Hobby Diary 11/12/16

An interesting week for me, I'm now up to six frigates for my UCM and more or less have my colour scheme nailed at this point. It's still not perfect and it's not what I had envisioned by any means but overall it's about as good as I'm going to get and I'm looking forward to getting the fleet done at an increased pace right now.

There has been so much vitriol levelled at Dropzone Commander recently. Disgruntled backers are something that I am certainly used to having backed my fair share of Kickstarters some of which have gone spectacularly awry, but this is a level of toxicity that frankly makes me ashamed to be a part of the community. Let's remember that this campaign, although running late, (I am still awaiting one of my pledges after all) finished barely a year ago. That's a brand new range and game produced and (mostly) delivered in a year. I'm sorry, but in comparison to many Kickstarters that is damn miraculous. Still, it must be said that Hawk have NOT covered themselves in glory here, their organisation and communication has been sub par and as with so many companies it seems that they have woefully underestimated the shipping process. Really six months was a VERY optimistic timescale and it is no surprise they didn't meet that target.

All that said, I would like the game to succeed and look forward to facing Lee in orbital combat sometime soon. Though I don't think he has done much with his fleet, I think he has been focusing very much on Heresy stuff recently.

Which I should be really, and I can assure you that that time IS coming, I have made some progress on my Contemptor but a road bump or two has somewhat curtailed my progress.

The Contemptor was looking really good, Though I am still but the most novice of airbrush users I have to say I am incredibly impressed by the way that  you can build up layers of  paint, both as a time saver and for the finish you end up with it just cant be beat. I'd added some Ultramarine Blue Vallejo Air, improvised some highlights and I was feeling pretty good about the way it was looking.

Until I compared it to the captain that I had already done. Upon comparison the Contemptor was SEVERAL shades lighter, far too many to get away with. I had two options, either lighten up the Captain or darken the Contemptor.

Anyone who has seen my painting (hell the picture of the UCM frigates enough is illustration enough) will know that my 'style' as it were is NOT bright and colourful. No, I tend to paint things very dark, sometimes I think too dark. So I opted to try to bring the Contemptor down a bit. It was the wrong decision. I tried to add a heavy wash of Drakenhoff Nightshade to bring it in line with the Captain a bit more. However, it collected and pooled and overall ruined the nice clean finish I had. Damn and Bugger. I tried to fix it by adding a mid tone and blending the colours a little but it didn't really work. That is the main reason the Contemptor is not finished yet. A shame, I had got it looking really quite nice, I particularly liked the Gold Trim. I'll be doing some heavy weathering to it to hide my painting sins and mistakes.

So with the Contemptor put to one side for now I did what I should have done all along, tried to lighten up the captain.

Really all it involved was trying to bring it up to the Ultramarine Blue through a number of midtones, I was at least partially successful, it's another one of those where I'm just going to leave it before I make it any worse, It's in the it''ll do' category. They at least look like they belong to the same army now. I'll look to get the Contemptor finished and then compare them again, providing I can live with the results I'll be in the position to proceed full steam ahead with the Ultramarines.

So overall this week I'm fairly happy with my progress, I have never been the fastest or most proficient of painters but as long as I am painting something it's gotta be worthwhile right? Christmas is just round the corner but my main plan is to get a cruiser and three more frigates done for the UCM as they are half done already and to get the Contemptor done as well. On the side I have the Silver Tower stuff undercoated and ready to be worked on. I have made a start on some Screamers but I'm mainly going to focus on the stuff actually being used in the game at the moment.

Speaking of games I played some Silver Tower with my Girlfriend. We already had one amulet piece so the choice of challenge was up to us and we got our arses handed to us as we chose one of the harder ones (can't remember which one). Next time round we played a different one and succeeded in securing another amulet piece. I really hope  that GW do an expansion to the game at some point, the base game will only last so long.

The other game we have been playing a lot of is Formula D. I do intend to do a full review of the game for the Conclave at some point but I will say it's a lot of fun. I'm grateful to Wil Wheaton's Tabletop for making me aware of it's existence. Vroom Vroom!

So what has Lee been up to then?

Well Allen is absolutely correct with his comment that I have been concentrating on my Heresy stuff and here are the results, two more completed units! So far this month I have completed the plastic Contemptor from the Calth box and a Rhino to transport my Tactical Veteran squad, or as is more likely once more units are painted, my Heavy Flamer unit.

I've gone heavy on the blasphemous script as I don't want these guys getting mistaken for Blood Angels! How embarrassing. With the Contemptor I had considered adding horns above the head but decided against it once I added the missile launcher. As mentioned before my Word Bearers are lacking in heavy weaponry in their infantry selections in my army as the majority are close combat oriented so I have maximised the amount of fire power I can get out of this model.

I could have replaced the close combat weapon with another gun but I like my dreads to be able to punch back in a fight and the two units I am currently working on, a Deredeo and Leviathan, both lack close combat weaponry so leaving this one gives me a walker with flexibility. Plus I want to see mine and Allen's Contemptor's go head to head at some point without me being at a disadvantage. Of course I could always sic a Mahra Ghal on it but that is overkill.

The Rhino is a Deimos pattern with some Word Bearer brass etched icons attached. I didn't do very much to this. I could have really chaos-ified it but I have been giving that a bit of thought and decided not to.

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During the Heresy the Word Bearers were beginning their journey along the dark path. Only the highest ranking and most devout legionaries were manifesting real signs of change. Therefore I will be adding more chaos iconography to the officers and elites and keeping the additions to the line troopers more subtle. I hope that way to show a transition throughout my army. 

Although I also intent to use these models as Chaos Space Marines in 40k I didn't want to just be using Chaos Marines for Heresy games. Still, with the new Legions Codex that has just been release my Word Bearers will be pulling double duty.

Now for the bad news. I broke my airbrush. I was just cleaning it, nothing too rough but when reattaching the fine end nozzle I turned a bit too much and it broke off. This has put a dent in my plans to get on with my Scourge fleet however I have found some £10 airbrushes in China so will be picking one (or two) up after Xmas to get back on track. Till next time.

Hobby Diary 06/11/2016

Lee:

Hobby wise this hasn't been a particularly eventful week. It has mostly comprised preparing projects for the rest of the month and re-jiggling my projects. It is irritating when you have a plan but new things shove the items you had wanted to get done out of the way. 

Preparation wise this week I constructed a 500pt Scourge fleet. I enjoyed putting these models together. Even though all the Scourge ships have the same basic hull the additional parts really do set them apart, at least as far as the frigates are concerned. My fleet is mostly frigates organised into Groups that have specific purposes with a light cruiser along to provide a bit of heavier firepower. Now that I have had a chance to read through the fleet list it is easier to recognise the ships as their individual classes instead of a succession of weirdly shaped vessels. I'll discuss my fleet when Allan and I get our first game in, I don't want to tip him off to my plan.

I intend to spray all these ships metal with silver along the tips of the protrusions. Over this I will apply washes. Then once these are dry I will pick out the detail traditionally. I will be paying particular attention to the unique parts of each ship so I can easily identify them on the board. Rather than go for the usual purple and greens that the display fleet are painted I will be looking at sea creatures for inspiration.

I was disappointed that I did not find Khalida during a search of my carry cases but determined to complete a Warhammer Fantasy model this month I chose a Tomb King instead, with a Scarab Swarm base as an optimistic hanger on that may also get done at the same time. This is going to follow the same method as the Liche Priest from last month, paint the gold, skin and bandages then brown wash the lot and then highlight and pick out the details.

The thing I made the most progress on this month was my Sicaran. As a main Word Bearer unit this is painted red but with charcoal black sections echoing the shoulder pads of my Astartes. I am making good progress so far and hope to be done by the end of next week though you know how it is with plans and reality matching up.

The first project that looks like it will be completed this month is my random Emperor's Children. The Emperor's Children for 40K are one of my oldest armies and I have quite a bit painted. This model found its way to the window sill when I was unpacking and was left behind so that when I started to paint it was to hand. Wanting to expand on this army rather than junk it I have painted this Marine as a test bed for my newer scheme. The main change is changing the banding from the same blue as the weapons to green. I think it works and will make sure that any new or touched up units match this guy. As it stands there are just a couple of details to finish and then to base and he is done.

As far as November's plan goes below are the changes. 

Definite

Word Bearers Sicaran

Emperor's Children Marine

Queen Khalida Tomb King

Planned

Scourge ships

Squats

Warrior Nation Braves

Khalida is out and the Tomb King is in and the Squats have been relegated to the sidelines to make room for five Warrior Nation Braves for Wild West Exodus. I have all the paints I need now to do justice to their skin so these will be my test bed. I had intended only to paint one but there is a new hobby challenge beginning on the Wild West Exodus Facebook groups and the minimum requirement for month one is five Hired Hands. Whether they get completed or not really depends on how long the Sicaran takes but if I keep up the pace I have set thus far then I should meet my deadline.

AL:

Like Lee, i have had a pretty quiet week comparatively after last week's mad rush. It's mostly been back to watching Star Trek Voyager while building cultists. I did get my UCM fleet undercoated though, ready for the airbrush, i've undercoated them black and i'll drybrush them with grey and white in an attempt to pre-highlight them before I give them the base coat. It's all a bit experimental at this stage. Still, i'm looking forward to getting them done and of all things, Call of Duty Infinite Warfare has been a major influence with the ships in that game being rather well realised and giving me a few ideas for my UCM. 

So like I said, in the meantime i've been adding to the ranks of the Cultists, i've actually finished all my Overkill sprues and though I have a box of neophytes (which are to be assembled with all the options and intermixed with my normal squads, it's been the Cadians that i have been working on this week. 

So one of the main things i have realised of late is that the Hybrids are FAR superior to the Cadian models. OK there are ten years between them but you can see every single one of those years when comparing kits. The Cadians are crude, oddly proportioned with massive mouldlines (thank the Emperor - Beloved by all - for the mould line remover tool) and just don't go that well together. Well overdue an upgrade i would say! After spending as much time cleaning the model as it took to assemble a dozen cultists I started to assemble them. I wanted to try to improve the way they looked a bit and in all honesty the removal of Aquilas and addition of cult bits and heads only goes so far with that. I'll be painting them quite drab so that they don't stand out too much compared to the much more interesting cultist models.

I managed to get three complete squads of ten and with a bit of creative hacking have tried to vary the models up a bit with backpacks and the like though i have to confess i am not absolutely happy with them, it doesn't help that the superior Command kit has a lot of options that the cultists just CAN'T use like powerfist and plasma and melta guns. This variety would have improved the models considerably. Stupid Codex. 

Oh well, never mind, I moved onto the heavy weapon squads, a little bitz order a few weeks ago meant I was in a position to utilise more of the heavy weapons than normal and indeed I actually seem to have all options available which is handy. I do like getting the most out of my kits. The main place I had to be creative was with the missile launchers, they needed a bit of cutting to make them a bit shorter so they look like they could be fired without the need of the tripod. I think i've just about managed that. 

I've also been creative with the hybrid bits. I used Overkill models to utilise as many bits of the sprues as possible and have turned basic Acolytes to make Metamamorphs and a standard bearer. Though the models needed a fair bit of cutting, the conversion is actually fairly simple and I think i have got away with it. 

So that's the cult mostly done! The tanks are yet to do and another box of Neophytes, and i have a commissar from the start collecting box to get creative with - probably double up as another Primus. Oh, and the rest of the Cadian Command, OK the cult is not quite as done as I thought, good thing that we are only on season 3 of Voyager. 

I did also construct a glass cabinet to display my Star Wars Armada fleets, that counts as hobby right? 

Still, i'm casting my mind to other things, (i'm like a hobby magpie) and whilst I try to resist the lure of the wavering post Trump election dollar making a Kickstarter very tempting i'm thinking about what is next. I really want to finish those three busts i started, it shouldn't take too long, a couple of evening sessions maybe, in between i can do my UCM and 30k Ultramarines. As you will see from the picture i have the ventilated spraying station all set up so next time I hope to have much more than just construction done...