Wednesday, 14 February 2018

Weekly War Report #2 (Fraction Progress February week 2)


Excuse the drop in picture quality from this morning, its taking me time to work out how to get best results from my best friend's photography set-up (shout out for Matt for the lend of his spot lamp and scenery). So, this past week's hobby: another week of a surprising lot of hobby for a man intentionally taking it easy:

Gaming

Over the weekend I had a couple of games. First, my entrance into Dave J's Necromunda campaign sending my Goliaths to loot the territory of Matt's Inquisitorial Warband. I lost and ended up with about half my gang out of action. Hopefully, this week's game will end with somewhat better results.

I also got to debut my Tyranids on the tabletop, first against Matt's Death Guard in a take and hold scenario where I just about managed to squeak a draw and then against Tom T's Valhallan Imperial Guard where I lost quite conclusively, conceding with a whole four models remaining on the table.

An entire mantlepiece of my finest troops

A big burst of energy over the weekend saw me finish off a lot of the projects I had in progress last time. At time of writing the sand is still drying on the bases so, hopefully, I'll have some, all or less of them finished in the next couple of days. The only things on the shelf not previously showcased last week are these funny little fellas...
a pair of Familiars from the Genestealer Cults Broodcoven set. They were rather fun and quick to paint and I look forward to running them out on the tabletop (I wasn't sure what they were for and left them out of the list last weekend).

Underhive Hustle

For a start there's my Goliath gang. The progress so far is basic and messy and inspired more by a need to get just some sort of paintjob started for my first game than anything else.


The main armour colour for the gang is Stegadon Scale Green because I liked how it looked on the 'Eavy Metal Orlocks in this month's White Dwarf. The rest of the models are giving me some trouble. Surprisingly for big, beefy bastards on 32mm bases these are amongst the most finely detailed and complex models I've ever had to paint. There are so many belts, buckles, metal implants and rivets on them. I mean, I can't argue against the value for money as these ten miniatures account for more than a thousand points and that's whilst pretending the two lads with stubguns and spud-jackers are juves instead of full gangers.

Its A Bug Hunt!

Reinforcements for my Tyranids continue apace with a bunch of units getting their grey layers finished, which isn't terribly visually interesting but here we go...




Its mainly Cults stuff because they were, to me, the surprise breakout characters of the first two games. They were only in there to fill up the 100 power limit but I found them surprisingly fun to use. I've painted their industrial armour using the same method as the flesh on the 'Nids which will probably be the only shared design element between the two armies (except for the models that have carapace).

Now My Watch Begins

Having sent the test model, the Marine Malevolent with the heavy thunder hammer to the basing shelf its time to get to work on the rest of his squad. 
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that one of them has a Chaos Space Marine Raptor head with horns. This is because he's a Black Dragon, a chapter with a geneseed mutation that makes them grow bone protrusions out of their bodies as they age. This team is built around Marines from the shiftier, less trustworthy chapters, the ones other chapters are suspicious of.
They're also joined on the painting table by the Blood Ravens Librarian from the Kill-Team Cassius box set who is probably my favourite sculpt from the unit.

The Big Lad



The Great Unclean One is getting closer and closer to done. There are some small details I'm trying to work out how to do like scabs. I mean, the flesh itself is the darkest grey available from the Citadel paint range so I'm not sure what I could do for scabs since I can't go darker. Skavenblight Dinge, perhaps? Aside from that, progress here has been fractional as I tidy up some of the drybrushing and made a start on the metallics.

Green Energy



Finally, some Death Guard. First off, I'm continuing to progress with the Blight-Hauler which now has a start made on its metallics. The silver that's on there is basically finished sans a little highlighting and the rather flat Balthasar Gold will be worked up to bronze. Looking at the photo I realise I have actually missed an entire bit of trim on the top of the left wheel arch which I'll have to go back to and I do need to fill in some more areas, like the spiked on the weapons, silver.
And, having proved to myself that these methods work on a large scale it was time to apply them to some man-sized models with the Easy Build Plague Marines. These are really cool models but they are so encrusted with details that I keep finding things that I missed like the fly symbol on the champion's right kneepad.

Hell, if nothing else, posting all these pictures really makes me notice the mistakes I've made in time to fix them, eh?

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