Progress is made.

Work has been kicking my ass, and my creativity's ass. I have made some small progress though, like buying the Dark Imperium boxed set (pictures of that will come) and also a new light box for photography. Still getting the hang of it, but I think I'll get there.

So anyway, onto the models!

All right, first things first. I've been working on the the crew for the first heavy bolter team in my Morphean Highlanders army. So we've got the assistant gunner below, made from a mix of GW Cadian bits, Forge World's Cadian Respirator upgrade kit and Victoria Lamb's upgrade kits, both some of her old metal and newer resin bits. The idea I had behind the posing was for him to be rushing back from the resupply truck/half-track with a fresh box of bolter shells for the main gunner.
He's recently been undercoated and so needs to be painted.

Next up is probably my most extensively converted model to date, the commander of the First Platoon for my Highlanders 101st Regiment of Foot. Again, made from a mix of GW Cadian bits, both the standard infantry box and the command kit, and Victoria Lamb bits too. The sword though is made from one of the Executioner Greatswords from the Sisters of Silence kit which I bought online from bitzbox.co.uk.
I was originally a little bit worried since, obviously, the Sisters of Silence are female and generally, women have smaller hands than men, so the fear that the hand wouldn't sync up with the arm was there. And I was proven right too. It was far too small. So I had to basically cut off the hand, then the grip and the sword while also cutting off the hand off one of the banners and then do a bit of filing and shallow drilling to get it all right, but overall, I'm pleased with it.

Then next we have a Ministorum Priest, one of the old ones which I bought from my 'local' (it's about 20 miles away from where I live). I am a little annoyed that these guys have been swapped from the Guard army list to the Adeptus Ministorum list in 8th Edition, but beggars can't be choosers. Plus, I've still wanted to paint one and I've never been able to find the actual one that I want, but still. The plan for this guy is to paint him up like a priest/vicar that followed the Scots Covenanters during The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, so basically just plain black all round, but also adding a little bit more stereotypical Scots flair with him (ginger hair and blue facial tattoos).

Then my last model, my scratch built Recon Salamander. Now, it's nowhere near the same as the actual Salamander model, especially since the official model had sloped armoured around the crew compartment, but in all honesty... I like my version. It kind of brings to mind the Universal Carrier from WW2.
Still currently adding some bits to the outer hull, like the fuel drum at the back along with the pannier full of jerry cans on the other side. I do need to buy the Astra Militarum Tank Accessories kit to cover the tank treads at the front since having just one track guard is just... daft. The crew is currently at a mix of being built and being painted, but I'm quite happy with the result so far.

Morphean Highlander #1

And I have finally finished him. After having him sat unbasecoated for nearly three years and unpainted for one year, lo and behold, here is one of my Morphean Highlanders.

Built with a mix of Victoria Lamb bits (kilt legs, bayonet sheath, which you can't see because of the shadow from the lasgun, and the lasgun barrel), vanilla GW Cadian Shock Troop bits, a few Space Marine Scout biker bits, Forge World's Cadian Respirator kits and Anvil Industries weapon sights.

Another WIP

Well work has been a pain since it has cut my creativity to a huge degree.
But I finally pulled my thumb out and did something.

One of my Morphean Highlanders in... some of his painted glory.

Morphean Highlanders WIP and a few painting WIPs

I shall get this out of the way first: my laptop fucking sucks!! I really hope that if I get this apprenticeship (for lack of a better phrase for it. It's complicated) then I can save up money to buy a new one. 

Anyway, between job searching, the lack of money from being jobless and the general feelings of not being good enough to have anything good happen (thank you, anxiety and stress), I have not been as productive as I would have liked, but over the last few months, I have had sporadic moments where I've been able to accomplish things. Some things.

First up: We have the a group shot of the Imperial Space Marine model, painted in the colours of the Raptors chapter, on the left, the sergeant for my first squad of Morphean Highlanders, with torso, legs, head and sword from Victoria Miniatures, while the laspistol is from the Forge World Cadian respirator upgrade kit, and the trooper on the right with the legs and bayonet from Victoria Miniatures (again) and the torso and arms from the vanilla Cadian Shock Troopers kit and the head and backpack from (again) the Forge World Cadian respirator upgrade kit. 

As of now (September 5th), I have painted two more models for my Morphean Highlanders, one carrying the vox-caster and a normal Guardsman. It is a pain when you try and paint tartan but put the wrong colour for the stripes first. So... blegh.

 Next up is my retinue for Lion Rampant, made from the Perry Miniatures 15th century Mercenaries box and the Mounted Men-At-Arms box.
The composition is as follows:

• 6 Mounted Men-At-Arms, with my leader (6 points)
• 6 Men-At-Arms (6 points)
• 12 Foot Serjeants (4 points)
• 6 Handgonnes, the official rules of which are included in Wargames Illustrated issue 330 on page 62 (4 points)
• 12 Crossbowmen (4 points)

So 24 points overall. Still yet to play a game with them though. Plus, since the date of this photo being taken, I have started painting them.

And lastly, we have the best example ever of me pulling my thumb out of my arse: I have put the greenstuff for the plaids on my Morphean Highlands. After sitting for almost half a year half done on my desk. The ones at the bottom are for my first infantry squad while the one sitting in the pin vice is for my Heavy Weapons team. He'll be the loader for the heavy bolter since, if you can't see it clearly, in his left hand, he's carrying an ammunition box.

The soldiers are, once again made from a mix of parts from Victoria Miniatures (the legs, weapon barrels (curse me desire to have a unique force) and heads), Anvil Industries (weapon sights), Secret Weapon Miniatures (the backpacks) and Games Workshop and Forge World.

Expensive for one squad, I know. But goddamnit if I don't want them to look great in the end.

So goodbye until next time.

An update and Morphean Highlander Taurox WIP.

So... it's been nearly four months since my last update. I'll cut a long story short on the reason why: life. I've just not had a good time of it. Between loosing my job, having money stolen from my account, falling sick and not being able to get any news on whatever job I apply for... it's just not been the best combination for my mental health. *sigh*

Anyway, on to the models!
When I had a reasonable amount of money in my account, I went out and bought an Astra Militarum Taurox kit. I'll be honest, I think I was one of the few people who actually kind of liked the model when it came out. So I bought it, while at the same time ordering some very cool resin kits from Zinge Industries' (zinge.co.uk) resin APC range to swap out the Taurox's caterpillar tracks for a set of wheels (along with other bits) to turn it into a 40k MRAP.

 (no idea why the top one came out blurry but the bottom one didn't)

So, I think it turn out quite well. This also marks the start of the colour scheme I'll be using on the vehicles for my Morphean Highlanders: basically a drab green colour with a red invasion stripe down the middle for easy identification from the air. I obviously based this around the orange IFF panels used by Coalition forces during the Invasion of Iraq, and the idea I had behind this particular regiment, the Morphean 101st Highland Regiment of Foot is that they're engaged in a war against anti-Imperial secessionist forces in the Karisol system. Obviously, particular vehicles such as command tanks and vehicles will have a simple camouflage scheme in place of the drab green while other vehicles will have camouflage netting on them.

I also have an idea for quick identification flashes on the flanks of vehicles such as the Taurox or Chimeras, but that's still a work in progress so I'm not 100% on them yet.

So yeah, that's all I've got for now, but I hope to have something up before the end of the month.

Morphean Highlanders Heavy Weapons Squad WIP

Well, I hope everyone had a nice and productive Christmas and new year. I myself binged on too much chocolate and cracked a tooth (they are not related incidents, trust me). But as I said, I'd be more productive after the new year and I have.

After a trip to my 'local' hobby store (I stress local since my position in Wales puts me pretty far away from any official GW store or hobby stockist outside of using the internet), I came home with the Cadian Shock Troops Heavy Weapons Squad.
So I got to work (don't mind the camera quality. I took the photos with my phone):

First up is the first crewman for heavy bolter crew one. He's made using a mix of parts from Victoria Lamb (the kilted legs and the lasgun barrel), Forge World bits (the arms) and standard GW parts (the body and the ammo case in his hand).

Secondly is the heavy bolter herself. Almost a standard fair with this, except for the inclusion of a box from the Italeri Modern Battle Accessories box and metal sandbags from The Assault Group to help beef up the base. I plan to have the whole model look like it's being used in the middle of a pitched battle, so I plan to include a fair bit of battle detritus, but not too much so I don't overburden the model. Maybe just a few 'empty' ammo boxes.

So that's it for now. See you later.

Painting Imperial Guardsmen - Rhodesian style!

I know that for a first post, this is quite a stretch, but I tried uploading this tutorial up to my Tumblr page and... well, to put it bluntly, Tumblr just went "Nope!" and never let me upload it. So I'm doing it here. Actually, this is the reason why I created this blog in the first place.

Now for a bit of background on the reason for this tutorial: I've been heavily in to military history for a long time now, ever since I was a young(er) lad. But ever since me joining Tumblr, my love of history has been expanded by being introduced to a conflict that is very rarely ever mentioned but can be considered to be quite important in terms of modern warfare: the Rhodesian Bush War. I won't go in to much detail on the war, since I've provided a link and it would make this post quite a long one. Plus, I also do intend to paint up some models for the Rhodesian Bush War in the near future.
To cut a long story short, the Rhodesian Defence Forces created a new camouflage scheme, a variant of the British 1959 pattern Denison Smock, more suited to the warmer environments of the Rhodesian bush. This was simply called Rhodesian Brushstroke.

In terms of camouflage schemes, it's quite high on the list of schemes that can be quite daunting to paint. I don't doubt that at all. I think it's got to be up there with the modern digital camouflage schemes (ACU, MARPAT, MTP, etc), so it doesn't really strike me that it's only seen on miniatures that are used for the Rhodesian Defence Forces. But I was really shocked to see that hardly anyone in the Warhammer 40k community has attempted it for the Guard.

So, I decided to rectify it and give it a go. Now I admittedly did not look around the internet for any tutorials on how to paint it. This was due to two things:

1. I wanted to have a go at this myself just to give it a go.
2. I am admittedly quite a lazy little bugger. Heh.

I was bit stuck on what colour paints to use, but a trip to my local Games Workshop in Chester helped me with that conundrum. I would like to thank Matthew for giving me the starting point with what paints to use for the camouflage.

Anyway, on to the tutorial proper!

Paints Needed.

I wanted to keep the practice scheme as close to the original scheme as shown in the first photo, so I went for mainly muted brushland colours. I've also got a lot of the older Citadel colours left over from before the change (a curse from being in this hobby for over 10 years), but the conversion chart is readily available on the GW site.

So for paints, you'll need:

• XV88
• Bleached Bone
• Seraphim Sepia
• Straken Green
• Catachan Green
• Chaos Black
• Mournfang Brown
• Lahmian Medium

I will say this upfront: I did regretfully not water down some of these paints enough and it does show on the models. But hey, practice makes perfect, no?

For the models, I used the £6 box of five snap-fit Cadian Shock Troops. They're simple to build and not that difficult to paint so they make good practice models. For ease of reference, I'll be showing both the front and back of the models. I do have to apologise about the varying qualities of the photographs.

The Painting.

Step 1: After undercoating the models in Chaos Black undercoat, I basecoated the areas of cloth with a layer of XV88.

Step 2: Over the XV88, layer on Bleached Bone. Do one or two layers, depends if you want to try and keep it as clean as possible. I applied roughly two layers to my models.

Step 3: Over the layer of Bleached Bone, apply a wash of Seraphim Sepia. Now regretfully for the next phase, I think that I overdid the next layer due to not being able to see the shading through the paint. Again, it's all practice so live and learn. I also did unfortunately mix up the placement of the models, so sorry about that.

Steps 4 and 5: Now this is one of the reasons why I didn't go with any online tutorials, since I wanted to a bit of experimenting. Originally, I was going to layer over the shaded Bleached Bone with Straken Green, but I found that the Straken Green was a bit too bright, so I decided to try mixing it with some Bleached Bone. The model on the left was done with 1:1 mix of Bleached Bone:Straken Green while the model on the right was done with a 3:1 mix of Bleached Bone:Straken Green.

I did forget to take pictures of the models with the third layer applied, so I apologise about that, but it doesn't really make much of a difference since you can still see the layers. Anyway. For the first layer of the camouflage patches, I used straight Catachan Green and applied it to the Bleached Bone:Straken Green mix using the side of the fine detail brush. One of the things that I should stress is that when you're applying the patches to the cloth, make sure the patches on the jacket don't spill over on to the trousers. This shows that the Guardsman is wearing two separate pieces of clothing and it also helps break up the outline of the model.

Step 6: The next step for the camouflage is to apply some more patches with a 1:1 mix of Mournfang Brown:Lahmian Medium. Now I cannot stress how brilliant Lahmian Medium is for painting. Essentially, it's a thinning agent for paint in lieu of watering the paint down. If you thin paint down with water, you also water down the pigment which essentially turns the paint in to a water-colour. But with Lahmian Medium, the strength of the pigment is kept pretty much the same, meaning you can keep the strength of the paint you mixed it with, in this case brown.

Step 7: And you're done! Apply your chosen colours for the armour, skin and other equipment on the model, and you'll be gold.

My examples are a bit plain, I know. I'd have liked to include some fully painted examples of the models, but work and preparing for Christmas has been hell on my schedule. I'll try and get them done soon.
Still, if this helps any of you, I'm perfectly happy.