Cadian 127th Regiment

Monday, 6 July 2009

Its been a while

It has been over just over a month since I actually posted anything, other than the odd comment on some of the blogs I follow, and for this I apologize. I've spent the past month mainly helping out a friend with some things, but I did find some time to carry on with my Emperor's Fist tank company, and I'm quite glad with the progress I made. Here are some WIP pics of what I've got done.

Sorry for the dodgy orientation of the pics, for whatever reason Blogger doesn't like using the same orientation as the Microsoft picture thing. I'll give a little description on the pics. The first pic is just when I was getting started on building the remaining tanks. I started off just cleaning up the pieces for the two sides of one tank, but then decided that I might as well remove all the side pieces from the sprues and clean them up in bulk. This leads on to the second picture which is of the piles of side parts, 24 pieces in all (2 pieces per side for anyone that hasnt built a Leman Russ before).

The next pic is of the track runners having been added to the right side sections of the tanks. I didn't take a picture of the left side as it looks pretty much the same. The next two pics are off the side sections with the outer piece glued on. I did also add an access door to each piece but didn't take a picture. Sorry. And the final picture is off the side sponson housings. I have deliberately left the bottom sections off. This is because I will be spray painting the complete tank, minus the sponson weapons which have been painted up already. I figured this would allow me to paint the weapons more easily. When I do come to spraying the tanks, the sponson housings will be blu-tacked in their positions on the side sections with the bottom part of the housing also blu-tacked in position.

So that is what I've got done in the past month. Doesn't seem a lot looking back on it, but it's the best I could manage with time constraints. Anyway I am now off to start building the main hull sections and turrets etc. Comments are as always appreciated.

Command Tank 611 "Auctorita" ("Power") - EFTC

Well I promised some pictures of another tank for my EFTC, and here they are. This tank is going to be the command tank for one of the squadrons. It's numerical designation is 611 and I've stuck with the name "Auctorita" (meaning Power), from the list of names I came up with way back near the beginning of my blog, here.

Anyway this little beasty is at about 90% complete. All that remains to be done is a wash of Devlan Mud over the gunner and storm bolter, apply the relevant transfers and then protect with matt varnish. Enough of what I haven't done, and actually some stuff about how I painted Auctorita.

I do have some WIP shots of this tank on this post. At this point I had already primed the tank and put the main colour of Orkhide Shade on. The main thing that I tried out on this tank was drybrushing the entire model with Bleached Bone. I'd seen this used on the Games Workshop website with their Emperor's Fist Company, and I wanted to give it a go to see the results myself. Overall I am very pleased with how it has come out. I think that it helps to give the tank a slightly warn look but also contrasts nicely against the relatively dark green armour.

The rest of the bits on the tank were done using my normal paint scheme, so Goblin Green for the light green areas, Snakebite Leather for the clothing and Boltgun Metal with Mithril Silver highlights for the metal. I used Bleached Bone for the inside of the top hatch as this helps to draw attention to the gunner when looking at the model. The red areas on the tank and on the HK missile were done with Mechrite Red. This will be a universal theme over all of my tanks - the red on the front panels as another indication of the regiment.

So that is the latest tank to be almost completed. The weather looks good for the next couple of days so I should be able to test out my spray gun and get the rest of these tanks started. Oh also for the squadron being commanded by Auctorita, none of the tanks will have a light green camo, the other 2 squadrons however will have spray gunned camo, which I hope will come out ok. Thanks for reading everyone, and as always comments and suggestions are appreciated. And now off to build a bed!

Presents

Well it's been a long time coming, but the majority of the things that I wanted to order have arrived.

The picture on the left is the stuff that I ordered from Gamers Warehouse which was nice and cheap, especially with the free postage discount I got. In my order was the new Guard Codex, which I've been dying to get my hands on, one new plastic Cadian Command Squad, the Citadel Spray Gun and 2 cans of propellant. This now means that I can crack on with the rest of my tanks, as the thought of painting the rest of them by hand was a bit daunting.

On that front as well though, expect to see some pics up soon of one of the squadron command tanks for my EFTC, Tank No. 611. I've tried something different to the rest of my tanks with this one, taken from a Games Workshop idea.

The picture on the right is of my new brushes. These are Winsor & Newton Galeria Short Handled Round brushes - bit of a mouthful that. The sizes from top to bottom are 00, 1, 2 and 3. I am still waiting on my no. 0 brush to be delivered as it was out of stock. I got these for a reasonable price off of Budget Art Supplies, and they were very helpful and agreed to send the out of stock item free of charge once it became available.

Other than the brush I'm just waiting on some Tamiya masking tape so that I can experiment with some camo schemes on the rest of my Emperor's Fist Company. Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to get much time to try out the new brushes for a while, as my fiancee's parents are up for the weekend and then I'm off to Wembley on sunday.

Thanks for reading and I apologize for my lack of posting recently.

Money Money Money

First blog in new house!

Well its taken a while, but I've finally got some free time in order to post something after the move. There are still the odd boxes sitting around but pretty much everything is where it needs to be. Still waiting for our new bed to be delivered which is annoying but bearable.

As those of you who have moved house before can imagine I've had pretty much no time to do any painting or anything. Instead its been a case of eBaying certain things that I'd put aside before the move - this includes some of my tanks!

And so I am selling 2 Chimera's, a Leman Russ Exterminator and a converted Leman Russ Vanquisher. These can all be found under my eBay alias of chollyoake, if anyone wants to pick up some models. These sales are to fund the purchase of some Winsor & Newton brushes, a spray gun, some Tamiya masking tape, the new Guard codex obviously, some new command squads and perhaps a battleforce. Hope these things sell well.

As a little addition, here are the links to the items:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=130304565767

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=130304566239

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=130304566977

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=130304567725

Update

Well due to packing everything up other the past few weeks I have not been able to do any painting or building at all. This means that I've been spending the past few days with absolutely nothing to do other than play on my PS3 and rediscover how hard playing America's Army online is.

I have however found a nice site that do discount Warhammer stuff. I don't know if any of you have used it before but its the Warhammer Store. Whilst searching for some of the 20 man Cadian box sets (as GW are now only selling the 10 man squads) I came across this site. They still have the 20 man boxes in stock, and they are pricing them at £14.96, with £2.99 P&P to the UK. You do however get free postage if you spend over £25, so I may be grabbing a couple of these boxes in the near future just to bolster my forces once everything else is painted.

I hope to get back to painting as soon as possible after the move so stay tuned for an update sometime after the 20th of this month. Cheers.

On The Move

Things around the home have been just a little bit hectic recently. This is done to the fact that the misses and I are moving home. As of today we are still waiting on hearing back from the letting agency about the place we wan't, but so far so good (touch wood). We are moving from our current 2 bed terrace in Derby, where our landlord is charging a high (ish) rent to a 3 bed semi in Stoke-on-Trent which is cheaper per month. This move isn't just because of the rental price but also because my other half has got a new job in Stoke (more money for her to spend on me :) ).

As those of you who have moved house before know, it can be a stressful time and quite frustrating when you realise how much crap you've got to box up. Luckily I think my current project is being spared the packing box for a few more weeks. Now I just have to get around to actually continuing with it.

The current project at the moment is 30 guardsmen - including Sgt, Vox, Special weapons. Here are some pics of this WIP. Although there are only 27 (I think) in the pic below, rest assured that I am working on 30 men - I'm not going crazy (yet!), the other 3 are yet to be glued to their bases.

As you can see, I've already got started. All of the legs were removed from their sprues and glued to the bases a while ago, so I've had to go along and remove all the mold lines along with the basecoat. Oh well. I've then painted them in a bit of a random order. Some of the models have got torsos and have already been painted up whereas others havent had certain areas painted. I'll try and explain the paint used etc. My basic idea for all of my Guardsmen is Goblin Green armour and Snakebite Leather clothing.

So the plan is to give all the trousers some light coats of Snakebite Leather. Then to do the boot fronts in Goblin Green, with a Camo Green highlight, and the boots themselves in Chaos Black. Once I've done this I'll be gluing the torsos onto the bodies and will begin painting on that.

These next pics are just of my current collection of things to do etc. The left hand pic is just my pile of boxes containing stil on sprue models. The box underneath the tank company contains my WFB Empire army - yet another giant army that will take ages to paint all the infantry. The middle pic is one of the shelves next to my painting station. Again odd boxes of sprues, Space Marine Vets and unfinished models. And the picture on the right is of another shelf with my on hold Leman Russ' for my tank company, some Empire models and some spray paint etc. As well as a squad of Space Marines.

Finally just because I was bored with my camera, is a photo of my left leg just below the knee (knee at top of pic). This lovely bruise and scrape was earnt on Sunday at football - think it's from a strikers studs. Just thought I'd share that with you all :). Thanks for reading!

Fire Support Squad - Heavy Bolters

Continuing in my strange way of actually posting some completed models here is my first Fire Support Squad consisting of 3 heavy bolters. A second FS Squad of autocannons is in the pipeline. So here is a photo of the entire squad.

I'll now try to explain each model, starting with the team on the right. These team was done to try and look like they had basically just set up their weapon and hadn't had a chance to fully prepare it before engaging the enemy - so the gun shield is off and their pack has just been kind off thrown down. This idea also works with the loader firing off his lasgun in support.

And onto the second team. This is the one on the left of the main picture. Here I just went for a simple plan and just had the loader pointing out targets as the hapless guy on the gun tries to mow them down (with his useless BS3).

And the last team is the one in the middle of the main pic. I tried using an idea I saw in White Dwarf when the plastic Cadians first came out of trying to model a guardsman lying down. It sort of worked, although the pose is not really near to how a real person would be when prone. Anyway, this team was done so it looks like the gunner is running back to engage the enemy having been away from his post (tut tut).

I thought I'd try and give an insight into how I painted these models as well, everything was basecoated with Skull White spray to start. To begin with I'll explain the base. This was painted with Graveyard Earth. Some PVA glue was applied and modelling flock added. This on its own looks a bit lame though. So some more Graveyard Earth was applied to add variations in colour - to look like mud. Small blobs of PVA were placed around the base randomly and static grass was added - although certain pics don't really show this.

The heavy bolters themselves were painted with Goblin Green with a Camo Green highlight for the body of the gun and Boltgun Metal for the metal areas. The stand was painted with Chaos Black before Boltgun Metal was drybrushed over it. The ammo in the feeds was painted with Codex Grey with a highlight of Boltgun Metal. The ammo clips were painted with Red Gore.

The lasguns were painted in the same way as the heavy bolters, except that Mithril Silver was used for the barrels, magazines and also the stock ends. A highlight of Codex Grey was also applied on the stocks.

Now onto the guardsman. The clothes for these guys were done with Snakebite Leather, no additional layers or highlights were adde. Any green areas were done with Goblin Green and then a Camo Green highlight. The flesh is eithe Elf Flesh or Tallarn flesh. Once this was done everything was given a wash with Devlan Mud.

Thanks for reading guys. Oh and by the way definitely check out Admiral Drax' 100th blog to see the might of a Cadian regiment.

Red Angel Sentinels

When I decided the other week to try and put the finishing touches to a few of my tanks I also thought that this would be a good chance to finish two Cadian pattern sentinels that had been collecting dust - no change here I'm afraid.

So now that I had this brilliant idea to get them done I sat about staring at the little walkers for a while. And I came to the conclusion that whilst I could add some little details and do a bit of touch up painting here and there, I couldn't be bothered to repaint pretty much the whole of the upper section of the crew compartment on both walkers - this had become quite badly chipped. Instead I'm going to leave it how it is as it kinda pulls off looking worn and battered rather than poorly painted. On one of the sentinels I am yet to paint and attach the pack/las pistol that go on the side of the crew compartment.

With that painting dilemma out of the way, I went about adding the Red Angel marking to the side of each sentinel - this is a transfer from the Leman Russ sheet. I'm trying to decide if I should just add single numbers to the sentinels or use roman numeral markings. Any personal preferences will help me gauge what will look better. I also repainted the lamp on the front in Iyanden Darksun. I did also try to improve the bases a little bit by adding some patchy muddy areas and some static grass. The bases still look a bit bare, but I'm hoping to add some debris in the form of a weapon or body. Now to decide which enemy of the Imperium I dislike the most. I suppose as they are Cadians it should be Chaos Space Marines or Daemons. Decisions decisions.

So without further ado here are Red Angel 1 and 2 - simplest way of marking them so far. Red Angel 1 first. Sorry about the amount of random stuff in the pictures - haven't got round to reinstalling Photoshop since the Pc rebuild.

The next post will be my completed Heavy Bolter squad. Comments are welcome as always.

Mortar Support Squad

Well I've finally managed to finish the mortar squad. Be prepared for an abundance of posts over the next couple of days - including a completed heavy bolter squad and several Sentinels.

I'll start this post off with a picture of all 3 of the mortars.

I'll start off by explaining the team on the right hand side of the above picture. Starting with a picture of the front of the team I've tried modelling one of the mortar rounds actually being fired. I think it looks ok, but may have been better if the round was further in the tube. This is the only picture of this team that partially shows my attempt at making skin look a bit better. The trooper on the left (as you look at the picture) has had a layer of Tallarn Flesh, followed by a Devlan Mud wash. Elf Flesh and then Rotting Flesh were then drybrushed onto the model. This was then finished off with a very light wash of Ogryn Flesh.

Next we have a picture of the side of the team, sort of showing the one handed sight I created. I used the sight from the heavy weapon sprue placed on top of the hand with trigger for the missile launcher. This was glued to the arm and shoulder that originally had a hand holding a laspistol from the Cadian sprue.

A shot showing the back of the models. Everything was given a wash of Devlan Mud.

Finally for this team, here is a picture looking down on the team, showing the layout of the models on the base.

Ok onwards. Now to start on the second team, which is the one in the middle of the main picture. Here is a shot of the front of the team.

A picture of one side of the team. This picture shows the teams lasguns propped up against an ammunition crate while they bombard the Emperor's enemies from afar.

The back of the team, again showing the lasguns and aummunition waiting to be fired.

The other side of the team. The crate that the lasguns are leaning on is from ForgeWorld.

And last but not least for this team, a photo showing the layout on the base. Once again everything got a wash of Devlan Mud to "dirty" the models up a bit.

And here is the last team of the squad. I think that the two poses of the troopers work well together - with one really shouting things out and the other preparing additional rounds and spotting where previous rounds fell.

Here is a side shot showing the loader placing a round into the tube.

A quick shot of the back of the team - showing another ForgeWorld crate. As with the other teams this one was given a wash with Devlan Mud. Also I used Camo Green to highlight the Goblin Green sections of the models.

The other side of the team. These guys obviously aren't bothered where they keep their ammo lying as long as its within reach.

And the final picture of this post is of the team from above, once again showing the layout of the models.

And there you have it. One Mortar Support squad finally completed. Think I need to work on my speed skills. Comments as always are appreciated.

Oh one final thing. Has anyone had any experience of using the GW Spray Gun? I was looking at getting one in order to quicken up my completion of some tank models etc, but wanted to find out if anyone has any good or bad experiences with it. Thanks.

Mortar Squad Update

As promised here are a couple fo pics of one of the Mortar teams awaiting completion.

The first picture is just showing the team from an angle at the front (with my nearly complete sentinels in the background).

The second picture is obviously a top down view. The crate at the front is just from the Imperial Guard tank accesory sprue whereas the one at the back is from ForgeWorld. I'm debating on if I want to add some sort of markings to my FW crates, maybe a serial number.

This picture also shows the extra ammunition laid out behind the tube. I've got enough spare bits to include several extra rounds on each base. These provided a welcome distraction from painting lasguns. Annoyingly the base hasn't shown up very well, but I still have to add some static grass. Other than that I need to add 2 lasguns leaning against the back crate, finish off the heads and give pretty much everything a wash of Devlan Mud. Now to motivate myself to complete these guys.

- One other thing guys, has anyone used the Games Workshop spray gun? And if you have is it any good. Basically I'm looking at getting a cheap (ish) spray gun so I can complete my Emperor's Fist tank company a bit quicker and also to make the camo schemes easier to apply. Thanks in advance for any comments.

- Cadian 127th