Back to the little guys - Epic

 After a nice wee break painting 28mm for Bolt Action, I decided to crack open the box of shame and fished out the remainder of the order I made to Vanguard back in June.

3 not-sicarian battle tanks, 1 not-fellblade, some daemon princes and some not-knight errants.

I wanted to make the 30k tanks part of my Iron Warriors army, however I feel that black/silver paint scheme is tough to make look interesting at this scale, unless I can learn non-metallic metal painting somehow.

So instead I went with a bit more of a eye-popping teal/turquoise colour that I've became fond of recently, mixing in some green/grey.

I also decided to heavily weather them, partly to tone down the bright colour, and also to make them look ancient and war torn.

I really like the effect for how simple it was, and I'm now sorely tempted to do a whole 30k army like this.

The Daemon Princes were done as one for each of the major powers and require a bit of tidying up/detailing, as do the Knights, which will be added to my Mars AdMech forces eventually.

Epic - Chaos: Army on Parade

Following on from yesterday's post about the importance of cohesive basing, i've dug out my Chaos and ran a brushful of 'Mournfang Brown' around all of the bases, as they were quite, eh, chaotic before!

I don't know if i can be arsed with putting grass tufts on them all yet, especially as my new bag of static grass is a wee bit of a different colour to the one i've used for everything else so far.

Anyhoo, i've taken the opportunity to get all the spiky lads, lassies and everything in between out on a table for a big family photo.

I'm toying with the idea of doing this for them all now, as i think i've got recent Eldar, and IG ones somewhere, so would just be a case of digging out the others.

we'll see how bored i get in the coming days/weeks!

Epic - First Chaos (For 2020 at least!)

Just a very quick one to kick of 2020.

I picked up another few greater daemon/primarchs for Chaos, meaning i can field bigger armies.
Still waiting on my Magnus the Red arriving and i'm looking forward to painting it in all it's ugly glory!

In the meantime i knocked out Angron and another Nurgle Great Unclean one;

Epic - Final Chaos (for 2019 at least!)

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

I thought i'd close out the year of hobbying with a couple of late additions to my Chaos forces. As before these have been given a quick and dirty paint job to get them ready for the table in 2020 hopefully! (that's my excuse at least as i pretty much painted them in the dark, with my old glasses prescription, and i'm only now seeing all the issues as i take some close up pictures of them).

This now gives me a decent sized Khorne army with the addition of the rather wonky looking greater demon/titan - Lord of Battles and some flaky fire support from the Cannon of Korne, as well as some extra lesser demons for Tzeench and Nurgle.

2019 has been a pretty lacklustre year hobby wise, with very little being played or painted - outwith the last 6 months of piecing together this Chaos force and having a game with it.

As I've been making a very conscious effort to be 'more intentional' with my purchases, as well as downsize where possible i really do feel a lot more in control of the lead/plastic mountain. I'm hoping to carry this in into 2020 and further pare down what i horde, and get more use out of what remains.

I won't do a full blown 'Hobby goals 2020' post this time, instead i'll keep it short by repeating that mantra;

"Own less, play more."

Something i am quite interested in is trying to learn and play some of the other versions of Epic, such as Epic 40000 or Armageddon, as well as play test Imperious Dominatus as it develops. I realise this may be a bit of a pipe dream, but i do feel like i'm starting to hit some frustrations with NetEpic that i wasn't really aware of as a kid, so i think that these later rule sets may fix some of these issues?

Other than that, i want to get more use out of my FFG X-Wing and Imperial Assault collections.

Everything else in my view is living on borrowed time, so i may have to pack it away into storage lest it be eBay'd on a whim!

Epic - Chaos Daemons

I've been on a bit of an eBay spree of late, but it's yielded some decent results...

I've picked up daemons for my chaos forces, most of which were painted fairly decently, meaning all that needed done/still to do is do a bit of touching up and re-base to bring them in line.

I've ended up with 3 units of Flesh Hounds, which is probably more than i'll ever field, but i'm happy to have them.

It something that still surprises me - the sheer number and variety of units that exist for each faction in Space Marine/Net Epic.

I naively assumed that i'd be able to paint up my Chaos plastics, grab a few metal models and i'd have a full army, with all the options. Where as really, all I've done is scratch the surface for some of the powers.

That said, i'm practising restraint, and in a similar fashion to my other armies, i'm drawing a line here and calling it 'done (for now)'. The big push is over and now i can spend some time hopefully playing with them, and trying out different combos, before i get the itch to add anything else to the pool.

I think this is pretty healthy. whilst i'm sure i could seek to ensure i had 3 or more of every unit, and have a complete collection with no restrictions on what to put on the table, i actually strive to not do this. It is the way i enjoyed the game as a kid, where i got to play with what ever new units my brother brought home and painted up, and after playing battle after battle, deciding on my favourites and forming a real bond with them (which is how i got back in this mess 20+ years later!).

I think this extends to lots of hobbies, and life in general. If you are given too much choice it can be overwhelming, or there could be a temptation to optimise, or 'min/max' as the kids would say.
This would lead to some things being sidelined, and never played, instead being present simply for completeness of a collection.

Once again I battle with my own conflicting desires to become more minimal/intentional in all aspects of my life Vs. being a nostalgic adult, with disposable income, part of the 'cult of the new' and trying to be a completionist.

The struggle is real!

Anyway, apologies for the psychology lecture, on to the pictures! also as an aside, i'm actually getting a game in with them this weekend, after a period of what seems like forever being a hermit, so i'll try and get some photos/after action report on that.

Epic - Chaos heavy support

OK, so even by my standards I've rushed this project...

I've churned out the remaining unpainted units for my chaos horde, and found some bits to make a Decimator super heavy tank - which i believe is something along the lines of a Chaos Shadowsword.

This was built from what i presume was a GHQ or similar 6-10mm M1A1 Abrams tank, which i chopped the back off, and moved the turret to the rear to make it more 'Tank Destroyer-esque'.
I added a fantasy Chaos shield to get the 8 pointed star in as a prominent feature, then some spiky sprue down the sides to widen it out, and make it look more armoured.
I mounted some sprue sponsons to the sides, and a couple of Ork battlewagon turrets, as well as coaxial las cannon.

Along with this I've painted a couple of Tzeentch Firelords, 3 Khorne blood reapers, and a unit of Juggernaughts.

finishing off my Khorne ambitions are 3 more daemon engines i picked up from eBay, with a paint job that i found fitted well, and as good/better than i can muster at the moment, so they are just going to slip straight into the collection.

My fliers also got a nice magnetic 'flying high altitude' base to use, which totally coincidentally is exactly 25cm tall - which is the range to add on when targeting units flying high... useless to know, but still!

Anyway, i'm not massively happy with my painting efforts this time around. I really did rush things, and the sloppiness/lack of cleaning of flash/mold lines is really evident in these close up photos.
That said, for 'tabletop standard'/from 3 feet away they look totally fine, and i'm much happier to have something painted that i can always revisit and improve on in the future, than something still in bits in a box, never to be used!

Overall i'm very happy with the amount of stuff I've managed to pickup, paint and get ready in such a short window of motivation. This amounts to a small force for each of the 4 chaos powers, some generic units, and more stuff for my Iron Warriors legion, and this was the goal at the outset.

I now feel I've got a good grounding, and enough variety of units to have lots of fresh games in the future, with an army that i didn't touch in my youth, so really looking forward to trying them out in battle.