March to War 2018 – Update 4
Today marks the last day of January – the first month of March to War. Progress has been varied so far, but with two months still to go, we’re on target. The tactic for completing March to War is to get the painting out of the way first then do your building at the last minute. At least, that’s the sensible way to do it…
Dave:
Two weeks further into the challenge, and I’m afraid that I don’t have as much progress to show as I had hoped a fortnight ago. This is partly due to distraction (for which I completely blame Rob) and partly due to some personal issues that I won’t bore you all with here.
Whilst it’s not worth any March to War points, I have upgraded my hobby area significantly: you may remember from some old photos that I had a couple of small shelving unit from Wargames-Model-Mods (link here), but I have since added more shelves and some units from Hobbyzone (link here) after consulting Mike and Rob, who both have their shelving in their hobby areas. I particularly like the corner storage unit, which I have been storing all of my part-assembled tank bits in, and have come to call ‘The Garage’!
In terms of tank progress, having previously worked out how to make the basis of the Leman Russ tanks with my prototype, I set about making the other five chassis. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I was one Leman Russ body short, and have had to order it from a bits site, which means that I only have five tanks in progress. I say that this could be fortunate, as the guys asked if I would make a short tutorial on the Panzer-Russ conversion just after I had finished the first five. So I now have a Russ to build from scratch, which means that you can have a tutorial. Hurrah!
The second two chassis are going to be Basilisks. So, will require some more working out to make them look like the WW2 Hummel artillery piece, which will include making a gun shield for the crew. I think I’m going to work out exactly what I’m going to do with the sides of the tanks before I tackle that particular challenge. With that in mind, the next job on the tanks will be detailing the rather bare looking sides. I have strips of plasticard waiting to make track guards, and I think that, given my previous success making panels for the wheels, I may mount them on panels too. After they are in place it should give me an idea of what I have left to work with, and therefore what detailing can go on. Naturally I will be drawing heavily on the actual Panzer IV for this, because historical accuracy is incredibly important in a sci-fi combat game!
Now to the distraction… Mr. Knipe has put it to the group that we should play some themed games of AoS in a few weeks (I think mainly because he has two armies for that system, yet has never played a game!). I have a Sylvaneth force that I’d been trying to sell, with little success, in trading groups online. So, I decided that rather than part with them for vastly under what they were worth, I would do them up for this event. I’ve written a 500 point list, which gives me only a handful of miniatures, and which should be perfectly manageable in the remaining ten days. I say should be, if my idea for the army didn’t involve converting the head of every single model…
I loved the Leshen in the Witcher 3. They were one of my favourite monsters to face, and I think their design is really cool. An army of them was way too good to pass up.
Inspired by vikingpainting’s Instagram (here), I set about creating a force of Leshen for AoS, but where he has sculpted his own heads, I scoured ebay for old undead kits and beast skulls to use as the basis for mine. You can see the hooded effect I’m aiming for on the Kurnoth Hunters I have assembled below, although naturally they still need antlers adding. Cloth is a pain in the backside to sculpt, but it’s nice to get the sculpting tools out for the first time in ages.
So that’s it from me for this week. Sadly, despite the progress on several fronts, my March to War tally remains at a rather pitiful 494 points assembled, 0 points painted, but I am getting closer to finishing several units and vehicles, so hopefully there will be a huge surge for the next update!
Mike:
I’ve been focussing mainly on painting at the moment, and as you know, that involves my Dark Angels. I wanted to use this challenge to finally get a playable army together. With a few Custodian thrown in for good measure.
The first thing to note is that I have finished highlighting the green armour (using Warpstone Green) on my Dark Angels Tactical Squad:
The other thing I achieved was shading the bone armour on two squads of Deathwing Terminators. This was done with a mix of Seraphim Sepia and Forge World medium. It goes nicely into the recesses, leaving the bone above. I then started highlighting them with Pallid Wych Flesh:
I mentioned this last week, but I had finished the silver highlight on two Custodians. This week I finished the others, as seen here. (Don’t forget we have a video, if you’ve just joined the Custodes bandwagon):
Then I did some building to add up some points. With the impending release of Inquisitor Greyfax as an individual model, I assembled the one I had from the Triumvirate:
Also, as there is a new Imperial Knight coming out, I thought I would assemble this guy:
That’s all from me for this week!
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