Addressing the hobby sprawl

My works in progress are sprawling again. As I write this half-finished models occupy pretty much the entire length of the mantelpiece, a mismatched combination of Deathwatch, Mechanicus and one very lonely Necron. To be specific:

1x Deathwatch Librarian

1x Deathwatch Terminator Watch-Captain

5x Deathwatch Kill-Marines

6x Deathwatch Terminators

1x Necron Cryptek

1x Magos Dominus

10x Skitarii Vanguard

5x Sicarian Ruststalkers

1x Knight Armiger

That's too much. That's dispiritingly too much and just looking at it has been a roadblock on my hobby for the last couple of weeks. So, to address this: method and reward.

The method, going against a lifetime of habit, will be to concentrate on one thing at a time. Instead of trying to address the sprawl in its entirety or as a couple of units in one go I'm going to take one unit or character down at a time and concentrate on finishing that one thing before moving on to anything else.

As to reward: for every unit I finish between now and next Sunday, I get a “cheat” on my resolution to not buy any models until I've finished painting my Forgebane set.

Thirty-one models and seven days. Let's see how I do...

Hobby Goals for May

One

Build Forgebane

I definitely need to build these models. I've been painting the first of the Armigers and the Cryptek for the last week and its lit a fire under me to work on these factions. Unfortunately, those aren't just the only models I've been painting they're the only ones from the set I've even built.

Time to get a little construction going.

Two

Decide what I want to do for Necrons

Between my own Forgebane and the Necron half I bought cheap off a friend who just wanted the Mechanicus models, I have the basis for a decent size Necron army. I just need to make a few decisions. My own colour tests having failed I've fallen back on the utterly gorgeous Novokh Dynasty colour scheme so that's decided (and oh so easy to paint).

For a start I need to decide what to do with all those multi-purpose kits. Two units of Immortals with different weapons load outs or one of Immortals and one of Deathmarks? Triarch Praetorians or Lychguard or both?

So, I need to go through the Codex to see what the Novokh background suggests and how their bespoke faction rules work and prepare an army list.

Three

Finish something for the Deathwatch

I have a lot of things just sitting half-finished for my Deathwatch and there's a new Codex on the way. It would be nice to have a thing or two battle ready when that drops.

Weekly War Report #7

This week I didn't have a chance to set up the gaming table and the scenery so its back to models floating in the void of time and space which does horible things to the focus of my camera at times, so apologies.

Anyway, this week has been all about the test models for Forgebane and much everything else has stayed in the work in progress case. First up we have the Necron Overlord...

… he needs a lot of highlighting and some drybrushing but I'm happy with the general effects. The cape and scythe in particular, which are Stegadon Scale Green washed black and drybrushed with Thunderhawk Blue Dry Compound, is a nice effect that I think I'll try to replicate on vehicles and Canoptek units. I'm less happy with the brass effect on the backplate but since its another drybrush method it should improve with practice.

On the side, since I was doing repeated coats of Rakarth Flesh on the Overlord, I decided to do the same to some Dark Vengeance Deathwing Terminators I've had lying around for a while. As you can see they're only bone on one half, this is because the eventual plan is to do a small Angels of Redemption Deathwing army.

On the Mechanicus side I have rather more models lying around because I bought a bunch when they first came out and, being me, did very little with them after that. 

The Tech-Priest Dominus is the most complete, of course, since I'm testing out methods on him and then extending them to the other units. The silvers are the only block colour yet to do and then I can get to more shading and detail work. As you can see, I gave up on the Voss Prime colour scheme early on and switched to Stygies VIII. It wasn't even that Voss Prime's quartered red and yellow looked bad on the this model its just I couldn't work out how to extend the colour scheme to vehicles and servitor units.

Next we the Sicarian Ruststalkers who are a much, much better colour test for the Stygies VIII colour scheme because they have the blue undershirts on them that the Dominus lacks. They're coming along nicely though the Dominus taught me to hold off on the shading until all the block colours are done which is why it all looks so much brighter.

Forgebane and the backlog

Later this morning I'll be ordering my copy of Forgebane. My test models are proceeding apace, though the Voss Prime colour scheme did not work out for me and I'm going back to the drawing board on that. I just don't want to do Mars, ultimately. Anyway, the set was expensive and contains a lot of models plus I've come to an arrangement with a friend to take his Necron half of Forgebane off his hands. So here's the deal:

Aside from the special event Chaplain I'm going to have a chance to buy next weekend I am not going to buy a single model until I have finished painting all of the Forgebane models. At least the ones from my set, anyway. That twenty-seven models (or forty-one with the extra Necrons but let's keep things realistic).

So its another chance to address the backlog and to make sure it doesn't get any worse. For a start there's a small box of second hand Tyranids I need to get around to and the Mechanicus models I'm planning to recondition for this new army.

Time to get started on some old projects.

Forgebane thinkings

Forgebane pre-orders are this weekend and I really want the little Knights. If I have my maths right, even before you count the new stuff its still a £20 discount. So, here's the question: what to do with it all.

Now, I do have some Mechanicus stuff I impulse bought when it all first came out. Typically for me I didn't get much done on them. I painted a couple of Vanguard with blue robes because I vaguely liked the idea of representing the Ultramarian forge world of Konor. I've gone off that idea since mainly because I just did not like how those models looked in blue. Its a bad colour for them, it makes them look too small.

I don't have a Necron army but I've often thought having one might be cool. I could always just sell the Necron stuff on eBay though I doubt I'd get a good price on any of it because you know that so many people will just be buying this stuff for the Armigers and flipping the rest of the stuff for a profit thus no profit for anyone because market saturation.

Not that I have any grounds for complaint given the number of dirt cheap Tyranid Gargoyles I've snagged because no one wanted them from their Start Collectings. I've never figured out why, I adore Gargoyles.

Anyway, Adeptus Mechanicus and Necrons. What would I do with them?

Adeptus Mechanicus: Forge World Voss Prime

The Stygies VIII colour has some appeal, I admit, but I have so many black armies that I think the black robes might bore me out of the army. Most of the other sub-factions are in various combinations of black, grey and red which is a bit too standard for me. Then I saw that the new Codex has a whole double page spread of new forge world colour schemes including...

… Voss Prime. Skitarii who look like Swiss Guards. You don't tend to associate the Mechanicus with bright colours but the key art from the Codex here looks so good. It will also hopefully assuage my occasional desire for a Howling Griffons army. Voss Prime is apparently known as “The Right Hand Of Mars” thus giving me a valid background reason for using the Martian Forge World Dogma: Glory To The Omnissiah which allows you to randomly generate two Canticles of the Omnissiah each turn.

Voss is also the closest forge world to Armageddon which would be a nice excuse for them to be tooling around with my Savlar Chem-Dogs until I have a proper army's worth of either.

Necrons: The Pirate King Thaszar the Invincible

There is comedy Necron background. At the very least there is Necron background with a funny idea at the heart of it. You see, there was this exiled Necron noble called Thaszar. He was exiled and placed into hibernation on his Tomb Ship on what would become an Imperial world. Millions upon millions of years later the master program of the Sarnekh Dynasty crownworld sends out a recall order to his Tomb Ship and he wakes up, destroys the Imperial capital as he blasts his ship free of the planet's crust and returns to the world of his birth.

Except the master program for some reason issued his recall but didn't wake anyone up.

So our boy Thaszar hacks the master program and convinces it he's the phaeron of the dynasty and has that concept hard coded into every single Necron on the Sarnekh crownworld Zapennec. And he isn't happy to just be king, oh no, he decides he's going to be a pirate king.

Yes, an entire army of Necron space pirates.

I will restrain myself from converting an Overlord to have a tricorn hat but I intend to go absolutely overboard with the colour scheme. Lots of regal blue with gold accents, maybe even some white panels around chest and legs to make them look like Napoleonic naval officers. Maybe even work out a rank system represented by how much gold is on the body.

I might have to think heavily about how of even if I can incorporate the Triarch units. On the one hand they're not something Thraszar would have been able to reprogram as they wouldn't have been hibernating on Zapennec (I don't think) but on the other they seem so intent on re-establishing the Necrontyr empires that they might just accept that this guy exists and has a huge space navy so they'll just try to enforce the rules on him in the hopes that he'll at least be useful.

I'll have to do a lot more background reading before I decide whether that's a viable storyline or not.

The Test Models

One thing I've learnt the last couple of months in my little hobby renaissance is the value of a good test model. I tend to go for an ordinary trooper of some variety but since I have a Magos Dominus to hand from aforementioned impulse purchases I might as well go all out and start with generals.

So, in the red corner we have the Adeotus Mechanicus Magos Dominus with his Pope hat (I love the Pope hat) who is going to get the halved red and yellow Voss Prime colour scheme. In the green corner we have the Necron Overlord who will be getting a suitably naval ceramic design in various blocks of white and regal blue. I can already see it in my head: regal blue on the limbs and the side of the torso, bone white on the ribcage and certain elements of the legs, gold helmet and lower arms. I'll probably keep the resurrection orb and scythe in the traditional green to have some of the more common Necron visual signifiers.

To the painting table...