Chaos Heldrake

     Falling even further behind due to my wife getting sick, but the Heldrake is all kinds of finished and ready to start flaming things dead-dead.

Thousand Son Pre-Heresy Heldrake

Heldrake WiP and 2016.

Heldrake WiP

     There's still a sizable amount to be done. I'm hoping to at least finish the steel metal on the wings today, and at least start the gold work before I leave for vacation. I'm not bringing any models to paint with me, but I'll be bringing a ton of stuff to assemble and prep for when I get back. It's unlikely I'll get the Flamers, Horrors, and LoCs done by Jan. 1st, but I am still hoping to do the Horrors and hopefully the Flamers.

     I saw a game going down of 30k, and it's got me really pumped to get more Thousand Sons 30k/40k Friendly stuff ready to go. I assembled my Mortis-Contemptor Dreadnought with twin Kheres Assault Cannons yesterday, and got a ton of bits I needed to do my Sorcerer/Apprentices up. Woot! And to top it all off, I ordered the following from Forge World:

- Sicaran Battle Tank

- Deimos Vindicator with Laser Destroyers

- Spartan Assault Tank

- Typhon Heavy Siege Tank

     Sooo much excitement. Once they get here, I'll be working to assemble and paint those ASAP. They are almost 1,000 points worth of tanks, so just doing those for a month worth of painting will be great, but I also want to try to knock out in the next few months:

- Tactical Marines x10

- Support Squad /w Plasma x5

- Support Squad /w Melta x5

- Sorcerer/Apprentices/Multi-Use Characters x4

- Mortis-Contemptor Dreadnought

     If I can prep all the marines over my vacation, it is definitely doable. I want to save up a bit of money for once the Thousand Sons book comes out, any 40k Tzeentch-related stuff, and Thousand Sons pre-heresy specific units once they get released (hoping for brotherhood of pyskers).

     There's also a handful of terminators I want to assemble, although I probably won't get to paint them for a bit.

CSM Progress.

    I didn't get done as much as I was hoping over the weekend, but I've powered through all the base coats and am on the home stretch. While there's still a good bit left, it's the fun stuff:

Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons WiP

     Stuff left to do:

          - Finish up all the black

          - Armor washes and highlights

          - Free hand work

          - Dull cote

          - Armor Highlights

          - Pigments

     Seems like a lot, but it'll be fast since I'm over the hump. They need to be done by noon(ish) on Wednesday, so I should be fine. I'm planning on taking my Lord's of Change with me on my vacation to finish up, assuming I can get the airbrushing finished with, so the next week and a half will be trying to power through all the infantry left. 38 models, a Heldrake, and the LoCs - gogogo.

     There was a good auction on ebay this morning that enabled me to get 20 more Pink Horrors built and ready to paint for dirt cheap, so that's exciting. I had 40, but having 60 makes me much more comfortable.

         

Re-aligning priorities this month.

     I'm going to become a bit ambitious and try to expand my Tzeentch this month. It's probably likely that every hobbyist's desires is to have everything they own painted and ready for action. I have half of my Circle painted, half of my Haqqislam, and barely any of my 40k stuff painted. So if I ignore my Ork pile and focus December on my Tzeentch-ing, I can probably get a good amount on the slate and have a completely painted army by the end of the month. In fact, I can have more than 2,250 points painted when counting upgrades. And I think I can do it!

     December Paint List
--------------------------------

- Daemon Prince x2 (both completed)
- Rhinos x2 (both completed)
- CSMs x10 (painting)
- Heldrake (ready to paint)
- Lord of Change x2 (bought and awaiting them in the mail)
- Pink Horrors x20 (easy to paint, at least - need built and based)
- Screamers x9 (easy to paint and assemble, so should be able to pull them off in one day off)
- Flamers x9 (should arrive in the mail today, probably the hardest group I have to paint after I finish up the CSMs)

-------------------------------

Totally doable, even with Christmas at the end of the year. While the wife and I are going away, I can take a big model or two (probably the Lord of Changes) and paint them up while I'm on my Christmas vacation. I'm anxious and excited, and big projects like this really drive me to push through. I'm still looking for high tabletop quality on my entire army, so not looking to do shortcuts.

That leaves me with owning a good bulk of the following:

- x50 Tactical Marines
- x10 Terminators
- x2 Dreadnoughts/Contempters/Helbrutes/Whatever they become
- x20 Pink Horrors
- x1 Burning Chariot of Tzeentch
- x3 Chaos Sorcerer/Thousand Son Aspiring Sorcerer models
- x1 Herald of Tzeentch

...and minus the Chaos Sorcerer conversions I posted a bit ago, nothing is built. So pretty much everything I own for Tzeentch will be painted if I can refrain from purchasing and get on this painting goal.

Daemon Princes and the next steps.

     I opted to not do much to the armor plates. They started to grow on me, so I'll leave it to be changed later if I decide to do that. The quality is high tabletop standard on my Chaos army, or that's what I'll be shooting for. That'll be the baseline, and I'll go the extra mile for more special models.

Converted Tzeentch Daemon Princes

     Also, here's a better photo of the Rhino's I finished the other day:

Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons Rhinos

     That puts me on good ground to push through the 10-man squad, hopefully finishing them and a commission I have by Friday. I'll be taking a bit of a break from building and spraying for a few days/a week, so I'll be turning my attention to painting whatever's built or ready. I may take the opportunity to build some bases for the 40 pink horrors I have on the horizon.

The Weekend Progress.

     Everything came along pretty nicely this weekend, especially considering the wife and I spent a good chunk of it binge-watching X-Files. Even with that, I managed to airbrush my 10 CSM and get most of the work done on my Daemon Princes. Here's what I ended this morning with:

Click to Enlarge

     I'm happy with the colors, but I'm a little unsure of the armor plates. The black to red may be too extreme, but I do plan on ending it with a Tamiya Red glaze if my trials come out well. It doesn't look horrible, and definitely better in person, but worse case scenario has me going back over the black areas with just a darker red. I don't think there's too much more to do as of this picture. I need to finish the metal wash on one of their wings, finish the weapons off (one more wash and one more white highlight most likely), add flames to the swords, do gems, dull cote it all, highlight the metal, and do the red glaze and 'Ardcoat. Okay, seems like a lot of steps, but they should all be pretty quick. And after I'm finally happy with everything I get to practice my weathering pigments on the base. Fun times.
     Two hours of my weekend was also assembling a Heldrake. Oh yeah, got one of them. Kind of necessary for a CSM list, as it's still kind of a big deal when it hits the table, and one of the few power units in the codex. No conversion work was done, as I suspect I may want more just for how great they look. I didn't fully assemble it, but I probably will be the time I get to work on it.
     There was a huge chaos space marine codex leak, but apparently that's bogus. It did remind me pretty well that if I can speed through the "core" of a CSM and Daemon army (Tzeentch-themed "core"), I can really just add a unit here and there. I still have a pretty large list of stuff to paint in that core, but a sample list (from what I own, mostly) is:

- 20-40 Pink Horrors (with an airbrush and my experience, I expect the bases to take longer than the pink horrors).
- 9 Screamers (another super easy to paint unit)
- Heldrake (assembled, so close)

What else is there? A Lord of Change or two and Fateweaver, I suppose. Of course there's a ton more I COULD add to that list for stuff I want to run, but that's the core of it once my DPs and 10 marines are finished up. I'm avoiding Cultists since I want to see if Age of Sigmar gets Tzeentch-themed guys that can act as Cultists. But largely I'm avoiding a lot of things with rumors and obvious codex (CSM and Daemons are owed a new Codex) release window with new stuff. So starting with the "should haves" and going from there.

PS: Amusingly those two DPs are more points than I have painted in Orks total. Orks are so cheap.

Next up we have...

... Maulerfiend number 2. I had to make this guy pretty quickly to elevate my current list to 2k points, but I'm happy with the way he came out. He's more of the "scour the battlefield collecting corpses" kind of creation. There's still a lot of sculpting and trimming and hacking and sawing to be done before he can hit the paint table, but the general form is complete. 

   I elongated the body to give him a more dog-like appearance, and used the Maggot Lord head bit that has two sacs (which make it resemeble testicles - pretty intentional). He's ready to start ripping apart the Daemonkin army I'll be facing this coming Wednesday! So look out for the companion battle report on that one!

Battle Report: Nurgle vs. LictorShame

I managed to get a game in last night and took some pictures of it! It's a start, anyways. The pictures are scarce and some were taken at odd times throughout the match. Oh well, better than nothing. I even wrote "BATTLE REPORT!" at the top of my army list. It didn't help me remember.

So this was my first go with my 1,850 Nurgle list. My opponent was trying out a LictorShame list and had some hard growning pains throughout the game. It was fun, though, and a good experience overall. That's always what you want in a game.

Targ and a Typhon conversion.

    Busy times. I've been hanging out with some friends during a Thursday night stream over at Hungry Badger Games twitch channel. It's been fun. Last Thursday I worked on Targ and I managed to finish him up yesterday. It's a quick paint job, but effective enough. I'm slowly getting everything painted for the beautiful army that is the Thornfall Alliance! Unfortunately I'm debating dropping the Gator side of Minions that I own. It's nothing against them, but I just prefer Thornfall in every single way. One day they'll get that one model/unit that'll make them extremely competitive, and then they'll be all I play in Warmachine anyways.

Targ, Thornfall's Igor

    And then I created this monster:

Typhon Heavy Siege Tank WiP conversion

   It's still a pretty heavy work in progress, but the bulk of the look is there. I'll be adding some Maggot Lord maws to the doors and try to make it look like a huge daemon grew inside the shell and is bursting out. Even though it doesn't have Daemonic Possession doesn't mean it can't look like it does. It's a Lord of War, hopefully a future centerpiece model, and a hefty conversion idea - so I don't feel like I can go too far with it. Once the shell of it is completed I'll go ahead and snap a picture of it before I start doing the green stuff work (green stuff shown now is just to help reinforce the structure of the model).

   That pretty much leaves me with nothing left to build to start playing the list. While there is still some massive amounts of work to be done before I even start painting a few of the models, they are tough enough to endure playing games (and if something isn't then I'd rather learn that sooner than later to fix it up right for future playing). I have a second Sicaran tank coming in, and just put together the one I got in the mail on Friday evening. I'm very excited to start playing all these crazy chaos creations, and hope I can find time with everything I have going on. Because we can add the fact that I got engaged on Saturday morning to the list of things keeping me busy. And we are already looking to buy a house in the next few months. So, yeah. Woot. And busy,busy,busy.

And the Nurgle list to rule all Nurgle lists!

Mono-Nurgle 1,850 List
-------------------------------

This is designed as a starting point, but should work well for the "upcoming" tournament in May. A little less than 2 months away means I can probably get everything painted up once it's all built. Minus some heavy greenstuff work, I should only have the Typhon Heavy Siege Tank and the Sicaran Tank (in the mail now from an ebay purchase) left to put together. I'm fine with it not being all painted, though, but no real reason I couldn't get it all done in time. Anyways:

Crimson Slaughter (Primary)
---------------------------

HQ - Chaos Lord, Mark of Nurgle, Bike, Power Fist, Lightning Claw, Melta Bombs, Sigil of Corruption, Daemonheart, The Slaughterer's Horns

Troop - Cultists x10, Flamer
Troop - Cultists x10, Flamer

Fast Attack - Chaos Spawn x5, Mark of Nurgle
Fast Attack - Heldrake, Baleflamer
Fast Attack - Hell Blade, x2 Helstorm Autocannons

Heavy Support - Maulerfiend, Lasher Tendrils
Heavy SUpport - Sicaran Tank

Lord of War - Typhon Heavy Siege Tank, Armoured Ceramite

CSM (Allied)
------------

HQ - Daemon Prince, Wings, Power Armor, Daemon of Nurgle, Spell Familier, ML 3, The Black Mace

Troop - Cultists x10, x9 Autoguns, Heavy Stubber

---------------

I bloated up the troops a bit due to lack of points to toss around. 30 objective secured guys running around will probably end up being forgotten about for awhile since the list is pretty heavy in the "deal with this NOW" category of threats. So some flamers and 24-36" shooting to help out a bit isn't horrible. Flamers help against that dreaded charge, and the Crimson Slaughter detachment grants Fear to ever unit chosen in it, so that's a bit of a plus (and the reason why they are cheap CCW guys).

It scales up to 2,000 pretty well, but since there was a mention of the next tournament sitting around 1,850 points I didn't see the real need to go up that high for now. It's basically just adding in a Maulerfiend and then downgrading troops and taking the melta bomb off the Chaos Lord to fit Heavy Bolter sponsons on the Sicaran.

Right now the biggest consideration is making the CSM detachment a Daemons detachment and getting a cheaper Daemon Prince that can easily deal with every multi-wound model with an instant death Balesword. It'd use the same model, so it's not a huge deal and I'll just do playtesting to determine that. The Black Mace is good at raping Invisible units, though.

So that leaves the deadly Lord of War - Typhon the Siege Engine. As far as "cheap" LoW go, an AV 14 all-around 6HP vehicle that's immune to Melta is pretty crazy. It moves 12" in the movement phase without worry, gets to do the amazing Thunderblitz table (and at a +1 due to it's rules), so can actually hurt/destroy non-vehicle units by just pushing into them with a Tank Shock. I'm also under the impression you can Tank Shock and still shoot, but Ramming says you can't fire (but not sure how that interacts with the "Super-heavy vehicles always act as having been stationary for their shooting" rule). If I can Ram on top of Tank SHock and still get to shoot, even with just 1 gun we're talking about a killer vehicle roaming around the battlefield. Even with 1 BS 4 Str 10 AP 1 ignore cover 7" blast, it's doing damage somewhere. At 370 points with ceramite armour, it feels like a steal. It's just hard to deal with and has a gun that will slowly (or quickly if there are lucky penetrate rolls) deal with an entire army on it's own. The only real threat to it is Str D in close Combat. My only concern with it is what to do if Lords of War aren't allowed in the next tournament. It's something that'd be great to know ahead of time. 370 points is an Imperial Knight that would fill the same role, but then I have to worry about CtA allying. Oh well, I'll wait and worry about it later. I still have plenty of open slots to fill my current Force Orgs.

Some more Nurgle conversions, and a "studio" update.

     I managed to secure a good section of one of my rooms recently. It took some bargaining with the Other, but I'm trying to set up some good lighting to try to stream and have a better work area in general. It's pretty exciting!
     I'm forming an 1,850 Nurgle list since I have enough stuff to create one from pretty much scratch. There's a bit of a stand-off between whether or not I want to include a Typhon Heavy Siege Tank or not. Obviously there will be quite a few more points available for fun times if I don't, but I really like the idea and backbone of 1 sure-shot that can annihilate serious issues from an opponent's list (while having the caveat of being a serious issue itself). But anyways. I was planning to run two Maulerfiends, but having recently won an auction for a Sicaran Battle Tank - it's likely I'll be using that bad boy instead. I'll post a refine list later on when I've had more time to think things through.
     In the meantime I've put together some more heavy conversions.

Maulerfiend:

Nurgle Maulerfiend WIP

Hell Blade:

Nurgle Hell Blade WIP

Both need green stuff, and the Hell Blade still requires a bit of additions before it's at the green stuff stage of the conversion. It worked out that I hate the Hell Blade model, and creating crazy conversions is a huge plus to playing Chaos.

Nurgle WiP.

Kind of took today to just relax and get back into the swing of things. I managed to complete two conversions. The green stuff work is nearly complete, although none of it is in these pictures. After a few years of bits hording, I have more than enough to really customize the Nurgle side of things.

Converted Nurgle Heldrake

Converted Nurgle Daemon Prince, Black Mace

150 Posts, Draigo, Tournament Recap, and Chaos!

It's been quite the busy week. The tournament on Saturday went well, and I managed to paint up a good handful of things to play completely painted for it. Sunday was a long work day filled with tons of moving furniture and filling up a storage unit, and today will mark steps forward in powering through a very busy month.

This is my 150th post. I was trying to plan something exciting, but then realized it's a bit odd to put a milestone on posts. I could write 10 in a day and "speed up" to a high post count. So I'll just wait for my year anniversary, which I...think is in May?

As planned, I've tossed the Bloodthirster, Wraithknight, and Wave Serpents on eBay. In less than 24 hours the Bloodthirster was sold, so maybe I should have put a bit more on him? Heh. Considering he and the Wraithknight were painted side-by-side on the same day, it was still a pretty good profit and one of my better commission earnings so far. That's exciting. I finished up Draigo's base and he went flying off eBay, too.

And what did the end Draigo product look like?

Nurgle Lord is finished.

Pretty happy with the way he came out, especially considering painting him with a cold. My sickness is almost gone, though, so getting closer to being able to start pumping through all the paintings that need doing.

Nurgle Chaos Lord.

Nurgle Chaos Lord on that bitchin' bike.

Slimy as all hell.

Happy Nurgle Chaos Lord.

Bad weather and bad health. Sat on the coach all day watching Futurama and putting this beast together. Probably going to make a small allied force of Nurgle CSM to join up with my Dark Eldar just for fun. Love me the Nurgle.

Is that a Combat Familiar? Or just a stray Nurgling?

Nurgle Chaos Lord on Bike

That tank might end up oozing some vile liquid...

Tentacles bursting from his stomach steer the bike.