From GregB: One More Post - Sons of Horus Space Marines

A Veteran Tactical Squad for the Sons of Horus. 28mm figures from Forge World

Good day everyone! I am pleased to share that I received my first COVID-19 vaccine jab yesterday, and so this will be my last submission to the Analogue Hobbies Quarantine and Vaccine Challenge. The group of figures you see here in this submission is a Veteran Tactical Squad, clad in the colours and livery of the XVI Legion Astrates, the "Sons of Horus". These are resin figures from Forge World, part of GW's "Horus Heresy" setting, often referred to as "30k".

Trooper carrying a meltagun, flanked by Marines carrying fancy bolt guns.

Lots of intricacies on the power packs - you also can see the handy chainswords carried by the veteran troopers.

I am a huge fan of this setting, and I generally love how GW has, over the years, issued a huge variety of models and figures for the 30k setting. There are many different variants of power armour for the Space Marines, many different variants of weapons, and a large assortment of bespoke accessories, such as the shoulder plates featuring the symbol of the Sons of Horus legion. This huge assortment of components, broadly speaking, are all compatible with each other - this is an awesome feature, and for dorky fan like me, allows for many components to swap in to the different units.

Vox operator on the left, Vexillary on the right.

More detail on the backpacks - I quite like the bizarre little details on the communications pack.

The squad sergeant's ominous "power claws" and plasma pistol point, while in the background you see the trooper with the heavy bolter, a support weapon.

A lot of rivets and segments in the Mark II power armour...a bit of a challenge to paint, and I was pretty rusty in terms of painting these guys, but they still came out OK.

These particular Marines are wearing Mark II variant power armour - an "early" pattern of armour, but carrying "later" patterns of bolt guns, with box magainzes. The chainswords they are carrying are spares from the plastic Mark III marine figure set, as are the special weapons seen on the officer. The heavy bolter is a plastic accessory from the plastic Mark IV marine figure set. So a lot of different component packs came together here, which was great. Besides, I figure veterans would be the sort to keep the older armour, but ensure they got their choice of the nicest/newest weapons :)

Horus for hope!

You may note that the transfers are still quite glossy in these photos - it has not been "safe" to spray the final coat of matte spray on these figures, so that may wait for some time - that is something I will get to at a later time.

The embossed shoulder armour plates are great - not the cheapest thing to decide to like, but I do love them.

So that's a wrap for me! Thanks all who participated and shared comments. I look forward to seeing you all again in the next edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. Cheers. 

From GregB: XVI Legion Moritat - Horus Heresy

"Moritat" in the colours of the XVI Legion Astrates - the Sons of Horus.

The wait for a vaccine continues in Northern Ontario. Hopefully it won't be much longer. So here is some more painting to share. This is a 28mm Space Marine "Moritat", painted in the colours of the XVIth Legion Astrates, known as the "Sons of Horus", part of GW's "Horus Heresy" setting. This is a resin figure from Forge World...which is part of GW, but still separate...or something...I really don't get that, but I digress.

Guns drawn, ready to fire...and the helmet of a previous victim lying on the base...

So what is a "Moritat"? Well, the "Horus Heresy" was a giant civil war which tore the Imperium apart. Space Marine Legions fought against Space Marine Legions, and the fighting caused the odd Space Marine here and there to crack up a bit, the nature of the conflict being such that it wrecked the careful mental/psychological conditioning/programming that was part of their creation. While still physically fit, such mentally damaged Marines could no longer be fully relied upon to fight effectively as part of their units, and so were pulled from the battle line. The Legions would never "waste" an asset, however - a Space Marine is still a Space Marine...and so such mentally fractured Marines are made in "Moritats", and sent to battle as one-man armies. Not suicide missions per se...just loners at the fringe of the battle plan. If they survive, great. If not...well, they will still have cause serious issues for the enemies of the Legion.

The cabling is a pain the @ss...some crude "green stuff" repairs were needed - I've got no skill using "green stuff", but you have to start somewhere? Practice is practice.

The Moritat seen here wears Mark IV power armour, with extra plating. He has fancy special guns - they are dangerous to use, but whatever - this guy is going into battle on his own, so who cares, right? He is equipped with a jump pack to get close to the enemy as fast as he can and start shooting. He has a variety of extra targeting kit to help his shots land more accurately.

For the Warmaster!

It has been almost a year since I last painted some 30k figures, and it was fun to dig into the packing crate and pull out some figures like this one. It has been waiting for paint for just over a year - I first assembled it during my previous burst of 30k output, in spring last year. There was a particular challenge with this figure - the cables running from the weapons to the backpack of the armour. Resin features like this are not easy to assemble, and even with careful use of hot water etc. the cables can break because they need to be bent/turned into position. That happened here, requiring "green stuff" to be used for repairs on one of the cables. I have almost NO experience using "green stuff" to do anything, so my repair execution was pretty crude...but it still worked enough to get the figure into the line.

Thanks for reading everyone - hope you are well!  

From TeemuL: Genestealer Cultists (15 points)

Tomorrow I'll be able to book my first vaccination, but I have no idea how fast I can actually have it. But it is coming and this Challenge is going. There's at least one post coming up after this one, I have been lazy doing the finishing touches and photographing them, but they are coming.

Here's three three-armed Genestealer hybrids from the Cult. Actually I don't know what they actually are, these are the first ones I painted, which look like this. They came from the Deathwatch Overkill box by Games Workshop. I have a small army of these guys now, more than enough for Kill Team, not enough for Deathwatch Overkill and definitely not enough for WH40K (even for a small crusade). My color theme for these is the purple skin with light blue eyes, tongues and robes with green protective suits - armored kind of things are drybrushed with blue, the other parts with yellow to get some variation. Much of the equipment is painted with pale white and everything is washed with Drucharii Violet before the drybrush or highlights (even the metal parts). I seem to use Drucharii Violet for many things, these Genestealers, my Sylvaneths and even for my Death Guard. But it gives a nice tone and shadow effect, which I like.

Thanks for reading, next time something with no violet! Take care, stay safe and paint!

From GregB: Knights for GW's "Adeptus Titanicus"

Acastus Knights for Adeptus Titanicus - kits from GW.

Hi everyone! It looks like it will still be quite a while before any meaningful vaccine supplies make their way to my part of Northern Ontario here in Canada, so I hope you won't mind seeing a few more submissions...for this one, we continue with the war machines of Games Workshop's grim and dark future. These particular machines are "Knights" - specifically, "Acastus" Knights. They are multi-part plastic kits from GW, part of the model range for the game Adeptus Titanicus.

Rear view showing the armour plates on the back of the torso and legs.

What is a "Knight" in the dark sci-fi world of GW? No horses here. It is, rather, yet another large walking war machine. Of course, in the grim darkness of the future, "large" is a relative concept...you see, the Knights are large war machines - they would tower over normal humans. But they are nonetheless small compared to the massive Titans. Knights only have a single pilot. The weapons mounted on a Knight, while destructive to enemy vehicles, infantry and fortifications, have a limited impact compared to the neighbourhood-and-city crushing armaments of the large battle Titans like the Reaver class example I posted last week.

Energy weapons ready to blast enemies to particles.

In the world of GW's Adeptus Titanicus, the Knights are organized into "households", pseudo-medieval orders which serve as a sort of combat auxilia to the Titan Legions. Thus when the Titans go to battle, the Princeps of the great war engines are often accompanied by groups of Knights. These machines need to act carefully on the battlefield where Titans are present, but when used with cunning they can be a serious pain for your enemies. They can harry flanks and distract opponents - and if they get close to the enemy Titans, they can cause critical damage and even score kills on their much larger opponents.

There are some rocket launchers mounted on the top of the hull...you can model them closed up, but where is the fun in that? :)

There are many, many different classes of Knight available. These Acastus Knights are the largest class of Knight available...about as large as a Knight can get, nearly, but not quite as large as the small "scout" Titans. As such, the weapon systems on them hit hard, and their armour is a bit more robust. Acastus Knights can certainly threaten enemy Titans, and even take a bit of a beating, but are not as mobile (even if they are much more mobile than the huge Titans). These two Knights are painted in the red-and-black-gold colours I use for the loyalist Knights in my Adeptus Titanicus collection.

Ready to fight in the name of The Emperor. I'm sure Horus is laughing somewhere...

These kits are very, very nicely done by GW. Real beauties to work on, with tons of tiny details. As far as backstories go in GW's 30k/40k setting, I must say I am indifferent to the stories of the Knights (the Titan Legions are SO much cooler), but there are many out there who enjoy all of the Knights. If you are one of those folks, you will be blown away by these kits. The detail is insane - you even get a choice of different auxiliary weapons (either lascannons or autocannons). Wow. 

"Family photo" of my upgraded loyalists for Adeptus Titanicus.

With these two Knights now stepping into the line, the rebel and loyalist sides to my collection are balanced out, with the same amount of God engines available to each side. I'm not sure why that should matter - we can't even get together to game anyway - but is it the sort of thing that lingers in my hobby brain. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this recent run of Adeptus Titanicus kit. I think some other GW subjects will soon be appearing here as I continue to wait for a chance to get a vaccine...

From TeemuL: Spite-Revenants (25 points)

Today I present you some Spite-Revenants, plastic GW models for Sylvaneth army in the Age of Sigmar. I painted these in the similar colors as my dryads, the wooden part is pale purple, leaves are metallic red and skin is yellowish purple. The aim is have angry looking fellows and I think I have succeeded. These sculpts are quite angry looking themselves, but the the painting enhances that. The bases are dark brown mud, kind of a swamp with some skulls. The colorful things represent spiritfolk, they are bright colored, but monocolored. You might guess, they are simple Contrast jobs.

 

No idea about my vaccination, but my next post is almost ready. Stay safe, stay sane!

From SanderS: More Stalingrad Russians!

 Hoi,

 

Still beavering away at the big Warlord Games Stalingrad commission. I try to alternate between a unit of Russians/ Germans and something I like to paint for myself, today it's time for some more Russians. I batch paint them by priming colour and these chaps are all based in Valejo English Uniform since they all wear the padded/ insulated winter gear so typical for Russians at the Eastern front. As such there's too many submachine guns and the poses of the LMG team don't match up.

Another 10 chaps done still about 100 to go!

Cheers Sander

From StuartL - I'm Still Here

Um... It's been far too long since I last posted. Sorry.

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy with hobby stuff, just not really very much painting. I've been assembling minis and drafting up army lists (handily doing double duty as shopping lists) and all of the other things that go into this wonderful hobby of ours. I have done some painting, but my inner Squirrel has had me start a batch of minis, get distracted, put them to the side, start another bunch and so on. Thankfully some of those batches have started to get close to completion, so I do have something to post today and a bit more to come sooner rather than later.

This cyclops is from Reaper Minis' Bones range and it was a very easy paint job. Which is actually kind of depressing as it has taken me far too long to get done. He's quite a chunky fellow and stands about 50mm tall.

At some point I'm probably going to use him for D&D, along with all the other RPG minis I have painted over the past year and a bit that my group has been socially distancing.

From SanderS: Epic? Not so much!

 Hoi,

 

As a subscriber to Wargames Illustrated I regularly get their freebies; plastic sprues provided by big brands (mostly Warlord Games) to get the gamer into new periods. One of the recent issues came with a sprue of the new 15mm ACW Epic batlles figures from WG. Now I have literally enough figures in 1:72 scale lying here to make 22 batallions of 24 figures each, so I have no intentions to start the ACW in 15mm but I gave these a try since I had them anyway. I am sorry if my opinions are going to offend any of you, but: I really do not like these figures at all! They are lacking in detail, depth and the fact they are moulded together in rows makes them not only hard to paint but to base as well (at least using my tried and tested way of basing). 

Therefore these are not my best work ever and so I am not proud of them, but since i have painted these within the time frame of this challenge I thought I'd post them anyway.  

Cheers Sander

From GregB: Another Titan - Nemesis Warbringer

More reinforcements for Legio Gyphonicus - a Nemesis Warbringer Titan.

Hello again everyone! Here is another war machine from GW's Adeptus Titanicus. This is "Nemesis Warbringer" Titan (love those names), a multi-part plastic kit from GW. This is another Titan for Legio Gyphonicus, the "War Griffons", a loyalist Titan Legio that fought on the side of The Emperor during the wars of the Horus Heresy.

The new Warbringer, together with the Reaver Titan from my previous submission.

This Titan class is slightly larger than the Reaver in my previous post, and is still broadly a "medium" class of Titan. It is still covered in heavy weaponry, of course! You can see all sorts of big guns all over this thing.

Now THAT is a big gun!

A lot going on up there on top of this Titan...

There are even some anti-aircraft batteries up there...just in case!

Where this machine stands out from the others is the interesting weapon mount on the top of the Titan. This is a "quake cannon" - no need to get into the specifics here, but you can tell that it is a really big gun, and it has really satisfying big-gun-type effects in the game. 

You can just make out the crew access hatch in this view...

This is a beautiful model kit from GW, but the assembly for this requires more caution than the other large Titan models I have built to date. It also needs more painting of sub-assemblies than the other main kits for the model range. Many of the components/armour plates overlap, but do not cover completely, the various sections where they are mounted. I get obsessive about these situations, and end up wanting to be sure everything is painted, even if there is only a 0.000005% anyone will see one of these mostly-covered areas. 

So much great detail on the armour plates...really great job by GW on these kits.

Lots of overlapping plate armour on the legs and torso.

So putting one of these together and painting it is a bit of a slow process, at least for me - I paint a lot of the components (like the armour plates) separately from the base structure, and then assemble afterwards. That takes more time, and is more fiddly for sure. But it is worth it in the end - I really like the model, and I'm glad to have one of these available for my loyalist forces.

Thanks for reading! Hope you are all well out there.  

From SanderS: Home Alone!

 Hoi,

Since I had a week off from work I finally had time to sit down and paint one of the many TTCombat Streets of Venice buildings I have lying around. This builidng is one I put together from several left over bits (hence the missing door) from other kits and I tried out some new weathering techniques involving sponging and washes.

 

 

 

If I learned anything from the process, it's that I need to go far lighter/ brighter in my colours prior to applying the washes as they darken down the whole subject quite a bit.

I am really pleased with how the building turned out and am going to use the techniques on my other buildings as well.

Cheers Sander