Air Cav Madness!

I was rather happy that I got to stop by my FLGS yesterday, as I managed to get a very nice trade!

LOTS of Spess Mehrehns!

A friend of mine at the shop bought the last 2 Assault on Black Reach box sets they had (Yes, they still had some), and wanted the 2 sets of AoBR Orks I got from previous trades/Christmas. As a result, I have a nice supplementary force for my IG. I especially like this option, as these guys are actually Battle Brothers with my Guard. Woot for awesome trades! As for the chapter these guys will be, I'll still leave that for another time...

So I have a few other things I've been working on as of late, mostly just for the lulz.

I finally got around to finishing this guy up. He was a random acquisition I got from eBay back in '08. He was already sprayed green, so there wasn't a whole lot more that I wanted to do. I thought about camo'ing up the Chimera, but we'll see where we go from there. I need to dig up my old IG codex. They had some awesome hobby articles in there. Why did they stop doing that?!

And here's the center of today's post

I ended up grabbing this model kit some time ago just for scale modelling purposes. However, my quickly-dwindling hobby budget is forcing me to get creative with what I've got. After seeing several hobby posts around the Interwebs, I figured this would be an okay idea, especially to round off my Valkyrie squadron. 

As you can see, I've already started priming a lot of the larger panel-esque parts of the chopper. Seeing as how the interior of this model is heavily featured, I wanted to make sure I could prime and paint enough of those parts as I could before I start putting this thing together.

You can tell this was a cheaply-made model kit...

 As unfortunate as the build quality is, I didn't want to buy more 40k pieces I can't afford, not to mention the only other people who could fit in would be 40k Sentinel pilots, and I'm quite certain they don't have legs anymore. Given that this is an older model kit, I was a bit worried about the comparison of scale with the 40k scale of "heroic" 28mm.

Not horribly accurate, but it'll do.

That being said, I started on the pilots, as I wanted to get these guys done quickly. They would need some of the greater amounts of detailing, next to instrument panels and weapons.

Thank God for Vallejo Extra Opaque paint!

These guys are coming together nicely, as poorly molded as these guys are. Thank God most of the bad flashing is on the legs, which aren't going to be seen much. I want these guys to look like they're attached to my mercenary company, so I'm matching their flight suits to the general paint scheme of my army. I'll probably give them an insignia somewhere on their shoulders and paint their helmets up accordingly.

Either way, things are building up quite nicely. I have a LOT of projects crowding up the table, but I couldn't be any happier about it. We'll be back soon enough!

*Insert Random Side-Project Here*

After a long day, I still managed to get some hobby work done today. It wasn't much (especially for post # 50!), but I'm pretty happy with it. I apologize for the poor quality of the photos in this entry. Granted, they weren't anything special before, but I know these ones were taken with little to no backlight on my netbook. I'm hoping to get a photo box together soon. 

Finally getting to use the "cutter squad"

I didn't manage to get any beginning WIP shots, but I ended up finding some old salvage parts from a broken pool skimmer lid I found when I worked cleaning pools for the summer.

I'm pretty sure I was as safe as possible when cutting this resin piece...

What was I doing this for? Not terrain...at least, not yet for something like this.

Step 1: Size it up!

Step 2: Get it ready!

If you haven't noticed yet, I love doing base treatments, especially for something as large as the Dreadnought from the old Assault on Black Reach set. Speaking of which...

I do happen to have the rest of the gang waiting!

My plan is to throw these guys into a secondary list as the standard Spess Mehrehns/IG list. As for what chapter I want to do, I'll leave that for another time...

I was going to work on another command squad from a Cadian CS box set I got a few years back, but I seem to have lost track of where said box set went.

I'm sure it'll turn up sometime soon.

Anyway, tomorrow is Warhammer day at the FLGS, so I'll probably have another entry ready after tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to *gasp* actually play a match! We'll be back!

Makin' Bacon!

So yeah. Hudson's Bacon Fest was yesterday, and boy; am I glad I went. Sarcasm aside, no one should run a festival dedicated to bacon, and then proceed to run out of said bacon 2 hours into the festival. *end rant*

Anyway, much progress has been made over the past several insomnia-fueled days. I've been hanging around my FLGS a lot more often, and as a result, the motivation to keep chugging along on my army has been pretty strong. I'm glad to stay on track; to do something I love so much, and most importantly, have the support to keep at it.

I completely forgot I had this classic Hellhound model laying around. I think I got it as a Christmas present well over 4 years ago. I had a lot of difficulty getting the hull together when I first got the model, and I ended up back-shelving the project. Thank God I managed to dig this one up out of the random box of old terrain projects I had in the basement. It might not be updated with all of the more recent optional weaponry, but it never hurts to have an extra Hellhound on the field, right?

From the random "graveyard" of projects I almost gave up on...

Thanks to the assistance of one of my friends at the FLGS, he managed to help me start piecing together the old Chimera-based hull. I've kept the model limited at this stage, as I want to find a way to at least magnetize the hull-mounted weapons. They get melta-guns this time around! Who can pass that up?

For the lulz

I also got my hands on one of the new Hellhound models, mostly for the new weapon loadouts. I thankfully have some spray primer to help speed these guys along!

Finally starting to look  like something, eh?

As underused as the Leman Russ Vanquisher is, this particular project is really starting to grow on me. As you can see, I have finally displayed the slightly-Orky turret onto the tank, with a fresh new upper hull piece I got from a previous resolution GW managed to help me out with a few years back. I also managed to strip off a lot of the old paint, leaving a conveniently durable metal-toned primer behind. The treads also held onto their black primer, too.

I love seeing the old archive bits on this thing!

 The previous owner of this tank did a good job extending the barrel of the Battle Cannon, though I'm hoping to build up the sides of the extension with some strip styrene scraps I have laying around. I want to Imperial up this tank!

This'll be the last thing my enemies will see!

Like with the Hellhound, I want to make sure I can wait until I get my hands on some magnets so I can swap out the hull-mounted guns when I need to. Thankfully, some eBay auctions went my way. I just need to wait for the last ones to wrap up and get here...

I managed to get some really nice bases from the awesome people over at Micro Art Studios. I figured they'd be good for the urban-themed army that I'm building now, so I can have this Catachan CS really stand out. I'm not too sure how I want to build these guys, so I only have some bare legs/torsos on them now. I can't wait to start work on them!

Coming along nicely, eh?

I'm very happy about how good my stealthy veteran squad is looking. I was originally planning to have these guys as Forward Sentries. As a result, I think I'll outfit them with some sniper rifles to really make a mess of things for enemy infantry formations. I didn't happen to get a picture of them yet, but I do have some classic Cadian sniper models that are going to fit the bill perfectly next to these guys.

"Sight unseen, commander."

I still need to kit out these guys, but that'll come together soon enough.

I took these pictures a few days ago, so I've actually have made more progress on my projects than what I've posted. I hope to have a more updated entry in by Thursday night. We'll see how it goes soon enough! We'll be back!