Painting: 48hrs To Go Until ToS Time

Toward the end of last week I posted with plans of an action packed few days over the weekend getting stared painting my Dark Angels ready for Throne of Skulls a little over a week away. I also promised updates.

Unfortunately for the painting a friend came to stay for the weekend at short notice...nothing like being two days behind before you even start!

I got some done today so here's how it's going...

Painting: Dark Angels ('Dualwing')

It's been a few weeks since my last post because I've been putting off the inevitable: PAINTING.

Goddammit though, I have to bite the bullet sometime.

That sometime is now. A week on Friday a few friends and I head to the GW November Throne of Skulls at Warhammer World. Last time I was there I ad a pretty sucky timebecause my 5th ed Angels Sanguine got trounced. Repeatedly. No fun. 

To mend that I'm taking an army I don't really know, it's really my play style and that I've barely practiced with. On top of that it needs painting. I essentially have five full days. (away with work, travel etc) so it's going to be a challenge for sure. Here's where things are at...

From The Chopping Board - Darkshroud Progress

I've been adding little bits and bobs to the bikers this week and finishing off the last few riders. It's not the most exciting for photo's so I'll show them when it's time to paint.

Yesterday I went back to working on the Darkshroud. I'd started working on it a few weeks ago and then put it to one side as I couldn't decide quite what to do with it.

Whole bunch of pictures after the jump...

Ravenwing Building Progress

My work bench has been in full production mode this last week or so.

Stacks of sprues. Two trays (and a frisbee) full of various bits and parts. Bikes pulled apart by hand. Thumbs sliced apart by knife.

You get the idea.

I came to a point of indecision with the Darkshroud - I think I'm going to entirely rebuild the front turret as part of the body. I put it to one side so I can come back to it after sourcing some parts and having thought about it a lot.

In the mean time I've been doing all the tedious jobs involved with this hobby - scraping flash lines and drilling bolter barrels (two different diameter drills per barrel). You know the stuff.

Today I started on the Command Squad which will be five men with the grenade launcher and banner option built as well making 6 total. You can see where I'm up to in the top picture. Aside from that I've added a few slightly different riders to break up the standard rather static pose. Here's a couple of them for now:

This Sgt is a super simple bit swap with a head from the Drakshroud and a Grey Knight hand. I also doubled up his wing banner things on the bike to bring it in line with the Dark Vengeance Sgt.

This guy is using one of the very old Dark Angel upgrade pieces (I think from early-ish 3rd edition?).

This chap is the rider from the Heresy era jetbike which I converted into Sammael (see last post). He didn't fit the bike too well so he needed leaning right forward to reach the handlebars and is pinned at each joint.

Lastly here's one of two attack bikes. This is the old metal-plastic hybrid model and I lost the gunner and used the melta for the old converted Stormraven. The old version like this had the gun on the stand rather than the rail so I could have built it all but decided to have a little fun instead. 

Initially the gunner was going to be stepping from the sidecar but it looked like he's kneeling. Not cool. So then I thought 'why would he be not staying sat down?' well if his driver is dead leaving him a sitting duck of course.

So I killed the rider. 

Open hand from the Sang Guard kit, straight bolt pistol arm, drill holes. Job done. His other hand has been blown off but still dangles from the handlebar! I showed a few friends this on Facebook and they said I had to play it as single wound, no +1 toughness (as he's off the bike) and either no move or always difficult terrain. I said 'hahaha, no'. 

I'll be making a downed biker for one of the other squad too. I also have a couple of (hopefully) cool flamer conversions on their way too. Pics of all that soon.

See you all soon!

Dark Angels Mk.II - Ravenwing & A Little Deathwing

Table top::most of new army
Table below: so many more bits to add!

Hi All,

I'm finally getting back into the hobby swing of things here at the Grotto. After my 'quick' Deathwing project ground to a halt over the last couple of months I've finally had another couple of games.

Getting the dice back rolling is always a good boost to anything gathering dust on the work bench.

With a mixed bag of results under my belt from the Deathwing I'd built up it's time to take a step back and see what I can change with plenty of time before ToS rolls round in November.  

The gist of it is - add more bikes!

After the break check out where I'm at with a few conversions and general plans...

Painting: Deathwing

In the two or so years I've been blogging away here on the big old internet, and across the 90-ish posts I've thrown out there, there has been ONE completed model shown on these colourless pages!

It's time for a change dear reader!

Even the picture to the left, designed to be my 'painting article' header is out of date - I've recently started using a wet pallette (how did I used to cope without one??? If you keep thinking about doing one, DO IT) and recently have been getting some practice in with my airbrush.

Anyway, onto todays project: getting the Dark Angels coloured in...

Incoming: Dark Angels

Hey all, just a quickie.

Picked up my order from the excellent Dark Sphere here in London today, saving myself a tidy £35 thanks to their webstore discount.

I got two Deathwing boxes, one Ravenwing box and my first ever Land Raider - not bad considering I've had a marine army since early third edition.

From the bits box I have ten DV Terminators, five standard assault Termies (now with their arms pulled off) and twelve bikes (six DV) and an old attack bike. All this will give me a force, if I've planned right, which will scale from 1,500 points, through 1,750 and up to 2,000

Preliminary list is:

Belial
10 Deathwing; assault cannon, cyclone, 2 x chainfist
5 Deathwing; Sgt 2 x lightning claw, 4 thunder hammer and shield, cyclone
Land Raider (standard or crusader - magnetised)
Ravenwing Squadron; 6 bikes, melta attack bike

No idea if it's any good. I'm avoiding net lists and the like as much as possible - want to try and form my own opinions about this one - at least at first.

The two new kits look super versatile and have a good share of spare bits. There'll be a few kit bashes to make those standard termies a bit more 'DA', and also to add some variety within the duplicated DV ones.

Watch this space.

Yet Another Deathwing Force

I'm surprised the net hasn't collapsed under the weight of Terminator armour this last week or two. Everyone and his mother has finally started work on the Dark Vengeance models and adding a smattering of the new Dark Angel releases.

The Grotto is no exception to this I'm afraid!

In the most traditional sense of bandwagon jumping, and having almost started this force at some point during each of the four codexes, I finally put (air)brush to paint last weekend.

I don't really want a new Marine army, if 'm honest, but that fact it's models/units I never currently use, an entirely different paint scheme and I have 10 DV Termies already, along with a bunch of old bikes, is about as much justification as I need.

I gave these guys a quick blast with Vallejo Radome Tan, then just quickly airbrushed a wash of brown over them. This is also a good project for me learning more techniques with this tool.

Next up is purchases. I want to run a 10 man squad of shooty, a 5 man of hitty blokes, 5 Knights and a mixed Command Squad. I though three boxes would cover this, added to the 10 DV models I will already have.

I then started thinking about all the bits in those kits, the duplicates of the standard Termie in the DV models and a couple of other things. In the end I planned it out in what can only really be described as a complicated mess:

You win 1,000 points if it is understandable to you...

Anyway, he good thing from that is that I actually only need two boxes of Deathwing. I'll probably go for a single box of the new Ravenwing in that case - I have about 6 bikes between my bit boxes so already have enough for a detachment.

Add to this order a good ol' Land Raider (will be my first EVER one) and, of course, Belial and I'll be good to go. Turn around on these needs to be pretty speedy. In future they'll mainly be used for ally detachments and Apoc Angels of Death lists.

Beyond that it's almost time for the Eldar to take centre stage in my world!