Alpha Legion Squad Bravo

My slowly growing 40k army gets some more reinforcements with another regular Chaos Space Marine squad. As I was planning on building roughly a 1800-2000 point army and keep it at that this should be the last regular Core choice, at least for a while before I've played some full sized games. Still a Havoc squad and Terminators to do as well as character models, but outside of that it's mainly just vehicles and Daemon Engines from now on.

As with the previous unit plenty of kitbashing with pieces from different plastic kits from three decades and some 30k Forge World Alpha Legion bits thrown in for flavor. Some minor conversions as well pieces cut off and mixed between kits to vary identical parts somewhat.

Like with the previous unit main colours were done with an airbrush followed by picking out details. I cut down a little on the edge highlights compared to the previous unit as they are just a pain in the **s to do and getting clean  edges just seems nigh impossible at times. Concentrated on the most visible areas  now to save a bit of time, while still keeping the same look as the other minis. Worked out rather nicely so I'm going to continue with the same on the final minis as well.

I bought some new paints in late spring from a fairly new company from Cyprus called Warcolours. I've been tinkering with them lately, but haven't really painted proper until now. They seem to be more gel like compared to the Vallejo I normally use and dry a lot slower as they are meant more for wet blending etc. compared to traditional layering painting styles. I decided to try them out on the banner to see how easy  it would be. Smooth blends are something I've always struggled with, but boy these paints really seemed to make it easy. As they dry slightly slower and are more translucent than Vallejo it was really easy to feather out the edges between layers. In real life the contrast differences are a bit more stark than on the photos, but hopefully they still show the effect. Considering that I did that with 4 different shades in less than 10 minutes the results are pretty nice. With more practice and time really smooth highlights shouldn't be too hard to achieve. I'm really starting to like these paints more and more, the colour selection is aimed more towards fantasy and sci-fi with strong vibrant shades so not that great for historicals, but for other subjects should be amazing. Especially on larger smooth surfaces these are superior to Vallejo and so much easier to handle once you get used to the different properties compared to more traditional paints.

Decal wise I used a combination of Games Workshop and Fallout Hobbies decals as well as a 30k Alpha Legion decal for the unit's Icon. Everything else went on smoothly except  for the Forge World one. I've had issues with their decals previously as well as they are extremely thick, but still somehow they seem to be quite brittle and crease easily as well. Getting that hydra decal on the wavy flag took me nearly an hour to get it to sit straight and set into every crease. It seemed that the moment I though I had gotten everything to stick correctly some corner had moved  and lifted from the flag. With massive amounts of decal softeners and setters I finally got it to sit straight and covered it with a thick varnish layer that smoothed the surface out to remove most of the creases.

With these guys finished I'm probably going for a Daemon Engine next. I have a Helldrake and a Maulerfiend prepped up so going to start with one of them unless something else grabs my attention. We also have a Flames of War escalation league starting in September so I really need to start to prep and start painting for that as well. I'm going with a Soviet Tankovy so plenty of T-34's in store throughout the autumn.

Flames of War Pershings

With my summer holiday over it's time to be more active in the hobby field again. A month away from work was definitely needed as I was really starting to feel fairly burnt out and frustrated about everything. Couple of weeks in Canada and a few weeks back home spending time with friends, going out, watching movies etc. really did a lot to help bring back some long lost motivation for work, and for painting as well. I've been back to work and a normal routine for about a week now and painting has actually been really enjoyable for the first time in a long while.

First up are some more additions to my Flames of War US forces in the form of a Pershing platoon. A late war entry these didn't really reach troops until the final months of the war and even then only in small numbers. Still it's an iconic tank that saw much use in Korea and formed the basis of further US armor development into the Patton series, so I had to have some. From gaming point of view these are pretty bad to be honest. They are very expensive points wise in Flames of War, but still pretty vulnerable to larger late war AT guns. Fielding more than 3 is nigh impossible and they aren't too survivable then.  Still fun to field every once in a while for a themed list.

These guys were nearly done before I left for Canada, but with the mud effects taking hours to dry they weren't quite finished in time for that. Still it was a good way to start getting back to painting by just slopping on some finishing touches and varnish to get these guys ready.

I followed my normal recipe for US vehicles with a suitable green basecoat with dark yellow modulation. Some chipping and enamel washes for weathering followed by liberal coats of mud. Still haven't really fully figured out the Ammo of Mig mud products that I've started to transition to. They feel a bit too liquid to me and don't really have much texture so building thick coats of mud seems tricky. They've nowadays come out with some thicker stuff as well, so might have to give it a try or then try to mix in some very fine sand to add more texture and grit to the ones I already have.

Aside from the Pershings I've finally received my Skaven Blood Bowl team from a Willy Miniatures Kickstarter and been putting them together. I'd opted for a Deluxe box which included a pitch and transportation foam. After some mishaps those who did so ended up receiving their stuff about three months after everyone else. If I'd known before hand I would have just taken the minis, but originally everything was supposed to ship at the same time.

Alongside Skaven I've been continuing on the next Chaos Space Marine squad. Most of the time consuming work is finished with all the details picked out and the tedious edge highlighting done. I've still got decals to apply and chipping to add before a final panel line wash to make those pop out better. I probably should have gone for a slightly faster scheme to paint, but I do enjoy the look so maybe it's worth the extra time. Hoping to finish them of within a week or so, though a friends wedding this weekend will reduce available hobby time quite a bit.

From a hobby point of view it's forming up to be quite a busy autumn. We have a Flames of War escalation league starting to get new players in and for us older players to start new armies. Also a Shadow Wars Armageddon campaign starting which I was planning to take part in. And finally we are planning to start our 1813 Napoleonics campaign that we'd originally already planned for 2016. So there should be plenty of gaming and painting ahead and hopefully I'll be a bit more active updating the blog as well.

Chaos Decimator

Back to 40k and blogging! Painting has still been slow with computer games like Steel Division and Battlegrounds taking much of my free time lately. But with the 8th edition of 40k coming out and massive hype at my club and online it's really rekindled my interest for my Alpha Legion project so I dug them up and continued from where I left previously!

I started by continuing on the Rhino which was left in a WIP state previously, but like last time I wasn't completely sure about the aesthetics that I went for. Originally I thought a rust base coat and chipping fluids would be a cool idea, but now the vehicle just feels too 'messy' compared to how the rest look. So I put it aside until I figured what to do with it. I hate removing paint, but with an airbrush job covering some of the chipped areas will be a pain in the ass. Luckily most of them are on the lower areas and will be covered by mud anyways, but I'll let that simmer for a while until I get  some inspiration.

So with the Rhino pushed out of the way I went for what is probably my favorite Daemon Engine, the Decimator. It's like a massive mean version of a regular dreadnought that really looks chaotic, but doesn't go overboard like some of the funkier dinobots. Like many Forge World models, fit wasn't always perfect and it was extremely fiddly to put together as it's really top heavy and connection points were tiny. Plenty of pinning and green stuff helped though and now it feels pretty sturdy.

I was thinking about different variations on the green accents with more realistic highlights, random splotches etc. but just ended up going with highlighting panel lines and corners. Outside of that it was a fairly simple job of painting all the steel areas, picking out some cables in different colours and highlighting the demonic features on his armor. I added some dusting and rust effects with pigments, but didn't want to go overboard so left it pretty light. Likewise the base was kept simple, partly not to take too much away from the model and in part, because there  really isn't much room even on a 60mm base as the model really is that huge.

Outside of that I started applying paint on another squad. All the airbrush work is now done, next up it's all the steel pieces and then some edge highlights. That will have to wait a few weeks though, as I'm starting my summer holiday in a few days with a trip to Canada to visit my parents and tour Quebec for a little over a week. Might squeeze in a bit of hobby time before my departure, but that will probably go into some nearly finished Flames of War things. After the trip I'm going to try to get back to more regular painting and blogging, but we'll see how I'm feeling after a short holiday period.

Alpha Legion Marines

Time to break another few weeks of silence!

These guys have taken a while to finish with some of the minis built around a year ago and the first painting steps taken during summer, but they are finally finished. As I said a few posts ago I had a mishap with varnish leading to all of the minis having paint stripped and redone. Suffice to say I've learned my lesson and won't lazy out by using a spray can if I have the airbrush available and using spray varnish outside after rainy weather is definitely not a good idea.

My comeback into 40k started about a year and a half ago when I dug out some old plastics that I had lying around from early 00's and found my old bits box. I like kitbashing stuff and slowly found myself with an assortment of miniatures that didn't really have any use for gaming for me so probably wouldn't get painted. I remember loving 40k as a youth playing tons with my IG and later on Death Guard armies. So I figured it might be a good idea to build a small army to kind of have a target to strive for. Sometime late last year and early this year I put some smallish guidelines for myself about what I wanted to do with the force and what to aim for when putting together models.

I don't know what it is about Chaos that always pulls me in, but once again I couldn't resist it's lure. What I originally put together was mostly renegade guard and some mutants with a few Chaos Space Marines thrown in for good measure. However I figured that I'm not going to be painting a few hundred renegade guardsmen to get into gaming so I decided to build a smaller CSM force first to get into gaming faster. Choosing my legion wasn't going to be easy though. I had a reasonably sized Death Guard force previously, but it's been sold long time again. I did have an urge to build a new one with the modelling opportunities, but decided otherwise as I've done multiple Nurgle armies over the years and  always seemed to lean towards the loving caress of Papa Nurgle. Khorne worshippers were out of the question as I find them a bit dull and I didn't fancy painting all that red armor. After days of research I finally decided Chaos Undivided is the way to go and what better Legion to go for than the infamous Alpha Legion.

The Command team with a Power Sword and combiplasma wielding Sergeant, two Plasma gunners a standard bearer and the squads very own Rambo going at it with dual-wielded pistols.

With Alpha Legion's mysterious past and and slight doubts about their allegiances even after the Heresy offered a nice backstory to pick from. The fact that they are operating as small cells outside of the Eye of Terror would open some possibilities to differ from the normal add spikes to chaosify approach that is predominant with the official Chaos miniatures line. After all the legionaries would have to somewhat blend in to achieve their tasks and aid in subterfuge.

With the Legion chosen I set about choosing some design guidelines to have somewhat of a plan regarding my building process.

• No spikes!
• Every miniature must contain parts from at least two different kits or have some clear conversion done to them
• Equipment from different eras should be used when possible to achieve a look of a veteran unit that has kept whatever equipment worked best for them.
• Every model must have something distinctively chaotic equipment
• Regular Space Marine backpacks instead of the weird looking Chaos ones.

The first unit that I did were the cultist and there I did cheat a bit as the push fit minis were quite tricky to convert. Only some weapon swaps were done on them. Maybe sometime in the future they will be replaced by some suitable Planetary Defence Forces models. However with these guys I more or less stuck to what I'd planned and I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I'm not even sure from how many different kits they are built from, but the major parts come from the CSM box, Horus Heresy box and some Alpha Legion 30k resin parts thrown in. On top of that there's parts from a few different loyalist space marine boxes, some early 90s CSM stuff. I counted at least 8 different kits used, but with stuff scrounged from a bitz box that I've collected since the 90s and which also has bitz lots that I bought from other people it's quite hard to keep track what's from where!



Painting scheme wise I went for a look similar to the one in the mid 90s Codex with a blue base colour and light green highlights. The base shades were painted with an airbrush and light green edge highlights were done with a brush. With details being picked out I decided to try Tamiya Panel Line Accent to define the edges. Not sure if I'm totally sold on the product as results were a bit mixed. On areas of the newer kits which had sharp detail it worked great flowing into creases and corners to make them pop out, but on the older ones with soft detail like the Chaos Space Marine plastics it had a tendency to just run everywhere and had to be cleaned up using mineral spirits. A thicker satin varnish layer would also be required to help the wash flow and make cleaning up easier. Now I had practically no varnish in some harder to reach areas as I only did a thin coat to protect the minis in between.

The regular Joes of the squad.

I finished painting them a few weeks back, but only got around to basing them now as I had a few days of from work. Basic rubble themed basing with some tear plates and discarded imperial equipment thrown in to spice them up. Plenty of different coloured pigments were thrown in to add variety to the otherwise monotone finish.

With them out of the way I have the squads Rhino up next. Though with the speed I've been painting these guys it will be 2018-19 before I have a whole army together so don't hold your breath.

In other news it's the Finnish independence day today so a busy evening ahead filled with the traditional spectacle where we watch our president shake the hands of thousands of guests at the Presidential Independence day party. Plenty of judgment will be dealt out with most of the nation tuning in and admiring and berating the dress choices of guests. At least the afternoon papers will have plenty to write about for the next few days.

With Putin in charge of our neighbouring country our President has also had to step up his game with photoshoots. Being a classy guy he at least has his shirt on unlike Putin :)

Return to 40k

It's been pretty quiet for the last few months miniatures wise for me, but I finally got around to finishing up a bunch of minis that had been lying around on the desk in a half-finished state for ages.

I used to play a lot of 40k in the early 00's during 4th edition, but my interest died down in my late teens alongside other hobby interests as well. I still played a lot of the 40k video games and loved reading the novels from Black Library, so it probably isn't that surprising that I'd eventually be drawn back in. Unfortunately in my silly youth I went and sold my Imperial Guard and Death Guard armies so getting back into playing has really required me to build an army from scratch again. I actually started with Tau a few years back, but after a few units I realized that they are not for me and dropped that. Fast forward some more years and on a random whim I ended up walking away from my local store with a Dark Vengeance box in my back. Being a fairly devout follower of Chaos it seems that I just couldn't resist the lure of the dark gods any longer.

I've actually been pretty lazy in painting these as my relapse into 40k has been more of a modelling hobby until now as I've just been randomly kitbashing miniatures from various different Space Marine and Chaos Space Marine kits, but never really putting any paint on them. But with a club 40k campaign starting this summer I figured I'd finally get to painting them as well. To start of easily I picked the Cultists as my first unit before venturing into Chaos Space Marines themselves.

I set myself a target that every single model should have at least something converted to set them apart, with parts taken from multiple kits being the minimum requirement. However with these guys I kind of cheated as many of the sculpts are a bit more difficult to convert as they are snap fit models. So only a few simple weapon and head swaps on them, and otherwise they are mostly just straight out of the box.

These were actually painted all the way back in May for most parts with only the bases and weapons being unpainted. With my slump in hobby motivation they were pushed into the back of the painting desk and left gathering dust until I finally pulled myself together this week to finish them up. I wanted to keep the paint job fairly simple and tried using mainly edge highlights to bring out detail. I still need quite a bit of practice with that as some colour choices were probably a bit too stark and my brush work wasn't always tidy enough. Still from a normal gaming distance they look quite nice.

I wanted my force to have a rubble basing theme so I filled the bases with cork pieces, kickplate shaped plasticard and some different plastic profiles to represent fallen debris etc. After a basic drybrushed paintjob I went over them with different pigments to vary the shades and especially to simulate heavy rusting on the metal areas. Turned out quite nicely at first, but when it came time to varnish the minis a lot of the pigments sort of blended into the miniatures. I had used pigment fixer on them beforehand, but apparently not enough as the varnish diluted them again. As with the edge highlights I really need some more practice with pigments as well. But at least they seem pretty promising for tasks like this.

With these done I finally have a much emptier painting desk. I've had so many things in a WIP state on the table that it's actually sapped a lot of my painting motivation away. I've packed most away from sight and hopefully just having a few things on the table won't seem so overwhelming all the time.

Hobby progress will continue to be quite slow throughout the coming months as hunting season started again in the beginning of August and I'm in the woods for most of the weekends until December. It's also my dogs first proper hunting season as he's starting to be old enough to take with me on trips. With a bit under two years of age he is still quite overeager at times, but hopefully more practice and age will help.

Painting Challenge entry 12: Adeptus Arbites

I'm really having trouble keeping up with the challenge posts here on my own blog :) Oh well, it's all over soon so no need to worry about that in the future :) At least until the next edition of the challenge...

If there is anyone in the Imperium with as large steel ball as an Imperial Guardsman it has got to be an Adeptus Arbites officer. Going up against alien scum might be bad, but at least you have some heavy back up. An Arbites enforcer will have to go down into the bowels of a hive city with little else than his weapon and badge to bring order into the world of gangers and mutants. So with the introduction done these are 5 of the 7 Adeptus Arbites sculpts from the early 90's. Still missing the last two, so if you happen to have them sitting unused I'm more than happy to give them a new home.

Arbites are at least for me some of the most iconic 40k models. Might have something to do with seeing the Stallone Judge Dredd film at a very impressionable age and getting my hands on some of the comics soon after. Beefed up cops with trigger discipline that would make US cops look like girl scouts somehow just seems to work brilliantly. With the same kind of characters in my favorite miniature universe I was instantly sold on the Arbites enforcers when I saw some in Necromunda. Now looking back at some of these older Citadel sculpts and how a lot of the aesthetics is completely copied from somewhere else, it's a bit funny that now they are going after everyone and their cousin for even the smallest IPR infringements.

I wanted the bases to be urban themed to show them battling in the depths of hive worlds with some corrugated steel, rubble and rusty barbed wire thrown in. For the colour scheme I chose the traditional black and red that features quite often on the older artwork and some studio miniatures of the time. It was bit of a tricky combination as I find both red and black quite hard to highlight as red easily tends to turn into orange and black into gray. In the end I ended up just doing a dark gray edge highlight on the black areas and a bit of layering on the red. Turned out rather nicely, though the black is a bit hard to see in the pictures. Taking photos of black minis against a black background wasn't too easy either. I might have to try get some other suitable background sheets for these occasions when the miniature colours are too close to the photography booths background.

With these done I guess it's time to play Necromunda again! I think the last time I played a game was in the early 00's with my old gang, that has sadly been sold with most of my other old minis when I quit the hobby for a few years in my late teens. Still it's never too late to get back in as it's a great game system. And what would be better than bashing in a few ganger skulls while dishing out the Emperor's justice.

Painting has slowed down a bit lately with a very busy schedule at work due to some unexpected visits from a customer. And when I've been painting I've seemed to have had a series of mishaps constantly. My air compressor is acting up with apparently the power button broken so I might have to pull that apart in an attempt to fix the issue or buy a new one. I've also been extremely clumsy as of late and have managed to bump things over on my desk multiple times. As a consequence a few minis have attempted to end their life by jumping on to the floor and I've managed to spill my brush rinsing water cup onto the table a couple of times over the last week. It wouldn't have mattered too much, but on both times I spilled it right on top of some half-finished minis that had their MDF bases soaked up. A couple of them were on sabot bases with cardboard bottoms that started to swell up very badly and were a bit of a pain to fix up.