The last of the Crimson Fists - Part 6

We're in the midst of the typical Colorado springtime (i.e. 12" of snow one day and mid 60's the next), so I took advantage of one of the nice days to flock seal a mess of Crimson Fists and call 'em done.

I made the executive decision that any waterslide transfers I do are going to end up making the model look worse than leaving them off, so other than the leader and character figs I've done so far, there are no more shoulder pads getting the treatment.

I had a chance to field the army this past weekend, and they fared rather well against my friend's BA, and I was able to fight him to a draw.

Unfortunately the Assault Squad failed several reserve rolls, then had two deepstrike mishaps in a row resulting in them never actually making it to the battle. Ah well.

The Scouts were probably the most fun to paint, too bad they were washed off the table by a squad of Death Company. I suppose in a battle between DC and Scouts, the outcome is fairly certain...

With that the painting chart is finally more green than not, which is always heartening to see!

The last of the Crimson Fists - Part 5

Let me preface this post with the comment that I absolutely dread/despise using waterslide transfers. Granted, for a long time I wasn't using the appropriate tools, methods or materials to do so, but to this day (and with the use of MicroSol, MicroSet, hot water, long soaks, trimming and slicing, you name it) I haven't really mastered the art of setting transfers over the curved marine shoulder pads and more often than not they just don't set correctly. In any case, I took another swing at it on a handful of the models yesterday and managed to pull off a couple squads with only minor blemishes:

 

First up, the squad of Terminators. These models turned out to be the best of the bunch so far, the various washes toned down the harshness of the highlights, and the transfers all more or less cooperated. Unfortunately after I sprayed these few squads I discovered that I didn't get the right matte sealant, so I'm hoping that another coat with the correct stuff won't screw them up.

 

Next up is good ol' Pedro Kantor, and a command squad that he technically can't have. Upon closer inspection of the codex, he's only allowed an honor guard squad which conversely are unable to be armed in the same fashion as the command squad. Argh. To be fair, the one time I've actually fielded the Crimson Fists, I fielded the Pedro Kantor model as a generic Captain armed with a Storm Bolter and Power Fist. For some reason, a couple of the shoulder transfers rippled up a bit on these models at the matte sealant stage, likely due to a combination of insufficient micro-sol and the incorrect sealer. Ah well, practice makes perfect!

 

I also knocked out a trio of Sergeants that will likely need their shoulder pads redone as well. It's at this point where I wonder whether attempting to freehand 25 more fists would be more or less aggravating than doing 25 more transfers. Of course, since I've started with the transfers I'm more or less compelled to finish the rest of the army in the same way for continuity's sake.

A few more bits of forward progress as well! The Land Speeder Storm was actually rather fun to put together - I opted for the Assault Cannon  upgrade, and moved the Cerberus Launcher to the top rail, which I think turned out pretty decent. I also got a bit of paint on the Dreadnought and the Drop Pod, which were a nice change of pace from dozens of infantry!

So far so good! Things are starting to turn green on the chart, and as it stands the army comes in at a respectable 1977 points, which leaves room for a bit of wargear juggling. Once they're all painted I'm hoping to stage a battle report against my Guard and get some shots of a fully painted game (which doesn't happen very often around here)!

The last of the Crimson Fists - Part 4

Nearing completion on the infantry - A few hours worth of work this afternoon got them to the point that I can apply the first coat of sealant prior to adding the waterslide transfers and static grass. Wonder of wonders, it's supposed to be nice enough out tomorrow that I should be able to get them finished:

I still need to get the 5-man Devastator squad finished, as well as touch up the original command squad so they better match the current state of the army. Painting all of these models ensured they match one another, but the older models that I've done were painted in a slightly different manner. Nothing that can't be made to match with a little effort, though!

 

I sat down to point out the army and found it stood about 100 points shy of 2000, so to bring it up to a nice round number I decided to build one of the leftover Land Speeder Storms that I had laying around (I'd used the bodies of the scouts to make the Storm Troopers for my Guard army). I updated the painting chart accordingly - for all the progress I've made, it's still a mass of orange. Getting close to turning a bunch of them green though!

The last of the Crimson Fists - Part 3

It's hard to call them Crimson Fists until their fists are actually crimson, and as such I pressed onwards last night and managed to get a bit of red on them.There was a bit more armor highlighting as well, followed by an Asurmen Blue wash that didn't quite tone down the highlights as much as I'd hoped (though my current plan involves a further wash step at the very end that I hope will rectify that situation). The red fists were done by a base of Scab Red, some Blood Red highlights then a wash of Red Ink. I then went over all the weapons, chest detail and arm/leg joints in Boltgun Metal before snapping a quick picture and calling it a night.

 

I've been considering what I wanted to do with the weapon casings (as I'm not a fan of the black casings displayed in the current SM codex) and a friend suggested that I go with a green/olive-drab color. I tried that on the one test model I'd done a while back (left column, 4th row) and I like the way it looks - a little splash of color to set of the blue and red without being too garish. I also hit that model with a wash of Devlan Mud which cut the highlights down a bit more and added some depth to the metal-painted sections. Once I get the rest of the models completed to a similar point they'll all be getting a Mud wash as well prior to the waterslide transfers...

I'd say the models are about halfway done at this point and I'm rather pleased with their progress overall. I'm not going to get any painting time in for the next few days though, but expect to see further updates this weekend. I did manage to put together a 5-man Devastator squad out of bits I had lurking in the Closet of Doom, so I need to bring them up to speed. Once all the infantry is done I can concentrate on cranking out the Razorback, Dreadnought and Drop Pod!

The last of the Crimson Fists - Part 2 (also, #100!)

There's a catch when doing the assembly-line method. There's usually a stage in the painting process where I hate how the model looks - some half-finished intermediate stage between highlights. The entire set of infantry now sits at that stage, and I'll tell you that really makes me want to press onwards and rectify the situation!

 

A fair bit of progress last night - I followed the Midnight Blue basecoat with a medium drybrush of Regal Blue. After that I went in and polished off the six exposed faces, and added the red lenses to the helmets. Once that was done, I continued the highlights on the blue armor - that allows me to be a bit sloppy on the lenses, as I can come back and clean up any overspill with the helmet highlight color. A highlight of Ultramarines Blue catches the major exposed areas on the armor, but at that point I needed to call it a night. This is the stage I mean when I say I don't like how they look - it's an awkward, sloppy looking stage in the middle of the process. There will be one more extreme highlight of Shadow Grey on the upper edges, then the armor will get a blue ink wash to tone down the highlights.

Just realized that this marks my 100th post, and I want to thank all of you for your feedback and support over the last year. The 40k blogging community is amazing, and I'm glad to be a part of it! Cheers, everyone!

The last of the Crimson Fists - Part 1

Over the past year my model-buying has seriously outweighed my model-completing - Far too many projects crowd my shelves and lurk within the depths of the Closet of Doom. It's high time to rectify that situation and polish off some of the smaller side projects and get them out the door. That being the case, I've decided that the next major painting effort will revolve around cranking out the Crimson Fists army I have been procrastinating on.

 

I'd assembled this small force with the intent of using it as an allied assault force for the Mordian 7th, but in all the time that they've sat assembled, they have only taken the field once. I'm thinking that I need to add a Devastator squad to round out the army, though if I do so I will be assembling them from existing bits. With the exception of the upcoming Battle Missions book, I have vowed not to buy any more models until I complete and sell the Crimson Fists. I plan to attack them assembly-line style and paint all of the remaining infantry at the same time. I spent a bit of time this afternoon applying the initial Midnight Blue basecoat to the models, and plan to add at least one color to them every other night until they are complete. ...At least that's the goal!

 

 In other news, I've been running a bi-weekly game of Rogue Trader for my gaming group (the above cruiser being one of the recently-painted models we're using in the game), and I'd purchased a 3'x4' dry-erase board to facilitate gameplay - it's great for sketching out a quick map or keeping track of notes and such for the various players (not to mention being a decent backdrop for white-balancing model pictures). Of course, it does lead to random doodling on the part of the players as well:

That's it for February, here's hoping March is a productive month!

2010, and the state of the hobby

Happy new year everyone - I'm looking forward to seeing what the hobby brings this year, as this past year has been surprisingly productive! Thanks to the awesome 40k blogging community it has been full of great blogs, each one chock full of amazing conversions, stunning paint jobs and helpful articles that have inspired me in innumerable ways. Thanks to all of you!

I'm not one for resolutions, but I figured I'd make an appraisal of where things stand and try and map out what needs to be done. As actually pulling out and organizing the miniatures is an enormous undertaking, I went through all the boxes and updated the painting charts. So here's what I'm planning on working on in the upcoming year:

Mordian 7th Regiment, D Company

Obviously, the glorious 7th is the main reason for the blog, and I'm planing on giving them plenty of brush time in 2010. After updating the chart I was pleased to see that I'm actually getting close to the finish line on the army, at least as far as recreating the original list goes (denoted with the blue unit headers). However there are a few things that I'm planning on doing to make the army more closely aligned to the original list, most noteably by replacing the veteran models with new grav-chute equipped models. I'll likely fold the old veteran models into the ad-mech army as Tech Guard.

Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator Force Chi Xi

I finally settled on what I figured would be the most appropriate name for the  Adeptus Mechanicus army. I actually made some headway into getting the Ad Mech painted this year, which I was happy about. I'm still holding out for the rumored plastic Storm trooper models to use as Hypaspists for the army, though in the short term I want to dabble in kit bashing some out of a mix of Cadian and High Elf parts, some plasticard and greenstuff. The Ordinatus Minoris is in the design sketches phase, following the purchase of some interesting looking toy track units from an old GI Joe toy. I figure before I take another crack at building the Leviathan I should start with something a bit less ambitious.

Craftworld Alaitoc Eldar

The Eldar are my secondary backup painting choice, which I'm keeping around for those times I need a break from the unrelenting grey and red of the Guard and Ad Mech. The squads are small (5-10), and nearly every unit has a rather different paint scheme, which means I can branch out a bit and do some (gasp) blues or greens for a change! It's having those kinds of fun side projects that helps me maintain my overall enthusiasm for the hobby when the army painter's fatigue rears its head.

Crimson Fists Assault Force

And finally (in both the list and my current painting queue), the Crimson Fists. I'll admit that at the moment I have zero interest in painting these marines, and they've been relegated to long term storage in the depths of the Closet of Doom. My intent was to use them as an assault force to complement the Mordian 7th, as well as be an homage to the original paint scheme I'd chosen for my first box of beakies back in the day... However, at nearly 6500 points, the Guard don't really need allies on the table. Hah!

I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the community comes up with over the next year - here's to a good 010/M3, everyone!

Crimson Fists, Part 2

I managed to get a quick game of 40k in over the past weekend, and decided to give one of my 'boutique' armies a try for a change. I'd built a smallish (1625 point) Crimson Fists assault-themed army as an allied force for the Mordian 7th, with the intent that they would supply a rapid-response force capable of engaging and succeeding in close combat - as opposed to the guard who engage and are subsequently horribly killed in close combat!

Upon initial deployment only the dreadnought, the combat squad of sternguard veterans and the razorback (containing the command squad) are placed on the table. After the opponent sets up, the scouts (carrying a teleport homer) infiltrate. In turn one, the drop pod carries the tactical squad into battle, and in subsequent turns the assault squad deep strikes down near the locator beacon carried by the drop pod. Similarly, the terminators teleport in near the teleport homer carried by the scouts. During this time the razorback has raced forward and deployed the command squad within striking distance of the enemy.

Of course, using this army against my friend's similarly-assault-themed blood angels meant that the entire battle took place in a roughly 2'x2' section of the table, as everything both armies had teleported or deep striked into the fray. It was a brutal, close-fought battle, with massive casualties on both sides. The Blood Angels won the day through superior cheesemongering (though my opponent pretends to call it 'tactics'), but all in all it was a very entertaining battle.

I'll likely bounce back and forth between painting a unit of guard and a unit of Crimson Fists over the next month or so. I'm hoping to get these marines finished and sold before my trip out to GenCon this summer...

The Crimson Fists

Another side project, I have a small Crimson Fists army. I've built it with an eye towards being a fast, hard-hitting assault force - basically everything the guard really isn't. I decided that since I was going to sit down and recreate the original Mordian 7th for 5th edition, I may as well do an homage to my very first army ever as well- the Crimson Fists. I was so taken by the art on the front of the Rogue Trader rulebook and on that first box of beakies that I just had to paint my first army the same way. Granted, at the time they were the very first models I'd ever painted in my entire life, and I shudder to think back at how they turned out. It was horrific, and I'm glad to say that my abilities have improved significantly since those days! Suffice it to say that Testor's paints will always haunt my nightmares...


At the moment the army is just assembled and primered, awaiting the painting table. The only unit that I have painted thus far is the command squad and good ol' Pedro Kantor that I'd done just as a proof-of-concept for the paint scheme (I'll admit it, I mostly just wanted to paint the new Kantor fig):


I decided to take Kantor's equipment theme through the squad, plenty of power fists and storm bolters. I also enjoy adding the occasional bit of humor into my armies, and this squad's plasma gunner is a perfect example. The opposite side of the scroll attached to the gun has a number of hash marks representing the number of times it's successfully fired... His time is no doubt near!