And the winner is...

The winner of the competition to win one of my old kit bashes is:

Chico Danks!

Be sure to check out his blog at Oldhammer on a Budget.

See, Chico - I said I'd look into a post about how awesome you were...

Finished Arbitrator

For the last week I've been running around the country causing mayhem and mischief. Just before I left, I finished the Adeptus Arbites I'd been working on, but hadn't got the time to take some photos.

Now, this was another experiment with photography. I used the my iPad mini's "HDR" option to take the photos.

I also used a second lamp which I brought down from my parents. My usual light was aimed straight at the miniature, and the second light was used as an overhead light. Unfortunately, I didn't have a daylight bulb in the second light and I think it's made the photos a bit too yellow.

I also think that some of these photos have highlighted a couple of brush slips I'd made that I hadn't spotted with the naked eye. I may have to pop back to this chap and touch up his paint job at some point, but for now, as far as I'm concerned, he's done and going away in the box.

I am achieving things!

This was a very busy week for me, but despite that, I've managed to get a whole bunch of stuff done!

I've snipped Collodi's tab and cleaned up the edge of his base ready for pinning and gluing. Meanwhile, I've started assembling the second ten Guardsmen for the start of the Hobby Progress Challenge 2014. This is one of those things I have to do in little bits and come back to because cleaning up flash is one of the dullest things in the world.

I've finished assembling Nicolai, and he's now attached to a resin base. He's a Joker faction model for Eden. I've started base coating him, but I need to put in a second coat. Once the base coat is on, I'm planning on basically using washes and inks to add all his colour. I'll be curious to see how that goes.

The Arbitrator is now painted, and I've moved onto basing him. I'm just waiting for the basing material to dry so I can paint it, and he'll be done!

And finally, the water effects have dried on my Wicked Dolls. I've also tried to improve my photography lighting a little with this shot, so I'd like a little feedback - is it much better than the quick shots above? Is there anything else I could do to improve this more?

I have a painting lesson with my wife booked up at Golem Painting Studio next week, so alongside trying to finish assembling my Guard, I need to decide what I'm taking up to paint and make sure its prepped and ready for painting in plenty of time.

Progress of a sort - one bit at a time

With another week passed, I haven't managed to finish anything.

This isn't as bad as it sounds - I've still done a lot, and in some cases the end is in sight, but the real fact remains - nothing is finished yet this year.

I'm really starting to feel the Arbitrator is coming together. I've redone his legs in blue, and I think that's helped in breaking up the colour blocks on the model. I don't think I'm going to go for this combination on my final ones though - there's just not quite enough armour, and Guard flak vests are really distinctive.

As before, the first level of water effects ended up shrinking down and not being flat, so another, second layer has been added and is still drying. This is the frustrating thing with these swamp bases and water effects - I don't know if I'm "finished" until several days later when I get to see the models with everything dry.

I've also completely assembled an Imperial Guard squad. In a sense, the assembly is finished, but the miniatures are not finished finished. Also, in order to complete the Hobby Progress Challenge with any chance of success I need to get two squads done rather than one!

So hopefully, I will be well into the assembly of the second squad by the end of next week, the Arbitrator will be as good as finished and the Wicked Dolls will finally be done. I'm really feeling like I've got some momentum!

First week of painting for a new year

I spent the first couple of days of the New Year completely clearing off my painting table, as it had gained an awful lot of junk I wasn't working on. Once it was finished, I took the opportunity to lay out all my current Kanban board on the table so I could see all my work in progress.

Then, after a little more procrastination, I sat down and tried to start doing a little bit each day.

I started work on the head swaps for another five Guardsmen for the Independent Characters' Hobby Progress Challenge. I'm quite happy with the chap with the rebreather and the Bretonnian head.

And a couple of them needed a little green stuff to make the heads work with the bodies.

I picked up the Chaos Champion, too, gluing him to his base and filling in the hole with green stuff, as I've decided to try out Agrellan Earth on this chap! Not much more than that yet - but he's moving a little again.

I've started painting the Arbitrator. I'm worried there's a bit too much red on him, but I think that's down to the choice of parts I used to put him together. I'm trying to decide if I should break up the massive amount of red with something else, like changing the trousers to Dark Blue or something similar.

The armour is going more to what the leg plates are like rather than the helmet - that missed a few stages as I sorted out his face. Trying to decide what colour to make his gun - whether to go with some sort of particular case colour, or mostly gun metal.

And finally, three Wicked Dolls are pinned and glued to their bases, ready for water effects! The end of the road is in sight with these chaps. This makes me inordinately happy - they've been an absolute pain for ages.

What have I been doing during the Christmas break?

It is sometimes a good thing that I take photos of all the hobby work I do, because I sat down to write this post and suddenly had absolutely no idea what I've been doing.

I finally finished painting my Collodi crew - all that's left now is to base them up. I may even get in a game of Malifaux 2e at some point!

I purchased some old White Dwarf magazines from ebay (they may at some point be a future article). However, it has been pointed out to me that my sender may be somewhat of a time traveller - the 12½p Christmas stamp from 1982 was suspicious, but not a give-away - until a good friend of mine pointed out that the package was postmarked 27 December 2016.

I've also started learning how to use my wife's new Dremel, and have started the process of pinning the Collodi crew. The end is in sight with them, and I am so pleased. They may not be done in time for the New Year, but if so, that's mostly now because of the time needed to leave them drying in between different processes and jobs.

I haven't gotten back to this chap yet, but I dug him out from a transport case in the hope of actually doing something with him in the coming days as I wait for glue and / or water effects to dry...

The Tzeentch Herald is finally starting to gain some colours and I'm feeling like progress is restarting with him.

There was a break in the weather, so I got my Arbitrator kitbash undercoated.

And lo, did my darling wife ask me very nicely to undercoat some of her figures. This is her Malifaux gang.

There were also some Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors and a Succubus who needed undercoating, so they've all been done too.

I'm definitely feeling like I'm getting back into the groove of getting things done. I really did need to finish off some existing projects, like the Collodi crew, but some have been so demoralising and troublesome that as they are the thing I should really be doing I have put them off by not doing anything at all rather than doing something else. I am starting to feel like I'm cresting that ridge now, so I'm a lot happier and starting to look at what I managed to do this year, and what I hope to do next year.

Progress over the weekend, arbitrators and assassins and Dark Angels, oh my!

This week, an irresponsible moment on ebay resulted in this.

I also went on a bit of a spree through the "Collectors" ranges on the Games Workshop site, as they will sadly shortly no longer be with us, and I didn't want to end up in the sad state I am over not having the Frenzied Mob from Mordheim I've been having acquisitive thoughts over for so long.

So I'm also aware that when they arrive, my "painting score" is going to take another hammering.

This motivated me to get modelling and painting this week, and I'm pleased to say I've finished a bunch of projects. The weekend, in particular, has been super productive.

On Wednesday, I was at the 40K slow grow league at Dark Sphere as usual, when a young gentleman (he said he was 12) came in and asked me lots of questions about games, particularly about which one he should start. As the store staff were busy with people paying for things, I had a chat with him about the different games available, and what they were like.

He bought a Troll Bouncer with the money he had (and a bit of the money his elder brother had, after a bit of arm twisting), and as he was too young to be loaned the shop glue, I agreed to assemble it for him. This resulted in me providing a short and impromptu tutorial on basic rules of assembly. "See how I'm cutting towards my thumb like this? Don't do that when you're doing it."

The model was actually remarkably easy to quickly put together. The mould lines were easy to spot and clean off with a scalpel blade (my preferred means of cleaning). It seems Privateer use a different type of plastic to the one I'm used to, and I will say I'm rather impressed with it.

The young gentleman was able to, on the basis of the completed figure and enthusiasm, persuade his father to allow him to purchase a Hordes two player starter box, and left happy. Fortunately, I then had someone turn up late to the slow grow so I still got a game in and didn't keep anyone waiting.

My friend's Herald of Tzeentch is now undercoated and ready for base coating. The plan is to try and paint it up in standard GW colours, using the techniques GW recommend. I also sorted the flying base - it was a bit loose where it is meant to enter the disk, so I used a small piece of green stuff to make it a tight (and straight) fit. A trick my wife taught me was to oil the flying base with light machine oil so the green stuff stuck to the model, and not to the flying base. Both will work, but this way looks much neater.

With some other blogs getting all nostalgic over Arbitrators, I decided to throw together my test kit bash Arbitrator as well. (You may remember a while ago, I wrote a few thoughts on how to represent Adeptus Arbites in 40K). This one uses Empire Greatsword legs, a Forge World Cadian Veteran body, and a Hellstrider of Slaanesh helmet (which is really the core of the conversion). This particular one only looks good from some angles not others, but I'm happy with the principle. I also need to see if I can acquire the body and arms of a Space Marine scout, as I have a suspicion they may be a viable and cheaper alternative.

I'm also putting him away again now - I'm trying to limit the number of projects I have 'on the go' at once now, and the Herald is my work in progress for non army related projects.

I've also finally finished the Vindicare assassin I've had pottering along in the background for goodness knows how long. Sadly, he won't see the battlefield outside of Apocalypse until I get myself a new Coteaz model and get him painted up - and I have several Grey Knight figures to paint and finish before I'm allowed to buy any new Grey Knight figures. I had better crack on!

And I've also finished my test Dark Angel Marine. Sim is recommending I try out an oil wash technique on him, which, if we find the time to do it, I will undoubtably do some "before" and "after" shots of. In the meantime, I'm mostly happy with the colours I've used working well enough. The green base is Caliban Green, despite an early experiment with Castellan Green, it just didn't provide the colour I wanted. He was then dry brushed with Sybarite Green.

The shoulder pads were edged in another green I now can't find the paint pot of, and the eagle coloured in Zandril Dust, followed by a Screaming Skull drybrush and a sepia wash. The boltgun was originally base coated in Jokaero Orange, but it really didn't work, so Wazdakka Red and a mix of black and red washes brought it back down to a tone I liked.

Sim doesn't particularly like the over-heavy drybrush I tried out on the green, but I do kind of like it, especially on the helmet. I'll have to make a decision when I finally crack out the Dark Vengeance set.

Some thoughts on 'Counts As' Adeptus Arbites

 

I've been thinking about how to run some Arbitrators in 40K. Now, with the advent of allies, there's a lot more flexibility in how you can do this as you can steal from one army's list to help another.

Imperial Guard

You can quite easily put together a squad of Imperial Guard Veterans as Arbitrators. They can replace their lasguns with shotguns, upgrade them to carapace armour, give specialists grenade launchers and the sergeant a power maul.

Sadly, there's not much more you can do - although I might consider a Priest with an Eviscerator as a "cyber mastiff", although I'm not happy it's the best representation of what the model should be doing.

Space Marines

Space Marine Scouts are the other solid option - they start with carapace armour, and can take shotguns easily. Sadly, they lack the grenade launcher upgrade available.

You can also get Arbites bikers by using Scout Bikers. You get shotguns as standard and carapace armour, and some real potential for mayhem with a locator beacon.

Grey Knights & Sisters of Battle

I'm putting these in together as its effectively the same rules you're using for both - Arcoflagellants for cyber-mastiffs and Crusaders for shock squads with power mauls and suppression shields - whether from a Battle Conclave or an Inquisitorial Henchman Warband.

Both have restrictions in taking other models - the Battle Conclave is not a Troops choice so you would need to take some Battle Sisters as well, while the Henchmen either need Coteaz to make them Troops or some Grey Knights to go with them.

So, those are the units you can potentially use as members of the Adeptus Arbites - but how would you use them in a force?

All Arbitrator Force

For the greatest variety, you're probably best placed putting Space Marines and Imperial Guard allied (it doesn't overly matter which way around). You'll have a lot of scoring units from the Marine Scouts and the Veterans. If you want to up the close combat punch, using the aforementioned Priests with Eviscerators as Cyber Mastiffs.

You can certainly take a Marine Captain with a Storm Shield and Power Maul as a good Judge, and from the Imperial Guard side you can easily have a "Detective" Primaris, a Commissar Lord "Judge" or a Command HQ as a Judge with a bodyguard.

Hydras or Leman Russ are good choices for Heavy Support, with it not being too hard to justify a Vendatta as an Arbites gunship.

Marines to the Rescue

One good option for a theme list is to take a pure Codex Marines force, but with the Scouts and Scout Bikers as Arbitrators, holding out on the planet against the evil invaders - perhaps a Fortress of Redemption as the "Precinct House"?

The Marines get held in reserve, whether Terminators or Drop Pod troops - and they can then rock in to "save the planet" from the evil invaders as the Arbitrators were preparing for their last stand!

Forces of the Imperium

This is about coming up with a way of fitting as many different branches of Imperial Forces into a list as possible. Imperial Guard & Space Marines is your best bet again, but you should be able to fit in the following;

• Imperial Guard
• Space Marines
• Adeptus Arbites (any of the counts as mentioned above)
• Imperial Navy (Master of the Fleet, Valkyries & Vendettas)
• Adeptus Astra Telepathica (Astropath, Psykers)
• Departmento Munitorum (Commissars)
• Adeptus Ministorum (Priests)
• Adeptus Mechanicus (Techpriest)

I have some ideas on how to kitbash a few Arbites, but that is definitely something for the future. I hope these rambling thoughts have been helpful. Does anyone have any other suggestions for units?