Here is wave 1 of the #40k2ndAC IV for February. We have 11 entries in this wave. The flag above the badge denotes where the participant is currently operating, while a small terminator honours logo means that the participant has been honoured by his peers for a previous entry.

We made planetfall today and no lie, it’s fragging good to be back on firm ground even if half the planet is trying to kill us. Makes it feel even more like home. The company has been fully deployed and Blue Platoon is at full strength, even Marbetz that skrag from 1st Squad has recovered from his stasis sickness to join in this fun. That however, is where the good news pretty much dries up. The lack of contact from the planet which had the higher ups worried appears not to be down to some faulty equipment, just a lack of people to use it. The basecamp is deserted and aside from a few scattered notes and vox recordings repeatedly mentioning the Nedirid Basin, there really isn’t much of an indication to me or the rest of the squad as to why they have all cleared out. But that was never a target for the mission, and from looking at the schematics is nothing more than a backwater above and beyond the rest of this planet, which appears to be made up almost entirely of backwaters. 

The company has therefore been called upon to deploy with our specialist trackers and pathfinders leading from the front. The Nedirid Basin is about two days travel away, with a short flight to the closest outpost followed by a days long slog through the jungle. Parker, the 3rd Squad’s flamer specialist is already taking bets on exactly how many of the others are still alive, I hope we find answers at the outpost. Even more so now as I’m in for two hundred Aquilas that they just discovered something which they didn’t want us around to claim some of the glory for, are all fit and healthy and just a few days ahead of us.    

• Recovered personal vox recording : Trooper Karbeiss Gravers, Catachan XCVIII Regiment, Red Company, Blue Platoon, 2nd Squad, taken D-2 from the Nedirid Incident. 

***

With the first squad and the terrain out of the way, I wanted to keep the ball rolling this month with the infantry troopers so looked to finish off the company’s two other squads, and also got another 2 bonus squads completed as well! This means that I’m well on course for having three companies worth of troops ready to field by the end of the challenge. At this point, I was becoming more than accustomed to batch painting my way through a squad of IG, and the real challenge was trying to keep things interesting and varied across the 6 units I’ve painted up in total so far (including the initial squad I used as a test for the paint scheme Ive moved forwards with). Again, squad by squad I used the same technique as last month, working through 10 models at a time and going stage by stage. I found that I could get each 10 man squad finished to a table top standard in around 4 hours by the end of working through the 40 of them. As for squad composition, 

Regimental Unit 1st Squad 

Chainsword, Boltpistol, Missile Launcher, Melta  140pts 

Regimental Unit 3rd Squad 

Sword, Plasma Pistol, Missile Launcher, Flamer,  142pts 

Bonus Unit 1st Squad 

Boltpistol, Sword, Autocannon, Plasma Gun  126pts 

Bonus Unit 2nd squad 

Chainsword, laspistol, Heavy Bolter, Flamer  119pts 

So that’s a 282pts slice and a bonus 245pts for 40 highly trained jungle fighters! 

With the bonus troops, I looked a bit further afield through my bitz box to complete one of the squads, who I’d like to think are veterans of the Lightning Hounds XCVIII Regiment would be made of pathfinders and trappers. I like in the Gaunts Ghosts novels the specialist snipers and scouts are mixed throughout the units normally, so will probably look to add a model or two to each squad I field in a game, but they can also come together and represent a veteran unit pretty clearly on the table if called upon.  

with the core body of troopers completed, Im looking forwards to next month and getting the command section painted up, along with psyker and commissar to act as HQ for my force, and I’ll probably look to get some more bonus squads of troopers painted. I always find that once I don’t keep a production line process like these guys going, I always struggle coming back to a project, remembering exactly how I had painted those that had gone before and results can be varied. Still, if I can get them out of the way next month then I can move onto some more interesting support options for the force moving forwards.  

Well, here we are again. Still going.

First of all, I had a lucky break for my birthday and managed to secure a Bjorn (sans banner, sadly) for a damned good price. As I’m painting my Space Wolves then I decided the Fates had decided that I should buy him and add him as a bonus.. and I couldn’t wait so did him straight away!

I have also decided to paint up my two squads of Long Fangs to give my army some proper fire support. 2^nd Ed might have been very random (which is cool) in it’s assigned weaponry, but I like a little bit of order so have gone for 4 Heavy Bolters and 4 Missile Launchers, arming the Sergeant with the traditional Bolter. (Saving all of my random for my other “normal” Marines)

Still trying to work out what I submitted for the Gamer Challenges.. I bet one was about a background…

Points total (WYSIWYG only)

Long Fang Squad & 4 Missile Launchers, Bolter – 340pts

Long Fang Squad & 4 Heavy Bolters, Bolter – 220pts

Bonus Birthday Bjorn the Fell-Handed – 270pts

11 models (again, or 10 Infantry and a Dreadnought/Vehicle)

Maddix

Sergeant Zek scanned the treeline of the jungle, they could hear the sound of lasguns going off not far away, deeper in the patch of jungle his squad was currently watching. So far the attack hadn’t provoked any reactions. He looked across the dunes towards Diggs’ squad, hiding in an old wreck of a fighter jet, he could barely make out their shapes. ‘Gus…hey Gus’ he whispered under his breath, ‘bring that horn here’. Gus crawled along the trench and put the vox caster down next to his Sergeant. ‘Here you go Sir…but…Sir I thought the boss had called for total silence…Sir’. Zek looked at Gus as he turned the dials on the caster. ‘I’m very well aware of the order Private, but in case you haven’t already heard’, he pointed across the dunes towards the trees ‘it seems like the silent part of the mission is over’. As if on cue the night suddenly erupted as several explosions went off in the jungle. With his eyes still trained on the treeline, Zek put the horn to his mouth. ‘Diggs, Zek here, you in?’…A few seconds passed…’Diggs on the horn, ready steady feeling hot, any action coming our way?’ came the usually casual reply. ‘Not yet, but keep your men ready, I think they lit it up pretty good’. 

As they were talking, the sound of several explosions rolled across the dunes, the night sky suddenly went bright as if someone had set the jungle on fire, Zek smiled as he thought about the two brothers who most definitely were behind the explosions. The 101st. platoon held many veteran soldiers with many veteran skills. But few who could match the skills of “Dart” and his brother Rico, when it came to demolitions or accuracy with the missile launcher. It was said that “Dart” could thread a missile through the tiniest of holes. One of the guys from his squad said that he once saw him destroy a chaos dreadnought by shooting a missile into the barrel of its autocannon. Though that particular achievement is unconfirmed, to this day he’s still got more confirmed destroyed “cans” as he calls them, than any in the regiment. 

‘Keep on your toes, and keep the tank hot, we’re gonna need you on the flank if they come our way. Stay alert and wait for the light’, Zek handed the horn back to Gus as the caster spat out Diggs’ reply…’Roger that, tank hot, ready for the light, Diggs out’. 

Zek’s eyes narrowed as he continued to scan the treeline. Might just be the fire, but it looked like the shadows were moving…more explosions, he shielded his eyes against the light and as he looked back the entire treeline came to life. Dozens upon dozens of the alien creatures burst out the jungle into the dunes, running and scrambling to get away from the fires in the jungle, several of them more or less on fire as white hot flames licked across their carapace. 

‘We’re live, we’re live’ Zek screamed, ‘Heavy on the right flank and center, bring them in, bring them in, and get that melta blasting’. All around him guardsmen came out of their hiding places, lasguns firing following the Sergeant’s orders. Las beams cut across the dunes as the guardsmen cut off the aliens’ escape. The occasional burst of the melta supported by an expertly placed frag missile from the squad’s launcher, had the aliens scrambling to get out of the line of fire. The wave slowed and then turned right, running parallel to the jungle right into the hands of Diggs’ squad. 

Zek barely had time to appreciate their luck, the plan had worked out perfectly, as he looked back towards the jungle, which by now had turned into something of a raging inferno. Even out here they began to feel the heat, which even for a Tallarn or Catachan was something else. Zek scrambled down next to Gus, ‘Give us that horn mate, better make sure they got out before it became too hot’ he said, as he turned the dials. 

———————————————————————————

Another month gone, another entry ready. This time more troops (you really can’t have enough of those) but I took the effort down a notch, “only” doing two squads of 10 guardsmen each. Not a lot to say about these particular squads as they’re more or less identical to those of last month. Different sergeant and special weapons, but that’s about it. I did however try a new approach to the classical black and yellow stripes that I had done on the chainswords last month. I saw someone doing it like this somewhere on the interwebs, but I can’t for the life of me remember who or where. I really liked the idea when I saw it and decided then and there, to try it as soon as possible. I’m sure my result isn’t half as good as the one I saw, but as it often turns out I’m happy with my result. 

Storywise the troops I’m painting for this challenge are all part of the same platoon, the 101st. In regard to rules and setup of the army, I’m obviously painting enough squads to do two platoons, giving me more options for backup units. Originally I hoped to do two platoons of 30 guards. But for lack of different things, the right minis being the most obvious, I ended up with this setup of 5 squads in total. At some point in the future I hope to pick up the missing pieces to do the last squad, if or when availability will allow it.

This is the first time I’m painting an Imperial Guard army that isn’t Tallarns, and so far it’s been a real treat doing these Catachans. I decided early on that I would try some different approaches to this army, than what I’ve been used to with my Tallarns. The first of these was priming the minis with a light primer (Grey Seer) as opposed to the classic black I’ve always used for the Tallarns. A simple choice yes, but it gave me the chance to try some things with different paints and techniques that I’ve never done on my Tallarns. And that was basically part of the reason why I joined the challenge, having wanted to do something new for my Imperial Guard for a very long time and at the same time trying some new things in regards to techniques and colors. 

I’ve found that using the light primer and contrast paints have helped my job along quite nicely. When doing guardsmen, no matter the amount actually, I always use the assembly line approach, painting all the minis one step at a time, starting with fatigues, skin, guns and boots before doing with the smaller details as knives/grenades, accessories, hair and eyes and finishing with the camo spots on the pants. As always there’s obviously details I could have done better, had I had the time and skill. This month for one, I discovered that the camo spots I did on the first slice, weren’t done exactly as originally planned. It’s really a very small detail, and nobody will probably ever notice so I’m not gonna do anything towards correcting the first slice. But as I corrected the painting for this month’s slice, it did come out a little bit better imo. 2 x Battle line squad – 277 pts.:

– sergeant w. Chainsword, laspistol

– flamer, missile launcher

– sergeant w. Chainsword, laspistol

– melta gun, missile launcher 

Month 2 in the bag! I was getting a little worried as most of my work was done in the last couple weeks due to other hobby butterfly issues. But here we are again, and even with a few bonus models.

I have never painted a scheme and armour colour like this before so it was a fair amount of experimenting. As usual I used the codex to get an idea of what I wanted to aim for. I ended up blending a couple of the example paint jobs they had. I really liked the yellow helmet with black flames over the face and had to do that.

As usual these models had a million gems on them to paint which was… fun? I still haven’t managed to really nail those yet. I get some looking okay but I often find I want to improve them. Maybe by the end of this I’ll feel more comfortable with it.

Initially I was only going to do 3 Fire Dragons but some shame from having so few models this challenge initially has prompted me to add some more in. I got 6 done, and then moved onto Fuegan himself.

I mostly copied his paint job from the book, and looking around found surprisingly little other reference models to work with. He was honestly quite fun to paint and gave me some chances to try out new techniques with him. I originally wanted to do a banner (since he has one in the book) but couldn’t really find a way to get it done and didn’t want to run out of time and rush it. The freehand would be beyond my skills anyway!

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you in month 3.

Fire Dragon Squad [168pts]

Fuegan The Burning Lance [176pts]

Painters Pledge – New technique (lots and lots of blending!)

This month I’ve painted up seven Guardians on Jetbikes.  That includes the five in my original pledge, fixed up after some damage they suffered in the post, and converted with metal rider bodies, plus a couple more I put together because I enjoyed the look of the first ones so much.  I also managed to paint a Vyper Jetbike, bought with a GW voucher I got for my birthday last year (thanks Sis) but hadn’t managed to spend.  Amazing that the original model is still available years later – it must be one of the oldest models still in the current range and it still holds up.  

I went for my usual fairly quick painting method. I undercoated them with blue spray (white for models with unhelmeted faces), basecoated with base paints, recess washed with shades or a blue contrast/medium mix, did a quick tidy with the base colour, then one highlight.  I wet-blend the highlights on the larger areas so I can use a colour that’s a fair bit lighter than the base and still get a fairly smooth transition – trying to follow the method John Blanche showed me and a small group of other lucky punters in a GW store when I was 16 or 17.  Then I spent a bit of time trying to freehand a thorn pattern – I may come back and add some more markings if I get time.  

Rather than trying to get hold of flying stands, I’ve mounted them on oval bases with 5mm clear acrylic rod.  I’ve never really liked the flying stands, I feel that these bases tie in better with the other models, and this also let me vary the height and angle a bit more.  But it did mean a few running repairs were required after drilling the holes in the bottom of the jetbikes with the electric drill I usually use for DIY…

7 Guardians, 5 Jetbikes, 2 Jetbikes with Shuriken Shrieker Cannon (227 pts)

Vyper Jetbike, Twin Shuriken Catapults + Shuriken Shrieker Cannon (65 pts)

Total 292 points, 8 models (7 bikes + 1 vehicle counting as 18).  Subgoal: convert an entire squad.

Next month, I hope to paint either Swooping Hawks or Striking Scorpions.

The second month of the challenge has been quite difficult as Real Life has robbed me of a lot of time (also being the shortest month in the year does not help).

In my hubris I prepared up to 18 models to be painted this month, but in the end I have been barely able to paint the five ones of the second slice without any bonus. One of the reasons I chose the painter’s challenge was to get rid of the manufactorum mentality that has dominated my hobbying since the very beginning, and it seems to be harder than expected. Paradoxically, the lack of time and energy for painting this month has been a reminder of this fact.

So, this time I bring you five fire dragons. I painted several colour schemes extracted from old sources with little variations in order to fit with the rest of the army. I expected a better result than the one I ended up with, but the mentioned time constraints and my lack of ability with smooth clean surfaces sapped my efforts. At least I am getting used to painting gems…

The scenic bases are just like the ones of last month: Urban debris with battle remains and junk. Just like with the gems, I think I am grasping the use of pigments for weathering effects, like rust.

To summarize:

Slice 2

5 Fire Dragons = 140 points.

This is it for the second month. If you have reached this point after all my ramblings, I am most grateful. See you next month!

Viden

Hello again!

(This is pretty epic – I’ve cut it down significantly from what I was going to send).

This month I started painting up some of the actual troops.  Last month was an easy start, this month I think I’ve got a better idea of what I’m going to be doing for the remainder of the challenge.  The basic paint for the figures should be quicker now as I’m getting my head around the process.

This squad has several small conversions in it.  Because of the extremely limited range of figures available, I need to do these conversions both to have variety in the figures and to give me a better mix of equipment.  A lot of heads are being chopped off and replaced – either with heads from other figures in the range or with pirated space marine helmets. 

I’m really happy with how the helmets fit with the figures.  I had looked at other female heads from a variety of sources but the extreme exaggeration in both size and features makes it almost impossible.  I do have a small set of 1/35th scale heads that may work.

I have definitely decided on using the cast ram skull insignia on the left shoulder pads as the chapter emblem.  One of the figures that has a replaced left arm has my own version of this insignia on it.  This insignia being associated with psychers makes me think that this is a chapter commissioned by the inquisition – all having at least latent psychic ability even if not manifested much within the rank and file.  This means my right shoulder pads were free to be used only for squad markings (like the classic 2nd ed mk 7 marines). 

As an assault squad – I first started with crossed arrows but realised I couldn’t really get the whole squad looking consistent.  I then tried crossed white lines over the pad.  It looked ‘ok’ but the look wasn’t consistent with different line thickness.  In a moment of inspiration, I painted black within the thicker white lines. It looks a little WW2 German but I think it works and the white variation doesn’t look out of place.  

I am really happy with how the power swords turned out.  I had experimented with burning swords for a different group of figures earlier in the month and brought my experience from that to these swords.  VMC deep sea green is blended up the blade to nostalgia 88 hawk turquoise.  Then the turquoise mixed with white to edge highlight.  Then that highlight is glazed with warcolour green glaze.

Bases have a little more effort than previously.  I’ve got some tufts and I’m putting a little more effort into the placing of my foliage mix (tea mostly).  I hope they’re looking good.

Due to a challenge from elsewhere to paint a single leader figure,  I have also painted a bonus officer figure.  The insignia is a variation on the RT era veteran sergeant insignia and I’ve given her a degree of personal heraldry with the checks and red / green trim.  I also sculpted a half skirt behind her waist.  

I had taken the ‘sculpt a significant addition’ task as part of this challenge – yet despite the sheer number of conversions this is the most I’ve done in ‘sculpting’.  I hope it is enough to count, although I will try to do something more significant before the end of the challenge.

One last thing, due to the conversions I have made, this squad has lost a bolter.  Being an assault squad I’m happy with this.

I’m not sure yet which squad I will be doing for next month.

Assault combat squad – needs conversions: 150

3 power swords. 18

2 bolt guns 6 1 bolt gun 3

2 Power fist 20

Slice 3 – 194 points  191 points

One pic attached – but if I get better pictures I’ll send them before the end of the month.

Welcome back dear mutants for the second slice of the challenge! How are the crab claws? Envenomed and hungering for the flesh of the weak I imagine? Excellent! Come and see how the forces of Chaos have waxed strong since last we spoke…

This month I have completed the first subgoal I had set myself for this challenge: namely creating my own special character! I needed to create stats, rules, points and a model for this dark creature and I am very proud to present to you Urien Shur, Virtuoso of Agony! Urien will in fact be leading my force and boy oh boy is he one bad mother. If you want to read all about Urien Shur, I have provided the rules and a description below so that you too can wreak pain and fear throughout the galaxy and play as Urien himself!

Alongside Urien Shur, we also have the cream of this Chaos Space Marine force. Four Emperor’s Children terminators stand by their master Urien and form the vile Chaos Lord’s bodyguard. We also have the respective leaders of the Nurgle and Tzeentch sections of this force present as well: “Septivus the Unwashed”, a particularly pungent sorcerer of Nurgle and “Umut the Seer” who is a wandering sorcerer of the Changer of Ways.

For my bonus entry this month, I have painted some absolutely beautiful Chaos Raiders from Knightmare Miniatures. These were a gift from my amazing partner over Christmas and I am so happy to add them to this force. These sculpts are based on some very early Rogue Trader depictions of traitor marines and they fit perfectly into the aesthetic of the force.

To be honest, I was very lucky to even finish the main slice this month as I was unexpectedly sent to hospital and have still been recovering and I’m aware that next month I’ll be having surgery as well and needing weeks of rest. Surely too much time spent in the presence of the lost and the damned I believe XD Anyway, wish me luck and I’ll see you next month. Cheerio!

MONTH TWO’S CONTRIBUTION:

“Urien Shur, Virtuoso of Agony”: Chaos Lord of Slaanesh armed with the Hand of Anahiti, a lightning claw, terminator armour, the Soul Flayer and the Scream of Slaanesh. 208pts

Four Chaos Space Marine Terminators: One reaper autocannon, one heavy flamer, two combi bolters, three power fists and one chain fist. 284 pts.

“Septivus the Unwashed”: Death Guard Sorcerer Champion with mark of Nurgle and force rod. 141pts

“Umut the Seer”: Thousand Sons Sorcerer Champion with mark of Tzeentch, force sword and power fist: 151pts

Five Emperor’s Children Chaos Space Marines: One with a missile launcher, one with a heavy bolter, three with bolters. 181pts

Subgoal completed: Build your own special character – stats, points, conversion and all.

Total points: 965

Total model count: 12

I really cut it close this month. I ran a multiplayer game of Frostgrave mid Februrary and spent the start of the month painting up a bunch of buildings for that, which left me little time for the Harlequins.  Luckily the comparative ease of their scheme made painting them fairly quick. As I mentioned last time the weapon, armour and basing are all things they had in common, so I started by painting those.  I found a cool bit of harlequin art online so used that to get the three core colours (pink, green, and turquoise) and wen with blue as the unifying colour.  The art also had a gold mask so I stuck with that for the squad. 

Harlequin Squad (6) 222pts
Hand Flamer, Powerfist, Pack Grenade Launcher
Power Axe, Shuriken Pistol
Chain Sword, Shuriken Pistol
Powerfist, Shuriken Pistol
Harlequin’s Kiss, Shuriken Pistol
Shuriken Pistol, Laspistol

Hello Dr V,

Gamers Challenge-Month 2

Sub goals- NA 

Models- 7

Points – 274 

Bonus models- 1 pts 29 

Total points 303

Total Models 8 

Month 2 has felt like an absolute marathon – even though I’ve only managed to paint 5 models!. I did paint a test ‘squad’ of three marines at the back end of 2022 to test the scheme and see whether I wanted to go down the Thousand Sons route for this challenge – and the three of them took me more than a month to paint. Trying to get 5 done in the same time has been a real challenge – I’ve had to make myself paint every day in Feb. Even so, the first batch of three models took me nearly three weeks to finish! At this point I was absolutely bricking myself as I thought I had another three models to paint and I had no chance of finishing them in just over a week. Thankfully I re-checked my original pledge and I’d actually only booked 5 – so I only had 2 more to complete. After really pushing myself I’ve managed to get all of them done. All of them are missing at least 1-2 stages on the volumetric highlights, but I will try and go back to them in Month 3 and lift them up a little bit more.

As with all the models I’ve done for this challenge they’re all based from Contrast Paints with additional edge and (for these marines) volumetric highting. I think this is where all the time has gone this month – one colour of edge highlighting on the armour took a good hour per model to complete. The good old Chaos marine trim has also been a right time sink and for some reason I also decided that the crackle paint on the bases needed edge highlighting as well!!! I have to admit that I’ve not really helped myself this month…

Anyway, pledge done, a squad of dusty automatons with a couple of heavy weapons to lay down some heavy firepower against the misguided lackeys of the false emperor!

Models Completed – Month 2

5 x Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines – 2 x bolters, 1 x flamer, 1 x heavy bolter, 1 x missile launcher (212 points)

Subgoals Completed

None in month 2.

Here’s to Month 3!!! Nice relaxing month with only three character models to paint so with any luck I’ll find the time to make a start on the scenic base subgoal.

Tom