More 15mm Blood Drinkers Space Marines and a Land Raider!

                                         

Okay so today I'm gonna say this project is "finished". These are 15mm Space Marines for my Blood Drinkers army, 3D-printed by Conscript ByronM. It was a bit "challenging" to find STL files for these character models but of course Byron came through.

From left to right here we've got a Chaplain, standard-bearer, Captain, Librarian, and Techmarine.

I had to do something different with the reverse side of the flag, just painted on every Bloo Angels/Drinkers insignia I could there.

The Chaplain's weapon is literally nearly as big as he is.

The Captain has to have a power sword, because power sword!

Never was too keen on Librarians or Techmarines but here they are.

Of course they need a ride! Here's the last Rhino of the four Byron printed for me.

The chalice is hand-painted of course :-)

Lastly, I painted a Land Raider for the boys. My favourite version, this. Just a great looking vehicle eh!

Here's the whole Blood Drinkers force. I like how they turned out and am looking forward to having a game with them. I just need somebody else to jump into the scale. Greg has lots of 15mm Space Marines though so maybe next time we get together, we can have a game! We'll just have to figure out what rules to use... HINT: it won't be 10th edition :-)

Painting Challenge Submission #9 - Thousand Sons Tactical Marines for 30k

Thousand Sons Space Marines of the XV Legion Astartes. 28mm figures from GW.

For my ninth AHPC submission my brushes returned to a familiar setting, GW's "Horus Heresy". This is a tactical squad of Space Marines belonging to the XV Legion Astartes, known as the "Thousand Sons". These Marines are wearing Mark VI power armour, known by fans of the setting as "beakie" armour for the pointed faceplate on the helmets. These are multi-part plastic 28mm, embellished with some Legion-themed resin helmets and shoulder plates. 

A couple of the individual Marines.

View of the power packs.

I have painted a great number of these models since GW released them a couple of years ago, and I can't seem to ever get tired of them. I have always loved the classic "beakie" Space Marine armour pattern, and I have also been a huge fan of the Horus Heresy for a long, long time. I enjoy painting units of these figures, and really, the only limiting factor will be my ability to display and store them, which is an issue now that I live in Toronto...but those are issues for another day.

I love these particular poses.

Nice view of the embossed Legion symbol on the custom shoulder pads. Love these things - plus it saves on the decals a bit.

The Thousand Sons Legion is great fun, combining all of the violent combat potential of the Space Marines with an assortment of spooky psychic powers. They pursue and accumulate knowledge, as opposed to the other Space Marines who otherwise struggle to stand out from one another via varying degrees to which they are either violent, stoic, or violently stoic. Also, as JamieM noted on the Challenge blog, some are stoically violent :)

Officer on the left, with a power sword (sporting a SKULL in the hilt!).

Of course, in GW's universe of the future, learning and knowing things doesn't tend to work out well for you in the end, and so it is for the Thousand Sons. By the "time" of Warhammer 40k, the remnant Thousand Sons are basically Flanderized parodies of their former selves. 

A sort of "must-have" for these big tactical squads - a vox operator and vexillary.

But during the "Age of Darkness", the Thousand Sons are wearing cool armour, with fun Egyptian-themed accents and all sorts of symbols etc. The custom enhancements are part of that, and I love how they look on the Marines.

Vox operator (with a skull, because obviously) and vexillary at the front of the squad.

This big 20-man slug of tactical marines will fit nicely in with my previously small (and rather elite-focused) XV Legion Astartes collection. I hope to add more through the summer, so we'll see how that goes!

Painting Challenge Submission #8 - 28mm Afghan Tribal Warriors

28mm Afghan tribal warriors from Perry Miniatures, ready to close in on the British columns...

For my eighth submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I switched gears to debut a completely different setting and a new project for me - the Second Anglo-Afghan War. These are 28mm Afghan tribal warriors, multi-part plastic figures from Perry Miniatures. There are 32 figures, enough for two units/groups of tribal warriors for the Osprey skirmish game "The Men Who Would Be Kings". 

An assortment of rifle-armed tribal warriors.

This setting seems to be popular among colonial wargamers, including several fellow Painting Challenge participants. Their various efforts through the years have intrigued me, and between looking at those blog posts, and a couple of "just browsing" sort of visits to the Perry Miniatures web site, I was intrigued enough to take the plunge myself. Reading through the "The Men Who Would Be Kings" rules sealed the deal for me...

Very basic hand-painted flag.

This project has been under way for quite some time. I had started the majority of these figures right around Christmas last year. But owing to the disruption caused by moving to a new house, I was not able to complete the basing and the (very basic) hand-painted flags until a couple weeks ago. So here they are at last!

I love the guy loading the jezzail!

These multi-part plastic from Perry Miniatures are fantastic. The metal castings are still better (because obviously) but the plastic boxes are very well done and have been an excellent way to accumulate a relatively large number of tribal warriors. I plan to add units of cavalry and regular infantry from the Afghan army, but the tribal elements would be core to any Afghan force and I wanted to start with them. 

There are lots of swords and shields in the mix too!

I tried to mix up the colours a bit, and sought out different bits of inspiration in the hopes of not completely f*cking everything up, which is always a risk when one comes to a new period/setting. The warriors are equipped with a broad mix of muskets, rifles, jezzails, swords and knives of various sizes, and even shields! It all gets abstracted in the rules, allowing for a nice and motley appearance for the tribal warriors.

This lot is ready for battle!

One area that still needs a ton of practice is the skin tones. I wanted to get some different skin tones, and it was quite hit-and-miss, owning in large part to the fact that GW paints I use have tended to be out of stock, leading to improvisation, and combined also with the fact that, in the chaos of moving, I haven't really kept careful track of what worked and what didn't...maybe this will improve when I get to the next round of Afghan units for this project...

A 16-figure unit of Tribal infantry for "The Men Who Would Be Kings", ready for action on the table

There are 32 figures in the photos, but there are a couple of pre-Challenge test paint jobs in there, so this only "counted" as 30 figures in 28mm scale for the scoring aspects of the Challeng. Not very much by the standards of current AHPC participation (Frederick would have finished this in a day!) but it still felt like a "points bomb" for me, which was. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more as the Challengers enter the final frantic week!

Legio XIII Gemina

                                       

Having painted a load of hairy Germanic tribesmen so far I thought I'd change gears for a bit and work on some Romans. For this week's entry I've completed a unit of 15 Legionaries of Legio XIII Gemina.

The models are a mix of monopose metal Foundry and Warlord Games figures, with a couple Warlord Games plastics thrown in. Fortunately the plastic Legionaries mix in really well with the much older Foundry sculpts. 

The command group are all Warlord metals. Sorry about the lion on the vexillum, I really wasn't feeling it this morning and it kind of looks that way. But it's a lion, I swear. What I do really like is the metal mask worn by the standard bearer. Pretty freaky.

The shield decals are water transfers from Warlord Games. I'm really impressed at how well they came out. They make my previous handpainted shields on the veterans look pretty sad. But these are easy to apply, fit well (even on the old metal Foundry shields!) and look the business.  

I picked Legio XIII as it was one of the longest serving Legions (having been levied by Julius Caesar in 57 BC and hanging around till the 5th century CE), it served in Germany after the disaster at the Teutoburger Wald, and 13 is my number on my beer league hockey team, the Kyle Wellwoods. So there.
 

The legion gained their cognomen "Gemina" (twin) after being reinforced with veterans from other legions following Actium and the end of the Civil War against Mark Antony.

You can hardly tell the WG plastic figure (front centre) from the metal Foundry ones!

I think they look pretty good and being individually based, can be used for skirmish games as well as ranked up for WAB. I'll stick 'em up in the cabinet and call these done.

Painting Challenge Submission #7 - Imperial Shore Troopers

More members of the Scarif garrison ready to deploy.

After a delay caused by the move, I am (mostly) back the painting wagon again, and for my submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I returned to a favourite subject from last year - Star Wars and the Scarif garrison from the movie "Rogue One". We have a group of Shore Troopers to bulk out the garrison. These are 28mm figures (yes, they still are, even if they are big), a mix of "official" figures from Fantasy Flight Games (not called that anymore, but I have lost track of what they are now called) and 3D print designs from DarkFire.

Shore Trooper squad from Fantasy Flight Games.

The Fantasy Flight Games figures comprise a regular squad of Shore Troopers, an officer and five troopers, including one with a heavy weapon. These are lovely sculpts and I really like the poses of the troopers, a nice mix of action, firing and moving among the group.

Squad leader and corporal, ready to deploy.

I love these firing poses...

The action poses are fantastic too - great sculpts.

Moving into the 3D prints, we have two support groups that are rounding the garrison out nicely. One is a sniper team (cue the jokes), comprised of a marksman and a spotter.

Imperial Shore Trooper "sniper" team - we know all the jokes about Imperial soldiers and their inability to hit anything in the films...but in actual table top games, the Imperial soldiers can indeed hit targets!

And to provide some leadership and direction for what is now a platoon-sized Shore Trooper force, we have a senior officer and a communications trooper. 

Command team for the beach!

Another view of the officer/command team.

I have applied my own interpretation of the various colour schemes I have seen online - and in the film - for the Shore Troopers.  The senior officer has the greatest variety of colours - between that, his pose and his pistol armament, and the flunky with the comms unit following him around, he is all set to look the part on a gaming table and lead an Imperial garrison in response to terrorist acts carried out by the so-called "Rebel Alliance". 

The Fantasy Flight sculpts of these figures are awesome, but the 3D prints are tremendous too - Dark Fire Designs is just great, and if you like Star Wars, I really recommend checking out their STLs. Conscript Dave V is the one who inspired me to look more into the 3D world of Star Wars figures, and wow, is there a lot to choose from. I find Dark Fire to be one of the best. They have a number of licensed printers too, so you are spared from actually having to contemplate owning one of those !@#!@#ing things yourself :) 

Anyway, that is all for now - thanks for reading, and watch for more progress by the Fawcett Conscripts through this edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge!

More 15mm Blood Drinkers Space Marines!

                                         

So at the same time I've been working on Germanic Tribesmen and Romans, I've been interspersing some other painting work - namely these 3D-printed 15mm Blood Drinkers Space Marines. I burned through the first 20 of these quickly and enjoyed them so much that I had Conscript Byron print me up some more of 'em, plus some vehicles. I particularly needed some heavy weapons and special weapons, and Sergeants to fill out the platoon.

I also had him print some Rhino transports. As with the Space Marines, I painted the vehicles Mephiston Red and highlighted them Evil Sunz Scarlet, then washed them with Nuln Oil, The tracks were painted Leadbelcher and washed with Nuln and Agrax Earthshade. Most of the insignia are decals from the Blood Angels 40K sheet, but the aerial recognition insignia on the rear decks are hand painted. Weathering was done with some sponge chipping using Vallejo German Camo Black-Brown and drybrushing dirt colours.

Here's the whole bunch that I've painted so far. There's three squads of 10, each led by a sergeant, including one missile launcher, one meltagun, and seven Marines with bolters. At the front of the photo I've put the extra dudes I've painted - more Marines with bolters, another missile launcher, and some random command-types.

I still have the Company command section, their Rhino, and a Land Raider to paint. After that this mini-project will be finished and it'll be back to Legionaries and hairy Germans.      

There will be more!

15mm Blood Drinkers Space Marines!

                                         

Well I suppose I have Conscript GregB to thank for this one... I had Conscript ByronM do some 3D printing for me, and when I went to pick up the prints Byron told me that Greg had asked him to print me some 15mm Space Marines! Cool!

So somewhat on a whim and as a palate cleanser, I knocked out the 20 models Byron had printed for me. Originally I was considering painting them as Iron Warriors, but these beakies were just begging to be painted in the blood-red power armour of the Blood Drinkers. It's just a bonus that the chapter insignia is super-easy to put on the shoulder pads with a black technical pen :-)

These guys all carry boltguns of course. But once these guys were painted I had to get in touch with Byron to print me some more dudes with heavy weapons, as well as some vehicles. Escalation!!

 

For the record, the paint job was pretty straightforward. Basecoated Mephiston Red, heavily highlighted with Evil Sunz Scarlet, then washed with Nuln Oil, Backpacks and boltguns are Leadbelcher washed with Nuln Oil.

  

These two are the start of a command squad I reckon. We'll see what else Mr. B can come up with for me.

Here's a comparo shot of my 40K scale Blood Drinker with his tiny colleagues.

Hope you like 'em!