Leaving the battlefield of the Red Sands for awhile…

o/

I’m kinda tired of both painting my red armored Grymn, as well as using their red sand flock for seemingly everything. Its cool, its different (or rather it was…), and I will no doubt continue to use it (the sand as well as the color scheme) on unfinished projects.  Luckily I have a bucket load of Grymn, still unpainted and some still unassembled. So starting a new contingent really doesn’t hurt anything aside from consistency across the army when on the table. 

Currently, my Grymn serve as Outremar Imperialis Auxilia allies to my Alpha Legionnaires, with the abhuman healot provenance (i.e.: Squats). Curiously (and unfortunately) the provenances for Auxilia are only available when you use a force commander. As an allied contingent, that precludes using any other option. 

However I’ve been wanting to try using the Imperalis Auxilia Platoon Command Cadre as my allied contingent’s HQ choice. Unlike IG command squads, this little (no pun intended) unit can be outfitted in various ways, and acts as sort of a Swiss army knife. No provenances though, sad face.

As such, they’ll serve as just ‘regular’ humans which in effect makes the good ol’ ‘regular’ space marines of 30k True-scale by comparison. 

(And suddenly off topic and on the ol’ soap box: Do you see that GW? If you hadn’t made your human infantry so fucking out of proportion to what they should have been vs. space marines in the 1st place, then this massively stupid, fluff-retcon from hell that are the Primaris-Sigmarines wouldn’t have been necessary. They may in general be pretty models, but your fluff reasoning for them is just fucking awful! Rant concluded aaaaaand, back on topic….)

Anyways, where was I? Ah yes, the Grymn. I opted for a simple ‘test’ color scheme, and here it is:

Ta Dah!!!

Simple, easy and quick to paint…yeah, I like it. The base however, not so much. I dunno, I just painted it grey and flocked it, hell the Ork bit was little more than an afterthought to cover the opening that was visible in the slotta base. I’ll probably scrape the flock off and redo it as a desert base like I’ve been using on my Rainbow Warriors. Those in general look better. Still as a test minis goes, this one is the 1st of many more just like it I’m sure. 

*****

Paint Recipe: (for my own reference):

Armor: Vallejo Green Grey

Clothing: Vallejo German Camo Orange Ochre

Leatherwork: Vallejo Red Leather

Wash: GW Agrax Earthshade (slathered on as per the norm)

Drybrushing: the usual Bleached Bone.

My 1st Ork of 8th ed!

Now...I haven't actually bought anything for 8th ed yet. Nor have I played a game of it, but this is my 1st 40k mini painted in 8th, and he's armed with weapons which are unique to this edition:

ROKKIT PISTOLS!!!

(yes, those 2 words, put together just amuse the hell out of me for not logical reason...)

Note the Lions of Harlech
helm on the base.

It was a bit slow going as I'm still trying to snap out of my 40k malaise, Kill Team and Necromunda 1.3 Shadow War not included. Nonetheless its done and I'm quite happy with the mini, and he'll 'round out my Tankbustas to an even 10 Orks.

As you can see by his looted armor, this Ork is a veteran of the sacking of Rynn's World. Which is always a nice middle finger to marine players, especially those who field chapters of the Imperial Fists' heritage.

Beakie tanks make da best Orky armor!

Speaking of...I believe the Lions of Harlech technically fall into that category, and Kushial and I have a game tentatively scheduled for this coming weekend, allowing for us to give 8th ed itself a try.

All's quiet on the hobby front

Nope, I haven't made it to the FLGS to pick up my copy of the Xenos 2 index, nor did we make it to game night last weekend. Actually, all I've managed hobby-wise is to get some paint on ol' Rokkit Pistols from my last post.

You can also see a WIP Rainbow Warriors' Scout Sgt..

About the only thing of note thus far on this mini is the space marine helm on his base is conspicuously the same color as those of the Lions of Harlech...

ROKKIT PISTOLS!!!

When I ordered an Ork thrower off of ebay to use as the basis of a Warboss conversion, I was dismayed to find it was no bigger than a standard Ork boy. I thought it would be bigger, and mistakenly said so out loud. So go ahead and feel free to insert whichever "that's what she said" joke you please there. My beloved Wolfy did and just ran with it, much to her amusement!

If all Ork throwers were armed with rokkit pistols, they would be more popular...

Anyways, a warboss was out of the question and aside from special characters, the Ork warboss options available are...well the same as they were YEARS ago. Seriously, what the actual fuck GW?
Anyways, the purchased bitz to go with this mini were too large for it, meaning a good ol' rummage around the ol' bitz box to see what I could scrounge up. By this point the bitz box is all but devoid of Orky stuff, but I had enough to make him into a slugga boy at the least.

More ammo!

Then, an idea popped into my head: ROKKIT PISTOLS!!! I don't know what they do, I don't know if they're even worth a damn but...c'mon they're called ROKKIT PISTOLS! As an Ork player, how am I supposed to resist a weapon like that? Well, as you can see: 

I'm not. 

My first Rainbow Warrior Deathwatch veteran is complete

o/

Curiously, the 'ard coated eye lenses didn't catch any of the flash, instead rendering them into darker pits of blackness... 

For the time being this guy will serve as my Rainbow Warriors Kill Team sergeant. I say for the time being as I have second, identically equipped deathwatch marine in the squad who is still just primed currently. The metallic green helmet arrow, marks him out as a survivor of the chapter's 4th company.  No doubt not that's not the standard green of the Rainbow's former 4th company, but more of a decorative flourish. Perhaps in recognition of his initiation into the Deathwatch.

His bolter arm's Mk III armor has been scavenged from a deceased Red Corsair.  The bolter which is an old and obsolete, though apparently still serviceable design was likely also of battlefield salvage. His other arm is bionic and the chainsword is in the Rainbow's standard livery for weaponry.

I tried using a different color for his helmet's eye lenses, but shaky hands prevented me from any success and after a bit of frustration I opted for just glossy black against his matte black armor. I figured 'what the hell, it works for Darth Vader, right?'

Don't hold your breath on my usually scheduled Thursday post. Real Life has reared its ugly head, and I'll be so busy after work these next few days that I predict absolutely zero hobby time till maybe Friday.

Heading in every direction but forward...

o/

There’s neither rhyme nor reason to this week’s hobby progress, rather I’ve started several things whilst finishing notta whole lot. 

First up, the Rainbow warriors:

Having been circumvented by the sudden switch from Kill Team to Shadow War, I decided to build my scouts up to 6 marines. My Sgt. w/powerfist however needed to lose that powerfist arm as that weapon isn’t available in Shadow War (a pic of this mini with said powerfist is in the link below). Luckily, I had matching Scions chainsword arm still in my bitz box for an arm swap. 

Additionally, I found yet another Aurora Scout with a sniper rifle. Those fucking Auroras! Every time I think I’m finally rid of that infernal army another scout is discovered, they’re like god damned roaches! (huh, seems I've had this rant before) As such I suspect he’ll stay true to his Auroran roots and either never hit or never wound a damn thing!

The 1-armed marines in the background seem to be having a dispute of some sort...

The scouts however were put on hold when I realized I was out of 32mm bases. I’ve ordered some more and hopefully they’ll be here before the weekend. I’ve also started painting a Deathwatch Sgt. for my Rainbows, however the traditional Red Sgt.’s helmet (as per Girlyman’s Codex Astartes) doesn’t look quite right to me. So I’ll probably repaint it black. This is also a 1-armed mini currently, as it’ll ease the painting process.

Next up, Rogue Stars:

Insert limp-dick (no pun intended)
comment here.

I also finished ‘Crankie’ from my Rogue Stars ‘A-Team’ crew. Actually he was all but done a week or two ago, but I somehow broke his SMG’s gun barrel during painting and was out of glue at the time. Thus he remained hanging by a shred of resin for entirely too long before I was able to buy some glue to fix it. 

Ya know, despite being a pair of short little bastards, they've somehow managed to be in the way again!

He’s pictured alongside Myr’Dok who was simply plucked from the base of my Grymn’s never-built shuttle and rebased. Conveniently, you’d never know she was on that shuttle’s base which thankfully requires no repair whenever I get back around to that project. Also on the Rogue Stars front, I started painting my only statted out crew’s leader Catalina, whom you can see in back of the vertically challenged A-Team members.

Hopefully I’ll finish some of these projects this week though truth be told, I’m more likely to leave ‘em and start up some others instead.

Another Rainbow Warrior

o/

I finished up another Rainbow Warrior and made a minor change to the original one I had painted. My complaint with that mini was that there was little contrast between the blue armor and the scavenged Dark Angels green leg armor. That and I really didn't like the idea of the last of the Rainbow Warriors raiding other loyalist chapters.

Remind me again as to why I opted for such difficult chapter markings rather than the standard, mono-chromatic lightning bolt/rainbow chapter icon?

So, opting for red which has far more contrast I did a google image search on 'red space marine chapters images' and lo and behold, a pic from my own blog came up in the search. It was of Mac's Red Corsairs...that's perfect! Ironically though, the image was on Pinterest, not on this blog...

Anyways, what better source of supplies for a shattered Space Marine chapter that's been cut off from Imperial supply lines than to raid and scavenge them from one of the most notorious pirate/traitor space marine warbands?

Hmm, wonder if I used the wrong ink wash on the 2nd marine?

I'm guessing I'll have to arrange a specific game of Kill Team with mac as on the last few times I've had my Rainbow Warriors at the FLGS, either no games have been played, or else we've played Shadow War instead. No doubt the potential of losing to the lamely named Rainbow Warriors is a notion that one really wants to contemplate, lol!

The new gold is good!

Going with a suggestion by prolific gold paint user Mordian7th, I picked up a bottle of Vallejo’s Glorious Gold and the verdict is in: 

Its perfect!

Come on, sing it! They're gonna be Royals...

lol! Sorry, but I couldn't resist!

 Its both opaque and easy to work with! Many, many thanks to you good sir! As y'all can see, this little Bulldog tank was my Guinea Pig for the new paint. Now in the colors of Battletech’s Lyran Alliance Royal Guards, this mini is the first of that contingent. True, for one of, if not 'the' best equipped of the LCAF’s forces, the humble Bulldog hardly qualifies as 'the best’ in any category, but…there are only so many Demolisher II tanks to go around…

Having taken a 4th day off this past weekend, I got a fair bit o’ painting in on our little ‘staycation’. In addition to the Royal Bulldog, another was painted to match my budding Free Worlds League contingent. 

At some point I need to add something 'dangerous' to this little band of mediocrity.

I also got some painting in for both Rogue Stars and my Rainbow Warriors, though none of those are quite finished yet. So I'll save them for later.