Deadzone Marauders - 4 more figures complete

Most of the base coating for these figures was done last year, but finally towards February of this year I began having an itch to paint again so I got them finished up. This represents 5 painting points (2 for the captain, 1 for each of the others) the captain has some significant highlights compared to the commandos, and the sniper has some extra detailing to make his cloak look like it was selected to match my deadzone terrain (unlike their generic strike team camouflage)

Commando Captain

I had to add a piece of terrain snipped off a door underneath his right foot to keep him balanced on the clear base.  The dullcote didn't seem to do as good a job on these guys I may try to protect the clear base and give them another spritz.

Commando with 2 guns

Love this guys head with the skull plate, the two guns do nothing in game terms he just looks bad ass. He's got long sleeves so not much skin, but I stuck with doing highlights using yellow directly on the goblin green skin and it works great IMO.

Commando

Gave this guy a simple head swap so he doesn't quite match the last one done using this body.

Goblin Sniper

Do like these guys, they are potentially powerful in the game but very unreliable due to their poor shooting skill.  Was pretty happy with how the cloak came out so it looks like he equipped himself for my terrain.

Between the last four and these four I have enough for a legit strike team while adding a few things like extra ammo, etc.  I will probably continue to try and paint up more of these guys in batches of four until they are all finished rather than switching gears to other factions.  I have another commando, another mawbeast, some more snipers and the pyro still to go.  Was planning to try and pick up an old AoBR ork warboss from the old GW 40K box since I like it better than the marauder warlord figure.

painted for others and by others, part deux

I don't often schedule posts but since I have been focusing on my Novamarines up to now with getting prepared for astronomi-con (see pt 1, pt 2 & pt 3) and it will probably be a few days before I can get a post up about my first 40k tournament I thought this will give you something to read.

nb. Well that's the second time that blogger has failed to post when I've "scheduled" - anybody got any tips or  does it just not work??

Well I enjoyed posting up the pics in my previous "for others and by others" post. I especially like getting nice pics of the minis I painted in "staged" or game situations.  First up I have some pics of the dark angels captain model I painted for Mik @ Mik's Minis as the prize from the second GWpertinent contest.

common basing theme = win!

I'm pretty happy that his basing scheme has helped to make the paint job look better. These are some pics from Miks game using the SuperSystem rules, which looked like a hoot btw!

epic battle begins!

tracto gets slammed by an escape pod!

Next up I have a pic from Mike over at Constantly Risking Obscurity - a fellow I have been following for quite some time.  Ever since his submission to a painting contest called "Take Cover" with this incredible entry. I love the burnt piece of wall and battle damage.  In this instance I was fortunate enough to NOT win a contest he held on his blog to receive a painted model - and by his great generosity received an offer to paint a mini for me regardless of the contest. How awesome is THAT?

early stages of what promises to be an awesome addition to my collection

I have been slowly collecting the spare harlequin here and there whenever I can get them pretty cheap.  My plan is to have a different person paint up each one, and use them as a brat gang in my games of Necromunda  - using Anthony Cases rules.  You can check out the first harlequin I had painted (by Dave from mini painting 4 free) in my post here.

Finally - Mik recently showed me some love for the dark angels captain model, and he took some nice close up pics.  I think they are nicer than the pics I originally took (and he looks better based) so I thought I would post them up too.  The pics definitely help me to think of what I could improve.

power sword details

I went with the same power sword as on my space sharks champion. I think I should have blended out from the white instead of into it. Lesson 1.

full frontal :-O

As for the armour and details, I wanted to use a single wash (devlan mud) over everything to really unify the piece.  I feel I did go a little heavy on the wash, next time I do something over the whole piece, I am going to thin down the wash. Lesson 2.

knee pad & shoulder pad details

The knee pad was re-painted after the wash to get the company colours exactly right. The wash really dulled down the (probably too subtle) red highlights on his shoulder pad and headdress. Greater contrast highlights work better with the unifying wash (as seen with the green details).  Lesson 3.

cloak

This one is the maybe.  I wanted his cloak to be very green to ensure he still fit with the rest of the dark angels - however it is just a big flat area, possibly a decal (artistically - perhaps half the chapter symbol) might have really made this pop. Lesson 4? What do you think?

GWpertinent Contest #2 - painted prize

I didn't want to post anything about this until I knew Mik had received his prize - I definitely wanted it to be a surprise!  The request had come in for deathwing scheme (aka bone armour).  He pointed out that his is the 4th Company, with a specific badge on the knee - but other than that I was left pretty much on my own. While I wanted the mini to suit Miks Dark Angels army, I still wanted it to retain some of my painting style.  I did a fair amount of reviewing his current army. I am a huge fan of washes and have recently really gotten into staining, so I decided to go for a bit grittier look than his very white terminators.  I wanted this armour to really seem aged and ancient.  I do think I might have taken it just a teensy bit too far (you can judge below) but thankfully it's nothing as bad as one coat too many of badab black on my Raptors Chaplain.

mostly basecoated

I used a grey undercoat with bleached bone basecoat. Over that I did some highlights in white, trying to focus them so would appear as if from a single light source.  Other than leather and metallics I only used dark angels green and a pretty bright red as complementing colours.  I wavered a bit about the headdress feathers but in the end I decided I liked how striking the solid colour was.

highlights pretty much done

I kept all the gems and his cloak dark angels green to make sure I had enough green on the figure.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a pic between staining and painting the power sword.  I debated between using either the red or green as the base for the power sword, both had their benefits but in the end I decided that I liked the look of his assault squads blue power swords - and that I really needed the sword to be a different colour from the rest of the miniature as it's a pretty standout feature of the fig.

some details like the gems and metallics

I had always been planning to copy my Space Sharks champion power sword. It has gotten a lot of positive reviews.  I think I did a very good job on this blend except for the white end near the band - my brother pointed out that the blend into white was a little smoother on my Shark champion.  This was probably because I had the base green colour and worked down whereas here I started with a light blue and worked up since I wasn't sure how dark it would need to be.  Lesson learned always work to white.

strong wash of devlan mud all over.
added company detailing.
electric band blended power sword.

I finished up a few details with a fineliner pen (name on scroll & purity seal writing) and sealed him up.  I can only hope that Mik enjoys him as much as I enjoyed painting him - it's always nice to take a break from your own projects and paint something outside what you normally would.

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.

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

Novamarines character details

Filled out some of the details on my captain and deathwatch sergeant. Mostly doing up the power swords, but I did fill in some heraldry on banners & cloaks (forgot to take picture of back - shoot!)

Novamarines update - Captain piccys

Some pics of my captain, with base colours.

Space Sharks update - Captain & Command squad built

I've been building these guys as the parts come in. Trying for a very unified look so using a small selection of bits. Some stuff I'm going for with this chapter.

• Very "army/marine" look with lots of kill markings, etc.
• Vehicles with shark tooth decals (converted to be/look amphibious)
• Drop pods with similar stylings.
• Lots of dreadnoughts/no scouts.

Captain


Captain & Command squad


Champion


Apothecary


Standard Bearer


Auspex Vet


Comms Vet (This guy now has a little antenna looking thing on his backpack)