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I'm probably not going to be typing much tonight, however I've been meaning to do a blog for a couple of months now, ever since I got my valkyrie really. - Problem was, I tended to rather spend time painting the thing rather than writing about it.
I probably won't be writing much tonight, however it is a foot in the door, so to speak and at the very least I can get some photo's up - I can always edit to do the talky parts about them later.
Hrm, where to begin.
I started 40k with Space Marines near the tail end of second edition in 1998/1999. Surprisingly, not Ultramarines but Dark Angels. However, what I was particularly interested in was the Imperial Guard, although I never got their codex until the great 2nd edition sale (more on that later).
I started off with a Demolisher, armed, of course, with 1 multi melta and 1 plasma cannon, with sponsons glued on upside down and a good 2/3rds of the tracks missing. - This is a planned repaint, but for hilarity value I might very well upload a shot of it after my attempts in 3rd edition to fix the sponson issue - ultimately tearing both of them in half. However, what I had also bought, was a basilisk and a (metal) sentinel - which are both still in use today and is not particularly horrible, 2 Mordian Iron Guard units and... drumroll... A box of plastic stormtroopers. Even today, these Mordians form the core of my army, only having slight touch ups for the hrm... 2007 Conflict Scotland and the Stormtroopers are now my Command HQ veterans.
The great second edition sale came along, and I returned to my Guard, managing to get my hands on enough Mordians to make 2 squads with mortars/flamers, some command squads, a hellhound (which has provided inspiration for my continuing army's color scheme) and 2 commissars. This brings us to (what will probably remain) my first 2 images. The aforementioned commissars.
First of all, Commissar number 1. A repaint, as you can see. And at the time of writing (10/07/09), still not being worked on.
And the other commissar, who I actually finally got round to painting a couple of months ago and was really my second 40k model I've painted since February 2007. I didn't do much painting of 40k for a few years before then either. When Lord of the Rings came out, I all but abandoned 40k entirely.
My flash is probably a bit bright here, so here's a second one. Good/bad news is it showed up a heckuva lot more errors in my painting than I thought I had - advice welcome!
----------------------13/07/09------- The (very) Old Guard -------------------13/07/09------------
That Commissar Yarrick model is so old, I remember taking him into school being proud of my painting of him. So he was definitely a 1990's purchase/paintjob. Oddly enough, for a long while I never found I was able to equal his painting. I'll definitely not be repainting him though, some history you just don't wipe away.
Ah yes... The Demolisher. My first tank as I said. You can see I really didn't underestimate how bad it is. I'm almost certainly repainting this. I do however, still love that old sentinel. And he still crops up in games.
I had the bright idea back then that every squad would have its own unique uniform colour. One was painted lightning bolt blue, one emerald blue, one Festering blue and one Regal blue. I also decided that the command squads would be Ultramarines blue.
This has caused me no end of trouble over the years. I eventually tried to make my army more unified by having the pauldrons(?) be the same for each platoon. Platoon 1 gold, platoon 2 red. Then, for some reason for the 2007 tournament, I decided to paint goblin green trim on my original squads uniforms. So now, having bough 30 new Mordian Guardsmen, I have absolutely no idea how the heck to paint them without having to redo absolutely everything of my old models as well.
I do think the pauldrons = platoon colours is a good idea. But different uniforms is more than ridiculous. What I'm thinking for my new ones is, uniform trim the same colour as the pauldrons, then have the bands round the hat being different to signify the different squads.
The very old stormtroopers, with a metal heavy weapons team, 2 plastic squaddies and the old Cadian Lieutenant who tends to be my Colonel if I'm using a cheap command HQ. Unlike his food bill....
So, time marched on, after the 2nd edition sales bonanza I left my Imperial Guard behind again, resumed collecting my dark angels when 3rd edition game out. I even dabbled in Eldar ( Keeping in mind I was just getting out of the unsupervised-games-store-kid-phase). Until I believe it was 2000/2001 rolled around and Imperial guard got their brand spanking new codex and Catachans.
Of course, Catachans didn't fit in with my army at all, but they were guardsmen and in plastic. So.... I bought 60 of them (including the battleforce) and my first normal Leman Russ. I also had an incredibly bright idea then. I had decided that plastic models don't *really* need undercoating. I also got 2 'new' plastic sentinels in the battleforce. - Which I still have barely painted.
Um... yeah... Now I make every effort possible to not include my Catachans in my armies. You'll see why.
Ok, people take note. This above image is very important. This is an important example of how NOT to paint your army.
Always. Always. Always. Use undercoat. Preferably spray and preferably a dark colour (IE black). Otherwise your army might end up looking like that.
The final step of my journey for tonight (13/07/09) is my tanks.
Well, this is missing a Sentinel from the new Cadian battleforce, mainly because it's still on its sprue.
Now, the order the tanks were bought was roughly.
Demolisher first, then the basilisk, then the sentinel. Then hellhound while we were still in second edition (as shown by box). Next purchase was the Catachan battleforce, with a Leman russ (sponsons) and not one but 2 sentinels.
Then came the 2003 box set with the new Leman Russ and a chimera purchased shortly afterwards. Finally, bringing up the rear - my Vendetta.
The best way I can figure it, is that the Hellhound must have been repainted at some point because it looks quite clearly far too... acceptable when compared to ye olde Demolisher or even the later Leman Russ.
What I do find funny though, is my basilisk crew are quite possibly amongst the rarest models I own.
Well, that's me for the 13/07/09 update. Good night folks.
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2003 ( I think? ) and whoooo! Plastic Cadians and a non-crap codex. The same one I was using until a few months ago. Additions to my army here were the cadian battleforce (with a new leman russ - half painted!), 3 sanctioned psykers (still not painted), a squad of kasrkin (mostly painted, but not well (by my standards 6 years later) and a chimera - painted semi-decently I might add! Since resuming 40k in 2009, I've begun painting the models from this box and have some pictures of them amongst the models from the newest battleforce.
The painted squad in the foreground, and the unpainted squad in the background both come from this old battleforce.
Now these guys, I painted a few months ago along with the Commissar. I'm actually quite proud of the washing/highlighting on the gunner but, of course I forgot to do it to the loader.
The Guard sleep for a while after 2003, only coming out for a 4th edition Conflict Scotland doubles tournament (the 2004/2005? one). I only use my Mordians and the Hellhound. We come middlish - 2 massacres, 2 massacred - not bad considering I'd only played about 2 games of that edition before, having focussed on LOTR). However, the best part of it was the number of folk that had thought my Mordians were a scratch built / converted army - they'd never seen them before!
So, I play/paint LOTR for a while until the tailend of last year where my next door neighbours grandson, having seen my armies on my display shelf in my mothers craftroom begins 40k.
A move both his mothers and my own wallet probably regret bitterly.
I start teaching him, and learning 5th edition myself and manage to *avoid* buying any 40k stuff, up until I move away from home in April (whoo, job!), which, of course, coincides with the Imperial Guard codex being released shortly after.
I can still hear my wallet crying. Though that may be related to planetstrike.
A new round of purchases begins.
----13/07/09----The Vendetta Comes----13/07/09-----
Well, it's late again, so I'll probably leave the writing until another day. However, here are some photographs of the Valkyrie as it progressed.
This is shortly after I first got my new camera. - The earlier photo's than this arn't much use. I had just begun painting the interior of the Valkyrie. The main thing I wasn't too certain about - and am still not happy with is the lights on the roof section. I still think they look like some kind of mutated pancake. I really do doff my hat to anyone that can pull off realistic lights.
Interior detail is beginning in earnest here. I'm glad I never threw out any of my old paints. The light greens here are from an old rubber pot of Jade Green from over 11 years ago. - They've lasted a whole lot longer than the majority of my 3rd edition 40k paints, I'll tell you that much! It is (of course) tremendously important to paint the interior while it's separate.
The interior is now assembled. - Big suggestion though, use a rubber band to hold the back together with the ramp closed, even though it seems to close fine. When you add in the roof (which doesn't *need* to be glued on), it forces the joins slightly apart so the ramp may start falling open. Beginning work on the crew now. I started with adeptus battlegrey, then codex grey with a highlight of fortress grey. As you can see, this made it look very bright grey! Fortunately a wash of Badab black saved the day.
The flash is a bit bright here for the crewmen, but it shows the detail on the cockpit. - It also shows my attempt at trying to paint something with the targetting computer. It didn't work perfectly, but it looks fine to me.
The plucky pilots now completed. I decided that grey would be a suitable colour for them and would differentiate slightly from the dark blue plane. Although, i was tempted to paint them bright orange.
img]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_XuFBDYfNlUY/SlqMRt6ncjI/AAAAAAAAB60/Kt0Rm9CJ8n8/s720/DSCF0099.JPG[/img]The completed interior. Note, no matter how hard I tried, with no matter how much filing, the handles on the arms refused to slot properly into the heavy bolters.
It's complete(ish)! And, perhaps more importantly, is a not bad photo with the flash off, so you can see it's true colour.
Would it be worthwhile me trying to drag up pictures of the lascannon sponsons, or talking about the conversion a bit?
With the battleforce, plus another squad, I began building up plenty of heavy weapons teams, since due to my catachans, I had more than enough basic men.
------10/07/09----Talk about the mortar team conversion here -----10/07/09-----
My Cadian forces that were assembled at the time, including the old(er) models.
Work has been progressing and as of last week(!) I've now completed these heavy weapon teams. One of the annoying things though, to make the army more playable, I had to do a fair bit of cutting and hacking of some of my 03 Cadian models, who were assembled into special weapons teams and the like. - So expect some rather dodgy loaders!
However, expect some rather cool ones too (in my opinion) from the newers ones (aka not undercoated yet).
I was struggling for original ideas on that one, and I had mostly ran out of parts. However it would probably fit better with a heavy bolter team than an autocannon. The giand autocannon nose isn't exactly subtle
Poor Jimmy the Loader. Someone has to do all the work why the rest of the squad are off striking heroic poses.
The Ammo Dump. Probably not the best place to put a heavy weapon. But at least it isn't a missile launcher.
My first attempt at making a greenstuff conversion since me attempting to make Aragorn the King from Helms Deep Aragorn in 2003. A simple one, but at least it makes him look veteran-ish.
Veteran Squad sergeant with a spare head from my Valkyrie.
Also, to treat myself and as a reward for doing some overtime, I bought a load of new Mordians with the extra cash. - 30 to be precise. My recent games at the club I've now joined have surprisingly often resulted in my guardsmen doing fairly well in close combat. The few survivors from a guard squad have semi-regularly managed to take out harlequins, a few surviving terminators and even a chaos lord!
Therefore, this conversion seemed rather logical.
- Yes, that is a bayonet on his pistol.
Alright, now we're really up to date, with my latest model who I just finished painting a few days ago. My mate wasn't too impressed with a commissar painted in army colours, so I decided to have a go at a more traditional one.
This really is the most up-to-date, best quality model I have (probably took around 6 hours all told) and I would appreciate any helpful opinions and criticsms of him.
Basecoat then Pre washes and additional detail work.
Completed model. - Woohoo!
Hopefully you will enjoy/find interesting this little tale of an evolving army over well, 10 years.
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