Howdy folks!
It's been a while since I have regularly posted, but I've mainly/solely been working on my career in that time (Making apps, learning how to interview correctly, etc. You can see everything on
http://marclaffan.com if software development interests you). I've been looking for something to break up the monotony, and for the past few months or so, 40K has scratched that itch.
I've started a truescaling project (On already-painted miniatures no less, rebasing them on 32mm bases as well) and started working on my Night Lords army again. At this point I just want to get my Chaos Space Marines all painted, and I don't really care about any of my other models (Zombicide, Orks, Space Marines, old metal models, etc. Perfectionism really does impede progress!). I would still have to paint/convert a bunch of non-chaos stuff when I don't actually want to collect those armies otherwise, so meh... I also decided to not repaint anything I've painted so far. Scott the Miniature Maniac (Or just Scott) brought up the great point (
six, in this video) that every model you ever paint is a sign of your overall skill progression story and that you shouldn't keep repainting finished models, regardless of how much better you could do them justice now. I'm a bit lucky in this regard, because I barely finished any models when I started painting. When I got to the stage where I was fully painting models and not just basecoating, they quickly became good enough for me to consider them finished forever to a satisfactory standard. Anything else was just painted with a basecoat of Dark Angels green at the time, so it was easy enough all those years ago to just repaint the ten or so models I had to regal blue, without thinking of my own miniature painting history. Best to preserve the old painted models now though!
I want to paint up and truescale my core Night Lords troops
mainly first (About 50 chaos marine troops/Havocs) before moving on to the rest of my collection. So far I've almost fully truescaled about 35 of them, and have begun truescaling some other stuff in my collection too (Possessed, a Lord, etc). I've also, just last weekend, finished magnetising my third Chaos Predator. The turret really cuts the fingers off you when you're drilling the space for magnets, so be warned if you go down this route!
I also recently began stockpiling potentially out-of-production chaos marine kits (so far the Iron Warriors upgrade pack, Old Chaos Marine kit, metal Chaos Lord with a Power Axe and Finecast Dark Apostle have proven me right). I only really need the newest models, the Daemon Engines aside from the Defiler, and the newest Chaos special character models to complete the line fully for my collection. SO I've actually built up a decent backlog of Chaos stuff now to replace the horde of plastic that I just stopped bothering with due to lack of interest 😂
Todo list:
Truescale 50-ish of the now-old Chaos Space Marine troops/infantry models. 10-ish are done aside from the new paint needed for their truescale thighs, a further 20 are on the 32mm base with the plasticard spacing in place for the extra thigh/waist height, and 20 or so haven't been touched yet (Four aspiring champions and the rest are heavy/special weapons guys. Think I'll promote some to Havocs!)
Truescale 10-ish of the now-old Chaos Space Marine Chaos Terminators.
Truescale and paint 10 Night Lord Chosen (I'm gonna do these last, when my truescaling ability is good enough. I spent a tonne of time kitbashing these guys and even used the
Night Lords conversion pack on all them. I also recently got my hands on the Forge World Nostraman Chainglaives that might end up featuring on a few of them).
Truescale and paint 10 Chaos Space Marine mercenaries.
Truescale and paint 1 Chaos Terminator Lightning Claws Lord: This guy is gonna look really good when he's finished. According to the Night Lords trilogy, the Night Lords terminator Atramentar sometimes feature Lion motifs on their armour, which will also appear on this model. I think I'll use him as a master of the Atramentar)
Truescale and paint 1 Chaos Terminator Chainfist Lord.
Truescale and paint 10 Chaos Bikers (3 Dark Angel Fallen bikers, 3 White Scars, 4 Chaos bikers)
Truescale and paint 8 Chaos Raptors (5 plastic kit, 3 Forgeworld Night Raptor conversions. Though I'm not sure about truescaling the Night Raptors yet, as they are pretty tall already).
Truescale and paint 5 Possessed marines (Two are truescaled, but not finished. I'm kitbashing them with a bunch of Chaos Knights and making sure that each one has a weapon. Their fluff involves them picking up cursed weapons 👍)
Paint and convert 5 Rhino's (3 recent Warhammer Conquest ones, I already have tanks for the Rhino upgrade kits I'll be mentioning in the next post).
Paint and convert 3 Predator's (One almost finished paintjob-wise).
Paint 1 Vindicator (Heavily converted. I've spent a lot of time on this one, which is weird considering that I got it second-hand from Ebay and I'm iffy about second-hand stuff)
Paint 1 Hellbrute: The Dark Vengeance one, which I'll be painting in the colours of the Crimson Slaughter.
Pain 4 Chaos Spawn: I finished two more of these out of the ten that I have since I restarted the hobby. I mainly use these as "inbetween" painting models because they're so easy to paint. They break up the monotony of sticking to a paint scheme and picking out every last detail for more important models, providing a nice and needed break from strict painting. Once I run out of these I'll probably move onto some of my old lesser Daemons to use as "inbetween" painting models. My grey Horrors of Tzeentch should work like a charm for this.
Paint and convert 1 Land Raider: I'll be spending a lot of time on this. It'll be a centerpiece, so I've bought the
Night Lords Land Raider doors from Forgeworld for it.
Paint and convert 1 Defiler (I might also change or paint more of the magnetised, prepainted one I bought from a warhammer shop in Wicklow. In a decade, when I can be arsed!).
Other things: 80(-ish?) Cultists, 10 Horrors, 10 Plague Marines, 6 Noises marines and 21 Berzerkers. These don't really matter to me, nor will I want to truescale much more after getting through another 35 truescaled marines 😂
Warhammer backlog: 10x Mk3 marines, 10x Mk4 marines, 1 Nurgle Daemon Prince, 5 x Furies(They're fluffy as per the 3.5 chaos codex), 1 Aspiring Champion/Vrosh Tattersoul (Crimson Slaughter dude), 1 Warpsmith and the chaos half of Shadowspear.
Forgeworld backlog: Leviathan Dreadnought (Plus really cool weapons), Contemptor Dreadnought (Plus slightly less impressive weapons), 5 Night Raptors, Sevatar, Zhufor, Necrosius, Praetor with Jump Pack, Praetor in terminator armour, Rapier Quad Heavy Bolter (These things look SO COOL).
Collectibles (Stuff I'm not actually planning on painting, but wanted before they went OOP): The old Chaos Space Marine kit, the old Chaos Space Marine Terminator kit, the old/current Chaos Terminator Lord kit (That I doubt will be around for much longer), the old/current Berzerker squad(Again, I doubt it will be around for much longer), the finecast Mutilators (I can't see why the Obliterator pack would not be sold as a dual Mutilator kit when it eventually comes out), the old metal Chaos Lord with a power axe, the old Dark Apostle, the finecast Sorceror, Fabius Bile, Huron Blackheart, Night Lords hero and an Iron Warrior Warsmith.
I must say, this actually looks a lot more doable than painting almost 1000 miniatures did the last time I tried to "complete" my collection:
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For prosterity's sake, remember this? ("This" may also refer to a time where the above list still actually featured on this blog, because I was too lazy to take it off at the time, to clarify). |
I still need/want to get the following from Forgeworld before it goes nuts and stops selling things I want again:
- World Eaters Rampager Squad: So that I actually have an (Albeit minor) presence of ancient MKII armoured marines in my army. I'll need to remove/model a few things and maybe not use some parts (Like the World Eaters shoulderpads, or the unarmoured arm if I use the model as a tactical marine. I also might shave off the orb thing that looks like a belt buckle). I'll likely use some other heads as an upgrade kit too.
- Space Marine Apothecary set: Again for another MKII body and because I really want an apothecary model in my army. I think of my collection as reflective of a marine company, and they can't really make new marines without apothecary's now can they?
- Misc things that I've wanted since I was a teenager after seeing them in a Forgeworld catalogue, but didn't have money nor a credit card to buy them with. Also just some things that looks plain awesome.
So yeah, that's basically the plan!
Now to finish off this Predator and get some pictures of my new Spawn, converted Dark Apostle, and maybe some work in progress photos up...
Best of luck!
Marc