FTW Ron makes Green Stuff Look Too Easy

The title says it all. Growing up I became a huge fan of Super Sculpey. It is most likely the number one reason I enjoy the hobby so much. As a kid I made miniatures for all my friends when we played DnD, in addition to Star Wars ships, Arwing fighters and my favorite Battle Tech Mechs. I made so much stuff with it I could fill a ledger.

Most people know who FTW Ron is. The Raven Guard models he has been converting have been amazing to say the least, and since he's kind enough to post how he works some of his magic I finally decided to try.
I saved this image a while back because I was planning on using some Ultramarine Tyrannic War Veterans as sternguard vets in my Raven Guard successor chapter.

(Thanks Ron for the things you do for the community! I know you've helped me a lot through your posts!)

The models have had the Ultramarine Iconography shaved off for months and since they are the last infantry squad I'll be painting for the army I decided that now was better than never. As soon as I began I remembered how much I loathe working with green stuff. Besides gap filling and the odd roll or disc of it in small places I have avoided it in my modeling for the past three years. I just can't stand the consistency of it after being spoiled by Sculpey since 6th or 7th grade.

But regardless of my preconceptions I went ahead, and after making a few practice pieces I turned out these.

Not the greatest icons in the world but they will get the job done. I think my tools are too big for the small details I'm wanting to achieve. I have a sculpting set I picked up from Michael s or AC Moore but there's nothing super small in it like I would need for 40k scale. I mostly just used the razor blade on my hobby knife for these. I really would like to get better with green stuff and take a crack at making a mini for my new RP group. I also heard KY is a really good lube to use on your tools while working with green stuff so maybe I'll give that a try next time.

Forgeworld Great Unclean One

My brother in law Rob paints very slowly. So slow, in fact, that he has never completely finished a single mini...ever. Hes got a squad of "boring" necrons that are painted but need bases and a retail great unclean one that needs paint on the sword and a base. Last year at Games day I grabbed this big boy for him. He immediately quit the project he was almost finished and started on this.

 He will come over for paint nights and talk, have fun, and paint about an inch on this thing. We keep telling him if he ever finished something he could be a contender for a golden demon but I'll let the pictures do the talking. My hope is that a little bit of community support will spur him on to greatness! (Or at least get him to paint an extra inch or two next paint night!)

Finally Decided on a Chapter Badge

After years of putting it off, I finally decided on the chapter badge for my original space marine army. I've been wanting to get this army "done" for the last few months and move on to bigger and better things so I just went with one of the ideas that seemed to fit the most with my play style and the overall style  of marine shoulder pads.

Apparently I've been playing like the Raven Guard ever since the 5th edition codex came out. Dropping dreadnoughts in pods and outflanking with scouts while advancing with assault squads are what I like to do best. Even if they are not the most powerful units in the codex these days the game is about having fun first and foremost so from now on ,the Immortal Knights are officially going to be a Raven Guard successor chapter and sport some spiffy orange birds all around!

The logos I used were found on The Bolter and Chainsword and after a quick recolor in Illustrator were good to go. I had been planning on trying decals for some time and already had all the essentials on hand such as Micro sol and Micro set. It took me a while but i finally found some the of decal paper I bought form the model train shop well over two years ago. After a few test prints I was good to go and thanks to BigRed's excellent tutorial over on BoLS I managed to get that "painted on" look the first time through! I didn't really think the Micro sol would make as much of a difference as it did. From now on I plan to swear by it. My only gripe with it is while applying it I sometimes ruined my decals by bending them and occasionally it seemed to eat away at the decal sealer and splotched the ink as you can see in the picture. It's not a super big deal though as I plan to do a little battle damage here and there any how.

For one of my terrible first models full of mold lines, fuzzy primer and over watered metallic paint it doesn't look half bad in my opinion.

After I made my first decal and tried it on the bottom of a rhino I realized that I would have to put some white underneath for the orange to show up. Last night after the kids bed time I furiously painted white blobs on all my infantry models. I couldn't wait to throw a few on my favorite first turn wonder. And so my nefarious drop pod dreadnought was the first vehicle to get a few decals stuck on. After that I did my bikers, a few tacticals and a few terminators. When my wife came down to bug me about going to bed she actually said my dreadnought looked good! She hates my armies color scheme and has never said anything good about it before so I quite surprised to get some praise out of here for once!
With paint night coming up I'm hoping to get all the decals on and repaint all the area around them in one fell swoop. Then I plan to move on to putting more work into the bases. I'm considering making up a wash mix to throw on the whole army to make it look a little better since washes seem to fix everything. As I come across my first 20 models I'm trying to clean up the fuzzy primer/ too watered down paint jobs too. It shouldn't take too long there are only a hundred and five or so models in total!

Since I painted everything before basing I am looking for a way to get some shading in the recesses of the dirt without too much work involved. I was wondering if maybe a watered down black wash could be sprayed in without too much trouble. If any one has any advice I would appreciate it! The faster I get these guys done the better! I can't wait to paint something besides black and silver!

A Black Reach Chop Shop

Lately I have been running a five man TH/SS assault squad around with an Avenger / Gate of Infinity Librarian. One of my goals during the planetary empires campaign was to try out new things and bring a more "fun to play" list to the table. I know most people will call TH/SS termies anything but fun, but to me they are a relatively new unit and those who know me would most likely say that bashing guys in with a huge melee weapon fits my style just fine. So before the GW price increases and my loss of employment, some of us got together and made a big group order. On the top of my list was what will most likely be my final Black Reach. Ever since getting the Assault Terminator box Ive been wanting to put the spare lightning claws to use. I chopped up most of my brothers black reach nobs to make use of all the weapon upgrades found in the retail nob box and figured that chopping up the space marines couldn't be much harder. A few snips with my clippers and a little glue and I had some hulking go - go gadget monstrosities. After cutting down the arms a bit more I got em just right and was pleasantly surprised that iIhad achieved a more dynamic arm pose than the original kit would have allowed. I made three of the LC termies so I can fill my crusader though I will most likely opt to run only two and put in special characters in power armor.

This bring me to my next new model. After looking at the available chaplain builds I decided that Cassius was my man. I looked him up on the GW site to check the model and immediately started to look for some thing different. The chaplain I ended up with had always caught my eye and was one of those models that I would have always bought if it was on the store rack. After debating whether or not it was worthwhile to cut up a combi - melta form the commander sprue to make his flamer I came across the chaos terminator one. I decided that the older style weapon would be more appropriate on a model representing an ancient warrior. This model also marked my first use of the 005 Micron art pen. This thing works wonders for doing script squigglies. If you don't own one head out to your local craft store and get one today! If you have shaky hand syndrome it makes so many things easier!

Now that all my key players are ready, I'll be hoping to rock my full crusader during the next game I play. Hopefully the Crusader, five TH/SS termies, two LC termies, Cassius and the Avenger / Gate Librarian justify the huge point cost for one super death star unit!

I Want To Paint Your Forgotten Army!

So I found myself unemployed this week, and oddly enough I don't feel so bad about it. My job was a good one and the money was great, but it also had its downsides. I always hear how 12 hour shift rotations take years off your life and inhaling the stuff we made had to be bad for me. Half the time I would only feel half awake for the majority of the day, and switching form days to nights was really a pain. Aside form the whole, "What are we gonna do now?", panic from my wife, I found that going to bed at a normal time and waking up with my kids in the morning felt pretty good. With a mortgage and two kids to pay for I started thinking of some of my options, and I remembered that for a few months I have been considering doing some commission painting.

Looking through blog rolls and seeing all these awesomely converted minis with beautiful paint jobs made me think,"Yeah that's not me." What I'm good at is sitting down and cranking out models in mass quantity.
A little over a year back my local GW had a "New Army For The New Year" painting contest where you had three months to complete a new army from scratch. I believe the points were something like 2000 for fantasy, 1850 for 40k and 1000 for Lord Of The Rings. I had a friend's Dwarf army sitting around for years, and after checking out what was in the box, coupled with my Battle for Skull Pass starter set, I decided I'd go for it.
Now, like any good procrastinator, I entered, built most of the models, and then didn't touch them for ten weeks.
 When it finally came down to crunch time, I busted the whole army out in the last two weeks and won the contest!

With 8th Edition Fantasy on the horizon, I'm guessing that someone out there has rank upon rank of soldiers waiting to get some color, or a 40k army that has been gray for too long. So if your interested in getting your army done drop me an line at palinmoonstride@gmail.com and we can go over the project details. I am considering having a flat rate based on the points of the army instead of being based on individual models. If someone comes at me with 200 boyz I may cry, but I do like a challenge.
Since I have more free time now I'll be trying to post more frequently and catch up on some the latest projects I've been working on.