Another week and more progress

Hello again and thanks for reading my blog.

Without further delay lets get right into the meat of what I'm planning to do over the next few months. As my friends will know I'm moving down south of the border again in summer to live with my Fiancée while this in itself is amazing I have also been invited to join a 40k league to have some regular play. Which means I need to have an army painted to a respectable level to play with... even though apparently sometimes they play with just assembled models without paint.

Anyway I figure that even though I have a significant amount of stuff I could paint / play my focus has always been the Eldar so my priority should be to get my list ready. What is your list I hear you cry? Well I'm planning on running the following or variations of the following initially which gives me a more focused to do list than I currently have.

HQ
Autarch w/ Fusion Gun, Laser Lance, Mantle of the Laughing God, Jetbike

Elite
5 Striking Scorpions
Exarch w/ Scorpion's Claw
Wave Serpent w/ Holo-Fields

Troops
5 Dire Avengers
Wave Serpent w/ Holo-Fields

3 Windrider Jetbike
3 Windrider Jetbike

Heavy Support
Fire Prism w/ Holo-fields
Warp Hunter w/ Holo-fields

The league is 1k points and this should bring me in at 997 and should be fun to learn with.

So on that note my painting list basically follows the list above with the exception of the Fire prism already being completed and I've also made some progress in the form of completing the old school Dire Avengers which have been sat on my desk for about 2 months which can also be ticked off too! Now you could argue that as they aren't based they aren't finished... well sure once I decide what basing style I'm going for I'll 'finish' them properly. :)

Long time hiatus and what i've been up to

Hello and welcome to my blog. My last post on here seems to have been some time ago due to a multitude of things but mainly that my hobby was taking a back burner while I focused on other things. I now find myself with more time and will attempt to be posting on a more consistent / weekly basis.

So Good news! I have actually been painting things and for a reason too. I've been quite active over on +Fritz 40K  Warmaster Forums. Where you can find me under my usual tag of Zangetsu. There's a WIP post with all of my to do list and updates on progress AND I even found time to enter a competition. Considering my mediocre painter status I actually think my entry turned out pretty well.

I managed to try out some new techniques on this and have actually been starting to use my airbrush. I will get better at it but i'm pretty happy with the end result anyway!

My to do list at the moment consists of the following: 

Eldar 

1 female Farseer scratchbuild,
1 Avatar,
1 Autarch,
Maugan-Ra,
Barroth,
60 Guardians,
10 Guardian jetbikes,
6 Howling Banshee's,
28 Dire Avenger's(8 painted),
3 Support Weapon Platforms with crew,
6 Striking Scorpions, 
7 Rangers,
5 warp spiders,
2 wave serpents,
2 Falcon Grav Tanks,
2 fire prism / Night Spinner Grav Tanks(1 painted),
1 Warp hunter,
3 Vyper Jetbike's,
3 War Walker's,

For my Chaos Space Marines I have the following:
Everything from the DV limited edition boxed set (Lord, 6 Chosen, 1 Helbrute, 20 cultists),
Abaddon,
9 termies (5 painted),
10 marines,
1 Rhino,
1 Forgefiend,
1 Heldrake,

And last but not least I have the following for my Dark Angels:
Azrael,

Everything from the DV limited edition boxed set (Company master, Chaplin, Librarian, 5 termies, 10 marines, 3 bikes),

Dark Angels Battleforce (6 bikes, attack bike and a landspeeder),
5 man assault squad,

I'll leave it at that for now and follow up with another post next week. Thanks for stopping by!

It still counts.... honest!

So updates for you all!

I've been on a bit of an ebay binge while I was away and have so much stuff to paint its a bit overwhelming, never mind all the stuff i already had needing painted... namely: 

Eldar stuff: 8 dire avengers, 7 jetbikes, 6 rangers, 3 warwalkers, a nightspinner, 2 falcon grav tanks, an autarch, a farseer conversion, about 60 guardians, 3 vyper jetbikes, 6 howling banshee's, a warp hunter grav tank, maugan-Ra and a fire prism there's probably a few more bits i've missed there. oh yeah an eldar avatar too!

I have the whole dark vengence set to do and on it way i now have a dark angels battleforce, 8 chaos terminators plus termi champion, a chaos sorceror, a dark angels assault squad and Abaddon the despoiler!

BUT I'm not idling sitting by and letting things pile up, oh no i've already started to undercoat / highlight the chaos terminators. I will get better at using my airbrush if it kills me!

Here's some initial shots of the terminators, i'm going with black legion, I also intend to paint the dark vengence set up in black legion colours.

On the desk pt2

I think it's safe to say that this can be called an on the desk part 2 because all i've managed to get done is order a whole load of new bits, fully magnetise my autarch (for all the weapons / back equipment options excluding the missile launcher which has been converted to a death spinner) i'm also working on a converted helm with mandiblasters and a warp jump generator both of which are also magnetised ready to swap about as needed. it's my first attempt at this so i'll get it painted / finished up and then post some pictures.

I might have been slightly bad and gone ahead with purchasing an eldar warp hunter (http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Eldar/ELDAR-WARP-HUNTER.html), truthfully I think it's an awesome tank but I also wanted the fire prism bits for magnetising so I could swap them out with my nightspinner. :) There are a few bits that I will be able to magnetise on the warp hunter but I don't plan on being able to swap it out for anything else.

off to do some spraying so apologies for the short update.

On the desk at the moment

So I have picked up painting again and lets be honest, it's long overdue. I have on my desk at the moment several things in various stages of completion.

My Nightspinner has been primed, the turret weapons have been magnetised for when I pick up a fire prism turret I can swap between them.

6 x howling banshee's currently primed black ready to be airbrushed.

Maugan-Ra primed black ready for airbrushing.

6 rangers primed black ready for airbrushing.

7 jetbikes primed white, ready for airbrushing.

1 x warwalker half magnetised and primed white awaiting the airbrush treatment.

10 x guardian defender squad needing highlights / finished off.

8 dire avengers undercoated blue awaiting airbrush highlights and then detail work.

I have lots and lots of other models here to work on, these are the ones i'm trying to focus on and will be updating the blog regarding in the near future. :D

Let me open with an apology, things have been quite mental over the past few weeks and my time for modelling and painting has been limited at best. This doesn't mean I have not taken the chance when it's been presented to work on a few bits and bobs. First up is my very first attempts at using modelling putty or greenstuff. The Dark Reaper exarch was a second hand job from ebay where the previous owner had decided to remove the front detailing on the chest for whatever reason. the original model had the straps crossing over with a skull on top however as this was my first attempt at modelling ever I opted for the more straightforward approach of just doing the straps. once this is undercoated i'm hoping you wont even be able to tell that the straps were not there all along. :D

 Alongside this you have the beginnings of my female farseer model. a lot of work still needs doing to her including the addition of a long coat, detailing on the head 'fin' and some other eldar type bit's.

 

In these two photo's you can see i've pinned the head and the arms into place to give a better idea of how she will be posed, as you can see she's still missing her sword in the left hand. More to follow on this little project.

  

 Next up, my friend has given me some of his chaos marines to work on, these have mostly been glued and undercoated and he wants them in thousand sons colours so i've started on one of the models, base coated and highlighted the blue areas and started on the gold trim. only about a third of the way through and i'm pretty chuffed with the results so far. He's also going to be letting me have a go at painting his defiler so I have plenty to be keeping me going....

 

Did I mention that i've also picked up the limited edition dark vengeance boxed set as well as ordering a load of  terrain oriented bits which i'll make into a video and post on youtube when i'm done, ordered a set of 72 Vallejo paints oh and this arrived in the post today:

So yeah, plenty to be keeping me busy, now just to find the time to actually sit down and get through it all!!!!

Magnets and stuff!

So heres some of the things i've been working on recently when i've not been programming, working on pygmy hogs rescue stuff and not helping establish a fledgling games studio, if you've not seen it yet then please check out www.pricklyproductions.co.uk, follow us on twitter, like us on facebook etc etc!

So my magnets arrived and i've been working out the best way to use them, mainly for the support platform / war walker weapons as they use the same spuce so having a bigger pool of interchangable weapons made a lot of sense! I have 2 different sizes of magnets 2mm x 1mm and 3mm x 1mm. The slightly bigger ones I will be using on the weapon mounts, arm sockets, general joints etc and the smaller ones will fit on the actual arms and the underside of the weapons.

I had originally tried out the idea of having a small cut to shape piece of paperclip on the mount and only using the magnets on the weapons themselves,

This did work to some extent but the strength of the magnet - clip is no where near as strong as I would have liked.

Here's my support weapon platform that is part of the first 10 man squad i'm painting, its not finished but it'll help to illustrate what I mean. you can see the mount at the back has the bit of paperclip in and here's the practice weapon I have magnetised.

The hold on this is very weak, to put it into perspective here is the same weapon mounted on a war walker, the hold here is magnet to magnet and I can actually hold the model by the weapon and lift it off the ground, which I cant do with the weapon platform which is considerably lighter.

 

Heres the magnet placing on the model itself, you could add greenstuff etc to it in order to blend it in if your particularly focused on the details but to be honest its not noticable when you have the weapons on it anyway.

I think these images give you an idea of what to do with these magnets however I will put a guide up on what i've done, how to do it if theres enough interest. It's very very simple, straightforward and very very cheap. I think I paid maybe £5 total for 300 magnets which includes shipping.