Deathwatch conversions

While looking for some more pictures to post here I came across some pics from some conversions I was working on earlier in June. These guys are a side project that I'm working on when I have had enough of painting blue.

These are intended for use in Deathwatch RP campaign.

This is the Ultramarine Librarian Varen. When I uploaded this guy to facebook it detected his face and wanted me to tag him as a friend. Thats how good the sculpts on the Grey Knight models are.

This batch of conversions is really just a big kit bash (one of the reasons I love working with plastic and am psyched to work with finecast).

I have cannibalized bits from the power armored grey knights box, space marine command squad, sanguinary guard and space marine commander box.

There is a little bit of green stuff work to reposition the sword arm and left wrist. Not as apparent from these pictures but he is looking and pointing with the sword and hand at the same distant target.

I cut the antenna off the interceptor backpack. I have a tube sculpting tool that I will try out on him to connect the top ports on the power pack to the collar of the power armor to give him a super psychic hood.

The pose is supposed to look like he has just stepped back and taken up a stance to project psychic lightning at the threat

 As of yet unnamed assault marine running towards target while firing plasma pistol and about to leap into the air. Currently held together with bluetack and in need of a shoulder pad. This one uses other bits from the boxes mentioned above.

 My personal favorite a Keeper of the Watch. I need to find a nice axe head for the top of that staff and bend the cape down a bit so its closer to his legs.

For the bases I am going to use the decking from a Fortress of redemption. I love the double tread plate used on the walkways.

Wednesday Hobby Session

Squad so far

I spent a couple of hours working on the Terminators for my army muster as promised.

Im really happy with how the armor turned out. Everything that you read describes Ultramarines as being a cobalt colour.

The armor is done by the following steps:

1. Chaos Black Spray undercoat
2. Mordian Blue through the spray gun
3. Ultramarine Blue drybrush. Very lightly and selectivly targeting the sharp edges and areas of the model where I expect more light (top curve of shoes and kneecaps)
4. 50/50 Azureman Blue/Badab Black wash
5. Edge highlight with 2:1 skull white/mordian blue (I cant promise its not 3:1, that is why I keep a painting journal with my gear. I have it written down and will check and update if necessary).

Rear of Sargent

Sargent

Being the grim dark future I usually prefer to stick with darker colour schemes. Also as mentioned the Ultramarines are described as being a cobalt colour.

This means that ultramarine blue (or the mordian/skull white mix that I prefer) is the final highlight since I am not using extreme highlighting on these guys. This is a general principle I use for painting 40k; If you want something be be colour x then colour x is the highlight.

The marines that I have painted so far do look darker in person than the pictures above. When I get around to taking up model photography I will do some research on proper colour balance etc.

I have been thinking about replacing my phone recently (current phone: iPhone 3g) and the ability of the phones camera to take good pics of minis is a serious consideration. Just to creep out some mobile phone dealers I'm thinking of taking some models and rulers and a lamp into a phone shop and hamming it up with a photo-shoot (ruler runway etc :P)

On a side note I have also been seriously considering getting a Harder Steenbeck Infinity 2 in 1 Airbrush for finer detail work. I have heard amazing things about this airbrush. To quote Scotttard "Its red...red is betta cause red goes faster!!!"


Seriously though it looks sweet.


One of the things that I completely forgot about for the terminators is that the helmets are supposed to be white. Next time I sit down and work on them I will have to fix that up.


To finish them off I need to:

1. Fix helmets, paint sarg's head
2. Drill and blacken barrels on the guns (i forgot to earlier)
3. Gem effect the targeters
4. Add a bit to the eyes
5. Highlight the white/grey bits
6. Highlight the metal
7. Do the base

Getting started with Airbrushing

As promised here is my post on my experience starting out airbrushing.

After doing my research I figured out that I wanted the following configuration:
-Gravity fed dual action airbrush
-Compressor with air tank

I ended up investing a bit and purchased an Iwata HP-CH. Not that I have much by way of other airbrushes to compare it to, I am very impressed with the quality of construction. The thing looks and feels like it could last forever.

Iwata HP-CH

By way of compressor I cheeped out and purchased a no name one off ebay that met my criteria. I really regret this decision. It does the job perfectly...except the pressure regulator is rubbish. The problem is the pressure regulator is pretty much either full on or full off with no ability to select intermediate pressures. The net result is that i had to purchase an additional regulator and an extra hose and introduced a leak into the system.

On leaks the bigger 1/4" BSP fittings seem to leak air a lot more than the r 1/8" BSP fittings so where possible i would recommend buying equipment that uses the smaller fittings. I picked up some Teflon (plumbers) tape from super cheap auto for $1 and that has reduced the air leaks very substantially but I haven't eliminated them totally yet. I'm going to grab a water gun and spray down all the connections till i find the bubbles then use some more tape and maybe some duct-tape or hot glue to try and plug the last few gaps.

Another thing I got at the same time was an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner ($50 off ebay again...look at the wattage and frequency) off the recommendation of a few blogs. This is amazing for cleaning out the airbrush parts (never ever soak the whole thing according to everything I have read) and I have also used to clean paint out of the runnel of my paint brushes as well as help strip paint from metal models. I fill it with regular windex and run it for a few three minute cycles and that seems to annihilate paint.

Windex is your friend. I have been through a few bottles of both the original windex glass (the blue one...don't get the ammonium free variety) and the clear windex surface and glass. I have noticed no appreciable difference between the two.

As far as the rest of set up goes, the following are necessary IMHO:

Table-Top Cleaning Station

• Respirator (protect your lungs, I hear you need them for something important)
• Cleaning cloth (to wipe down the brush without leaving particles on it and dry off parts after cleaning)
• Cotton swabs (cleaning out the airbrush cup and needle cap)
• Toothpicks (dislodging dried paint at the bottom of the paint cup, mixing paint in the cup, mounting parts to spray on)
• Moist towlet (clean external body of brush, wipe needle when disassembling)
• Sponge (to absorb fluids used when cleaning airbrush)
• Airbrush Cleaning station (somewhere for the thinner, cleaning liquid to go when cleaning out the brush by spraying through cleaner)
• Airbrush cleaner (use for the same brand as the paint your using or just use windex)
• Airbrush cleaning brush (for cleaning out the bits that dont disassemble)
• Moisture trap (removes water and oil from the compressed air before it gets to the brush)
• Airbrush Lubricant (keep the parts working properly. Also coat the needle to prevent paint build up

Left to right: Needle cap, Nozzle cap, Nozzle, airbrush body

Some other incredibly useful things are:

• Dropper bottles (for storing paints and cleaning fluids in)
• Disposable pipettes (for mixing paints. Try and get ones with measuring markings so you can measure out ratios)
• Quick Disconnect (allows you to disconnect the airbrush from the hose without having to unscrew it)
• Disposable gloves (keep your hands clean from paint and the oils on your fingers away from what you are painting)
• Foam (to stick the other end of the toothpicks in when your using them to hold parts)
• Masking tape (to protect areas you dont want covered. Dont cheap out, get the decent stuff from an arts supply store because it comes off without taking your paint with it or leaving a residue)
• Black/White cardboard (testing paint consistency on)
• Drop-sheet (protect your work area from over-spray or spills)
• Tupperware containers or small storage containers (keep everything organized. Also put models inside when drying/in between coats so that dust doesn't settle on them)
• Proper lighting
• Notebook (write down everything you try, every ratio you mix and every pressure you spray at and the results)
• Marking pen (label bottles etc)

Quick Disconnect

As you can see there is a bit of a theme of requiring a lot of cleaning products. You need to keep the airbrush clean, its possible that I am overdoing it but I would rather clean too often than not enough. In a future post I will go through some of the cleaning procedures since there are a few nifty tricks that I have picked up. Also I didnt mention It above buy I purchased a large bottle of filtered demineralised water (also from super cheap auto) and use that instead of tap water.

Once I have a working camera I will also post some pictures of my set up. In a future post I will go in depth on what I have learnt about paints and pressures.

Feel free to post any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

August Hobby Goals

I wanted to start out by congratulating Jasonc on winning the Best General award at High Lords of Terra this year with his Grey Knights. I was planning on going into the open tournament this year but unfortunately couldn't get work off. I will be planning ahead on taking my Necrons to the next tournament I can this year.

I have a fair chunk of experience playing with the Necrons and people tend to underestimate them due to the age of the codex. Hopefully they will also give me a good 'soft score'.

So as part of my latest idea for public accountability I am going to publish my August Hobby Goals and post my progress on them throughout the month.

First and foremost I have to finish off my 1750 point Ultramarine army for Games Day. This means:

1. Finishing off the details and bases on 30 tactical marines
2. Shading, Highlighting and detailing 3 landraider varients
3. Painting the AoBR (Assault on Black Reach terminators) Captain
4. Detailing and basing 5 AoBR terminators

On Wednesday evening I'm planning on having a hobby evening with the ladz from work. The plan is to finish off either the tactical marines or terminators.

The rest of the plan is to finish off at least one of the points above per week in August.
Once I sort out a camera I will post some progress pictures.

Incursion Mission 5

On Sunday I played a game of Incursion against Little Max while providing moral support for DJ's Space Marine construction push. Incursion is an awesome game with some really cool minis and great game play.

DJ's Ultramarines are looking really awesome because he is taking a lot of time and effort to use forgeworld bits (brass etch and vehicle doors) and press molds for the shoulder pads. It gives me hobby envy to see his Ultramarines given that I have been rushing mine so that I meet my Gamesday deadline. I often hear people complain about seeing 'another Ultramarine' army but in their defense how many have you seen that have been done up by mature experienced hobbyists? A good set of the old space smurfs look great and I cant wait to see DJ's army once he has them painted up.

Back over to incursion, I am convinced Max and I over think incursion because I find our games more mentally fatiguing than a game of chess. We keep trying (I try, Max seems to succeed as he has a nasty habbit of bidding the exact same number of points as me) to get into each others heads with turn bidding which has a massive impact on the game.

We have been playing our way through the missions in order taking turns playing as the Allies and Germans. We played mission number 5 with me commanding the Germans.

Initially reading the mission and seeing that the allies get 3 more points to buy models with as well as an additional battle card and command point per turn had me worried. Based on the mission though I decided that if I could delay Max near his entrance points and keep him from freeing the stranded trooper then that would reduce his advantage causing us to play with even points models. My thinking was that that would keep us on a more even footing and that I could then employ my favorite German tactic of flooding him with sturmzombies. This hasn't failed me in previous missions.

To this end I took:
-Hans
- 6 points worth of sturmzombies (allowing me to bring 6 on per turn)
-5 bomber zombies

I have been waiting for an opportunity to try Hans out and looking at the firing corridors on the map that i would need to get reasonably lucky with the battle cards to bring Max down with shooting.

From out last game Max discovered that Bomber Zombies are highly effective in pairs. Given that Hans removes the restriction on the number of Bomber Zombies you can take I decided to run 2 pairs of them and then had 1 point left over so took a 5th.

By deploying them where they couldnt be shot or grenaded (two squares around a corner) I had the desired effect of making Max hesitate to run forward early.

I used hans in a suicidal fashion to take out a heavy in my first turn (objective wise this put more pressure on Max) although in hindsight I should have saved him to deal with one of the Blazers.

Blazers are pricks to deal with if all you have are sturmzombies. Max ran a pair and even after I dragged his heavy down, there were several turns where i could do nothing due to corridors filled with flames.

Fortunately I caught a break and Max had some poor dice rolls allowing me to drag his apes to the ground. That said he was probably only one 4+ roll away from victory at one stage when he had my one entry point flamed and had the other blazer effectively blocking off the other half of the board. Fortunately I had enough zombies out already and he didnt kill them all, allowing me to kill the blazer flaming the entrance and then take out the Sarg.

I will post battle reports on or games from now on. Fingers crossed Ill be swapping places with him and using the Allies to play the same mission on Friday.

Incursion lessons learnt so far:
- Bomber Zombies work great in teams
- Sarge is a massive force multiplier
- Grenades can be game winning
- Flamers are really good for area denial (better than reaction fire in many circumstances)
- Sturmzombies are the core of German victory (for my tactical style anyway)
- Slugger Murphy is great for reaction fire, however dont rely on his shooting in his turn because thumpers special rule could ruin your plans leaving him and your other models horribly exposed.

What its all about

This is my Hobby Blog. By 'Hobby' (as opposed to hobby) I refer to the construction, painting and gaming components of tabletop miniature war gaming.

My intention is to over time post my cumulative Hobby experience onto this page.

About me (aka shameless self promotion):

Currently I am working an an Ultramarines army for Games Day Australia 2011.
My other armies include: Necrons, Imperial Guard and Dark Elves. Having recently figured out what I can do with my shiny new airbrush I am thinking about painting up some Grey Knights next.

Recently I have begun to try and experiment with new painting and modeling techniques so expect to see some posts on the following topics soon:

• Airbrushing
• Oils
• Metallic pigments
• Weathering