The Joys of Travel

I had to go out of town for some specialized training (involved literally being blindfolded and flipped upside down under water among other things-compare that to your average "trust exercise). The upside of which was I had some spare time on my hands in a place that I had no real reason to explore so I got my second squad of devastators painted. That puts me five squads into the Ultramarines project.



I've also got a special character about half finished and the Heresy Era Devastators prepped but I may hold off and get July and August's Freeboota challenges prepped; I will probably not have much time to paint in the near future so getting them ready now would go a long way.

Month, er, Two Weeks of Devastation!!!! (Late Entry)

My project for this month is to knock out my Ultramarines Devastator Squads both for the "modern" army and the Heresy Era army. Painting has really taken longer these last two months for some reason; stuff that I would knock out in 5 days has taken two weeks. Case in point; these guys:



So I got one squad done. I will be doing some travelling soon so without "the burden of work and family" to quote Homer Simpson I will be able to get a couple nights of uninterrupted painting in. Arguably I'd rather have the wife and kids along but getting caught up in painting is a nice second place.

Astute observers will recognize the 2nd Ed plastic marines in the squad. I'm using them to fill out both this and the second devastator squad (2 ML's and 2 HB's) of the modern army. The are decent enough figs that I don't want them to go to waste but since they are traditionally min-maxed out to fit in Razorbacks or to shave a couple of points it is fitting that they will be the first to get dropped. I also need to go back and do decals for both them and the tactical squads I have already done. I wanted to maximize using the moulded shoulder pads but alas-for too many figures it was just not practical.

Incidentally, I also got these guys done up: I'm still getting caught up with the rest of the command squad and Captain Sicarius. You will note the name of the champion (I need to clean up the lettering): Thebus. This is a reference/joke (for all you Ultramarines haterz) to the Sacred Band of Thebes. To get why this is a joke, look them up on Wikipedia.

I See Fallen Angels

Now if only Cypher had rules. In the mean time they are my Chaos Chosen Elites and I guess he'll be some sort of champion or something. Details, details.

Preaching to the Newly Converted

My mass conversion from lame to blue continues in earnest with this bike squad. Like the two tac squads, these guys took a lot longer than I thought they would. I'm going to convince myself they take longer that my usual paint jobs because I am putting more detail into them to include conversions and special bits. Yeah. Right.


Anyway, here they are, followed by a poorly framed shot of what I have so far. Currently in the dip is a dreadnaught and chaplain, but I'm thinking an assault squad isn't far behind.



In the mean time, for my monthly challenge I've started on some Chaos elites. I hope I haven't "fallen" behind.

Ultramarines

Here is my first wave of my old marines recylced as Ultramarines. Would type more but jacked up hand mountain biking.

Auction Complete

I raised $127.50 (minus what the Ebay middle-men took out for their cut) to American Red Cross for the Japanese Earthquake relief. Take that earthquake!

Clankers-Slag 'em!

I had kind of a lull in my enthusiasm for my big projects so I've decided to fill it by catching up on other projects I've set aside.

First, you've already seen these in action but here is my Planetstrike terrain:


Second, these are from the Reaper Chronoscape line. I thought painted properly they made great clone troopers. Or Inquisitorial stormtroopers. Or corporate guards. Whatever. You can't really tell by this photo but there actually is shading involved and not just white paint being dumped on them. $#@*ing camera.



These I was going to pull out for a Rogue Trader adventure I was building up to. They might also get used in a Deathwatch game. What would they be used as? Mankind has enemies with long memories. Enemies created by man's own hand...