Display Board for the Dark Angels

My Christmas project was to build and paint a display board from my LVO Dark Angels army.

I started with a wooden serving tray purchased at the local grocery store. I spray painted the outer edges black and then finished it off with a gloss protective coat.

Next I took a single Realm of Battle board section (purchased from Red Claw here in Edmonton...thanks for breaking up a full box of these boards, Leanne!). I measured out a section of the board that would fit inside the tray, and then cut out that section with a hand saw. I sanded down the edges, and had a display board ready to go. I painted it (the longest part of this process, obviously) and weathered it with a variety of acrylic products.

I slipped the board into the tray, and...well...there it is.

My 100 PL army fits in perfectly. And it's ready to go.

'Til next time.

Weathering the Repulsor...and Another Dreadnaught

Well...that was a long project!

I've been working on the Primaris Repulsor for the last few months...bit by bit. In fact, I've played it in a number of games, starting from when it was in black primer, and most recently before the guns and details were finished off. Regardless, it rolled off the hobby table today for the last time.

In this blog post, I want to go over the steps I went through to weather the vehicle. Looking back, I should have taken photos while I was doing the digital urban camo with the great stencil set from Anarchy Games. Next time. Anyway, I'm picking this up after assembly was 90% complete and five layers of the camo paint scheme were laid down.

The concept here was to have the Dark Angels repaint a Primaris Repulsor for an urban combat detail. As such, I first sprayed down the metallic green, and then masked over the areas where the major insignia would be left exposed on the vehicle. Next, the four layers of urban camo colours were sprayed down with the aid of stencils.

So, the first step in the weathering process was to coat the tank with a gloss finish. I used Testors Glosscoat.

Next, I applied all the decals. These came from a variety of sheets. Markings are for 3rd Company, Dark Angels Chapter.

Next, I wanted to give some Migs enamel products a try. I've never used them before, and it's been decades since I used enamel paint. Anyway, I wanted to use them for the pin washes and streaks, and use enamel thinner to see if it's better than acrylics and water.

And the verdict? I liked them. Easy to use, quick to apply, and a great general effect. This shading and streaking layer formed the foundation for everything than followed.

Next I mixed some Migs weathering powders with enamel thinner and went to town adding in rust and a base dirt layer. I also did some work on the metal repulsor "tracks" at this point.

The painted "tracks" were put on at this point, along with a generous application of dust and dirt pigments over the tank body.

I switched to Vallejo acrylic weathering effects at this point, and splattered on a number of mud shades.

Then it was time to paint the gun barrels, lenses, lights, and then add the commander and hatch covers. The vehicle was sprayed with a couple of coats of Testors Dullcoat at this point to bring the sheen down.

Then there was a final application of dust pigments to the top deck to finish the weathering off and give the whole tank a nice scale effect.

Very happy with the end result.

This is not a traditional Games Workshop vehicle finish, with the edge highlighting and so on. However, it does harken back to the old days when I used to build Tamiya 1/35 armour kits. That was a long time ago!

Anyway, I was really happy with the way the camo scheme worked out, and the weathering pulls the whole thing together.

And now this guy is ready to hit the game tables at the LVO next month.

It was the first week of holidays for me this week, so I had time to knock off another model. This is the "anti-personnel" version of the Redemptor Dreadnaught...which I seem to need to fight off Elliot's Tyranids!

This was painted using the same steps as my last Redemptor, but I spent more time on the base this go around.

After building one of these, the second went together very quickly, and the paint scheme is simple and fun to do. Again, happy with the results.

'Til next time.

Shadespire: Sepulchral Guard

Finally finished my first Shadespire Warband. This is the Sepulchral Guard. 

Great skeleton sculpts, finely detailed, perfect fit and a pleasure to paint up. Couldn't ask for more. Now, time to try out the game.

'Til next time.

More Shadow War Terrain

So, one project that's been sitting on the shelf for months has been this last major piece of Shadow War terrain. I finally got around to completing the weathering and painting in the final details. With that, this terrain piece is now done.

With the weathering completed, the piece now fits in with the other two pieces of SW: Armageddon properly.

As always, lots of nice detail in this terrain.

Can't say enough about its utility and usefulness in 40K games.

'Til next time.

Azreal

OK, down to the last few figures for my Dark Angels LVO army. This figure is the army Warlord: Azreal.

It is a conversion of the Primaris Captain figure, since the actual GW Azreal figure is ages old and woefully undersized.

Only the banner survives from the original figure. And to get the figure "walking" up the stairs of this base, I heated up the cape over a candle flame and bent it to fit.

The weapon is a combi-plasma/bolter from the Calth boxed set.

Next up is Belial, leader of the Deathwing.

'Til next time.

The Best Day of the Year

If you've been following this blog for the last several years, you know that my favourite day of the calendar is the day we return to standard time. That day, when you get an extra hour of weekend, far and away outshines every other day of the year for pure joy. Period.

Every year, I try to invest that extra hour into an ongoing hobby project. So, this time around, that extra hour got sprinkled between a few things going on at the hobby table.

To start, I picked up the new Shadespire expansions on Saturday, and dove straight into the skeleton box.

Each model consisted of only two pieces, but what results is the most dynamic set of skeletons I've ever run across...and I've painted more than a few sets of skellies in my time.

On to the day's two main projects. Two character models for my 40K Dark Angels force. First up, Azreal. Now, the actual Azreal model is a small, pathetic chunk of metal which looks to be a few decades old. I'm making my own from a Primaris Captain model, but salvaging the banner and relic bearer from the original. Here are the component parts of the Azreal I'm making.

Also, there's Belial. This is the Deatwing commander, put out by Games Workshop and moulded in the absolutely horrible FineCast resin. What a piece of junk. But, the model's pose and detail is nice, so I'm going to push through it. Needless to say, cleaning the pieces to a half-acceptable state nearly saw me throw this model in the garbage.

I also wanted a special base for the Azreal model, so I picked the "steps" from the GW heroic bases set. Base coated brown.

I pinned all the pieces for the two models, in preparation for painting.

Base coats were done in three colours, depending on the item and final intended finish. Black, white and Zandri Dust.

Belial started with Zandri Dust (in order to get the bone-coloured Terminator armour portions correct), but the majority of the model is green...so I put blue-tac over the armour portions (and face) and started spraying the green.

And without two much effort, got the major colour areas done before going in with washes and a few highlights. More to come on this one.

All the other components got their base colours in an epic airbrush session.

Over the course of the day, I went into various bits and started to add in detail, like painting Azreal's new head. This piece is about half-way done at this point.

I was able to complete one component before calling it a day in the hobby room, and that was Azreal's base. 

 Really, it was just a nice, relaxing hobby room day, without any pressure of a pending tournament or game to get ready for. The extra hour really helped, and I'm hoping to get a finished piece out on Wednesday.

'Til next time.

Dark Angel Scout Snipers

I wanted some scouts for my Dark Angels force, so I grabbed 5 scout snipers from the Shadow War Armageddon box.

To make these guys blend in with my Dark Angels force, I wanted their body armor to be in metallic green, and their camouflage cloaks to match, colour-wise, with the urban camo I was painted on my Repulsor tank. So, I started with assembly. 

Before I started into this project, the heads were already mostly painted from a tutorial I ran a few months back up at Thunderground in St Albert.

The bodies and guns were painted gloss black.

The fronts of the figures were sprayed with silver...

 ...in order to receive the green ghost tint.

I then painted on the gold aquila and sprayed the figures with a flat sealer. This allowed me to move on to blocking out the other colours I was going to be using for the cloth and leather portions. All painting was pretty straight forward from this point.

Including the cloaks, which got an urban camo treatment. The figures were  glued onto their final bases, the heads were finished off, and that was about it. Time to move onto the next project.

'Til next time.