Sunday 23 October 2016

Hobby Diary 23/10/2016

AL:

So this week I aimed to continue what I had begun (i'm sick of having half painted models) before moving onto something else. In this case its three busts from Relic,the Fantasy Flight Board Game. I finished the Callidus first, there wasn't much to do the kit on the back needed a quick bit of painting on the displays and the Coal Black needed toning down a bit which was achieved with some Chaos Black and Lahmian Medium.

A gloss varnish was absolutely essential next. This was a gaming piece and would be handled a lot. I discovered Vallejo varnishes a while ago and haven't looked back since. After the gloss had dried i used matt, the synth skin was looking a bit shiny for my liking. The Matt still has a lustre to it, but its not as shiny as the gloss. I did go back over the eye lenses with gloss, that looks nice. Shiny.

So Callidus done, it was back to the Ratling. First things first, I know what I said last week but I wanted to bring the face out a little, so I added some Cadian Flesh to the mix, another bit of ruddy glaze on the features and another highlight and i'm calling it done.

Next was a bit of camo on the vest, I already had a dark olive colour so some Coat D'Arms Dark Leather brown and P3 Ordic Olive finished the scheme, Nowhere as near as nice as I would have liked but good enough, an ink wash would hide a multitude of sins. The sleeves were recoated and highlighted, the pouches and bags were painted brown with a highlight-cum-weathering of that same brown and Cadian Flesh.



At this stage it's not far off done but I wanted to move onto the Ultramarine. Due to the large size of this and buoyed by my success with the leather look on the Ratling's pouches i decided to push my luck and experiment somewhat with texture on the Ultramarine. I laid a few washes of Gulliman Blue over the Prussian Blue armour and some Mephiston Red Mixed with Vallejo Scaly Green on the helmet. I then started building the blue back up with Prussian blue but used a stippling effect to try to get some texture into the armour, Tinny Tin and Brassy Brass were used on the shoulder pad edges.
The next couple of days I really wasn't up to painting, got home very late and settled for assembly in front of the telly.

I had ordered some stuff from Triple Helix and although I was missing an upgrade sprue from the Armoured Claw box I started assembling some Cadian neophyte hybrids. I then lost a kneeling set of legs so jumped onto Bitz Box to grab a spare and a few bits that would enable me to build a few of the other heavy weapons in the box, I was very impressed as I ordered on a Thursday evening and had them by Saturday.



Taking off the Imperial eagles was easy enough with a knife and the Citadel Mould line Remover tool, although outrageously expensive does its job superbly. I'm glad I forked out for it. I'm working on a colour scheme in my head for them, something pretty drab to contrast with the brighter proper hybrids i think, maybe a grey urban camo

Speaking of proper hybrids  my hobby week in general took a big swing towards the assembly way of things as I got stuck into my mass of Genestealer Cult sprues. As I assembled them I was impressed all over again with the quality of the Overkill models which is easily the equal of the miniatures in the separate kits. In particular I was impressed by the Aberrants which have actually been designed to fit no matter which arms you use with which body. Given that there are only two designs of Aberrant and they are not easily convertible this allows me a tiny bit more variety in my unit.




Elsewhere I used the Acolyte box to build all the heavy weapons options. Oddly the body sections of the acolytes have to be matched up, perhaps to allow for the right number of arms on either side. The Demolition Charges in particular look great as does the Rocksaw. I was left with a large number of bits left over on the sprue and decided to use some Metamorph bits on the overkill models. A bit of cutting here and there and I had a unit in no time. And I still have bits left over to use, this is good as as great as the Overkill models are, multiple sets will have quite a few of the same models knocking about,.


Actually a quick word about the myriad of bits on the Cult sprues, we all know that GW prices have gone up and squads are much more expensive than they used to be but one look at the Neophyte sprue compared to the Cadian one kind of illustrated why. Take a look at the Cadian sprue, produced quite some time ago now,



and compare it with the cultist one.



Quite a difference, I cant wait for GW to revisit some of these older kits.

So yes, mostly getting the cult together this week. Still, I have at least enough for a Killteam game and a few more evenings assembly should see a decent sized force, especially when I get the tanks built.



Prospero is also on the horizon and though you can rest assured that the Conclave will be reviewing that in due course, I am more excited about getting my mitts on some MkIII armour, I popped in to Wayland Southend to grab some nice deep Vallejo blues and will be cracking on with the XIII legion very soon. With my new airbrush booth now all I need to do is decide how im going to do them! I think in order to honour (Courage and Honour always) our commitment to do something for our Heresy armies each month i'm going to grab a character from the Calth box set and try to use that to get my scheme
sorted. I have spares should it all go horribly wrong.

Now, where is that Airbrush?

Lee:

Given the buzz around the Horus Heresy with the Burning of Prospero set coming out this week all my hobby time these past seven days has been devoted to my first five Ashen Circle marines and I am 85% done. I have some detail work to do on the various pieces of parchment attached to their plate and some tidying to do but after that I just need to highlight the armour and I am done.


I've not been able to spend as much time on each model as I did with Zardu Layak but that's fine, if I want to get things painted they cannot all be to that level. I'm happy with how they have turned out though I need to dig out one of my regular Word Bearers that is completed as I think the silver trim was a lot darker than it has turned out on these. There isn't much to go over if that is the case so shouldn't prevent me from completing these before next week.


Even though I shall be drowning in more plastic Heresy miniatures by the end of the week I have already decided that my next Heresy model to finish will be my Sicaran. I want to paint something red and this will be good practise with my airbrush. It was a close run thing choosing though, I have also been looking at the colours of Legio Mortis and their knightly allies.

I have been tempted by including a unit of Thousand Sons to accompany Ahriman as he isn't good for much else than representing himself. Despite them also being red I would paint them in the style that Forge World adopted by painting them metal then airbrushing them clear red with metal to highlight. Other than that the rest of the models will be folded into my Word Bearers which bumps up my force considerably. Those Sisters of Silence and Custodes will be enjoyable to paint as I do like painting gold.

As well as this I want to crack on with some Scourge ships as both Allen and I will be receiving our Dropfleet Commander pledges on Tuesday. Quite a few people in the office have already started building their fleets from our retail stock so it will be good to start catching up. Having a battleship for every faction I already outgun everyone else.

I notice that Allen has been putting a lot of Genetealer cultists together which leads me to want to put together an obscure army of my own so will be digging out some Squats. I will most likely proxy them but will need to give some thought to what codex to use.



So below is how November is looking painting wise.

Definite

Word Bearers Sicaran
Emperor's Children Marine
Queen Khalida

Planned

Scourge ships
Squats

I stuck Khalida in there as I had been planning to paint her since before we moved as I really want to make progress on an 8th edition army. Maybe next month I will assemble a unit to be painted a rank at a time? Overall it is a lot to be getting on with but all three of my definite choices are single models so here's hoping. 

Lee.

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