Devastators and Praetorian Done

I kicked out my Devastators and Praetorian for my Heresy Era Imperial Fists this week. Except for a Command squad, I'm almost done working on MKIII armored Marines! Wooo Hooo!! You have no idea how excited I am to paint something else.

I feel like I'm in the home stretch!

The Burning of Prospero set comes with 3 Heavy Bolters and I quickly scoured Ebay for two more lose plastic MKIII Heavy Bolters and they arrived really quick. I'm pretty pumped about playing a game with five of these bad boys in a squad. If I use them in regular 40K, the plan is to replace the Sergeant with a member of my in-progress Command Squad since I can only field 4 in the 41st millennium (Boooo. Hisssss.)

The design of the MKIII Heavy Bolter took a bit of time to grow on me, but now I dig it.

For my Praetorian (Marine commander in 30K) I just kit-bashed a guy from the plastic set. Not super sexy, but he'll get the job done.

All ready to smash Traitor Legion filth!

I'm pretty chuffed with how his face turned out.

This guy has ALL the laurels. ALL. OF. THEM.

So my next step is to get on my Tartaros pattern Terminators - which are all built, primed and ready roll - and then I get to do some neat stuff like tanks and dreadnoughts. I'm super excited to tackle those. 

Cheers!

More Heresy and some Diehard Miniatures art!

Work continues apace on my Heresy Era Imperial Fists. I managed to finish up another squad of Tactical Marines and the entire unit of Adeptus Custodes. But I have more to share this week than just more and more yellow Marines! Some concept art that I've been doing for Diehard Miniatures.

The growing Defenders of Terra.

Diehard Miniatures is the brainchild of sculptor Tim Prow, who I had the good fortune to catch up with while I was in England for Salute. Over way too much rum for how jet-lagged I was, Tim offered me the chance to do some concept art for an upcoming expansion of his line. Its been a really fun project and I'm looking forward to seeing Tim make these drawings real.

"IT BURNS!!!!" Flaming skellies are always fun.

He's coming to get ya! Definitely trying to get an Old Skool vibe out these designs.

I love drawing me some robits, and Tim wanted a 2000AD feel out of these guys.

This guy is supposed to be a repurposed civilian droid that now has a taste for war.

I like the idea of this one being an out-dated medical droid that's REALLY bad at his job.

This is only a taste of the work I've done. We've got lots more on the way. The Kickstarter these will be included in should jump off soonish. I'll certainly share the info when its available.

Up next for my Imperial Fists are a Devastator Squad and Tartaros Terminator unit. They should go pretty quick. Then it'll be vehicle time as I'm all infantry'ed out at this point.

I really like these models. They painted up really quickly and look fantastic for only a little effort.

I think he really likes the Emperor of Mankind.
Maybe.

10 more Rivets… I mean MARINES!…done. Whew.

Cheers!

Objection! That's Horus Hearsay!

After a short hiatus, I've continued working on some marines in MKIII armor from the Burning of Prospero set. I stalled a little when I discovered that special and heavy weapons aren't an option for Tactical squads during the Heresy Era, so I went back and painted a vexilla and regular bolt-gunner for the first 10 man squad.  I was a little put out when I discovered the lack of options for the Tactical squads initially, but I've overcome my ignorance with a little extra effort and a big dose of "Who cares? Its just toy soldiers."

Squad 1 complete! And a second squad begun.

The start of squad 2!

I have also decided to add some allies to my Heresy Era Imperial Fists - a small retinue of the Emperor's bodyguards, the Adeptus Custodes. This might not be 100% kosher, but I really don't care at this point because these are cool models and fit the time period. The Custodes also come in the Burning of Prospero set, and I have really enjoyed painting them up. The level of detail highlights really well and I don't feel like I'm copping out by just doing an all metallic paint scheme.

For the Emperor!

I plan on using the Custodes as a sort of treat to paint every few marines that I get done. Its getting hard to maintain steam on the MK III armor sets - so much trim and rivets! Ugh. Trying to keep my eyes on the prize - less than 10 to go!

Cheers!

Imperial Fists: Part 5: Old Fistos

"Stupid babies need the MOST help!" said the Primaris Ancient...

A while back I picked up the Horus Heresy game "Burning of Prospero" and still hadn't assembled any of the stuff inside. I ended up deciding to paint the marines it comes with as Heresy Era Imperial Fists, figuring by the time I assembled and painted them all that 30K will be ported into the 8th ed rules. In the meantime, I'll fold them into my regular 40k army as marines wearing honor armor or some nonsense. So now my army has some Tiny Marines™.

These models come in waaaaaay too many parts for such limited posing. 

While I really like the MKIII marine armor, its like GW looked at Privateer Press' models and said "Hold my beer." and then set out to make a smaller model with even more rivets. That said, the technical constraints that two part moulds put on little details like rivets are handled really well here.

Another quick tip that I used to speed up the painting process here was that after the model is primed and then sprayed yellow, a liberal wash of GW's Druchii Violet created the perfect shading and base to work my colors up from. I can't believe I didn't do this the first time since Violet is on the opposite side of the Color Wheel from Yellow - my art college professors would probably slap me. 

Just a quick wash over a sprayed base coat and you're ready to go!

Cheers!

Slooooooooow Hobby Week

Not too much to report this time around. I managed to get done a squad of Space Marine Assault Terminators that I had hanging around. I had originally ordered a box of Ork Boyz on Amazon and these came instead(?). Rather than going through the return process, I just socked them away for the future. I guess that future is now and I can use these guys to wham on enemy tanks.

I've always been more of a Thunder Hammer and Stormshield man, than a Lightning Claw guy. I guess
I just don't need to see Wolverine in Spaaaaaace.

I love that the teleport homing beacon is part of this kit.

A Space Marine army just isn't a real army unless you make it out of stuff you just have lying around, I guess. So now my Imperial Fists are legit. I think I'm going to start looking at adding  tank as the next step in this army to bring it to 75ish Power Levels.

Cheers!

Slow Week - Adding To My Orks Here and There

Just painting some more Orks this week. I added a Weirdboy and some additional Shootaz to bring that unit up to 30 models.

I really didn't like the current Weirdboy model very much. Its also Finecast,
which I've tried to avoid as much as I can. Instead, I made a Weirdboy using
the AoS Orruk Weirdboy and spare Ork parts from a Deff Dread kit.

I added parts from a Scorcha to each end of the staff and added a skull plate as well.
Then I made a backpack out ofanother piece of the Deff Dread.

I was going for a bit of post-apocolyptic vibe on all this.

These last 7 guys brings my Shoota mob up to 30 - a fearsome prospect to face.

Cheers!

 

Imperial Fists: Part 4: More Like Imperial Finished!

All ready to crush the enemies of Mankind.

I put the finishing touches on the last unit of Primaris Marines from the Dark Imperium set this week - the Inceptors. This closes out all the Imperial units from Dark Imperium! Wooooooot! Now I can try to get some games in with these guys.

Lead by Brother Sergeant DiCapprio, these guys will hopefully haunt my opponents nightmares or something.

A little bit of a closer view.

FORWARD! FOR THE EMPEROR!

All total, these guys add up to about 50 Power Levels - so certainly enough to start gaming with. I plan on adding some tanks and a Dreadnought in the future, but for now I think I'll take a break from painting yellow and messing about with Microsol and decals. On deck, I've still got some Napoleonics to paint - ships, cavalry and more infantry - and the Nurgle half of Dark Imperium as well as Orks, a Heresy Era Marine army, and Dropfleet Commander space ships. Its all a matter of just deciding what to do next. 

Cheers!