058 - My Favorite Iron Warriors Units

As the new Iron Warriors are being created I think it is time to consign the old models to storage to make way for the new guys. I have painted up quite nearly 150 models for this army with painting ranging from "okay" to "my first paint job". But before they go into a KR case here are my three favourite units from the army.

The Heldrake was the first big kit that I had to put together and man is it complicated. Its looks huge when it is finally completed. Just don't try and pick it up without using the flying stand!

The cultists get in here not just because of the natty paint scheme but because this is when I felt i had cracked batch painting and could churn out a decent amount of models at a good pace.

The Helbrute was one of the more complicated miniatures with alot of detail to paint but I feel I did model justice. The dynamic pose is pretty cool too!
Despite the Iron Warriors being a little rough round the edges I will always have a soft spot for this army due to it being the one that got me back into the hobby. However I feel it has had it's day and I now have to crack on with my 30k Iron Warriors and do the sons of Olympus justice!

039 - HPC Halfway

So in January I decided to get a little more structured with what I was going to paint. I started recording my painting progress with a Kaban board and keeping a better record of what I have done. I have also joined the Independent Characters 2016 Hobby Progress Challenge. The Independent Characters is an amazing podcast that is back after a year long hiatus. The website for the podcast is here and the forums for the Hobby Progress Challenge can be found here. The rules are simple, you just commit to painting a unit (or units) each month and post a  photo of the unpainted miniatures on the forums. You have a month to paint them and when they are done you post a photo up of them completed. 

So lets have a look at my first five commitments:

January was a Betrayal at Calth Contemptor Dreadnought. I really like the model and feel like people were a little down on it compared to the rest of the boxed set but it ticks all the boxes for me. I did quite a few layers of Khorne Red to get the smooth surface on the model.

My second model in the challenge was a Land Speeder that I had leftover from another project and I used mk4 armour to model the crew. I like the fact a "Chaos" army can use a Land Speeder and was quite happy to put the Octed symbol right on the front of the model. I am going to go back and add a havoc launcher to it so it has a little extra firepower than a single heavy bolter.

I converted this Mortis Comtemptor from the Betrayl at Calth Dreadnought by just swapping over the close combat weapon with a spare assault cannon. I also popped a radar dish on the top to represent the Helicial Targeting Array.

This is my first tactical squad.I kept them quite simple to paint with minimal equipment modelled on them. I wanted them to look like foot sloggers rather than the super elite of the legion. 

This the second tactical squad. I have painted them shoulder pads red rather than black as i wanted them to look slightly different to other Word Bearers armies. I like the fact there are hundreds of thousands of marines in a legion so there can be some variation with the colour schemes.

Doing this challenge has been a great shot in the arm and I will have a decent looking army by the end of the year if all goes to plan which for a slow painter like me is very exciting. I would recommend this kind of scheme for projects. Next up are some characters to lead the force. Maybe even some tanks as well!

030 - Puppies Vs Hobbies

I have added a monstrous creature to the collection. This little guy.

So my wife and I got a puppy recently as we wanted to get one for ages. Me being the man of the house said he would take two weeks off work to look after the little monkey. After reading on Google that puppies have eighteen hours of sleep a day. I thought great, that's hours of hobby time for two weeks I'll get so much done. How wrong I was!
Apparently puppies are very full on so my hobby marathon was curtailed due to playing (which is good) and cleaning up mess (which is bad). I had twenty minutes here and there during nap times so I got all of my small hobby jobs that I could find and set about seeing them off one by one.

I have varnished and based some cultists which have been sitting in a box for a year. It has bumped up my large cultist unit up to 31 members which is a nice blob of expendable troops to have.

I am going to have to find smaller tasks to do like this  while the puppy is really young but it is nice when real life is full on as a little hobby goes a long way.

026 - Freaking Warhounds!

I'll come right out and say it as it's no surprise for most people in this hobby. Games Workshop kits are amazing. They seem to get better year on year. They have extra bits to convert your models. The CAD design process has helped them get more detail on each sprue.  They are a cut above other models available.
However some kits are a little "meh".
I recently bought five plastic Warhounds off Ebay and then bought some of the new oval bases that have been released for Age Of Sigmar. Thinking they would be a quick project to get a small unit on the table which I could expand with a ten model box set if they were quite fun to assemble and paint I set to work.
The models were quite easy to put together but as they were in two pieces there was a line running straight down the centre of the model. I had similar problems with the fur lined capes of my chaos warriors with a massive gap in quite a prominent location. I had to get the sculpting tool  and green stuff and fill in the gaps. To be fair this is a slightly older kit and the more recent efforts from Games Workshop have slightly more clever  pieces so things like fur and armour detail are not interrupted by a injection mark or a mould line.
This is how they turned out:

With the Warhounds I got them finished in the end but it was definitely a case of  finish them to a decent standard and hope nobody looks too closely. It's not my best work but sometimes you just have to push through the pain barrier to get a unit done.

025 - Beastlord Addition

One thing that I really like about the Age Of Sigmar is the army selection. With most armies in 40k and 30k it is very structured but you can just choose what you want in Age Of Sigmar. it's quite liberating at first. I'm a big fan of the size of the armies. It makes it easy it to finish an army. You don't have to have  a certain points value in mind you can just say enough is enough.
With my Tzeench war-band I wanted to add some Beastmen. I was a big fan of the old Chaos army where you could add Deamons, Beastmen and Warriors of Chaos to a whole army. This was brought back in The End Times but can easily be adapted to Age Of Sigmar by just sticking to the Chaos faction.
I had a hunt on Ebay and found a bargain of a Beastlord. I think it makes a great hard hitting alternative to the more magic focused Tzeench heroes which will be in the Tzeench contingent of my Chaos army.
Here he is in all his beastly glory.

I quite like the pose of the model although the way the axe is positioned I had to paint the model in it's component parts. The colour scheme is a little wacky but I wanted the skin tone to match the Tzeench Sorcerer Lord that I have already painted.
I am already looking at adding a couple of Beastmen units to the army as the Beastlord's contingent. As a whole I am enjoy the Age of Sigmar army build experience because I don't have to worry about any of the constraints of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles army selection so I can basically pick whatever I want and in the future I want Beastmen!

019 - Chosen Of Tzeench

I wanted to start a new Chaos army for the Age Of Sigmar. I started a Tzeench Army as I have always like Tzeench because he is a scheming git of a god. It has a little more depth than the other gods whose motivation consists of killing, rotting or sex respectively. I had a box of Chaos Warriors that I was going to use as Space Wolves conversions that never panned out and a Tzeench Sorcerer Lord that was going to be another conversion but was sitting in my bits box. This gave me a great basis for my warband.

The Warriors of Chaos have blue capes which will be a running theme throughout the army. I shaved off the horns of the helmets to make them look a little different to the normal warriors. I have given the hero horns sprouting out of the side to make him stand out.

One of the really liberating things with Age Of Sigmar is the way you can build an army. It seems pretty mind blowing after years of percentages of Core, Special and Rare choices that you can just pick what you want. I could have an army full of Warshrines if I really want or ten Bloodthristers. The only real restrictions is making it fun and fair for your opponent so that you will get a second game!
I have limited myself to Tzeench choices over the Mortal, Daemon and Beast categories and will grab the models that catch my eye rather than the ones that are super effective. I have always loved the Chaos Wastes (which I suppose now is conveniently the Realm of Chaos) and the Warbands that are constantly being tested there. Some of them will fight for years and never see the lands of men due to them trying to get the attention of the Chaos Gods.

I had some of the Famous Familiars which I had for another project (see a theme with models being from another uncompleted project) which I dropped into the army as backup for the Sorcerer Lord. There is some concern from the community that they wont support their current range of models with rules but these models came out in 1988 and have new rules. I think if a model is popular and fits in with the design ethos the studio is going for then I believe they will have some kind of support for them.

With an addition of  a Chaos Spawn that I did in the same kind of colour scheme as the Sorcerer Lord I think I have the start of a really characterful warband.
Now I have a few mortal units I think it's time to add some Beastmen!