March to War – Update 7
It’s week eight, and we’re moving quickly through the second half of the challenge. We’ve had a fair bit of distraction this past week, with two nights spent playing some Malign Portents games of Age of Sigmar. If you haven’t played Age of Sigmar, we recommend you give it a crack, it’s simple, with added complexity if you want it, fast, and really good fun. Anyway, on to the March to War 2018.
Rob:
With a couple of days of Age of Sigmar over the past week, I’ve spent a lot of time building Daemons of Nurgle. The main focus has been on the Nurglings, for the simple reason, I can’t play with them if they’re not together, and because I can’t put them together without painting all of them – yes, even the ones you can’t see… I had to plough through them before everything else.
The Nurglings themselves are a lot of fun to paint – you can see how I painted and based them in the post here, and the video here – Although they’ve had a quick paint job, there’s enough small detail to make them look great and draw the eye from the skin, and seeing them all together on the battlefield is amazing. They’ve all been painted the same, with the exception of the initial shading on the skin. I used five different shades, then painted the same skin tone over the top, which resulted in a variety of different coloured Nurglings.
54 points. 2224 points built, 653 points painted.
My initial plan for March to War was a small force of Fallen, with Relictors allies. As the weeks and updates have gone on, I seemed to have forgotten this and painted only the Relictors. Now, I’ve done my first squad of Fallen. As there isn’t a whole lot about the Fallen in the new Chaos Space Marine Codex, I’ve been searching online for images of Fallen Astartes, particularly their iconography. It’s not been covered in the 30k books yet, so I’ve gone off a few images of 30k Dark Angels, Old Fallen Iconography from past Codexes or Games Workshop magazines, all readily available with a few quick Google [other search engines are available – Ed] searches for ‘Fallen Dark Angels Iconography’.
The colour scheme for them is fairly easy, with Citadel Abaddon Black being the main colour. The metallics are Vallejo Model Air Chrome, with icons and details painted up in White and Citadel Mephiston Red. The robes are just Citadel Rakarth Flesh washed with Citadel Seraphim Sepia, then the layers built up from Rakarth Flesh to a 50:50 mix of Rakarth Flesh and White.
The sword that the squad leader is carrying is painted up using a similar technique to Space Wolf Frost Blades, but using red and yellow rather than blue and white. I’ll be writing/recording a tutorial on how to do them in the near future.
109 points. 2224 points built, 762 points painted.
With the Fallen element of the force, I took inspiration from the covers of Descent of Angels and Fallen Angels, using a lot of Chrome to contrast with the black. Their leader, himself only an Exalted Champion, has had the wings from the Dark Angels Veterans pack added to his helm. This took a little trimming of the helm itself, as they’re not made for MKIII helmets.
I decided to give him the markings of a Tactical Squad on his right pauldron because they’re no longer a uniform fighting force and they’re showing the icons of their previously held positions. He’s the most senior of the Fallen that are fighting together here, but that could be for any number of reasons over the past ten thousand years.
81 points. 2224 points built, 843 points painted.
In the ‘working on’ pile, I currently have the Relictors terminators who have been sprayed with Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey, then washed with Citadel Nuln Oil. As I progress with them, my aim is to get them looking a little more chaosy, painting the armour trim a dark brass colour similar to the Black Legion/Sons of Horus, just to show the merest hint that they’re heading along the wrong path.
The final things, which are being painted up for both Age of Sigmar and allies for the Death Guard, are 20 Plaguebearers. I’m actually painting up 28, but 8 of them I’ve had built and started since mid-last year, so it’s only the twenty from the past few weeks that have been built and painted up to this point. They’ve all been sprayed with Citadel Death Guard Green, then washed with a variety of Citadel Shades – similar to the Nurglings, with the exception of the character models who are being painted up for a video and a blog tutorial.
The Plaguebearers are being painted up using a variation of the methods from both our older post and video, just to give some more colour to them, as the original paint scheme being painted onto 30+ miniatures would have driven me crazy, so I’ve mixed it up a little, and will be doing a post detailing different shades and colours for the skin and weaponry.
The only issue with painting up these for the March to War, is the number of points for the number of miniatures is pretty pitiful. At 7 points a model, the Plaguebearers will only come in at 140 points before icons, etc.-
That’s all from me for this week, over to Adam for some xenos and traitors! Hoorah!
Adam:
This week’s post for me is more a statement of intent than really showcasing any real amount of progress. In points terms, I have added 0 to both of my scores.
As well as interrupting my painting schedule with two games of Age of Sigmar, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I have also been fortunate enough to travel to Berlin for a few days. There I got to visit the Reichstag, Berlin Wall, Charlottenburg Palace and a few other cool places – and the odd pub or five. This halved the amount of hobby days I had between my last post and now. It also stirred up the need to revisit some of my Bolt Action forces and start Seven Years War Prussians for Black Powder, but so far I have resisted!
Even more catastrophically for my hobby progress, SAGA II landed. For those who don’t know it, SAGA is a skirmish wargame by Studio Tomahawk. Originally it was set in the Viking Age with expansions to cover the Crusades and post-Roman Britain. (You can find out more about it here, and I have made some comments on what makes SAGA unique in an article here.)
The new edition has made the rules generic, so they can bring out a wider variety of sourcebooks including fantasy based expansions which are hinted at through the images in the rulebook. Staying true to their origins, however, the first book released was for the Dark Ages. This has lost me days of hobby time as I have tried to assimilate all the new rules and see how my beloved Byzantines (now rechristened ‘Last Romans’) play in this new version. Needless to say, I love the new rules and you should soon see a commentary from me on this very topic…
However, on with the show! I did say nothing was finished, but there has been some progress nonetheless.
I have partially built my Ork Blitza-Bomber and a Warbike unit. And this is why I said earlier that this was a ‘statement of intent’ week. With just over five weeks to go, I will not be hitting the 2018 points for either painted or assembled. I have spent some time this week taking stock and setting myself achievable targets.
I believe there is no better way to put yourself off painting something than to set crazy goals. This is meant to be a fun hobby after all and we all need lives. However, in the spirit of a Hobby Challenge, I won’t be giving up and still hope to complete some things I would not otherwise have finished.
Therefore, my ‘achievable’ objectives for the end of March are:
- Build and paint the Bomber and Bikers pictured above (+295 Assembly, +295 Painting).
- Finish building and paint the rest of the Ork Boy unit and last Loota below. (+18 Assembly, +59 Painting)
- Convert and paint the Tankbusta squad (who are currently just torsos). Paint Boss Zagstruk and Boss Snikrot. (+136 Assembly, +293 Painting)
- Finish all Night Lords: lightning to be added, some final highlights and basing. (+325 Painting)
Adding these to my current totals has generated my ‘Target Points’ score, as displayed at the bottom of the page.
Most of the Night Lords will not count towards my March points but I should make most effective use of my time; if I am going to paint the lightning I may as well do it for them all at once, or over a few evenings. This way, as well, I have an army completely finished by the end of the challenge.
If I do manage to finish all of the above and have some time spare, I will then look at other ways I can finish models to add some more points.
Current totals (no change to last week):
Painting: 187 points (Target: 1159)
Assembly: 366 points (Target: 815)
So it looks like I might get around half way towards the original target. This will, however, leave me with a load of Orks which were half done (and don’t count) completed, as well as a fully finished 30K army (most of which don’t count either). In terms of outcomes, if not points, I”d still count this as a success. Now just to knuckle down and get it done…
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