Pics of new starter set. OMG, the Hellbrute!

I'll just start off with the link:

http://imgur.com/a/eZEVT#A3PsA

The Chaos stuff looks awesome, as do the Dark Angels. And cultists!!! Click to enlarge. Click the above link for all of them. I guess it's time to paint up my Deathwing.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

WIP: Emperors Children Sonic Dread...color blocked

Not even remotely related to this post.

Not much time to post this evening. It's already 1:00am and I have a bunch of work to do for a 9:30am meeting. But I wanted to show the progress I've made on my little 3 year project, my Sonic Dread.
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The thing about the Angels Sanguine...

From the Lexicanum:

The Angels Sanguine are known never to remove their masks in the presence of anyone outside their Chapter. Even amongst their battle-brothers, their faces are usually hooded.

So this poses some challenges when fielding a few marines. I have always hated bare-headed models...it just seems really, really dumb. I understand why, but it's still silly to me. So when I realized that I needed to field a sergeant in my tactical squad, I knew I had to modify the AoBR sergeant a bit to make it work in a fluffy way.

This is the sergeant from the Black Reach box:

I only have CSM heads in my bitz box since I've never collected regular space marines before, but I found sort a neat looking one that didn't have spikes or horns. In fact, it looks a bit like a chaplain helmet, but not quite as skull-like.

I dremeled out the head and neck and voila (sorry, this was taken late last night on a cell phone):

Each time I do these little, forgiving projects, my confidence builds, and I want to do more. I still need to figure out the whole mycetic spore thing.

Sangweenies

Vampires in Space!!!

OK, so if you've been following along on this blog, you know that I've pretty much completed a Tyranid army. I did so without really thinking about how competitive it was, since I had restarted from scratch. I just liked the models. Then the new Codex hit and people were underwhelmed.

I then bought a sizable Chaos Space Marine force, which in retrospect is a pretty disparate and unfluffy set of choices, and started painting them. I didn't realize that no one liked the codex...I just assumed it was the evil version of Space Marines.

So now that I decided to do a power armor army (try saying that 10 times fast), I saw it as my opportunity to choose a codex and build that was at least competitive in terms of Mathhammer and Internet foolishness. Since I can't stand the viking aesthetic, I was limited to SM or BA. So I've decided on Blood Angels. I'm not really wild about painting more red, but compared to the number of gaunts I've painted, this should be nothing.

Instead of making things easy, I thought I would do a quick test to see if I could paint the Angels Sanguine scheme:

While I was at it, i thought to do a quick test of the normal Blood Angels scheme of all red. I looked up Les Bursley's tutorial on Angels Sanguine and got to work. I know people have mixed feelings about Les, but he is the only person doing tutorials that actually seem geared towards the person who is trying to learn.

At any rate, this is what I ended up with. Click for bigger pics:

The halving scheme was surprisingly easy with Les' method of using a Micron pen to draw the hard border. It only added a few minutes to do it. I think that's the scheme I'm going to go for.

Finishing up the Hive Fleet

I've been distracted a bit by the immediacy of Warmachine: painted up 5 figs and I'm ready to play.

But I've been staring at my 'nids, and they are crying out for completion. So I figure if I formalize it for everyone to see, I can be motivated to finish it posthaste.


Gargoyles
You know what I hate about gaunts and gargoyles? Painting fleshborers. Their fingers are so intertwined in the gun symbiote that it becomes almost impossible to paint with contrasting colors. Had I thought about it before starting, I would have just painted them the body color...either Red Gore or Bleached Bone. But no, I had to make them black. So my 10 gargoyles are ready except for those guns and a dip...but it's going to be a total paint.

Hormagunts
I have about 24 of them unassembled.

Genestealers
One of the first units I painted was a group of genestealers. Not knowing anything about anything, I did 11 of them with normal heads and rending claws, and one with feeder tendrils and scything talons. I have another dozen in the box, and I've procured a few more tendril heads, so I'll do 11 with feeders/scythes and 1 to match the original guys. The Cthulu looking stealers can double as Ymargls.

Hive Tyrant / Swarmlord
I got a great deal on one of these via Ebay, and I was considering magnetizing the arms, but I seriously think it will actually be cheaper for me in time, materials and effort to buy another tyrant. The boneswords for the swarmlord will be purchased HERE at Paulson Games.

Tyrant Guard
Two are assembled, primed, and ready to paint.

Zoanthropes
I have 4 on the bench, primed and pinned, but the little back fins are a colossal pain to attach. If anyone knows of a way other than greenstuff, I'm all ears.

Termagants
I have about 36 of these to paint, with 10 of them almost completed except for the gun symbiote. See the gargoyle text above to see what the hold up is.

Doom of Malantai
I was going to convert a Zooey for this, but I think I'm just going to buy the Alien Brain @ Troll Forged.

Warriors
Three left, unassembled. One may become an alpha.

Wow, I never realized how much is left...but it IS a finite amount. I still have Tervigons to model and paint, but I'm not worrying about that right now.

So after this, I have a full 2000+ points of CSMs and the AoBR set. If anyone wants to suggest a marine and chaos marine chapter, I'd love to see comments. I'm going to do the orks fairly traditionally, so I'm going to have to research them.

In other news, there's still time to enter the giveaway. I don't know if I should be pushing this more aggressively, but you have a huge opportunity here since there are so few entrants. And international folks should not hesitate to enter...I'm a big boy, and I can afford the shipping.  :) Good luck!

Progress, slow and steady.

With the advantages of learning from my mistakes while painting my Nids, I proceeded to gingerly dip my toe into both Orks and Chaos Space Marines.

Orks
When I got back into 40k last year, I really tried to avoid Orks. I thought they were too comical and brought down the gravity that the game deserved, after reading through the fluff and some Black Library novels, I've had a change of heart.

This AoBR boy is undergoing a skin test. That is not striaght green on the skin. It's Sunburst Yellow followed by a heavy wash of Thrakka Green. It's a little bright, so I may go over it again with Devlan Mud. The AoBR models are surprisingly detailed, and I look forward to painting more of them.




Noise Marine (WIP)

I'm doing my Noise Marines as Patchouli-smelling ne'er do wells, so the tie dye scheme seems to work. Obviously, I still need to trim with black, and the other shoulder pad is black and gold a la Black Legion.

Finally got going again

Last night, I completed the Venomthrope except for the basing. This was a huge step forward as it had been sitting at my desk for quite a while. It's certainly not my best work, but I truly feel like I'm nearing the finish line with the 'Nids. I don't want to sound like it was torture...I definitely had a clear idea of the scope once I hit my first roadblock months ago. So right now, on the bench are:

- 4 Zoanthropes, primed white
- 1 Obliterator, primed white
- 1 Obliterator, completely unassembled
- 1 AoBR set unopened
- 9 Gargoyles awaiting black detailing, basing and dipping
- 10 Termagants (the cheap ones, 5 for $8.25) awaiting basing, detailing and dipping

I am itching to get started on my CSMs, but I'm also full of anxiety. I basically want a Black Legion equivalent but in my own scheme and mixing oblits, berzerkers, and noise marines. I know that it's OK to do that anyway, but I feel like a cut my teeth on the Tyranids, and it's time to strive for the step above tabletop quality for the renegades.

Any suggestions? I am so sick of painting red, but I may go for tie dye marines. lots of wet blending and chromatic colors. I will start with the Noise Marines, since they should look like that anyway.