By the order in which I chose my slices, you can tell I went with what I was excited to work on, because I really should’ve started with the largest slice. Regardless, I lulled myself into a false sense of security with five models last month, and transitioned into month two with a whopping ten Eldar! At least the biggest slice is over. 

Since I’m addicted to using paint handles, and I only own five, I decided that I’d paint these citizen soldiers in batches of five. Not a bad idea, I thought, until January 20th rolled around and I had only finished my first five! Still, they’re done, and while there are some things I’d have liked to put more time into, I’m actually pretty happy with how these turned out. I’m going for a new color scheme for my craftworld models going forward, and this is a good first draft. 

The armor was painted with the modern Citadel Incubi Darkness, and highlighted with a 50/50 mix of Incubi Darkness and the old hex-pot Hawk Turquoise, followed by an edge highlight of pure Hawk Turquoise. The helmets and weapons were painted using the paint scheme I’m going to mimic on my Howling Banshees in month three, which is 50/50 Snakebite Leather and Bleached Bone as a base coat, then a little bit of Skull White added in for a highlight, and finally just some Skull White on the edges (all old hex pot paints). 

Speaking of Bleached Bone, my venerable hex pot of Bleached Bone may have finally bitten the dust, and replacements have been hard to come by. I don’t know if it’s just my pot, but the old Bleached Bone is a richer, deeper, cream color than Coat D’Arms or even Warcolours replicated, which tend to be duller. I searched high and low for a good replacement, and finally found it in Scale 75’s “War Front” range (Camo Top Lights SW-22). If anyone out there has a hex pot of Bleached Bone and wants to help me confirm my findings, I wouldn’t mind a comparison between it and Coat D’Arms’ Bone, and Warcolours’ Bleached Bone to see if I’m crazy or not.

Month 2 Army List Breakdown:10 Guardians – 140pts

Mesh armor, shuriken catapults

Until next time, check out my hobbying at www.onarollgames.com!

Hello again.

Slice 2:
Tactical combat squad – 150
Flamer, Sergeant with Power sword 15
Chaplain Veteran plasma pistol 58
223

I am sorry, from the depth of my very soul!  It’s totally my fault!  I’ve messed up the composition of my slices!  

I’ve been getting all my combat squad leaders mixed up.  A chainsword last month,  a power sword this month.  It will all be correct by the end, in the meantime I beg all of you for your forgiveness 😦

With no further ado!  Here is my second entry: Since the far distant days of 1987 the traditional space marine squad has had a flamer and a missile launcher, and who am I to fight such a tradition!  These 5 marines complete the first of these squads.  I expect these to be the very heart of this army.  A strong core of brothers to take on all comers.

In addition I include my force commander.  As this is intended only as a small task force, it is being lead by the companies’ chaplain in all his righteousness.  Not overly powerful, but able to aid the brethren on the front line, and wipe out the odd threat with a well aimed plasma pistol.  While I was a bit of a herohammer player back in the days of 2nd this feels to be much more in keeping with a competent marine taskforce.

While not totally happy with paint jobs (especially one of the insignia needs a little more work), I will refrain from complaining.  I am so very happy that I am getting marines painted for the first time since 1993. 

First pic front view, Second pic side view, Third pic – both slices together.

“Make your peace with the Emperor, guardsman. Our death is upon us.”

Sergeant Raphael pushed him deeper into the shadows of the shelter. It would not be enough to save them when the firestorm arrived, and the enemy was close. Raphael could hear them baying for blood at the end of the street. It was only a matter of time.

The guardsman squatted down in the ash and adjusted the fit of his rebreather. Like everything else in this world, the mask was failing. Poisonous fumes were already diffusing through the filter. “God-Emperor, forgive Your servant his sins, and remember me in my weakness…”

The first berserker charged out of the smoke haze. Raphael bared his chiropterous fangs as he slipped from the entranceway, folding the traitor over with a blow from his chainsword. The spinning teeth bit deeply, but the berserker straightened and lashed out, backhanding Raphael into the wall of the shelter. The disruption field of the traitor’s fist shattered Raphael’s armour, cracking its power core. At once, the displays in his helmet went dark, and he could feel excruciating heat as plasma began to leak against his back. The wall collapsed and Raphael fell to his knees under the deadweight of his armour.

Inside, the guardsman fumbled in desperation for a weapon, finding only a jagged length of shrapnel in the debris. Its edges were still glowing from the violence of its creation. “I swear to remain steadfast and true in my loyalty, and may the darkness claim my soul if I prove unworthy…”

Raphael staggered to his feet as the berserker pulled the dead chainsword from the ruin of its armour. “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!” it bellowed, just as the guardsman charged from the shadows of the shelter.

A blistering stream of green tracers cut the berserker down, engulfing its form in ghostly fire. Three apparitions rode out of the storm and swept down the street, sowing destruction in their wake. Their livery was death, and darkness and hungry flames. One of them skidded to a halt in front of Raphael, judging him with eyes that fumed with ghastly necropotence.

“…Join the Legion…”

Raphael turned to the guardsman, but there was only ash where he once stood. As the plasma breach pierced his body, Raphael reached out to grasp the gauntlet being offered to him.

This month I completed the first of six Legion of the Damned bikes. They were all ebay rescue projects, which took much longer to restore than I had originally bargained for! I have used the same spot colours that I used on my Commander last month (purple and green), whilst introducing some very unhealthy looking flesh on the sergeant’s face. The amount of free-hand I had to do this month was a little crazy, but it was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed painting the “motion trackers” on the bikes, which I have never really attempted before in all these years. Hopefully, I can find some time during the challenge to finish the other three bikes off as a bonus. There is also the issue of that brave guardsman…

Bike Squadron with Mk 1 plasma gun, melta-gun and powersword: 202 points

Good morning,

Slice 1 finished, though a month late. There have been some challenges with this one. A wet and busy December combined with a wind related priming disaster.

This slice consists of 4 Necron Warriors and 1 Scarab, for a total of 206 points. There are no equipment choices to make with these guys. Warriors and scarabs are the backbone of the Necron army, and this little chunk gives me my first playable squad; as well as helping me to settle on a paint scheme before tackling the more challenging Lord and Destroyer figures. The idea is to have different shoulder pad colours for different squads, but we’ll see how that goes.

Blog link here:

https://tokenresistance.co.uk/?p=836

Dear Second Ed. Fans,

Next up I have painted 5 classic wraithguard. These awesome models were given to me by a friend a couple of years ago so it was good to get them painted up. I painted them the same way as I painted my guardians in the last challenge and they weren’t too hard, but there are a lot of gems! I am also looking forward to a break from edge highlighting after the challenge is over! Edge highlighting up to white is the only way to get them to really pop in the classic Mike McVey style though…so I guess it has to be done. 

I used a lot of decals for the icons, some classic and some from the newer eldar transfer sheets. I was going to paint flames on the guns but ran out of time to do it properly so I just used some random warning symbols (I assume?) from the newer eldar decal sheets instead. 

I am looking forward to the next month which has a RED theme – and what could be more 1990s than that?!

Until then….!

ROLLING TOTAL:

Month 1: 2x Vyper Jetbikes……..160 points

Month 2: 5x Wraithguard ……..175 points

TOTAL SO FAR: 335 points

Blog link: https://classic40k.com/2022/01/31/3rd-second-ed-painting-challenge-month-2-wraithguard/ 

Month 2, the force is growing slowly. As far as I can recall I would almost always bring a couple of these to battle, long range and hard hitting. 

3 Dark reapers 201pMauruin finished giving the orders, they where short and to the point. The leader of the small squad stood motionless before him and, as expected, said nothing. The path of the reaper was a bit of a mystery to the Farseer, why would one willingly choose it? Long periodss of deathly silence interupted by the thunder of war.  The precise tool of death they provided was one that was of need however, much to often it seemed, and today he was thankful for it. The masked figure gave a short nod and left. Soon there would be blood.  

Month Two down! Partially… kind of…

My painting journey this month became a comedy of errors/frustrations, I was able to finish out the Infantry squad with little issue to start with, but I lost a week to overtime during a heavy work schedule. This was followed by getting ill during the following weekend (who doesn’t love recovering in time for work Monday, lol), which left only one week to knock out the heavy weapon squad. I was able to finish getting to the wash phase but still lacked the time to place all the pieces together and properly do the basing. 

Dropping the heavy bolters, I decided to add the static grass and Valhallan Blizzard to the Infantry squad to hand in something, only to find the Valhallan Blizzard’s pot was cracked open just enough to dry the whole thing out… it’s almost as if these pots are made to be difficult… Anyways here is my infantry squad, minus the snow (to be added later), I was happy with the muzzle burn on the flamer nozzles and the chimera backpack guardsman looks great. I have a few more backpacks and valhallans that I butchered to put plastic commlinks/voxcasters on years ago, so this conversion will be popping up more.

I’ll have to place the Heavy bolters on the menu for month 3, they’re nearing completion but still lacking the finishing touches

I’ll pots these guys and the missing squad up to my instagram once I get them finished in the next week

https://www.instagram.com/valhallan_winter/

Completed- Month 2

·      Infantry Squad Sgt [Handflamer, Sword], Flamer  114pts

Oh hello Again!

The backbone of a Genestealer Cult must be the Stealers themselves. Usually only a few Genestealers would be part of a growing cult, but once it is ripe to overturn the local powers there would probably be quite a large inner brood. I have chosen to paint a 12 strong brood since it is the maximum size, I will probably never need more in a 2nd edition army and since I already have 24 painted for Space Hulk I would say I am set for life here.

I have chosen to be a Little bit creative with their paint schemes, after all they turned out to be a brood of Chaos initiated Genestealers. I don’t know how well it all went, some look great (in my own oppinion) while others probably could use a touch up. But such is life, especially since I am only minutes from this months deadline.

Pic is a bit uninspired too, but Next month I can hopefully take revenge with a more interesting set up.

http://deathworldadventures.blogspot.com/ is my usual playing ground and I will also document my progress there along with this challenge.

12 Genestealer Brood @ 336 Pts

Hello there,

here is my second months work. I have painted a Chaos Terminator with Reaper Assault Cannon and Power Fist (84 points) and four Khorne Berserkers, one of which has two Bolt Pistols (37 points) and three with a Bolt Pistol and Chainaxe each (111 points). As a bonus I did an even older Khorne Berserker – the monopose plastic version – for another 37 points. So this months total is 269 points.

Despite the Berserkers still being the “current” models, to me they are very much oldschool. I came into the hobby around the time these were released back in March 1999 – I have provided a picture of my White Dwarf from back then, as well as one of the models that inspired the colour scheme I am using for this army. Funnily enough the very models I built back then are the ones I have just now finished painting (with some stripping inbetween) – it took not even 23 years!

This month was stressful overall, and painting was a chore from time to time – but once again I made the deadline. I hope to finish with enough time to do a proper write-up one day… but it is not this day!

Hi Dr TV 

Just barely finishing on time this month.  Thanks for holding this juggernaut together.

“Scout Squad Calogrant adds some important anti-character firepower to my ever-growing 2nd edition army.  With the ability to infiltrate anywhere on the board after deployment has occurred, their scout  special ability will help get their powerful needle sniper rifles into position to do the most damage.  The Needle rifles automatically wound against most humanoid targets regardless of their toughness, which will be a huge help against the enemy’s most durable units.  In my last game against the Wachtmeister a squad of my marines got shredded in close combat by some nasty Ogryns.  Using these infiltrated snipers to eliminate high toughness targets like those Ogryns before they even get near my marines will be very helpful in future battles.  The models were very fun to paint, the metal miniatures of 2nd edition contain so much rich detail to pick out.  A squad of these scouts always feels like painting 5 characters at once.  My photo was taken on the fly this month, Dr TV is a hardliner on those deadlines.  For better pictures of my models and updates on my other projects, check out my blog at 1st Legion Chronicles.  Thanks to Dr The Viking and all the challenge participants, this wild ride is always a joy to be on.”

Dear Dr The Viking,

Cutting it fine this month – work and a slight lack of motivation to work on the Dire Avengers has meant I’ve been pushed to get everything done!

However, it’s come together in the end, so here’s the official Tranche 2 of my challenge entry – five Dire Avengers and a scatter laser and crew. This actually marks the largest number of models I’ve panted in a month for this either this or the last challenge – beating the previous best of 6!!! Ah, thank Khaine Eldar are expensive in 2nd Ed!!! Anyway, this clocks in at a mighty 175 points all told.

The scatter laser and crew I finished off really quickly at the start of January. I think it was the joy of painting the most 1980s model – I even found myself browsing Oakley M-Frames on eBay after he was done! I think it helped that I’ve got my recipe for the dark blue I’m using as part of the Iyanden scheme down after the Dreadnought, so even the thought of attempting it on the larger areas of the weapons platform wasn’t particularly daunting. I even found myself doing a bit of stippling for the highlights, as I found that a bit easier to get them placed exactly where I wanted them.

The Dire Avengers were a bit of a contrast! I’d not managed to get a test model done, so I really wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to go with the recipe. I really wanted them to be dark – but not just a copy of the Iyanden blue I’d been using, that gets highlighted into teal. I think it was this that meant I kept delaying and delaying, until the impending deadline forced me to sit down and actually put paint on models rather than thinking about it!!! This is what I love about these challenges – if it wasn’t for this they’d still be sat in primer and I’d have painted something else instead! Anyway, after doing a bit of fiddling back and forth with a few options I found one I was happy with and got going. Not 100% happy with the armour panels, I think they need to go a bit lighter at the highlights, I might go back when I get some more time! I also ran out of time to get some decals on the helmets and although the crests are pure yellow to tie in with their Iyanden brethren, I may go back and add the iconic red sections to those at some stage!!!

Anyway, only 6 models next month – my first guardian squad and Fuegan. Guardians should be fine, I have their recipes down – but hopefully Fuegan won’t have me over thinking again as I’ve no idea where to start with his armour!!!

Thanks,

Tom