On the Painting Table... June

Time for a bold statement. This month, June 2013, will finally see all my Space Wolves painted, complete and finished. Over 5,000pts of Wolves painted and all my urges to paint more of them satisfied. But what have I got left to complete this aim?

To start with I have 36 terminator arms and a cyclone missile launcher to finish off for the bodies I finished at the end of last month. Following them I have one solitary Grey Hunter Standard Bearer.

With them all finished off all I have to do is add snow to 100+ model bases and my work on my Fenrisian children is over. Then I will try to find a space big enough to take a few pictures of the entire army in one place. Should be fun.

Following the completion of my Wolves I will be putting down the paintbrush for a short while and will instead be picking up my hobby knife, various modelling tools, glue and green stuff and will begin a massive phase of unit building.

I have amassed a few models over the months that I just haven't got round to painting so, before I start a focussed period of painting, I am going to build everything ready for painting.

Off the top of my head I should have two Keepers of Secret (1 GW model KoS and 1 of my own design), a herald of Slaanesh, Chariot of Slaanesh, converting normal Chaos Space Marines into Noise Marines and hopefully building a Maulerfiend and Soul Grinder from a whole load of bits I bought off Ebay. I even think I may still have some construction work on my Dark Eldar to do. If it needs building it is being built this month.

That's a fair amount of work to do this month, bearing in mind it is my wife's 30th birthday at the end of the month and the British and Irish Lions are (hopefully) kicking some Australian ass all month in the rugby as well. Maybe it is time to retire, 37 years early, to focus all my efforts into this hobby!

On the Painting Table... May

It's a bank holiday here in the UK and what better way to spend it than clearing out the man-cave and settling down with one solitary aim?

This solitary aim is to finally complete my Space Wolves. The last few guys have been hanging around for the last year waiting for some paint, so now they will get the colour they crave.

I must confess to being a little ahead of what I have shown in this post, with the Wolf Guard above being about 40% already and taking shape nicely.

Aside from the those Wolf Guard Terminators above I have left to paint an Iron Priest, a Grey Hunter Standard Bearer, another 4 Wolf Guard Terminators with magnetised arms and a 5 man squad of sniper scouts and a missile launcher.

With that last squad I may have a little bit of green stuff work to carry out - I am thinking of adding a little fur to the tops of their cloaks just to 'wolf' them up a little bit.

So there we are, it's a Space Wolf based start to the summer in the Immaterium, but one that should see my Wolves finally completed, 4 years after I began working on them. Their beginning pre-dates my wedding. Crazy stuff.

Of course, all this painting lark will also be interspersed with a few games of 40k. It's been a long time since I was on the winning side so I am definitely aiming to win at least one battle this month.

In a positive note on that front, I recently had an impressive draw with my Chaos Marines against Eldar. One more turn my have won it for me, but may also have seen my luck with the dice crumble. Very interesting to see the carnage that blastmasters and sonic blasters can do to Eldar who try hiding in cover.

As always, I will add pictures to the blog as I complete units and sometimes will update the 'On the Painting Table' page with some work in progress shots. The blog also turns two this month so that is something else to look forward to. Hopefully should be an exciting month!

On the Painting Table... April

Already half way through the month, I will have my work cut out to make much progress on the models I have waiting for some paint, but we all love a trier don't we?

So here is a quick look at what I am hoping to get done or, at the very least, get started on.

The Dire Troll Mauler for my Trollbloods, as you can see from the picture, is very much nearly complete, so with a bit of luck should have him completed in the next few days.

Then I will be moving on to the Warmaster of Chaos, Lord Abaddon. He's a model I have had for an absolute age and one that I have always wanted to have a go at painting. So this is my chance. Quite excited about this one.

Once he's done I shall put the pictures up on the blog, before sending him to Ebay as I really want to get the new Forgeworld model of him instead now! Plus Lokken in that package would allow me to paint up one of my personal favourite characters from the Horus Heresy series.

And finally, as I am aware that aiming for too much will only result in failure, I introduce again the lovely ladies of Slaanesh to the painting table. With one test model complete it should be a relatively straightforward task to get this squad completed.

The only trouble I have once completing all of these guys is where to got after that? I can either buy more models to build, crack open my Space Wolves cases and completely finish that army, carry on plodding through my Emperor's Children force, pick up my Dark Eldar again or get some terrain painted. I'm really not sure which option I fancy, thoughts on a postcard (or as a comment on this post) please.

On the Painting Table... March

A new month and a few new targets to throw my paintbrush at! I managed to clear all the previous months targets which I am pretty pleased about and now I can move on to all new models which I haven't looked at painting yet.

The first of these are the models you can see to the left here. They are in fact Terrorizers from HiTech Miniatures who I will be using as Obliterators in my Chaos Marines army. These models have an awesome amount of detail and look a whole load better than the Games Workshop version of Obliterators in my opinion.

As mentioned in my post the other day, about the Pyre Troll, I mentioned that I only had one Trollblood left to paint - the Dire Troll Mauler. And here he is, ready to be greenstuffed, fixed to the base and then painted.

It didn't take too long to paint the Bomber version of the Dire Troll, so I'm hoping I can shoot through this guy as well and have my Trollbloods fully completed this month. Well, for the moment anyway.

And now I really try to step it up on the 40k front. Hopefully I can get this unit completed to start off the Chaos Daemons detachment of my Chaos army. The Daemonettes of Slaanesh should, in theory, be straight forward to paint and only use a handful of paints and washes to get each model of the unit done. Look out for a test model for these ladies (?) soon.

Lastly, I am aiming to get the King of the Chaos Space Marines, Ezekyle Abaddon, completed and sold off to help fund the Loken and Abaddon models that have recently been released from Forgeworld. It may only get me a few quid, but it all helps doesn't it?

Also, the new Abaddon from Forge World looks incredible and who needs two Abaddons anyway?

I am also selling off a couple of excess models on Ebay if anyone is interested in that sort of thing - 2 x the OOP metal Obliterators and the metal Chaos Dreadnought with plasma cannon and forge world close combat arm.

I'm looking forward to keeping you all updated with how the paintings going throughout the month!

On the Painting Table... February

A week in to February already? Boy this year is starting to fly by! Anyway, it's time to quickly catch up on what I managed to get done last month and what the plan is for the month ahead.

Of the four targets I had last month, I only completed the two Chaos Space Marine Chosen and the squad of Trollblood Pyg Burrowers. I was hoping to have the another two of the Chosen finished, but didn't quite manage it due to one thing or another.

As you can see in the picture above, the two Chosen are well on their way to being completed. What I have got planned for after, I hear you ask? Well, I am going to carry on with my aim of finishing off painting my Trollbloods, with Calandra Truthsayer being the next model from the faction up for a spot of colour.

I am also hoping to complete the remnants of the Chosen squad and finish off the remaining two models this month as well. I have saved my two favourite models from the Dark Vengeance box set till last, so I am quite looking forward to getting to these guys!

As I know I have quite a busy month ahead, completing just those 5 models alone would be an achievement. However, if I can get through them I have one further paint job and a modelling job that I want to get stuck in to.

The paint job is back with my Trollbloods and would see me finish off the penultimate model that I currently have, the Pyre Troll, which will take me away from painting trolls in their usual blue (for my force anyway) and look more to a burnt brown colour, which should be interesting!

The modelling job is the beginning of the making of a Keeper of Secrets for my Chaos Daemons, who will be allied with my Chaos Space Marines. The Daemons allies won't be a huge detachment and will mainly just comprise of the Greater Daemon, a Herald, a few Daemonettes and a couple of Hellflayers. I may add in a few Tzeentchian units in the future, but certainly nothing until a new codex for the Daemons is released.

So on the painting/modelling front there is certainly enough to keep me busy when I can fit it in (I think fitting a new bathroom could seriously hamper this though, but challenges are there to be defeated!).

On the gaming front I should have at least another couple of games this month and hopefully should be able to have one big Space Marines v Tyranids game (2 Space Marines v 1 Tyranid player) which should a nice, bloody punch up, which I am really excited about. Hopefully we can get that sorted and spend a day pulverising everything in sight!

Look forward to updating you all on these models as I get them done. Thanks for reading!

On the Painting Table... January

Back in my review of 2012 and looking forward to 2013 post I mentioned that I would be looking to put forward a monthly feature or two. Well, this is the first one and hopefully I can use it to track how much progress I am making on my targets for each month.

All current progress can still be found in the 'On the Painting Table' tab, which will also have links to each months post. All will become clear once we have gotten into full swing. Hopefully.

Anyway, looking forward to this month I will be completing the two Chaos Space Marines Chosen, shown above, in the next couple of days. Currently there is a little bit of tidying up to finish off, the champions head needs doing and the bases are requiring some last touches.

Once these two are finished I will be moving back toward my Trolls and completing my Pyg Burrower crew, which should then see the majority of my Trolls complete (for the moment anyway).

Once the Pygs are done it's back to those Chaos Chosen again and, once these two are done, just one more pair to do until all the Dark Vengeance Chaos Marines are finished.

The final model for the month, if I have time, is Calandra Truthsayer of the Trollbloods (notice much of a theme for the progress of the models?). Once she is done I will have only two more Troll models to paint, which could be one of my post-Christmas objectives completed relatively early in the year!

So, aiming quite high for this month, which could be interesting with real life stuff also coming up this month and my desire to play a few more games before the month is out.

Next months edition will look at what I aimed for and what I actually achieved, and what is up for a coat of paint through the month of February.

As always, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read this blog. All comments welcome, so please feel free to post up anything you want to say as long as it relates to 40k or Hordes I'll be a happy man!