Resolutions and Realistic Goals!

Well it's a new year...sort of... and with it comes the mandatory resolution:

Be realistic.

Last year I got my second wind (third? forth maybe?) regarding all things Games Workshop and I probably stuck my fingers in way too many pies, I had lofty ambitions of an Adeptus Mechanicus exploratory force, then I went off on a bit of a tangent and had a half hearted attempt at a Dark Angels army.... not to mention helping my eldest son, Alex with his Lizardmen and Tyranids. Add on a full time job, a wife, a second child with a superhero obsession, a mortgage and now a dog, time was not on my side.

So, the new year was a time to take stock and refocus.

The Ad Mech thing is a long term goal, something I will labour on well past my 150th birthday probably, it's not dead but it's a definite back-burner job.

Dark Angels are probably going to be my go-to army, especially considering the amount of DA related gear I've already got and the timely release of the new codex and figures. Most of my time will hopefully be spent on this. 2000 points is my aim.

I've made a deal with Alex regarding his armies, one that will free me up to work on my projects. The deal is secret, it is a deal that was brokered under the watchful gaze of the devil himself. The deal is secret.

I was looking at the old 4th Edition rules the other day and started reading the Kill Team rules, so running alongside the Dark Angels I'm going to make a small 10 man Imperial Guard Kill Team. I'm going to loosely base them on one of the Houses in the Dune universe. I got my mitts on a Commissar Lord so I did a quick paint test in the colours of House Atreides...

Atreides Palace Guard test piece...

House Atreides colours are a green uniform and a red hawk as their symbol. Not sure what I think really, my mother always said "red and green should never be seen, only on an old fools back" and I think she may be right.

Anyway, that's it. Expect a lot of stuff painted green from me this year.

Death Guard possessed Helbrute / Dreadnaught - Work in progress

A while back I got a £5 eBay voucher on Facebook, so I immediately put it to use and picked up an extra Helbrute for myself. Why not? It was only £2 in the end, plus I thought it might be quite good fun to mess about with and try and convert.

Obviously, with my limited skill set, any conversion work is not going to be ridiculously extensive, but here are some shots of what I've managed so far...

This is the top of the close combat arm. To which I have
decided to add an attempt at the mark of Nurgle using
the heads of some poor unfortunates. 

I was attempting to make them appear to be pushing their
 way out from below the surface of the armour plate.

I've given it this head from the new Plague Bearers kit.
I really like the bizarre rotten proboscis. It looks quite
unpleasant.

This was midway through what I've done so far...

I then started to add a couple of trimmed down trophy racks from the Chaos
Terminators kit. I didn't add them to my terminators as I thought they looked
a bit crap on a terminator size model. Particularly as I'd used the Death Guard
upgrade set that Forge World make. Including the trophy racks would have
made them a bit too busy. As well as crap. 

T'other side.

This is some sort of plague censer from the Skaven Plague Furnace.

Why wouldn't it be vomited forth from a mouth in the
palm of a power claw? That's normal, right? 

Word Bearers Helbrute or Dreadnought

I have to confess, I struggled somewhat with this one.

I glued it together ages ago, and I will readily admit that I wish somebody had suggested binding some bits of  this thing together with rubber bands (or elagi bands if your are that way inclined - the North...) while the glue dried to stop them coming a bit apart.  Luckily though, you can't really tell too much between the crap photography and the amateurish paint job.

One of the pleasing things about this model is that (having put one together and handled it hour after hour while painting it), I think it offers tons of scope for interesting conversions, both major and minor.  Not that I bothered on this one, though.  I do have a second one that I picked up for absolute peanuts (thanks to a £5 off Ebay voucher) which I am intending on doing some conversion work on at some point. When it's done, it'll be painted up in Death Guard colours, though.  Once I've given myself time to block the annoyingness of this one from my mind, at any rate.

Anyway, back to the model.  It took ages to paint, and I'm not really mega happy with how it turned out, to be honest. But I don't think it looks absolute toss either.  I did realise something about myself while I was working on it. And, that ladies and gentlemen, is that I don't seem to enjoy working on larger models. Somehow, I managed to forget how much working on that Death Guard predator ages ago totally pissed me off.  In the grand scale of life, this one was realistically less annoying than the predator, though.

One thing I do know, though is that next time around I may well look at doing the majority of the base coating before it gets glued together... although that may not be so great if I'm going to use rubber bands on it while the glue sets...

Chaos Cultist leader, the first mini of 2013.

Over the last couple of days, I've been working on the Chaos Cultist squad leader from Dark Vengeance.

In my current lists, he leads a squad of 20 cultists, and has already achieved infamy in a few games (for all the wrong reasons).

In my local gaming circle, he has been lovingly named Arnold Porkinson, and I've dreamt up a bit of background for him.

Porkinson is the disgraced son of a planetary governor of an Imperial garrison world somewhere in the Ultramar segmentum.  As the second son of a noble in this region of the galaxy, he was tithed to the local  Imperial Guard Finishing School for Officers, where he soon excelled, and was earmarked for a career as a morale officer with the Commissariat.

Again he excelled in his training, until one fateful day of training exercises and live-fire battlefield simulations. On that fateful day, he was set up by a jealous cadet, one Giles Coriandus, who took it upon himself to trip Porkinson whilst simultaneously shooting the instructing Commissar in the back with his bolt pistol.  In the ensuing confusion, Porkinson and Coriandus' bolt pistols were mysteriously swapped, and the blame thus pointed at the seemingly clumsy Porkinson.

Despite his protestations of  innocence, one severely maimed Commissar later, Porkinson was unceremoniously discharged from both the Commissariat and the Imperial Guard Finishing School for Officers AND the Imperial Guard itself.  He was subsequently sent back to his father's holdings in disgrace.  His father of course was outraged.  Officer or not, Commissar or not, the second noble son must serve as a soldier, in some capacity or other.  Thus Porkinson was required to enlist in the local Planetary Defence Force.

However, the local PDF is no place for a noble's son, as he was soon to find out.  The PDF of course is made up of grunts who just can't cut it in the Imperial Guard, along with thuggish miscreants who have failed to find paid employ elsewhere.  He was victimised and bullied by his new found peers until he proved himself worthy of their respect by busting heads and breaking noses in a barracks brawl.  He even rose as high as the rank of Sergeant several years later, and it seemed he had managed to find a niche after all and redeem some honour for himself.

That is of course until a chaos cult emerged on planet and the subsequent spread of sedition. Eventually, an offshoot of an invading chaos fleet arrived in the system and soon made planet-fall. The Imperial Guard were called in to help put an end to the invasion, and this was when Porkinson and Coriandus were to cross paths again.

It seemed that Porkinson and his PDF unit had been tempted by the seditious whisperings and pamphlets that had been distributed by the chaos cult, and thus when they found themselves backing up a brave charge by the Imperial Guard, which was being led by the dashing (and smirking) Commissar Coriandus, there was another "friendly fire" accident.  All Porkinson's bitterness, resentment and jealousy at events from a few years back once again bubbled to the surface once again, and one well placed las bolt to the back of the head later, Commissar Coriandus smirked no longer, and Porkinson took Coriandus' greatcoat and cavalla sabre as his battle spoils.