40k Deathwatch - Army 99.9% Parade Ready!

It's amazing what working under a deadline will do for my productivity! I had a blissfully event-free Friday evening and the whole day Saturday, and buckled in for a marathon painting session to finish off the army before next weekend's event. Barring any minor issues that may reveal themselves in the photography stage the force is ready to rock!

First of course is a quick look at the force on the board as I mess around with various unit layouts. I really need to invest in a monopod - this was as in focus as I could manage. Hope to get some better final pics from the actual event next weekend!

 

So let's go through what all got finished over the two-day marathon - First up is the Watch Master, which is a superb sculpt, and I rather like the peek into the upcoming Custodes rules with his Guardian Spear!

 

I was quite taken by the Blood Angel librarian in terminator plate that was shown in the book and knew I wanted to take a crack at it. Continued on with the ghostly green for the force weapon, definitely going to be using that recipe for future psykic gear and spell effects...

I'd taken a group photo of Kill Team Cassius a little while back, so it was only fair that Watch Force Artemis got the same treatment. The two 5-man veteran squads have been shown before, so it was really just two models that needed to be completed for this unit to make it to the finish line.

  

The man himself, Brother Artemis is my favorite sculpt of the DW range, having owned the Inquisitor 54mm scale version back in the day. I might just have to trawl eBay and see if I can find another one, as I'd sold it on yoinks ago.

  

Sliding into place for my Dreadtober vow is Brother Nihilus. His background is rather interesting in the Death Masque booklet, he's essentially an interred Blackshield, so it's anyone's guess as to what lurks in his murky past! That said, after doing nothing but Contemptors for so long, working on an old 'brick dread' was kind of fun.

  

Not a whole lot changed on the Corvus front other than a little more weathering and some edge highlighting of the red wing stripes (though they are blown out in the pictures somewhat). Really dig this model, but it would be 100% cooler if it was 20% larger. There's just a bit of dissonance to me between its stats and its appearance. Still, best flyer GW was released in plastic for quite some time!

Finally, the bodyguard unit for the Watch Master and terminator librarian, Squad Graul - While I appreciate the hyper-individualistic nature of Kill Team Cassius, I wanted these folks to have a very singular battlefield role - close combat and protection of the HQ units. At least that's the theory, we'll see how they perform once I get them on the tabletop!

Next up, back to the whole reason I picked up Overkill in the first place and ended up with this whole Deathwatch army - a swarming brood of Genestealer Cult gribblies!

40k Deathwatch - Kill Team Cassius complete!

Managed a fair bit of painting time in over the weekend, and polished up the last of the infantry models from the first batch - all the 'fun' models that I left for the end as a reward for pushing through the basic models (if there is such a thing in the Deathwatch line)!

Really happy with how the kill team turned out as a whole, while I was initially down on the mono-build nature of the models, I have to say they really are quite cool sculpts. Each one really has their own character to a degree that you really can't capture with the build-yer-own Veteran kit!

 

Couple closeups of the two characters, Chaplain Cassius and Librarian Natorian. After trying out the effect on the wings of the assault squad sergeant, I thought I'd try it again to represent the psychic witchery on the Librarian. I think it works a little better than the more dark jade/neon green method I'd been using previously - gives the weapon a bit more of an ethereal look.

 

The terminator was a fun model, lots of fire and scales, reds and oranges. Rather enjoyed how the brazier turned out!

 

The biker is one of my favorite models of the set, Suberei really has a great sense of motion and a ton of cool little details. I was listening to the audiobook of Scars while painting these and I started to get a little twinge to do some White Scars on the Heresy side. Must... Resist...

Next up is finishing up the last few models in Watch Force Artemis, with a couple more characters - Artemis himself and, just in time for Dreadtober, Brother Nihilus! I'm also hearing rumours of further Genestealer Cult codexes and models on the horizon - there's still a whole set of cultists on sprues in the Closet of Doom, could be there's another army on the horizon while I await the upcoming Prospero book and box set!

40k Deathwatch - Squad Crull and Squad Donatus complete!

While I had the painting servitor subroutines running, I finished up the two Veteran squads that came in Overkill and Death Masque. They were a fair way towards the finish line already, but even so it was a good three or four hour session to pick out all the little details and go back to catch the little stuff I'd missed on them in the abortive batch painting process.

First up is Squad Crull, using the new Deathwatch kill team sprues. I think these are some of the best sprues GW has come out with, definitely the kitbasher's dream with all the bits! I was forced to arm them as shown in order to use them as part of the 'official' kill team, and while they certainly look neat it strikes me as a bit of an awkward array of armaments for tabletop play. Definitely looking forward to building a few more kill teams armed a bit more sensibly.

I was pretty pleased with how Sergeant Crull's Xenophase Blade turned out, it's a fun bit of kit and shows some good ol' Imperial hypocrisy. I'm planning on carrying that idea through and do a Radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitor with some further Xenotech and perhaps a Jokaero to accompany the Deathwatch force. Should be fun!

Next up is Squad Donatus, the Veteran squad that is part of Kill Team Cassius. These models also suffer somewhat from the scattershot armaments coupled with the mono-pose nature of the Overkill models. That said, for what they are they definitely were a blast to build and paint - they exude a bespoke sense of character that is a little hard to capture with the multi-pose models.

Next up are the characters and specialist models from the two Kill Teams, then on to the vehicles!

40k Deathwatch - Painting Deathwatch the wrong way.

I'll admit, going into the project I was feelign confident that it would be a snap to batch paint the Deathwatch, and it was - at least up to the point that I finished the line highlighting and the silver arms. Then I started all the little fiddly details, and let me tell you it is no longer the right way to be doing it. I can't begin to count how many times I've had to go back and touch up another part I missed each time I changed colors - since the models are so individualized, there's no real rhythm or routine to rely on. "Oh, there's another bit of gold filigree I missed." Cap paint, wash brush, touch up with previous color, repeat. 23 models is way too many, so following the efforts over this past weekend I'm going to be finishing them off in smaller groups where the models are all broadly the same type (all the jump troops, the tactical guys, the characters, etc.) to hopefully cut down on the back and forth. That said, a fair bit of progress!

The addition of the gold and boltgun metallics really helps the models start to pop. I also took some time working on the faces for the various helmetless models though as mentioned above, these pics point out I missed a skintone step on one of the vanguard vets. Gah!

 

Time to consider how to finish them off. On the left is Watch Force Artemis (plus a Librarian in terminator plate), and on the right Kill Team Cassius. I think I'll knock out the seven jump troops from the two kill teams as a group next, followed by the ten tac marines, and finally the six characters individually (including the biker and terminator in that as they don't have similarly styled compatriots in the force). On the whole I am really digging this project - while the painting up front was admittedly rather tedious, the amount of detail on them has really been fun to paint and I'm really digging how they're coming together!

Off to Nova midweek for a couple days chock full of heresy goodness which means there still a few days left to get in on the rather excellent raffles for some beautiful armies. The money goes to a good cause, and you need not be present to win - the armies and other models will happily be shipped anywhere in the world! Check 'em out - a couple bucks could win you some truly epic prizes!

40k Deathwatch - Kill Teams Artemis and Cassius continue...

Snuck in a little painting time in the evenings over the last couple days as we got a break in the punishing summer heat. Phew! Continued cranking away on the Deathwatch models, and actually have started having fun with 'em.

Gave all the models a few extreme highlights with fortress grey which hopefully wasn't a step too far. Interestingly they do seem a bit more stark in the pics than they do in real life. Went with a slightly toned-down blued steel from the prior recipe which I'm much happier with - still has the blue tinge but it's not quite as prominent as on the test models.

At that point I switched gears a little and went full-on polychromatic! Started laying in the various marine chapter insignia and color schemes which was fairly enjoyable. Still some cleanup to do on them but it was a breath of fresh air after the hours and hours of monochromatic line highlights!

So far, so good!

40k Deathwatch - Patience is a virtue...

So I'll admit that when I picked up Overkill it was predominantly for the Genestealer Cult models and the Deathwatch chaps were pillaged for parts to use with the Thousand Sons (as there were several tasty older-mark armor sets in there). I was rather impressed with the models however, and ended up trading away the painted Cult for a new-in-box set of Overkill that was tucked away into the Closet of Doom for a rainy day. With the release of Death Masque it started to cloud over and I picked up the box with the rationale that I could use the Harlequins for the pointy-eared gits army. The kill team sprues really caught my eye though - while the Overkill models are gorgeous, I do prefer multi-pose kits in general and they are simply grand. So, they all got built and based and I got stuck in.

As I'd mentioned before I had built a trio of Space Wolf terminators as test models and to sort of get my eye in a bit and try out a couple recipe ideas. If they didn't end up perfect, well they're just Space Wolves. Hah! I felt that the Black/Shadow Grey/Fortress Grey was a little too stark on these which I tried to address below. The blued steel is perhaps a bit TOO blued as well, I think a bit more deliberate silver over-painting is in order. Overall though I got these far enough along to establish where I wanted to go with the scheme, so they were set aside.

After getting the two kill teams built and primered, they were all then given a coat of painted-on vallejo black to ensure that any later cleanup on the black will match the overall color - the primer I use has a different level of tone and shine so it ends up being rather noticeable painting black atop it! Then I mixed up a bottle of 50/50 black and shadow grey, and gave all of the models a reasonably light drybrushing to catch all of the various hard edges, trusting that I'll be able to back in and clean up any egregious over-spatter later.

Next up the models were given a more selective line highlight with shadow grey, concentrating primarily on the hard edges of the models upper surfaces. This step took approximately one million hours, or at least that's what it felt like! This technique is definitely challenging me to take my time and paint as fine a line as I can and really think about where to place them, as opposed to my usual speedpainting techniques which mostly rely on gratuitous drybrushing and liquid talent. I wouldn't exactly say that it's been fun, but it has been instructional and it's always good to try and get out of your comfort zone now and again! I think I'm going to go one step lighter on a few selected extreme highlights, then clean up all the black panels as best I can. At that point we'll see how they look - I'm thinking they'll likely benefit from a black wash at the end to blend and tone all the highlights back down a touch.

 

As a bit of a reward for all the tedious line highlighting I thought I'd treat myself to a little build time - I knew straight away that the other model in the command tanks box from Warhammer World would end up being a Deathwatch tank (it's just far too modern and encrusted with Aquilas to work in the Heresy), and I am really happy with how it turned out - looking forward to painting it up!

I particularly like the tank commander model, as well as the eagle weapon shroud on the heavy bolters, definitely blings it up to the ostentatious level of the Deathwatch marines!

I loved the look of the Corvus, and the Watch Master with the Guardian Spear is just awesome, I ordered up the Strategium Command bundle which includes a full 10-man veteran squad as well so I could build a kill team to my own spec rather than relying on the formations laid out in Overkill and Death Masque. I also knew that I wanted to bang out a couple squads of terminators using the various leftover bits from all the heresy terminator kitbashes I've done over the years, and figured I ought to tot up the points and see what I had in mind for this supposedly nice little boutique project. ...3500 points. While at first I was shocked, at this point I've come to think that's almost perfect - surprisingly high for the model count I have planned, but that's just about the ideal army size for one of my projects and in comparison to the massive numbers of broadly anonymous heresy warriors it'll be nice to just focus on a few models that all have a ton of personality. This will very likely be an army that never actually fires a shot in anger I think, just a fun project to while away the time before Forge World finally releases Inferno later in the year and my beloved Thousand Sons actually get some rules!

We're just 10 days out from the Nova Open, and I though I'd continue to flog the rather excellent raffles going on this year, which include several fantastic armies as well as some truly stunning single pieces. You need not be present to win, and the armies will be shipped anywhere worldwide! Absolutely worth checking out, it's for a great cause!