The Commissar, Man's Best Friend

As I'm working through a fair amount of Imperial Guard at the moment, it's obvious that I need representation and encouragement from the glorious members of the Commissariat.

So, part one - I've owned my Guard army in some form or another since the mid 1990's, so some models have paint jobs I consider distinctly ropey. Case in point:

This is a Rogue-Trader-era model, that I really can't remember acquiring in the first place, but I clearly painted at some point. 

He wasn't actually too terrible, just a bit unfinished. Some parts were untidy, some just needed finishing off, and it was worth trimming off a couple of bits of flash that I'd left in place back in the day.

This took me a satisfyingly short amount of time, with this result.

Much more like it. So there you go, probably has a name like Commissar Egrin Glint or something. Is a bit short since he's such an old model, but definitely now useable.

And then, of course, there's this.

A deeply silly idea that I clearly picked up off Cults at some point and printed, then forgot all about, then found and printed. He revels in the name Commissar Chomp, and was quite handy in a recent game against Pete.

Claw and Order

In a quest for variety, I've stepped away from painting 40k units to keep up with (or trail massively behind) my Combat Patrol Magazine subscription, and gone towards painting some other 40k units that were just lying around the place.

First off the pile was a unit of Tyranid Gargoyles that have been sitting around in their box since I had a sudden burst of GW enthusiasm about 4 years ago and suddenly bought several new Chaos fantasy things (some of which are, of course, still in their boxes) and for some reason threw these into the order as well. 

I normally like plastic kits with lots of possible variety on the sprues, but these are the exact opposite. Other than being able to pick which head goes on which body, and the exact angle of the arms, you don't have any choices at all with these. This was actually quite helpful given I was treating them as a quick 'n' easy job. Bish, bosh, new unit ready. 

I also had some terrain bits lying around. I printed out a couple of big aquilae waaaay back when I made some buildings using old Necromunda bulkheads and then never painted. I decided, since these would take about 15 minutes to paint, that I should probably get on with it.

Then, the main event. I'd had a metal squad of Rogue Trader/2nd Edition era Adeptus Arbites sitting around for well over a decade. I randomly painted a couple in advance of our first Apocalypse game for Christmas 2024, then they disappeared to the back of the queue again. Suddenly, it was time.

But that's not all. A while ago I'd been taken by the idea of having several squads of these to accompany an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor, so I bought some files from Monstrous Encounters on MyMiniFactory, which sat unused on my hard drive for a while, and then Monstrous Encounters had a deal to get their whole back catalogue for cheap, so I did that, and then that sat unused for a while, and then, eventually...

I got a bit carried away. 

I realised that I can use them as veteran Imperial Guard squads, which have options to take all shotguns and to have carapace armour - so it's a perfect fit.

I also had files for some Makers Cult penal legion proxies, so I've printed some of those and given them a Mordian sergeant as a penal custodian. This is another unit I'd like to do more of, although at a fixed 80 points for each squad they're unlikely to form the backbone of an army by themselves. 

I'm definitely in a Guard mood at the moment so there's likely to be more of this before I wander off somewhere else. Stand by for that!

Techno Techno Techno Techno

For no obvious reason, I decided it was time to paint the tech priest I got from a bring and buy some time ago. 

He actually made it onto the table last weekend, and had a go at surviving his first game, until I flung him into a heroic yet doomed charge in the last turn. Still, I like how he's turned out, and he actually allows the surprisingly flexible squad of servitors into an Imperial Guard army.

As an added bonus, I also painted an Astropath who was just lying around on the desk. I have even less to say about him than I do the tech priest, and I expect his main role will be "extra body in the command squad". But here he is anyway.

There you go. Some posts are short!

40k Combat Patrol Premium Delivery 2 - Howling into the Void

My insane decision to pay for the Premium level subscription for the Combat Patrol magazine has struck again, so I've been forced to paint some more things, and then, much later, take photos of them in suboptimal lighting. 

The big hitter in this set is a daemon prince.

As with the previous premium set, I've ignored the magazine's suggestion for how to assemble it, because I want huge models that have wings.

I really enjoyed painting this guy, although for some reason he took ages to get finished. 

He's using the same colours for armour as the chaos marines I've already done, but the armour is really secondary to the overall daemon-ness.

Also in this set - some Eldar Howling Banshees (which my brain for unknown reasons keeps wanting to call Striking Scorpions). 

I can't find a lot to say about these - they're nice enough if slightly boring models. 

One of them has a sword stuck out to the side, which makes it hard to arrange them in a neat line for a photo.

Also there's a little statue. How many units get one of those?

This post appears to have fizzled out. But still, stuff has been painted, so it's all progress. Or something.

40k Combat Patrol Character 2 - Haarken Worldclaimer

Well, they got me again - I've failed to opt out and thus have been charged a tenner and sent a character by Hachette Partworks.

This time, it's a character that I'd never heard of, as he comes from some version of "new" (aka "wrong") 40k...

Haarken Worldclaimer, Herald of the Apocalypse!

Or from my 5th edition point of view, a chaos lord with a jump pack and a daemon weapon.

He's in a very modern and dynamic pose, hence it's slightly possible to read him as tripping over a pole. Try not to do that.

I decided to paint him in Black Legion colours to allow him to be used as the special character if I end up using him in 10th edition, and also as a way to help tie together my vague theme of Black-Legion-aligned chaos marines. 

Not much more to say about this one, but it's another tiny step in the direction of painting all this stuff, so that's nice. 

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.