Buying is hobby progress... right?

Yes! It must be! Because that's my hobby progress for the moment. I've added a droppod, thunderfire cannon, Land Raider,..... battleforce.... and megaforce. Each step just gets bigger and more complicated.

Once I get all of this done I could field a tactical company and a small portion of the 1st company along with plenty of dreadnaughts. I've also increased my bitz range with a random bag of bitz from ebay. Some nice stuff in the bag, old stuff I make use of and some.. terrain perhaps. I can always melt the remainder in to mishapen plastic lumps

I've added everything to my Kanban board which is turning in to a Kanban monster.


If you need something to get yourself organised I recommend setting up a kanban board for hobby progress. I've started using https://kanbanflow.com/ after hearing The IC podcast talking about it. I haven't made much hobby progress, for other reasons, but at least now when I sit down I can just load up the page and pick something to work on based on the time I have available and move it one step closer to Fin.

This will be the last of my purchasing for quite awhile. If you can tell from the board picture above I have quite a backlog to get through.

Other projects

I've some other small projects on the go to give me different activities to do when I get bored of whatever I'm doing on the main project. I'll be making posts of them once they get to a section where I can start taking photos of them.

Forgeworld - Mk V Heresy Armour. A new-year purchase of 5 marines. I'm undecided on what to do with all the pieces, I'm thinking of using them in a Sternguard squad and mixing in a small amount of other armour types for a bit of variety. I also have a Legion MK IV power weapons set, plenty of options to play with to bling these guys out, except for combi weapons :( There's a double handed chainsword in this so perhaps there's a Gabriel Seth model in it's future.

Techmarine - I like Techmarines, so much so I want a third one that I can say I've made myself. I have msot of the parts picked out except for legs and a backpack. I have spare parts from some servitors so that should take care of the servo arms so just need a backpack I can modify and have it look like it fits.

Ebay purchases to be repaired/fixed and unfinished projects - I have a good few devastators with metal shoulder pads, assault marines with the same and a bunch of Legion of the Damned that need a bit of work to get them fit for base-coating. There's one assault sergeant who is looking as his power sword as if it just appeared in his hand "Holy shit! I have a power sword!" Two landspeeders and a Landraider that need the paint stripped off them and some holes filled, a Landraider with the lascannons in the wrong position (my mistake). There's a Predator that I did a botched magnetising job on a few years ago I really should finish and a squad of scout bikers that I also botched the magnetising on and are pretty close to being finished, I just never get there.

Stormtalon basing - I'd like to make a good diorama base for this model, something to show that it's flying high overhead of a battle, swooping down to make lightning strikes so I bought some marine epic models on ebay again, old style rhino's and marines. I need to lay out a design before starting this one.

Dark Vengeance - As a marine player I couldn't avoid this purchase, cheap power armour! They're assembled and based but I'm not sure how to paint them. I may go for a Crimson Fist scheme and call them something like the Crimson Angels or Fists of the Lion, a custom Dark Angel successor chapter so they can blend in with the rest of the marines when I need them or allies or I can use some Fist units in a Dark Angel list.

Firestorm Armada - I've a small Terran fleet for this game, I like parts of the game and I like the models. The plan with is is to paint the Terran ships in the Crimson Fist colours and maybe add some iconography to them. They won't be battle barges or strike cruisers but it's the closest things I'll have.

Other 40k models - There are few other models I like from 40k that I won't be building an army with, the Tyranid Trygon and the Imperial Guard Valkyrie. They just stand out as models I want to build, paint and display.

March of the Elites: Project update 2

I've made some progress, less than I'd like but more than I expected considering the amount of time I've put in.

While cleaning some of the black reach Terminators I... pulled the arms a bit too much. I thought I'd be able to get them off without breaking them, that only worked for one arm. Easily fixed with a bit of plastic glue but then I got to thinking, magnets! Magnets and lightning claws that is. It's a perfect opportunity to make some changes and expand the versatility of my Terminators without expending a considerable amount of cash on a new set of Terminators (or going to ebay to get bodies without arms, that route wouldn't save me that much)

The paint stripping worked well, some of the thickly painted models required a few soaks in power spray to get nearly everything off. They'll need one more soak to get the stuff stuck in the corners but otherwise they're just like bare plastic. I have some ebay landspeeders that I've been trying to strip as well, the hard to reach spots in between the marines are a pain in the ass.

I ran in to an unforeseen issue with the two ebay dreadnoughts, the leg guards. They where nice and cheap but I never realised that the legs where missing the leg guards that all other dreads have, a stupid mistake as I'll have to go hunt for parts now. I'm fairly sure the dread kit comes with spares with different designs, a search of the bitz box is in order and I'll have to get creative if I come up short.

Landraider (MultiMelta, pindle storm bolter) - More assembly required. (No change)

Terminator Assault Squad (Thunder hammers and Storm Shields) and Lysander (200) - Moved to next phase early, they are now coated with the main armour colour so they're in to the detail paint phase now.

Terminator Squad (Cyclone launcher) - Cyclone Launcher repaired. Paint stripping finished. A spare Terminator is being used to test magnetised arms to allow swapping out for lighting claws to increase their versatility. Once the magnets work they'll be need a basecoat applied.

Dreadnought (Default load-out) - Basecoat needs to be removed. (No change)

Dreadnought (Plasma Cannon) - Paint stripped. Legs repaired but missing leg guards. Icons/accessory's to be added and then moved to base-coating phase.

Dreadnought (Assault Cannon, Missile Launcher) - Paint stripped. Legs repaired but missing leg guards. Icons/accessory's to be added and then moved to base-coating phase.

Ironclad Dreadnought - Moved to next phase early, it's now coated with the main armour colour so it's in to the detail paint phase now.

Contemptor Dreadnought (Kheres Assault Cannon) - Assembled and weapons attached with magnets just below the elbow. The CCW is missing the internal weapon, something I didn't realise until I had the arm assembled for several days. I thought it would just slot in but you have to do it before attaching the fingers and the ring they're glued to. It doesn't matter as I'll just fill the hole with milliput and cut off excess resin from the weapon to get it in. The mould release was nearly impossible to get rid of on the leg joints, it seemed that no matter how many times I scrubbed it the super glue wouldn't take until eventually I got a good contact. (shown here with a heavy conversion beamer instead)

A new list: March of the Elites

A new year and a new list. I've massed up 25 Terminators and 6 Dreadnought's that need to undergo assembly, paint stripping, re-basing and painting again, plenty to do and I'm starting it off with the Bolter and Chainsword Librarium Painting Challenge (LPC) to keep me motivated. This addition to my Crimson Fist army comes out just over 1500 points and it's nearly all elites so I realise that it's not a legal army list without troops, I have plenty of them to field a valid army.

For basecoats I've used Armypainter ultramarine blue and I plan to use an airbrush with Kantor blue for the next layer, I've used Necron Abyss for my other Crimson Fists so I want to get a colour close to that again.

There's a few ebay purchases here and I've had to strip the paint off some of them so I've used Fairy Power Spray to get most of the paint off them. The only problem I've had is with two of the broken dreadnoughts, they had layers of paint on them and one of them was thick layer of bronze which was a bit trickier to shift, and the crevices are damn hard to clean out with a toothbrush. I had to dig out a box of toothpicks to get in there. 

Phase one: Have all models primed with blue spray along with any paint stripping, magnet attachment and model repairs to be done.

Army list:

Landraider (270)  (MultiMelta, pindle storm bolter) - More assembly required.

Terminator Assault Squad (200) (Thunder hammers and Storm Shields) and Lysander (200) - Based, waiting for next phase.

Terminator Squad (230) (Cyclone launcher) - Paint stripping in progress, Cyclone Launcher needs to be repaired.

Dreadnought (105) (Default load-out) - Basecoat needs to be removed. I used gesso on it originally, while it worked well on other, smaller, models but the flat areas on this dread appear uneven and you can see brush strokes. I have the same issue with a predator but I won't be stripping that one, too much work.

Dreadnought (115) (Plasma Cannon) - Paint stripping in progress, legs need to be repaired and then re-based.

Dreadnought (125) (Assault Cannon, Missile Launcher) - Paint stripping in progress, legs need to be repaired and then re-based.

Ironclad Dreadnought (135) - Based, waiting for magnets on DCCW mounted weapons.

Contemptor Dreadnought (190) (Kheres Assault Cannon) - Needs assembly and magnets.

Places not to clean your airbrush

There are some nice places to clean your airbrush,... and there are some not so nice places.

1. Kitchen/Bathroom sink. - Access to water, towels to dry things, it's nearly a workbench away from the workbench! With less power and more water. The best feature is the hole at the end of the funnel, it's a great place to drop small parts you've just taken out, especially the smallest parts.
2. A room with a carpet - A nice couch to sit on, a nice table to work over, TV to watch and listen to! The couch is great to drop stuff on to so it can slip down the sides and in to crevices, and bounce under. It's pretty good combined with a carpet, 
3. Cats. - Cats like thinks that move fast and in different directions, and shiney things of course. Shiney thing fall, shiney thing hit floor and make noise! Shiney thing bounce. KILL SHINEY THING!

 These things are all of the things I've had happen to me in the last two days of using an airbrush. Lazyness nearly caused me to loose the use of my first airbrush, a decent gravity feed one at that!