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

More dreadnaught

Some more red gold on the model now. The camera makes it look more goldy than it is though :/ Looks niftier RL. Got the first layer of yellow on as well. Took better than usual. I think that it helps making sure that the foundation color really covers well. I'm thinking of applying the sepia wash already and then go for more yellow. Probably going to go for a heavier highlight than usual as well just to try it out.

Lots of black and yellow with a little red gold. Gotta get me some more color :)

A from behind shot :)

I'm going to add some Badab black to all the metal, but I might go with some green wash on the canisters for extra niftiness. Hmm. Or what color should melta canisters be?

When I look at the base I'm wondering what I should do with it. Need to make something nifty for sure!

Dreadnaught WIP

Here comes the big bad dreadnaught! Following him will be an Ironclad dread, but that poor fellow is still in bits, and I think that one needs a drop pod. Maybe I need to have two ironclads each with a drop pod. Might really want a special dread pod though from forge world, which means more expensive. Wish they had released it as a plastic kit too.

Anyways, back to my current dread. I took a little gamble and painted the sarcophagus first in tin bitz, then burnished gold with some shining gold at last and finished it all with a baal red wash over the feathers, sockets, and on the black background. Give the whole thing kind of a red gold feel to it. I like. In fact, I like so much that I will give the skulls on the model the same treatment. Good thing I came up with that before I had started with the non foundation yellow.

Also the cables between the sarcophagus and the rest of the dread needs to go metal colored. The tip of the multi-melta looks horrible in this picture but it really is metal colored. I haven't done anything to any of the metal areas yet, but I will give it some tin bitz and devlan mud + badab black on the multi-melta and badab black on the rest, plus some highlight metal.

Hope you all like it :)

I've been thinking of adding a few more purity seals to the model. Only one? On a dread? Hmm...

I keep some of the back parts black with a little gentle metal brush just so I don't paint the whole freakin' thing yellow. Takes time and all that jazz. Plus it kind of looks better this way:) Apparently black was my favorite color as a kid, a story my mother loves telling me (and I promptly hate hearing, especially since I apparently couldn't pronounce it right even!). Needs a bit of soot on the, ehm, chimneys?

This skull will also go red gold and the plate it is on will be black. And that close combat weapon, it needs to kill kill kill to earn its points back.

Stay tuned for more dready goodness in "da future".

Perils of the Warp

Greetings from the US of A. The jetlag is starting to slowly die down and it's time to start posting again. This is the carnage that was the result of traveling. Perils of the warp for sure! Luckily everything broke at places it was glued together so it was just a case of bringing out the glue and go to town. Also note that the plastic colored Captain has a little problem, yes, I put the darn flagpole on the wrong way. That had to be fixed too.

And this is the result, now they look dressed for success again :)

And in my excitement I started to paint the dreadnaught as well. Gonna take quite some time to finnish that bugger I'm suspecting. I think that the Ironclad will be painted in parts and then assembled. It's just a better way of doing things for me. Cleaner if nothing else.

Oh, and if you think the quality of the pictures are different it's because I just *had* to try out my new iPhone 3GS :) I will steal my wife's camera in the future as it surely will take better pictures being a camera only type of device, and I did brought my gorilla pod:)

Bye bye Sweden

Time for a real life post. There won't be many, this is a miniature wargaming blog after all. I've decided to keep myself to one broad subject per blog. I am sure nobody wants to read about all the aspects of my life after all :)

This is a big one though, because this is the last evening I will spend in Sweden for some time to come, as I am moving to the US of A tomorrow. One way ticket. First Class. Immigrating. Ad astra, ad infinitum.

I'll be back blogging in a few days. Hopefully with pictures :)

Hej då Sverige!