On the table - Thousand Sons Sorcerer

I got most of the base colors down. Just need to do some highlighting and then we can wash the whole mini sepia. That is a magical step and really ties the room together, Dude. 

On the table - Something Old, Something New

One of the first posts on this blog (and for some reason, one of the most visited posts) is a post about Thousand Sons. I am in the long long process of adding to the squad with some new bits. I am starting with the Sorcerer before I start with the assembly line of the other 8 or 9 Marines.

I wish I had taken pictures of how the metal Marine started. I got the mini in a lot purchace and it was a piece of garbage. It was missing all the extra bits. No backpack or left arm and the head was deformed. Clearly, someone wanted to do a head swap and gave up. I don't blame them as t is hard to Dremel off a metal head. Fortunately, I have powerful Dremel 4000 with fancy attachments and the most important attachment... Skill. 

I finished the decapitation of the mini and carved out a space for the head. It was hard to make a space without ruining the cowl on the back of the neck of the mini. The pose is a little awkward but only at certain angles. 

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

Things are coming along with this giant project. It is hard to see but I have all of my base colors and most of the highlighting done. Really it is just detail work at this point. Unfortunately, that is the part that takes the longest time and is the most frustrating part. 

I am close to being done with the main body. The weapons and accessories may take a while though.

Completely Finished - Khorne Cultists 30 of 30

Finished at long last! Greg's little men will be seeing him again after almost a year apart. For the most part I am pleased with how they turned out. They make a nice big red blob, but each mini is unique in how they are painted. Even there are several of the monopose Cultists, I tried not to paint any two minis precisely the same. 

This was a giant project and it reminds me of why I don't take giant bits of my own work anymore. I used to buy two boxes of minis and get them all ready for painting at the same time only to get bored after 40 hours of work on them and they are not half finished. I get disheartened and bored with the project. I have learned to take smaller bites of no more than 5 minis. This way I can make progress in a week or so and feel accomplished. 

Slaanesh Chaos Lord Revisited

I felt like the Slaanesh Chaos Lord from earlier was missing something so I added a Possessed back pack to the mini. While it does not quite fit because of the angle of the back and the slenderness of the Dark Eldar frame, it does add a CSM feel to the mini and round it out a bit. 

Finished - Khorne Cultists 26 of 30

The penultimate lot of Cultists are finished and the final four are on the table. This is a rather appropriate time of year for the Final four but I don't follow football much. This project has been on my table for almost a year. I did not paint much from June of 2015 through Jan of 2016 and that accounts for most of it. It is still an unreasonable amount of time. 

Almost done though...

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

The magnets are in and the nut is glued into the bottom of the flyer. I got my basecoat down of Fenresian Grey and have started shading with Drakenhof Nightshade. I am having to do some of the painting piecemeal due to the complexity of the mini. 

I have also done some interesting conversions. I have the secondary weapons magnetized in such a way that I will be able to swap the secondary weapons out as needed. The downside is that because of the way that I chose to do it and a few other reasons (like breaking one of the cupolas on the side that holds drones when trying to pound in the nut on the bottom), I will have to glue the drone turrets on the side in place. I am a little sad as I won't be able to rotate them to shoot someone behind me but the benefits outweigh the losses. For instance, these rotating turrets always end up rubbing off the paint where they contact the cupola. That alone would bug me more than not being able to rotate the turrets.

Look closely at the bit at the top of the picture. The Ion Cannon comes standard on the Barracuda. I have ideas to increase the points cost and let it use the overcharge mode that lays down S8 AP3 templates. I also envisioned a "tank hunter" variant as I talked about in my previous post (and likely every post about this mini from here out). I loosely based this idea on the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, a plane that was built around the GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon, a big bad phallus if there ever was one.