Word bearer tacticals

More Word Bearers!

These are the WIP pictures of the second tactical squad, the three with bases were used during the Inferno tournament and so they jumped the queue. 

The rest of these are finished up to the point of needing varnish, which ofcourse I have run out of, or misplaced in a move. I just need to finish their bases so they can all be varnished in a batch. 

The next batch of 9, will finish both current squads to 15 man each, and complete the compulksory troops selections for the armylist I'm planning on running at Inferno II.

Quite a short post today, but I had these pics in my phone for a while and thought I could throw them up to show that there is still movement on the painting front. I'm trying desperately not to get motivated to do a Cults and Militia army using the new Genestealer cult models, but I can feel my willpower failing!

Thanks for looking. 

Gal vorbak on deck

Hi guys, welcome to another post about the Word Bearers.

I recently played in the first Inferno of the year in Brisbane, Inferno is a Horus Heresy narrative campaign tournament played 4 times throughout the year, with escalating points. 

The first Inferno was a tactical strike tournament with a heavy focus on zone mortalis. 

Here's a few pics of the tournament:

Stolen from the Eye of Horus podcasts Facebook page (I recommend giving them a listen too if you like HH, and don't mind Australian aka swearing)

As is usual for me I used the upcoming tournament as motivation to finish a unit from bare resin to varnish. 

Considering the strength of Gal Vorbak in the tactical strike arena, and low points levels, they got bumped to the head of the queue. 

As is usual for me too I needed to make the models unique, by adding plastic components from the WHFB spawn kit that came out years ago. 

I also won players choice which was amazing, and a shock considering the high quality of armies on display. Thanks to everyone who voted for me and all my opponents for great games! 

I should also say that the traitors carried the day, shutting the imperials out of their spaceport and granting us a small bonus in the next Inferno in May. 

Thanks for bearing with me through this long winded post. 

Ultimate bro team

Just a quick one today, while I had the photo booth setup I thought I'd take a family portrait of the finished primarchs. 

I think this phot really shows the base size creep that's taken place over the life of the character series, Horus' base is massive! 

But then he is the big cheese so that makes sense too. 

I took a bunch more pics of the WIP word bearers and a couple of other projects I have rattling round, so expect a couple of weeks with 1 or 2 posts each as I ration them out. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

Aurelian, Lorgar of the Word Bearers

Welcome to another belated update. 

Firstly as to why it's been so delayed, I'm expecting an addition to my life shortly, a baby girl, this as you can imagine is equal parts terrifying and exciting for me and has absorbed a lot of time and the kid hasn't even been born yet! She's due to arrive in 6 or so weeks so expect updates to be even slower than they have been after that. 

In other news I've finished Aurelian, Lorgar of the Word Bearers. 

As you can see he's only been done to a decent table top standard as he was batch painted with a bunch of tactical marines, and I actually ran out of Baal red during painting him.

I replaced to top of his crozius with a plastic piece from my bitz box (the warriors of chaos I think) as I lost part of the resin original in a house move. 

All in all I'm pretty happy with how he has turned out, and will post some more progress pics of the word bearers as soon as I can take pics of them. 

Next cab off the rank: Angron

Hello everyone, welcome to my series of Primarch posts.

I've had a collection of Primarchs building up in the background for quite a while, but they've been on the back burner as I finished units for gaming as a priority and uni got in the way.

Since I finished Horus however I've been making steady progress on the backlog and Angron is the second Primarch to be finished.


The model is from my recollection the oldest primarch in circulation, and the sculpt and basing style certainly shows its age. There has been a steady increase in the size and complexity of the bases in the character series, not entirely for the better. I would prefer FW to offer a gaming choice that comes without the over the top display bases for a more reasonable price, but that may just be me.

To that end I've actually decided not to paint the display bases for the rest (most) of the primarchs, providing me with fodder for conversions and objectives, as well as saving alot of room in the display case as well.

I have also decided to paint the remaining primarchs to a good TT standard to get them ready for some gaming. There was talk of a Primarch death match series at some of the tournaments in Brisbane which I think would be really interesting.

As you can see from the photos, I have experimented with a darker background for the pics this time, oddly it seems to make the images of the models lighter, and I actually had to dim the lights so the images didn't look too washed out.

Which background do you prefer? What do you think of AngryRon, is he showing his age, or holding up well?

Cheers

Aaron

Horus the Warmaster

Hi everyone, back from the dead again.

So recently I have moved house and as any gamer or modeler who's goes through this ordeal knows it involves packing and unpacking that most sacred space, the hobby table.

This can be painful, there's a lot of stuff, some of it get broken and things get lost, and it can take a while to get setup again.

Once you do though, it's like a blank slate, none of those half finished projects sitting there staring at you accusingly, no bits of offcuts and chucks of sprue lying around. It can be invigorating to tackle something new.

So with the constant heckling of Rictus I managed to finish the first of my Primarch miniatures, and I started with the big cheese himself, Horus.

This is the first miniature I have painted in a long time that didn't require the use of an airbrush, every step was done using standard brushes, and man am I rusty, it took along time to get back into the swing of blending highlighting and not weathering.

The cloak was shaded with purple inks, to give it a depth, but not be so dark as to be all black, I found that when I tried to use straight black to shade the cloak lost a lot of its regal appearance.

I hope the pictures are a lot better, as I finally invested in a photo booth setup, I bought a Foldio 2, which is a really nice product, easy to use and set up, though not exactly cheap.

I hope to do some experimentation with photo backgrounds, and might reshoot some of my old minis that I've done to test them out.

I also have 4 more Primarchs to paint (and another I just ordered) so expect some more painting progress in the not too distant future.

Like everyone else involved in HH I have bought a couple of sets of Battle for Calth and will be using them to start my third legion force, so watch that for developments when I finally get them in my hands.

Thanks for sticking around and reading this wall of text if you have, and thanks for stopping by, I hope to increase the tempo and consistency of posts to the blog, but we've all heard me say that before.

Cheers

Sheep

More Sons of Horus Reinforcements

Just a quick one today, I've had 3 Terminators sitting in my miniatures case half painted for ages, probably going on 18 months!

Consequently they were incredibly quick to finish off, only taking me one day of intermittent painting.

These take my current termis to 8 + a Praetor, lucky i have a Spartan to take them up the guts in.

Hopefully I will have something else to put up soon, maybe some more infinity, but the response to those was a bit muted so I don't think I'll spend too many posts on them and stick to HH and 40k.

Either way, the next few week will be quiet as the Uni year ramps up to exams, and I move house, which will obviously involve the packing of the studio (desk) and downtime before its set up again I'll need to buy a new compressor for my Airbrush too, as the industrial one I have now is inappropriate for the new apartment.

Anyone have any recommendations for a quiet compressor you can use inside?

Hopefully when I return the quality of photos will improve dramatically, I bought a Foldio2 collapsible studio on a whim, and having seen some reviews I'm confident even I can't screw it up, just need to make/buy a back ground for it.

Cheers for stopping by.

Word Bearers Boss-man

Every army needs a general, and Word bearers armies apparently need 2 compulsory HQ's, so here's the first of mine, the "obviously a bad guy, I don't know how we fooled the Ultramarines at all" Diabolgist.

 Long time followers of the blog might recognize him as the WIP World Eaters Praetor from awhile ago, just modified somewhat.

Apart from some minor alterations, the majority of the model stayed the same, I replaced the purity seals with the more WB parchments, added some skulls to the jetpack, which were supposed to be from his victims at Istvaan.

Oh and added horns, stops him wearing a helmet, but really drives home the fact he is an evil bastard, and the source of all the daemons I plan on painting for this force.

 The book has a subtle hint as to what god the planned Daemons will be from.

The broken symbol he's standing on is a cast I made of an old Buldog buckle company key chain, I think it makes a nice broken symbol of Calth, and is symbolic of the betrayal of the WB's in that theatre.

Initially I had tried to paint the legion numerals of the Salamanders, Ravenguard, and Iron hands, on the skulls, but they were just too long and detailed to fit onto such a small space convincingly.

Leading from the front . . . gets you killed now days in 40k/30k.

This final photo has been included because I think the colour is slightly more representative of the actual tone of the armour.

Thanks for looking.

Word Bearers Legion Symbol

Hey guys, just a quick one on the legion symbol I have had to free hand on all the miniatures I've finished so far.

Initially I tried to do the above symbol, but found it too time consuming, especially for tactical marines, and assault marines that will just die in droves.

I did one on Barry the test model, just to try it out, abut couldn't fit the daemon face into such a small space convincingly (its really distressing to spent so long free handing something, only to add battle damage to it as well).

Originally found on From the warp, I make no claim to this awesomeness

Then I found the above Image on From the warp, a now sadly inactive blog, and it saved my bacon.

Much easier to paint, and according to the FW books, still canon and current to the campaign on Calth and beyond, all the bases covered I can carry this on to all the rest of the units, and save the more complicated symbols for tanks, dreadnoughts etc that warrant a bit extra attention.

Cheers for checking in.

Bearers of the Word, Muster

Welcome one and all to another post that starts off with an apology for failing at updating, sorry about that . . . 

Inspiration for my scheme

As usual though, after a long hiatus I have pics of finished minis to make up for it.

 Its been along time since I painted anything for the Horus Heresy that wasn't for my Sons, the last thing I painted was that test world eater, who coincidently has been repainted to make it into this squad, he was the test again, and just turned out well enough to not need another re-re-paint.

Quite happy with how the metallic red has come out, it is a Vallejo model air colour, "Signal Red", there are several layers of GW washes to bring it down to a more muted colour though.

The eyes on these are yellow, not green as in the inspiration picture, not for some paint theory reason, but because I don't actually own any green paints! Surprised the hell out of me actually.

The only things I can't get to work are the inscribed geometric symbols in their armour, I  have actually repainted armour panels that I just felt it wasn't working on, like the chest of the guy with pelvic parchments.

I'll have another couple of posts on these guys coming up, and have a few more at the base coat stage. Funnily enough, while base coating my airbrush carked it, so these are the first models I have painted, entirely with brush, in a very long time.

It is also actually a really hard scheme to photo graph well, so I apologise for the quality of the pictures, I really need to set up a proper light box one of these days.

Thanks for looking, and hopefully I'll have something else for you all shortly.

Sons of Horus Reinforcements

G'day everyone, sorry for the lack of updates, but I am updating now, so get off my back Matt.

As seems to be my MO, a tournament provided the impetus to get the latest batch of models completed for this army.

I required 1850 points (40k) to play, and only had 1000 points painted at the time, and being generous, and organised as I am, I only gave myself 21 days to paint the remaining points. . . .

But I did it!

So presented here are the finished pics, because in the made rush I didn't take any WIP pics worth posting (also tried a new background/new way of photgrapghing the minis, I'm not sold on it though, I think the sun was causing too many shadows)

First up we have a repaint of the drop pods from my Khorne angels force. I didn't even re prime them, just sprayed them in SoH green mix and went from there.

These were used by one of my Dreadnoughts and the veterans squad.

Speaking of veterans

I used the breacher marines to represent DA veterans with combat shields, not the most cost effective choice, but they were fun, and never failed to blow up something big. If I were to paint them again, I would cut the 6mm tape I used to the hazard stripes in half, they just look slightly too big for infantry.

Next we have the second completed tactical squad, the lascannon is singly overpriced and ineffective in my hands, I think it took 2 hull points off the entire tournament.

Finally, one of my favourite tanks in all of 40k, and a staple of every SM list I have ever run.

Vindicator!

S10 pie plates just scare the pants off of the enemy, and I'm not scared to call in danger close fire missions either.

The list for anyone who was interested was:

HQ:

Azreal *(Ravenwing and Deathwing as troops)

= 215

ELITES:

Dreadnought – 100 -          Multimelta -0 -          Powerfist - 0 -          Venerable  - 15 Drop pod – 35 = 150 Dreadnought – 100 -          2x Autocannons - 20 -          Venerable  - 15 = 135

Veterans x7 – 126 -          Combat shields x7 -35 -          Meltagun – 10 -          Combi-melta x3 – 30 -          Power weapon – 15 Drop pod – 35 = 246

TROOPS:

*Deathwing terminators x5 – 220 -          Chainfist – 5 -          Assault cannon – 20 = 245	Dedicated transport – Landraider - 250 -          Deathwing upgrade – 30 -          Hunterkiller Missile – 10 -          Multimelta – 10 =300
Tactical Squad #1 x9 - 126 -          Vet Sgt – 5 -          Power sword – 15 -          Plasmagun – 15 -          Missile Launcher + Flakk – 25 Rhino – 35 -          Hunterkiller Missile – 10 =229	Tactical Squad #2 x10 – 140 -          Vet Sgt – 5 -          Power sword – 15 -          Plasmagun – 15 -          Lascannon – 25 = 195 “Strange, is it not, that so many I wish beside me stand against me, while at my back are only the flawed and damaged. I am a master of broken monsters."

HEAVY SUPPORT:                                                                                                         -Horus Lupercal

Vindicator – 125

-          Seige shield - 10

= 135

Thanks for looking, hope to have something more to post soon. 

Sons of Horus milestone!

21 months I have been painting these Sons of bitches, and I can finally say it. I have a playable force!

Only 1000 points, and not very optimised, or even fluffy, but its a start. . .

I guess I'll start with the new additions, firstly, HQ's.

This is Moritat Axander, and will pretty much ruin anyones day if he gets a turn of chainfire shooting at them. I haven't seen that many of these guys around the forums and blogs, which is surprising considering the damage potential they have with 2 plasma pistols.

I used the current 40k plasma pistols because I think the 30k ones look like a hair driers . . .

Unusually for me, he is clad entirely in Mk IV armour, although I did make a couple of modifications to it. There has been an extra armoured plate sculpted onto the left greave, and a plasticard strip and rivets added to the crown of his helmet to differentiate it from rank and file, and give him a pseudo crest/mohawk.

Next in the HQ slot is a Praetor in terminator armour, because a Moritat can't lead your force.

I took the normal Terminator Praetor and converted him to have lightning claws, just a simple matter of cutting all the relevant parts at the elbows and pinning them together. I also heated (carefully) the fingers on the left hand to give him a pointing/commanding pose. Looking at the pics, I need to add some definition eye sockets to the skull on the night lords shoulder pad.

 I've never been a fan of unhelmeted marines, something about going into battle without a lid when explosive projectiles are flying around just seems dumb to me. So I squeezed a Mk II helmet in with a bit of trimming. Unfortunately some super glue got into the eye slit and destroyed the detail, but it still works as a gaming piece.

And what is a pimp, without an entourage?

Basically just stock Cataphractii terminators from Forgeworld, its hard to improve on perfection. The only thing I added was a heraldic shield from the Grey knight terminators to the Sgt.

And thats it for the new stuff. The observant among you would have noticed that the basing has changed though. The new style matches the tyranids, and will match the Ad mech, and the table I am going to make (eventually) for my collection. This meant that the rest of the 1k needed to be rebased.

 The Sgt also had a head repose so he wasn't looking at his shoes.

Unfortunately I have to lose the stomping pose on the dread due to time constraints, but I kept the marine and the base so I can redo it at a later stage with another contemptor.

And thats 1000 points (plus a rhino), my photo set up isn't big enough to get all the models into one shot, but I'll take lots of pics at the 30k tournament being run by John from The Painting Bunker called The Emperors Legions, which is set to be epic, including a group shot.

Thanks for stopping in and reading my ramblings, what do you think of the new additions and new basing style?