Strike from the Sky Brothers!

Here's a little update on what I have been up to. Although I've not had time to do any painting in the last couple of weeks, I thought I might upload these pics as I felt guilty not posting anything new into my blog. Anyway I have scavanged my Spacemarine Battleforce box and can proudly say that everything is built. Almost everything that is, as I could still build two more marines but wouldn't know what to do with them so they will be in "reserve" for some kind of honour guard project or something like that. I might even paint up an Imperial Fist Marine as I realy like their paint scheme. Anyway, I still had 5 jump packs left so I decided to reinforce my Assault Marines to a total of 10.

These are the five new models:

This is the first Marine in my army that is equiped with a power axe, I used a technique that I found in a white dwarf magazine to paint the axe. I built up a number of layers starting from a very dark blue up until pure white for some lighting effects on. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out, however I used the same technique on a sword and it does not have the same effect as on the axe. I'll show you the sword in one of my next postings.

I didn't want all my Marines to be posed in the same way so I tried something a bit "radical" at first I found I had gone a bit over the top with it but the more I look at it I actualy thing the model looks pretty cool. A kind of "Matrix" "Max Payne" bullet-time pose. Or maybe he's aiming at some nasty dude flying over him or what ever. I might even weather him a bit and give his armour some battle damage.

This is "Rugby-Guy"! He's charging into the enemy shoulder first, at least that's what he's supposed to look like. I don't exactly know why but the effect of his violent charge is missing something.

And this chap has got a flammer and a different type of shoulder guard. He's got a different set of legs as I needed one pair of the running legs for my other squad that I'm working on at the moment. That's why this Marine has the luxury of noting having to run and he get's a gun that spits fire as a Bonus! I actualy think that a flamer in an assault squad can come in very handy.

I actualy didn't want to post pictures of these models until they where completed, however at the moment I can't say when that will be as my assignments are coming up. As you can see I still need to do the bases, for these models I will make a little more effort when it comes to basing. So there might be some dead xenos or traitors or what ever else your day to day marine likes to kill. In one of my last posts I was talking about decals. Well these models will be getting some decals, however I plan on using decal solution on them as I hope that the solution will make the decals look more real. I'll need to apply some kind of varnish before hand, however I made some very very bad expierence with GW varnish and ten marines a while back. So I'll still need to decide what to do in this point. Anyway this is the solution I bought, I'll put up some picks on how I worked with them and you can see for yourself how it worked out. I sincerly hope it does work!

Grounded

Due to the bad weather conditions, predominantly the cold temperatures, my imperial guard army has yet to be base coated! As I cannot use my spray cans inside my flat I usually do my base coating outside on the balcony (which has left a somewhat telling black mark on the wooden tiles I painted last year, during a midnight drunk base coating session of my ork flamers and looters). However with temperatures being at around about -15 degrees I am reluctant to use the spray cans as I fear that the resulting base coat may be comprimised.

So I have stuck to assembling and painting the rest of the Space Marines. So they will be getting 5 more assault troopers and an entire tactical squad. I would post some pics but I am still waiting for some supplies to be delivered as I want to try and use my decals on these models. I have seen a great tutorial on the miniwargaming website that should lead to some pretty neat results. I will be using decal solutions in order to apply the squad markings. If they turn out allright I might consider remarking all of my Marines as my free hand skills are pretty poor as you may have seen on my banners.

Anyway as soon as this stuff arrives I will show you what I did and how it worked out and I'll have a look if I can find the video tutorial over at miniwargaming.