Painting - Horus Heresy WIP & Dark Angel Terminator

So I'm working on not one Horus Heresy force for Tale of X Gamers but two!

With my own Mark IV Raven Guard in the works I also have Cody's Mark III Ultramarines on the painting tray.

First off my Raven Guard have had a base of Adeptus battlegrey with 3 washes of Nuln Oil to create a dull matt black finish. Highlighting, battle damage and some weathering have followed with a freehand Legion symbol to finish the painting off. The Raven Guard will all be based on the Secret Weapon line of blasted wetlands bases, suits the image in my head of the Raven Guard on the run from the Traitor Legions.

Cody saw a marine I painted in the new Thunderhawk blue and liked that it was a little different from the standard look of the Ultramarines. I have yet to add Legion symbols and unit markings but this is a good example of what the initial unit should look like, not all will have the gold face plated though. The gold is from a balthasar gold base, layered with auric gold then washes and highlighting to final effect. Cody has some Urban ruin bases coming so his forces will be scouring the ruins of Calth and other Ultramar worlds fighting Word Bearers and World Eater forces.

Finally I have finished a Terminator from Dark Vengeance, I really like these models and the new Dark Angel codex so once the Horus Heresy units are complete I'll do some more work on them. Not being a fan of the traditional dark green or bone white I took inspiration from the cover of the HH book Fallen Angels. The battered metal look with worn gold trim and personal script will be the look for this force. Also a neutral enough scheme if I want to mix and match with the Blood Angel codex giving me options for the Angelic marine army. This Terminator is on a Secret Weapon ruined temple base.

I'll post more pictures once the units are complete

Black Marines and Dark Marines?

With a busy Christmas over workwise and my wife having taken over use of the xbox and the new games 'we' got, its time to get focused back on some hobby projects.

I received my little box o goodness from Forge World today containing the 10 sets of mark IV armour and a pack of Umbra pattern bolters. Now these are of course for the Horus Heresy project and should be destined to be Raven Guard in the process of having the crap kicked out of them by Traitor forces, who I might add seem all the rage with other participants of the project... poor outnumbered loyalists...

Well in addition to this we have the new Dark Angel codex being released in less than a fortnight and fingers crossed, it has some competitive punch from Mr Skaven/Ogre Kingdom Vetock. Now I know some other vocal NZ gamers do not like the new DA range but I frakkin love it. The look is similar to what I was working towards with Cody's Grey Knights with personal heraldry and extra details on the armour. The new DA kits can take this to another level of gothic 'space knight' imagery.

I have the very nice DA models from Dark Vengeance and have used them in the narrative campaign but now I have some little choices to make. I would have prefered to paint the Dark Angels in a preheresy colour scheme as I dont like the traditional dark green at all. However as I was going to play Raven Guard for 30k I dont want to be working on 2 black marine armies. Looking at successor chapters I like the Guardians of the Convenant the most, however I will darken the metal armour considerably similar the Grey Knights I have already worked on.

So do I paint my DA as Guardians of the Convenant and stay with ninja Raven Guard for Horus Heresy or roll it all into one and have a combined pre heresy Dark Angel force good for both systems? I do think they can both function fine as seperate armies and the Raven Guard can always be a vanilla marine army for 40k.

Finished Grey Knights for FoB

Finished Cody's Grey Knights which he will be using this weekend at Fields of Blood in Wellington. They are based on Secret Miniatures Bone Fields bases with a couple layers of wet effects added.

I will touch up the power armoured marines force weapons before Saturday but other than than they are good to go.

Just have to do some final touches on my own Wraithseer for the same event.

Wryth's Week in Wargaming

Heres an update on what I've been doing wargame wise in the last week or so.

Above is the first 'Custode' Grey Knight Terminator I've started on for my Inquisition GK army. It's not quite done and as the photo shows I have to tidy up some edges but overall I'm happy with the worn golden shade to the armour. It was achieved with a boltgun metal and Mithril Silver base then successive layers of Golden Sepia wash and a little Devlan Mud. Not sure how I'm going to base the army yet but it may be amongst some arcane ruins or an old temple complex Coteaz and his forces have seen fit to cleanse.

This fella is a test paint for my possible Orc & Goblin force and I thoroughly enjoyed working on it. I know I would have potentially about 100 of these to paint but it was suprisingly fast to paint and not fiddly at all. The dirty golden hoods would be throughout the whole army as I see the potential force being comprised of travelling mercantile Orcs and Goblins capturing, training and selling off a menagerie of exotic beasties to other factions in the warhammer world. The yellow will represent their obsesson with gold/wealth. Already have ideas of a large wagons being dragged by Arachnaroks and Giants.

In actual game play I had a couple games last weekend against Dave from Feilding who I met at CTA. He brought along a very nasty dual Stormraven Blood Angel build. Game 1 was against my standard tournament Eldar build and I took control of the table soundly. A couple of bad morale checks from Dave saw his jump pack combat squads flee the table from mass fire and Dante's command squad not moving from their dropped position due to Nightspinner attacks saw a combined round of shooting and Harlequin assault wipe any threat off the board.

Cody played him next with his Dark ELdar but unfortunatly didn't do so well. I wasn't watching the game but as far as I can tell the Blood Angels massacred the DE.

I threw together a fun CSM force after that and even though I lost in the end I destroyed a satisfying amount of Daves force. After that quick game we had time for one more bash so out came the WIP Coteaz/GK list. Ryan has been helping me work on the list and via email had provided me with a very nice build with most of the toys I like in. The general strategy for the list is to create a nice 24" bubble of death for the opponent which worked wonderfully against the Blood Angels! Dave had no idea what hit him when my DCA/Crusader squad barrelled out of their Land Raider into Dante and co and the other DCA/Crusader unit aboard the reserved Stormraven flew in later in the game to wipe out his objective camping combat squads. The Callidus Assassin is proving a nice one shot nuisance for the enemy but usually getting killed by mass fire after the fact. The rest of the build works well though so I think I'll keep at it and see how it performs in the long run.

Other than all those games on Sunday we had an enjoyable D&D game monday night with the boys dealing with a Dragon, insane Bard and a Cryohydra in good order to carry on with the 4th main part of the Shackled City campaign.

I have been distracted as the weeks gone on though as my new limited edition Gears of War 3 xbox arrived =D oh xbox how I missed you so. I'm quite impressed with Gears 3 but thats no suprise however I have popped in Space Marine and my god what a bloody fun game that is. They have captured the look and scale of 40k so well and after a rocky start I've even been having a good time playing multiplayer too - gotta love the customisation tool set. A modified Black Templar for the loyalists and a sweet Alpha Legion skin for Chaos!

Anyways on the painting table now is a metal Wraithlord bound for Oz, a hadful of random Imperial Guardsmen as I experiment trying to find an Imperial colour scheme I like and more newly arrived Sisters of Battle for Wil!

Oh well a little more Xbox then back to painting right...