Galleries

Warhammer 40,000 – Harlequins For Kill Team

While I am spending time with my clippers, scalpel and glue. I guess it is inevitable that other kits might get completed.  Well, put together at least.

Where as the Gellerpox Infected might number in the teens as a full Kill Team, these Eldar Harlequins are slightly more ‘Elite’ so hardly any are needed.  Only six Players can be fielded as a full 100point force.  A £25 box of figures from GW doesn’t often supply you with everything you need.

In this case it doesn’t either, as to get the crew I wanted I would have needed to buy a second set just to get the weapon options I required… But with a slight compromise on weapon options, and some further juggling of points values, I managed to keep it at six figures and hold onto my sanity to boot.

The figures themselves are quite slight, as you might expect for elves in space.  It’s my first space elves, ever, so please don’t look too closely at how I built them.  To get a sensible pose out of them (not looking like they just tripped over) I was less than careful in checking the pieces used in their construction.

I am pretty sure some of the boys are now eunuchs and a few of the ladies might be packing a little more than you bargained for..

Either way, with a little paint on them they might not get noticed…

And NO, when it come to it, I will not be trying to paint diamond patterns on their tiny little limbs…

Warhammer 40,000 – Gellerpox Infected Kill Team

With two or so Kill Teams completed to a playable state, it’s time to decide what to do next.  I really do need to play a few games the the teams that I have before I know what to tweak or add to the teams.  I have a few figures already side lined for those teams, selected from the odds and sods section of my collection.

While I get those game played though, I don’t want to be wasting my time doing nothing.

Therefore, its clipping, trimming and building time…  Coronasan split the Rogue Trader set with me (well he left them here for me to fall in love with. All the time knowing I would be a sucker for some brilliant new Nurgle inspired sculpts).

This Kill Team is a set of larger and smaller models. Representing the infected engineering room crew of a deep space explorer.  That, and the collected vermin found in the bulges of any long adrift vessel.  The biggest are these Nightmare Hulks. Lending a level of muscle to a kill team that has little or no shooting to speak of.

Led by Vulgrar Thrice-Cursed, on the right above, this chap being the conjoined remains of the chief engineer and his two first mates.  These have some nice touches that, although space travellers, feature sea creatures with almost C’thulhu like overtones.

The mid sized guys are the Vox-Shamblers, a bunch of mutated crewmen. Lesser souls that are now part man, part machine and wholly plague zombies…

Glitchlings (on the left) and Sludge Grubs (on the right) make up one half of the hordes of massed dross.

Eye Stinger Swarms (on the left) and Cursemites (on the right) finish off the horde of little gribblies that should distract, if not damage, my opponents kill team.

Now that these are built I wonder when I will get round to undercoating them.  Not the best time of year for using a spray can.  Might be time to unravel the Airbrush from the accumulated rubbish that has gathered under my desk…

Warhammer 40,000 – Biggest Green Gitz

The last of the Space Orks, that I intended to paint in order to have a playable (but unlikely to be effective) Kill Team, are these five Burna Boys.

Well, actually there are four Burna Boys and their ‘Spanner’, which I guess is their equivalent of a Boss.

The Burna Boys got their first coats of paint last night and before I nodded off I got the Spanner to an almost similar state.  Fast and dirty painting (my usual style) and using a mix of brown tones from the brighter end of my paint collection.

Tonight I managed to get the last of the base colours done and then glue them together in their final poses.  As a consequence of the multi part design, not all of the poses are perfect. Some of the shoulders for example do not want to fit on to the bodies where shoulders are meant to be…  Well not if you want the second arm to actually find its way to both the gun and the Ork…

Anyway while the washes are drying let me remind you of the force.  Five Autumnal Goblins with Guns (Gretchin to the true 40k fans).

A Boss Nob with big choppa, his Gunner Boy friend (Not boyfriend! Not in public anyway) with Big Shoota and their Kommando cousin.

Have now been joined by not one…

Not two…

Not even three…

But four Burna Boys, all armed with…  Wait for it… Great big Burna’s (flame throwers to normal folks).

Not only that but there is also their Spanner and his Kustom Mega Blaster…

Yes, a fine bunch of green skinned lads (flamethrowers make it easy to hit stuff when shooting, so these guys might be the only boys to kill anything when shooting with this  Kill Team).

All in all a nice looking Mob of Space Orks (and goblins). There are thirteen of them so, from here on in, they will be known as ‘Lucky’s Louts’. Although I might wait until after their first outing to decide who of them ‘Lucky’ actually is…

Warhammer 40,000 – Bigger Green Gitz

As the drying rack is now turning well and truly green, another few items have been moved onto the painting desk, to make more room.

The last of my Space Ork Kill Team have had a green wash applied to their skin and, as these Burna Boyz are carrying bloody big guns, I have decided to paint them in pieces and stick them together nearer the end of the process.

To make room for them, the last three ‘normal’ Boyz have been moved to the top of the painting queue.  These guys have sensible poses that makes painting that much easier.

The first (on the left in the picture above) is from the basic Ork Boyz sprue with both weapons cut off as I wanted something slightly bigger as his weapon.  He will be an Ork Boy Gunner in Kill Team so doesn’t get a Choppa either (but can throw stikkbombs).

The second (middle in the picture above) is a very basic Ork Boy with no changes to him at all.  He will be fielded as a Kommando, so I went with an Axe for him rather than the classic Choppa, and although you can’t see it in the photo, I painted his shirt in striped camouflage.

The last (on the right in the picture above) is the Gretchin Herder that came with the Little Green Gitz I painted earlier. I had scavenged his original arms, for use on another couple of Orks, so I had to find a suitably large gun, and a Choppa that looked slightly special, as he is destined to be my Ork Boy Nob…

These chaps were painted over the course of a Saturday afternoon and had a further green wash to the skin to darken them slightly. This was a result of me getting such an unexpectedly autumnal finish on the skin of their smaller teammates.

If I were the type of person that worried about such things, I would likely feel the need to make up some reason for this difference! Maybe something like ‘the larger an Ork the more green vegetables they need in their diet’!

Or maybe not…

Warhammer 40,000 – Little Green Gitz

With the scouts nicely out of the way the green skin tide can wash in.

Sadly that sentence stopped me typing for longer than is proper, as I dwelt on the fact that it was not only cheesy but fairly apt.

Some of you will cringe with me, thinking of green ink washes, tide marks and the fact that thirteen figures does NOT make a green skin invasion…  For everyone else I shall move swiftly on…

I seem to be taking small bites out of the painting pile at the moment and achieving more that way than any other.  With that in mind, I started painting my green skinned Kill Team with these 5 Gretchin.  I suspect they will be first to die in my games, so why not make them the first figures to paint.

They are a wonderfully varied bunch of figures.  Full of character and little details.  Being plastics, some of those details do blend or merge into the main body of the figure in an annoying way.  Pouches that become trousers and then loincloths, without a point of division, spring to mind… Where as other details stand out, ready to be painted, like these tiny fingernails and teeth.  They even have eyes that are large enough for me to attempt to paint.

For speed painting a limited palette was used.  Various browns and tans mainly, with a touch of red, silver and brass that I intend to use on all the larger Orks to tie the force together.

Another thing that ties a force together is base material.  I tend to try not to paint bases these days. A mix of coloured flock or grit suits me for most things and in this case – A mix of Sand, Grey Grit and some Red/Brown Stone Chips. Nostalgia almost made me paint the edges of the bases using a pot of old GW Goblin Green that I still have. I managed to avoid that disaster with the use of a dark earth colour instead.

When the whole force is completed I might add some plant life to the bases in either grass or straw tones.  As the skin tone of the goblins is almost an autumn green/ brown it might be fitting to use the straw but I shall leave that until they are all done.

For now though, the first five Gretchins are done, and the Orks are sat awaiting their turn under the brush…

Warhammer 40,000 – Scouts Completed.

With the test scheme done I should be able to plow through the last 4 scouts with ease.  The only thing that might slow me down is my own inability to slow down.  In my rush to get them done and away, I started adding a wash to these guys and started washing off the not quite dry silver.

They say patience is a virtue.  It certainly saves time…

When I had waited for the silver to dry properly (not just sitting them in front of a small fan heater for 5 min) the wash went on much easier.

My final collection in all its glory.  12 bodies. A 10 man squad can be played with differing heavy weapon options in games of Warhammer 40K (or two squads of 5 each with their own heavy weapon).  About 8-9 will make up a Scout Kill Team with the option to vary the weapon selections slightly.

Warhammer 40,000 – Matching Old Scouts To New

Well, the drying rack has been invaded by green skins so those last few scouts had better scarper, sharpish, as they are now out numbered…

My issue with these last few scouts is, as always, matching new miniatures to older paint schemes.  I guess these are far from what could be classed as new miniatures as they were purchased at the same time as the originals. Needless to say, they still need a paint scheme that matches the touched up camo scouts seen recently.

To get the ball rolling, and in hopes of not cocking up all four figures in one go, I started with a test model.

With a game of Kill Team now planned (my first since before the start of December it would seem) a useable chap would be best to start with.

I suspect that the yellow, with an orange wash, is slightly too orange when compared to the original (which might have faded with ages spent, unused, on the display shelf) but it will do for my needs.

I have managed to match the badly drawn green camo stripes very well (obviously a talent inherent to my natural painting technique) and copied the slightly worn, black weapon choices of the originals.

All in all not too bad…  Now for the other three…

Warhammer 40,000 – Space Marine Kill Team

The latest batch to come under a paintbrush in the shed are these Space Marines and Scouts by Games Workshop.  The first of the Scouts were an easy batch to touch up and finish off.  The slightly more time consuming figures were a small Kill Team of six Space Marines.

The last of the scouts have now also been started, but are currently sitting quietly on the shelf awaiting my return…

The focus of this post are the first of my Space Marines that were not originally undercoated in the, now unavailable, Shadow Grey. Two of them are older originals, from my return to wargaming back in the early 2000s. The remaining four are Primaries Marines from the Warhammer Conquest part-work magazine. Two of the early editions of this magazine featured packs of three Primaris Marines on the cover.  I am unlikely to ever collect full squads of Primaris Marines for Warhammer 40k, but a few figures will do very nicely for our smaller Kill Team games.

Two Intercessors each armed with trusty bolt rifles, and one holding an Auspex that might help me hit things if they do ever make it into a game of Kill Team.

Two Reivers each with bolt pistol and combat knife.

An original metal Space Marine Captain and his flamer weilding plastic friend.

The yellow paint scheme of these guys is very different from the majority of my, blue coloured, army but with a left shoulder pad painted in black, they should have something in common with that force.

Not too bad for a half days work…

Warhammer 40,000 – Scouts I Can Use In Kill Team

I managed a half day in the shed again this weekend.  I must try to get in there for an hour or so of an evening if I can.  I’m not sure I am back to full swing though, as I’m still just pottering about (grandad style) and grabbing whatever catches my eye to be done.

This time it was something useful at least.  A small batch of figures that might just find a place in a Space Marine kill team.

The simplest batch to complete, amongst this small collection, were a set of already painted Scouts with Sniper rifles. Originally painted in the early 2000s in a base of bright yellow, and given a camo pattern using the old original GW green ink.  These were definitely gaudy and, with the gloss finish from the green ink, very shiny. To finish the terrible effect, they were based using a summer flock called ‘meadow flowers’.

The repaint was minimal, as the age chipped areas were just repainted in a drab mix of black and browns, and then the whole thing was doused in a dark green ink wash.  With the old bases ripped off and new ones done in the black/ grey flock, sand and stone chip mix I  have been using for this army, the job was done.

These are all older metal scouts that had been originally planned as the start a full scout based army (I have about 20 more in yellow undercoat that I should really sell on to someone who will make better use of them than I will).

I can’t remember why I only painted 7 of them, but it was likely due to their points cost in an older codex.  Frustraitingly I can only use five or ten of them in a squad in the current version of the 40K rules.

More importantly I suspect, in Kill Team, I can make up a full 100 point force using eight scouts.  Either way I need to paint more of them up and sadly that means I have to try to match the original gaudy paint scheme… Hence the scarily bright blobs of yellow and green that can be seen in the first photo.

Warhammer 40,000 – Space Marine Reinforcements

Why spend time doing something relevant to the ‘here and now’ when you can do something that might be useful, if you are lucky, and you play the right game somewhere in the next month or two.

If I do get a game in in the next week or two it will most likely be a mission from the Kill Team Rulebook.

So why am I painting a Space Marine Dreadnought and a second unit of Terminators, that I cannot use in Kill team, and when I never field more than one unit at a time in a 40K game anyway?

The answer: I don’t know.

They just happened to be there on the shelf…

Why argue with fate…

This chap is an old lead GW Dreadnought that is equipped with twin close combat weapons.  Not a configuration that is usable in the latest Space Marine Codex.  Destined to languish on a shelf unused, this chap was last on the to do list!  Then I found that I could field a Chaplain Dreadnought with just this configuration.

Black paint job and a few skulls later, back in the running for a place in my next 40K army.

And 5 more terminators that needed to be finished (and used the same basing and washes) so got done as an add-on this time.

Any finished models are a welcome success, right?