End of the Year Closeout

A little early but with my work schedule migrating towards nights and I leave on vacation the 23rd I don't foresee much more in the way of painting so here goes:

The end of the year total is:

Painted:
190 Miniatures
7 Vehicles
10 Objective Markers
16 Ressurection Protocol Markers

Made but not painted (intentionally)
1 Vehicle [CENSORED BY THE INQUISITION]
40 Objective markers (30 Ultramarine markers given for free, five Necron markers given as a gift and 5 [CENSORED BY THE INQUISITION])

All told, down from last year but I lost two months to travel and even more to work. I expect next year to be down a little as well. I am going to shift focus to more terrain; I have boxes of parts and ideas that have been gathering dust literally for years. My big miniature project/yearly challenge will be Heresy Era Ultramarines and I look forward to getting started on them, however my current era Ultras still have plenty of work needing to be done on them.

Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!

In Your Honor, Honor Guard Conversions and More Chapterhouse Goodness

First, thank you GW for converting Marnie Calgar and his buddies to finecast. No I actually mean that; other than some minor work I have not had any problems with this set:



On the other hand, thanks (sarcasm this time) for not making the individual Honor Guard available for purchase any more. So I was forced by my overwhelming cravings for a second honor guard squad to make my own using Tac Marines as a base and the Spartan Heads from Chapterhouse Studios:



There was a bit of conversion work obviously. The swords were cut from some spare terminator arms (those arms are were converted to hold the Thunder Hammers on the termies I did earlier). I used various extra bits from the tac squad and command squad for the shoulders as well as the GW metal Ultramarines shoulder pads. I made leather straps for the front and sculpted capes (thanks to Ron over at fromthewarp.blogspot.com for the tutorials, as well as modelbits.co.uk for some spare parts not in my bits box).



The real thing that made these a cut above (as far as anything I've done could be considered a cut above anything else) was the heads. To make them fit properly I pinned them on to the torsos (the base of the head is a touch small to fit perfectly) but that was not a problem. The heads themselves were fantastic and there were no issues with flash (they are metal so bubbles were not a problem). I have a ton more and plan on using them in my Heresy era projects.

More Objective Markers

This time for Necrons:

Markers A-Go-Go

Here are my Ultramarines objective markers which close out this year's Freeboota Challenge:


And here are the failures from the polyester project. They were primed black and I painted them up. The picture is blurry but essentially they worked out fine.