Getting out the Terraining Wheels

As someone who is mostly on the "Painting" side of the hobby, my main outlet for actually playing 40k at the moment is against Ewan, my eldest son, who is pretty fond it as a way of wasting a wet afternoon. The big problem we've had though, is terrain, which has left us fighting over battlefields made of shoe boxes, bits of racetrack, and action-figure statuary. And to be honest I'm not forking out for "proper" scenery for sporadic, knock-about games. 

So, one solution that was suggested was paper-craft terrain. Oho! I thought. So, following a recommendation I ended up at World Works Games, which makes loads of them, and bought the Mars Station set. 

Now I remember how dreadful I am at Papercrafting. Thankfully, as pdfs, I can reprint the damn things. So, a couple of hours of pritt-stik-ing my fingers together and I've got some base tiles and a difficult terrain tile, and a little crawler unit thing: 

The set also comes with modular wall pieces so I can make a couple buildings to go with them, so thats the next job, whilst I'm waiting for my Storm Talon order to turn up. 

Blood Raven Tactical Squad COMPLETED

So, finally finished, done, based, weathered and ready to fight and die for the Emperor!

More after the cut. 

Gosh I'm starting to get tired of painting red!

My Tactical Squad is nearly finished, thankfully, and I'm feeling a little bit over-familiar with Marine armour and red paint after a run thats included Devastators, a Command Squad and now the Tacs. Enough Already! And I think it's beginning to show, as I'm not feeling as engaged as perhaps I should be. Still, Should get them finished this week and then it's onto the next project.

The next big project is likely to be from the Judge Dredd: Block Wars kickstarter that I backed and just finished over the weekend. Probably won't get the stuff till November, so will need a stop-gap, although that is likely to be some shade of red! 

WIP: Tactical Squad

So with the reference model done and dusted, I've been working "batched" on the rest of my Tacs. I mean, lets face it, full squads can get a tiresome quite quickly. But, 5 down, 5 to go, and whilst I've no posh shots, here's the group. 

I do love the "Womble Nose" Helmets, which is why he got the Meltagun. 

Blood Ravens Tactical Marine COMPLETED

One of the things I've been trying to achieve with the new paints is staying relatively consistent with my existing Blood Raven forces. This has two problems - firstly the paints are different, so that's been tricky, and secondly most of my Blood Raven basic infantry were painted a while back and I've (hopefully) improved since then. So rather than production line my new Tacticals, I pulled out one and just did him, so I have a baseline model for comparison. I am rather pleased with him.

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Painting Table Update September 2012

Well i've finally started on the last of the kits from last big blowout, my second Tactical Squad. They're in a really mixed state of development at the moment, but the furthest along- the one i'm getting ready to use as a "standard" to get the others lined up against, looks like this:

He still needs highlighting, and a lot of touching up, but he's the right colour, which was a relief after the problems I had with the speeder being too bright. A didn't do the best job on cleaning up his mould lines though, dammit.

Anyway, after these guys are done I'm not entirely sure what to do next. Bearing in mind that I'm in this for the painting, and only really actually play 40k with my son, building a balanced army isn't high on my priority list. However, I'm close to a decent-looking 1500 point Blood Ravens force and one option would be to build up towards that. Which means a couple of Rhinos and another speeder, basically. Which would also be good tests for any airbrush starter set I care to buy.. 

I think I just don't get on with Da Orks...

Heres the thing: I love the Orks. I think the fluff is great, the figures look fantastic, I played them to death in pretty much every incarnation of Dawn of War. There is just something about their bloody-minded determination to enjoy themselves in the GrimDark milieu of 40k, whilst all the other races treat it all so seriously.

But I have a problem - and that its that I just can't paint the damn things.

This is a Trukk for Ewan's Orky horde for use in the on-going stuggle to control his bedroom floor. Ewan enjoys playing 40k a lot but painting leaves him cold, so I occasionally end up painting bits of his army here and there when i feel like I need a break from Blood Ravens. This got rattled off in a few hours spaced over the weekend, and it shows in places. The thing is, I just can't get into painting it. I like the model - I think they look cool painted up - but I struggle to get a handle it myseld and consequently...its just a bit substandard. I mean, it's fine for charging around the battlefield being blown up by Marines, but I'm left feeling it should have been better.

On the other hand; I'm learning a lot about metal effects, which I don't use much on the Marine stuff, so its not a total waste.