Hobby Holidays!

 Greetings and Happy Holidays to all!

Things have been quiet out of my corner besides my Friday articles, but things haven't been quiet behind the scenes.  I've been dancing between 4 hobby projects and enjoying not working towards a tournament deadline currently.  I acquired a Grex airbrush in early December from my buddy Joe who won it along with best appearance at NOVA this year.  I've been wanting to try it out but needed a new canvas.  I finally decided to have a go at the new plastic tyrant with a new red/black/fleshtone scheme and I do have to say, the difference between the Grex and my old Badger is shocking.  I went from painting at 18psi down to 2-4psi and the blending is so much smoother on this model than any of my dark eldar.




My renewed enthusiasm to paint paired with the recent chaos codex release got my creative juices flowing.  I've got all these 2nd edition metal CSM sitting on my shelf from my college days and a decent chunk of store credit from the GT so I decided to add a really fun hobby project to my agenda: Rebuild and repaint my old CSM collection and produce an army with what I have on the shelf and store credit only.  I think it will be really fun project so I put together a possessed model to test some colors on.

 This army will be a mono-nurgle build with some bandwagon and some unusual units.  Nurgle holds a special spot in my heart as a plague marine force was the first army I built.  I've been working with so many bright colors on the dark eldar that I was craving something more subdued and earthy.  I loathe the fact that so many nurgle armies look similar at a distance, so I wanted something less traditional.  Here's my inspiration:

 The army chapter and theme will be "Legion of Maggots".  They won't be bloated and rotting like most plague marines, but are known instead for arriving at recent and current warzones to consume the dead.  The armor will be white to yellow with dark heads to draw a parallel with maggots.  This possessed has some green appendages to denote his nurgle mark.

I'm pretty excited about how the test model turned out.  The picture doesn't capture the true grit, but it's definitely a grimdark model.  I used the new airbrush to blend 5 different colors from brown to yellow to green, then fire white down from a zenith on the armor.  I finished it all up with some techniques I picked up on youtube from schnauzerface.  Check out this guy's demo videos, I learned a lot of good tricks from them.  Here are my two favorites:

After airbrushing the model and panting in the trim, I painted on a layer of gloss varnish and applied an oil wash using vandyke brown.  I've never used GW paints so I can't compare to their washes, but I am pleased with the end result.

I also applied some purple, brown, orange, and red pigment scraped from a pastel chalk like he does in the mountain king tutorial.  I really like how the powdered pigment create a whole new texture and feel to the model so I'll be adding plenty of rust and corrosion.

On the terrain side, I've been busy mass-producing terrain stock.

 I wasn't kidding when I said I was prepared for a large order if some wayward TO happened upon this post and was interested in a large commission.  Nothing big happening yet, but one of the local guys did order 4 pieces of area terrain with crystals (almost done Paul!).  Top shelf has about two dozen pieces cut for area terrain.  Second shelf is primed pieces ready to be airbrushed.  Under the eggcrate is about 300 pieces of spray foam of various sizes to be used as rocks and area terrain clusters.  On the bottom is enough pre-cut foam stock to make 100 or so crystals.  If no new orders come in, I'll be making 3 new sets for myself with new fabric I found to use as mats.

I also made it out to a small local tournament last weekend, which will probably be my last event until April due to work.

I hit up my co-authors and Crispy obliged me and came out.  Figures I would have to face him first.  I brought my grey knights because I knew space would be tight and time would be short.  They are by far my  easiest to transport and fastest army to play.  We set up our own terrain and some huge BLoS walls helped him with his hive guard and biovores.  It came down to his tervigon running for an objective and rolling a 1, then my terminators central in the above picture chew through most of the army and consolidate towards the same objective, also rolling a 1.  I also had one last chance when a mishap-re-reserved dreadknight tried to deep strike into contest range of a backfield objective, scattered away, and couldn't run far enough to reach.  Chris got first blood when 3 ymgarls that survived inteceptor (quad gun) and overwatch from the rifleman achieved 3 glances and wrecked it.  I had linebreaker so we ended in a draw.

Next, I played Mike who's somewhat of an arch-nemesis.  We face each other in every other event it seems and he almost always beats me.  This time, he brought a brutal mechdar list and combined with first turn and hammer/anvil deployment he outmaneuvered and outshot me.  I had my warlord, terminators, and 1 NDK left at the end but scored the 4 point objective and linebreaker in The Scouring for a 5-10 loss.

My final game was a bloodbath with grey knights versus black templars vying for The Relic.  Dual vindicators plagued me all game and a drop pod followed by jumpers and 2 loaded rhinos meant my opponent got the relic first, but I was able to get first blood with one NDK and his warlord with the second NDK for a 2-0 victory.

It's been a fun couple weeks and it's back to painting for a few months for me.  I have the final game of the GT to write up still and then I'll move on to hobby articles and maybe some CSM list discussions.  I'll leave you with my obligatory baby pic.  1 year old next week!