Dark Angels Codex Updated!

At long last a new Dark Angels faq upgrades DA equipment to 5th edition! That makes my thunder hammer, storm shield, and cyclone missile launcher guy awesome! When I built this model I did it just for fun. In 4th edition codex game terms he just does not make sense. But now, he is a beast, with that shield finally providing protection, and his cyclone firing two shots instead of one. I think I may catch the DA fever again and paint up another terminator squad!

Imperial Guard Advisors

My new painting style does not fit very will with my existing guard, but I decided to keep experimenting with it just because. I painted up two Psykers. One of them is a Forgworld model that comes with the Hector Rex model. Some of the details are still not done, and I have no idea how to base them. Right now I am focussing on just having fun painting.

I've found a lot of different quality in the resin. Some of the models do not obey human anatomy very well. I wonder if this is just a case of old fw versus new fw. All of the newer models have been spot on.

I think it might be time to finally start the Krieg army. I am getting comfortable with making my own washes which seems to be a pre-requisite when working with resin kits.

Titan Crew, Imperial Advisors, and Inquisitional Servitor

I finally broke down and painted some of my forgeworld stuff. I have a titan, death korps, and early mark space marines to paint, and have been avoiding painting them. Basically the minis were so nice I did not want to ruin them. I think I just had a case of the painting fear!

So first things first. These minis are small! Space Marines look like giants compared to them. This also means that the details are incredibly hard for me to paint. At times I was relying on brush mojo to magically land the paint where it needed to be. I found that washes were the easiest ways to paint these up, so I created soupy/wash like paint mixtures and used them instead of full strength paint. The details while hard to paint were also loads of fun to paint. I had so much fun with the FW stuff, I yanked a few imperial advisors that have been gathering dust on my painting table and sploshed some color on them as well.

the Servitor mini came out a little differently than I expected. I wanted to keep him off-white in order for him to fit in with the rest retinue, and as a way to avoid the deep red normally associated with servitors. The tiny little dots of purple on his head were also a last minute addition. I like them, but afterwards they started reminding me of Admiral Akbar, the squid-like, general from Star Wars.

Astral Claws Centurion Helmet Crest + Corpse Taker

Timing is everything. Ron over at FTW just posted about Roman style helmet crests. As my first real green-stuff attempt, I sculpted one of these for my Astral Claws Sergeant test miniature. I am not sure if I am going to do this for all of my Astral Claws, or just this one miniature. In Roman legions, the crest went front to back for normal legionnaires, and perpendicular to that (as shown on my sergeant) for officers. This would be a neat way to make centurions and sergeants stand out from rank and file astartes. It would be fun to see a squad of Astral Claws that did not side with their chapter. The minis could form a little diorama showing them throwing down their weapons.

The other mini posted above is the beginnings of my Corpse Taker. For those who have not bought IA9 and read it over and over again like I have, the Corpse Taker unit is a small Apothecary squad that removed gene seed from Astral Claws and non Astral Claws wounded. Basically they try to collect all of the gene seed they can in order to create more legionnaires. This is just about the worst thing one chapter can do to another. Naturally I had to paint one unit up! I used Fabius Bile's backpack thing along with regular apothecary bits.

In terms of color, I am still unsure how to paint white cleaning. No matter how smooth I think the blending is, the moment I take a photo the edge highlights of pure skull white stand out like sore thumbs. I plan to paint the shoulder pads blue and gold like regular troopers. I was also thinking about adding highlighted battle damage as well as blood spatters. These are gruesome marines after all.

Astral Claws Retaliator Squad Sergeant

Since Bolt Gun did not look that great to me, I decided to try a second AC paint test using codex grey as the base. After I had airbrushed Codex Grey on, I increasingly added white to the mixture and sprayed downwards from the top of the mini. The initial effect was great, so I decided to go one step further and wash on a heavily thinned badab black wash. The wash pooled in places, which should not have been a surprise to me these.

I really like this mini. I've never tried to paint a space marine holding his helmet, so this is a first. I have a little green stuff plume that is curing right now to put on the top of it. It may make the guy look a little too ultra-mariney, but since the Astral Claws used Ultramar as part of their legal defense for the independence of their realm it seems ok right now.

Astral Claws

In addition to a lovely FW Argus Lighter, my wife purchased a photo booth for me to use in updating this blog. It turns out my cell phone picts were not well received!

Since the Argus Lighter is for my Astral Claws army list, I thought I should give an AC paint scheme a try. I used very thinned down bolt gun metal, followed by chainmail line highlighting and a watery badab black wash for the metal portions. I did not want to use all metallics on the mini, so the gold was done with foundation yellow. I am not happy with how the mini turned out, both in terms of my painting skill or the methods used. I think the gold really needs to be metallic gold and the blue darker. I think I will use shaded grey instead of bolt gun metal for the body. My difficulty in painting metallics is one of the primary reasons my Grey Knights have never been completed.

Does anyone have a good recipe for astral claws that I could use?

I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things last night, and even had some fun with the light booth. (hence the random chaos minis---or should I say Astral Claw allies!)

Christmas Eve Forgeworld

My wife and I are at my parents condo in an undisclosed place in the northeast. After returning from the requisite haircut at the mall, I noticed a stack of boxes in the hallway enterance. While looking for the 96 gigs of ram I ordered, I spotted a lovely little package from fw. How on earth did fw get a package to my parents place in time for christmas?

So now I have a wonderful new problem. A resing forgworld model, and no way to build it! I supposed it evens out in the end.

Merry Christmas!

My Wife And I Are Playing 40k: Weird

My wife wanted to try the game and we are playing. The game is a simple annihilation game with her as Blood Angels pitted against a Chaos war-band led by Typhus. The battlefield is strewn with abandoned imperial guard tanks with a ruined imperial temple in the center. Her entire force is left, while mine consists of a single unit of 5 lessor demons and Typhus leading three terminators. It is rather surreal playing a game of 40k against her.