Tournament roundup

So I came a solid second and I am happy with that, although I think the dice gods were against me in my last game as I failed a lot of saves and couldn't kill a riptide in 6 rounds of combat. It was still really enjoyable and three solid and challenging games.

I think I dodged a bullet by not having to face the tournament winner who was running around with 5 flying monstrous creatures. I had a couple of ideas to try and counter the list, but it would likely be too much all at once.

I need to crack on with painting it all now as I would have lost due to the points I dropped being unpainted even if I had won all three games.

Tournament rush again

It has been a while since I have had much hobby time, but tomorrow Hulls Angels are running a small tournament to raise money for a cancer charity. As well as raising money for a good cause it is also going to give me a chance to sharpen my rusty game play before we take on York. I have been tinkering with a list that is hard hitting but not as resilient as I would like. I will post more details of it after I play York Garrison to avoid too much meta game, but for now I will say that this list was originally written to face down 6 Imperial Knights and has already proven very effective against battle suits.

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

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.