Finally finished something...

all three together - initial one (3) on left and latest two (6, 9) on the right

Sweet!!  A combination of seeing G.N.O.M.E.s painted space shark rhinos and being put to shame by Ricalope has spurred me to finish my second and third magnetized rhino chassis to complete something and gain a huge 20 painting points.  Fortunately they were pretty much 90% done, so it didn't take too much effort.  A few decals needed to be applied, the teeth and decal areas fixed up and the banners for the rhino doors completed.  You may notice I used my second TLLC razorback turret on the original chassis (#3).

chassis 6 configured as a predator

This is probably the first time I took some close ups of the additional magnetized bits.  They have been painted for a while but until I finished the chassis I wasn't too chuffed about showing off just a predator sponson.  Up next I want to build a couple LasPlas turrets, do a proper heavy bolter turret (I have one I hacked together similar to but not as nice as the TLLC) and I have another predator turret (need another set of sponsons) and I also have a couple whirlwind turrets.

chassis 9 configured as a vindicator with extra armour

I am still on the fence about whether they should be worth some painting points, especially the vindicator bits since they are almost 3 sides of a rhino.  I still have more bits to paint, a dozer blade that is half done, I obviously need more "blank" hatches, more searchlights and H/K missiles.  Since I am on the fence I will wait before awarding anything other than the 10 painting points for each chassis, and it let me post about it sooner rather than later :)

mini restoration

Interesting article by Ron @ FTW today about the Chaos Lord he restored for a client.

He mentions how it's more work restoring a model than starting from scratch, which in the case of the type of restoration he was working on, will probably always hold true.  However there are other types of restoration that you can do to your minis to ensure they don't languish in the case or on the shelf.

These "restorations" (and I use the term loosely) are usually of the much smaller variety.  Fixing a poor weapons combo choice, re-painting a choice piece of the fig you are unsatisfied with, perhaps re-basing the mini.

Example 1 - my Novamarines scout sergeant with combi-flamer

removed chainsword, added bolt pistol

I was actually putting together models before playing any games of 40K, mating a combi-weapon with a chainsword was overall a poor choice.  The chainsword doesn't really add anything since you can't get a second attack in CC anyways, at least a bolt pistol would allow me to fire once before assaulting (assuming I had already used the combi-flamer)

Example 2 - my Space Sharks captain with combi-plasma

removed combi-plasma/chainsword, added bolt pistol/power sword

Again an example of putting models together before considering their weapon implications.  I liked the thought of all my Space Sharks having chainswords since those are the images that spring to mind.  Arming your SM captain with a chainsword is a bit of a damp squib.  I updated him to have a power weapon and a simple bolt pistol for the additional attack.

I am contemplating doing a second update to this model as well - magnetizing the bolt pistol hand so I can swap in a plasma pistol so he can also count as Sicarius.  My thought is to do the same with the below example so the champion has the option of taking the combat shield with bolt pistol or plasma pistol as well!

Example 3 - my Space Sharks command squad champion

power sword painted

He's another quick example. This hardly needs a before/after shot, since for some reason I thought a plain white power weapon would look good??!?!  He looks a lots nicer now.  As mentioned above I am probably going to magnetize both his and the captains pistols so they can swap easily.

Example 4 - a Novamarines terminator turned heavy

added the IG sentinel missile launcher

Final example here.  Fortunately for me I used an extra AoBR terminator (from white dwarf) when originally making my "heavy" (heavy flamer) for this squad.  This meant I still had 4 terminators with storm bolter & power fist, so I just selected one and added the IG sentinel missile launcher to act as a cyclone, giving me two options for a heavy weapon (but unfortunately no longer the option of NOT taking a heavy weapon - oh well worst case it's 5 points for the heavy flamer)

Crusade Week: Space Sharks!

image used without permission - copyright "aerion the faithful"

The final day of Crusade week brings us to the Space Sharks! I will be generous and include any blogs I follow who use that dreadful Charcharawhatsit name that Forge World came up with.  I am hardly surprised this chapter has become such a hit.  It was bound to happen once I started building a Sharks army ;-)

Check out the following;

• Charcharawhatsits (dude, add a label - sorry the **** name isn't good enough and you have other stuff on your blog :P)
• Sons of Taurus
• Space Sharks
• The Space Sharks (ok the whole blog is about space sharks, I won't call you on not having a label!)

If you have a Space Sharks army, link your label in the comments below and I will both add you to this post and start following!

Space Sharks: updating champions power sword

Originally I had a vision of all the sharks power weapons being white (as if made from sharks teeth? definitely not well thought out!) since I did the chainswords in a similar vein.  Here is the champion with the old white power sword.  When I updated my original captain to Kundera, I realized it was stupid and went with a different, brighter green than I use as the company colours.  I really liked the result and so I pulled the champion out (I don't use the command squad much) to update his sword when I felt like something fun to do.  I got about halfway through before I shelved it for something else - and it's been languishing in that state for several weeks.

I managed to get myself up to the local GW today for a couple games (1 win/1 loss - used my Kundera "counts as" Khan for the first time) it meant I had to pack up the stuff I had been painting recently.  When I had a chance to do a bit of painting but didn't have time to pull everything back out, I figured I would just try to finish off the command squad champions power sword - seeing more painted Space Sharks on the field has me debating a command squad again.

side view, top edge of sword

front view, underside of sword

I used a combination of washes and metallics for the "band" and I basically tried a NMM style slash.  Then I blended the rest of the sword from the original green to white near the metallic edge of the band.  They are positioned differently top compared to underside, I was going for the appearance of the electricity coursing up the blade.  Not sure if I achieved this well, but that's ok - I like trying different methods for all my power weapons.  It looks very "comic book" to me - from a few feet away.  I debated using a wash of gryphonne sepia or thraka green to tie it together but I think it might ruin it.  Thoughts?

close up of the sword

Still need to give the gold a wash of ogryn flesh too - whoops!

Badab War character competition WIP pt2

Here's part two of todays Badab related posts, a couple WIP shots of my Space Sharks Chaplain.  Painting this guy up has taught me I need to go back and fix all the terrible badab black washed shining gold, ogryn flesh wash looks much better.

I built this guy a while ago to be able to use him as a Cassius "counts as". I used the filigreed bolter from the commander box with an old 2nd edition hand flamer mounted sideways for his master crafted combi-flamer. I also glued an old RT001 beakie helmet on his belt. Like the apothecary in my command squad, only his right arm is coloured - designating his rank. He's got some serious head bionics which is pretty suitable for T6!

He probably won't make the FLoT Badab War play aid update since "Chaplain Neth" doesn't seem to use a combi-flamer (ironic I had to convert the Raptors deathwatch marine to have a combi-flamer to be considered whereas it will likely disqualify this model from the play aid) Silar has said any model can win the competition.  Tomorrow is the 15th so I have a whole month to get these guys finished and my photos submitted.

Space Sharks: Terminators

This is something I hadn't planned on getting yet, but ended up picking up from someone mostly complete.  The trade started about something completely different, but I ended up picking up these guys and a terminator chaplain.  A squad of magnetized termies!  Having a bit of fun here with crazy weapon combinations.  I knew immediately they should be my Space Sharks terminators with Badab camo scheme and shark's tooth trophies, since I only planned to have 2 veteran squads, one in power armour and one in terminator armour.  It made sense for them to be magnetized as much of the rest of the army is.  I have 3 of the Chapterhouse Studios combi-weapon magnetic kits for the other 5 power armour veterans I have to build.

There's practically every weapon option, so many I need a bunch of blank terminator pads.  I've gone through and painted a different colour for each models arms.  Before I prime them I will use some masking liquid to cover them up.  I've found it very handy for that type of thing.  Unfortunately these guys are pretty low priority on the painting list, and will definitely have to wait until I've built the other 5 hammerheads/sternguard to paint.

Space Sharks: Scratch Built TFC

Ever since the Thunderfire Cannon model came out, I knew I would never purchase it.  Small complex metal models that will break easily are not for me.  I knew it could be done, but it wasn't until Andy from Eagles View posted about his scratch built thunderfire cannon that I went and bought some volley gun bits from a bits site to have a go.  You can tell by the date on his post that this item has been sitting in the backburner for a LOOOONG time.  I built the volley gun bits and the tracks pretty quickly but the actual body was giving me problems.  A recent land raider acquisition came with lots of spare bits and I had some leftover sentinel parts so when I got some inspiration I built this.

Sorry for the crappy iphone photos, I didn't bother to show the other side as it's basically identical.  The only thing I see left to do is cover up the bare "axle" holes on the 2 rear most small wheels.  Questions for you lot are - 

Do you think it needs anything else model wise?

I was considering some ammo racks in the open space, might it be prudent to leave the space open for the techmarine to stand in so he can get a cover save?

Finally.. does anyone know if the techmarine that comes with a thunderfire cannon means you can take a squad of servitors, and if they can still be joined by him if he is operating the gun?

VOGEN campaign - round two

During the week Eric & Mike had fought their battle, it was apparently very close with Mike just squeaking a win out. Ian tried a couple of times to have someone fight him as the Arbites but the timing hasn't worked out. Apparently he d6'd it and the Arbites kicked him out of the precinct in short order.

I convinced Ian to play a small 500 point game as the NPC nids attacking myself - and offered my space hulk genestealers for him to use - as an excuse to use the Space Sharks Kundera model I just posted about. Even with Preferred EnemyFurious Charge, Kundera was whooped in short order by the broodlord led 'stealers. However giving all my heavy bolters hellfire rounds meant that everything wounded on 2+ except for the typhoon missile launcher.
The turning point in the game was probably his outflanking genestealers attacking my land speeder, he literally rolled a cube of dice, had 15 or more hits and rolled a single 5, to glance (adrenal glands for furious charge) and failed to do anything more than stopping it from shooting next turn. The landspeeder and razorback did the business in the end. I have some pics from this game on my phone - this was the only decent one.
So here's how the map sat before we did another round of pins.
22 - Tristan, 11 - Tyler, 10 - NPC, 8 - Josh, 6 - Graeme, 2 - Mike, 0 - Eric, 0 - Ian
So, onto new pins. First up Eric attacked the Arbites (playing orks, Eric is rolling a d6 and going in a random direction). Ian decided to get on the board with the Trading House. I took the Theatre House which will open access to the North Road Gate next turn (re-roll reserves - yes please!) also figuring I have enough territory I can force others to attack me. Josh wasn't around but we figured he'd take the west Pleasure District (this could change). Mike attacked the NPC nids in the Basilica, and the NPC attacked right back through the Railhead Depot!
24 - Tristan, 11 - Tyler, 10 - Josh, 10 - NPC, 6 - Graeme, 2 - Mike, 0 - Eric, 0 - Ian
Eric couldn't play today (I think Mike was interested in playing him as the Arbites) so I gave Mike his battle vs the NPC nids. This would be huge - possibly knocking Mike back to zero.

It was a kinda epic really fun 2000 point game. I'm not an experienced 'nid player by any means but who wants the NPC to win? Mike took a ton of guardsmen, some grey knights, 3 leman russes and 3 sentinels. I had mostly bigger bugs, my space hulk genestealers, some tunnel swarms and one swarm of gants with spinefists. It's too much to give a play by play but some of the better parts include;
1. The LR Executioner, shooting at a broodlord, missing and blowing up the damaged (but still active) LR the broodlord was assaulting, thereby killing the broodlord!
2. The carnifex losing it's last wound to lasguns
3. Swarms with spinefists killing a grey knight
4. Guardsman Bob who refused to run from the Hive Tyrant, regardless of grey knight terminators dropping like flies next to him
5. 58 guardsmen, 3 terminators, 1 grey knight killed by Tyranids
6. 20 gants, 10 genestealers, 9 warriors, 6 ripper swarms, 2 ravenors, zoanthrope, carnifex, hive tyrant and a Leman Russ killed by Daemonhunters (lol)

In the end though Mike still had plenty on the table and was going to have another turn of shooting before my last reserves came on and I was happy to concede the game - I might suggest making the jump to Witch Hunters - Sisters would count the Basilica Imperialis as 4 VPs. This leaves us with the below, and maybe some movement from Graeme & Tyler or Josh if he decides he's not happy with securing the Pleasure District - maybe wants some revenge!
24 - Tristan, 11 - Tyler, 10 - Josh, 8 - NPC, 6 - Graeme, 4 - Mike, 0 - Eric, 0 - Ian
Had some fun with a couple games - won the right one and lost the right one.

Space Sharks: Captain Kundera

It didn't take very many games for me to realize I was unhappy with the armament I had given my Space Sharks captain (click link for original). A combi-plasma is ok but a chainsword was a weak selection - keeping his bolt pistol would've been better. Yes, I could've just called it a power weapon (he even had a bionic arm which could've been the reason behind it), but found I wasn't using him very much, preferring my Novamarines captain when I didn't use a chaplain or librarian.
A sweet bonus for switching to a simple bolt pistol + power/relic weapon is being able to count as Captain Kundera from the FLoT Genestealer Cult mini-dex (recently updated to v3.0 for 5th edition) A quick note here - I suppose Bell of Lost Souls (where the mini-dexes were originally published) has gotten so big they have done some rejigging - so be absolutely sure to check out the Fly Lords of Terra. The mini-dexes are what attracted me to BoLS in the first place. They are really well put together. I've just copied an image of the rules for you to see - I don't think this won't be a big deal. The bonus of getting him completed is there is an NPC nid in our VOGEN campaign @ 2HD, so he could even see some action as Kundera in that campaign.Finally I made my second attempt at a Sgt Lorenzo style power sword. I couldn't find my white dwarf with the masterclass in it, but Ron over at From the Warp gave it a whirl and documented his efforts. I don't think I even have a photo up of the Crimson Fist sergeant I tried it on first. This one definitely looks more like it's charging up to the tip, though I think it needed one more level in the blending of the electricity crackle, maybe an elf grey before the skull white.
damn, i just noticed now the edging on his back banner isn't painted.

B-day present JPG

Here it is - my birthday present. Gavin sent me some formatted jpgs - look at all the detail on this thing. He even included a dead Mantis Warrior in the ground. All kinds of details from my tank are in the painting; kill markings, army badges, etc. Love it!!!

Best Girlfriend EVER! happy birthday to ME

It's been a great day. I turned 29 today, got some nice prezzies - but top of the pile definitely is what my beautiful girlfriend got me. She had a friend of ours who's a great illustrator to base a gorgeous piece of art on my Space Sharks Razorback. He's going to send me some jpgs to use as wallpapers and stuff, but here's a pic of me holding the painting and my model.
It's absolutely gorgeous and there are tons of great little details in it. I've spent about half an hour poring over it and am just beside myself with how cool this is. Can't wait to mount it on the wall above my painting area. I'll wait until I have jpgs to post to remark on all the little details, but I couldn't help myself making a quick post.

LOVE YOU BABE!

Badab Hammerheads done

Got some spare time to spend painting so I made the most of it and hustled through finishing the other four hammerheads. I'm going to wait until I have a decent amount of mini's before I start doing their mud bases. This also gives me a chance to think about any differences the bases might (should?) have. The brown does show off the mustard armour quite well, but doesn't really make me think 'tranquility'. Any of you folks out there have any ideas to spice up these guys' bases a bit?


It was a nice break to paint up these guys. Trying out new techniques is always interesting. I'd like to increase this squad to 10 men (still debating what if any special/combi-weapons to take) though I could always use my Deathwatch Heavy Bolter Space Shark (seen here) in a pinch. The hammerheads get a CCW, Scout & Move through Cover so any weapon upgrades should hopefully work well with that combination. The Power Fist will cover the odd vehicle, but for the most part these are troop munching machines, without anything beyond their base wargear. Thoughts?

ps. I'm at 70.4% of my PP goal of 250 points, meanwhile we're 62.5% through the year - leaving me around 8% ahead of schedule.

More Space Sharks... hammerheads & landspeeder

Put a decent amount of time into painting today and got quite a bit done. I've gotten all my hammerheads/sternguard ready for the final details. I've also completed a landspeeder I've been sitting on for too long.

First here are some pics comparing my standard SS scheme to the tranquility scheme.

Comparing the pic in the play aid to my completed hammerhead.

Standard scheme vs. Tranquility scheme



Space Sharks Landspeeder




ps. 100th post!

Badab/Hammerhead progress + mini tutorial

I've spent a few hours on my hammerheads this week, I added some "shark's teeth" hanging on the right shoulderpad - made out of combat daggers! I was pretty excited to try the painting the camo so I haven't had much trouble staying motivated to work on these guys.

Picked up some art masking fluid from a craft store (it's meant for watercolours, but works great - by winsor & newton) and have been giving it a go. I did one whole model through to see how it looked, so in the end I decided instead of batching the rest, to get one at each 'major' stage through the process, to give you a mini guide.

Some background. I wanted the grey for the camouflage stripes to match the grey of my other Space Sharks. So I decided I would do the armour the same, and use a mask to protect the camo pattern, painting the yellow overtop. I did this to hopefully keep them more closely visually linked with the 4th company sharks.

WARNING: This stuff will RUIN your brushes, not even good as a drybrush. I ended up switching to using a toothpick/paperclip to apply it, if you do use an old brush - wash it after each dip. Dip, paint, wash, dip. Trust me.

First, here's a group shot for me to list the major steps.
Left to right;

1. prime med sea grey, black wash, light grey drybrush, boltgun metal drybrush.
2. paint over tubing and apply camo pattern with art masking fluid.
3. iyanden darksun, gryphonne sepia wash, drybrush golden yellow.
4. use an eraser, toothpick, etc. to scratch off the art masking fluid. clean using a dry brush.
5. painting details, decals, etc.

Here's a close up of the guy with the art masking fluid applied. I got the kind with a bit of tint to see it more easily, so you can kind of make it out. Wherever there's a yellowish tinge.

Here's a close up of the guy with the art masking fluid scratched off. I have a couple little fixes to do, but nothing drastic. Note: by this time I was using a paper clip to apply the art masking fluid.
Here's the guy who I completed first to sort out colours, etc. from all four sides.

I really like the masking fluid. Another thought I had to use it with would be for difficult quartered/halved patterns (Novamarines anyone?). If you have any great ideas please let me know.

ps. the space sharks have just surpased the novamarines for chapter tagged the most.

Badab War: Space Sharks Hammerheads

I hope everyone by now has had a gander at BoLS new badab war play aid. I finally read the full fluff today and it's pretty well written. The modeling and gaming sections have sparked a ton of ideas, and here is the first I've started to put into effect.

I hadn't planned on including many veterans in my Space Sharks army, I was thinking more along the lines of a battle company (eventually!) and so hadn't even thought about termies/sternguard/vanguard much. The Badab play aid changed all that. When I was first thinking about making some hammerheads the obvious fluffy choice was truly chainswords, however being the clever chap that I am I thought of something even better. I had bought a bunch of dark angels backpacks with swords tied across the top, so I've given these to the hammerheads so I can just use them as normal sternguard in regular games. :)

I've used the same bits for body/head/etc, but have used the older 2nd ed. bolters (have a stock, need to add scopes) and a rogue trader era ammo clip on their backpacks. I also cut the sword out of one of the backpacks to make it more obvious they are really a weapon. I am planning to paint these guys (probably increase the squad to 10 eventually), plus a squad of termies and convert a Quintus model as well - all in the tranquility camo scheme from pg. 39 of the play aid. Going to give liquid mask a go.

group shot
sgt & vet
3 vets

Badab War playaid is available!!!

Play Aid: Badab War @ Bell of Lost Souls

This looks just as incredible as I was picturing, just having a quick browse while I'm at work - but definitely will be reading the whole thing tonight. The quality of it is literally beyond words.

FYI.. My space sharks rhinozerback I entered in the Badab APC challenge is pictured on page 20! W00T for me!

Space Sharks painted - tabletop quality (+17pp)

Well I've finally gotten these guys to tabletop quality, there's still some details and stuff I should pick out, but as this was the first run and it took longer than usual while I sorted out colour schemes, etc. I need a break. I'll probably do the touch ups for these guys when I paint more Space Sharks stuff. Currently my thoughts are to paint a unit of Orcs for the Lo2G at Two Headed Dragon, and then I'm tempted to paint up my Raptors assault marines, since I've completed the test mini using just washes over a white basecoat and it looks great.

Here are some pics, sorry for the lower quality.
Captain


Command Squad

Deathwatch Heavy Bolter

Tactical Squad

finally updates... pt2

Well so far the troll photos aren't turning out so hot. I'll give it one more go in a bit. I did however get a couple decent pics of my techmarine conversion. He'll need some green stuff work but again enough to get playing with. He'll be my Space Sharks techmarine. I may still need to add a beaky helmet in there somehow - anyone think I should replace the head with a beaky?

I cut up an extra techmarine backpack to provide the extra bits for the conversion. The servo-arm I pinned to the middle exhaust vent, the wires I pinned to the bottom. For the laser cutter I combined an old and newer plastic plasma pistol, for the flamer I just used an old hand flamer. I didn't bother with any other weapons as the servo harness gives enough power for a support character and he has a bolter slung under his shoulder so he's both WYSIWYG and a nice round 75 points.

finally updates... pt1

Whew, had a few hectic weeks there where I didn't really have time to take pics and post. I did manage to do some modeling and painting in between being busy and being hurt. I've put together a fair number of models since I've decided it'd be nice to be able to use them before being painted, and includes;

• 3 magnetized AoBR dreadnoughts
  
• 1 techmarine with converted servo-harness (basically 2 servo-arm backpacks combined)
• 1 eversor assassin
  
• 2 magnetized rhino chassis' (minus side doors and rhino top hatches)
  
• 1 set of magnetized predator components (the turret needs another magnet to keep the barrel up I think but it's good enough for now)
• 5 iron knights 'squires' (SM scouts aka neophytes - planning to use the black templar list for that chapter - since my iron knights are going to have the studded shoulder pad, i've used old RT001 arms for these guys and they are perfect sized for a smaller model)

The only pics I've managed to take that came out ok are of the three dreadnoughts - so without further ado, here they are. I used magnets in two positions on each arm to try and make sure they stay pointed up.

Arms detached

Arms attached

I need to post up pics of my painted trolls for the Lo2G competition @ Two Headed Dragon tonight (done with same techniques as the goblins), so parts 2 and possibly 3 of "finally updates" to come.