Stormraven update

So I have been painting the Stormraven and have done about 70% now, I have to paint lots more details and then apply washes and attach the cockpit/multi-melta. Quite a few areas need tidying up as well. I have left off the wing mounted assault cannons and underslung bolters of these photos as I have only just started painting them but I should be finished soon.

 Apologies for the messy background on these, it is under the best light in my house.

I used army painter flowers, tufts, static grass, brown basing and barbed wire for the base.

This is just about the only photo which shows up the highlight, I used evil sunz scarlet and wild rider red on the edges and it shows up well in daylight, unfortunately the lighting on most of the above photos washes it out.

Army painter tips

Quick update, I have spent this week sorting out the assault marines and basecoating them and the Stormraven. I will put up some pictures later, but I have to say I am very impressed with the army painter dragon red. I practised using some old figures and at first it just didn't turn out well, the paint scraped off and it was patchy and gloopy. But then I read a few tips and cleaned the figures using soapy water, shook the can for about 2 and a half minutes, made sure the humidity was okay and most importantly I prepared a large area to spray in. Unlike the citadel undercoats the army painter requires a much more delicate approach, I found it best to use my hall-way and I used newspaper to cover about 2 feet up the walls and a bit of card to stick between the walls. This created a covered area that I put an old cardboard tray in, and using side to side motions and spraying from about 14cm away I achieved a nice even finish. The most important part was to start spraying and then move the can past the figure in a sweeping motion, don't spray directly onto the figure as this results in far too much paint.

Using this approach I managed to get a very even and consistent finish, and it saved a lot of time. I sprayed both the 5 marines and the SR in about 30 minutes including prep time. Using a brush it would have taken a lot longer with a more uneven finish.

Space Wolves photos

I haven't made much progress over the weekend with the Stormraven or anything for that matter so I thought I would take a few photos of the Wolves. Not the best photography by any means but it will do for now. The un-based grey hunters still need quite a lot of painting, and looking at the photos I have noticed lots of little bits that need doing elsewhere as well. 

Stormraven nearing completion

After a few more magnets and some gluing I have very nearly finished the stormraven now. I am planning on painting the cockpit before gluing it into place so that will be the very last job.

I have attached the lascannons from the predator sprue which make a bit more sense as they can actually aim at the ground without the SR being at an impossible angle.  They fit without gluing so are removable as well.

 The above photos shows the plasma attached using the turret, they can swap with the lascannons if needed.

I also finished sorting out the assault cannons for the wings, I wanted them to be a bit like the old fighter jets with machine guns on the wings. It makes sense for rapid fire weapons to be mounted under the wing as they can be used for strafing runs without much pitch, and would require less precise shooting than, say, the plasma.

Finally a couple of photos showing the heavy bolter turret. I just need to decide what to do about the wing now, I haven't glued it on yet and am hovering between adding it or adding two smaller wings instead.

I have been working on the stormraven weapon situations again, and have made an underslung turret out of the turret pieces. I wasn't happy with the bolter turret I discussed a few days ago and the more I look at it the more it looks wonky as hell. So I glued together the bottom two pieces of the turret, added two magnets on the inside of what was originally the back and the magnetised the plasma and lascannons so can swap between the two.

 I also decided to have another go at making a heavy bolter turret, but using fewer pieces and sticking with GW parts. So I used the bolters off a predator, the door from a rhino/razorback and the radio from the Land raider kit. I am pretty happy with this, it actually works really well.

Here it is on mounted on the SR, it it reminiscent of the Thunderhawk twin heavy bolters which is only a good thing.

Stormraven update

I have been building the Stormraven this weekend, and have made quite a bit of progress. I have painted the interior and finished putting together the main body. I have also had a go at making an underslung heavy bolter as I mentioned before. It worked okay and I am fairly happy with it although I may make a new one at some point as it isn't quite even. This is it from the front.

 And the side

 The bottom is perfect for adding a magnet, because of the ridges you don't need to drill a hole and can just file down the middle ridge and glue the magnet in place. I will be making a few more turrets for it so can swap.

 and this is the turret, I used the bolters from the razorback sprue with some plasticard. I cut off the bolt feeds from both guns and added a single central one instead. I also added the box (or whatever it is called) from the sprue and glued it behind the feed to represent the bolt storage. Some green stuff was added to fill a few gaps and to make the feed attachment to the box look a bit more realistic. Finally I added a few symbols and the sensor from a hunter killer missile. As I said it isn't perfect at all, and it is a bit wonky and lopsided as the most difficult part was finding the right piece so the bolters can move up and down. I achieved this using a cut down piece of sprue with a nubbin but it wasn't quite wide enough, so I added some plasticard which messed up the angles a bit. It looks okay though, I will be using the bolters from predator sponsons for the next set of underslung weapons which should be much easier. 

Army list and new stuff

I went to my FLGS today and bought a few goodies for the Blood Angels army I am starting. I bought the Codex a while ago so just had to pick what figures I wanted to start with.  I originally planned on just taking BA as allies, but there quite a few models that I liked so the small force I planned is getting larger by the day. Currently my plan is to have an all out assault army, with one 5-10 man squad of Death company with jump packs led by Lemartes, two ten man assault squads with jump packs, a furioso dread with talons, a modified stormraven with additional weaponry (magnetised so can run as standard), 5 sanguinary guards, 2 sang priests with jump packs, a lib with jump pack and Dante. 

I tend to pick the models that I like rather than try and get the best force possible, but I do try and take some advice from forums. Onto the new stuff. I bought a whole load of resin bases of ebay, the whole army will have the rock bases. These are fairly expensive but given the figure count will be about 40 it isn't as bad as a horde army, and they are about 50p each and a bit more for the larger (dread, flyer) so about £25 in total. I have bought a few bits from the Army Painter range for them, and some Dragon Red paint to make painting the army a bit more straightforward. 

The tufts are great, very easy to use and look fantastic

I picked up the death company a few weeks ago but added a box of assault marines to mix and match the pieces, I will add a few more of these when I am finished.

I like the Stormraven model, and with a few tweaks I think it can look great. In particular I won't be using the turret or the air intake which makes it look better imo. I have bought a predator sponson sprue off eBay to use mount the lascannons on the doors, and I have bought some plasticard to add underslung mounts for the hurricane bolters, heavy bolters off the razorback sprue, assault cannons (under the wings) and I have 4 heavy bolters left over from the pred sprues. All this will be magnetised so I can mix and match weaponry. I will see how it turns out space wise, but it would be pretty cool to be able to, when playing with my fiancee (and anyone else happy to let me use it), have two lascannons, multi melta, 6 underslung heavy bolters, wing mounted assault cannons, hurricane bolters and the deathstrike missiles. Obviously I will have to write some new rules for that but the idea appeals to me! 

That is it for now, I will be adding some more pictures when I start the Stormraven, and will get some pictures put up of the space wolves at some point. 

So this is my first post with pictures, I thought I would put a few snaps of my WIP Space Wolves Land Raider. As you can see I have painted on the Space Wolves Chapter Banner, for years I had this planned but never got around to buying myself a Raider. Fortunately my lovely fiancee bought me one as a surprise so I got to work straight away. I had a few problems putting it together and it is a tad wonky, which is annoying, but I like how it has turned out. 

I have also been experimenting with green stuff and gave Ragnar a go, like a lot of people I am not too impressed with the current offering from GW, 12 years ago I would have loved it but not anymore. So here it is, there is a Cultist from the DV set and the rest is just green stuff and marine bits, it took me forever to get the legs to fit as I had never used GS before and I was totally unprepared. I tried using Water to help, and had no tools other than a craft knife. It was a disaster so I read some advice, ordered some carving tools, a few new pairs of marine legs and a SW accessory sprue. The result is below

The blog

Hi to all readers. 

I am starting this blog to document my 40k related activities, mainly painting and modelling. I started collecting games workshop figures about 15 years ago, but I never really spent much time with the models and as a result the figures were all half finished and very poor quality. I gave it all up when I started college and sold all the models, but I picked up Dawn of War II a few years back on a steam sale and started hankering for some 40k action. After a bit of deliberation I settled on the Space Wolves, bought AOBR and set about creating a small force. 

Three years later, I am half way through my Ph.D and have just about finished 1500-2000 points of my Wolves. I am a pretty slow painter, hence the three years to get to 2000 points, and tend to stop for months at a time. However within the last few months I have made quite a bit of progress and have decided to add some Blood Angels as an allies force, although this "small" force keeps growing by the day. 

My painting skills are not exactly brilliant by any stretch but I enjoy it and keep trying to improve, one of my favourite parts of the hobby is modelling and I have nearly finished a custom Ragnar which was a fun build (and my first attempt at using green stuff). I also enjoy free hand painting, and am about 70% through a land raider with free hand murals. Once I have finished one more squad of Grey Hunters I will be stopping Space Wolves to concentrate on the Blood Angels, but I will probably add some more figures once the first cohort of Angels is sorted. 

I will be putting up some pictures and articles soon, so this is just a taster.