Blood Angels Praetor

I spent quite alot of time on this fellow, using decals I normally can't be bothered with and all!

The model is lovely and has so much detail to paint. Although mine had a few mold errors in albeit in quite discrete places. I did something different with the sword although I'm not completely sold on it to make it look unlike my other power weapons. I hope you like him!

I gave him turquoise eyes to contrast the red armour and go with the sword.

Probably went a bit overboard with the weathering on the forward leg there.

A tiny decal seemed easier than trying to paint the droplet in.

A decal!

Giving us the old grumpy eye.

Slightly from above so you can see his odd head stuff implant things.. I prefer helmets as a rule and sometimes like to put a helmet on the belt if not on the head but I really couldn't find room anywhere for one and liked this head just too much. It goes well with the old Baal scarred wasteland look if not the new golden locked covermodel vampire thing GW seems to have rolled into for the BA.

Blood angel Razorbacks with FW bits and Assault Cannons

I picked up two lovely base coated and transfer stuck razorbacks from ebay and enjoyed the very easy process of weathering them and finishing off the details. I also did a quick weapon swap from the heavy bolters they came with to assault cannons taken from the dark angels ravenwing upgrade sprue.

3000pts game with my three imperial knights!

It will probably be the only time I get to stick down all three of these at once for along time and it was the first time I had all three painted to be able to so this was quite exciting. I may have got a bit 'pre battle' picture excited and then failed to take any more pictures as the game went on.

My opponents were two friends playing allied eldar and harlequins. They took a knight too, but a much better eldar one. That for some reason costs way less points. GW sort your rule books out for goodness sakes!

Their view.

My view.

Definitely better to be behind these guys.

The three big boys in formation.

Turn 1 saw me kill a viper and assorted harlequins, almost a whole guardian squad and glance a prism tank, limited somewhat by nightfighting. I lost my vindicator and a knight to a charging eldar knight.

My remaining knights charged the single eldar knight and one survived to remove it from play. (its worth mentioning if my opponent has split its attacks he'd have killed both, eldar knights are needlessly amazing.)

Then I forgot to take anymore photos... whoops. The eldar army spent the next few turns concentrating on removing my knight from play. I went for his prism tanks but left on a single hullpoint and cleaned up two squads of firedragons in vipers alongside the last guardians and a harlequin squad.

The game finished early on turn 5 with both sides on 9KP's, we had decided to use no other win conditions because sometimes its just fun to smash face. A well earned draw for everyone involved and great fun was had by all. Probably particularly me as I got to enjoy that freshly painted models on the table moment.

Blood angels contemptor dread 30k

It's just the Calth plastic dread with a deathwing terminator cyclone missile launcher on top who I carved up and stuck back together with a little more motion as I don't generally see the Blood angels as a stand about statically kind of legion. 

The deathwing launcher from above, perhaps I should have removed the sword detail but was lazy.

"Sorry son!" I wanted to fill the base with something interesting that might help pull the eye away from the deathwing launcher and Calth dread knee pads that blend into the metal joint too much, etc. so I knocked out this guy out of a calth torso, reaver head, palatine blade empty hand and some GS to give the impression of legs (well... leg) and a back pack.

The back, if you look closely at the leg and torso joins you can just about see where they've been cut apart and restuck but I think its not obvious enough to ruin the model.

Some fist action. I had thought about doing some freehand on the spaces but ended up quite liking the minimal detail.

Dakka dakka.

A lesson in changing the paint plan. Blood angels kitbash Chaplain

Today I got down to the details on my pet chaplain project. I knew as soon as I saw the Night Lords terror squad heads I was going to use one for something like this and I had picked up Evanus Enkomi's body sometime back and so I got to it and bashed out a chaplain and primed him black. He doesn't have a crozius so I might pinch the one from calth and pop it on a belt loop or something later but I like him as he is:

I had a vision of my average idea of a chaplain, resplendent in bone, black and golden armour.  With a little red spot colour to blood angel him suitably. However I did the bone in a shade of blue grey as a nod of the head to the night lord head. and then the red contrasted with this rather well and I had to rethink my plan.

I had thought to do the sanguinary guard shoulder pauldron's and the metal plates on his legs a gold/brass colour, I then thought maybe some heavy verdigris could help to keep the temperature balance between the cool bone and black highlights and the red but in the end after a discussion with a friend via whatsapp I went for a more neutral dark silver with a light verdigris and nuln oil wash.

This was also a cooler tone and then the addition of the scrolls and basing in warm browns helped to keep everything in line.

For those who are wondering about the blood drop, when I carefully trimmed off the minotaurs chapter symbol from the chest I was able to carve the resin into a fairly centred drop shape. (It is slightly askew but the leaning pose hides it well!)

A back view. I chose (all but one) blood angel bits that had blood drop gems on to push the obvious chapter tie given I was going for two fairly distinct pieces from other chapters to make up the bulk of the model and have a more even distribution of red bits all over the model to draw the eye.

Not my best script but it will do. Perhaps I'll repaint it sometime I have more light.

I added stronger highlights to the shoulder guards than on the rest of the black armour to help their details not be completely lost beside the paler skull and rib cage detail.

I love a yellow stripe. It's probably a bit much against the rest of the model, but it ties in with the unit he will be deployed with who are all very red to his black armour. 

I'm very happy with the final result although I can't help but wonder how he would have looked if painted in the other scheme to compare. I think this is the first time I've made a major change to what I'd had planned mid way through painting something. Short of a full repaint, changing a minor detail or adding more detail to what I'd set out t do.

I hope you like him and the moment of insight into the painting process. What do you think about the yellow? Or my decision to change my colour palette plans part way? Would gold have looked better?

Blood Angels Ven Dreadnaught

This has been looking at me for the last 6 or so years wondering when I'm going to show it some love. So I did! I'd bought it off ebay with a base coat and highlight done and I'd shaded it then put i aside. I did a bit of various weathering effects all over to break up the red and did some details and based. The eyes look a bit over the top straight on but fine on the tabletop. Niggley details were what I wanted to avoid and enjoyed painting something different to tactical marines.

 

Contrasting green seals to help the red look bright and break it up with the other details in neural colours.

Filthy exhausts!

Slightly lazy on the skulls I admit.

I was quite pleased with all the scratch effects.

A Stormbird's eye view.

A bit of base, I'm not sure all my bases colours are quite matching at the moment, its something I need to work on a little!

I'm quite excited to get onto my Calth Dread now! Hope you like him!

30K Calth and FW bits Kit bashing.

I started on the calth plastics and mass of random resin I've gathered in preparation for blood angels legion building. My first batch of 20 is stuck, along with the contemptor which I cut to pieces before sticking back together in order to give it a less static pose more like that of the resin FW ones.

They contain bits from calth, palatine blades, FW MKIV legion assault marines, Ultramarine, Blood angels, Sons of horus headsets. They need some sand, helmets, rocks and other basing bits before being sprayed.

I popped some bits together to look like a Sons of Horus Reaver having been shot up and about to be trampled. I need to check the rules, perhaps I need to get one of the resin missile launchers, maybe a terminator launcher will do?

When I've got a little time these will be getting based and batch airbrush based.

Blood angels 30k Legion progress group shot

I often forget to take pictures of things as I go, most notably when I'm painting to take things to a friend's place for a game where my painted blood angels tend to live as he very decently uses his flat like a gaming club for us. This unfortunately means when I remember I meant to take a picture of my guys, they're not always with me! So I thought I'd pop up a group shot of all my heresy area marines so far:

I've got a mix of FW Iron, Heresy and Maximus armour. As well as a couple of Corvus chapter masters.

The MKIV guys were done before the legion shoulder pads were released so I've gone with the old freehand and a few metal 40K BA pads.

I need to start better planning on my weapons, hopefully they give us inferno pistols as I've stuck a guy with one.

The other blood angels 30k demi tactical squad!

 Here you can better see the brightness of these guys, my previous post made them look a little darker than in person.

A quick side shot better shows how the airbrushed basing blends the models into their bases. No time to clean your feet mid battle! A touch of free hand to fill the shoulder pad space where I didn't have enough FW legion pads.

More obligatory blood drops and a back view.

I really like how these are coming along and hope the different shoulder pad trim colour fits alright with my normal black trimmed marines!

30k Blood Angels Iron Armour Demi Tactical squad

Here are the first few guys from my big airbrushed batch. Going to see if I can keep pumping them out as I've got a Calth and a whole box of bits of MKIV guys to get to once they're at least mainly done.

I went for slightly different angel colours, I tried black on the shoulder pads trim and it seemed too much so I went for a dark metal and washed it liberally with black instead. Sarge got some bronze trim.

I think the banner is supposed to go on the demi sarge... whoops.

I paint alot of blood drops to fill large spaces.

This mould line isn't so easily visible in real life but with the camera lighting it leaps out!

Another blood drop.

And finally the other guys!