Epic Proportions End of June Update

Tank Shock!

Sliding in under the wire this month with two slightly different pictures of the same thing to sum up this month's progress.  I am happy with the two Land Raider Squadrons I completed this month but since I'm painting two armies for this project I did hope to finish more.  There was a need to rush paint a unit for WH40K that took my painting time for half the month so while I started painting the Land Raider company for the Ultramarines I wasn't far enough along to include them here.  Well with the Nova 2020 convention being canceled for the same reasons everything else is being canceled, I should have plenty of time to paint more Epic minis in July since I won't be finishing off an army for the 40K narrative.  Be sure to follow along with all the Epic fun at Dr The Viking's Cowabunga Slice and Dice.

I think I need to watch a few Bob Ross episodes to perfect my fluffy clouds.

Epic Proportions Third Unit Completed

2nd Land Raider Squadron, 1st Company Support "The Drake's Teeth"

The first unit I finished in June was some tank support for the veteran infantry company.

Epic Proportions Second Unit Completed

Salamanders 1st Company "The Firedrakes"

There is something magical about a fully painted Epic company that lets you envision legions of Space Marines going into action.

This unit was technically finished before the end of May, but Real LifeTM has kept me too busy to post the full pictures of the finished product.  As I discussed in the WIP post about the origins of my first painted army, this unit needed some restoration due to their age (28 years old!) and I also added a few details but tried to keep the spirit of the original painter's work. 

Zoomin’ Through The Inner Sphere

Citytech!

Our Battletech campaign continues over Zoom as our mercenary lance played several missions as part of a House Marik invasion of a Capellan Confederation world.

Since trying to see the board is difficult even with two cameras aimed at the mapsheet, I took a fellow blogger's suggestion to try some papercraft buildings from Germy.uk to add a three dimensional aspect for those playing over the interwebs.

Spaceships Are Not Supposed To Be This Close Together Part XI

Digital Edition

Constable Zuvio versus an A-Wing above the atmosphere of Bespin, just like in all those classic Star Wars stories...

Since no one has played games in person in the last 12 weeks this feature had ground to a halt.  Until this week when I made my first foray into the world of Tabletop Simulator on Steam.  It was a fun way to play and since the computer does most of the work the game actually moves a little faster than reality.  Plus I won with a list that included a Quadjumper so that's always fun.  This should be a fun way to keep playing until being indoors with other humans seems safe again so hopefully tales of spacecraft in extreme proximity should continue.

Epic Proportions End of May Update

Salamanders Strike Force Assembling...

The Firedrakes with a Vindicator squadron in support.

Not being sure when Dr The Viking will post a monthly round up so I'm putting up a few pictures of what I finished this month.  There will be a more detailed post on the first company when I can take some more pictures to showcase the veteran company in more detail. I was inspired by Dr The Viking's pictures of his in progress Ork army so I deviated from my normal picture approach and tried to highlight the finished units on a painted scenery background.  Future photos of this type need a little more staging so you only see the models and the scenery as background once they're cropped.  There are more pictures after the jump along with a army progress report...

Epic Proportions WIP

Salamanders Slither Forth

If they could muster an entire veteran company, my Salamanders must be a pre-Istvaan V army...

As May marches on, I'm making some progress in my goal to paint/restore somewhere between 500-1000 points each month as part of the Epic Proportions challenge.  I'm going for the low hanging fruit this month and restoring the first GW army of any kind that I ever owned and played games with.  Additionally this story will explain why I have a green space marine army that's not the first legion.

My first exposure to the 40K universe was when I started picking up White Dwarf issues in 8th grade way back in 1990.  However for the first year I was interested in the hobby, it was a solo adventure.  Coming from a small rural town in Pennsylvania I didn't know any one who was even familiar with Games Workshop or Warhammer.   While I had gotten Rogue Trader, RTB01, and other box sets for Christmas that year, other than trying to convince my younger brother to play an overly complicated game that neither one of us could totally understand, my experiences with actual gameplay were only in issues of WD or my imagination.  All that changed one fateful day in 9th grade Geometry class...

Epic Proportions First Unit Completed

4th Vindicator Squadron, Salamanders 1st Company Support 

I can't tell if I lose some resolution when I crop and enlarge the photos, or if the closer view emphasizes how much work I still need to do in controlling my edge highlight lines. It's probably the latter...

My first unit for the Epic Proportions challenge is finished and I'm pretty pleased with the results.  It was also very satisfying to set out to complete a unit and pull it off in just a few hours of painting.  Epic was always the scale where you could feasibly have the units you could never afford in full size when you were a money poor teenager, and now as a more organized adult painter it seems like a quick route to the great feeling you get when a unit is completed. This challenge may be more fun than I originally imagined. There are many more pictures after the jump...

Scenic Distractions VI

To the Barricades!

Army Painter Wasteland tufts seem to be a good turf color for "space junkyard".

This gorgeous resin barricade is available from Spellcrow miniatures an awesome producer of miniatures and scenery in resin from Poland.  They have all kinds of great conversion bits for 40K miniatures and their own line of fantasy skirmish minis and a game system to go with it.  If you have ever wanted to make a super detailed Salamanders or Space Wolves army this site has all the scaled armor and wolf pelt pauldrons you could possibly want.  There are conversion bits for several different chapters, as well as some cool ork conversion bits as well.  Also available on their website are some great pieces of scatter terrain sized scenery and if you order over $80 worth of stuff international shipping is free.

Epic Proportions Army Pitch Update

Mustering for War

This is why I love Epic, outside of a giant game of Armageddon you could never field this many marines and tanks in a game of WH40K.

This blog had 240 hits the other day and considering my daily pageviews are normally measured in the low teens I must assume this has something to do with Dr The Viking posting his project updates on Facebook.  Which leads people to his blog, then to the Epic Proportions page which will lead them ... here.  It's like how the stormtroopers finding the Jawas leads them to murdering Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, but with 100% less charred step-family bodies posed dramatically outside their farm house.