Blood Angels Big and Small

With last weeks Zone Mortalis tournament, I was somewhat pressed for time, but still managed to finish up all the Blood Angels I wanted to play. After that I spent this week finishing up some projects that lay around started on my desk – among others some more small scale Blood Angels.

Pict 1418: Blood Angels Tartaros Command and Veterans

Pict 1419: Blood Angels Tartaros Preator and Command Squad

Pict 1420: Blood Angels Tartaros Preator and Command Squad

First up are the Tartaros Praetor and his Command Squad. The Praetor is the limied release miniature from 2016 and is the second version I painted of him – my 6th / 7th edition Flesh Tearers army made use of one as well. Anyways, a very cool miniature! I really like the Tartaros armour and getting to use the Command Squad and the Praetor during the tournament was really great.

Pict 1421: Blood Angels Veterans and Apothecary

Pict 1422: Blood Angels Veterans and Apothecary

These Veterans were especially built for with Zone Mortalis in mind. They are kitted out for close quarters fighting and make use of a lot of flamers to root out any enemy clumping up in the tunnels. Especially when paired up with another squad, they really chewed through enemies. During painting I followed my usual recipe, but of course they are a lot more blinged out. For example I decided to give them all gold helmets following the examples from the Liber Astartes and of course the old Black Book Malevolence.

Pict 1423: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Contemptors and Plasma Support

Since I had the fitting shades of red on my wet palette, I also finished up some more Legions Imperialis Marines. I had started them before a game to make the Plasma Support Marines stand out against the tacticals. Now that the plasma guns have had some more highlights, they should read even better. The Contemptors were painted alongside them. Simply because I love my Dreadnoughts.
This is also reflected in the numbers of miniatures bought this year. I can't wait to add some Leviathans and Deredeos into my roster!

Pict 1424: Blood Anges Preator (reworked)

One of the small projects I mopped up after the big push for the tournament was this Praetor. He was done quite a while ago but I had to chop off the head for my Raldoron. I had selected and primed a head pretty much right after decapitating. But I never got around to painting it until now. There also was a bit of touching up to be done around the collar. I'm really happy with how he looks now and glad he can now be able to be fielded again.

Pict 1425: Horus Heresy and Legions Imperialis Size Comparison

This also a great opportunity to do the obligatory photo comparing the size difference between the two scales. Really sets the minute detail Workshop was able to put into the small miniatures into perspective!

Old Vampires Stir

I managed to finish a few miniatures for my Undead collection, did some more work on the elite Blood Angels from last post and then started a new MESBG army project in the form of Ents with Quickbeam and Treebeard.

Pict 1414: Old Vampires stir up the local cemetary

Pict 1415: C18 Vampira, Necromancer and Neferata

First up are the first finished miniatures of the year – three pieces of my Undead collection that I started right after a game of Cursed City last Halloween. The faces of the C18 Vampire and Neferata were a bit challenging to paint up with the somewhat exaggerated features of yesteryear. But I'm pretty happy with the way they look now. In comparison, the modern Necromancer really was a joy to highlight, but he does lack some of the charm the older miniatures have.
The Necromancer is the first of nineteen miniatures I want to finish this year for the second Cursed City expansion. Very good to have the first one done early in the year, but I have to try and not loose sight of them and should propably start the next batch sooner rather than later.

Pict 1416: Blood Angels Tartaros Command and Veterans (WIP)

My Blood Angels got to see action in a game of Zone Mortalis. I was really happy with the Veterans and the Terminators but my Preator really needs a more powerful weapon compared to the simple power weapon he comes with. Thankfully what he's modeled with could reasonably represent a numer of different weapons. So I'll be able to try a few permutations.
Anyways, the oilwash is dry and locked in with a coat of varnish, the detail work is coming along nicely and I'm starting with the highlighting of the red armour. Not that much more to do after that, so I should have them ready for a Zone Mortalis tournament this coming saturday.

Pict 1417: Quickbeam and Treebeard (WIP)

I also got to play two games of Middle-earth SBG and fell in love with a somewhat stupid list containing just the three Ent heroes Treebeard, Quickbeam and Beechbone. The latter has no official model and I used my metal Ent to represent him – the first time he saw play since I painted him almost three years ago!
Quickbeam here was only partially assembled when I played him. Glueing on the all the missing branches did not take long at all and the basecolours and washes went down fast as well. Treebeard is missing some greenstuffing before the priming. The gaps should be done quickly, but Merry is missing his right hand. I'll have to see how adequatly I can manage that...

Blood Angels Elites

I started painting two more units and attached characters for my Heresy Blood Angels on the occasion of an upcoming Zone Mortalis tournament: a Tartaros Praetor and a Tartaros Command Squad as well as a unit of Veterans with their Apothecary.

Pict 1412: Blood Angels Tartaros Command Squad (WIP)

First up, here is my leader for the Zone Mortlis list: A Praetor in Tartaros Terminator armour (using the beautiful limited edition Legion Praetor from 2016) and a Command Squad all in Tartaros armour as well. I used the more ornate pieces from the plastic kit to set them appart from other Terminators. The Legion Banner comes from the Grey Knights Terminators removing the embossed detailing and smoothing everything out with a layer of Green Stuff. The topper is made from a Vexillum. The banner should help out during the game by enabling the unit to score objectives – they should do great as a strike team!

I put on a selection of decals on them to make them stand out even more. Sadly the banner was to small for the amazing big decal from the ForgeWorld sheet. Combining some of the smaller ones should look good as well, though.

Pict 1413: Blood Angels Veterans (WIP)

It was really difficult to decide on a load out for these Veterans – there is so much choice! In the end I went with a smattering of Perdition weapons and Lightning Claws for the close combat. Two Heavy Flamers and Combi-Flamers should help with thinning out enemies in the confines of the Zone Mortalis.

For now, they and the attached Apothecary had some work on the base colours done. I think I will continue with them to catch them up with the Terminators and then do the oil wash on all of them at the same time.

The Butterfly's Tally 2023

Happy New Year! As is tradition, the start of a year calls for reflection on the past and for plans on what to do in the upcoming cycle around the sun. I'm really quite happy with what I have achieved in 2023 and am looking forward to the projects in 2024!

Pict 1404: Sanguinius leading the Blood Angels

The Hobby Tally 2023

So to have a look back, this is what I set out to do at the start of the year and how I did:

• Paint and play at least the first of the two Cursed City expansions (it's only 6 miniatures: 3 giant bats, Radukar the Beast, Lady Annika and Carmilla DuSang)
• I managed to paint all of these, but decided against playing just the one expansion. Ideally I'd like to start a fresh campaign with both expansions painted.
  I did, however, play one session over Halloween, which was great!

Pict 1405: Cursed City Villains of 2023

• Paint 5 Infinity miniatures and play a game with them
• In the end I painted 11 Infinity miniatures and even had a few games scheduled in, but they all did not work out in the end. I will have to be better with getting together with people to play these games!

Pict 1406: Haqqislam, Dahshat and Kaplans of 2023

• Paint 10 MESBG miniatures
• I painted 16 MESBG miniatures - not as many as in prior years, but I'm still happy with them! Again, having a game scheduled makes for great motivation to paint at least some of the miniatures you need.

Pict 1407: Mordor Orcs and Rohan Heroes of 2023

• Paint 3 more tiles of the modular gaming board as well as the rest of the Garden of Morr (that's 6 pieces of wall)
• This is probably the biggest achievement of this year! I'm super glad to have finished a 4x4 gaming board and the Garden of Morr pieces. I still have quite a few more pieces of terrain fitting in with the collection, but I can play games at home, which is amazing.

Pict 1408: Garden of Morr Scenery 2023

• Paint at least 100 miniatures in total
• 100 is always a good and round number to aim for and of course I managed to smash this goal as well with 176 miniatures painted in total!

Looking at these resolutions and my way of achieving them makes me really happy. I did not go for to many specific projects because I know, I will get distracted over the course of the year. What could have gone better is gaming – while certainly also a question of free time, I could have been more agressive in getting together with friends. But in the final days of the year I managed to get to hobby club about an hour away and get in my first Heresy game. I do hope to contiune this trend!

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

Other Big Projects of this Year

Pict 1409: Horus Heresy Blood Angels of 2023

I added quite a bit to my Blood Angels army this year: Aster Crohne, 1 Consul, 10 Mortalis Destroyers, 5 Assault Destroyers as Zephon's retinue, 1 Castra Ferrum Dreadnought, 15 Inductii Despoilers, 10 Scouts, 15 Assault Marines, 1 Rhino, 6 Seekers, 1 Avenger Strike Fighter and of course Sanguinius!
All in all 67 miniatures – quite the collection seeing it tallied up like this!

Pict 1410: Tyranids of 2023

With the new models coming for the tenth edition of 40k, I also did some work on my Tyranids. While I'm still not that enamoured with 40k, these were quite fun to get back to.

Pict 1411: Badab Enforcers of 2023

I have gotten quite a good start to a Necromunda collection without even intending to do so. I plan to use these as the bad guys in a Inquisitor game but they could also see use as a Badab War Kill Team. I should really get onto painting the Inquisitor, the retinue and some more terrain I have sloted for that project...

Hobby Plans for 2024

Which brings me nicely to the plans for the coming year. I will once again try to not be too specific and be ok with getting distracted. I also want to try and not get to swept up an the hype of new miniatures and get to the projects I already have at home. And I do want to play more games

• Paint 2 pieces of terrain each for the SciFi and the Fantasy collection
  
• 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!
  
• Once again paint more than 100 miniatures
  
• Lastly, make a concerted effort to buy less new stuff, paint the stuff I have and play with it
   

Starting up Legions Imperialis

One last post for 2023: December really flew by and with the holidays left little time for the hobby. Nevertheless I managed to make a good start on Legions Imperialis with a small scale version of my Blood Angels. I even managed to play a first game of LI and a first game of Heresy! These inspired me to build some more minis for these systems. But I also finished some of the Vampires and assorted undeads.

Pict 1392: Legions Imperials Blood Angels

Pict 1393: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Contemptors

These four Contemptors were the first miniatures I painted for the Legions Imperialis version of my Blood Angels. I love these miniatures! Of course, I like the Contemptor chassis. But they really did a great job to recreate them in the small scale and still give them a good range of motion and easy dynamic poses. Painting them pretty much took only an evening for all steps, so I can really see myself painting these LI miniatures quite fast.

Pict 1394: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Legion Command

Pict 1395: Legions Imperialis Blood AngelsTactical Legionaries

Pict 1396: Legions Imperialis Blood AngelsTactical Legionaries

Pict 1397: Legions Imperialis Blood AngelsTactical Legionaries

Pict 1398: Legions Imperialis Blood AngelsTactical Legionaries

The Legions Imperialis Space Marine infantry is also really nice. I did some carving to improve the undercuts, but really you do not have to do this make them look good on the table. That work will only ever really be noticed on pictures magnifying the models beyond what you would usually see.
Anyways, I decided against painting them unassembled – the power armour leaves just enough room to get the brush in and I'm quite happy with the way they came out. The hardest part really were the eyelenses - that's the first time I acually used a maginfying glass to see what I'm doing! And even now, the blown up pictures show all that went wrong. But I don't mind, you'd never see them during play.

Pict 1399: Winged Vampire, Bastet and the Werefox

In the end I only managed to finish up the winged Vampire, the two versions of Bastet and the Werefox during December. The other Vampires and the Necormancer are still waiting for the highlights. I will really have to make an effort next year to finish all of these started and abandoned projects...

Pict 1400: Blood Angels Tartaros Terminators, Moritat and Contemptor (WIP)

I also got to building some more Blood Angels in the big scale. The Contemptor is geared for anti-tank with a Lascannon and a Chainfist – same as the Moritat, who would also like to open up some cans with his two Infernopistols. The two Tartaros Terminators are the start of a big squad. I used the ForgeWorld Iliastus Assault Cannons with the Cataphractii arms and put them on the heavy weapon arms that would usually hold the Tartaros' Auto Cannons. The Tartaros Praetor only got a helmet to keep that face safe even when fighting in space!

Pict 1401: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Thunderhawk (WIP)

Pict 1402: Legions Imperialis Blood Angels Thunderhawk Conversion (WIP)

Pict 1403: Legions Imperials Blood Angels Fire Raptors (WIP)

Lastly, since I planned an Aerial Assault formation to start Legions Imperialis, here some planes. I really love the Thunderhawk model – they are so big in comparison! And of course I would probably never get them for the 28mm collection. I also was inspired by Chaosbunker's Thunderhawk conversion and decided to recreate the open front hatch.
The Fire Raptors had their cupolas magnetised, even if it look like I will probably only use the Lascannons in LI. But I might play them in Aeronautica and then would want the options. Anyways it was quite fun little project using small steel ball bearings in the cupolas and a magnet inside the hull right between them.

Infinity Mercenaries: Kaplan Tactical Service

November once again provided very little hobby time, so this post will be a quick catch-up. I managed tp finish a small project for Infinity: a company of Kaplan Mercenaries. I also did a little bit more work on the Oldhammer undead miniatures I had started at the start of the month.

Pict 1389: Kaplan Mercenary Company

Pict 1390: Kaplans, Yuan Yuan, Ghulam and the Yu Jing Ambassador HVT

One of my friends is really into the Mercenaries game mode for Infinity and has been trying to get me paint up a team as well. I had an old box of the Kaplan Tactical Service and took the opportunity to paint them in different (but similar) colours to my usual Haqqislam/Dashat Company collection. Besides the Kaplans I also added in a Yuan Yuan, a Ghulam and an HVT to round out a small 100 point list. I'm really happy to have this use for the Ghulams - I already have six with this exact load out in older poses painted.

Pict 1391: Vampires, Necromancer, Werefox and Cats (WIP)

I also worked on the Undeads from last post - they are now basecoated and had a wash. Highlighting them and doing the detail work should not take to long!

Blood Angel Mortalis Destroyers and Aster Crohne

During these past two weeks I managed to finish up all the Blood Angels for my tournament list, that is the ten Destroyers and their Rhino. I also put the finishing touches on my rendition of Aster Crohne. I then converted more Blood Angels heroes and started on some more Undead miniatures.

Pict 1383: Blood Angels Mortalis Destroyers and Rhino

Pict 1384: Blood Angels Mortalis Destroyers and Aster Crohne

First up, here are the ten Mortalis Destroyers as well as Aster Crohne. I really like how they came out! The Destroyers use a bit of a darker red. Combined with the black panels, this really makes the gold and green details stand out! Aster Crohne is also very nice. I pushed the contrast on the gold this time around and I have to say it does pop more than with my ususal recipe. I might have to get myself some Destroyers to swap out the special weapons for flamers since Crohne gives them a boost...

Pict 1385: Blood Angels Rhino with Reinforced Armour

Pict 1386: Blood Angels Rhino with Reinforced Armour

I'm also very happy with the way this Rhino came out. As with Crohne, I pushed the contrast on the gold. Other than that the big panes were quite fun to weather. It has been quite a long time since I last painted a vehicle and I could see myself doing more of them. Besides the Dreadnought Drop Pod I have still on my table there are also two more for Infantry.
Anyways, this meant I managed to paint every model I neede for the tournament, only to get sick a few days out preventing me from going. Next time it is then...

Pict 1387: Blood Angels Librarian Conversion, Raldoron and Vigilator (WIP)

After finishing everything I needed for the tournament, I went back into build mode and did these three heroes for my Blood Angels. The Vigilator is pretty much stock with only a little bit of green stuff to elevate the helmet a bit. Same goes for Raldoron – here, I removed the sculted blood from the blade and of course I also gave him a helmet. I realised that the Blood Angels Preator in power armour uses a helmet that is based of an illustration of Raldoron and so I had to behead my painted Praetor... He'll be getting a new head as well. The Librarian is based on the model for Ahzek Ahriman, I still had from my Betrayal at Calth box. I used plastic Mk IV head and torso and removed a lot of the sculpted detail. I really like the clean look I've achieved and very much look forward to paiting these three!

Pict 1388: Warhammer Vampires through the Ages

Lastly I also played a short introductory session of Cursed City on Halloween which reminded me of all those beautiful miniatures I want to paint for my Undead collection. I got the project box out and selected a few miniatures to paint up next. They come from various eras – the Vampires and the Werefox are from the Night Horrors line from the late 80s/early 90s; the metal Neferata and her cat Bastet are from the 6th edition Vampires whilst the plastic Necromancer is a modern sculpt from the 8th edition. Ever since the plastic Neferata was released during the End Times, I wanted to convert her on foot. I've had the bits, including a scond hand Yvraine, for quite some time now and after fiddling with the Librian, I also started outlining this conversion – the next step will be the green stuffing and some minor details.