Well, sort of. This is a very badly painted model, indeed a conversion, that could be described better as a proof of concept... Well. What happens if a Marine didnt want to carry his weaponry? And here he is. I'm sure it will have die hard 40K'er shouting heresy!! But. .. What I really wanted to talk about was the new White Dwarf. In a fit of boredom last week I went and purchased issue 320, and within about a minute I wanted to spend £40.. I HATE magazines. They are just huge big want lists whenever I buy one. I really should learn. Interesting though is the selection of LOTR miniatures that are now being added to the range. You can see that finally the LOTR design staff have been moved back onto BGIME as some of the models comming out are really nice. Must resist though... Its not as if I've not got anything to paint at the moment.

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I may have mentioned that the other week Reuben ordered a Gandalf from Games Workshop. We nipped up to get this one evening, and Zephan blew his top in the shop because he wanted a ‘goodies bike’ to go with his baddies bike (the orc) that he got a week or so ago. This was a bit out of character for him, so we didn’t succumb to his yells but when the dust had settled let him know he could buy one when he got his pocket money. Today was the big day, so we went to get one.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned before about what a good deal you get in Games Workshops shops. Although collecting and painting the figures can be quite expensive, the advice in the shop is second to none. You can leave your kids (if they are over 11) in the shop all afternoon if you want, for free. You can book and play on the tables (as long as your miniatures are mounted and painted) And you can go there in the evenings for games. Not to mention training on how to play and how to paint. All around you get quite a good deal.

So there in the shop one of the staff was patiently describing the merits of Space Marines to my 4 year old. He spent a good 10 minutes and I was really impressed at his patience. When I could get a word in edgeways I asked about the Captain Sicarius model that was released that day, and the guy went and found none on the shelves. This was a special edition model, which was made to commemorate their new Website/Campaign the Fall of Medusa, which starts about now. He went to check his order book to see if there were any spare and in the end he let me have one that had been ordered by one of the staff in the store. Now I thought this was really above and beyond.. I’ve respected the staff in the stores for a long time, and this really was a great experience, continuing on from the way he was treating my little boy.
So thumbs up Games Workshop! Well done. Here’s Sicarius, which I have mounted, but will take some time painting at a later date to commemorate the staff member who gave his up for me. Sorry about the picture quality.

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When the family were in Games Workshop at the weekend, while Roo was ordering his Gandalf, Zed decided that he wanted to buy something. Of course this was a bit of a dilemma, because what do you buy a 4 year old that he can make himself?

Finally we came across an orc bike (sorry don't know the correct term for it) which was a plastic model. Zed carefully cut the pieces from the sprue and helped glueing it all together. But then he asked me to paint it for him. I didn't really know where to start, but a dry brush over the unercoat of various shades of metallic paint produced the results shown. I was really happy with the outcome, especially as it took less than 10 minutes to paint, and so was zed.

Of course I now have to do the Orc to ride it - which I'll wager will take me a lot longer.

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My mate Paul came around the other night. Now Paul is the chap that I used to do this painting lark with 15 years ago. After the kids went to bed we played the first two scenarios from the Macragge pack. I think thats what has given me the encouragement to get all of these finished, as I enjoyed it but felt bad that I was playing with some unpainted stuff - silly really as you only use them as counters. Heres my version of Lieutenant Varras. He seems to have lost his chin on my version, must have been some horrible battle wound.

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Heres the finished Biovore, with sanded and inked base with some static grass. Looking at it now it's a bit dusty, that was due to sanding off the polyfillered base. But a brief brush with a big paint brush will clean that off. Does a Biovore have eyes? They are just painted red in the manual, so I'm not sure what to do with this one.

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Well, I've been at it again, buying something else before I have finished painting my other stuff. I bought this metal Biovore miniature. it was quite a bargain actually, as you get a few spore mines with it as well for the price, and it was surprisingly easy for me to put it together, but i did pin it while gluing, - something that I don't often have success with. I purposely put the fist so that it would touch the floor outside the base as I thought that was a nice effect to show how huge the beast was. I finished it last night, but the picture here just shows what it looked like before last night - like most of the macragge set - blood red with chestnut ink wash, and turquoise with a light blue lining. It looks much better than this picture now, but I'll save that for another day.

Had a good night of miniature preparation again tonight. I polyfiller'd the bases of all my models from last night (I fill the underside of the base with polyfiller, and then sand it flat - this gives the figure - especially plastic ones, a bit more weight when playing with them.) and then I removed all of my remaining marines (8) and genestealers (5) from their sprues, cleared their flash, washed them and mounted them, and sprayed them with undercoat - that was a boring but necessary job.

I would like to think I'd get these models finished by the end of the week - but I've got other commitments. I do feel I'm on a roll though at the mo.

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Well, with Roo having chicken pox I've been around the house more, so have taken up painting again for a while. My Macragge set is coming leaps and bounds. I've undercoated the whole of the crash pieces, and finished the main cockpit - which you can see in the picture, although I'm not overly happy with the sandy colour of the base (vermine brown with a brown ink wash)
You already saw my termagant, which apart from having a large surface area, are pretty simple to pain. I added an extra sky blue highlight to the hawk turquoise drybrushing of the armour, which brightens it up, but when I was batchpainting the others, I changed techniques to lining, as opposed to just drybrushing, as thats what it looks like theyve done on some of the pictures in the book from the set. So apart from a standard marine and a rocket launcher dude, the rest of the marines are still on the sprues. I have 2 more termagants to mount and undercoat, and 2 ready for final painting. I have 1 genestealer, that you've seen, finished, 4 more on the sprue, and all of the other tyranid and marine equipment undercoated and ready for final painting. So I've got a lot to do, but I'm determined to get the complete set finished because: 1, its a result and 2 I have to play it with Roo....

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Ok - so I lost issue 53. Dunno where it went - so I cant blog it. But in the mean time I started painting my gene stealers.. (if thats what they are..) The instructions say to paint with chaos black - so out to the garage and start to spray, and the paint runs out. Ho hum. After a couple of days, got some more black... Sprayed them again. Then I have to drybrush them with Hawk Turquoise - thats ok. Looks quite good. Then all you seem to have to do is paint the arms and legs with blood red. So I did - and this was the result. Rubbish huh. Thats the end of this story.

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I'm hoping that I can post 2 photos to the blog at once. I'm using flickr to host the photos, and the email feature makes the picture posting easier.

So hopefully you can see that I have started the construction of my macragge set. Well, just a couple of marines. The shots dont really look as good as the figures do in real life, but I have only under and basecoated them. I'm following the color guide in this months white dwarf which is revisiting marines due to the new set. If the other picture shows, you'll see some genestealers and other nasties, which are also in the set. This is supposed to be clip together and I can see why, as all I have done is cut them off the sprues and they are assembled without glue - I just wanted to see how easy it was. I need to wash the plastic before I undercoat them, but I have purchased the new paints.

Hmm - a lot of purchasing and not a lot of painting. oh well. makes a change from urukhai though.

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The new issue of White Dwarf (298) arrived this morning, and for the
first time in a while I had time to read it from cover to cover - I
usually just read the LOTR section.. It depressed me. I Subscribed to
it last year - as I had missed a few issues of the Lord of the Rings
supplement in it. This time it had a section on Space marines. IT was
these that got me into painting years ago - as I thought the marines
were an excellent idea. I had recently seen Aliens and loved the idea
of the marines. I note now that Games Workshop are selling a set of
Ultra Marines in a boxed set "The Battle for Macragge" AND I WANT IT..
Its got some Tyranids in the set as well, which I'm sure are "I cant
believe they're not Geiger's aliens." Looking over all of the stuff I
have that isnt painted depresses me - in fact I'm sitting here getting
ready to paint something, thinking I must do that before I buy anything
else. I recon I'll wait for a month - and if I can get my goblins, my
Mordor orcs and my undercoated Galadriel and Aragorns painted then I'll
treat myself. Anyway here is a Second age marine that I painted
recently, this was part of a badly painted set I bought for pennies
from Ebay. You note there is very little detail on the model - thats
because the existing paint was so thick on it before I started.
Anyhow. I'm off to paint something now, better stop wittering.

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As I'm not getting chance to paint anything at the moment - I thought I would upload some of my work. Spent most of the evening taking photos of my collection (or some of it anyway) This is again another old miniature that I am happy with. However - there was no dry brushing, no inks, only a bit of highlighting, and a boring base. Cant even say its supposed to be tarmac... The wonderful idea of using a gold pen to make the base look good has now rubbed off. Still - this is one of my showpieces.

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