new Plague Marine squad finished, and modifying the second squad

May 12, 2018 by 0 Comments

It’s taken a while, but I finally got my first set of the new plastic Plague Marines finished. I should say, these are the Plague Marines from the Dark Imperium box set, not the multi-part kit. Still it’s nice to have them off the painting bench and ready for the table.

Plague Marine squad, completed

As you can see from the picture, I’ve kept the motif of using Goblin Green on the rim of the bases. I realize some might say the use of green on the rim is old-fashioned, but I’ve used it on all my Chaos Space Marine models, and I wanted to keep that theme going in the new models. As far as the paint scheme goes, I found the Ogryn Camo paint to be an excellent highlight of the Vallejo GC Camouflage Green. I thought it did so well I didn’t do a second highlight for the armor plates.

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Modeling - Models - Warhammer 40K

Considering the new Plague Marines

January 30, 2018 by 1 Comment

Over the holidays, I grabbed one of the new boxes of Plague Marines to add to my growing collection of plastic Plague Marines. While I had initially resisted the temptation, I think I am going to slowly move all my Death Guard Plague Marine models over from metal to plastic. I’ve already built the squad from the Dark Imperium Box and I nearly have them all painted up. I also got the First Strike box. That means I have quite a few of the Easy-to-Build variety of Plague Marines. I wanted to see what the new multi-part models looked like.

New Plague Marines

Here are some of my first impressions. The multi-part kit comes with a lot of options for the squad. In fact, it comes with enough parts to build at least one of any option (except one) you can put on the Plague Marines. That means you can build at least one Plague Marine with the Great Plague Cleaver or a plasma gun, but you can’t build two with just one box. So if you want to max out one one option, you are going to need at least two (or more) boxes of Plague Marines. You can also try to pull bits off eBay, though that will lead to a possible problem (more on that in a second). I do think having all the options in the box is a great feature. It makes life a lot easier for folks who don’t have the time or skill for conversion work. It also makes the general building process quicker.

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Beyond the Gates of Antares - Modeling - Painting - Warhammer 40K

Updates: Armies on Parade and Antares

October 29, 2017 by 3 Comments

It’s been a little while – over a month, now – since I posted. A lot of real life stuff, including a new house and moving into said house, has meant almost zero hobby time until this past week. But now that things have settled down, I’m getting back into the swing of things. So, here are a couple updates.

First up is an Armies on Parade board. After missing the last couple of Armies on Parade events, I promised my local Games Workshop shop manager I’d participate. Knowing I wouldn’t have time for something amazing with the board, and it being a little while since I did something like this, I decided to go the simple route. I wanted to do a two-tier board to keep it from being completely boring. The three options I though about were a centralized tier, an unbroken back tier, or a split back tier. As you can see, I went with the third option.

Armies on Parade board, foam

The Armies on Parade rules say the board limit size is 24″ x 24″ with no real height limit. Height wasn’t really my concern this time around. I did go for the full size limit on the board because I was concerned about running out of space. I picked up two 2′ x 2′ squares of insulation foam and a thin plywood 2′ x 2′ board from my local Home Depot, along with a 2″ brush and big bottle of wood glue. I glued the base foam square to the wood board. I figured the would would act to reinforce the foam for transport, as well as protect it in case of any accidental drops. Once that was dry, I marked off where I wanted the tier pieces to go, then I use a hot wire foam cutter to carve appropriate chunks out of the other piece of foam. I smoothed out the foam surfaces where the cuts were made and then glued the pieces down.

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