York Garrison

York Garrison will be playing the return leg of a competition between themselves and Hull's Angels in just over a months time so I have to plan a very competitive list to take part in this epic struggle. My Ultramarines suffer a pounding when I played against them last with two complete tablings in my first two games.

I am hoping that there will be some home ground advantage as there is fairly static terrain at Hulls Angles where each of the 40k boards are a distinct world and all of the boards have strategies that play to different strengths.

Still whatever edge there is I expect it to be thoroughly tested by York Garrisons excellent play.

It is also a great motivator to get me list building and painting, so I always enjoy the run up to something like this.

Terminator Librarian in progress

At the moment I am working on my Terminator Librarian. I have not finished painting him, so I won’t add any pictures just yet. It is  surprising I have not gotten to painting him sooner as he has formed the vanguard of many on my games, providing a potent  psychic kick in 6th edition Warhammer 40,000 as part of a Assault Terminator death star.

My 1st Company Librarian is the first finecast miniature that I bought. The cast is actually pretty good, although on such a chunky model I think I have missed most of the issues that the early finecast had. I did not like cleaning up the finecast very much, but the rubbery nature of it at least makes him less likely to be damaged by accident.

I do like banners on my sergeants, but worry about them snapping off characters, so I omitted the standing book that can be attached to the top of the suit of Terminator armour, although the Terminator Librarian does not lose much in height as he has the additional Forge World resin detail added to his base like my Terminator Chaplin. The extra thickness adds and extra few millimetres to the overall height making him stand out from my other Terminator armoured veterans. I did have to cut the resin to fit the standard base to keep him tournament legal, which is a shame as there is a lot of detail on this part.

The Terminator Librarian is also pretty unique as he is the only model so far that I have magnetised. I wanted to have the option of running him with a cheap Storm Bolter load out or the more expensive Storm Shield. Tiny magnets drilled into his wrist and the hands on the weapons make this possible.

Oddly enough, despite going to the effort of doing this, I find that the majority of the time I am using the Librarian with a Storm Shield in a squad of Terminators with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. He is also now much cheaper in points and this makes him a more viable choice even in small games.

Cyber Cherub campaign token

The new plastic Space Marine Librarian comes with a plastic Cherub servitor that can be fixed t his shoulder. I thought that this would break off ridiculously quickly, so like many servo skulls before it the Cherub was consigned to my bits box. Hulls Angels wargaming club were putting together a campaign and it required everyone to have their own unique marker for their army.
Unfortunately I had too many commitments to join in the campaign, but before I realised this I had already stuck the Cherub to a 25mm base, ready to be my marker.

The poor Cherub has been sat around on my office desk for a few weeks now, frequently getting knocked over by other projects, so I decided it was time to show the mini some love and turn it into my first stage by stage paint. I am not going to win any Golden Demons, but I thought you might like to see how I work.

Base chaos black

So here is stage one, black undercoat and then because I want an odd flesh colour on this odd little servitor I have started lighter than I normally would and put a layer of elf flesh straight on.

Elf flesh

Everything is still rough and ready at this stage. I was planning on using some grey to try and make the skin tone more pallid, but I wasn't happy with the results of that so I mixed snot green and elf flesh to get a slight green tinge. Rather morbidly I like to think that this little servitor has started to go off a bit and is getting a little necrotic. I added the bulk grey colour to the wings and back of the shield and scorched brown to the paper and the areas I was planning on doing metallic gold. I also painted the red on the purity seal and the eyes. I wanted glowing malevolent coals, but they looked nothing like I hoped, so I put them down to clean up later.

Grey, red and brown

 I used bleached bone over scorched brown on the areas of paper and then built that up to a more solid white, with ceramite white. I also added some detail and definition to the wings using white. I cleaned up the black areas ready for the boltgun metal and I also added some writing to the parchments and the purity seal. I think it came out reasonably well. The white in the picture below is very bright, but I found that bleached bone was very close to the skin tone and I felt that I had to make the difference between the skin and parchment more distinct.

Progressing to white

As you can see at this point I  have reduce the Cherub's optics back to the single red eye in its forehead. I guess the Mechanicum did a rush job on this one and thought 50% of the optics was suitable for something with 50% of the size.

The back of the sheild here is Enchanted blue and I had a bit of a wobble and decided that the whole thing looked better as a single colour, so I wrapped it around in the next stage. Below you can see that I added the metallics and also added a snow flock and PVA glue mix to the base to get a thick layer of snow on there. Now that this is all matched up with my Ultramarine army I am very tempted to throw the little fellow in as a filler in a command squad at some point. For now he will be joining the odds and ends in my glass cabinet.

Finished front

If you spotted the cable to the left of the head is not cleaned up, I did spot this, but it was after I had all the photos together. Below is a rear view shot for all of  you who have been wondering what has been going on back there. The answer is cables and the white on the wings, which I find is surprisingly easy to do and looks really good. That is all for this post. Come back for more progress on the army as a whole.

Finished rear