March to War 2018 – 10th Update
Ten updates! Count them, ten! That’s ten whole posts of hobby goodness from us here at the Brush and Boltgun. We’re well into the challenge now, with only a couple of weeks left for us to get 2018 points both built and painted. Let’s see how we’re getting on…
Mike:
I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. Okay. Stop. Breathe. It’ll be okay…
I suddenly realised this weekend just how close the end of this challenge is. And it’s even closer for me, as I need to get my stuff painted and down to GW to paint before the Easter weekend, as I’m going away. Nothing like pressure, eh?
It could all come together at the last minute as so many hobby projects do, or it could not. Worrying about it isn’t exactly conducive to painting. So why don’t I show you how I’m getting on.
Speaking of things just coming together, one thing I often talk about on here is the latter stages of painting a model, and once you get in the flow how quickly progress can be made. Just as an example take a look at the Dark Angels Tactical Squad and where they were at last update. Now look at where they are; apart from the bases they’re finished. I won’t bother going into all the colours here, as I’ll be doing a “painting Dark Angels” post soon:
I haven’t done any more on the Ravenwing, but I have painted all the silver on one unit of Deathwing using Citadel Leadbelcher, and shaded it with Citadel Nuln Oil. This is probably the unit that I will work on next, as I think the best way to tackle this challenge now is to start ticking off complete units:
One new thing from last time is the Dark Angel Librarian. I gave him a basecoat of Citadel Zandri Dust as most of the model is robes, and then painted the armour sections in Citadel Kantor Blue:
I have continued doing the black on the Custodes. It’s really frustrating how close they are to coming together like the Dark Angels, but I just can’t quite get over that hurdle yet. I hope when I’ve finished this colour it will start to pull together, but the black is proving difficult; as I gave the models a gloss varnish, the models aren’t retaining the black paint so it’s taking a few coats:
To show how much difference a shade makes, look at the Fyreslayers from our last update. The only difference in this picture is a shade of Reikland Fleshshade, and already they look so much better. I’ve also started blocking in the black for these guys:
I’ve also done some silver on the Flesh Tearers Dreadnought, and found these Sisters of Silence in a box, which as they are only basecoated will count towards the challenge if I can get them done. As I say though, I need to start ticking off completed units and giving myself some structure, so that’s enough from me for now:
Dave:
It’s been a while since my last post. I missed the last week because I was painting a house rather than painting miniatures (Which is a mistake. If ever you get the choice, pick miniatures every time). After hours of painting walls and skirting boards, I have been fairly hesitant to pick up a paintbrush, and I’ve realised that I am burnt out on hobbying at the moment. I think this is a danger that most hobbyists have faced at some point during their career (unless you’re Adam, his output is prolific!), and it’s something I encounter more than most – this may be something to do with my insistence on converting every single model in an army (see my Sylvaneth here for example).
I decided that the best way to deal with this was an ‘easy win’ project to get my hobby juices flowing. If you’ve been following the blog or our Youtube channel you’ll have seen our work on Shadespire, and I decided it was about time that I started on my band for it. I had decided that my band would be Garrek’s reavers, as Mike got his hands on the Sepulchral guard before I could (curse you!), but naturally I couldn’t just leave them as they were out of the box. I wanted to make them look like Khornate Spartans, so I picked up a few extra bits from maxmini.eu, and some marauder horsemen spears from eBay, and set about working out how to convert the models.
The models themselves are great. I really like the base kit, but they snap together in such a way that make them quite difficult to convert. First thing I did on every model (except bloodied Saek) was remove the heads with a jeweller’s saw and hobby knife, and swap them over for the maxmini helmets. I wanted to pick out the 3 ‘characters’ in the force with unique helmets, where as the two disposable Khorne characters were given the same helmet with a forward-facing crest. When you’re replacing heads, it’s worth thinking about the pose of the model, something as simple as rotating the head a few degrees can change the whole feel of the miniature! There are a couple of models in the Khorne Shadespire band that benefit massively from that, and I hope that you can see that in some of the head swaps I’ve done here:
Then came thinking about the weapons, which created much more of a headache! I originally wanted to have them all armed with spears and shields, but looking at the models it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to be possible. So I settled for using the gladius style swords that came on the figures. I was particularly pleased with how Saek’s overhead stab turned out (those of you not familiar with the original model, he is going for a two-handed overhead swing with an axe). To attach the shields, I first trimmed the arms they were going on. I tried to preserve a chunk of the handle of the weapon to act as the hand-hold for the shield, and cut off any spikes and extra details from the Khornate bucklers, and then they were attached using superglue.
I want to just take a second to talk about the most difficult bit of conversion in the band: the head on Garrek. The heads from maxmini are clearly designed to fit Space Marines (as evidenced by the massive plugs on the bottom of the heads, that I had to trim off), and the head I had picked out for Garrek had a Space Marine style grill on it, which I didn’t want to be a feature. I instead swapped the double crests from the aforementioned head and transferred them onto a different head. This was a massive pain in the backside – the helmets are rounded and smooth, and getting the base of the crests to match perfectly with rounding of the other head was going to be nearly impossible, so I decided to cut into the ‘donor’ helmet, leaving a squared edge, then cut angular indents into the second helmet, and gluing them all together. This was also a pain in the backside, but it worked, and was probably easier than the other way.
Hope you enjoyed that insight into how I made my band more unique, maybe next time, I’ll get to show you how I painted them.
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