Magnus Opus

     And he's finally finished completely, and just in time.

More Magnus.

I changed up his face and gave him his much undeserved messed up eye. :P And, you know, did more to him as well.

Magnus the Warlord

     I'm working on Magnus for a personal project this week. Hopefully I'll have more details afterwards. First day of progress:

Avatar of Menoth WiP

     Phew! Painting the last few days has been a trial. We have a new puppy in the house which has taken up a good amount of the wife's and my time. And our older dog is getting a bit jealous and requiring some extra time to feel special on top of that. So when I've been able to sit down and paint, it's been for a lot shorter sessions than I'm used to. Hoping to get a good block of time this weekend to pump through the Avatar, preferably leading towards MkIII's release!
     What I've done is a really rough base coat of colors to get an idea of how it'll look, as well getting a feel for how the brush can get to certain areas and which colors and layers should be applied first and whatnot. I'd highly advise doing this model in separate pieces.
     Sorry for the poorer picture quality here, but I was in a rush and didn't have time to make sure the focus was on.

Avatar of Menoth WiP

High Exemplar Kreoss part deux and the reign of an Avatar...

     I went ahead and tidied up the staff a bit, since I forgot about painting a portion of it. That led to better pictures, so that's always nice!

     And with him done, I moved on to the Avatar of Menoth. Just a bit of base work, but it all has to start somewhere. We have a new puppy in the house, so that may take away from some painting time I usually dedicate my mornings to.

Protectorate of Menoth - High Exemplar Kreoss Complete

High Exemplar Kreoss

     It's a bit hard to focus after some news, but that's okay. Took about a day to complete total, so happy enough for tabletop.

Protectorate of Menoth - Kreoss 1

     Had a quick game last night against Vayl1, and the pressure was put on me pretty early to make some magic happen. Luckily I was running my first game with Kreoss1, and he has some pretty awesome magical abilities. So I assassinated Miss Vayl after a little bit of setting her on fire. The Protectorate way!
     That pretty much sealed Kreoss1's fate to be my next model painted. It's either him or High Reclaimer as my ADR pair leading into MkIII, so he might as well be painted.

Early WiP Kreoss1

     I blocked out the white armor plates and started blending on the shoulders. Blending the armor will be the most tedious work, so hopefully I can just rock through it so I can move on to the fun parts.

Protectorate of Menoth - Choir Completed

Took a bit longer than normal, but there was a unit of them. This is the smallest unit I'll be needing to paint, though. I have 4 or 5 more units to paint until I'm happy with my unit collection, so.... need to grind that out this year.

Choir of Menoth - Completed Group Shot

Choir of Menoth - A few

Protectorate of Menoth - Choir WiP

     While assembling the Avatar and waiting for textures and glues to dry, I might as well work on my first unit for my army. The Choir doesn't really feel like a unit, due to primarily being support, but at least it's only 6 guys. My reward for getting these guys done will be moving on to painting up the Avatar. So very excited!

Choir of Menoth get some bases painted up!

Update 5/30:

Choir of Menoth WiP 2

Update 5/31:

Choir of Menoth WiP 3

Warmachine - The Avatar is Coming!

     The new sculpt is to die for. Here are some size comparisons!

Astra Militarum - Leman Russ, Two More

     I finished up two more Leman Russ tanks. That leaves me with two more to paint up and I can call it for a bit on my Leman Russ collection. I own nine, but I don't see myself playing more than seven for a bit, and don't want to build what I won't see myself playing yet.

Leman Russ Exterminator and Vanquisher

     The next two will be painted up in a different paint scheme, however, as I want a less uniform look to the army, and doing the same colors is getting a bit boring (and exhaustive on my paint collection). 

Warhammer 40k - Update and Recap.

     Took a bit of a painting break yesterday, but I did manage to swing in a game. I had to bloat up my upgrades to hit 2,000 points, but Camo Netting is never a bad idea. I added an Inquisitor and some upgrades to my "standard" 1,750 list I wanted to try out, including making the Battle Tank that accompanies Pask into a Punisher Leman Russ for more dakka.
     The game didn't go too well in my favor, as my opponents (played a game against two others looking for a game) rolled a lot of well-placed 5s and 6s, and my rolls weren't the greatest. To be fair, I understand my list doesn't have a ton of rolling to actually do, and puts most of it's faith in averages, but when your opponent needs 6's to glance, and takes out three leman russ tanks in one turn - well, you tend to notice those kinds of spikes a lot more. Oh well, that's the nature of the list, honestly. I know how to improve it to be more competitive, but that's not the point in the first place, so will keep trudging along. For the most part I had fun, but I think the younger opponent I had was doing a bit of cheating, as he called out dice rolls that didn't occur, given I have better eyesight than he thought I did. It's not a huge deal, and not something I cared to address, but it's hard to test out a list when the dice are stacking up against you as well as soon "number fudging".
     Further thought into my list, I'm really stoked for the plug and play nature of it. Once I get my 1,850 points painted up, I can just move towards taking out "X" formation and adding "Y", so I don't have to build completely new lists and can slowly add to my collection. It's a really nice side effect of the current state of 7th edition, and something I'm very happy about. I don't think this applies to every army, but for Astra Militarum it definitely seems to function that way (the new Decurion-style Cadian stuff, anyways). I can take out my Emperor's Wrath Artillery formation for the Baneblade variant with a 7" (maybe 10"?) Str 10 AP 1 Ignore cover, or take away Pask's command slow for a Lord Commissar and an Infantry platoon for screening. And so on.
     As for painting, I did begin this morning with weathering up my next two Leman Russ tanks, and now just need to black out all the metal and color areas, and do that stuff. The blacking out is the longest step left, so should fly by if I can focus some tomorrow morning. That'll leave me with an Inquisitor, two Enginseers, two more Leman Russ tanks, and two Wyverns for a fully painted list. It's not a terrible amount more to go, and I have until June 12th to get it done. Because, you know... MkIII Warmachine!

Astra Militarum - Chimera and Manticore

     I finished up the airbrushing the other day, and spent yesterday painting up two of them. I didn't want to push through four vehicles since weekend plans would get in the way, so spaced my time out with the Chimera and Manticore only. Here's the result:

Imperial Guard - Chimera and Manticore

     I went heavier with the wash-weathering this time to give it a bit more color, and will probably stick to that in the future. There's still a good bit more to paint and build, and I'll try to filter in either a Lord Commisar or one of my Enginseer's I have left before I finish off the next two vehicles so I don't feel like it's getting too repetitive.

Astra Militarum - Squad 1 Completed

     Still early, so let's see if I can get some layers of airbrushing finished up on some tanks that are crying to be painted up!

Imperial Guard Veteran Squad

Astra Militarum - Dudesmen

     Having a very frustrating morning. Between the power going out in waves due to a downed line (or something) and the tedious nature of painting guys en masse, I'm calling it for the day. Progress is at a good point, I feel. While I'm only painting up 12 guys, it's two more than I'd like to - with one of them being a weapon team.
     But can't play Astra Militarum without some Dudes. Once I streamline the process and only do squads/lots of 10, it'll be much better. I'm basically just at painting all the black areas various shades, and just started the basecoating for that. Here's the progress on one of them, which puts them all in the same spot as far as quality. I will say I'm happy with the quality versus the time I'm spending on them, and will decide if I want to keep this standard or make it a bit more simple.
     I'll note that I'm looking towards painting tons of dudes while playing this army, so I want them all to be the same standard and not take forever to paint.

These guys will be done tomorrow at the latest, and with my three days off coming up I plan to paint up some more tanks if I can buy/get them built. The tanks will paint quickly, so I'll use any free time to just relax since I'm really feeling like I need to break and chill for a day or two to refuel (and I don't just mean for painting).

Update 5/19:

     I got some more work done, but this is all taking longer than I thought. I finished blacking out all the areas, and am closing in on home stretch. All that's left are black highlights (which should go by pretty quickly) and then some metal. I have all day at the house to myself, so I hope to finish these guys and prep some more tanks I grabbed last night (4 Leman Russ ones!).

Astra Militarum - Pask and Company

     It's been a long morning, but I finished up my tanks! Instead of posting how they all came out (pretty much the same minus camo pattern), I figured I'd just take pictures of the Pask tank after he was adorned on top of it. So here he is:

     Now I just have to paint up 10 guardsmen and a Heavy Weapon Team, play one 40k game, and get my gift certificate so I can grab more tanks!

Astra Militarum - Leman Russ

     Ahead of schedule. Started the Leman Russ tanks this morning. Just the metal, blacks, and finishing the weathering left!

Astra Militarum - Pask

     I got some serious work done on my Pask "conversion". I've added a lip on the inside of my Pask Tank so he can just sit in there and be glued in easily after I paint the tank. This guy is a few highlights from being finished, but work is work and I needed to get to it.

Astra Militarum - Enginseer

     Back from a family funeral, and back to my normal/sporadic painting schedule. Trying to paint up what I finished building recently, which is about 750 points worth of Astra Militarum (accounting for list upgrade bloat). I started with the Enginseer and will try to paint up my Lord Commissar afterwards. Then some tanks and some infantry and we're done. I'd like to be finished with what's on my 40k paint table by Wednesday morning, which is very possible.
     This Enginseer is going to set the standard for my infantry painting standard. So much to paint, I'm looking to take a step back from higher quality so I can pump through models as I need to.

Enginseer

     I also finished some Vampire Counts painting, and I'll update on those a bit later. Nothing too spectacular, as I went with incorporeal units/models.

Vampire Counts - Hexwraiths, Mannfred, and Mortis Engine

     So I put Feora2 on the shelf for a bit, as I just felt like pumping out some miniatures en masse for a moment. I've been building and painting for my small Age of Sigmar collection. I must say, what a terrible game, but I have hope (which I will always hold out for) that it becomes better. But, at the very least, I get really cool models for my display case (even if they are lower paint quality), and have some DnD miniatures whenever undead come up (which is often).

     I've prepped the Hexwraiths, the Mortarch flying beast, and the Mortis Engine bottom and will be trying to knock them all out tomorrow morning since they are primarily airbrush work, and that's pretty fast. In the meantime, I needed to paint Mannfred and the upper section to the Mortis Engine, so I just finished that up:

Mannfred WiP

Mortis Engine Top WiP

     Now they just await being adorned to the top of their ghostly flying creations.