Rodents Of Unusual Size And The Junit Round-Up

Rejoice, rejoice! If you own any bells now is the time to ring them! The ugly plague monks are done at last!

I’ll admit that by the end I was sick to the eye-teeth of them and more than happy just to call them done. The result of this is, sadly, that they’re not the best painted models in my collection, but then again they’re not the best sculpted models in GW’s catalogue either. I will however happily meet them half-way, if they make me some better plague monks I’ll put more effort into painting them.

I used a bit of greenstuff to make this one look even more diseased and to break up the otherwise rather flat and bare surfaces, with mixed results in my opinion.

Here’s the whole unit, complete with banner, musician and Bearer of the Word (although if that’s what a Bearer of the Word looks like these days Lorgar has really let his standards slip…).

The way units rank up in Warhammer means you can’t actually see all of them that well but to my mind that’s actually something of a blessing.

Anyway, in spite of my moaning, that’s another unit done and a definite cause for celebration. Furthermore it occurred to me that as we’re now roughly half-way through 2018, that this would be a fine time to take a look at the progress my Skaven army has made so far this year. Here’s how it was looking back at New Year;

…and here it is now.

Solid progress, I hope you’ll agree! Now arguably the rats didn’t quite make it under the wire for Azazel’s Junit challenge, sneaking in last night which is technically July, but I don’t think Azazel’s that strict and anyway I’m just glad to get them finished. Certainly I wouldn’t have had the push to finish them, at least not for a while, without the challenge so, as I’ve been saying here regularly over the last little while, Azazel deserves another resounding “thank you” from me for conjuring and shepherding these little excursions of collaborative encouragement.

Two units that definitely did meet the Junit criteria however were my Space Marines and Imperial Guard squads. When I posted the marines last week I realised I was pretty unhappy with the highlighting on the acting sergeant’s legs and, although you were all too polite to comment on it, it pained me sufficiently that I went back and gave him a quick repaint. Again hopefully you agree that this is an improvement.

And, whilst we’re turning our attention away from fantasy rat-men and onto the defenders of humanity in the far future, I realised after I posted the most recent two guardsmen that I hadn’t added a group shot of the whole squad so here they are, the completed (J)unit of rag-tag serfs, plus a Catachan who’s still on the phone.

Indeed, by way of a pallet cleanser after struggling with the monks, I went ahead and kitbashed another addition to the Guard regiment. I tend to try and keep updates to a theme but as this one is proving to be very much a grab-bag of general updates, here’s a couple of WIP images of the newest recruit.

I know there are a lot of Chaos and Ork models garrisoning the shelves of my house but humanity need not loose hope whilst this little lot stands in their defence.

Having seen the progress that the Skaven army has made in 2018 it occurred to me that it would also be worth taking a look at all the other things I’ve painted this year so here they are, every model I’ve finished in 2018 (minus the Skaven as that made everything too confusing, and also not including the little gang of genestealer infested civilians that I sent off into the northern wilds in search of Big Boss Redskullz). It’s not an unimpressive pile either if I may say so myself, with everything from plague zombies to unicorn-men, and goblin warbosses to skull-faced birds putting in an appearance.

Sadly there’s still only one painted Necromunda ganger in there but expect to see that situation rectified over the next few months. Of course that’s not all I’ve got planned so here’s to plenty more projects over the next six months!