The tenth company

Darkwynn posted on BOLS about playing the tenth company. I thought that was kind of a nifty idea so I set to checking out how I would build a 1500 point tenth company army. Imperial Fists of course :)

First up six five man scout teams. Four with sniper rifles and camo cloaks, two of whom would have a heavy bolter and two with missile launcher. One would be lead by a special sergeant, i.e. Telion.

The last two scout teams would be tooled up with combat blades and power weapon plus melta bombs for their sergeants. They will fly in style in a Landspeeder Storm with Assault Cannon each.

For HQ I would take a Librarian on a bike that hooks up with one combat squad out of ten scout bikers. The sergeant gets a power fist, cluster mines and a locator beacon. Three scouts get an Astartes grenade launcher.

The scouts are guaranteed to get into trouble, so they need to be supported by six Legion of the damned marines. The Sergeant gets a power weapon and the marines have to make do with a melta gun and a multi-melta (relentless rules). Having them arrive should give any opponents the hiccups for sure:)

That's 1492 points of scout based Space Marines. I couldn't resist seeing what I could come up with. I wonder how it would play :) What do you think?

Next post should feature my Assault Marines again, they are getting closer and closer to being finished.

Imperial Fists Assault Marines

This is my fortieth post. Just thought that I would open with something fun. :) I have been, slowly, working on the first half of the Imperial Fists Fourth Company VIIth Squad Assault Marines. Here they all are, in various stages of painting. I probably shouldn't have had glued the flamer to the hands of the marine, but oh well. I chose to wash the container for the flamer fuel (can't remember the name of the stuff) with Ball Red. Turned out a bit too pink, so I might give it another brush of metal, but this time a lighter color, and then more Baal and some Badab Black, maybe even a little red paint in there.

The next two are the closest to being done, then the Sergeant with the power weapon which I do not know how I will paint, and last my little was directly on white test subject. I will probably go for the Iyanden Darksun/Yellow mix directly on top of that.

I gave the exhausts a drybrush of black to give it more of a used look, even though I don't go for any battle damage yet. Maybe in the future :) I hope that it is visible in the photo. I borrowed my wife's camera but it isn't that good for close ups I'm afraid.

This is the two closest to being finished. They lack the IF transfer on the left shoulder and I want to put a VII somewhere so it is easy to see which squad the belong to. I am thinking of doing the same thing as what is often done for the Ultramarines, just that I can't use white transfers as they won't be very visible. I am also not at all good enough with a brush to paint it. I have a pretty odd style compared to what I see in videos online when people paint. I sure don't make the brush go as smooth as the pros :)

I have been playing with the idea of using masking tape to get an assault X and VII on the top of the backpack. We shall see how that goes in the future!

Until post 41, hope you enjoyed some yellow painted assault marines:) I hope to have all of them painted for my next post, and hopefully their 5 friends at least assembled.

Assault Marine

I am still around :) Wanting to finish one before I finish the rest (five still needs to be glued together!) so I see some faster progress I painted this Assault Marine. He's still a WIP but you can clearly see the idea of what I want to do. The next step is a few decals (First on his left shoulder, squad number on the top of the jump pack on the left side, thinking of seeing if I can't get a green assault marine X on the other side, but I need to find some real good tape for that. Yes, I suck that much at painting freehand:)) and then some minor weathering.

I am thinking black soot around the jump pack exhaust and some small metal chips around the edges. Some mithril silver lightly drybrushed in the black part of the exhaust as well. Maybe something more, but I want to keep it fairly "clean" if you can call that with my ad hoc yellow paint style.

This Marine is Tausept Ochre as a base, with a Gryphonne Sepia was followed by a 50/50 of Iyanden Darksun and Golden Yellow. One (!) layer of Golden yellow followed by Sunburst Yellow as highlights. I think it was just one layer at least. He's a bit darker than a few of the Tacticals, but funny enough roughly the same color as my dread (which will be finished and getting some decals when Mr. Marine gets his. I just feel reluctant to do it since I suck at it:)).

The green is a Gretchin Green with Goblin Green on top and a Scorpion Green highlight. Not much for mixing paints right now. We'll see how it goes in the future:) Oh, and the eagle on the chest is blazing orange with a baal red wash or two. Too narrow to brybrush so it was just easier this way:)

So feast your eyes on the WIP (damn I need a proper camera instead of my iPhone):

I will write more about this later, but I have a little display case now :)

And this was a little XMas present to myself. More pictures to come :)

Working on my Assault Marines

Hi readers of my blog. It's yellow time again, this time with two different Assault Marines that I've given some attention. Again poor pictures but at least there are pictures :)

I based one of the guys in Tausept Ochra, then added some Sepia in select places, followed by a mix of Iyanden Darksun and then "darker" of GW's two yellows. Turned out pretty good thus far, and faster than I thought it would be. I will follow it with just yellow and then start to highlight and all that jazz.

The other boy I just washed in Gryphonne Sepia. I plan on giving him a ID/Yellow paint followed by yellow and then highlights. We'll see which one turns out the best. That's the guy that I haven't painted the bolt pistol on btw :)

Sorry for the odd order of the pictures btw, blogger has one seriously awful interface for uploading pictures. And darn it, I gotta raid the wife's camera next time it is time for pictures. Also I need to go lighter on the skull whiter primer, damn it cakes. Maybe it is too darn cold here in Minnesota... I will put another 5 assaulties together and paint them as I think that I will go with a full Assault Marine squad and kick out my dread. I will also have power weapon sergeants and have a meltagun in both squads.

Enjoy the blurry pictures and let me know how I am doing :)

It's alive!

Hi all who reads my blog. Been pretty quiet in the last month and a half. My current gaming goal is finishing up my 1500 point Imperial Fists army, so that I can go forth and make the Minnesota (or rather Twin Cities) WH40k world shiver before my mighty army. Or more likely having my fair share of defeats and a few fun wins too:) Being busy first with an insane amount of coughing for weeks and also starting a new job the hobby time suffered greatly. I did a few little things, but nothing worth writing about, and I want to keep this blog about gaming.

So what have I been up to? Assault marines! I am for the first time trying a white primer, skull white from GW, and it was very hard getting a nice even clean cover. I wonder if it is already too cold here to spray outside. Black has treated my far better in the past, but then again I have never sprayed in this low a temperature before. We'll see how it goes in the future.

This is the first half of a 10 man squad. I have a sergeant with a power weapon and one guy with a flamer. I will fill it up with four more chainsword + bolt pistol and more one flamer. I also have modified the right shoulder guard on all five of them to have an assault four way arrow. On to pictures!

And from the side. Click on the image to get a slightly larger one. Sorry for the poor quality, the iPhone is wonderful in many-o-ways, but photographing minis is not one of them. Sometime next year I do have to look into a good camera. I just don't know what to look for yet.

Also got some of the chainswords painted. No proper highlight on one of them yet, but that is coming. The super-duper shoulder guards should be easier to see on this picture.

I created the shoulder guards by cutting out the shape in .25mm plasticard and gluing it to the shoulder guard. I liked the look of the tacticals from the Attack of Black Reach and tried to emulate that. That said, it was really really difficult. Not easy at all to make it perfectly symmetrical, which is how I envision the Space Marine's armor. We'll see how it looks painted. I am going back and forth on what kind of yellow I will try this time around. The future will tell!

I have also bought the Retribution of Scyrah force book. Damn Privateer Press makes awesome stuff! The quality is really good all the way through. And I have already put together a little 15p army. Couldn't help myself. I just have to finish my IF army before I start another project. Plus I want my Space Wolf army too. I might just paint an eldar council on jetbikes or some Ork Boys in between just to clear my palette.

I have also used the 25% rebate from battle foam. 251 fresh dollares later I had ordered a big ass (that's a technical term!) army bag that will fit many a marines, fists and wolves. I might just have to order a special one for my retribution forces in the future. Looks very slick. Maybe I will donate my old bag to my wife, on account of her starting to paint some Circle Orberos. We'll see how she feels about them after she has painted some. Pretty cool stuff, I will post pictures of the army bag and my wife's Argus when it arrives / are finished.

I hope to have the assault guys done soon, and after that comes Lysander + Assault terminators, followed by vehicles. War needs to be waged!

Being sick sucks

Being sick sucks, and thinking that you were getting better a week ago and then getting even more sick sucks even further. I've coughed up my lungs several times and I am certain that getting transferred into a Space Marine gotta be a great deal.

Which means that any progress I've had in painting has been, well, slooow. I am almost finished with the Blood Angel, so I should be able to submit photos tomorrow. I don't hold any illusions but I hope that I won't make a fool out of myself at least. I have come to the conclusion that my current painting skills are weak compared to my imagination. I.e. I come up with cooler stuff than what I can make.

I have started to dabble with transfers and found out that it is REAL hard to get them on smoothly. I've put three transfers on three shoulder pads on my fists and not a single one looks real good. I am pretty pissed about that. I hope I can master it by the time I get to my assault marines since I am kind of going all out of those guys. I've finished a first test assault shoulder pad and I am painting up a full metal sergeant with my chosen colors before I do the rest of the team. That said I think the shoulder pad is totally filled with win. Too bad I am not a wizard with the green stuff and can whip up a nice steel glove for the left pads too.

I did on the other hand do far better with the transfers on the blood angel. Pictures will come tomorrow hopefully. And I have given him my new secret super basing. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

I have also gotten the new Wolf codex. It isn't nearly as powerful (I think) as lots of people say, but I do like the idea of being able to use Wolf Guards as "Sergeants" of my teams and their Devastator teams rules. I am going with two long fang units, both being bolstered by a mean wolf guard with a cyclone launcher (Heavy 2, yes 2!). Oh and a mean Wolf Guard team headed by Rangar, two Grey hunter packs headed by power fist wolf guards (2 points cheaper than their grey hunter brethren, isn't that nice?), and a blood claw pack with a wolf priest. No psykers or anything, just pure fluff and mean cool Vikings in Space!

Also my melta guys are going to get Mark of the Wulfen, because that makes extra sense to me, since the get one less attack anyways :)

Have I gone and died?

Nope. I am still going strong (?!). It just seems like that between the interviews, thinking too much about me acting like a boob, and spending time with the missus I just haven't gotten that much painting done. I have added some more extreme highlights on my dread but it's kind of slow going. I have, finally, ordered some Micro Set and Micro Sol so I should be putting on decals like crazy soon. Got a bunch of tact marines that need some nice IF markings and that dread do need a bunch of decals as well.

Oh, and I also have a little project. Check out this "preview". Some of you reading will know exactly what is going on, others won't have a clue, and yet others will work really hard at not caring. That last group should go watch American Idol or Dancing With The Stars or something :)

The pic is a bit dark and I think you might want to click to watch the big version of it to get at least a little of the detail. Jupp, I sorely need my own camera for taking photos of minis (which more than likely will be the only thing I would do with it ^_^).

I have put on a very liberal Baal Red wash on it after stealing a pic of it. Starting to suspect that mixing the red wash with maybe devlan mud or gry********* sepia and then badab black would be a good idea. I will see tomorrow how well the wash did in making dark shades. Think I might have to add in some extras here and there to select areas before I throw on another layer of blood red followed by blazing orange. I really, dearly, lotsa need to learn how to blend colors directly on minis. Maybe this will be my finest hour, we shall see:)

Still Around,

Flekkzo