Painting, Painting, and Painting some more.

Anyone who knows me can tell you the two following things in regards to Warhammer 40k and other miniature gaming like Fantasy, Warzone, etc.

#1. I play a damned good game.
#2. I never paint my miniatures.

I'm not here to talk about #1, but instead #2.

I hate painting miniatures, I have hated painting them for years, which is why I have done it so infrequently. I mean, sure I have painted miniatures, my collection of old stuff I've done over the years proves it, as does my collection of old paints. That all aside, I never finished an army. For example, the Dwarves (Because I spell it like I want) that I have had for... phew... uh... almost 20 years are not fully painted. Sure, some of the squads may be fully painted, but that is mostly because those squads are like 10-20 in total. And truthfully my painting abilities back then sucked as much as the typical 12-15 year old gamer.

Not to knock gamers of that age, but truthfully I was horrible. I knew I was horrible, which is why I never really finished stuff, because while what I could easily visualize in my head was great and awesome, what I could produce on the miniatures was terrible.

So, because of that, as I got older I never bothered to paint. Sure I would convert miniatures, sure I would assemble them, I would play the various games, and I always did it with an army of either a various spray primer, or of just plastic/metal. I did paint the old Iron Warriors army I owned, but that was a labor of love, and in retrospect, while they may have been decent, they were far from good. The fact that the army was stolen was probably a blessing in disguise simply because it gave me a chance to not only rebuild them and get to actually painting something I wanted to paint. And lo did I discover, that I was actually a bit better than I used to be, at least better enough that the stuff looked good and received compliments. While I will never ever win a painting competition, I will be happy with how my stuff looks.

That said, I have more armies than just the Iron Warriors. For example, I own a collection of old and new Blood Angels, I own the afore mentioned Dwarves, some Empire, and a lot of Brettonian knights. But, other than my Iron Warriors, I love my Imperial Guard. Some of them are ancient enough to have once been named "Imperial Army". But the majority of them are bog standard Cadians. And most, if not all of them have been flat plastic in color save for a few individual pieces. That includes the tanks. But all that changed about a week and a half ago.

Despite over 20 hours of overtime in the past two weeks, I have somehow gone from no painted Imperial Guard, to 101 individual guardsmen, 6 Chimeras, 6 Leman Russ, and 1 Hell Hound, and this week I plan to paint my first Vendetta. So, somehow in less than 6 months time I have gone from no completely painted armies, to 2. The Mayans were right, the world must be ending.

What makes it worse, is that I have decided other than with the current Cadians I have, I will paint the rest of the guard, and convert the guard in full to be a heresy style army also. Which means... yep, say hello to the Olympian Planetary Defense force. Gotta keep up with the Iron Warriors theme don'tcha know.

Results

So, at Adepticon my Iron Warriors managed to go 9 wins, 2 draws, and 1 very narrow loss. That's counting both the Team Tournament where half of our army was the Iron Warriors and the other half was James's Pre Heresy Space Wolves. It looked really awesome to have two fully converted pre heresy armies fighting it out at one of the gates to the Emperor's palace, and it felt really really good for our team to take 4th place overall and only suffer 1 draw during the team tournament. 7 wins and 1 draw there is awesome.

In the championships however they did not perform quite as well as I had hoped. I drew Reecius from Frontline Gaming and had a very narrow loss to him, won my next two games against an all Death Wing army, and a 90 power armor body Iron Hands list with massive amounts of Lascannons. Then I got a draw with my buddy Mike in the final round of the Championships. Still I pulled off 47th out of 200+ there, so that leaves me a happy man.

And now, on to work with the ATC army, which will either be the Wolves with a bit more work added to them, or my Imperial Guard who are either going to be styled as the Olympian 7th, or the Caintuk 7th. Either way, there will be gray, there will be red, and it will hopefully start getting converted like crazy.

Because I've been bitten by the conversion bug, and it won't let go.

That does mean of course, that I will have to keep working on my Iron Warriors, because while having 6 full 10 man squads of regular marines and 15 missiles is nice, I want more.

I want a throng, a hoard, I want to be able to show off a full company level or more of marines, and by god, I will have it. So that's the goal, a full grand company. Minimum 100 power armor bodies, preferably closer to 150-175.

Best get cracking.

Iron Within, Iron Without.

Adepticon 2012.

So, we made it to Chicago. Sitting here in line, waiting on the registration line to open. I rode up here with the rest of Team Scabbard. When we first got here, it looked like there were around 4-5 people in line. Once we got unloaded and into line, it turned out there were about 20 people in line. Now when I look behind us, the registration line is wrapped around the wall and turned the corner to where I can't see the rest of the line. Looks like I will be lucky enough to get both the Adepticonstruct, and the Battle Foam Shield Bag. Huzzah!

Lets see how the Iron Warriors do at my first Adepticon.

Iron Within, Iron Without.

All done

4 Rune Priests/Warsmiths with their targeting servitors. Done.
All bases. Done.
Display board. Done.
Army pamphlet, will be done tomorrow.

Adepticon, here I come!

Finished my Razorbacks.

So I got overtime. It happens, not really a huge problem except when it comes down to time crunch.

Luckily, I managed to hammer out all three of the Razorbacks last night, then I got their turrets, hazard striping, and shading/dipping done. All done, in fact so done, that I discovered that my dip can is just about done. I'm fairly certain that after one or two more miniatures in total that the dip will be 100% done. It's starting to congeal, clump, and become almost as thick as mud. Which makes it kind of hard to dip anything into it.

But, as I said, I got the dip for the Razorbacks and their turrets done.

I also got a chance to redo a bit of work on my banners for each squad. Previously I wasn't at all happy with them, and now, while I am still not 100% happy with how they look, I am much happier that I redid each of the banners with black outlines on the edges of the banners, a yellow center, and finally over that yellow center I managed to get some of the Iron Warrior transfers that matches exactly the Skull that I have on my shoulder pads and on my Rhino hatches. So I put those on my 6 banners, hit them with the nearly last bit of dip, and then I did manage to use the very last of my antishine coat.

Looks like it's time to get more dip and more antishine. Hopefully I can get by with just the antishine and make this can of dip last through the final 3 miniatures I have to get painted. Depending on how this goes through tomorrow night and the weekend, I will try to get squad by squad pictures done (If I complete their basing for everyone).

So... other than finishing 1 Rune Priest, 2 Choosers, and about 10 bases in total, I'm done.

Wow. Holy crap, this has been a huge load of work, a lot of fun to do, and it's really nearly finished.

I feel like I just completed my siege lines around the Emperor's Palace, now it's time to open up with the beginning of the bombardment.

Iron Within, Iron Without

Custom minis order arrived.

As you may know, I have ordered a lot of custom bits for this army. Heads, backpacks, weapons, and shoulder pads from across the third party vendors have all gone into this project.

Well, yesterday I got my latest bits in. Custom Rhino top hatches from Custom Minis. They are the same people (Sandman Mike from the Heroic 28s) who have done my custom shoulder pads.

Heres a few of the finished hatches on top of their rhinos. All I need to do now are get their stormbolters done and I'll be good to go.

In the past 6 days...

I have been a busy little Warsmith recently. Other than the updates I already had to the army, I have converted 3 LasPlas turrets. I have also gotten the Rhino chassis for those Razorbacks built and base coated. Hopefully if I don't have to work crazy late hours tonight I can get them painted and together. I also built another Warsmith, got him painted, but haven't hit his Chooser up yet, I'll probably put that on the list for tonight also.

Then I went about and converted 6 combi meltas from some spare melta guns, then I put those and more power fists on a few Sergeants that I had the bits for thanks to my Maxmini order coming in finally, and then I got those 6 Sergeants painted. Now, while those 6 Sergeants work perfectly for the 6 line squads if I feel like using them that way instead of going with just a powerfist and bolt pistol, there is a problem of my Devastators/Long Fangs not having Sergeants done at all.

Well, last night I put together three Sergeants just for them. Since one of each of those squads in addition to his missile launcher has either a hammer, a sword, or an axe held in his hand, I built the three Sergeants to combine with that squad. One has a rather bitching sword, one has a rocking axe, and the last has another Maxmini hammer that I got in that last shipment.

Oh yeah, and I got them painted as well.

Need to get the last vehicles and Warsmith done, along with the two targeting servitors, but once those are done it's all cake, everything will be done, and my half of our Team Tournament team will be done, and my own championship army will be done. Adepticon here I come.

Iron Within, Iron Without

After almost 20 years I finally have a painted army.

When I got into playing Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy, some time back in either 1992 or 1993, I played two different armies. In Fantasy I played Dwarves (Not Dwarfs because I, unlike GW know how to spell the word), I played Dwarves because I like beards, I like Dwarves, and I still do. In 40k I started off with Blood Angels, probably because they were included in the box and because they had this mystique about them of being freakish space vampires.

When you are that age, things like that are cool.

At that age I picked up a single GW paint set and started painting, first on marines, then on the Dwarves, then on marines, etc etc. But never did I stick with one project for long enough to actually finish it. Sure I would finish whole units of Dwarves, one time I finished a unit of Spearmen with a total of 30 guys in it. But I never finished an army, I still have that Dwarf army, and it is still not fully painted. Those Blood Angels have long since vanished from my collection for the most part, either in trades, into the trash, or what have you, I honestly don't know anymore.

But right around 1996 or so, I started painting an Iron Warriors Chaos Marine army because, hey, siege warfare is cool. And that army I did nearly finish, only needing to finish the Berzerkers and some other random bits of stuff to be finished. Then I stopped playing 40k for about three years, came back, played my gray plastic Imperial Guard heavily, and then after my Iron Warriors walked away, I started rebuilding them, only this time, I had a plan.

Like so many others, I fell onto the Pre-Heresy bandwagon, and while some went with just painting a space marine army in the colors of the old Death Guard, I went a different route. I started converting each and every single one of the Iron Warriors in the army. Each figure had weapon swaps, hand swaps, back pack swaps, head swaps, removal of Imperial Eagles, and more. Each and every single one of the guys I was building had extra effort beyond what I would have ever imagined doing for a single rank and file trooper.

And this past Thursday, I finished it. I painted the last of the Iron Warriors I have done at this point. I finished them one and all.

Now, that doesn't mean I won't be building more, painting more, and expanding quite a lot, but the basic core of the army, the troops, the heavy support, the transports, the leaders, and the elites are all done.

So, allow me to proudly present the first army I have ever actually started, continued, and finished in my nearly 20 years of playing Games Workshop games. I give you...


The Iron Warriors of the 9th Grand Company.

Next up, doing two more Warsmith conversions from Techmarines, Two Razorbacks, and then 30 of the Forge World jump marines.

Yeah, it's been a bit. Not really sorry about that.

Sorry about not posting, been working feverishly trying to get ready for the Tournament season, which for me kicks off on Saturday with me going to Maul in the Mall.

My final to do list consists of the following for Maul in the Mall.

6 Rhino's. Painted, Dipped, Sealed. Done.
6 Squads. Fully done except for 1 which needs basing.
2 Rune Priests. Painted, Dipped. Waiting until tomorrow night and sealing then basing.
6 Wolf Standards. Painted, Dipped. 5 sealed, waiting on 1 to dry before sealing tomorrow night, followed by basing.
2 Choosers of the Slain. Painted, Dipped, Sealed. Needs basing.
3 Missile Launchers, Painted, Dipped. Will seal tomorrow night followed by basing.

Total to do tomorrow night. Seal the Rune Priests and everything in the above list. All painting is finished, just need to finish the seals/anti-shine on the stuff listed already and then I have to base 17 marines. Considering my basing is quick and dirty, I expect it will all be done in about 2 hours or so. After that is complete, the Maul in the Mall army is 100% done.

Adepticon to do list.
2 more Rune Priests, 2 more Choosers of the Slain, 2 Razorbacks, 1 Meltagun, 3 Dedicated Long Fang Sergeants, 6 new Sergeants with Powerfists and Combimelta.

Display Board. Needs to be completed.

Pictures... yeah, we know that'll happen eventually.

Looks like the Iron Warriors are nearly done for their current stage of readiness.

Iron Within, Iron Without

Finished painting those Marines

All but one of the marines I spoke about a few days ago are currently fully painted, dipped, and sitting in a nice ventilated area drying.

It rained like crazy here yesterday and most of today, which is why when the rain was done, and I got home, I scrambled to get them all dipped.

Looks like that's done.

Tomorrow, Rhino number 1.

Wish me luck.

Pictures will appear once they dry and have received their coat of anti-shine.

Iron Within, Iron Without.