Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Terminators and Storm Eagle complete, and a family photo!

Had a surprising amount of hobby time over the weekend and got quite a bit of work done! Polished off the Terminators, the Storm Eagle, and pulled everything that has been completed so far out for a family portrait. Woo!

I find I have a hard time photographing the shiny red, depending on the light it looks way lighter and darker, shinier and matte in the photos. It's odd! The Cataphractii will likely be hitting the table at NOVA, it's hard to go wrong with a whole mess of chainfists!

That said, I think I do actually prefer the look of the Tartaros terminators, the greater amount of blue on 'em really helps them pop. The five combi-plasmas will mean their opponents will pop too! ...As will at least one of the Tartaros from a plasma gun meltdown.

The Storm Eagle is a contentious piece for me. While it's a great centerpiece for the army, it's an absolute nightmare to build and has consistently under-performed on the table for me (mostly down to poor reserve rolls meaning a good 600 points isn't on the table until late in the game). Coupled with the fact that it takes up a huge amount of room in the travel bag, it ended up getting cut from the NOVA list, which is a bit of a shame. The points and space will be better used elsewhere in the majority of the games I have scheduled out there though...

With those three units done I figured it was high time to pull out everything that's been painted so far and get a group shot. It's about 5000 points as shown here, though a good chunk of that is down to the sorcerous overkill in the HQ slots. Only three more units to go before it's all complete!

Speaking of, it was really encouraging to see the painting chart flip over to almost entirely green at this point. The end is in sight!

This has been a rather fun project, but I'll admit to feeling some army painter's fatigue at this point. I'm struggling to decide whether to make the last push and knock out the last few models, or take a little breather and do something else for a bit. I can rest on my laurels a touch as all of the models intended to go out to NOVA are done, as are quite a few extras to allow for some last minute mix-and-match army build testing. Feels good!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Storm Eagle 'Quas' painting underway!

After the waves of infantry I figured it was time to work on a vehicle for a change! As part of the orbital assault rite of war all of the models must either be able to deep strike or be transported in a vehicle capable of doing so. In addition to a trio of drop pods (pics to follow), the Khamasiin will have a Storm Eagle ferrying tactical squad Hesyre, and due to its size it'll also be a centerpiece model for the army.

 

Basically just roughing in the base colors so far, earthtones for the areas that will be done up in bone and blacking in the areas that will end up in steel (and areas that will just be black). It was actually a bit of an adjustment switching over from the little minis to this somewhat unwieldy flyer!

The army progress tracker is getting colorful now! More or less everything is assembled at this point, and a fair chunk of it is on the way to being finished - Soon it'll be time to try actually getting them on the table to get a feel for how they play...

40k Deathwatch - Display boards and Land Raider progress, plus a broken vow

A bit more forward motion on the Armies on Parade force! A fellow 40k enthusiast and I decided we'd do a paired set of army boards, with his Craftworld Eldar facing off against my Deathwatch and he spent some time in his shop over the previous weekend putting together something for us.

He cut the 2x2 board and laid in some hills and craters on my side, and the floor level for some Eldar ruins on his side. As my bases are almost all dirt, and his are mostly Eldar Architecture, he left the ground color up to me. Took the paints I use for my bases to the local art supply store and found a couple bottles of craft paint that were pretty darn close (no way I'm painting the boards with Vallejo dropper bottles), and set to work. Much paint spatter later I had the dirt in, and some admittedly ham-fisted flocking - I haven't ever tried any terrain at this size so it was all rather experimental.

I handed off the Eldar side so he can tart up the Eldar portion, and went with some grey stone coloration for the craters, which will get some blast effect painted or airbrushed in at some point in the near future. So far, so good!

On the less enthusiastic side however are the vehicles. As I had remembered from the Imperial Fists and Iron Hands, fine edge highlighting just isn't my forte and the issue is exacerbated on larger pieces, such as the Land Raider. I did take the precaution of painting the whole model in Chaos Black before getting started, which has allowed me to clean up the lines where it was particularly egregious (and looking at the pic there's plenty more to clean up). Still, I'm hopeful that once the detail starts going on it'll start to pop.

I was reasonably happy with the slate/marble effect I tried out on the doors and detail plates on the front (and repeated on the dreadnought coming soon). It's not perfect, but with a little practice it might be a fun technique to add to the toolbox - practice makes perfect!

In other news I've perhaps slightly broken my vow to hold off on adding anything else to my Thousand Sons until the Forge World book and the new GW box set are released. Just a little bit. Ahem. The deal was too good to pass up, and thanks to one of the excellent folks on the Heresy30k Forum for ensuring the sons of Magnus have a sweet new ride! Much like the first one I built for the World Eaters, this kit was an absolute bastard to assemble, and even with prodigious use of clamps and rubber bands it still isn't quiiiiite seamless. Some of that can be attributed to warpage and shrinkage but honestly I've never heard anyone say "Wow, that Storm Eagle was so much fun to build!" ...I will say it's a cool looking model once it's put together though!

Heresy Era World Eaters - Storm Eagle painted

Pressing onward with the World Eaters, this time around it's the transport for the Berzerkers - The Storm Eagle! I'm really pleased with the look of the model, and it was a blast to paint though in retrospect I should have left it a bit less assembled than I did. It would have been a much easier job had I left the wing separate during the build process. Ah well, I was in the zone while building it and got carried away...

I went back and forth on the blue and white breakdown, and finally settled on just picking out various flaps and ailerons in blue, leaving the majority of the model in white. Once I had it all blocked in, I went over it with a sponge to add some scrapes and peeled paint along the leading edges where it would logically be taking the brunt of the weathering.

The yellow missiles and the green glow n the cockpit help to break up the vast fields of white and give the model a bit of spot color here and there.The front of the vessel got the brunt of the weathering, as I figured it would be most likely to take a beating on the way to the landing zone.

 

I left the top hatch loose in the painting stage to allow access to the pilot. I've really liked the "instrument panel glow" effect that I've seen others use on their flyers and gave it a go m'self. Statted off by painting in the main colors on the pilot and then gave him a light green wash, then highlighted the edges that would be lit up by the console. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together!

At this point everything that I have built for the World Eaters is now painted. Time to reward myself with some build time!

Heresy Era World Eaters - Storm Eagle and Berzerkers in progress

The Forge World order I'd made over a month ago finally showed up last week, and I immersed myself in a frenzy of clipping, washing, rinsing, and straightening resin over the course of several evenings. Eventually I managed to get a few things built and primered, though nothing's fully completed as yet. Nevertheless, thought some pics in process might be in order!

 

First up on the building queue was the Storm Eagle. I was always lukewarm on the Storm Raven kit, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either. The Chapterhouse extension kit was a step in the right direction, but the FW Storm Eagle kit really knocked it out of the park. My only minor niggle was the puny tail fin, so I bodged together a version of the "T" shaped tail boom which I think helps tie it in with the aesthetic of the Thunderhawk and the Storm Raven (and the new SM flier as well). This kit was a right pain in the butt to assemble - many of the panels were extremely bent and required a serious amount of time with hot water to try and wrench the pieces into some semblance of straight. After that there was a significant amount of clamping/banding/holding to get everything together. I love how it looks now that it's built, but I'm in no rush to build another one, that's for sure!

Of course, the Storm Eagle needs a unit to ride around inside it, and in this case it's a whole mess of frothing lunatics! A 16-strong squad of Berzerkers, to be precise. These are made from a mix of fantasy Chaos Marauders, the metal World Eater shoulder pads from GW, and Forge World Mk.V marine armour and Chainaxes. The intent was to make them look far more wild and deranged than the standard tactical and assault marines while still tying in with the rest of the army, which I think worked out pretty well. Still a long way to go on these of course, at the moment I'm just blocking in the main colors. Lots of highlighting, weathering and whatnot still to go...