She's done.
Justus Eterna, Baneblade 052 operating in command of a squadron of Cadian Leman Russ tanks.
That's it.
It's a great kit, I loved building it and painting it. Nothing else.
Next Time
No idea. Something not immediately related to Cadians I suspect...
Not at all. Just making such slow progress on so many projects, and forgetting to take photos at club days, have left me somewhat bereft of content of late.
But the weather's been terrible so a bit of a catchup on things that were waiting to be done has been done. First off, I finished my Rough Riders:
I also made some progress on the Green Machine:
She doesn't have a moniker yet but it's been a great project to work on so far. I've got a bunch of detailing to do and then some monstrous tiger stripes but she's coming along an, honestly, it's almost good enough to go on the park in this state, which I'm pleased about.
I've also finished up painting way too many 15mm Fallschirmjager and started getting my Early War Germans ready for the table by sticking Balkenkreuzes to every surface known to man. A little more work to do getting the tank numbering working and then a little bonus project to find a way to make removable demolition charges for my Panzer Is when they go out in support of EW Leichte Pioneers which, with the new mission book finally out, might be a goer....
Next Time
Club Day in which the Baneblade will get her third outing...
My 3D print parts arrived over the weekend so I have enjoyed the satisfaction of finishing the Baneblade build so here she is:
The 3D print parts were to turn the a four-sponson build into a two-sponson build with double the guns. The key parts were the quad-heavy flamers and the double mount for the lascannon. I hadn't been able to preview the flamer parts in the STL and, in person, I did not love them. So, some aggressive filing and chopping later and the four GW flamers were trimmed down to fit into the gunshields from the 3D print kit. I played around with the GW kit mounts but decided I liked this one better.
There's still a bit of filling to do around the seams on the sponsons but I'll let all the glue on the heavy flamers cure properly and get the sponsons completely assembled before I do that.
But I tell you something for nothing, she looks SO DAMN COOL. The kitbashed heavy flamers have given me the look I wanted (looking not dissimilar to a Hurricane Bolter) and the double lascannons look badass.
Fingers crossed (and a bit of dedicated painting time) I'll get this Guard army ready to go at a club day in March.
Next Time
Some more Early War armour, finished Rough Riders and some WIP of the Baneblade...
So while I'm waiting for my 3D print sponsons to get done so I can finish building (and thus paint) the Baneblade, I'm clearing the decks of the other Guard things I need to do.
First, moar beef. I picked up a second trio of Bullgryns after the new Guard detachment allows you to throw a Commisar into the squad. The whole image is slightly comedic (and feels a bit circus-conductor-y) but I think they'l lbe a fun squad to run.
Second, I have completed half my Rough Riders. Being able to smash through three at once was quite pleasing and the fact that they've quietly come together as a squad in terms of how they look has made me super happy.
It's a nice encouraging place to be to push through the last five and then have a bit of a think about how they're going to be decorated with decals to finish the whole squad off once they're done.
Next Time
Potentially taking the Guard out for a run if I can line things up and doing some prep work for my secret tech for this year's club Flames of War competition.
This is where we started - Scotty looking to get into my refused centre and me looking to sneak around his right flank. The Tercios deployed in their traditional triangle formation pointed at the enemy but the much more rapid Swedes came on at pace.
You can tell it was a good game when I utterly forgot to take enough pictures until we ended the game! Roughly, Scotty turned my left flank which left me dangerously exposed (enough to charge a Colour Regiment in the front with Gendarmes to stop them turning the flank of a Tercio!) but my light horse kept me in the game doing sterling work dinging up cavalry enough that I shot one off the board with heavy artillery.
In the centre, the Tercios ground into some Colour Regiments because I was a little too hesitant and unsure of how well they could take artillery. Turns out, well enough. I was lucky to fight two Colour Regiments one-on-one and the power of the Tercio bore out as they made it through the devastating charge potential of the Swedish infantry.
On my right, a stalemate between two Colour Regiments and my Landsknechts who, supported ably by some caracoling Reiters (who never got to shoot!) and some cavalry held on until a Tercio powered into the flank of a Colour Regiment and saved the day although with no way to stop the cheeky Dragoon who ran through a marsh and sacked my baggage!
So here's where we finished up:
Scotty sacked my camp a turn before I got to his and I broke. I had one round to finish off two of the Colour Regiments and ding one up a couple of other things to salvage a draw but in the end it was 22 - 19 (I broke on 19, Scotty on 20!) and a thoroughly good game!
Do I like Tercios? Yes. Are they good? Maybe. In period, I can see they'd be devastating. I definitely wasn't aggressive enough with them and, faced with charging infantry like Scotty's, they didn't really shoot much of anything or take advantage of their weird, multi-sided nature.
They're very slow and very tough and in this game, a musing Scotty and I had had during the week that if he could win big on a charge with his Salvo infantry he could beat me one-on-one but if he didn't, I'd grind him into paste, definitely proved to be true. And grind is the operative word - we had the same with the Landsknecht Kiel in a shoving match with a Colour Regiment that took me the whole game to win!
And a couple of things off the modelling bench:
Flames of War
In the absence of some 2pdrs for my MW Pacific Australians, I present their air support:
This is Alice, a PBY Consolidated Catalina flying boat and one of my favourite aircraft of the war. She's the right scale for Flames and is so much more fun than a couple of Kittyhawks. I don't quite have a full set of markings but getting some RAAF roundels was what was needed to at least get her to a point where I'm happy to have her on table.
Warhammer 40K
I've also got on and finished another Rough Rider, and started three more, so they're moving along now I'm happy with the palette and the technique:
Next Time
Rough Riders and maybe some more Early War Germans...
It's been a while. The end of last year definitely became all about real life and not a lot about hobbying. I'm also enjoying that realisation that comes with middle-age that my eyes don't work so well anymore and as a result, painting became deeply unfun for a while.
Mercifully, the summer rolling around and there being cricket on made for hobby time without glasses on a much more pleasing proposition.
So I've been doing a bunch of stuff with my summer break and herein is a catalogue of those things! Some of this will also be a bit of a steer as to what's on the gaming calendar for 2026!
A throwaway conversation with a clubmate at the end of last year about no one playing Flames of War Pacific reminded me that I had a whole army of Australians that could definitely come out to play. So I made up a list and realised that I was, annoyingly, missing a Bofors AA gun and more annoyingly, the platoon of 2pdr AT guns I thought I had painted actually doesn't exist and I have wholly imagined it.
But I made up a couple of Owen SMG bases and a flamethrower base to turn one of my infantry platoons into a Commando section:
McBeth hooked me up with a 4th Bofors gun and I'll get some 2pdrs at some stage. I've got some RAAF decals inbound to decorate the air support that's slotted in in the absence of the 2pdrs.
I've also test painted a single Early War tank, just to see how it comes out with the grey and brown and I'm really looking forward to cracking on with this army in anticipation of the release of EW in February:
Finally done. Am I happy with them? No, not especially but I didn't enjoy painting that army at all. The paint job is tabletop at best but honestly, I just needed to get them done. Basing and flags have helped with the finished product.
Having played almost nothing but Knights last year, I've been focusing on getting some improvements into my Guard army to get this army on the park again this year.
A new Leman Russ was one of the first adds and, given the armament, I decided he should be a Commissar tank:
I've also added some new support solos - two new techpriests (one of whom is nice and big for reasons that will become apparent...):
And from there (also for reasons that will become apparent...) a converted Lord Solar. I did the kitbash for two reasons. First, while I like the Lord Solar model, it's SO out of place in my Guard collection and second, I had an excellent head with a Windsor Davies style mustache and it's perfect for this.
Workbench
I've added a second trio of Bullgryns to bulk them out to a full unit. I'd like to give them a blat in a Grizzled Veterans company with a Commissar to make them more hitty:
I've done a bit of a kitbash on the new Attillan Rough Riders to provide an escort for Lord Solar. They're all built, this is the first painted one:
Finally, the apparent reason:
She's not quite done - some 3D printed sponsons are inbound (so I can have the double sponson list build with only one pair of actual sponsons) and I am still pondering the specific crewing arrangements but there will be some classic 'DRIVE ME CLOSER I WANT TO HIT IT WITH MY SWORD' energy though. It's been a great little project that I've really enjoyed. I genuinely can't wait to get it painted and running.
Next Time
I'll take photos and report back on the performance of the most hateful painting project ever. I have high hopes for the performance of the Tercio but we shall see...
I've had a couple of weeks off but back on deck and doing stuff and things!
Bloggers Pel, Scotty, McBeth, Pooch and I played in the Properly Cocked Teams event a couple of weeks ago. How did we go? Last. Did we have an absolute ball? Yes. Have three of the team started new armies for next year already? Also yes.
So just a few highlight pics from my games:
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| Deepstriking nonsense fights deepstriking nonsense |
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| My favourite fight of the weekend, Errant vs Stompa |
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| Rottigus gets Lanced |
I've also finally got my Waffentrager finished! I dug out the same toothpick-based method for putting ambush camo on the gunshield and then covered these obviously ambush weapons in foilage!
They're derpy as all get out and are definitely one of the less nice models I've done from BF in a while - the moulding wasn't super crisp and the design of the gunshield and mounting is easy to get real wonky. Their plastics really do outshine their resin/metals these days by some order of magnitude.
That is, I think, the end of all my unpainted Late War Germans. I've got a few whitewashed things to bring back to summer colours and I probably need paint a second platoon of infantry, but at this point, the next 15mm project I get into will be repainting my Early War!
Next Time
Playing some KoW with Tank and getting to work on a new Star Wars Legion project...
Painting this much black wasn't exactly a hardship - I've done it a lot over the years. :) There's one last job, which is to cut the join in the top door through the transfer which I thought I'd do after it was stuck on since the gap in the top doors of a rhino isn't square. Hopefully it'll work. I've also got an STL floating around to replace the kit storm bolter with a sweet remote-control-looking storm bolter and hunter-killer mount so at some stage I'll get that printed and swap out that turret.
Next Time
Waffentrager and hopefully the first stage of my random project...
in which his magic and infinity rerolls plinked a Cerastus Castigator for 27 wounds pretty much with nothing but bolt guns and Lethal Hits in a single round of shooting despite me passing an improbably number of 4++ saves. He took most of my Armigers and dinged up the Errant pretty badly (with more Lethal Hits) but the Lancer impaled Magnus with a degree of good luck to effectively close out the game. It was a learning exercise for both of us - picking up rules we'd missed and understanding how to deploy some of our kit to best effect.
Then I took on clubmate Ryan's Eldar and ho boy. Like, I knew Fire Dragons were vicious but wow. They did some spectacular punishment (with their infinity rerolls) and Grandad Eldrad making me pay 2 CP for Rotate Ion Shields to try and save my Castigator. Ouch.
The whole game pivoted on the explosion of my Castigator in the end - it plinked some wounds off the Errant and the Lancer and did some serious damage to my Moirax but it also blasted all of Ryan's Howling Banshees, Fuegan's second life and the last of the Storm Guardians that were protecting the Seer Council and other than some Warpspiders in my back field ripping my Sisters to bits, his offensive basically stopped dead with that carnage.
I learned a few things about Titanic as a rule which gives me a bit more confidence on doing secondaries with my big knights and also dealing with stuff in buildings as well as some of the shenanigans that can be committed by the ever-cheaty Eldar. Knights are a good army and they're pretty forgiving for an inexperienced player. I'm looking forward to getting my Guard out sometime in future for funsies.
Painting?
I decided I should paint something just to keep the pile moving so I did some JU87 Stukas for Victory at Sea:
Just something quick and dirty to keep my hand in. I haven't been in much of a mood of late and there's a pile of half done projects on my painting desk that just need doing so I decided I'd start on one of the easy ones.
Next Time
Workbench. I've pulled a little present I got myself many moons ago out of the box and will start work getting it together. What I'll do with it when it's done, no idea. That's a future me problem and future me has plenty of those.
This blog starts just for one reader. Local gaming stalwart Kenny was giving out little 3D printed models at ValleyCon earlier this year and he handed me one and said he expected to see it on the blog. So here we have one very very cute Stone Troll who now lives in a small pot plant in my living room:
It was a lot of fun to paint. I have this model in 28mm and I enjoyed doing this one in whatever scale this is. 20mm maybe? Kenny did a stunning job on the print - the details are super crisp and clean. It was an easy paint.
And the Lancer!
It is done. As are the new legs on the Castigator but photos of that anon. I've had a frustrating time with yellow as I have done every time I've painted models for this army but I'm well pleased with how it's all come out. I think I'd like to add some lightning bolts between the emitters on the shield to fill it out a bit more.
My favourite bit of the whole model is, weirdly, the pennant hanging off the lance. GW intended this model to be front on with the lance pointing straight ahead. No, says I. I wanted this defensive, hoplite-style pose and that meant the penant wouldn't work.
So I've been staring at that pennant for like three weeks and a couple of days ago, I had a brainwave and it's worked out really well. The fact that it's the same pennant as the one hanging down in the centre made me happy.
Photos of the full force next club day when I have enough space and enough light. Late on a midwingter Sunday was optimistic because I gave the Errant a tidy as well while I was at it.
Next Time
Back to the 15mm train. Got some Sturmtigers and Waffentrager screaming for paint. Maybe even the Stukas that are sitting here tormenting me....
So the Lancer is not built and there are a couple of reasons for this. One of them stems from me standing around in my office trying to work out how I wanted the legs to look and realising that I couldn't make it work the way I wanted to because it felt completely unnatural (for a robot) to stand like that. And the second stems from how I decided to fix it.
The one bonus about building a second Cerastus Knight from GW plastics is that the leg assemblies are identical. Can you see where this is going? I decided I needed to swap the legs so I snapped the glue on the hip assemblies from the Castigator and rebuilt those legs to now be the legs for the Lancer. The Castigator gets a complete redesign and now looks like this:
They're now the other way around and the Castigator is now leaning slightly back on it's right leg and stepping forward with the left. The legs had to be glued on given how the hip assemblies came apart so I've left all the armour plates separate so I can paint those and then I really only have to muck about with gunmetal. It'll be a challenge.
Unsurprisingly, this has also created the opposite problem with the Lancer. Until I exactly work out how the arms go on, I am going to be challenged finishing the torso. But I had to start somewhere so start we have:
One Lancer head! Next I'll do the gunmetal and all the piping on the torso and procrastinate about the arms a little bit longer but I aim to have these done in the next couple of weeks. And if I get bored, Sturmtigers. 😆
Also, I had a great game against Pel's Gencon Paras with my Italian Guastatori yesterday that was pretty well on from turn one and I didn't take a single photo. What a mess. Given some scheduling drama llama, it's going to be workbenches for a bit but I have some cool stuff on the to do list so it's not all bad.
Next Time
Knights and this random thing that's been sitting on my desk waiting for me to paint it since ValleyCon so I'm going to do it...
They didn't have a stellar day out and kept getting killed before they got to do anything. A bit vexing given the amount of swears that went into getting the shoulders on. But one day they''ll get to hit something and it'll be awesome. Next, a couple of the new generation of Land Speeders:
I went hunting for new camo patterns and found brown tiger stripes as an option. I quite like it (and I don't think the photo does it justice) but it was a nice change. As I go through tidying up my Germans, I'm going to be doing some more camo schemes on other things. I quite like that I can keep some consistency with the Dunkelgelb and the foilage.
Next Time
A Knight. I hope. And another run up against Pelarel's GenCon army after it pipped me last time I'mma have another go!
So, given the long weekend here, I got stuck into some serious construction. I picked up a few models for my Deathwatch recently with a view to making a bit more an effort to get them on the table.
I started with a couple of Storm Speeders. Honestly, when 8th came out, Dark Angels or Deathwatch was a coin toss and DW came out on top. So this is a nod to the fact that I loved the 2e Landspeeder as well as having a sensible tactical use in bringing some mobility and some decent armaments.
It was a solid reminder of why I LOATHE GW's Primaris Easy Builds for Deathwatch. I had to commit some serious violence on the shoulders in order to chop off the moulded pauldrons and replace the left hand ones with Deathwatch shoulders and the right hand ones with embossed chapter pauldrons. Ugh. But they're done now so they're the first that are going on the painting queue.
Next Time
I dunno. I'm thinking I'll break out X-Force for a game of 40K this weekend and I am musing on a game of Kings of War too as I haven't played that in ages.
Greetings readers, tis I! It's been a few weeks - I've been travelling a bit of late and haven't been home to game or to commit hobby time.
First off, I finished off the squad of Adeptus Sororitas for my Imperial Agents collection. This gets my Knights army done and dusted and will allow me to also run the Officio Assassinorum detachment that I affectionately call X-Force. It's dreadful but it'll be SO much fun to run.
I'm only middling about saying I enjoyed painting them because honestly, I don't think I did. Even with the miracle sauce that is contrast white, this was hard yakka. Having said that, I'm really happy with how they've come out and they look great with the two Immolators that they're going to be riding around in with their special friend Inquisitor Greyfax.
Shortly before I went away I spent my ValleyCon award on some new toys for my Late War Germans, partly inspired by blogger Tank's ValleyCon army (which I'm keen to iterate on) and partly for just stupid:
The Waffenträger are just a solid way of getting some cheap-ish long 88s on the park when I don't feel like the challenge of running Jagdpanthers and what's not to love about the Sturmtiger? It's lunatic but I think it could be a very entertaining addition to some of the more cheap and cheerful
There's also a box of Stukas awaiting my attention but I need to do some thinking about magnetising the weapons...
Next Time
I'm helping Blogger Pel test the list he's taking to GenCon so will try and do a write up of that. I'm breaking out what I think might be the best Italian build I can come up with so I'll be curious to see if it does the business. I've also got a couple of boxes of Space Marines that are demanding some assembly for getting my Deathwatch up to par in 10th so will be getting onto those shortly.
It's been a slow week - already done a bit much socialising and playing video games and not a lot of hobbying. I have finally finished the first sister in my Imperial Agents Sororitas squad and I'm pretty happy with how she came out.
She still needs basing (there are tufts inbound from the UK) and some transfers on the tabard but that'll happen when I do the whole squad. It was good to go through this one from beginning to end as now I have the order of operations that gets me to the end without TOO much repainting white...
I've also started on getting my Early War Germans up and rolling. I started with these two tournament objectives that I picked up at Panzerschreck last year. They're going to be actual 88s (because you can't play EW without them!!) and I had enough models lying around in the bits box to crew them:
I've also started on the insane task of cleaning off my Early War Germans to repaint them. At least I thought it was insane till I borrowed Blogger McBeth's ultrasonic cleaner and ho boy. You can see how well it's worked on a couple of the models on those 88 bases and it's worked even better on the tank hulls. In one case, I think it took off nearly 20-year-old primer!
There's still a dozen Panzer IIs, some self-propelled guns, some trucks and a bunch of infantry to do but I'm optimistic that it'll be fairly easy over the next little while.
Next Time
It's our club's annual event so there'll be a late blog with some how it went and hopefully some good photos of the Flames comp and anything else pretty I see over the weekend!
Been slowly grinding away at Immolators for the past couple of weeks and here we are:
That, dear readers, is too much white. And if GW hadn't thrown Contrast Paint into the world then it would have been even more miserable. I have seen a couple of designs since that had a white turret and top plate on a black hull and, in hindsight, I could have done that. All in all though, happy enough with how they came out. I suspect each time I get them out of the box, I'll find more patches of white I want to tidy up and that's kind of okay.
I really love the way the Aethermatic Blue came out of the statues for a real pop of colour and it was definitely a good idea I stole off the internet. I'm happy that I didn't put too much colour into the glass and while it's frosted (because you really have to spray some varnish on the model to get the paint to stick) I think it looks good being that simple. Didn't enjoy painting it though...
Lessons? Review the assembly guide before you start painting. I had the good sense to leave the gun mounts and the stained glass parts out before I started painting but I should have left the altar off the back and in pieces too and probably left the pilot's torso out but given what a pig getting all the parts glued into the cockpit and lining those up with the pilot were not easy at all.
The Immolator kit has been an exercise in frustration to be sure. There are some kits that go together like a dream and are so easy it's not funny (see Battlefront's Jagdtiger kit for an example) but this one feels like it fought me every step of the way.
Next Time
The Sisters squad that'll be riding in these Immolators with Inquisitor Greyfax are underway now and hopefully will get smashed through a lot faster than this insanity...
