Keeping the faith

I am keeping the painting going with this somewhat mauled Chaplin and his half cybernetic head along with a few more arms for the Dreadnoughts. I am starting to think I need a mass basing session to get the snow flock on a few miniatures.

Iron within Iron without... no, wait!

Completely armless

Marked for Censure - Ultramarine Sergeants

Ultramarine Sergeants have long had a distinctive red helm, handy for spotting troop leaders in the swirl of combat and making snipers' jobs easier since some time in the 1980's.

It is a nice distinction and has a practical gaming purpose. In fact, when playing games of Apocalyptic proportion I often find that it is simpler to try and keep track of the Sergeants than it is to try and remember the plan for each squad. They are certainly easier to find. 

With the growing fluff of the 40k universe, indeed thanks to the 30k setting and Brother Sargent Aeonid Thiel we have come to know a lot more about the origins of the red helm and in Gathering Storm III we get to use the original artefact as war-gear.In fact Gathering Storm has sent me back to my painting table and over the last couple of days I have produced the Brother Sargents you can see in this post. I have been trying to push up my normal standard of painting and I have spend longer than usual on these, making sure to highlight the models.

Some of the keener eyed among you might wonder why the Ultra symbol is on the wrong arm of the Sargent above. This is because the article white stripe with the inset Ultra is listed as a Tactical squad marking in the Index Astartes and I think it is nice to mix in the other symbols, marking out suits of power armour that may have remained unchanged since a specific feat in their history, or just more generally following the Codex rule of changing up the markings to confuse the enemy.

Back to war!

My brother recently speculated about how many vehicles I have and I was prodded into getting them all out to check. (I need a better system for this)

While unpacking cases I ran across the fuzzy void of not quite a vehicle Dreadnaughts. Dreadnaughts have always been funny to my mind as they are not fast enough to keep up with the close combat troops, not quite high enough initiative to be useful against monstrous creatures, not quite tough enough to slug it out at range with the likes of lightly armoured Eldar Falcons, or traitor marine tanks and lately not much use at tying down large squads. They do look cool, they are very nice fluff and they are not too points heavy so they do occasionally make it into my lists.

I have a couple of these guys painted and finished, but nowhere near the total number for the whole chapter and in the new Codex you can now field squads of them, which will look so much better if they are painted. I still need to base these latest additions and the large flat blue areas are a sucking void that makes me want to add more detailing, but I managed to bash out 4 dreadnaughts in a weekend, including a very nice venerable dreadnaught from Forge World.

I am still sticking with a few of the 80s/90s paint scheme elements and can’t bring myself to paint the end of a lascannon anything but bright red. They might look like lipstick, but let’s see you laugh about it when it punches a nice big hole in the side of your prize tank. Ha!

Slightly behind on my painting...

So, how can you tell you are slightly behind on your painting? When you have to use an entire can of Chaos black undercoat and you still have not finished! For the record today I undercoated:

• 3 Drop-pods
• 7 Rhinos & Razorbacks
• 1 Predator
• 1 Bastion
• Assorted turrets, guns, emplacements and tank parts

It does not sound like a lot, but it is a lot of square footage of plastic to cover. Right, now to make it blue...

Terminator Chaplin

One of the first miniatures that I bought for my Space Marines and also one of the first that I painted was my Terminator Chaplin. As Chaplin of the Ultramaines 1st Company his main job in the last edition was to provide a combat bonus and punch to a Terminator death star, now his job is the same, although he is much cheaper in points and often ends up as a challenge shield due to his low AP Crozus.

Ultramarine Chaplin side view

He stands a little taller than my other Terminators thanks to his Forgeworld base. I like the dark and gritty feel of this miniature, I really enjoyed painting him and managed to get a nice glossy look to the skull helm.

There are a couple of interesting differences between my Chaplin's paint scheme and the overall scheme I have used for the 1st Company. You will notice that his Storm Bolter is black instead of the throwback red that I use on my other veterans. I think this adds to the overall darkness of the miniature, making the gold and the purity seals stand out better.

There are also a couple of issues that the better painters out there have probably picked up on already. The devotional scrolls and parchment scraps on the miniature are all blank. I was so happy with the look of the miniature that I did not want to spoil it with my rough and ready attempt at writing on the scrolls.

Ultramarine Terminator Chaplin

The other thing you might notice and it is a bit more obvious in the picture to the left is I did not paint any blue on his pauldrons. This is the only Ultramarine I have with no blue on whatsoever! Don't worry too much though as I will go back and deal with that after I have filled out more of my less complete miniatures.

If you have any tips on how to do writing on scrolls and purity seals please drop them in the comments below.

Black Reach Dreadnought

My Black Reach Dreadnought has been sitting around in my collection with a blue base coat and a few splats of colour on for a while so I thought it was about time I finished him off.

One of the few things that make my Black Reach Dreadnought a little different are the brass bits that  have made their way onto his main armour plates and the small pile of skulls from the basing kit that are my attempt to fill the 28mm void that is his flat base.

I have tried a couple of things with the brass disk Ultramarine icon on his greave, but they have not worked as well as I liked. In the end I took it almost back to the original brass colour with Beastal Brown and Shining Gold and then picked out the details with green and white.

Most of the other work was cleaning up and adding a little consistency with my existing Dreadnoughts, painting the power fist red and colour to some of the cabling around the sarcophagus. I based it using a snow flock and PVA glue mix to add a bit of texture.

Overall I am happy with the finished item and it fits well with the rest of my painted miniatures.

Airbrush Work

This is my first attempt at painting with an airbrush. I had been toying with the idea of getting one for a while and the big flat areas of the Storm Raven felt like the ideal test subject. It is my usual Chaos Black undercoat and then my usually Ultramarines blue watered down with thinner. I have a pretty even coat and I am happy with the result, but I fond that setting up the brush, mixing the paint and cleaning the brush means that this is only going to save me time doing very large miniatures or batch jobs.