Another Year Another Resolution

So here we are, 1/1/12 and I'm sure you're wondering where I've been.
First off I got a job in April and its been requiring a TON of my time. The last few months I've been working 7 days a week and turning the lights on and off.
So what have I painted this year?

Space Marines:
Built and painted 3rd Company Tactical and assault marines
Built and painted 3rd Company Chaplain and Librarian
Built and painted Damocles Rhino
Built and painted 10 Space Marine Veterans
Built and painted 4 Dreadnoughts
Basecoated 9 Landspeeders
Built and painted 3 Apothecaries
Built 24 Death Company
Built 17 Marines
Built 6 Chaplains
Built 4 Librarians
Converted 2 Librarians
Built 7 Commanders
Built 4 Apothecaries
Built 10 Tech marines
Built 3 Standard bearers
Built 8 Command Squad models
Converted 2 Company Champions
Built 5 Terminators
Built 9 Servitors

Grey Knights:
Built and painted Grand Master Test Model
Basecoated Land Raider Redeemer
Built and painted 2 Librarians
Built and painted 2 Heavily Converted Dread Knights
Built and Painted Giant Display base
Built and painted 48 Servo Skulls
Built and painted 4 Familiars
Built and painted Castellan Crowe
Built and painted Tech Marine
Converted and Basecoated Lelith to Callidus
Built and painted 4 Crusaders
Converted and Painted Megan Fox figure to Callidus
Built and painted 3 Vindicare assassins
Converted and painted Vindicare assassin
Built and painted Culexus assassin
Built and painted Imperial Assassin
Built and painted 3 Witch Hunters
Built and painted Nearly 150 Purifiers
Built and painted 1 Fallout mini
Built and painted 3 Inquisitor Rex bodyguards
Built and painted Dark eldar to Callidus Conversion
Built and painted Culexus Conversion
Converted 34 Crusaders
Converted 9 Tech marines
Built 60 Terminators

Imperial Guard:
Stripped Fixed and painted Stormblade
Stripped Fixed and painted Baneblade
Built and painted 20 Sentinels
Built and painted 14 Commissars
Basecoated 90 Stormtroopers
Basecoated nearly 200 Guardsmen
Built and painted 16 Enginseers
Built and painted 10 Adepts and Servitors
Built 1 Commissar

Terrain:
Painted 6 feet of Aegis Defence Lines
Built and painted 10 Sentry Guns
Converted enlarged Punisher cannon

Commission:
Built and painted 4 Servitors
Built and painted Enginseer
Built and painted Genesis Chapter Assault Squad
Built and painted Vulkan Hestan
Built and painted Dreadnought
Built and painted Full Ultramarines command squad
Built and painted Ultramarines Tac squad
Built and painted Crimson Fist2 Tactical Squads
Built and painted 2 Crimson Fist Dreadnoughts
Built and painted 1 Birthday Present Cygnar model

Played:
15k Apoc-a-strike with no super heavies
Wargames Con
25k Apocalypse Game
1k Tournament GW Frisco (2nd)
2k Feast of Blades Tournament (4th)
2k Sideboard tournament (2nd)
AMPS modeling contest Silver Medal
Hobby Town Dallas Super Heavy Painting contest (1st Place)

So my hope is to try and do at least 1 update a week.

36th Post - Updates on me

Well first off I've got some updates on my resolution. Then I've been working on some commission work for Bob and Mac. And lately I've been painting up some 5th company marines. I also purchased a Pentax K-X camera, so I'll be taking some nice pictures.

Here's the 2010 Resolutions

35th Post - Update

Ok so I'm sorry I've let this languish for so long. I'm graduating at the end of this semester and I've been breaking my back trying to study. I've also managed to finish a few more commissions such as 275 Flames of War 15mm Russians for Bob, 80 15mm Germans for Mac and I'm working on 80 more 15mm Germans for Mac.

Bob and Mac are good friends of mine and they've just restarted their Flames of War hobby... well game I guess since I'm doing the hobby.

Next up I've been working on the Damoclese rhino, it's almost done with decals applied. Next step is to gloss and flatten the decals then weather the whole tank. I'm not going to be doing much weathering because I like my marines battle ready.

Dad and I have also been working on the warhounds. We've got lights installed, sound boards ready to be wired and even put some paint down on them! Well it's just the reactors.

I've also been selling some of my unused models. I've now sold off nearly all of my Fantasy stuff, leaving only the pile of 2nd hand Empire models left. I've also started selling my Warmachine models. I've come to realize that with the monetary and time investments I've been sinking into the 40k universe I really don't have much left for other game systems. Don't get me wrong I've started branching off into Battle Fleet Gothic (played my first game) and Epic 40k (Started buying companies of tanks), Aeronautica Imperialis (purchased 4 planes), but I think my table top gaming is going to be in just the 41st millennium.

34th Post - 3 Sanguinary Priests

Well I've been doing a lot of sanding on the titans lately so no pretty pictures of them, however I was able to finish some quick Sanguinary Priests for Bob. These 3 guys were done in about 2 hours total.

33rd Post - It's been a while

Hi guys!

I'm afraid I've been a bit busy doing some stuff since my last post. First up I finished the Blood Angels commission

Here's the Golden boys from the commission

27th Post - Legion of the Damned,small commission update

So, now you're asking "Why now, after all the posts you've had why do you chose now to do a history of your marines?" Well the answer to that is simple. I've started working on them again.

I'm afraid I went a little Legion crazy when the new Legion of the Damned models were released. I picked up 1 of every model released and then got a deal for an extra box minus the sarge. So I have 2 full squads, 1 10 man using multi-melta and melta gun, 1 10 man using heavy flamer and flamer.
Here's some pics of conversions I did to make the duplicates from the boxed set not look so samey.

Eleventh Post - Death Company Done, valk progress, more guard stuff.

It's been a while, I totally forgot to update the blog in the flurry of BoLS prep I've been doing.
I got the death company finished and delivered as well as the characters I was working on with them.
Pictures below (more pics in my photobucket)




Overall the figs came out good and Bob was happy thus I got paid.

Considering that was nearly 2 weeks ago I've got more news.

Next up was the Manticore for my guard. I converted it so I could magnetize on the kit's 3 missiles or put on a deathstrike missile (to be built later).


I also decaled up the valkyries. The forgeworld decals are a bit horrible and could have been put on as 1 large piece but they didn't include enough space in between for the panels. Instead you're expected to disassemble to decals and the put them down. If they would have added some spacing on the decal sheet this would be fine but there's barely any room to get a pair of scissors in there! They turned out ok, I've got some touchups to do with paint but them's the breaks.




Next up I started work on my Hydras. I've decided NOT to just stick something on my chimeras as that'd look goofy. Instead I'm going for a leman russ chassis (it's higher ;) ) with a special add on... take a look.



I've got some more work to do before I'm happy with them. Right now they keep falling over because they're so blasted top heavy.
So that's it from me.
BTW blame Bradford for my lack of posts. He recommended Fallout 3 to me and after picking it up I can't stop playing it.

Tenth Post - Nearly Finished Death Company

That's right I'm almost done with Bob's Death Company.
Since Sunday I've done the following to the death company:
Built them
Primed them black
Picked out red bits
Painted metallics
Painted parchments/tabbards
Painted wings/skulls
did touch ups
painted lenses

I need to do some touch ups around the eyes and then wash the metallics and parchments.

Ninth Post - Death Company and Psykers

So I finally received the parts I needed for my psykers and I started building them. They're coming along rather nicely I think:


I really need to get off my ass and start painting these guys but I'm hoping whenever the forgeworld decals get in I'll start working on them again.

I also picked up another commission from Bob in the form of 30 Death Company, 20 Sanguinary guard, and every Blood Angel Special character.
Here's the Death Company, Astorath, Mephiston and his "stand in" Lemartes.

I'm hoping on finishing the Death Company and hopefully a couple of the characters by this weekend.

Also I recently reformatted my OS. I thought I had a problem when I installed new updates for XP but it turns out one of my SATA cables went bad.

Eighth post - Commission break and Straken

I finished the last of Mac's minis. This time they're Tallaran Models, everyone of them had a conversion of some king. The lasguns had been converted to look more like carbines, others had simple weapon swaps.

Sarge, melta, and lasguns

Some guardsmen vox, 2 snipers and more lasguns


Heavy Weapon team


My favorite pose, it has a lot of story to it


Lately I've been trying out my BOLS list and I've decided to try out Straken. However I have no model for Straken so I needed to convert one, as the current and old straken models don't fit my army's look. So I came up with the following.


I had tried the scout biker shot-gun on the hip pose, but it didn't look very good so I went with the giant glaive.

I also ordered 3 foam trays for my vendettas, my first carrying case order of the year. It only took 6 months for me to start on my resolution.

Seventh Post - Commissions and BOLScon updates

Well for a while there it didn't look like I'd be going to BOLScon, however now it looks like I'm about 90% sure I'm going.

I started working on Mac's commission guardsmen again and got the Catachans and the Specials done.
I love working on Heavy weapon team bases, they allow me to really tell a story with the models, and just have fun with them. Here a junk russ turret becomes an ad-hoc piece of cover.

Here's Mac's Harker and 3 melta gunners.
More Catachans. Mac's guard are all rather bastardized amalgamations of every guard model he can get his hands on. Here some last chancers make good Catachans with the right paint.

Both of Mac's flamer's had a miscast on the left side of their face's. I painted them like they'd just been freshly burned by their charge.
The iconic Catachan sniper trio.

Mac also had some converted up medic's from the Lt Varras model from Battle for MaCragge boxed set. These figs need their bases finished (and the Callidus needs rubble)
I think they came out nice.
Next up was an Astropath converted from a Genestealer Magus, and a Callidus assassin.


This is the scheme I used for all of Mac's Cadians. It's the scheme that ties most of the figures together.

I started painting the vendettas I'm going to need.
I did one of the plastic vendettas a few days ago and did the old forgeworld resin tonight.
Here they are side by side. As you'll notice the wings are backwards. I like this look alot better than the normal GW look, as it makes the aircraft appear sleeker.


Here's the plastic's cockpitAnd the Resin's.

The resin Vendetta was originally my Inquisitor's Valkyrie so I'm going to just update the paint scheme.

Here's a close up of the Inquisition symbol on the wing.

And the inquisition door symbol. I've been wondering if I should paint the door black to match the backdrop of the wing symbol (and break up the gray). What do you think?


Obviously these 2 birds aren't done. I ordered a set of the fancy forgeworld valk/vendetta decals the other day and I'll be adding them later along with some weathering and possibly my normal Armageddon camo. I realize the fluff is that valks get attached to a ground unit after serving for so long so supposedly they would adopt the colors of the tanks around them, but I don't know. Again, what do you think, camo or no camo?



I also bought a new manticore/deathstrike list and I've got to say it's a fine kit. I don't like the style choice for the launcher itself (as I would have preferred a hydra/manticore pack) but apart from that (and the fugly deathstrike missile) I love it. I've gotten everything but the launcher assembly built and it went together so much smoother than the old chimera chassis vehicles.