Brutes and Bronze Beasts.....

Firstly, the Brutes of the title, in the shape of the wip Death Guard Cataphractii. 

This is once all of the basecoats have gone on and the chipped paintwork done before oil washing. Probably some of my favourite Forge World figures to date, and certainly some that will grace my desk again at some stage.

Death Guard Cataphractii Terminators, wip

Secondly, the Bronze Beasts, or more specifically, Space Marines from the Minotaurs chapter. I've been threatening some 'Taurs for a while now and with the new Codex on the horizon I'll be adding a few units to my current force. I'll be using the Forge World books for much of my reference moving forward, Imperial Armour's 10 (Badab War) and 12 (Fall of Orpheus). Fingers crossed that we get an update of the Siege Assault list from IA10 as that's the list I generally run with them. 

For now though, a look back at a few of the Tactical Marines that make up the army.

Minotaurs Tactical Combat Squad

Next time I should have the Cataphractii finished, potentially something Contemptor shaped and the next stage in the evolution of the Minotaurs.

Astartes Anonymous?

Been a bit quiet of late sadly, I'd been gearing up for a second round of spinal surgery for a while only to be told that the op had been cancelled and moved to a different hospital. Shame they told me that while I'd already been sat in a waiting room for 4 hours already.

On a brighter note, I finally managed to finish up the first full 20 strong Legion Tactical Squad for my Heresy-era Death Guard army. Bit of procrastination to get there but I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Death Guard Legion Tactical Squad

The Sergeant is my favourite figure in the squad, probably as it's the only figure that isn't holding a bolter across it's chest! Still, a squad this size will make a mess when it finally gets onto a table.

Next up for the Death Guard will be a squad of Terminators, all in Cataphractii armour, probably my favourite of the Terminator armour designs. Went plasma heavy with this squad as my local meta is heavy on MEQ's.

Death Guard Cataphractii Terminators wip

Lastly, the behemoth that is a new Space Marine codex is on the horizon. Personally I can't wait, having played Marines since I got into 40k close to 20 years ago. I'm going to put my hands up and admit I was tempted to paint a new Ultramarines army with this release, but good sense over ruled, coupled with a desire to see the Centurions in a Minotaurs scheme. Speaking of which i'll come back in the week with an update on the Cataphractii and a glimpse into what i've already done with the Minotaurs.

Of Lizards And Men.....

As I mentioned in my last post I'm looking at putting together a Lizardman army, using my good lady wife's cast off figures. It was mainly down to needing an excuse to paint the new monster kits, the Carnosaur in particular, which I think is one of the best looking big kits GW have released.

I've always had a fascination with dinosaurs so I struggled to pick a scheme - should I stick with the 'traditional' blue or go with something else? I thought of using a more natural scheme on the basic troops but came to realise that they'd end up blurring into the base. Back to the blue then. It does mean I can go with a more natural scheme on the big fellas.

With the blue in mind, I set about painting a test figure. I went with the Lizardman themed blues from GW, basecoating with thinned Sotek Green, then shading the scales with thinned Stegadon Scale Blue. With the two colours I thinned them with glaze medium to keep the colour vivid but also allowing it to flow in a closer manner to a wash. Characters will get more detail but for a rank and file figure I think it does the job.

I'll knock up a tutorial in time but for now I'll leave you with the test figure.

More clutter and some scales.......

Been a little bit quieter than I'd like the last few days, had a few days away with the wife for a bit of R&R before it all gets crazy again.

I've got a few ideas for posts lined up, but for now I'll open a little window to the state of my desk -

What a mess.......

Excuse the mess if you can and I'll talk you through what's there.

More marines for my Heresy Era project
Grey Knight Terminators
Plaguebearers
and the interesting one - the brown box and tubs are the remains of my wife's Lizardmen army - she picked them up around the time the current plastic Saurus and Skinks were released, oddly enough around the time we got together - nearly 10 years ago.

I'm going to have a look at stripping a couple of the Saurus back to bare plastic and have a go at a couple of test schemes - one in the 'traditional' blue and a more natural scheme. More on those later though, for now, I've got a desk to clean......

Finished Germans and untouched Astartes..........

The posts keep coming, much to my shock I can tell you, particularly given how infrequent they used to be!

I've finished up the Germans I was working on finally, glad to see the back of them to be honest, they've been sat on the desk for a while half finished and now they are done I can move onto something else.

German Infantry Squad for Bolt Action by Warlord Games. Click the pic for a better look!

Next up another 5 Mk3 Astartes for my Heresy era Death Guard army to add to a Tactical Squad. For those not familiar with Forge World's excellent Betrayal book, Tactical Squads can be up to 20 Astartes strong - with the Death Guard's preference for infantry assaults a 20 strong squad was to me the best place to start the army. This will be 11-15 of the squad, with the command element to add last.

Mk3 Legion Astartes pre-paint

When I get a bit more time I'll be looking to do a tutorial for how I paint the Death Guard, anyone interested?

Germans and Questions.........

Been a quiet few days around here, the only real noise being made being the screaming as I get to grips with Windows 8, but more on that later.

Operation: Clean Desk is moving slowly forward, with the German Squad now having it's basecoats.....

.......and wash applied.

A few quick and dirt highlights and basing and these fellas will be done. Next up for work will be another 5 Astartes for my Heresy Era Death Guard army and possibly a start on my Blood Bowl team, but that's for another post.

Painting Black

A lot of the 40k rumours over the last few days have been pointing to a Black Legion supplement for the Chaos Marine Codex, something I'm very much looking forward to as a Black Legionnaire for many years.

I've painted black many different ways over the years and I think it my be time for a change for my new Black Legion force - what are your favourite methods for painting black? Feel free to throw a link up to pictures of your own examples or stuff you've found online.

Photo Editing

I had a sad feeling this would come. I recently updated my main PC and it came with Windows 8 as the standard operating system. I'm going to be fair to it and stick with it for a month or two before making the decision to keep it or replace it with Vista. My one problem is the way pictures are dealt with - my usual process is to do a basic white balance/crop job using Gimp but I feel it's lacking of late. What do you like to use for editing photos? Have you found anything useful online to help out?

I'll throw up a post later in the week hopefully with the finished German unit and a collection of the links you might throw up.

Until next time, may your end stay wet and pointy.......

Cleaning off the desk.......

Wow, 3 posts in a week? Don't get too excited, it probably won't get any better. Might even get worse.


The wonderful British weather has well and truly buggered me the last few days. I'm very sensitive to heat, and being a grumpy sort to begin with my fuse gets a bit shorter the hotter it is. It also means that trying to paint anything is an absolute nightmare as the paint decides to dry up before you get it on a brush, let alone on a figure.

I did however manage to finish off a unit of Forge World Tartaros Terminators to add to my growing Minotaurs Space Marine army (i'll show that off in another post). They were an impulse buy at the 2012 Forge World Open Day and hadn't been touched since. I had a look at the parts and made an immediate call to Forge World as the castings were disgusting to be frank. The replacements weren't that much better but workable.

I'll be the first to admit it's not my best paint job, I just wanted to get them finished and off my desk. I did however have a bit of a brainwave - none of the figures come with any kind of purity seals or scroll work sculpted on, something I didn't spot until they were practically finished. Enter the Grey Knight Terminator kit and a handful of long flappy purity seals later the unit was complete.

Minotaurs Chapter Tartaros Terminator squad

On the subject of cleaning off my desk, my next project presented itself - a 10 man Heer Infantry squad for my Bolt Action German army. Bit of a departure for the blog as normally I'm a 40k guy, but I was really captured by the mechanics of Bolt Action. Also lets me dip my toe into historical gaming.

Instead of the 'you go, I go' system that 40k uses, Bolt Action uses a container that holds a selection of counters for each player. A counter is drawn, and the player who's counter was drawn completes an action with one unit - whether it be move/shoot, run, overwatch, ambush or similar. Once that action is completed, another counter is drawn and the process followed again until there are no more counters in the container. At that point the turn is over and the counter is re-filled. Doesn't sound that exciting now I've gone back and re-read that but it's great in practise and well worth checking out if you fancy a break from 40k or other GW games.

German Heer Infantry Squad by Warlord Games

I've had the above squad sat on my desk in that state for at least 3 weeks now, think it might be time to get them finished. My Germans tend to get a pretty basic paint job as it's more a gaming army than anything else, though i'll  make sure the vehicles get a decent job with some weathering and other effects.

How my Germans look in the basic uniform. Very basic paint job but they look good on the table.

With any luck the next update should be some more work on the Germans, really does depend on the weather. Thinking the evenings will be the best bet.

Ramble On......

You’ll have to excuse me if I ramble a bit here, I'm thinking out loud. Not a particularly tidy process.

When I first found out about hobby blogs, I (naturally) followed the ones that did something to catch my attention - 

Interesting paintjobs? Followed.

Unique conversions? Followed. 

Ideas I wanted to steal and improve upon? Followed.  

You get the idea.

I’ve seen blogs fall by the wayside in a similar manner to my own, and i’ve seen them go from producing average content every so often to great content on a weekly basis. While real life can always get in the way (remember my spinal surgery a couple of years ago? That gets to happen again soon!) the blog always seems to sit there like the loyal pet, waiting for the owner’s return.

I normally visit the blog every day, sometimes multiple times a day to see what everyone else is up to – my blog list to the right became my feed. None of this RSS nonsense for me.

Special mention should go to Ron at the sadly now defunct, From The Warp. I figured the way to push the blog was to get it on his blogroll, at the time (to my knowledge) the most read. Probably not the best way to go considering the slapdash nature of the updates but It seemed to gain a few readers who may not of discovered the blog otherwise.

So bringing me to the point of my little ramble – what do you want to see from the blogs you read and why do you read them regularly?

Seeing as I like to read blog posts with pictures in, here's a hint to a project coming in the future.....

Hmmm, is this thing on?

Well, just over 2 years later and I come back to the blog. Just feel drawn back to the idea of it I think.

Is anybody still out there?

A few Astartes from one of my current projects.