A Personal Painting Triumph

Look at those glorious, dark(ish) reds.

Sunday was supposed to be a painting day, but that didn't work out so well.  Turns out letting those painting juices marinate an extra couple of days meant I finally sunk a harpoon into my painting white whale, the ever elusive darker red.  I always knew it was possible, had an approach tucked into my back pocket in case the opportunity arose, but until this afternoon I never quite managed to do red in anything other than my usual bright(ish) hue.  With a supreme effort I kept the Bloody Red on the sidelines, only calling its number for the final edge highlight.  If I feel triumphant in finally conquering this seemingly easy to produce feat it's only because I am.  Ding dong and whatnot.

WIP Dark Angels, RIP Uncharted Seas

Green and mean.

 More painting today.  The focus was armor and the bounty was (relatively) great: a squad worth of green finished.  Previously I was unhappy with how the armor was going, but something clicked this morning and gave me a new perspective.  The work I had done before looked odd because it was incomplete.  With highlighting, and armor, finished the squad looks much better.  It was a rude welcome back to the world of painting for quality instead of speed, but after blitzing through Dust models for the past while it is satisfying to do work that is satisfying instead of sufficient.  The plan is to do the do the metals and/or reds on Sunday.  If I can get both done the squad will hopefully need only one more session to finish and I'll be halfway through my first EPL pledge.

Mostly a Place Holder

The vengeance, it is dark.

I may come back to flesh this into a fuller post in the future (probably not).  Mostly I need a place to link pictures from.  I've jumped into the E Tenebrae Lux (ETL) painting challenge at the Bolter and Chainsword as a goad towards getting my Dark Angels painted.  I'm starting small with two Tactical squads, one each of Dark Vengeance and Assault on Black Reach flavors.

Unpainted these many years, but on the road to completion.

These are just starting point shots.  I actually got more work done on these today, mostly base coating the AoBR squad green and taking a second swing at shading down (which is an awkward phrase at best, but nothing better has come to me just yet).  This time around I tried a wash (Army Painter Dark Tone, aka Badab Black) instead of a full-on paint.  The time invested vs results gained ratio is still too lean for my tastes, but it looks decent enough and doesn't take as long as layering 95% of the model to leave those black cracks intact.  I'll save discussion of work done today for when I have pictures of it, so for now use your imagination, then scale it back a few steps so you aren't disappointed when you see how they've turned out.

A Long Expected (Partial) Assembly

Finally on the road to the table.

Prompted in large part by a flurry of texts with EV last night, today saw the nigh-total construction of my long neglected Stormraven.  The impetus for this assembling was the dread Heldrake and attempting to find an answer for them that doesn't involve buying my own flyer or a large batch of Tau that I have no real interest in outside of killing flyers. While I think the Stormraven will do a reasonable job of fending off the dragons, I don't really like it as a solution for my Dark Angels mostly because it requires allying in Blood Angels and getting away from my plan for 6th edition (build some Dark Angels). Despite these misgivings I'm glad to get the Stormraven on the path to completion.  The red marines are getting a rest for a while, but that doesn't mean they have stopped occupying the place closest to my (40k) heart.  I'm the only person who likes the look of the model and I love the idea of a flying gunship/transport that gives unique flavor to the Blood Angels any random chapter can now field (except for Dark Angels of course).  Why all marines get the Blood Angels' special toy while the BAs can't field a Stormtalon is beyond me, but I'm sure there's some well thought out reasoning behind it.

Of course I can't just take the Stormraven, it has to have a minimum posse of a BA HQ and a Troops choice.  My initial thought was to load up on Death Company, plus a DC Dreadnaught, and top it off with a Chaplain.  Turns out that's really expensive, so now I'm considering something that is probably just as expensive: Dante and Sanguinary Guard.  The SGs got a bump this edition thanks to the nerfing of power weapons (their 2+ actually means something now), though their weaponry still leaves much to be desired.  Whatever route I end up on it'll be something with melee punch as I've had issues getting swamped in combat lately. 

In other news, don't let the long pause between posts let you think I haven't been doing other things.  I finally assembled the remaining parts of the pair of AoBR Tacticals, plus basing and priming.  I'll need to find a pair of missile launcher marines to join my BA Devastators now that the aforementioned Tacticals will be filling their primary roles, not to mention building a whole squad of Devs for my Dark Angels, but at least now I won't have Devs with Tactical markings.  While poking around at the Bolter & Chainsword I found a painting challenge that started a couple days ago and runs through the middle of August, which sounds like a great time frame to get some stuff finished.  I've noticed a large drop off in painting recently, aside from the speed painting that is Dust, and I wonder if it isn't related to the loss (to me at least) of Lost Hemisphere's Paint the Target (which may still be running in spite of the demise of the site).  I'll lurk along through the various B&C threads for a bit before making my move, but considering the personal success that was the LPC it's all but certain that I'll be throwing in my hat for this new (to me) challenge.

Painting and Dust News

What I did this afternoon.

Since 40k has been my most played game for the past month or so I figured it'd be a good idea to slap some paint on my budding Dark Angels army.  My plan was modest: dark green on the regular marines, blue on the Librarian.  Nothing excessive, not even (much) concern with leaving the black primer exposed in the crevices, just a quick base coat so I could prime the other squads and still be able to tell them apart at a glance. 

Of course things soon spun out of control, but we'll get to the soon enough.