Life On Mars – Part 8

It’s almost the end of 2021 but before the year is quite over there’s just enough time for a final visit to the scoured and irradiated surface of Blessed Mars, the Forge World Prime and home planet of the Adeptus Mechanicus. All year I’ve been trying – with great success I might add – to complete at least one new model for the army every month. With this being December I decided to push myself to finish up the part-painted squad of Sicarian Infiltrators that I started back in the spring. Having managed to get them done before Christmas I turned my attention to a couple of larger models. 

Back in October I painted a Cybernetica Datasmith, the specialist tech-priests charged with responsibility for the limited of robots deemed permissible under Imperial law. Now it’s time for two of those robots, the mighty Kastelans, to stamp their way out of the hangers.

Here’s the two of them towering over their master.

This brings my year on Mars to an end, although I still have several other Adeptus Mechanicus models that I’ll be working on next year. Things will probably slow down a bit with this army though as there are various other projects I’m wanting to concentrate on over the next little while. However before we do that let’s remind ourselves of how the army has grown over the past 12 months. Back at the end of 2020 it stood at a trifling 4 models – 2 of which were borrowed from Blackstone Fortress.

Today however the Martian host has grown significantly and stands ready to put the fear of the Omnissiah into all those who oppose the superiority of the red planet.

And with that we come to the end of another year, although there’s just time for me to treat you all to a lovely round-up post looking back at everything I’ve been doing in 2021 – something I’m sure you’re all agog to read. Of course, first of all I’ve got to actually write it but I’ll try to sneak it in before the year is out…

Life On Mars – Part 7

There seem to be a lot of assassins around here lately don’t there? From the elves who spring out of the shadows of the Mortal Realms we return to the murderous cyborgs that stalk through the forges of Mars. With the end of the year fast approaching I wanted to finish off the squad of Sicarian Infiltrators that was on my desk before we get into 2022 and whatever that brings.

First of all we have the last of the standard Infiltrators that make up the rank and file…

… and then we have the Infiltrator Princeps who directs their murderous activities.

With these two done I can pat myself firmly on the back with another squad completed and ready to join the ranks of my little army.

All things considered I’m very pleased with how my Adeptus Mechanicus collection has grown in 2021, from a mere handful of miniatures at the start of the year to something that can now justifiably be called an army. I’ve still got a couple more models I might – just might – be able to squeeze in before New Year rolls around, and I’ll certainly be putting together a retrospective post with plenty of group shots. However as I’m going to be busy catching up with friends and family over the next little while I’ll take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very merry Christmas. Have a good ‘un, be wonderful to yourselves and your people, and I’ll catch you on the other side.

Life On Mars – Part 6

Time for this month’s first visit to the polluted surface of Mars. I’ve spent this year working away on my Adeptus Mechanicus army for Warhammer 40k, challenging myself to add at least one model to the collection every single month of the year. Now that we’ve reached December my aim is to finish off the squads that are still incomplete so I can head into 2022 with a fresh slate – and hopefully ready to work on plenty more of the Omnissiah’s faithful.

Way back in May I painted up a Sicarian Infiltrator, the spidery part-machine assassins that scurry from the shadows to give anyone who threatens the forge worlds a damn good murdering. Now I’ve finally got around to painting up two more.

The other two models which will complete the squad are assembled, undercoated and lurking on the edge of the desk so all being well I’ll get them done before the end of the month.

Life On Mars – Part 5

Back at the start of November I set myself the challenge of painting up the first “Start Collecting: Skitarii” boxset in its entirety by the end of the month. Of all the models in the set the one that gave me the greatest concern was the Onager Dunecrawler, the walking tank of the Adeptus Mechanicus. I’ve always found vehicles tricky, with the result that I tend to put them aside in favour of other things and in so doing fail to give myself the practice that I need to get better at painting them. Indeed a big part of the reason I set myself a time limit for this project was the recognition that without it I might never get around to painting the damn thing at all. The looming deadline however proved to be enough to focus my attention and so here we are, almost at the end of the month, and the Onager is ready to walk upon the red sands of Mars.

Of course the completion of the Onager means the whole box has now been painted and need no longer sit shamefully at the back of the shelf. Time for the groupshot we’ve all been waiting for!

December will mark the end of my year long challenge; to add at least one model to this army in every month of 2021. Fear not though, it won’t mean the end of the project – I’ve got far too many biomechanical servants of the Omnissiah still to attend to for everything to be completed before New Year. However I will be aiming to wrap up the squads that are currently unfinished, something that should be achievable (just about). In the meantime there’s just one more day of Movember left, so can I sneak another bearded fellow over the finish line in time? I think I can…

Life On Mars – Part 4

In between painting all those beards this week I’ve also been chipping away at the second half of the Skitarii Vanguard squad. Now they too are finished and ready to march across the red sands of Mars.

This half of the squad also contains the Vanguard Alpha who leads them into battle.

With these five done the whole squad is now complete, giving me a second unit of troops for the army.

This just leaves me with the Onager Dunecrawler to paint to complete my self-imposed challenge of painting the entire Start Collecting box in a month. It’s about half done at the moment so I’m going to be concentrating on it over the weekend.

Life On Mars – Part 3

With my army of Skitarii continuing to grow it’s about time a Tech-Priest Dominus arrived to take charge of them in the Machine God’s name. These are the masters of the Cult Mechanicus; ancient, sinister and barely human, machine lords who crush innovation and gladly see entire legions slain and worlds ruined in pursuit of their own, often incomprehensible, goals. And we’ve all had a boss like that at one time or another haven’t we?

I worried about painting this guy, he’s got so many details on him that I feared he might prove to be quite fiddly and a bit of a chore. As it turns out though he was a lot of fun to work on, and he really looks the part of the cruel and strange tech-wizard I want commanding the army. Next up I’ll be trying to finish up the rest of the Skitarii squad, whilst work on the Onager Dunecrawler continues apace.

Life On Mars – Part 2

At the start of the month I set myself the challenge of painting up the entire contents of the first Start Collecting: Skitarii boxset. Now the fruits of my labours are starting to pay off, and after assiduously painting over the weekend the first five Skitarii Vanguard are ready for action.

I’ve got various miniatures sitting around which are all at the “almost done” stage so I’ll be aiming to spend this week batch-painting the rest of the Vanguard and working on the other two models from the set (the Tech-Priest and the Onager Dunecrawler) whilst keeping things fresh by taking breaks to put the finishing touches on those other models.

Life On Mars – Part 1

Well here we are in November, and my campaign to add at least one model to my Adeptus Mechanicus army in every month of 2021 has reached its penultimate stage. Over the last ten months the collection has grown from a tiny handful of models to something which, if not quite the vast host of Martian warriors I might dream of one day commanding, is at least a substantial looking mob of mechanical men. However I still have a lot more planned for this project so this month I’m going to up the ante, and set myself a painting challenge. After powering through a mighty horde of greenskins in Orktober I reckon this month I should be able to paint a complete “Start Collecting” box. This has become a staple of Games Workshop army painting challenges in recent years and frankly if they can do it so can I, right? After all, it’s only 12 models – time to put my money (or my foot) where my mouth is!

The set in question is this one, which was one of the first “Start Collecting” sets Games Workshop ever produced, and an absolute bargain at the time which I eagerly snapped up. Since then, in what is probably a familiar story to many readers, it’s been gathering dust…

My challenge is to get everything painted up by the end of this month, even if that means I’m applying the last lick of paint at midnight on the 30^th (although hopefully it won’t come to that!). I have however allowed myself the headstart of getting everything assembled in advance so let’s take a look at what I’m up against.

Leading the force, and acting as the warlord in command of my growing army, is this tech priest.

Under his command will be this unit of ten Skitarii Vanguard.

Finally, just to make my life tough, we have this Onager Dunecrawler. I always find vehicles intimidating to tackle but hopefully having a deadline will prevent me from getting too bogged down, or stalling until I end up pushing it to the back of the desk and forgetting about it. Plus, once it’s done it should make a nice centrepiece for the army.

So there we have it – 12 models in 30 days. Should be easy right… Right..? I guess we’ll find out over the next few weeks…

Cybernetica Datasmith

You’ll be pleased to hear that over the weekend I managed to paint up quite the horde of Orks as part of the Orktober painting challenge. Naturally you might assume, based on that provocative opening statement, that I’m going to show you some painted greenskins today – but you’d be dead wrong about that. You see, several months ago I swore an oath; to paint something for my Adeptus Mechanicus army every month of 2021 and I shall hold to that, come rain, shine or even hordes of Orks.

This month I’ve tackled another specialist tech-priest, and a model almost as fiddly as last month’s Tech-Priest Manipulus, the Cybernetica Datasmith. The Adeptus Mechanicus have always had an uneasy relationship with artificial intelligence. On the one hand armies of robots would be great, seeing as they’re durable, remorseless and wonderfully easy to mass-produce. They don’t have families waiting for them back home, they don’t need to be fed or paid and you don’t have to worry about them returning from war injured or traumatised. On the other hand, as anyone who has seen films like the Terminator can attest they do have the troubling habit of going rogue and removing problem elements (up to and including the entire human race). In the backstory of Warhammer 40k humanity tried having armies of robots and the battered survivors swore never to do it again. Nowadays the Adeptus Mechanicus keeps a very tight leash indeed on their robots and the men who hold those leashes are the Cybernetica Datasmiths. All this does have a downside of course, if the Datasmith happens to die – always a risk when you’re on a battlefield – the robots under his command will continue to follow their last instructions, at which point you’d better stand well back until they run out of batteries – however long that takes. Still better than letting the damn things think for themselves though!

Ready to march alongside my Datasmith I have a pair of mighty Kastelan Robots but they’ll have to wait until Orctober is over. I do plan to add them to the army by the end of the year though.

Tech-Priest Manipulus

Time to add a tech-priest to my growing army of Martians and my eye fell upon that most bulbous of the Omnissiah’s servants, the Tech-Priest Manipulus. He’s a funny looking little dude and quite complex to paint, which proved a struggle at first but in the end turned into quite an enjoyable challenge.

Like the squad of electro-priests I painted over the last few months these rotund little fellows are keen to remove the “motive force” that you are so casually squandering just by being alive and put it to better use in powering the great works of the Omnissiah. I decided to emphasise the fact that he’s a pretty unhealthy individual to be around, and give a nod to the toxic and irradiated nature of the planet Mars in the 41st Millennium, by adding a sign to his base that reads “biohazard” (which I realise isn’t easy to make out in these pictures).

I’m planning to tackle a whole bunch of Orks next month (‘cos it’s Orktober right!) but I’ll be sure to find time to add at least one new recruit to the Omnissiah’s legions as well, and once again it’s looking likely to be a tech-priest, this time one who likes to hang out with a couple of big robotic pals…