ChrisP's Orks - April - Rank and File 3

Evil Sunz Nob on bike with plasma gun - 39pts

5 Evil Sunz on bikes - 235pts

Total 274 points

 

 

The speedy contingent of my army grows with these warbikers. The models are mostly standard, with a few small conversions to replace components lost or broken over the decades. Naturally they're red, with the yellow gun-muzzles inspired by an even older warbike that I remember from White Dwarf battle reports. 

Next up will be another fast and reckless mob - Stormboyz in May!

Jaakko and Forin - Rank & File month #3

On one side of me stand my Homeworld, Stronghold and Brotherhood; On the other my ancestors. I cannot behave otherwise than honourably.

Warlord Kettri son of Egil, Grindel Stronghold

 

 

I know what people think of February but for me March has been the hardest month so far. I had trouble staying focused and painting felt like a chore at times. I think it was mostly because I had allocated a squad of bikers for this month and there was a lot more work in them than I anticipated. I struggled last March too and hopefully it is just a case of passing mid challenge blues. Anyway, I think I'll make some adjustments to the remaining months to make sure I have something inspiring to paint every month.

 

Despite the hardships, I'm very happy with what I managed to paint. I'm also glad that I didn't have to tap into the buffer I painted in February and prospects for April look bright.

I finished one Combat Squad with a lot of heavy weapons, a Living Ancestor and a Guild Bike Squad. In addition to these I kept the terrain pledge alive by putting my imaginary Squat Sappers into work with field fortifications and by modelling and painting an objective marker in the form of a wounded Squat in exoarmour.

 

TROOPS:

A Combat Squad with heavy plasma gun and six! heavy bolters led by another Sqt Bylcow. Yes, Squats love heavy bolters and you can give one to every trooper.

A fragile looking Living Ancestor. There were many other sidearm options but I went with the dreaded laspistol. He is a real hindrance with his movement value of 2 so I will try to include another one in a sidecar later.

A Guild Bike Squad with a leader and seven troopers. I got some more bikes to make this happen, but I ran out of parts and had to improvise as the leader's bike was missing a headlight and rear wheel. I made a blue stuff mold and casted a headlight from acrylic resin. The rear wheel was made from green stuff. I'm pretty happy with both of them. The mark II bike someone might have noticed in the intro post is put aside for a possible hearthguard biker and is also still missing parts.

 

 

I love these bikers now even though they were a pain to paint. I painted these with headlight covers but unfortunately could not source the mentioned fluorescent paints in time. I'll try Tom's recipe and will give them a full fluorescent treatment at a later stage.

 

A close-up of the leader. The Squat lovers among you have probably noticed that it's actually a Guildmaster model. If I have the time and resources I might replace it with another leader and use this as one. The banner is a slight variation from one featured in WD 111 and Warhammer 40.000 Compendium and I used an enlarged version of the original to make the scetch I painted over.

 

This month in points: 

 

I use the OWAC adjusted model count so a biker equals two models.

 

TERRAIN:

For terrain I made a wounded Squat to function as an objective marker and some field fortifications.

 

The intact arm of this poor Squat is a surplus metal part, the body I modelled from resin and green stuff and the wounded side has tubings made from green stuff. The body is broken, not complete and only has the front part to make sure it cannot be mistaken as an actual exoarmour body.

 

The poorly hidden message here is that I have acquired some Squats in exoarmour and will hopefully be able to include an alternative Warlord and Hearthguard into the leader month.

The barbed-wire entanglements are made from toothpicks and a barbed-wire basing product and the dragon's teeth only needed to be glued to their bases, based and painted.

The next, and possibly last, terrain project will be scratch built buildings.

 

Thank you for reading this far, until next month!

Tom's Sisters of Battle: Month Six - Wildcard (196 points)

A biker screams forth under the rousing sounds of Sister Leeta's guitar...

Straight into THE LAST MONTH - trumpets sound, warhorns blare - no messin'!

A second biker has joined the fray 👇 

I'm super pleased that I managed to paint at least one more bike (for a grand total of....two), and even more pleased that it matches the first one 🙃  

Tom's Sisters of Battle: Month Five - Troopers

A pict showing the Sisters purging the foul Ork.

Well, MAY. A month of finishing off the Sisters sculpts and roundly ignoring any Militia models... 

I did, as penance though, paint this biker which I am really very pleased with! Especially the rams head on the shoulder pad. I'd love to paint up the two others that I have, but this one was a chore, so we'll see what the final month (a Wildcard - where anything goes) can rustle up....

I think maybe I should dirty down those yellow exhausts a bit more, and I could maybe paint a fleur de lis on the real mudguard... But these things are more likely for the next model :)

I have tried to upgrade my photographing game, by borrowing some Big Lights, and then playing around with some free Android apps - namely BackgroundEraser which has enabled an automatic cut out of the model from the background which I can then place on a stock white background and hence eliminate shadows and have all the pictures with a standard background. 

I ummed and ahhed over the cost of these next two models, but in the end I bit the bullet and brought them (thanks to some overtime at work). I've erased the cost, due to shame, but in the interest of disclosure they worked out to be £50 for the pair... I was so enthused to get started on them that I neglected to take a proper timestamp for them, so I hope these ebay screenshots will suffice....

And here they are! I'm very pleased with both of them :)

Sister Jayne 👇

Sister Gabbs 👇

Here's a photo of how they look both together with my regular pict set-up. You can really see what I mean about standardising the background!

And a nice shot to compare the old (1988) minis next to their modern Satyr Studio (2022) counterparts, and some just about out-of-production GW models

Another duplicate sculpt, this time of Sister Heidi. I  really like how her hair came out, and it kinda makes me wish I'd painted them all with white hair...

Sister Ray 👇

Sister Morphine 👇

Up next, this Witch Hunter Acolyte 👇I wanted the cheques to tie him into the Sisters a bit more, but maybe I should have painted the green robe white like the Preacher from previous months instead. Anyway, I think it looks a bit more heat resistant in green 🙃

Finally, flagellant militia. I did do a push to at least get some of them painted!👇

I think I wanted the blue hair to be reminiscent of woad dye. I was also toying with the idea of some holy warpaint, but the motivations for this unit are super low so it was a case of keeping it simple. There's a LOT of duplicate sculpts, but that is to be embraced! Hopefully I can paint a few more in June...

The second 👇 In hindsight maybe the strap round the mouth should be a different colour - probably black or a dark red...

The third👇

The fourth 👇

And finally, an impeachable Inquisitor! 👇

Here's a pic of my new photo set up. The lights I have borrowed from a friend (who is a ceramicist, and needs to take good photos for his online shop ), and the tripod I've borrowed from my partner...

In it you can see all the terrain I was painting last month, almost all specifically for these pics, although I didn't really have an idea of how I wanted them to be set up. 

I kinda wish I'd painted another set of stairs so I could join the two and have gangways between them, and so a larger display area. Maybe for the army shot in July eh?

And now the resulting cropped image, with the shadows and black point deepened a little bit (all done on the phone with the stock Google Images app) 👇

This is all of the Drew Day Williams sculpts together.

And now the links back through the Challenge, and this months figure breakdown:

Intro: Army list - link

Month one: Leaders - link - 227 points

Month two: Troopers - link - 280 points

Month three: Troopers - link - 290 points

Month four: Troopers - link - 224 points

Month five: Troopers - 281 points

48...Sister on attack bike (points are for a regular Sister with heavy flamer)

140...Sister Jayne

.........Sister Gabbs

.........Sister Heidi

.........Sister Ray

.........Sister Morphine 

4...Militia

4...Militia 

4...Militia 

4...Militia 

23...Acolyte (points are for a Missionary Champion) 

54...Inquisitor (points are for a Confessor)

TOTAL: 281 

  

This puts my Sisters force at a comfortable 1302 points, so the last month of the Challenge is a no pressure month. I have been slowly painting militia taken from the hive world of Necromunda to assist the Sisters (as part of another challenge), but I will show these next month along with an insidious threat which you can peek at below :)

I'm aiming to paint the rest of the flagellants and hopefully another bike, but I may get carried away with the xenos 😬. Either way, it's definitely non committal 😂 , but there will be Things to See!

Cheers!

A xenos infestation is uncovered!