Some call him.... Tim!

Slightly overdue, but here's a Blood Angels update. March was dreadnought month! I painted three dreads over the end of Feb/early March. Since I had the time, I also painted up a drop pod for the Death Company or their dreadnought compatriot.

So here's the photos!

First here's the Death Company dread - Brother Mordred - and his deep striking transport. I talked it over with people and decided on Blood Talons for him in the end. Despite meaning it drops him down to AP3 rather than the usual AP2, but the ability to throw himself into a squad and start mincing them with his Blood Rage ability was too tempting to pass up. He's had two games to try his luck in so far. In the first one he was taken out by glancing hits fired at him with snapshots (a very ignominious demise for such a noble warrior). In the second game against my pal Marcus' orks, he minced a unit of grots that dared to fire a quad autocannon at him, then turned round and roasted a unit of stormboyz with his heavy flamer. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't extricate the ork Big Mek from the second story building in which he was hiding.

 Next up, the Venerable Furioso Librarian Brother Timmerklynn (some call him... Tim). I knocked this guy together from the Venerable Dreadnought kit and some spare bits from the Furioso kit used for the next dread. I ummed and ahhed over what colour scheme to go with for this guy as a lot of art and the GW eavy metal collection show Librarian dreads painted red with just a blue sarcophagus. I decided I wanted him to stand out though, and given that regular librarians are completely blue armoured, I felt that Tim should be painted the same way.

Much like Mordred, in his first game he was glanced to death with repeated hits from plasma guns. In the game against the orks though, he chopped through one squad of orks after another, more than proving his worth and flitting around the board on pyschically created Wings of Sanguinius.

The shield on the side of his arm is from a Dreadknight box. I thought it might look good as a sort of image of one of the noble deeds he accomplished before being placed in the sarcophagus. Of course, now I feel I need to convert him on foot and maybe convert a model of the Slaaneshi Demon Prince he is clearly fighting...

Finally we have the other Furioso, Brother Bors (chop it's head off Bors!). I went for a Frag cannon on him as it's just too fun not to have one for the purposes of snapfire (2xD3 Str6 Rending automatic hits!). He was made with the spare bits from the Venerable kit so he has slightly more ornate leg armour and the cool fist shaped dreadnought close combat weapon. He was cruelly shot down by a Forgefiend's autocannon dire in his first game in the very first turn without even moving an inch! In his second game though he smashed apart a truck load of boys, then got stuck into the rest of the ork army, helping me fight to a hard fought draw!

The white blood droplet marks him out as a member of the 3rd company.

Right, that's it for now - off to nag some of the others to get off their arses and post some pics of their works in progress. During the rest of March I finished off some allies for the army - will post some pics of them shortly. At the moment I'm working on the rest of the terminator squad. Details on them later this month!

Month 2 complete - and then some!

Ok, so for this month I set myself the task of painting up the Death Company so I'd have a second troops squad painted up.

Only problem is I got a little carried away and ended up painting more than I had originally intended - oh well, I'll just have to paint even more stuff in the rest of this month/March!

First of all, here's the finished Death Company - I've armed them with bolters as their relentless rule means they can rapid fire with these and then still assault the enemy. To help with that I've given them a couple of power weapons and a power fist for those more heavily armoured targets!

All they really need now is a chaplain to lead them (perhaps next month!)

I've also painted up a land raider redeemer to carry Captain Galad and his squad (painted last month) around the board. I press-moulded the grail symbol from a Bretonian banner then made a green stuff cast of it. Then I stuck a couple of Bretonian shields on the side and painted them up to match the heraldry on the captain's knee pad. As a final touch, I named this noble steed - Concorde. Sweet Concorde - bonus points for anyone who spots the reference!

And I started painting a squad of scouts. Three of them are done, and the other two will probably be finished tonight. I've decided to call the middle one Depardiu as he does look quite a bit like Gerard Depardiu to me! These guys should be able to guide any deep striking troops down bang on target, as well as roughing any enemies up they come across!

Then as a final touch - here's a couple of veteran models I did a test paint on -

The Vanguard veteran has Sanguinary Guard legs and jump pack, and a grey knight head.

The Terminator has a Sanguinary Guard torso on a Grey Knight back piece and has a Grey Knight terminator helm. The shield is the symbol from the Sanguinary Guard banner top mounted on a simple plastic shield.

And lastly, an Iron Hand space marine. I decided I wanted some heavy fire support for the army, and thought the best way to do that would be to add some heavy duty allies from the regular Space Marines codex. Eventually there will be a squad of 10 of these painted up, along with a Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer and another techmarine with a Thunderfire cannon.

Right, that's it - I'm off to paint some dreadnoughts!

Back in the Game

Well it all seems quiet on the Panic Rising Blog, so I thought I'd post a quick update-

There's two parts to this (well three, as the blogger iPhone app won't let me post photos anywhere but the end)... The second being my own hobby progress. The first is this-Community (not the TV show).

Having the blog and Facebook group for the Army Challenge has been awesome, BUT, more importantly, has reminded me of one of the big reasons why I like playing with small plastic soldiers (also known as Man-Barbies): the community of like minded geek culture and beer drinking that accompanies it! I don't get much beer drinking in at the moment, as my boy is still too young to join in, but I have loved seeing the posts on everyone else's work, as well as getting advice and feed back on my own! I have even had a fellow gamer post me some zombie bits out of the goodness of his heart (the wonderful BEN), which was AWESOME of him, and very generous! This kind of exchange is brilliant.

This may get a little sentimental, but getting to build this sense of community through mutual banter and hobbying advice has both made me very happy, and also really inspired me to keep sneaking in an extra coat of paint here, and some more plastic scythes on a model there..! I am certainly checking FB a lot more often than necessary, after posting a painting or modelling picture, to see what people think of it!

The other thing that is very helpful is a deadline-I've got it into my head that I can get 1750 points painted by march to use at The Spikey Clubs SVA event (with the knowledge that I can borrow some chaos allies if needs be - thanks 6th!) - so paint brushes ahoy, and I'll crush (I mean 'see') you at SVA!

HOBBY PROGRESS:

Painted up 5 immortals- fun, and not too taxing...
Built a couple of wraiths-great, but the decision to put decomposing cyber zombies controlling them has made them a big project. 3 more to build!
3 Crypteks built-enjoyed making these guys a lot-they feel very unique!

Also sourced loads of bits for other junky robots, and cyber zombies-as well as vehicles - which will be pretty big conversions! Including the Manifactorum terrain set, for building junkloader ghost arks!

Photos:

Horror In the Scrapyard: month 1 complete!

So this month has worked out well for me-my Cybermancer (overlord on catacomb command barge) and 15 scrapcrons have risen from the junk of a hive world and are fully painted and based!

I've been painting in short bursts of an hour here and there, after the boy has gone to sleep, and whilst watching DVDs with the missus... After five or more years its great to get back into the hobby!

The broken down feel has been very interesting to work on-from salt masking on the armour of the Cybermancer, and command barge, to the rust and oil stains on the scrapcron warriors... Over the top of shading, highlights etc. the Living zombie head of the Cybermancer really makes him pop amongst the other colours, and I couldn't resist the dripping blood from his in and out tubes. Honestly, the hardest part has been the hazard stripes on the tube on his head, all done by hand!

Next month I think is immortals, 5 more warriors and a ghost ark... But might scale down to just immortals depending on busyness... But for now, don't go done to the scrap yard at night... And recycle. That's important too...

1st month's goal complete!

Ok, so the goal for the first month was to paint one HQ choice and one Troops choice. For my first month I decided to paint my own version of the Captain Tycho special character, and a tactical squad, but as I'm doing my own successor chapter the Grailbearers my tactical squad is a little different to the one you'd see in a regular army.

Since the Grailbearers are styled more as a group of crusading knights, it seemed more appropriate for them to carry pistols and chainswords than bolt guns. This isn't to say I won't have some boltgun squads in the army, just that I want to have more combat armed units than shooty units. Luckily the Blood Angels codex gives you the option to take an assault squad without jump packs as a troops choice - the perfect way to represent a combat weapon armed tactical squad!

I've painted mine up as 3rd squad of 3rd company, as you can see by the the red droplet on yellow knee pad, and the white blood droplet on their rights shoulder pads. I've also modeled the sergeant on Sergeant Rafen from the James Swallow novels as I really like the cover of Red Fury (like I said in my last post). I've tried to make him stand out by giving him his own heraldry on his knee pad, so it's not just yellow and red but yellow, black and red.

The squad is armed with a melta gun, two inferno pistols and a power sword and I intend to drop it in from orbit in a land raider for some series tank busting fury!

The captain is my version of Tycho, like I said in my last post I'm quite chuffed to have been able to convert it entirely in plastic! Still considering a name for him - currently thinking Galad since most of my other models in the army have names on their shoulder pads from medieval knights.

Here's some photos anyway.

As to what I'll be doing next month, I'm currently thinking Death Company! Maybe even a dreadnought (even though it's only supposed to be one force organisation chart per month).