40k Combat Patrol Delivery 10 - Et tu, Helbrutus?

Here's a piece of information that will interest no one at all. This is the second-longest streak of models for a single force in the Combat Patrol magazine series so far!

Told you.

Anyway, some more chaos stuff. 

This is, apparently, a Helbrute. Why is there only one L in the name? I don't know.

It's basically a chaos dreadnought, and indeed for my 5th edition purposes, that's what it'll be used as. The difference seems to be entirely in the background and is to do with the corrupting power of the warp fusing the flesh of the interred marine with the machine body of the dreadnought. All of which is fine, but it also seems to suggest that because the pilots go insane, the sarcophagus is dragged away from the body when it's not in combat. So... the marine is dragged away from his own flesh, I guess. 

Whatever. I thought the fleshy bits looked a bit weird, so I went with grey to downplay them a bit.

I'd also had to decide on how to arm the thing. Pondering the various options and tactical flexibility I could achieve, I went for multimelta and power fist... exactly the same as with my Imperial dreadnought. 

I assume that first time I use this, it'll go insane and wipe out half of my own force, and then get destroyed.

I also have these...

Havocs! Here I was mostly influenced by the chaos autocannon models looking cool, and then figured a lascannon and a missile launcher might be a good idea. 

Also the aspiring champion is pretty close-combat-focused, which is weird for a heavy weapons squad, but who knows what might happen.

Anyway, it's all progress. Let's not worry about how far behind the deliveries I am now, partly because I've lost track myself.

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 9 - Embracing the Chaos

I might not have been on top of blogging about it, but I've been painting things from the Combat Patrol deliveries so I can do a bit of blog admin now.

We're now onto Chaos Space Marines! 

Here's a Dark Apostle, and friends.

Given I'm doing all of this with 5th edition in mind, a Dark Apostle is not a thing. So this will be playing the role of a Chaos Sorcerer. 

Although they don't actually require models, his two assistants can signify a familiar and a personal icon. 

And then! It's a squad of 10 Legionaries.

Again, 5th edition is less fancypants in the language and just calls these Chaos Space Marines, but they're clearly the same thing. 

This is a nice loadout for a squad of 10. However, 5th edition generally requires two troops choices for a legal force, and the missile launcher is only available with 10 models. So, to allow me to break these into two units and make the force legal, I've printed this:

In painting these, I was presented immediately with a colour scheme decision. I didn't want to suggest that these guys were devoted to any one of the fab four chaos gods in particular. I also didn't want to go with the bog standard black and gold, but I did want to leave the door open to a Black Legion element - I know that I've got some World Eaters on the way and I'd like to tie everything together. 

So, I landed on purple and bronze, which hopefully aren't too Tzeentch-y. But I decided to also go for plain black on the left pauldron - so I have the black to signify that they've joined the black legion and removed the previous iconography from their amour - this has the added bonus of removing the need for me to add some sort of legion symbol.

Enough waffle. I'll want to do more of these in the future and I'll forget how, so here's the list of paints I used:

Armour: Speedpaint Hive Dweller Purple

Trim: Speedpaint Hoard Bronze

Fabric: Speedpaint Gravelord Grey

Eyepieces: Contrast Iyanden Yellow

Left pauldron: Speedpaint Grim Black

Webbing: Speedpaint Dark Wood 

Gunmetal: Speedpaint Broadsword Silver

Battletech Blast Off

Something something Inner Sphere.

I don't really know a great deal about Battletech. However, I bought a starter box for it a while ago, played something like half a game, enjoyed it, and then let it gather dust for months, while constantly thinking "I should paint those, they'd be really quick".

Well, I painted them, and they were really quick.

I don't have a lot to say about these as I'm so un-versed in Battletech lore that I've immediately forgotten the names of all of these. 

I've also forgotten basically everything about the game other than "hexes" and the vague idea that managing heat is important.

Anyway. I'd been wanting to paint something in yellow and purple for ages, and these seemed ideal for it. I had been planning to do a quartered design, but I had a quick google and saw a few of these half-and-half versions that I liked, so I decided to go for the easier option. In hindsight I'm glad I did as some of the mech designs would have made quarters fiddly anyway.

Finally, for my own benefit far in the future when I eventually get some more mechs and want to match the scheme, here's the colours I used:

Armour - fast paint Purple Alchemy and Zealot Yellow

Weapon details - fast paint Gravelord Grey

Canopies - fast paint Fire Giant Orange

Bases - Citadel Armageddon Dust drybrushed with Vallejo Iraqi Sand

Base edges - Vallejo Tan Earth

There you have it. These are painted, I probably should try to play the game again or something.

40k Combat Patrol Character 1 - Chief Librarian Tigurius

As an absolute sucker for the Combat Patrol magazine, I declined to opt out when Hachette warned me that they would charge an extra tenner for another delivery. 

As such, I ended up with an extra model to deal with - Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius of the Ultramarines.

In keeping with my approach to the other marines, I've gone for a "2nd-edition-inspired" colour scheme, and tried to follow the rules from the 90's Codex Ultramarines. 

For that reason, I've gone with a bright red cloak and yellow sash thing - which was listed as part of the uniform for a librarian but these days seems to have been forgotten. 

I did agonise over that for a bit, given it means he looks different to other versions of him and this is after all a specific character rather than a generic librarian, but then had the blindingly obvious revelation that it's possible that the centuries-old, very high-ranking psychic supersoldier might just possibly own more than one cloak. 

I also went for a bit of a stylistic choice on his armour - Ultramarines are generally very bright blue, and the librarians of any codex chapter are also meant to wear blue armour. I decided to make a distinction between the two - so the majority of Tigurius's armour is a darker blue to show he's a librarian, with his shoulder and kneepad in the brighter Ultramarines blue of his chapter. 

I'm really happy with how he's come out, and I really enjoyed doing this model - something with a decent amount of detail but enough freedom in how I painted it to avoid things becoming a chore!

Of course, this is currently my only Primaris Ultramarine, but the genius of choosing Genesis as my main chapter then shines through - it's entirely plausible, since Genesis's background is basically "spare Ultramarines", to justify Tigurius joining them for a mission - or even to have him come with an Ultramarines bodyguard. So maybe I'll do a few more at some point.

Anyway, the delivery was labelled "character 1", so that's ominous, and I expect Hachette will make a further move on my bank account in due course.

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 8 - Leaving on a Jet Bike

This time, I present a set of six relatively simple models that for some reason took me ages to paint.

Eldar jetbikes! 

Or, if you absolutely must, Aeldari Windriders!

For some reason, I really struggled to get going with these, so painting the first three models took a long time to do.

It was only when I realised I was half way through that I suddenly shook myself by the shoulders and did the other three in a batch really quickly, which had been the idea all along.

Anyway, not a lot to say about these. I decided to make the bikes mostly white because the green I think looks a bit streaky on large flat areas and I don't have a good non-contrast match for it yet. That lead me to inverting the colours for the riders compared to the squad of guardians I'd already done, just to break things up a bit visually. 

I did also enjoy doing the barbed vine things - I like messing with freehand anyway, but these were particularly nice as I'm going for unique, natural looking patterns, so it's much more forgiving than trying to paint something very neat.

I suppose if I was up to date, this smaller delivery would have given me time to do something else. But I'm not, so onto the next thing!

40k Combat Patrol Premium Delivery 1 - Bigger Boys

Part of my insane, money-burning approach to the 40k Combat Patrol magazine is the Premium subscription. I pay a bit more for each issue, to then get some extra deliveries with more models.

The first of these gave me extras for the Tyranids and space marines - a Hive Tyrant and a Brutalis Dreadnought.

I went for the Hive Tyrant first of all.

The approach of the publishers is to use the full kits, but without the packaging or original instructions. So, following the instructions I was given would have meant building the standard "venom cannon and lash whip" build, but there was no way that was happening...

So I had to build it with wings. 

I really like this model - I won't go through the colour scheme again as it's the same as for the other Tyranids, with maybe a bit more Absolution Green to pick out some details.

It's a satisfyingly huge model, so I assume it will never survive to turn 3 of any game.

The marines get the Brutalis Dreadnought. 

I varied this one slightly from the suggested build too, by giving it the power fists rather than lightning claws. 

Partly this was to make it a nicer fit for the 5th Edition rules (it has twin multimeltas, two power fists and two storm bolters - easy enough to count as one of each and comply with the rules).

Mostly though, I'd had the idea to put the classic black and yellow hazard stripes on the fingers and I really wanted to do that.

I did still have a problem - for 10th Edition, the twin heavy stubbers (which have another name I can't be bothered to check) are required, but there's no way to do that in 5th. Fortunately, those sit on a sort of hatch thing that will sit in place without glue, so I was able to print a set of smoke launchers to match the 5th Edition loadout.

I was particularly lucky to manage a perfect fit on the first try, so now I'm able to swap between them depending on which game I'm playing.

I will say I found this model overall to be very fiddly to paint - the sarcophagus opens, for no apparent reason, and lots of bits are visible but inaccessible on the finished model, so have to be painted before gluing everything together. 

Still, it's done now, so as long as I avoid getting another one, everything is fine!

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 7 - Guardians of Part of the Galaxy

This month's set (I can't even remember what month this was, but I'm catching up, I swear it) is all about the Eldar. Or Aeldari if you must.

I mentioned in the last post that I'd gone somewhat out of order, as I used the set of guardians to work out the paint scheme before tackling the Farseer. Here they are:

The green helmets were the most annoying part of these. That's partly my own fault - I need to find a decent non-contrast match for Speed Paint Orc Skin, as that would give me an easier way to deal with big smooth areas like these. 

Still, I'm not complaining - these are bog standard troops, and they look fine with that in mind.

Of a bit more interest was the Wraithlord, which is a model with a surprising amount of options for something apparently so simple. This led to a fair amount of agonising over the loadout, before eventually going for exactly what the magazine told me to do anyway.

I went for basically the same colour scheme on this as I did for the guardians, and it was a pretty quick paint job overall, so that's a win. More of these to come!