Tactical Blood Angels Reinforcements

These past two weeks I made some good headway with my Blood Angels, finishing my Tactical Marines and some Heavy Support Marines and making some good progress on the Legions Imperialis Armoured Company.

Pict 1587: Blood Angels Command

Pict 1588: Blood Angels Tactical Marines

Pict 1589: Blood Angels Iliastus Assault Cannon Heavy Support Squad

Pict 1590: Blood Angels Commander

First up, I finished up the ten Blood Angels Tacticals to bulk out the unit I painted right at the start of Heresy 2.0. I also put the finishing touches on the Iliastus Assault Cannon Squad and the printed Commander. I imagine the latter to be in charge of the back lines – the commanding pose seems fitting for that task.

Pict 1591: Rados Cults Blazing Worm

Pict 1592: Rados Cults Blazing Worm

One small detour lead me to paint this Blazing Worm for my Rados Cults. Once again, a really fun miniature from Alkemy! The contorted pose made it a bit difficult to paint the underbelly, but I'm really happy with the outcome. It really was good fun to look at pictures of frilled lizards to get some inspiration for the colours!

Pict 1593: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Armoured Company (WIP)

The Legions Imperials Armoured Company is also coming along nicely. Most of the details are done on all of the miniatures. Whats missing is glazing up the red armour and then doing a few scratches. A few Predators already have this and are only missing the weathering pigments on the tracks! 

Pict 1594: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Forward Operating Bases (WIP)

Lastly, the Legions event at Warhammer World will require two additional objectives in the form of Forward Operating Bases. These are on 40mm bases instead of the usual 32mm used in LI. In my mind, they are great opportunities to make some very small  dioramas! I built one as a somewhat improvised and mobile command centre and the other as a squad of Recon Marines stunbling upon a trap rigged with explosives. Converting such small miniatures was quite the challenge, but really fun as well!

The Butterfly's Tally 2024

Happy New Year! One more rotation around the sun is completed. And that means it is time to look back at what has been achieved in the previous year. And of course it also means a look ahead and making plans for the year that has just started. Once again, I'm very happy with the hobby I have done in 2024 –

Pict 1523: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels and Legio Solaria Support

The Hobby Tally 2024

Just like last year, I'm going to start by looking back at my resolutions from the start of the year to structure my revision of this year's hobby:

• Paint 2 pieces of terrain each for the SciFi and the Fantasy collection
• I just about managed to sneak this goal in during the closing days of the year by painting the Solstice28 icons, which I will count towards my fantasy terrain. The scifi terrain is covered by the Zone Mortalis tile I put the finishing touches on only shortly before that. Since it is so big, I will allow myself to count it as two for the sake of achieving my goal!
  

Pict 1514: Zone Mortalis Reactor Tile

Pict 1519: Solstice28 Icons

• Finish up the Cursed City collection. This is 10 Grave Guard, 5 Direwolves, 3 Vargheists and a Necromancer – 19 miniatures in total, the should be doable!
• I started to work on this goal early on in the year and completed the Necromancer alongside some older Vampire miniatures. The other miniatures, however, are still primed a ghostly white...

Pict 1415: C18 Vampira, Necromancer and Neferata

•  Once again paint more than 100 miniatures
• While I was distracted from the Cursed City miniatures, I did once again paint over 100 miniatures. Again, I only reached this goal in December, but I do like it that way – that means it is an achievable but still demanding challenge. The group photo of my Legions Imperialis Blood Angels is representative of one focus, others I will look at further down this post.

Pict 1524: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels and Legio Solaria of 2024

• Lastly, make a concerted effort to buy less new stuff, paint the stuff I have and play with it
• Looking at the numbers over on the left, I am pretty content. It looks like I did indeed buy fewer miniatures – the smallest number since I started tracking in fact! Gaming took a bit of a backseat, but I still managed to play quite a few systems: The Horus Heresy, Legions Imperialis, Middle-earth SBG and Alkemy
   

If you want so look back at my painting progress of previous years, here are the links to the tallies of the past: The Tally 2017, The Tally 2018, The Tally 2019, The Tally 2020, The Tally 2021, The Tally 2022, The Tally 2023

Other notable projects of 2024

Pict 1525: Fangorn Army

Picking up after the list of gamesystems I played this year: Among them was (only) one Middle-earth tournament. I did quite enjoy this one, however, and I painted Treebeard and Quickbeam (now renamed to Birchseed) to complete a Fangorn army. I still have one more Ent to paint and now with the new rules, this looks like one easy pick-up to build out my roster. This new edition will probably mean more Middle-earth miniatures to come this year!

Pict 1526: Heresy Blood Angels and Raven Guard of 2024

All of these "big scale" Heresy miniatures were painted in concert with gaming events as well. Adding to my Blood Angels to have variety during a tournament and one narrative game day. The latter also inspired me to go ahead an paint the small allied detachement of Raven Guard. These still have to see the table, but I hope to remedy that soon!

Pict 1451: Rados Cults Starter Set

One of the smaller systems I have is Alkemy. With the Rados Cults I started a small warband and have even begun to build them out a bit more. Playing a real skirmish system is really something different to what I usually play and something I'd like to do some more in this coming year.

Hobby Plans for 2025

Speaking of plans for this upcoming year, I will also close this retrospective of 2024 out with plans for 2025. Overall I'm very happy with my goals from last year and will carry them over. I will, however finally give into my hobby butterfly persona and will refrain from giving myself any resolutions containing any particular miniature ranges and will simply go, where the games I actually play / my whims take me. So this is what I want to do:

• Paint 2 pieces of terrain each for the SciFi and the Fantasy collection
  
• Once again paint more than 100 miniatures
  
• And again, buy less new stuff, paint the stuff I have and most importantly play with it!

DreadTober Week Two: Blood Angels Flyers and a whole host of Dreadnoughts

This week was quite effective: I finally finished some Aeronautica / Legions Imperialis flyers for my small scale Blood Angels and got some good work done on the next few dreadnoughts (big and small)!

Pict 1477: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Air Support

Pict 1478: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Thunderhawk

Pict 1479: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Thunderhawk

Pict 1480: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Fire Raptors

Pict 1481: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Storm Eagles

First up: I managed to finish this collection of Aeronautica planes that form the backbone of my aerial assault formation in Legions Imperialis. They were half painted on my desk for quite a while (I last showed them in June but I started painting them last December...) and I'm really happy now that they are done. I'm really looking forward to using them in the next game and then painting the last three Xiphons that are still missing to complete my flyers.

Pict 1482: DreadTober Blood Angels Dreadnoughts (WIP)

As promised in last week's post, I got to work on the Blood Angel Dreadnought. Whilst working on the Castra Ferrum's basecolours, I also did the same colours on one more Contemptor and the Dreadnought Drop Pod I had wanted to paint as a strech goal last year. It would be great to get them done during October as well, but I'm not holding my breath. As long as I can get some progress on them, I'm happy!

Pict 1483: Howling Griffons Chaplain Dreadnought (WIP)

The Howling Griffons Chaplain Dreadnought meanwhile has been oiled up and is already looking quite goot. I'm confident this one will be done quite fast!

Pict 1484: Rados Cults Scourgers (WIP)

I also got a first wave of additional miniatures for my Rados Cults. These three Scourgers are pretty basic troops and now have the first few colours on them. Since I plan to play a lot more Alkemy, I'm sure they will get done sooner rather than later. As long as I don't get to distracted...

Pict 1485: Legions Imperialis Leviathan and Deredeo Dreadnoughts (WIP)

Lastly I also started on some small scale Dreadnoughts to keep in the spirit of DreadTober whilst still cashing in on the motivation from finishing the Aeronautica/Imperialis flyers.

Getting into Alkemy with the Rados Cults

Progress has slowed quite significantly with both the Real Life™ and the summer getting in the way of building and painting. I did, however, manage to paint up a starter set for Alkemy the Game choosing the Rados Cult faction during last year's Kickstarter for the Second Edition rules. I also started working on a few more reinforcements for my Heresy Blood Angels and I hope to field them at a campaign kick-off event later this month.

Pict 1450: The Rados Cults lead by Radamante

Pict 1451: Rados Cults Starter Set

Pict 1452: Rados Cults Starter Set

So, this is my version of the Rados starter set. The team consisting of one hero, a priestess and 4 warriors with different specialisations. Having played a few rounds I already love the game. It playes on a small board – easily doable on a kitchen table – and has interesting tactical interactions between activation points, custom dice and a bluffing mechanic with cards to resolve combats.

I did ejoy painting these six miniatures to get back into the swing of things. While the process is pretty straight forward, I also wrote it down as a guide for anyone interested or to remind myself should I need it later. I am particularly happy with the bases. While they are similar to the ones I do for my Infinity miniatures, I managed to put a bit more details and other textures in as well.

I'm really looking forward to expanding my collcetion here – even with a newer faction such as the Rados, there is a really good selection of other heroes, warriors and even monsters to choose from and to change up the game play!

Pict 1453: Heresy Blood Angels Melta Support Squad, Moritat and Rhino (WIP)

One of the best motivations to finish miniatures is an upcoming event. I plan to get to a kick-off event for a campaign at one of the local stores.We will be playing games of Zone Mortalis as well as regular Heresy and for the latter I wanted some anti-armour unit to do work against tanks and elite units. Instead of going with the ubiquitous Lascannon squad I went with a Melta support squad a Rhino to get them to where they are needed most. And while I had the fitting paints out, I also stared with a Moritat to join my Mortalis Destroyers as well as a Boarding Marine. The latter was a prize at the Zone Mortalis tournament at the start of the year and I wanted to paint it up before this next event at the same location.

For now, the Rhino has the base colours as well as the decals and is ready for the oilwash. The infantry has some of the colours but will get the rest of them over the next few evenings.