by 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.
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.
Boy was it. Even though these models are several years old now, they were at made at the leading edge of GWs foray into more highly-detailed Chaos models. Picking out each detail was painstaking. It felt like slow going but over the past week I was able to pretty much knock them out. I’ve gotten the Warp Talon unit down to work on the bases. I should be able to finish them up this weekend. If the humidity is down, I’ll also varnish them with Dullcoat.
Next up, was base adapters for my old Chaos Lord and my unit of Possessed. This Chaos Lord was one of my original models. I did run him originally with his power fist and combi-melta. But back in third edition, especially with the Chaos Space Marine 3.5 codex, the Chaos Lord was much better as a specialized close combat unit. When I got a set of the old metal Raptors, I chopped the lightning claws off the champion from that set and put them on my lord. I think that was my first conversion work.
Fast forward to the new edition. I’m now looking at using him more, since Chaos Lords are actually useful again. I’m keeping him with the old loadout, but since all my other Black Legion HQs have the 32mm bases, he’s looked a little out of place. So I added the base adapters, glued on some ballast and repainted the base trim. And now he’s up-to-date.
I also added the adapters to my Possessed. This unit actually physically benefited from these adapters as the Possessed are susceptible to “Wobbly Model Syndrome.” I’d used pennies to give weight to their bases but that’s kind of a kludgey fix. The added girth to the bases from the adapters on the other hand does a great job in preventing them from being knocked over. Once again, I added ballast after the adapters. But these guys actually had painted ballast, so I had to paint up the stuff I added. That work didn’t take long though and now I have my Possessed up-to-date.
The last thing I did was work on some terrain, and that actually involved two separated pieces. The first was to paint up some pieces from the old ruined chapel set you used to get in various Battleforce boxes from third edition. I think a set of the ruined chapel terrain came in the third edition box set. Anyway, this was mainly to test some cheap black primer I’d gotten my hands on. I wanted to use something as a test to see if it clogged detail. Turns out the primer worked great! I did a quick, simple paint job and now I have some decent painted terrain.
Another terrain project that has been languishing is this Comm Bunker. If you’ve been around the hobby for a while, you might remember the GW site used to run an e-zine (back when those were an actual thing) called Black Gobbo. It was a pretty cool feature and in it they’d have articles on tactics, scenarios, and scratch scenery building. One of the first such articles was on how to build this Comm Bunker. I remember thinking it was pretty cool at the time, though I never got around to trying it out. Eventually the Black Gobbo got taken off the site, along with the cool Comm Bunker article. I went looking for it a few years ago, and was able to find the pages using the Internet Archive. A lot of the images were missing, but the instructions were still there. I also got a hold of the PDF templates that were needed for this project, and so I started working on it. I think this was just before seventh edition dropped. So I started the project, but when the new edition came out, I started work on units I’d need for the new edition. That shelved the Comm Bunker and it’s been (literally) collecting dust.
With time on my hands this week and renewed interest in terrain, I decided to make some headway. And now I’ve gotten it up to near the end. I just need to add on the communications bits and other decorative bits. Given that line-of-sight blocking terrain is a premium in eighth edition, the Comm Tower should be a great addition to the table.
I did get some white primer finally and primed up my Plague Marines yesterday, so I’ll be working on them soon. Still it was a fairly productive hobby week for me even though I didn’t do much work on the unit I was hoping to work on. Sometimes that’s how it goes in this hobby.
