Challenge 2 - Met

Alright, this one was a bit of a rush job. I had solid days of interviews, work, and running around town trying to settle everything- I'm still pretty proud of what came of it, though.
This angle, you can see the freehanded Dark Angels crest on the left shoulder. I applied it with a toothpick (the stirring stick you see at the bottom of the picture) because I don't yet have the brush control I'd like. You can also see, on the base, the crosswalk and road lines - even part of the left turn arrow, though his foot is placed right over it. That was happy coincidence, on my part, because the bits I did get were a pain.
This shot didn't have very good lighting- there's lines of black on the Oath of the Moment, or the Purity Seal (never sure which is which) and the tanks on his meltagun arm were based with dark grey, covered with boltgun metal, then a thin coat of Scab Red was applied. The metal doesn't shine through as I'd hoped- probably should have mixed the two and then painted for the real effect I wanted. On this one, again, you can see details of the road lines. (As I live in the US, my only reference is US road markings, so that's what I've done them as.)
Shot of the front- shows the scrollwork on the leg quite well, actually. His name was originally Brother Davidicus, but there was no way I was fitting that all there- his name is now simply Brother David. You can also sort of see the red that I went over the lenses with, and the light grey of the hoses leading to the sarcophagus- I really like the contrast between those, and the ones lower down or on his arm. They indicate that what they're funneling power, etc. to is different than the rest of the suit, sort of a cut above simple leg motor cables.
Shot of the back, here- you can see the extent of the Boltgun Metal on all the assemblies down there (the codex didn't have any rear views of it, for which I'm disappointed- I had to guess) and you can sort of see the back of the meltagun tanks, and the cable to the close combat weapon which I painted Bleached Bone just for the contrast.
Here, I tried to go with a shot involving everything I'd painted for the TOEMP so far. Tried to arrange them in a fashion where all the road lines matched up, which worked fine except for the sergeant.

Well, there you have it- my dreadnaught. Points:
Walker - 5 pts
Icons - 1 pt
Lenses - 1 pt
Walker Details freehand - 5 Pts
On time - 1 pt

Total - 13 pts

A whole week!

Sorry it's been so long since I updated. I've been rushing to get my hiring paperwork done at a new job, and scrambling to find both a new place to live, and someone to replace me at the current apartment, in addition to working nearly full-time. Unfortunately, my internet is usually the one that pays the price, so I haven't had a chance to do my in-progress shots and dialogue for my TOEMP. (Just finished the dreadnaught, will have pics up on the next post in a sec)

The new job is at Express Scripts- the company itself handles medical benefits packages for corporations- say you get health insurance from work, we'd deal with the details of it. When someone has a higher copay than normal, or wants to see if a prescription is covered under their plan, we'd be the ones called- specifically, I'd be the guy on the phone. Training will either start Monday morning, if someone drops out of the already-full class, or the 28th September with the next class.

As to the new living situation, I'm going to be moving in with a couple friends (and the sister of one of them) in a house a bit farther than campus. Rent, utilities, and internet will only be 300 a month instead of 385 for rent, 34 for internet, and ~45 for utilities. The house has a garage, attic, and pool, with a few places I'm going to turn into gardens. The bedrooms are decent-sized, but the living room and dining room are positively huge. Kitchen's fairly large too, and the bathrooms are actually in nice condition. Will post pics of all this at a later date, and we've decided to name the place 'Hive of Scum and Villainy' as the majority of us are Star Wars fans. For a shorter name, we go with Mos Eisley.

Anyways, time for my TOEMP post. It'll be up in a couple minutes.

In time, depending on time zone.

I packed everything up last night, thinking I was finished, but the uploading of pictures was taking forever. Probably for the best; when I woke up, I realized I hadn't painted the Deathwing symbols on their free shoulder pads. The first couple pictures were pre-that, but I like them and didn't want to have wasted the effort.
Here's a shot from behind, to show that I dropped some Chaos Black on the accordion joints between the limbs, also pre-Deathwing markings.
Here's one of them laying down- trying to get a decent shot to show off that I hit both their eye slots and the auspex lenses with some Scab Red.
Here's one showing the actual work on the shoulderpads. Had to freehand it, no transfers, and I discovered that early in the morning, my hands are shaky as all get out. I tried using a pencil to draw guidelines, but they didn't show well enough, and my hands didn't have the control to stay with them. They still turned out okay, I think.
Final shot of them, and you can even see the basing. I decided that, since I like cityfighting so much, I would just put their bases back to black and draw road markings on top. Was slightly hampered by not having a yellow, but they turned out decently enough, I think.
So there's my entry- I had finished painting at 12:15 PM on Monday the 17th, and am posting this at 3:28 PM on Monday the 17th.

One thing I'm not sure of, for the points- I did the Deathwing icons freehand, and I also painted the purity seals, Crux Terminatus, hoses, and things like that. Would that be 1, 5, or 6 points per model?

Battle report!

This battle saw me pitted against my friend who initially got me into this game. He was playing his Tyranids, mostly a monstrous creatures army (6 carnifexes and a hive tyrant!) and I was marching my Dark Angels, both of us at 1500 points.
I had forgotten the camera in my pocket, so the first picture I took was after I had moved, and shot, and he had taken out half my veterans in his first shooting phase.
This was his army after the first moving turn. What he didn't field in 'fexes, he made up for with genestealers.
Tried to show the beginning of the serious engagement with this shot, but it doesn't seem to have worked that well.
After the fiasco of the first turn, I dropped one squad of my tactical marines back to secure my objective.
Bugger managed to immobilise my rhino after the first shooting phase, and through the next five turns, never got it working again. He also took out both storm bolters on it, making it essentially useless.
The squad of scouts was a bad idea- tried to flank around him, but never had the movement to shoot, then assault, giving me the charge. Which, I learned in a minute, would have been worthless, as the genestealers have I6 and my scouts, only I4.
In this shot, you can see my lone Terminator captain, after the deep striking worked perfectly and they failed to actually damage any of the 'sniper' 'fexes. I had to charge a veteran sargeant in there with a power sword to get those wounds you see just past his ass. The assault marines also dropped in fine, and unloaded into the genestealers- getting a single wound, which was saved against, and nearly killing one of mine from a bad plasma weapon roll.

Pretty much my final hope, at this point- his genestealers still weren't at their objective, and I had mine secured. I don't have any more pictures, but he had to run his carnifexes across the board to blow the living daylights out of my last squad, and in turn 6 he finally secured his own objective. My last ditch effort in 6 was to drop a couple of frag missiles into them, see if I could get them to run- he'd left them out of synapse- but I only managed to kill one of them, and his 'fexes wiped me out.

Next time I'm up against monstrous creatures with toughness 6 or 7 and four wounds apiece, I'm throwing more meltaguns into my squad, and replacing the scouts and rhino with my Dreadnaught. I really need to get a drop pod for him, so I can field him deep enough to make a difference. I could also use a serious devastator squad, 2 lascannons and 2 plasma cannons, so I can put the missile launchers back into the squads just in case I need them.

Also, sorry for the blurry pictures- I'm still getting used to the camera, and some days are better than others.

Sorry about the lack of posting yesterday- Photobucket's bulk uploader was being fiddly. This picture is after I've touched up the designs on the front of their chests, and put some red on the eyes/guns/auspex whatchamahoosit.
This is them all assembled and pretty.
Since these pictures were taken, I've also put some black into the joints between plates, behind the knees, places like that; and put Chainmail on the metal parts of the guns and sword. Don't have pictures of that, yet, but I still need to do a flesh color on the face, put a strong gray on the Crux Terminatus, hoses and auspexes, and touch up where I was over-enthusiastic with the Bleached Bone.

And I continue the post avalanche.

Time for some terrain shots.

This was the crashed Aquila lander that came in the Battle for Macragge box set I got to start off my collecting. (Yes, they now sell it as a standalone piece, but I got those darned space marines!) I painted it a few days ago, or at least started, this is what I've done so far.

That was the main body of the lander- going to eventually paint it DA green, but for now, I'm basecoating it black.

That was the cockpit, with some blue painted on the windows. You can just barely see behind it how it was a light tan color first; I was originally going to just make it a neutral color, but now that I'm fully behind the Dark Angels, I'll kit it up to look like it belongs to them. It'll go well with the Monastery that 73rd held onto the templates from. As a side note, I emailed GW about the article, to see if it'd get published as a book, or put back online, but they said negative.

This is an example piece I did to show the color scheme once finished. I'm going to freehand the red lines, and a big red sword, on the back of the shuttle so it has some nice, pretty sword-and-wings iconography.

And this is a collected shot, with the pieces in (more or less) the right places. I'll post as I continue with it, but it might take longer, since I've got the TOEMP going on keeping me busy.

Tomorrow at noon, I've got a game set up at the local store; have my friend Greg, who plays Eldar, that I normally game against, and invited my friend Ishmael (who has complete Ork and Tyranid armies- guy must really like hordes) to come along as well. With the Emperor's blessing, I will be victorious.

Bleached Bone time

To start off this post, I'll put up a picture my lovely girlfriend snapped as I worked.

This is after I got the bleached bone on them all- before assembly, and after.



Still need to paint their storm bolters, the Sergeant's face and power sword, go over the joints with black, the aquilas with green, and the Crux Terminatus in some nice gray shade. I'm going to the game store tomorrow, and might grab a Chestnut wash to try and even out the color- there's still brush strokes all over, and places where the white shows through, but not as bad as they gray did through the white.

Basecoating the Deathwing

This is a shot of the Deathwing before I started, just standing all together. It's a tad blurry, but the Sergeant has a power sword, the rest have power fists, and they all have storm bolters.I hadn't glued them together (they came from the space marines battleforce box, plastic push-together models) which made my life so much easier. It'll also make things easier to swap out the weapons for lightning claws when i get a few.
Same stage, different angle.
This is, as you can probably see, when I stuck everything back on after the Skull White basecoat.
Different angle of the same thing.
You can't really see it in the pictures, but the paint job is fairly terrible. Spots show through like mad, there's brushstrokes everywhere. My biggest problem, I think, is that the paint is too thick- I didn't want to water down the whole pot of Skull White just to basecoat these guys, and I didn't have a handy palette to do it with just a little. I'm going to go back over it, give them a second coat, sometime this afternoon when they finish drying.

By the way, 73rd, I'm playing the assault card- that one with bonus points for more than half again the points value. Hopefully starting off strong will keep me interested and enthused as we go along.

Quick runthrough of my army

Here's a few shots of my army, in all its Unforgiven glory.


Company Master Rafael is standing at the fore, with his veterans (disrobed, lawl) right behind him. To the left is my four 10-man squads of tactical marines, with their sergeants; all are kitted out with a flamer and rocket launcher. The blue squad was traded for my termagaunts from the Battle for Macragge starter set. Front right is my Scout squad; right behind them, my Assault marines, with a standalone company of veterans to their left. In the back is their Rhino transport (as yet unnamed) and the Dreadnaught containing the remains of Brother Davidius. To his left, a squad of Deathwing terminators, and to his right are a few scattered marines- one with a meltagun, and a couple of people that came from the Macragge set I haven't done anything with. Freestanding in the middle is my converted Chaplain, and freestanding to the right is my converted Librarian.

Here's a closer view of the librarian. (For the record, it was a pain in the ass to get it there <-- so hopefully you enjoy it) I pretty much went with a standard marine, but I glued a book from something I got onto one shoulder pad. Hey, it counts, okay? The other shoulderpad, the picture I took didn't come out, but it's the standard bearer shoulderpad with the sword bisecting the laurel. I'm going to make the background green, and the sword and laurel either red or white- haven't decided- to make what looks to be, at a distance, the Dark Angels crest. This is my converted chaplain; the shot turned out blurry because I'm still trying to figure out how to work my girlfriend's camera. She says to zoom in electronically, rather than hold it next to the thing, so I'll try that next time. His backpack is from the DA veteranse box, and I don't remember where the mace came from, but it was floating in my bits tub. Gave him a plasma pistol as well, but I never really use him because I've got the librarian and the Company Master.




Unfortunately, none of the other shots turned out that well. Doesn't really matter that much, though, because none of them are really painted yet that I want to show off. Anyways, next post will be my first step of the Deathwing Terminators.

Step one- sorting.

So, I sat down with my codex and tried to sort stuff out for my TOEMP 'competition'. I use quotes only because it isn't really people trying to beat each other, it's several of us working together to keep each other encouraged.

My Dark Angels are going to be from the 3rd Company; partly because the squad distribution works for my common army list, and partly because the iconography is the easiest available. The terminators will be from the Deathwing, of course, so that's pretty well laid out; I'll have several squads of tactical marines to sort, though. And I'm not sure, in the chapter organization, if the 'squad' it refers to is the 5 or the 10 man variants, because I plan to have a squad of 10 devastators, and I'm not sure if that'll be 9th and 10th squad, or just 9th. I also have some assault marines, but only 5 of those, so they'll just be 7th squad.

For colors, I have Dark Angels green, Chaos black, Bleached bone, Skull white, Chainmail, and Scab red. (The GW store was out of Blood Red and Boltgun Metal, so i'm improvising) I also have a standard brush for painting, a fine detail for painting, and a standard brush that has become my drybrush.

I think that I'll start out with a few wide shots of my full force, assembled for departure. Should be fun! Keep an eye out for them coming soon.

TOEMP

Wow, I'm going to actually have visitors to my blog. I'd better put some pants on.

I've been asked to participate in a little, fun 'contest' that Unforgiven 73rd is running on his blog- a Tale of Even More Painters. Hopefully, it'll motivate me to get the rest of my army painted up.

Currently, I'm looking at about 3 full 10-man squads of tactical marines, a squad of jetpack-equipped assault marines, a squad of terminators, and a squad of scouts; in the less tedious category is my converted Librarian and Interrogator-chaplain, my Company Master, a Dreadnought and a Rhino. However, they've all been assembled, so I'll have to be painting around bolters and all sorts of fun things already stuck together- should be a nightmare. I mean fun! fun. right, I mean fun.

But it'll be nice to have the motivation to finish painting, so I no longer have an entire army that is mostly plastic gray and a little bit of basecoated black. Darn, this means I'll have to hook up my digital camera, or get a better one, and show you lot pictures.

Anyways, stay tuned, for some fun will be had.