Weekly progress: Big Sons of Horus Batch doooone, Sons of Sek tank

Nothing like chopping a load of work from your unpainted army. These 30+ guys were a 'delight' to get through.

State of the Desk; Sons of Sek TAAAAANKS, some scenery, and some non GW beauties

Tanks have been the focus over the last few weeks. Love em! In an effort to get as many of the core Sons of Sek guys painted I wanted to get these finished and working away. 

Soon I'll put together a picture spread to showcase what these guys should look like. Aggressive!

I'm trying a new paint scheme with my Chimera and Wyvern chassis' that took a lot of work. And in the end I'm not sure whether I'm convinced it was worth it. Wyvern first.

State of the desk; Mortalis, Dark Mech, Stormtroopers, Apocalypse

So the desk this week has had a nice tidy after a busy couple of days,

First things first, Mortalis. This was a real “I'm not sure what to paint next. Let’s paint that”, moment. There have been some ridiculously nice colour schemes for Mortalis. See here for the eventual aim (landing bay).

I went the route that suited me best. I wanted dirty, rusted and oiled, but with some semblance of unity. Black and silver looks great as the internal corridors of a ship, but with a little extra work I hoped I could add some more character to it so that it could be other things as well, a bunker complex, the bridge of a ship rather than the bowels, laboratory etc.

I also didn't want to take forever, I have 7 more of these sections to do.

Astra Militarum themes; Correct vs Fun

I really do need to adjust my tactics. I sit back, a lot. This is classically what Guard excel at. This is how their fluff reads. Sit behind fortifications and blow the enemy away with hammerblows of overwhelming fire-power. 

It’s a tactic that in game works well against a lot of armies such as Nids, Tau, Necrons, Chaos, Ork Kan and horde armies. The problem is everyone else.

I know the amount of Marine players I will be going up against. All with access to a lot of Deep Strike. This means this happens a lot.

Sons of Sek 1 Year and 7 months in; group shots

We Serve the Anarch whose voice drowns out all others! Early Group shots first.

  

Then this is a healthy 2400-odd point painted selection of the Sons so far.

Getting the Commander finished does definitely help unify them all, moody shots will be soon too.

For now, as I've not said it often enough, bring on the extra stuff to complete.

Thanks for reading!

Sons of Sek; Jumpsuit Psykers

Work continues apace across many projects.

I really wanted to get some of the higher echelons of the Sons of Sek completed, so I finished all of the Psykers, Priests, and the Etoguar/Commander that have been making perennial under coated appearances for the last year plus on the battlefields, all while being fairly pivotal to the games I played. 

Ogryn Flagellants and the Spawn-o-Raptor

Everything in my house is being hacked and sawed to pieces at the moment. Loving the Razor saw (please ignore that last comment FBI scanner), but it doesn't bode well for my childhood.

In other news, Ebay has been its eternally-damned self to me, I won a still on sprue  box of Chaos spawn for £13 (RRP £25) and then lost a fully painted Forge world Imperial Guard Praetor Assault launcher for £46 (RRP £115) , I bid £45 and stopped! Woah woe woe.

Sons of Sek; Platoon 2

The shove that I needed to get cracking and paint these guys was a Facebook challenge with some gamers I know. These games have 10 man Marine Squads, I had 25 shiny converted guys that all needed a long process of painting. 21 steps, yay me.

So with the only time available to paint being between 10-12 when the family is asleep, this was a lot of late nights and an entire series of Better Call Saul, a few TED talks, some QI and a failed attempt at Community (nope, not for me).

Photographing Miniatures; an untutored view

Last night I sat in the dark and took pictures of tiny people that live in my house.

Also known as…miniature photography! So, it turns out that I don’t know how to take nice photos of my miniatures for show. Pictures always come out slightly too bright, or with too much morphing of the colours. But where I have had success is when they’ve been in enhanced photos.

Catch up and reset for the hobby clock

I've not painted in so long that my Superglue went hard.

No really. See through in the tube.

Is that the date already!? Right, catch up and get going.

Catch up is needed indeed. Therefore this will be a rather scatter-shot approach to blogging then over the next year. With less time to do anything with a tiny devourer (e.g. baby), plus the new house its getting harder to arrange time to focus on a little painting. And I also have this little demon called Warlords of Draenor to worry about as competition for my limited free time.

Eeek, busy!

Proud momma hen; my Hades Breaching Drill.

With the phrase stolen from Sergeant Terry of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I would like to present my favourite model of the moment, the lovely (completed) Hades Breaching Drill. Mmmmm.

This put all the little things into practice and I'm liking the result thus far.

40,000 Apocalyptic commitments needed

We tried our first large-scale game a couple of months back, where we tried out the Apocalypse ruleset with 7th Edition. To celebrate we tried a 40,000 point game. Here follows a breakdown of the our first experiences with the system of Apocalypse, 7th Edition, and the weekend setup.

Being championed by my good friend Bave, who managed the entire planning of the thing we set a date, and started checking how many points those invited collectively had, and how much we could field, to see what would be worth trying out. After bandying about for several days for sizes, we went for a game that would be 20,000 points a side. 

Ambitious, epic, awesome, but possibly a case of eyes being bigger than stomach!

Cutting that grey tsunami however you like!

My scalpel has not made friends with my minis. I can 100% confirm that in my one and a half years of 40k there isn't a single model that I haven't taken my knife to in some way. 

And I don't mean just mould line shaving, I mean cut cut. (insert questionable prison metaphor here)

Being a cliché, and 'Find the Cyclops'

Well I have been busy.

So apart from this Renegade Hellhammer beastie (more on him later) in the last month, I've got my house sold and looked at 18 separate houses to then buy afterwards (only 2 had a dedicated study, but hey ho) I've enjoyed a lovely holiday with friends, was best man at an awesome German wedding for my good man Den, had a birthday, and finally had an enormous game of Apocalypse, all with a pregnant wife and little spare time at all.

So I apologise for the delay, Den let me know the delay was unacceptable. Sorry Den.

Ahhh I cut your face with my mind-knives!

You've gotta love the crazies of 40k, the flagellants, the real screw-loose Inquisitors (Bam, your world is dead! Bam, your world is dead too! Bam, Bam, Bam) and pretty much ever illustration from John Blanche ever (Cables in there? Really?)

Not Blanche, its not that kind of site

I’m hoping that GW release something entitled ‘Everything on Earth that was weird before the great crusade; Ever’, because some of the apocalyptic armies that cropped up in that time are so rich and packed with such fantastic themes.

Alan Bligh has really nailed the character and the legacy of these hosts with short and sweet ephemeral names like the Crimson Conclave, the Antioch Court, the Million Hand march. You can really picture the swaying banners of insanity over the heads of these hordes.

Killteam

I’m going to say three things.
- No I’m not looking forwards to 7th Edition
- I didn’t know my stomach lining would look like that
- Moving house as a couple does not mean that you can prioritise a game room over an extra bedroom!

Image courtesy of Aerion The Faithful-DeviantArt

Glean for that what you will. On to gaming. Killteam! 

Tempestus Scions; not a one-shot-pop-squad!

 These guys will have to do till I get my hands on the plastic Scions box set; Traitor Stormtroopers! (Because they missed the memo regarding naming conventions)

Putting aside their painting methods until later to focus more on their use in-game in comparison to the last ruleset the Stormtroopers have, in general they are cheaper, better in bulk, and using them is wholly more risky if you stick to their former play style.

I've got a legacy of being underwhelmed by the rules for Scions. In the past I've been OK with the one-shot-pop-squad, with 2 meltaguns which can deep strike for a little over 100 points, really I was. 

Now they are cheaper, even with meltaguns. They are still a costly gamble, which is heavily influenced by terrain use, but still worthwhile.

Astra Militarum makes me sad; I'm already planning my 'Counts as'

Like other Guard players, I'm looking forwards to adding a few more miniatures over the next few months, but not as many as I'd have hoped.

With the happy folks of the internet documenting changes to the new Astra Militarum codex fairly cohesively, I'm looking ahead with some money on my mind, and some conversions. 

Sons of Sek; Sentinels

Finished these guys over the weekend and am chuffed with how they've come out for the short amount of time that I gave them.

Given that the Stalk talks are very much the Blood Pacts forte, I figured these would fill a niche nicely. For these I magnetised 3 autocannons, 2 lascannons, 3 hunter killer missiles, 2 multimeltas and a heavy flamer for weapon options, as these look close enough to use as drop Sentinels when I want a little difference.

Budgets and budget aids! (The Gamers curse)

So very many temptations this week as my Company bonus looms. There's a Mechanicum tank of spindly death (finally a decent Chaos proxy for a Destroyer Tank hunter), the beautiful new Horus Heresy rulebook, some new Mechanicum thralls that seem to be everywhere, and various Chinese counterfeiters adverts that are trying to convince me of the benefits of using their services.