31 January 2012

40k Painting Challenge

Over on the B+C the annual Librarium Painting Challenge recently kicked off, and I thought I would post my vow and some WIP photos on here, just for the fun of it.

The challenge runs for three months, at the end of which you will have to have painted all the models promised in your vow at the beginning. Those who complete the challenge get a forum signature picture saying so. Those who don’t, well, they agree to wear a forum signature picture letting everyone know of their failure.

Here is my list of models for my Chaos Space Marine army that I have promised to paint by the deadline:

  1. 2 Chaos Land Raiders
  2. 2 Chaos Rhinos
  3. 3 Defilers
  4. 1 Dreadclaw (a conversion I did)
  5. 1 Chaos Vindicator
  6. Chaos Predators
  7. 3 Land Speeders (corrupted to Chaos)
  8. 1 Storm Raven (also corrupted to Chaos)
  9. A diorama I made of a Space Marine Scout with a Bike Scout (more on that later)

Last year I built 5 Terminators and 8 Berserkers. I was tired of playing with unpainted minis and needed some motivation to paint the troops I normally played with. My army has expanded considerably since then, and I really need to get some vehicles painted. I always put the vehicles off and focus on troops, so I’m using the challenge to motivate myself.

Here are a couple of pictures from my first WIP. The first may be the most interesting to random readers from internet searches:

Because it’s a Dreadclaw conversion…

This is a Dreadclaw conversion I made using a regular Space Marine Drop Pod. I will probably come back later and edit in a link to the tutorial I used to make it, because it’s totally worth paying only $35 for a Dreadclaw rather than buying all that expensive Forge World resin. If I liked the design enough I might, but the original Dreadclaw just doesn’t float my boat. I’d much rather buy a Hell Talon. I used this for the first time in a game yesterday. For 65 points you get what amounts to a Deep Striking Rhino, though oddly enough there are ways that Rhinos are better. For instance. Dreadclaws don’t have the Open Topped rule anymore, nor do they have an Assault Ramp. You can’t put weapons on them, or extra armor, and they don’t have Inertial Stabilizers anymore, either. The one really cool thing about them is that you can Deep Strike in units that wouldn’t normally be able to. Chosen, Havocs, and probably most intriguing for a Chaos Marine player: a Dreadnought. Because when you’re Dreadnought spends a third of the time being a danger to anything near it, it’s really best to chuck it behind enemy lines, right?

The other thing I’ve got in the works is one of my two Land Raiders. This one is called “Meat Hook”, and has body parts and whatnot modeled all over it. That will be more relevant when the painting is further along:

And because this post here on RA is a combination of posts from two other different websites over the month of January:

I kept mixing up way too much silver and needing to not waste it, so I ended up starting in on more vehicles instead of getting to the details of the first two and finishing them. I’m now working on the Dread Claw, 2 Land Raiders, and a Vindicator.

Here is the group shot of what I’ve got done so far:

I’m probably going to repaint the yellow door on the Land Raider and go back to my original idea for boltgun grey. Those hazard stripes on the Vindicator made more sense from the exact angle that I painted them, but much less so from others… The Vindicators TC at least broke the monotony of painting tanks.

Since I’m already tired of painting tanks, here’s a shot of the current phase of my vow with the next phase behind it:

All this was done before what will be my last undergrad semester at KU started. Once school started I didn’t have much time to muck about with painting. I have probably got in way over my head with my vow this year…

And like last year I am struggling with wanting to work on projects that aren’t on my vow. One of the reasons I made my vow the way I did is because painting tanks is boring, but I’m tired of not having my tanks painted. A motivational thing. But, you know, you’ve already seen my Chaos Sniper, so, you know.

But I’ve got two months left, so we’ll make it happen, and I’ll be reporting on my update here. Victory or defeat I’ll cross-post to RA regardless. Man, I’m not looking forward to painting those Defilers, but I tell you I can’t wait to have painted Defilers on the table!

Reviresco!

This is a work of “fan fiction”, and is not authorized or endorsed by Games Workshop Ltd. For a fuller explanation of copyright see this website’s legal disclaimer concerning third party intellectual property.

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31 January 2012

OH GOD I HAVE TO POST SOMETHING IN JANUARY!!!!!

How about my most recent abomination, a Chaos Marine Scout Sniper?

Yes. This will do.

“I am going to shoot you in the face and you will never see me coming!”

OK, a little explanation. The 5th edition rules allow for “multiple detachments”, meaning multiple groups with their own FOC that they satisfy. It never says that each detachment has to be from the same codex, and while I suspect that was their intent, screw ‘em! It’s a big galaxy and their codices don’t fulfill my needs individually. So me and a couple of my friends have taken to playing a variation on the standard game that is somewhere in between what most people play and Apocalypse games. It goes like this: each player has a standard points limit, say 2000. I take 1500 points of regular Chaos Marines because that’s what I like, but my DIY warband fluff isn’t limited by the codex table top rules. So to make up for this I add 500 points in a separate FOC to bring the game in-line with my personal fluff. Each FOC is satisfied, all detachments are codex legal, I just paint them as the same unit and play them at the same time.

And I’ve decided that my Chaos Marines, the Iron Hounds, don’t recruit the way that normal Chaos Marines do (which is to stick newly converted or created dudes in armor and send them out and see if they live). No, we have a proper recruiting element that includes Scouts.

Here is the first of maybe three veteran sergeants of the Iron Hounds involved in training and indoctrinating new recruits. His name is Fyrd-Sergeant Ginnarr, and he is a Scout Sniper Sergeant according to the regular Space Marines codex:

The head is a bit large, but on the table it’s not as noticable. And GW minis have a wonky scale anyway, so who cares? I’ve been dying to use the Reaper Olive Drab paint I got a while back on something, so this was the perfect opportunity. The mottled brown of the uniform was a “happy accident”, in that the Vallejo black didn’t mix well with the Citadel Graveyard Earth I was trying to turn into a medium brown. Between the two not mixing evenly and the Devlan Mud wash I applied copious amounts of it turned out this mottled multicolor thing that I happen to like. And will probably never be able to replicate on the other Scout squad (though I do have all five Snipers painted with the mixture. There was a lot of it…)

Camouflage on a Space Marine? Ho ho ho! Cameoline cloaks (or however you spell that) are standard for Scout Snipers, but I wanted the armor and weapon to be subdued as well. Fortress Grey (IIRC) on the armor plates, the mottled brown mixture for the uniform, and subdued shoulder insignia. Normally veterans in the Iron Hounds get yellow and black hazard stripes, but I went with grey and black for extra sneakiness. The camo pattern on the cloak turned out better than I expected. I really wasn’t sure how to go about it, so I nearly left it a solid Olive Drab. Then I said “let’s do this” and started making random patches of color, and the Devlan Mud wash, applied extra thick here (even for me) pulled it all together. The hood is putty, and my friend Mike took over my bungling attempt and made it look decent for me while we were playing the 40k RPG the other day.

I wasn’t sure about the sniper rifle, but I went ahead and did a basic two color criss-cross thing for camouflage effect. I did the mottled brown in thicker swaths, then came in after that dried and did much thinner black lines. When I was in the U.S. Army in the 1990s we still wore woodland pattern BDUs, which are “brown dominant”. The way that pattern is constructed is the base is brown (not green), then dark green splotches, then smaller light khaki splotches, and finally little black splotches. I was trying to do something similar, but less involved.

I’m not sure about the Aquila on the chest armor. Do I line it out with black or brown (or some other subtle defacing), or do I leave it for extra sneakin’?

Reviresco!

This is a work of “fan fiction”, and is not authorized or endorsed by Games Workshop Ltd. For a fuller explanation of copyright see this website’s legal disclaimer concerning third party intellectual property.

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Filed under Finished Projects, Hobby, Modeling & Painting, Right Living

10 January 2012

2011 Year in Review

(Pictures at the bottom after the text if you want to just skip to that. I wouldn’t blame you.)

The Yuletide season is normally a quiet one for Romantic Antihero. I go crazy by the end of the semester and then start hibernation mode to shake it all off. Then the madness of holidays starts and then I recover from that. Well here I am in the second week of January, ready to actually start the new year for RA.

My time at KU is winding down. 2009 and 2010 were awesome years. In one I graduated from JCCC and moved to KU, and the other I went to England to study abroad at Cambridge for a summer. 2011 was… a “rebuilding year”, to borrow a term from collegiate sports. Everything after Cambridge has seemed so anticlimactic, very much like when I took that last summer class at JCCC after I had already done my graduation walk. It’s also been a year of ups and downs, struggling with my periodic chronic depression. Life is a roller coaster, and sometimes all you can do is hang on. So long as you don’t fall out, anyway. I’m a long way from falling out anymore, and life is good.

I have an appointment later today (I’m writing this near at about 0200) to talk with my CLAS advisor. If everything goes well I will be walking for my BA at the end of this semester. Being the paranoid kind of person I am I don’t want to make declarations. Speaking of which, I had made the announcement that I would be traveling to Japan last year. The tsunami and nuclear facility emergency put an end to that when a majority of the other accepted students backed out. Not that I’m bitter, but screw them all to hell. Seriously.

2011 saw RA become mostly a gaming blog, though I did finally get around to articulating some of my Asatru ideas here. That is a long project that I’m not feeling hurried about, and I’m not out to publish so who cares? One thing that really bothers me about 2011 is how much kendo I didn’t do. As I write this I’ve put back about half the weight that I managed to lose previously, mostly because of this lack of kendo. Kendo served to keep me motivated and helped move me away from my destructive lifestyle and toward these more positive pursuits, or at least the not negative ones like gaming. Kendo really started it all, so my pledge for 2012 is to reinforce it as a central theme in my life.

And of course as I write this I have a terrible pain in my back from a special practice of the KC Kendo club last Saturday. In 2011 I turned 36. It’s not 40, but it’s not <30. I was talking with a friend earlier who recently turned thirty and we were reminiscing about some of the times gone by. I had been told by my parents that the 30s were a really great time of life, and I have to say that it’s panned out that way for me so far. My 20s were full of arrogant youth and hot headed mistakes. The 30s are a lot more humble, but at least with a little wisdom and experience. But like I tell people, I’m young and vigorous enough to do all the same things, but old enough that I end up in so much more pain that takes at least twice as long to recover from.

Again, my mother inspired me greatly in 2011. She decided to take weight loss seriously and has gone through probably three wardrobe changes since, and she looks great. The rest of my family makes me very proud as well. My father maintains and we still hang out regularly, and my son, a freshman in high school who is turning 15 soon, started JROTC this year and looks very handsome in his uniform.

I didn’t do as much public Asatru stuff as I’ve done in past years this year. In 2011 I developed more of my own Heathen philosophy and continued to look at and explore life, but also became less interested in Heathenry as a “movement” and became more focused on the idea of living the same sort of individualistic life I’ve always led but from a Heathen center. I’ve got my kith and kin, and a group of Heathen friends and local acquaintances, so going to a Heathen event just because it’s a Heathen event is less appealing to me. In 2011 I focused much more on my innergarth as far as celebrations and ritual goes, mainly focusing on “Heathenizing” the time spent with my kin. My writings and thoughts on Heathenry likely won’t go far in the greater Heathen community, but I find myself not caring all that much. There are different roles to take, and I’m not a public figure. If I’m ever a pubic figure it will be because I’ve got famous for my personal weirdness, not out of any public efforts. That’s not me, so when I write it’s for myself and possibly any innergarth Heathens who care.

But enough about that. I’ll end this with some pictures!

Yule 2011:

Ma and Susan holding our family Yule Wreath prior to the New Year’s bonfire.

My son playing with my sister’s dog on Solstice Eve.

The New Year’s bonfire that marks the end of Yule (as far as I’m concerned).

A little less dramatic than the other, but it shows the Yule Goat and the Wreath we burn.

Ma and Pop got a new pair of critters for the house, Hansel and Gretel. This is Hansel taking a nap safe from the dog on the mantle.

On my birthday I met some good friends at Table Top and we had some games. My (still unpainted) Hare Army proved victorious, and here pose with the villa and walls I bought as a gift to myself.

I made this Dark Angels Devastator as a Yule gift for my friend Mike, presenting it to him on my birthday.

I made this Salamanders Devastator for my friend Jon for Yule, presenting it to him on my birthday. Life would be so much easier if all my friends played 40k and needed Devastators, because I am totally bad at picking presents for people.

Other stuff from 2011:

In 2011 I expanded my Chaos Space Marines army, including this Dread Claw conversion. The creation thread is somewhere else, but I’m painting it as part of the Bolter and Chainsword’s annual Librarium Painting Challenge.

And speaking of which, here is “phase one” of this year’s vow. More on that later in its own blog post…

Like I said, my son is in HS JROTC, and I took this picture at their Organization Day.

I continued my tradition of supporting Kansas City S.C. I’m very glad they did away with the name “Wizards”. This is the boyo and myself at Johnny’s Tavern with one of the support clubs watching a game on the box.

I continued my (unfortunate) tradition of only going to the home opener. This year’s was cool because Sporting K.C. opened their new dedicated stadium, which is about twenty minutes from my house by car.

I finally got around to planting apple trees in my back yard. It remains to be seen if they’ll survive the winter, but apple trees in the back yard was my graduation present for my AA from JCCC.

And I got me the porch swing I’ve always wanted!

This very tiny picture (saved the wrong thing…) is a rose from one of my White Rose bushes.

Another tradition: my three Jack-O-Lanterns and drinking beer and watching zombie flicks while handing out candy. My son helped me carve this year before running off with his friends.

AND I FOUND A PLACE WHERE I CAN BUY DANDELION & BURDOCK SODA BY THE CASE!

2012 will be a good year, I can already feel it. 2011 wasn’t the greatest, but as you can see from the pictures it wasn’t bad. Just more sedate, more filled with the routine of grinding through my senior year of college. 2012 will be a year of transition for me, and I’m sure it will be the start of a new period of adventure and excitement in my life.

For I am the Amazing Montismo, Gentleman Adventurer and Romantic Antihero™.

Reviresco!

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Filed under Budo, Right Living, The Heathen Gods

12 December 2011

Daemon Prince of Khorne

I made this guy a little over a week ago but I didn’t post him on RA. I made him using leftover bits from my first two Daemon Princes, and truthfully I still have enough bits leftover to maybe make another one. Or maybe I’ll use them to make a Chaos Spawn…

This guy has two heads, so his tentative name is “the Ettin Prince” (or summat):

I came up with the idea that this one Daemon Prince was at one time two separate Champions who were favored by Khorne. They each did something that irritated the Blood God, even while still being worthy of ascension. The Blood God is not entirely without a sense of humor, and ascended both Champions into the same Daemon Prince. Now these two each control one head and one sword arm of the Daemon Prince that they’ve become, and run around the battle field being very angry about their unusual condition.

So I reckon he’s a Daemon Prince with the Mark of Khorne, extra attack for the extra sword and all that. I did some cutting and puttying to try and make his left hand look decent. Of course because of the position nobody can see the plastic fingers I saved and carefully tried to make look like were wrapping around the hilt of the sword I had shaved a right hand off of. Unless I turn him over and take a picture of it:

My question is what colors do I paint him and his armor? I was thinking because of the Khorne theme that I’d just do him up like a Bloodletter: red skin, black horns/talons, white eyes. For the armor I was thinking burnished gold or brass. Any suggestions?

Reviresco!

This is a work of “fan fiction”, and is not authorized or endorsed by Games Workshop Ltd. For a fuller explanation of copyright see this website’s legal disclaimer concerning third party intellectual property.

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12 December 2011

Another attempt at a True-Scale Space Marine

So over at the B&C one of the members runs an unofficial conversion challenge every now and again. The latest gives participants the month of December to convert a sergeant / aspiring champion and write a short story about him. I’m still working on the story, but I completed the model tonight. I took the opportunity to have another go at making a true-scale space marine. Instead of just sticking a regular torso on Terminator legs, I decided to go one step more advanced this time. I scooped out the waist area of the torso and remolded on out of putty, plasticard, guitar wire, and bits. The result was spectacular, but it was a learning experience. And I bought a putty knife the other day, so the putty work was a lot smoother this time around. But I’ll talk about it some more after I’ve shown you the five required pictures from the contest submission:

There was too much putty on the middle of the haft…

In retrospect he’s posed rather like the Khornate Lord model from GW, but custom posing two-handed weapons is difficult. This was not exactly what I was going for, is what I’m saying.

Lots of skulls on the belt. Notice how much smoother the putty filling in the Terminator hydraulics is here. The right tool makes a big difference. I wasn’t sure about the large daemon heads for the exhaust vents; maybe I should have used the medium-sized ones.

These camera angles are awful, but mandated by the contest rules. I worry that his waist is too busy.

Was originally going to use a Skull Champion helmet, but changed my mind during the assembly. I think he has more personality without a helmet, and he is a sergeant after all.

For the contest it’s better not to submit photos of a painted miniature. It’s the conversion you’re showing off, after all. But when I do eventually paint him I’ll do size comparisons like I did the Deathwatch character.

Oh yeah!

His name is Arminius the Butcher, Chosen of Khorne. For the contest the entry had to be a codex legal unit, so I’m saying he’s a Chosen Aspiring Champion and that big axe counts-as a Power Fist. I might lose points for the base not being the correct size, but I figured since it was a true-scale miniature I might get some slack. The base is 30mm instead of 25mm, but since it’s an aftermarket wooden base probably nobody will even pay much attention to it.

I like him, and I can’t wait to paint him. I’ll post his story here when I get around to writing it. It won’t be very long, no more than “a page and a half” as per contest rules. Of the models posted so far I think he’s competitive, but there is a story about a Slaaneshi champion already posted that I think is very good. I need to put a few days thought into it, but not this week because I’ve still got stuff to do dealing with school.

Anyway, there’s my second true-scale attempt. I like him.

Reviresco!

This is a work of “fan fiction”, and is not authorized or endorsed by Games Workshop Ltd. For a fuller explanation of copyright see this website’s legal disclaimer concerning third party intellectual property.

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