Tigers in Devlan Mud

I painted a miniature once.

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Repulsor “Repulse”

Repulsor "Repulse," the flying Land Raider, is ready to take part in the fight. It was painted with the help of Something Awful’s painting Oath thread, where people oath to paint miniatures during a month, with challenges to make it more fun/inspire them to be creative. I went for Mr. Try Hard, which is doing all of the monthly challenges at once. 

WIP pictures come courtesy of Show Your Work challenge, which isn’t a monthly, but still gives you points for taking at least three WIP pictures. I took most of these after applying battle damage by using a pin vise, a hobby knife and a file. 

Apparently, the kit is simply bad about joining the outer sides of the hull to the hull, so it's not just me being a shit. It was more pronounced on the left side, so I did more battle damage there.

The green is from the paint I used to make a print of turret ring on plasticard. I was not at all happy with the turret, and I basically bought the model so I could put a Razorback turret instead (Chop Shop challenge is about converting). More on the turret later.

You can also see battle damage. Putting dents on corners and edges is really cool (I’m gonna wreck it! challenge is for battle damage). I was inspired by WWII range testing pictures.

Since Space Marines sometimes encounter some angry fauna, too, so I put some deep gnashes on the side and on the top.

Here's how it looked with a (magnetized) turret. It can be taken off for transport! I bought the lascannon turret from Kromlech. Now I have a mechanical ork arm that they included pro bono that I don’t know what to do with. 

Naturally, I had to remove (well, not glue on, more like) one of the cannons. In its place, I kinda shittily drilled, rod'd and glued on the smaller ONSLAUGHT GATLING CANNON. I lost the front part of the ONSLAUGHT GATLING CANNON almost immediately after taking it off the sprue. Maybe it will turn up some day. 

I didn't do a very good job of putting the stubber in place, either.

When I actually got to painting the damn thing, I sprayed the front white, then I used poster putty (or whatever you call it) and paper to mask off the white areas before going in the black.

The Back to Base-ics challenge forced me to spruce up the base. The stupid idea for the flying Land Raider is that even though it's a skimmer ([b]A Flying Start[/b] challenge is to paint something that is flight capable), it's actually so heavy that it barely clears ground, and the grav waves or whatever crush everything underneath it... which sounds terrible [i]until you realize that's basically what tank tracks do, too.[/i] So I wanted to leave some pristine ground in the center of the base while making the sides show how detritus and earth is churned and pushed towards the center by the treads grav waves. You be the judge.

This is how it looked nearly painted. I wanted to add some decals to the sides. But those didn't want to stick or just didn't like being handled, so they either all ripped or fell off. 

 Eventually, I ended up freehanding the name on the sides of the tank. I think it helps break up all the empty space, which is especially noticeable since I didn't put any of the stupid stowage that goes on the back half of the tank.

Those hand prints belong to some ork or dirty traitor who got dragged under the Repulsor (My heart bleeds for you challenges you to add blood to the model). I also applied Typhus Corrosion to the vertical grav plates for some of that sweet Always take the weather with you.

Things I suck at: dry brushing, applying Typhus Corrosion. 

I also wanted Time To Shine challenge to be counted for all the metals and gold. Maybe I should by one of those glazes someday. 

The paintings on the doors (they're not glued in... it's just that they got stuck there) are for Bring out your dead (add skellies or skulls), Free(hand) as a bird (do some freehand painting and Raise Your Flag (model, paint or draw a banner). The banner bears some of the Chapter iconography (I'm not set on it yet) while a skellington is always welcome on an SM vehicle.

While it’s fairly obvious that I will never manage to do OSL, I tried doing something similar for the Feeling the heat (make something look hot) challenge with the thruster tubes, starting with blue mixed with white, then applying more and more white. In the end, I added some more blue and black shading to the ends to hide some mistakes.

And yes, these are the only two decals that made it!

A view from the top! I might have overdone it on the edge effects, but eh, I like it well enough. I tried to follow some of the advice about paint chipping on HH Modeling Masterclass, but I might have used too much paint... and a mascara applicator.

Fuck I hate painting.

[tigersindevlanmud-blog]

Shadow War: Armageddon is the old Necromunda ruleset, albeit repackaged to be playable with Warhammer 40K armies. While most of the rules remain unchanged, the campaign has been severely truncated.

Since I'm a firm believer in “less is more” approach to miniature games, I'm a fan of skirmish level games. And Shadow War is the only sane-ish way to do it in 40K – well, until Heralds of Ruin team produces a viable 8th edition adaptation of their rules (you could also play 7th editio HoR or Grimdark Futures skirmish mode, but let's not talk about that).

I also have a soft-ish spot for some of the older – and unfortunately metal – Guardsmen sculpts. Eventually, I accrued enough of that older stuff through random purchases to make myself an Imperial Guard Veteran Shadow War Kill Team, hooray!

I wanted to color them in the new Imperial Guard color scheme, which is a bit lighter than the old Cadian one, but not having the required paints, I had to compromise a bit (actually, a lot).

My Sarge is the only dude who isn't made by Games Workshop. In fact, I got him via Tim Prow’s Eru-kin (space Lizardmen) Kickstarter. This '80s-ish dude tickles what little nostalgia I feel for anything, and even though he's a Space Mercenary reminiscent of Strontium Dog, he makes a fitting Guard Sarge. He already has a laspistol (even GW has the hardest time producing identical laspistols and bolt pistols), so I only added a spare chainsword from a MK III Marines sprue I got from Burning of Prospero.

The two initial carapace-armor-and-hot-shot-pack-lasgun Veterans are represented by a Kasrkin and a Stormtrooper. Both of these are discontinued miniatures (the loathsome Tempestus Scions took their place when the worst of codixes – C: Militarum Tempestus and C: Astra Militarum – were released), however, Stormies predated the Kasrkin. Yet the sculpt was so good that both of them were produced at the same time (with Cadian Kasrkin standing in as Stormies the same way as models of Cadian Shock Troopers are THE Imperial Guardsmen).

And yeah, the Stormie model is pretty great, even if he's made of disgusting metal (that's any metal, once it comes to miniatures). The weakest bit would be his shoes that look cartoonishly lumpy. The worst part to paint was the back pack, because there's no clear line separating it from the carapace armor, leaving you with guesswork.

The Kasrkin is a lot better, though you still need to guess the colors of some bits. GW could produce more in-universe guides on the crap that miniatures carry, as it would make it easier for us to decide on the colors. It's like familiarizing yourself with subject when you're drawing or modeling: if you know that that thingamabob is actually the Pitot tube, you will be more inclined to include it.

However, since GW has axed the lines in favor of Tempestus Scions (horrible name, atrocious fluff, great models, mediocre statline), we're not getting shit!

While Guardsmen are forced to use 10-man teams like the rest of them (except for ORKS!) - and much like the tabletop Veteran squad – they get three weapon specialists instead of two. So I gave one of them a sniper rifle – by converting one of the lasgun dudes – gave another one a plasma gun (badly glued under the gun of the guy who, in the old kit, was the ammo carrier for the heavy bolter team), and I also had a flamer dude (from Cadian box) and a meltagunner (from an expansion pack). It's really striking how good and modern the melta looks, even if it has the fuel source attached via some overly long pipe, while the flamer is such a horrible sculpt.

Naturally, the first battle saw the sniper fail to hit anything, but it was a sad show anyways. My team was hitting and pinning/wounding dudes, but didn't manage to actually take out any. Half if not more of his Guardsmen team (it was a brotherly spat/training) was on the ground and he was rolling bottling tests basically since turn one. So it's only natural that when his melta gunner managed to fry my unlucky flamer (ran out of ammo after a single burst) while one other dude was on the ground I failed my first bottle test.

Happens every time.

Now, some of the dudes in my team are supposed to be Veterans, while others are merely Guardsmen (newbies, in the parlance of the game). So far, I haven't found a way to differentiate between them, so I'm open to suggestions.

This also the first time I gave an entire squad eye pupils – using a soft tip pen – and the results are mixed, but better than trying to do it with the brush. I also tried to make a few of the soldiers black, most unsuccessfully. I had better luck with the albino-white (and red-eyed, with no pupils) soldiers!

The most bizzare thing was trying to give one of my veteran skull/baron Semedi facepaint. You judge the results.

The fluff behind the team is that they work with/for my special snowflake original content donut steel chapter the Stilled Voices. As they were crusading through a forgotten sector. they found a world which the Imperial Guard had held for generations, constantly calling for help. They have integrated some of the local white skin/red eyed peoples into their ranks over the years of constant defense against fallen human realms (currently being taken back into the fold by the surviving elements of Stilled Voices), xeno raiders and orks. Now, the Space Marines are taking the Guardsmen with them to bolster their numbers, mostly by acting as human-sized infiltrators to launch rapid raids and secret actions.

Stilled Voices had been much burned by desperately strict adherence to the Codex Astartes before and Akharon the White Hand, the new chapter master, is trying to conserve their strength while working from the shadows. He has seen the efficacy of such an approach and he's trying to do the same with the first humans that willingly joined the Stilled Voices in their (re)conquest.