IG saw their first action

I pulled my guard and tanks out of their display cases this morning, and hit the local GW store and play an honest to god game of 40k. That punisher that I had built because it looked cool turned into the MVP of the game. Everyone told me how terrible it was as a tank, but it was fun to roll that many dice, and the tank acted like a fire magnet. I am tempted to give it some painted on victory art, or a purity seal or something. Using a screen of 5 rough riders was also pretty useful. They ran in a straight line in front of my tanks providing a meat shield/cc counter.

We played a ruined city game, my mechanized guard against a raider dark eldar force. My tanks just pounded the dark eldar, dropping their vehicles and pinning them with barrage hits. My opponent was trying out his new DE ebay purchase, and I think he was not playing with all of his models yet. I lost only a single guardsman to a mishap jumping from a valk which arrived turn 5. My primaris psyker was able to drop one of the armored DE gunships with his mind, which opened him up to me as a useful unit.

Airbrushes are awesome!

I bought an airbrush a while back, along with an oil less air compressor. The brush is dual action, and was a bit intimidating. Last night I decided to put the thing together and see how it worked. I started by priming a miniature with boltgun metal, basically as a way to test how even the coats were, and to see if this gun would help me paint my grey knights. When I got home tonight I decided to try the gun on an Imperial Guard Punisher. I'm told the weapon is useless, but I like the way it looks, so I chose it plus three bolters as my first set of weapons to paint. After building the tank I primed it white, and then began giving the airbrush a spin. Most of this model was painted in under an hour! I has taken me two more hours to paint enough other parts (bolters, main gun, and tank tracks) so that I can use this guy tomorrow if I break my gaming fast. I am so impressed with this air brush I don't know what to say. You should just go buy one. I will never paint a tank by hand again. I even liked painting smaller objects like troopers and the bolters with it because it produces such an even coat. When I have finished weathering this tank I will post some more photos. The GW airbrush is already in the trash.

*EDIT A word of caution about purity seal. I used it on one of my heavily weathers tanks (not pictured here) and it basically removed all of the soot/rust/ash on the vehicle as well as changing the color of the graphite I used for worn edges.

Imperial Guard Regiment

I've posted quite a few tanks, but have not put up many of my actual guardsmen. Since I have been experimenting with light boxes today I ended up with a bunch of units photographed. The older minis were all part of my grey with white stripes guard army that had selected models simple greened. The rest are part of a box set that bought as part of a painting competition. The guardsmen are dirt simple to paint, and I think they look pretty good next to the chimera. I have never fielded this force, but keep meaning to.

I had to toss in a shot of the AoBR Orcs. I love those models. I may paint up another batch in some bad moon colors just because.

Chaos Terminators Done

Finally I have a full squad! I am not sure if I have just gotten used to the better plastics, but the chaos terminators I painted had very little definition. These were really frustrating to paint because I could not scoot my wet brush along any sort of defined line. Is this how they all are? Do plastic molds become undefined like this over time? I let the washes work their magic, and presto, my first chaos squad was complete. After seeing the forgeworld stuff in person, these blobby miniatures were not nearly as exciting. Hopefully the chaos kit will get updated as a gift to the community!

Devastator Squad Finished!

I've had 4 partially painted devastators for a long time. I originally bought them for my Iron Scythes, and then they got passed around from army to army until they received their blood red paint job...last year. This is the problem with starting and not finishing projects. These guys got a paint job when I was relearning painting from the ground up, but since I started them back then, I had to deal with that fact today. Now I have a unit that has all kinds of painting styles and does not benefit from either my new found love for layering and blending or my growing hatred for mold lines and bad priming. In a hobby like this it is hard to finish units when painting momentum is lost. At least they are done, and while not the best looking figures in the army, they at least do not stand out as the mostly primer unit they were.

So, does anyone field squads like this. I feel like I have to try them out at least once now that they have a few dozen coats a paint on them. What will one las cannon, two plasma cannons, and one missile launcher do to another unit. Can I toss this in with my baal and unpainted land raider? It certainly looks like a fun unit for the shooting phase!

Rogue Trader Era Imperial Guard

I needed a few miniatures to test paint, so I dug around in my 15+ year old bits box and found these minis. I have no idea what the orange guy is supposed to be, but I painted him up in a star wars suit to see how orange took the dev mud wash. I have never been good at fabric, so the guy with a cloak was an attempt to see what I could do. These are not well painted minis. I think I may have learned a little by painting them. Hopefully I did, since that was the point. The question is what to do with all of these guys now. I already have randomly painted orcs that I used for testing!

Dead Grass Basing

I have been using ruined city scape basing for a few armies now, but decided that I should do some experiments to see if I could get another couple of basing styles down. I decided to go for a rocky desert with dead and dried plants. I started the usual way, with rocks and sand, and a few bits from the bits box, and then tested out my new bootstrap leather P3 paint. The moment I dipped my brush in the paint I knew I liked it. It has a very fine consistency and is very smooth. After over-brushing the brown onto the base I dry brushed some foundation yellow followed by bleached bone. It was at this point that I mixed 50/50 water elmers glue and gave some gale force 9 static grass a try. It turned out ok, but lacking any way to easily create a magnetic field, I had to deal with having clumps of grass. Seeing as how I can't stop when I am ahead, I added some forge world rust and dirt pigments to the base. When I sprayed on the dull coat the pigment radically changed what it looked like, and produced what you see in the final photo. These bases are not bad, and can be produce in mass quantities if needed, but they don't thrill me. I might try adding some snow and water effects to them.

Who Likes A Pink Ork

No this is not a spoof post! I really did paint an ork pink. I did it for good reasons though. I am rather spooked about starting my voystroyan army, or my death corps unit, so I am trying things out on some old ork models bought way back in the rt days. Every so often on of these weird test miniatures earns a finished paint job. This is rare, very very rare though, as most of them end up as unrecognizable paint slag waiting for simple green to clean them off and prepare them for more painting abuse. On the pink ork you should be able to see three different washes applied to the skin. Dev Mud was applied to the face, sepia to the arm on the left, and purple to the one on the right. If I paint up any psykers I know I will choose the purple wash now. If I need grizzled vets I will choose mud. For female models or those away from the battlefield dirt I will use the sepia. With some blending I can really see these three washes working out for me. The two other orks are just tests of red, bronze, and a few types of brown. I had planned the voystroyans to be red so they fit in well with the grey knights, but maybe a brilliant blue would be a better choice.....well got to go paint some orks blue now!