Deathwing Commander

I finished assembling a speeder for a full Ravewing Attack Squad as well as doing a few more touches on my Raider. No pictures tonight but I may take some tomorrow once the Speeder is primed. I do have some new ones of my deathwing commander as I re-did a few odds and ends on him. Here he is:


I have quite a few things I can still work on but they all seem a bit daunting right now. I may take tomorrow off as I'm feeling a bit sick and I want to make sure I don't burn myself out too fast.

I got a bit distracted by this. I looked into some of what he's done and I started getting some ideas for a whole new commander but that would be longer term once I have more of an idea of how to do more modeling with sculpting and posing plastic minis. This set presents its self as a possibility to add some interesting lion motifs to my commander. This works out well as their primarch is The Lion as well as the fact that the Disciples symbol is also a sword wielding lion. There are a few other models with some lion aspects to them but they're metal so it would work out less for kit bashing.

Deathwing Primed

I managed to get three squads primed and ready to be painted as well as the new dreadnought. It took a while since I messed up on some of the magnets but I managed to correct it. Here they are pre- and post-priming:

The new paint station is working out well. It had a place to stash everything and makes the area look much more organized. I think the dreadnought may be the next thing I choose to paint though I've been working on the Land Raider a bit as a break from magnetizing and basing. I finished the decal on the other side of the Raider and now I've also finished painting on boltgun metal. I have to look over it to make sure I got all the spots as well as painting on gold and using washes.

Paint Station

I didn't really get much painting done yesterday beyond a bit of bolt gun metal on my Land Raider but the biggest thing was a new paint station:

On there you can also see the workings of some new terminators, that's my third squad, and a dreadnought which is the first basic one I've made from scratch. Making it from scratch means I could incorporate a few Dark Angels bits I had laying around such as the face place and the leg plates. This also now means I have a complete set of dreadnought arms so I can make any variety I want instead of being restricted to the multi-melta and storm bolter fist. On my trip to get the paint station and dreadnought I also got a whirlwind and some more termies so I can further fill out my army with a variety of units. I'm slowly working towards a higher point joint wing army which would be bikes and termies. This would allow for accurate deep strikes for my termies since all Dark Angel bikes carry homing beacons, as well as making some interesting apocalypse formations.

Raider Decal

I got quite a bit done today. For starters a dove in headfirst to tank painting. There's a lot I still need to do on my first tank but I decided to dive right in and do a large decal on the side once I'd finished a rough paint job of the area where the decal would go. Here it is:

I think it turned out pretty well. I still need to do one on the other side as well as finishing up the rest of the paint job bit I've managed to keep the green and black of the rest of the army as well as claiming the color scheme with a large symbol. It's actually the first time I've drawn the Disciples symbol and it's kind of scared me to paint it at such a smaller scale on the shoulder pads of my marines or termies.

The other thing I finish if the lightning claw option for my commander. The rest of the arm, besides the claws themselves are rather easy and nothing new to do. The claws themselves are a different story and will likely have to be re-done once I learn how to do them for real. Anyways, here he is with both options:


The last thing I finished was the squig objective that I had molded a bit with green stuff. He too turned out really well with washes truly making the teeth, body, and mushroom shine:

Deathwing Command

I finished up the Watchers today as well as redoing some of the paint on Baliel. All that remains to do is to name my Master of the Deathwing. Here are the finished models:

I re-did Baliels highlights as freehand instead of just dry-brushing. I like that method better as it gives me generally more control. I also redid his hood and his face to fix his eyes which bulged a bit. I also added the stubble as well as eyebrows which you can't see.

The watchers went as well as I could have hoped. It took quite a few layers of white to get the robes right but once I put on the wash everything pops beautifully. The banner probably took the most time though as it was a lot of small details intermeshed. You can barely tell in the picture but the banner is black in the middle and is edged with green. I may have to highlight part of it with the lighter green to make it show up better. The helmet wasn't really very hard as everything on it was stuff I had done before, just some highlighting and eye gemming. The last thing to decide for the Watchers is if I want to add any grass to either of their bases.

All in all I think the Master and his Wound counters look really good and is some of my best work. I did all of it while listening to 40k Radio, a Warhammer podcast I found yesterday. They were discussing the new Tyranids Codex for a large part of the cast and I have to say that it sounds really cool. I am all of a sudden glad that my Deathwing army is all Fearless though as it means I can avoid a lot of their more annoying abilities.

Last night a started thinking about the Ravenwing and looked into them. Sammael is incredibly powerful and might be a better HQ than Baliel. I might have to start thinking about adding him into my army, perhaps for Apocalypse games or making an entirely new army.

Highlighting

I wanted to take the opportunity to show my latest paint work. It was actually my first attempt at highlighting. The model is an objective that represents one of the Fallen Angels. The chapter I play was created with the sole purpose to hunt down the Fallen and one particular Fallen especially, Cypher. There isn't that much information about Cypher out there but what information is know is available on the Lexicanum. Anyways, here's the model:

The highlighting worked out pretty well but what I'm most proud of is probably the Dark Angels symbol I painted on.

Watchers sculpting

I finished up the sculpting for the pair of watchers as well as the little squig objective. The folds of the draping robes are hard to do but that turned out alright for a first try. I added the finals bits, the banner and the helm, as well so once everything is dried I'll primer them and start thinking about painting. That probably won't happen until tomorrow to make sure that the green-stuff has hardened. Here they are thus far:

Green stuff is a bit more challanging than I expected but it's fun and much easier than trying to carve something out of spare sprues. Also, the tip that the store manager gave me was really useful: put a little bit of chapstick on your tool and it will stop any sticking.

Welcome

I have a couple different projects going on right now, a dwarven army and a Dark Angels successor chapter, Disciples of Caliban. The Disciples are my primary focus. Within the DA army I have a couple of separate projects which I will be posting more information about, as well as pictures, later on.

The first of my projects is an attempt at modeling with green-stuff. I have never had a chance to work with green-stuff before so I'm exited. I am modifying a pair of knight goblin spearmen to be a pair of Watchers in the Dark to be wound counters for my version of Belial. I've finished Belial previously and here he is:

I made his arms magnetized so I could swap them out for the double Lightning Claws if I ever wanted to. Along with the wound counters, I'm also making a small Squig objective.

I also recently bought a pack of melee Termies which I haven't even started yet. They'll be used to make a third squad for my Deathwing army. The models themselves will probably be spread out among the the other two squads and used to complete a third so that each of my squads is more versatile in switching between melee and range. The ability to diversify each individual squad is one of the advantages of a Deathwing army over the other Terminator heavy armies. They do need to be constructed and then painted however. The squads I currently have also need to be painted so I may build the melee termies and then paint full squads so that I can play with a 1000pt army as soon as possible. They will take a while as I intend to magnetize them all so I choose between thunder hammers and lightning claws.

The final part to my Disciples army is just a whole lot of painting. I have a couple partially completed squads as well as some assault marines, an ironclad dreadnought, a Ravenwing squad, and all of my vehicles which still need to me painted. I simply need to work on painting my squads but I still need to decide on a paint scheme for my vehicles. I'd like to stick with the partially green and black but I need to decide which parts.

There are also a few odds and ends scattered around which I could probably use to make some more marine squads or possibly a Devastator squad. I have also been thinking about modding up some characters or heroes such as a chaplain or a librarian of some kind. Those will probably stay scattered until I get my Deathwing army done or mostly done anyways.

The Dwarves have all been constructed but not primed or painted yet. As I said they're on the back burner so I probably won't get to them for some time. I haven't had a chance to really read through the rules for Fantasy Warhammer or the Dwarves specifically so that would be first priority for that army.



That's a synopsis of where I'm at right now with my my armies. I'll work to put up some more pictures over the next few days.

p.s. Watchers in the Dark are part of the Dark Angels lore. They are mythical residents of Caliban, the planet to which Lion El'Jonson (the primarch of the Dark Angels) inhabited, but are now residents of The Rock, which is the fortress monestary and the largest remaining piece of the planet Caliban. They take care of the Lion in the catacombs below The Rock. For further information I refer you to the Lexicanum.