The Emperor’s Angels – Part 14

Tainted as they are by the vampiric curse of their bloodline the Knights Mortis avoid the harsh daylight, preferring to attack by night or under cover of ash clouds raised by a preliminary orbital bombardment. Where this proves impossible the Brotherhood of the Sun are dispatched. These warriors hark most strongly in appearance and behaviour to their forebears in the Blood Angels legion, and particularly to their sire The Great Angel. Each must be a superlative warrior for, even sealed within their power-armour and sheltered by layers upon layers of screens and enviro-filters, the unbending traditionalists of the chapter command will often refuse to give battle until full darkness shrouds the field. This does not deter the stalwart knights of the Brotherhood of the Sun however who, fighting unaided in some of the most challenging battlegrounds, claim great honour for themselves and their chapter.

Wow, I’ve not painted one of my Knights Mortis space marines since 2018. How time has flown by eh!

October Challenge Round Up

You’ve seen most of this stuff before so feel free to skip on but I really couldn’t pass up the opportunity for some self congratulatory back patting. (I could pretend that it’s just to make Azazel’s life easier when he comes to writing his community challenge round up but really it’s all about the backpatting!) Most hobbyists will be aware of Azazel’s Bitz Box and the monthly challenges he’s been running throughout 2018 (and if you’re not, make yourself aware and in short order!). October’s challenge called for the completion of a squad or squads, whether that be building and painting them from scratch or adding the last few layers to the final model that you’ve just never found the time for. As it turns out I managed to complete quite a few. Let’s take a look at them all.

In the grim darkness of the far future humanity won’t be left entirely undefended as my space marine squad grew to ten men.

When I posted the squad’s sergeant last week Alex, of Leadballoony fame, suggested that I’d forgotten to drill out the barrel, although in fact I thought I’d forgotten to paint in the lens. This led to an interesting discussion on how plasma weaponry actually works in the 41st Millennium. In the end I’m holding to my theory that the gun ends in a lens but, in the interest of keeping it from getting cracked and chipped, it should be recessed a little way inside the barrel.

Lest this new strength on the part of the Imperium go to humanity’s collective heads I recruited a few more Ork Nobs as well. As I’ve yet to see the Ork codex (which is fair enough, it’s not even officially released until tomorrow) I don’t know if this is still a full unit or not (it was in Index Xenos) but I’m going to count it for this month anyway. More Nobs will be forthcoming from me at some point, but for now I’m calling this squad done.

Meanwhile over in the old world of Warhammer my goblin spearmen unit grew to its full size…

As did the Archers…

…whilst the Squigs may not be a full “official” unit (8th Edition Warhammer rules called for at least ten) I’ve painted all the models I own so I’ll be calling it at that for now as well.

The underground arms race between the goblins and the Skaven means it was vital that the ratmen brought in reinforcements to deal with all these extra greenies, so I also completed my squad of rat ogres. When I posted him the other day I forgot to include a group shot of the squad but not to worry, here’s one now!

Add in the various other things I’ve painted this month and it comes to a not insignificant 69 models. Suffice to say I’m rather proud of this progress but fear not, I won’t be resting on my laurels, there’s plenty more to come. Next on the list will be building my House Cawdor Stig-Shambler for Necromunda. The half of him that hits things still needs a little more work before he’s ready to show off but the half that does the thinking has been ready for action for a while, so here’s a little sneak peak of the brains behind the operation.

You’ll have to wait a few more days before the rest of him is finished but, all being well, I’ll crack on with him over the weekend. Watch this space!

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 12

I take it you’re all familiar with Azazel’s monthly challenges by now? I mean really, if not – where have you been? For those who are completely new to the idea, blogger extraordinaire and prolific hobbyist Azazel has been encouraging his readers to take part in a series of monthly challenges throughout 2018. The nice thing about these is they are generally aimed at encouraging us to complete existing projects rather than simply being an excuse to start new ones.

Last time Azazel ran a community challenge to complete a unit of models, the aptly named Junit, I took it as an opportunity to complete my first five space marines based on the Primaris models. Since then I’ve added a couple more so this month’s challenge -again calling for a unit to be completed – seems like a fine opportunity to round out the full squad of ten.

I made this one as a test model back when I was first exploring this project but somehow I ended up never painting him, so getting him finished was my first priority.

Alongside him we have his battle brother, ready to send any heretics that turn up packing with a quick blast from a flamer.

That just leaves me with the squad’s Sergeant to paint and the acting Sergeant to be demoted to the ranks, which I should be able to manage before the end of the month.

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 11

As well as getting two more space marines painted for my nascent force I’ve also been kitbashing away, getting some more of the Emperor’s finest built. First up here’s the Captain who’ll be leading the army (at least until I get around to making a suitably imposing Chapter Master). At the moment I’m still working on a name and suitably pugnacious background for him, and indeed for the chapter as a whole. I’ve got a few ideas sloshing around in my head however and I’m planning to write them out soon as they’ll feed into the development of the army as it grows.

I’ve also tried to add a bit of gothic flair to the company ancient. The warrior given the honour of carrying the battle standard should be dressed to impress both the brave warriors of the Imperium and the craven scum they face and the base model is just a little bit plain for my taste.

Even though I doubt I’ll have many war engines in the army (beyond a Dreadnought or two of course because as every sane person knows Dreadnought are amazing) I knew from the get-go that I’d have to include a tech-marine. To me this is one of the most iconic units in 40k and the chance to include one was one of the things that attracted me to the space marines in the first place.

As it stands these are all still WIPs so as ever I’m all ears for feedback if there’s any improvements you think are called for before they go under the brush.

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 10

My space marines haven’t been entirely abandoned since their first appearance back in June. Admittedly they haven’t been my first priority recently either but now a couple more battle brothers have managed to sneak across the painting desk to completion.

This one was almost finished alongside the others in June but didn’t make it whilst I swithered to a complete stall over the, fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, question of what colour to paint his hair. In the end however is unfinished state annoyed me enough to make me get on with it and so he’s able to join his brothers at last.

His squad mate on the other hand I kitbashed just a few days ago and was sufficiently pleased with that I got him painted up in no time flat.

It’ll take more than these two to hold vack the enemies of the Imperium however so I’ve also been busy kitbashing some more champions and heroes for the nascent chapter. They’re not quite ready to show off yet but I’ll try to get something done this week.

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 6

Another of the Primaris-based Knights is finished.

Not entirely convinced by how well the highlighting on his shoulderpads has worked so I’ll probably give that a going over before the end of the month.

I was feeling a bit more confident and adventurous with this one so added some flourishes of personal heraldry. As far as possible I’d like to do this with all of them, to make each one stand out as a knight and a hero in his own right. That said when it comes to freehand I much prefer chaotic sigils to the more stylised Imperial iconography (which is one way of saying “I find Imperial freehand hard!”) and I’m not a big fan of transfers so how successful I turn out to be remains to be seen. I will of course be rummaging for any nicely decorated shoulder pads I can lay my hands on.

Two more to go before the end of the month!

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 2

It amuses me that the last time I showed one of these assault marines I received three key pieces of advice.
1. The jump-pack is too small.
2.The jump-pack is too big.
3. The jump-pack is just right.

Faced with such a united front  from my readership what choice did I have but to forge onwards and build another one?

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 1

Starting work on a little foray into throne-loyal power-armour. Although historically my preference for astartes has always leaned heavily towards the servants of chaos the chance to start a small collection of truescale marines was too good to pass up. Probably won’t do much more for a little while as so many other projects are jostling for attention but wanted to do a little kitbashing to test the waters, starting with this assault marine. As ever feedback is more than welcome.

I Am Ironman

Before normal Space Marines become old news and are swept aside by a torrent of true-scale Primaris-based giants here’s an Iron Hand I converted a couple of years back from the Captain in the Black Reach boxset, and finally got around to painting yesterday.

There’s no story or grand plan behind him, just a model I took a fancy to making and, a long time later, took an equally unexpected fancy to painting.

My freehand skills still leave something to be desired but hopefully its clear enough that here we have a member of the Iron Tenth, grim, relsolute and ready to smite heretics.

Public Service – Kairic Acolytes

Yesterday, fellow hobbyist Harrison commented that, in spite of their efforts, they was struggling to find any comparison pictures between the Kairic Acolytes released alongside the other Tzeentchian models for Age of Sigmar earlier this year, and those released as part of the Silver Tower boxset last year. Could I, they wondered, provide any images that allowed them to see them side by side? Naturally, as I’ve gained so much from all of you down the years in terms of support, encouragement and inspiration, I was more than happy to return the favour now.

Here we see Kairic Acolyte from Silver Tower (right) alongside one from the boxset (left, doing a fine impression of the Venus de Milo with his lack of arms). You may notice a very slight difference in height between the two but I’d put most of that down to the boxset model having been tacked together for the photoshoot whilst the Silver Tower model is cleanly stuck together with glue. Naturally I couldn’t glue the boxset model together as all the bits are needed for separate nefarious projects (watch this space!).

Certainly one could mix and match parts from the boxset to covert unique models for Silver Tower, or throw the Silver Tower models into a AoS warband to add a little more variety. However although they match each other fairly well fairly well for size there’s no denying these are big models. I’m keen to use some of them as Tzeentchian cultists for my forthcoming Thousand Sons, and have already had fun building a few for exactly that purpose, but it’s hard to overcome the fact that they’ll look oddly big in comparison to their power armoured masters.

Here the model from the Silver Tower attempts to get the attention of a stubbornly disinterested Space Marine who glares passive-aggressively in the opposite direction.

Indeed, for what should be skinny armed wizards, they’re almost as big as Khorne’s rank and file butchers, the Blood Reavers. From what I’ve been told about their background this is because they’ve thrown off their disguises and bloated their bodies into their warforms ready to do battle in the Changer’s name. There’s no denying however that with their bulging muscles and small heads they look more like beefy idiots than cunning wizards.

Once again, thanks to Harrison for suggesting I covered this, hope this helps you out and your own Tzeentchian scheme comes together just as planned. And of course if anyone wants to see a Kairic Acolyte posing next to any other model just let me know – if I own the requested models I’ll be happy to oblige!