40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge II - Complete!

Reinforcements!

Still trying to figure out what makes me filled with more nostalgic glee, the hazard stripes on the chainswords or the hazard stripes on the Terminator's power fists?

Inquisitional Conclave Weeks 3-4

 Tharok Radron, Ordo Malleus

THings are moving along well on my entry for the Inquisitional Conclave.  My inquisitor has a name and I have settled on the classic 2nd edition Hand Flamer as his pistol weapon of choice.  What better weapon for cleansing with fire the many enemies of the Emperor?  Be sure to check out all the fun over at the main site for the challenge, the excellent Neverness Hobby Chronicles.

Inquisitional Conclave 2021 - Week 1-2

 Insert Clever Name Here...

Got the basing textured and started to block in the colors for the base coats on the mini.

The 2021 Inquisitional Conclave has kicked off and I am happy to be participating in the 2nd annual iteration of the challenge.  Be sure to check out the headquarters for the challenge over at the Neverness Hobby Blog. The blog's author is working on an excellent Jaq Draco with the classic terminator Inquisitor model.

As much as I love the RT and second edition era, the Inquisitor sculpts from those days never have excited me.  Last year I painted a RT era "Robed Space Marine" and got him to look the part of a power armored Inquisitor.  This year I have shifted gears and found and GW Inquisitor mini more to my liking, but from the more "modern" 5th edition time frame.  He still needs a name and some story to link him to my entry from last year, so I will keep working on that as I continue to paint the miniature.  

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there...

Blurry ebay picture if what the model looked like when I bought it.

Blood Bowl WIP III

Trolls And Orcs And Gobbos, Oh My...

My son needed a troll for his orc team so instead of ponying up $35 plus tax for GW, I dug this long forgotten chaos ogre out of my bitz box and drafted him for the cause.  With green flesh and colors that match the orc team I think it disguises the fact that this guy started life as a ogre and makes him have a passing resemblance to a troll.

These orcs were my first attempt at the classic paint it yellow then shade it green approach to orc flesh.  I really like the vibrant color and dark recesses this method produced so I will have to remember the formula when I get around to finally painting my RT orks.

Blood Bowl - #58 Jack Crambert

Wolfenburg Steelers Blitzer

My first completed model for my human team is Jack "Crambert".  Based on legendary Pittsburgh Steeler Jack Lambert, a linebacker who literally embodies the look of 1970's American football.

While looking for an Old World Empire town with "burg" as a suffix I found the perfectly named Wolfenburg which sounds sufficiently macho while also allowing me to use my Space Wolves transfers as the team logo.  This was the first model where I tested the yellow and black scheme.  I think with future models on the team I will go a little stronger on the black highlights, they seem to really vanish when I gloss varnished the model.  I don't varnish every model in my collection but these Blood Bowl minis get handled so much just in the course of one game I think it's a necessity.  While I'm going to try and get as many models "pitch-ready" as I can first, Jack here gives me the goal post of what I want my final product to be when I have the time to finish the details and numbers.  Thanks for stopping by and stay safe out there...

 

WH40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge II - May Completed!

 Dr. Jones Said That Crystal Skull Should Be Here Somewhere...

Epistolary Azathor Commands the Deathwing squad holding the ruins of the xenos temple while scout squad Rhellion advances in search of the foe.

Another family picture of all the units I have painted so far for the 40K2ndAC II.  Epistolary Librarian Azathor was an awesome model to paint this month.  It was nice to have a whole month to focus on one miniature and I have always wanted to paint one of the original Terminator Librarians ever since my early days of reading WD in 1990.  The intricacy of the Aegis hood and force axe were interesting details to explore and painting blue armor was a nice break from all the usual dark green. The lessons I learned from wet blending with the greens and last month's bone white were able to be applied to the blue armor and gave it a look I really liked.  The banner is a slight cheat since it came from the 3rd edition codex, but I think the visual meta in early third still hewed very close to the banners of 2nd edition.  Sometimes the geek in me lives for sentences like that one where I can make the 30 years I have spent in the hobby sound like I had a career in very esoteric academia :-)

Three months into season 2 and I have already painted 700 plus points so I really need to start thinking about bonus models.  I have already planned out how I have enough models left if this endlessly enjoyable project goes into season 3, so I'll have to plan carefully not to dip into that material.  There's a fun twist on the bonus models that other participants have taken in the past that may be the route I go.  So that cliffhanger will hopefully have all you bat-viewers tuning into the same bat-time and same bat-channel here in the future.  Stay safe out there...

Be sure to follow along with all the great entries from all the participants for the month of May over at:

Dr The Viking's Cowabunga

Blood Bowl WIP II

 Match Ready

The two catchers on my team have had their base coats applied along with an all over wash of Reikland Flesh shade.

My long held dream of playing in a Blood Bowl league is finally reaching fruition.  Some friends and our kids are the participants and we kicked off the season with our first matches last weekend.  There are only five participants for our inaugural season but that's enough for us to all get some games in against a variety of opponents.  In the fall I'd like to run a season with more players concurrent to the American football season so this spring season will be great practice for that endeavor.  Follow along after the jump for more pictures of my human team, the Wolfenburg Steelers.

WH40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge II - May WIP

 My Least Favorite Stage

Trying to get all the base coats on these very detailed and very old minis is always daunting.  As I have written before I feel like the base coast stage always make the miniatures look clownish.  On my particular models, my choice to add many different colors to all the details and blow the three color rule out of the water probably only magnifies this comical appearance.  That will change once all the colors are on and the shades start defining the different areas by darkening the recesses.  I have to rely on my prior witness of these transformations to keep me going through what seems like an endless process just to cover up the primer with my chosen colors for all the different parts of the model.  Make sure to follow the links to see all the great work completed by the participants in the challenge for the month of April.

Twelve Days Of The Deathwing - Day Eleven

 Galactic Synergy

The next project on deck is a level of synchronicity that occurs for painters only during periods of rare interplanetary alignment.  The unpainted member of the Deathwing shown above will be my April entry for the 40K2ndAC II while also being the first terminators I will be painting as part of my project to get some units that are currently good in the "meta" into my army that will hopefully see some use on the tabletop as things seem to be improving here in the states.  Follow along after the jump for more words and a Deathwing project update.

WH40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge II March WIP

 Squad Rhellion Inches Towards Completion

The blending and highlighting are almost complete so I'm hoping to wrap up this squad by the weekend.  That way I can submit my entry before this month's deadline and begin work on next month's miniatures well ahead of schedule.  These scouts have been so much fun to paint and I'm really enjoying picking out all the details on these classic metal sculpts.  Thanks for reading!

The WH40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge II Has Begun!

 

A little behind on our promotional work since the challenge was kicked off at the start of March, but better late than never even when it comes to the ephemeral world of WH40K blogs.  There are 24 challengers this time so that means double the amount of fun that we all had last time, and so many more cool models for the spectators to take a look at. Head over to Dr The Viking's site to check out the starting point for the participant's projects.

WH40K 2nd Army Challenge Link

Revenge Of Old Stuff Day!

The Blog Feature That Wouldn't Die...

When reading over my post from Tuesday, besides the inevitable spelling and word errors I found after publishing I realized I left out a couple more blogs I wanted to be sure to highlight.  These blogs are both great reads and their authors are very supportive commenters in the WH40K blogging community.  They are also both Dark Angels players, as were several of the authors of Tuesday's links, strange how that happens ;-)

First up is St Andrew's wargaming, a great blog that has really informative reviews of rules, codexes, and models for both WH40K and Horus Heresy, plus some cool battle reports as well.  For a highlighted post I am once again not going too far back, but I am spotlighting a post that I missed earlier this year, a wonderfully painted full Primaris Dark Angels army:

The other blog I wanted to be sure to highlight is the 262nd Death Korps of Krieg.  This is an awesome blog whose author collects and paints Adeptus Titanicus, the aforementioned elite Imperial Guard formation, plus my favorite: Dark Angels armies in both 40K and 30K.  I am desperate to get involved in the world of WH30K but my model backlog is such that the project to paint my Age of Darkness army is several years off so I have to live vicariously through those who are already playing the game.  DAM, author of 262nd DKoK, has constructed a well though out and beautifully painted WH30K 1st Legion army and the post below will show off some gorgeous Dark Angels dreads he painted for Dreadtober back in 2019:

Thanks for rejoining for a few more interesting reads and stay safe everyone.

Old Stuff Day 2021

Celebrating Hobby Gold From Around The Blogosphere That May Have Been Overlooked...

One of my goals this year with my hobby was to participate in more community events like painting challenges (Dreadtober, 40K2ndAC II, etc) but today's post is actually another kind of community participation: Old Stuff Day!  Invented a few years ago to highlight great posts from around the blogosphere that may have been overlooked or were just awesome and could use some more looks.  My research did not go super deep this year, but follow along after the jump for some great blog articles I've read in the last year or more...

Squaduary 2021 Starting Point

 Personal Challenges 

From my shallow and cursory research, Squaduary 2021 doesn't seem to have a central coordinator this year so I'm taking a page from a fellow blogger and pursuing the goal of painting a squad in the month on February as a personal challenge.  Never one to miss an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, this scout squad is also my first month's entry for the 2nd Edition Army Challenge Part II.  Since my first 6 month's in the original challenge led to many last minute submissions of my painted models that month, I am aiming for a less stressful approach this time around and trying to get some work done before the challenge even begins.  These scouts are another unit I have owned for many years but have never painted so I'm excited to complete painting on such wonderfully detailed sculpts from GW's past.  Thanks for following along and stay safe out there.

WH40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge January - Final Month

 4th Company Master and Techmarine

Continuing to milk my completion of the 2nd edition army challenge for content, these two awesome characters were my contribution for the last month of the 2nd Ed Challenge.  Besides being the character portion of the 1,000 points I painted for the challenge, these also rank as only the second and third character models I have painted for my Dark Angels army.  I have written about my intimidation towards painting character models in the past, so the completion of these two increases my fully painted HQ choices by 200%.  It was extremely satisfying to finish these models after owning them since 1999, but they did take me 30 days to get every detail the way I wanted it, so my prior anxiety about painting character models was not completely unfounded.  However looking at the finished products gives me no end of joy, and that's the whole purpose of this hobby for me, so mission accomplished.  I will post more detailed pictures and words about how I painted them in the future but for now I will just bask in the glow of project finished for one more day.  Thanks for reading and stay safe out there!

WH40K Second Edition Army Challenge Complete!

 The Lion’s Blade...

There were so few bodies for 1,000 points in the space marine armies of old...

Wow, It is hard to believe the six months of the 2nd edition army challenge are over.  Participating in the challenge has been the best experience I've had so far since I started this blog to be part of the wider hobby community.  There was a great feeling of camaraderie among the participants, probably partially thanks to the niche interest that is loving 2nd edition minis and the infamous "red period" of the GW studio's painting and marketing departments.  Much encouragement and joking went on via a group chat thread that continued from before the challenge started right up to the end.  It was a great way to refine ideas for the challenge through discussion and find inspiration to stick with one project over six months.  Thanks to this challenge I attempted many new techniques I hadn't tried before and really enjoyed being able to experiment with things like wet blending and freehand designs.  Plus I was able to paint miniatures I've owned for many years while also using the painting of those models to add two more squads along with two characters to my ongoing project to paint all of the 4th company of the Dark Angels.  I will milk the end of the challenge for a few more days, the warm fuzzies of accomplishment deserve a few more posts after half a year of work.  Be sure to check out the final post for the challenge, all the participants did an amazing job:

https://c0wabunga.com/2nd-ed-armychallenge-1-final-month/

Here is the 2nd edition army list for the force pictured above:

Army list Dark Angels 4th Company 1003 points

Company Master Zakeal Korlael 123 points
Bolt Pistol, Power Sword, Member of the Deathwing

Techmarine Hephaestus 43 points
Servo Arm, Bolt Pistol

Tactical Squad Zanthor 357points
Sergeant with chain sword and bolt pistol
Meltagun, Missile Launcher with Frag and Krak

Devastator Squad Scalprum 480 points
Sergeant with Power Axe and Boltgun
Multi-Melta, Lascannon, Missile Launcher, Heavy Bolter

Thanks for following along, and watch out for the WH40K Army Challenge Season 2 coming in March!

Where it all started six months ago...

40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge Final Month WIP

 Characterful Sculpts Require A Lot Of Painting...

In the strange vagaries of the -blog publishing/photo taking/progress on a project- warp of the space time continuum, here are pictures from a few days ago that are for a challenge with a due date a few days from now.  Now that we've accelerated to the verbal equivalent of ludicrous speed, a few words about the models in question.  Both of these models have been in my collection since the late 90's, but due to my earlier expressed worries about painting character models, these two have been unpainted for 20 years.  However as my recent musings on the army challenge have pondered, in the end I think this will only benefit me since my painting skills have finally caught up to what I wanted them to be at the time I actually purchased these models.  Plus since they were second edition models that were still on the pegs at the start of third edition, they were perfect character models for my entry in 40K 2nd Edition Army Challenge.  All that being said, there are a lot of tiny details on these models to finish up in the last few days before the deadline and then I need to take a dramatic full army picture for the close of the challenge.  After that, in March it will be onto Season 2 of the 2nd edition army challenge!

Wave That Flag...

 Squad Scalprum Gets Their Banners 

The slow moving servitors and adepts of the Banneratorum have finally completed their work on the standards of Squad Scalprum.  The 9th squad of the 4th company get two banners in traditional second edition style.  The sergeant's banner is in a style lifted from the third edition Dark Angels codex, with the yellow of the 4th Company edging the banner and the bend sinister in the center.  The lower edge of the banner carries the Devastator symbol and the squad number.

The second combat squad's banner uses the more modern company markings for the 4th company, black and white checks over a field of bone white, with a roundel of the chapter symbol in the middle.  This lower edge then mimics the sergeant's banner with the Devastator designation and squad number.  I have used the black and white checks on many of the 4th company banners and coincidentally have used more and more rows of checks for the higher squad numbers.  This occurred without planning as I kept adding more and smaller checks just to challenge my painting skills, but now I think I will stick with the theme of more or less rows of checks depending on the squad number.  Thanks for following along, a full post on my recently completed Devastator squad should be along soon.  Stay safe out there...

Twelve Days Of Deathwing - Day Nine

 Dark Vengeance Is A Dish Best Served Cold, Like At Least Six Years Cold 

Today's slightly blurry picture features the closest I've come to fulfilling my dream of even fielding Deathwing miniatures in the recent past.  I got back into the hobby in earnest in 2014 coincidentally at the same time the Dark Vengeance box set came out to kick off seventh edition.  At the time these gorgeously sculpted, Deathwing specific Terminators blew my mind; having not been in contact with the game ,other than Black Library novels, since the end of 3rd edition around 2000.  I was really impressed by the strides GW had made with push to fit models in the 14 years I hadn't played the game.  As you can see from the pictures above I started painting these models straight away, but the combination of patience needed to achieve a layered bone white look along with my rusty painting skills from years away from the hobby table led to me stalling out and painting all the other Dark Angels models in the box instead.  

Coming back to them with a mass Deathwing project on the table these will probably be the first models I finish off since they are 60 percent of the way there already.  I need to rethink some wacky ideas I had a few years ago, primary among them my odd colored purity seal scrolls.  At the time I was baffled how I was going to paint two different whites next to each other and not have them be indistinguishable.   There will also be some shuffling around of a miniature or two because I think I can field a five man squad with chainfists if I transfer the chap carrying one in this unit to another unit that already has two marines with chainfists.  Thanks for following along and click on the Deathwing tab above if you want to see the current scope of the project.

Twelve Days Of Deathwing - Day Eight

 Thunderstruck!

The sergeant's pose reminds me of a cleric using a light spell on his warhammer to illuminate the party's dungeon crawling.

Stretching this metaphor for as long as history said it's more traditional equivalent would run, today features some slightly sub-standard photos of the second part of the Close Assault squad.  Four Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield armed marines backed up by the classic Terminator heavy weapon choice, the Heavy Flamer.  More slightly fuzzy pictures after the jump...