The turd has been polished...

...of course its still a turd, but whatever. 

The camo netting can only hide so much...

Now that it's all painted up it looks halfway decent, though in hindsight I ought to have put a piece of plasitcard over that rear entry hatch. That one area is now by far the ugliest part on this mini. I added camo netting, with attached foliage using a tutorial I found on a Team Yankee FB group I'm in. 

In person the bleached bone dry brushing isn't as prominent, but that's the camera for ya.

That covered up the most of the more egregious 3d printed defects (rear hatch aside) that I didn't already cover with plasticard and spare bits. I couldn't cover that hatch though as otherwise there'd be no way in or out aside from the driver's hatch. 

All I have left to do now for this army are my A-10s. 

*****

On a different note, I've also started painting on another three camo Smurf Intercessors.

 

Are Primaris Smurfs 'Sensible' Smurfs?

 Maybe...

What a fat lot of good the camo did vs. that backdrop!

Still mucking about with camouflaged Primaris marines, I found this tutorial (EXCELLENT if infrequently updated blog btw, highly recommended nonetheless) and as you can see I decided to give it a go myself. 

The colors I chose were:

Celestial Grey Base coat

Mechanicus Standard Grey as the first layer of blotching

Macragge Blue as the second

Daemonette Hide as the third.

After which came detailing, painted solid colored areas, decals, etc.

Then a light inking of Agrax Earthshade 

...and lastly a light dry brushing of Bleached Bone.

I haven't done one of these spliced together, multi-view pics in quite awhile.

This camo would work well for urban warzones, as well as rocky/mountainous/snowy environs. So as to not be too effective however (these are prideful Space Marines after all...), the helm, chest Aquila and pauldrons were left in standard chapter colors. 

To be honest I rather like it. Given just how many Primaris marines I have, I might even paint a small army of these guys just for the hell of it! I could even fight side-by-side with Neverness' Smurfs vs. some vile foe, though I'd dread to contemplate just what logistical nightmares and celestial alignments would be required for that to occur...

My various works in progress...

 

o/

I'm progressing on multiple fronts here of late, painting lots whilst finishing little...well, technically. First up are my caverns. Currently I've finished 50 (!?!) cavern hexes, yet I have many more to go. So yes, I am finishing individual pieces though the project as a whole isn't done (and I'll likely just buy MOAR when it is).

Soon these will be overrun with a horde of 15mm scaled Orks (which arrived in the mail the other day). 

I was thinking that I had about 60 or so cave hexes, but apparently I have more than that. I'll get an accurate count when I finish painting the lot as I've been keeping track of the number painted on a painting progress chart I have. I've dispensed with 'ard coating any more surfaces to make them look wet (as caverns so often are) because ultimately, it's barely noticeable and thus a waste of time. 

Differing somewhat from those tiles with the multicolored funguses, this tile apparently has a small opening to the surface in the roof above. Thus allowing for sunlight, rainwater and seeds/pollen to descend into the depths to sprout some limited green plant growth. 

Next up, I have my mediocre Team Yankee M577 from my prior post. I added two more plasticard bits to the front to cover up the still awful looking area where the tracks and front hull meet. Am thinking I'll get some cheesecloth to make some camo netting to hopefully cover up at least some of the multitude of still visible 3D printed flaws, maybe add a decal or...something.

Looks almost halfway decent...

Ya get what ya pay for...

 o/

Redressed in plasticard and spare bitz.

I recently bought a 3D printed M577 for Team Yankee off of ebay. The auction picture looked decent, just needing a bit of structure trimming, but otherwise not too bad. Here check it out:

$7.00, sure why not. 

However, as you can see from the first pic (and those below)  the tank I received was pretty rough. I had to prime it to even see what I was dealing with as it's really hard to tell in all white. After which...uh yeah. Oh well it was cheap and so I got cheap, as I was tired of being outbid on OOP Flames of War M577s. 

eww.

even more eww...

okay that's...decent...I guess. Not too fond of the flaps over the tracks, but the tracks themselves were hideous and in the end

this is tiny so...

I won't buy from this seller again, but this will work for an objective at least. Measuring in at 1"x1"x2", it's visually not so bad in person. Certainly not as hideous as it looks blown up all nice and big on here. Am hoping it'll paint up fine, though will have to go really light on the dry brushing so as not to pick up too many print lines (actually am thinking I might hide some of the multitude of imperfections under camo netting). 

Edit: When leaving feedback I saw that there was another complaint about the mediocre print quality on this same model about 6 months ago.

This week in camouflage...

Space marines in, in... camouflage?!?!

Wut da fuk...?

HERESY!!

 **BLAM!!!**

Once again I contradict myself. What is it I almost continuously rail about in regards to 40k currently? Primaris Marines. And what is it that I painted this week? A Primaris marine. Facepalm.

Yes, this pic is relevant...

Actually I've been wanting to paint one of these guys up in camouflage for quite awhile for whatever reason. So after finishing up the my two Humvees for Team Yankee earlier this week (which came out really, really well), I figured: eh, what the hell...and so here we are. 

You'll note that not only is this marine painted in the classic, Desert Storm era chocolate chip pattern camo, but he's also bereft of iconography aside from a contrasting OD green Aquila on his chest plate (which likely does NOT mean he's from somebody's 4th battle company...). Camo...no identification...it can mean only one thing. 

Yep, it's the Alpha Legion. Betcha didn't see that coming did you? Hehehe, a little bit of camo-humor there...and uh, moving on...

Curiously, whereas the caked on desert dust wash works quite well on my Incandescent Coyotes, I don't really like it on this desert camo marine. Naturally that makes no sense whatsoever.

This was more or less and exercise with two goals. (1) do I like the look of this? Answer: Yes, just sans the aforementioned dust wash. (2) Is this so laborious to do so as to make painting more than a handful unfeasible? Answer: no...not really. Honestly it was far easier and quicker than I had expected. It would have been even quicker were the mini not primed green to begin with. As for painting more than a few well...it's me. So that answers that.

I pondered iconography for quite a bit, and ultimately skipped it as this was just a test marine anyways. For some reason I kept gravitating towards the Blood Angels, and indeed there is a long, mostly-forgotten precedent for camo'ed BA. The readily available black icons ought to look good on this camo as well, though technically the Space Wolves and Black Templars icons would fit into that category as well. 

For right now though, we'll just go with Alpha Legion. I'm thinking I'll just put this guy on one of the shelves in my cube at work and ponder the idea for awhile before proceeding any further in this direction.  

(Note: Primaris marine pics replaced after publishing due to better lighting here at work.)

Matching colors...

 o/

The LAV-25 has always been one of my favorite looking AFVs.

I took a break from painting caverns on account of  having run out of my Testors Flat Earth paint which I'm using as a base coat. I did manage to restock my supply though it took a trip to one of the local craft stores to do so as the FLGS' was sold out. So instead I thought I'd turn my attention briefly to Team Yankee. 

Note the flight stand is warped, putting this fighter into a perpetual slight banking turn.

First up I assembled the first of two A-10s and boy isn't that kit a peach! Already forewarned that their assembly is raging inducing (quote), I wouldn't go that far though it did give me some Robotech Tactics flashbacks. I mean who doesn't like fine scale modeling at a small scale with vague instructions that don't mention all of the parts on the sprues? Detailed cockpit? Sure. Transparent canopy? Yeah no...that kind of shit.

I do not look forward to building the 2nd one, especially as this fucker took approximately 2 freaking hours to complete. The common consensus in the Team Yankee FB group I'm in is that the kit is crap.

I concur.

I'm happy with this result. 

On a brighter note, aways back I bought seven M-1 Abrams tanks for more or less retail cost. Their paint jobs looked good to me and more importantly, similar to my painting style and thus hopefully easy to replicate myself. This weekend I thought I'd give that a try and I think I did pretty good actually. 

I had messaged the eBay seller to see what paint colors he had used and sadly all were oil based and out of production. Nonetheless army colors are army colors and I was able to match his paint jobs fairly easily, using a combination of GW, Vallejo and Coat D'Arms paints. This LAV-25 is close enough that I think I'd be comfortable expanding this army without the need to eventually repaint the M-1s at some (very) distant point. 

Perfect!

I also got a heavy duty metal hole punch (kinda overkill for this project really), and magnetized the turret of the LAV. I'll do the same with several of my Battletech tanks, but that's a subject for my other blog. So as not to worry about the magnets being too thick, nor any polarity issues, I punched a circle out of tuna can lid to glue to the hull. There's ample room in the turret for a magnet, and it all worked out rather nicely. 

Next up, I think I might paint up my two, TOW equipped Humvees as well before returning to the caverns. 

Downsizing 'da Groop

 lol, I'm sure that just by that title alone Neverness has a knot in the pit of his stomach, and perhaps rightly so.

It isn't news to anybody that I don't play near as often as I once did, which has only been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. Thus my pile o' shame is both considerable and taking up a lot of space. Granted I still have some extra of that following the passing of My Beloved Wolfy, but that said I could probably do something better with it were some of it not filled with a literal pile of plastic that I have little want to paint. As such, force reductions are well under way:

First up, the Spess Mahreenz. As y'all may recall, having just sold off all of my non-primaris Spess Mahreenz, Kushial blindsided me with the gift of a veritable horde of them! From that collection both the Astral Claws were reborn, and my Incandescent Coyotes came into being. However with the Coyotes clocking in at about 500 points, and the Astral Claws at about the same, I was still left with a Landraider and 30-odd marines. Not wanting to sell what was gifted to me, I passed those minis on to Neverness. 

My Silver Drakes clock in at about 1000 points, with maybe 1/10 of that painted. No plans to add to or reduce their numbers at this point in time. They're not too high on the list to get painted either...

Next up: Chaos. I mentioned just a few posts back that I sold the majority of  my chaos marines off, reducing them to a mere kill team. 

Then there's My Beloved Wolfy's Fem Fa'Tau. By far my largest army (at the start of this paragraph anyways...), clocking in at a little over 1500 points of almost entirely unpainted minis (the original, paltry collection of painted Fem Fa'Tau minis Wolfy herself fielded are all in my display case). I didn't see meself doing much with these, and burned out after just a few painted up in a new scheme. Still, being hers, I didn't want to sell em, so what to do? Well, my buddy Hoss has flirted with Tau and 40k for years, but the astronomical cost of entry into the game has always kept him from making the jump. He was also one of My Wolfy's favorite folks. As such I have approx. 1K of Tau set aside to suck him into the financial hell that is 40k. The remainder are staying with me to all wear the Fem F'aTau's new colors...someday. 

The Exodites...barely clock in at 500 points, They're good as is. 

And lastly there's Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop itself. Recently they achieved something like 90+% painted status when 30 or so unpainted minis were sold to another local gamer. Riddled with sentimental favorites, they're all but impossible to sell off in their entirety. They are still fieldable as an army (albeit a small one) as their troops compliment has been reduced to a mere 10-strong slugga boy mob. 

Storage and transport of these little guys will be much easier as well!

That said, just days prior to the above mentioned sale, I purchased 48 new orks (pictured above)...in 15mm scale. Sure they may not be as detailed, nor have as much variety of models, but at the same time a *NEW* 500pt army cost me $50, of which a goodly portion of that was shipping from the UK. 

So...that's the current state of things around here. More minis are likely to go, just not sure what at this point.