On the Painting Table

For my anniversary, my wife gave me a gift card to Games Workshop, so after a long drought of buying any GW product, I was able to do some hobby restocking. The local manager was pretty surprised to see me, and I think a bit glad I was there to spend, even if it was with a gift card. With that in mind, I decided to build something I had been thinking about ever since the Grey Knights came out - space marine librarians.



I used the legs, back torso, and nemesis swords and warding staves - both from the kit and from my left over bitz -as well as the back packs, non storm bolter weapon arms, and one or two of the bare heads from the Grey Knight troop sprues. Then I used some Space Marine heads, some pistol arms and one combat shield arm to build five librarians.



With the models built, I used the grey two part epoxy that I use for sculpting to give the four without loin cloths, loin cloths. Then, choosing to make two of the Librarians Blood Ravens, I add sculpted ravens to the right shoulder pad of both models, and a raven to the combat shield. I figure I can free hand the blood drop. I also added brass etched Ultramarines symbols to one of the librarians. For the final two I am uncertain as to their chapter, though i am leaning toward one Sons of Guilliman, and the other could either be a Disciple of Caliban or a Flesh Tearer. But then again, I'm not sold on either.

Salvation's Reach

When I was waiting to be able to afford Salvation's Reach by Dan Abnett, I perused a couple of reviews of the book. Most of the them were fairly negative, expecting Mr. Abnett to be amazing and feeling he fell short. I liked this book though, even with the negative reviews ahead of time. For the first time in this lengthy series, a story arc is well and truly developing. It doesn't have the sense of completeness that other Ghosts novels had when finished, but is more of an actual series novel. Whether the end phase of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade is coming, or just the end of the Tanith, I do not know. What I do know, is that this novel starts out slower, it has a gradual build up that leads to a pretty brutal battle at the end. Fans of the Ghosts will enjoy this novel, and it even has a few space marines sprinkled in for the power armour crowd as well. Overall it is a good novel that continues an interesting new story arc

Long Term Plans

It may seem like I am stalling, likely I am on some level, but then again this time of year is the busiest for my company, as Halloween is our Christmas in terms of sales. Suffice to say, I have little free time right now. However, I am working on a vindicator, though what normally takes me two hours to build is stretching out over two weeks right now. This has left me a lot of time to lament my lack of physical hobby activity lately, while thinking about my long term goals. I suppose there are a couple different types of gamers or hobbyists. There are those on a budget, who have to carefully plan out there exact army so they can play and have fun. There are those, like me, who want to have one of everything (hey, I only have one Chapter), and there are those who jump on the flavor/codex of the month. Okay, I'm sure there are more that those types, but lets be honest, some types of hobbyists have longer term goals than others.

My current goal is to build 1000 point armies for each of the loyalist legions. I decided that these can be first founding, or later founding armies. Which is a good reason to show off the new cover for the HH series on the BL blog. They should typify the fighting style of the legion, or at least contain a theme or unit make up that is exemplary of this. For example, my Flesh Tearers (which have grown to about 2000 points) have a Storm Raven, Librarian Dreadnought, Death Company, Sanguinary Guard and assault squads to make up their composition. My Executioners are an Imperial Fist founding, and while they are not a siege army, they do have a heavy emphasis on mid to close range fighting and were designed to be a space ship fighting scenario army.

So far I have done Flesh Tearers, Sons of Guilliman, Hawk Lords, Black Consuls (not quite finished though), Executioners and Disciples of Caliban (about half way to 1000) - representing Blood Angels, Ultramarines (twice), Raven Guard, Imperial Fists and Dark Angels respectively. Leaving the White Scars, Iron Hands, Space Wolves and Salamanders to be done. However, I can also do the Blood Ravens as they are a loyalist Thousand Sons chapter, and since I am quite partial to the Thousand Sons, I probably will. In fact my dilemma right now is whether I build the Vindicator I am working on as a Blood Ravens, Disciples of Caliban or some other chapter's tank. I'm leaning toward the Blood Ravens but still undecided. I need to figure it out soon though, as the tank should be built shortly.

Space Marine - Part 2

So I just finished beating the campaign for Space Marine, and not really having any models to show off this week (I'm in a modelling slump due to a huge increase of time that work is taking up), I figured I would share some thoughts. First off, for those who like to jump right into online play, play out the campaign. The story is great, and the graphics are awesome. The end cinematics are well worth slogging through the campaign to see. And the promise of a sequel is definitely there. My favorite part, was actually the small appearance of the Blood Ravens, I was glad to see them in the game. Hopefully next week I'll have something more interesting, like a review of Salvation's Reach at least.

2nd Pink Horror's Squad

Having spent a lot of time on space marines the past few months, I took the opportunity for a change and built a second squad of Horrors. I used the same kind of aesthetic for this squad as well, avoiding the bird beak heads as much as I could. Though I did use fewer flaming arms (I think).



One big difference between this squad and the last was the paints I used. I primed red using Duplicote. Then I based them in Lich Purple. I then used Vallejo Tentacle pink the main coat. Finally, I did an extreme highlight of P3 Carnal Pink.



The rest of the painting followed my old stand bys in terms of paint layers. The base uses a mix of ballasts in order to create a varied texture. Finally the models are sealed with Dullcote.