Looking for Samurai minis parts

Hi guys, just a quick one today. My bestest buddy (god curse him) has seeded me with an idea... one that is as foul as it is perfidious in the extreme. It will take what was already a large project and shove it up somewhere to the nth degree.

So what is this concept you ask? Samurai Skaven. A whole army of little rats done up to look like feudal Japanese warriors, Clanrats as Ashiguru Yari spearmen, Slaves as peasants and Stormvermin as elite Samurai infantry.

 go check out , http://www.jeffdeboer.com/

So heres the crux of the matter, Im either looking at moulding some 220 odd mini helmets and associated parts or I could buy them from where ever is good and adapt them. If anyone out there in Hobby Land knows of good Samurai parts or has any ideas for goodness sake let me know!!!!! I implore you, Save my Sanity...

on a side note the Skaven Samurai project already has Girlfriend approval, even after I explained the work involved... Her answer was "Cool!"

*The armour shown in these photos was created by Canadian artist Jeff de Boer,the guy is a genius!

Work In Progress Raven Lords Honour Guard

So its been 2 weeks since I last posted, which had to do with work and waiting for parts,  Im still waiting for my massive Forgeworld order, but in the interim received the character upgrade sets that they recently released for the space marines.  I have to say I and as usual very impressed with the Forgeworld offering.   Work also decided i needed to give it more attention and thus with that modeling has slowed down to a trickle.

I am though slowly working on things and the 1st of the Raven Lords Honour Guard is here as a WIP shot.  The Raven Lord the overall commander of the Raven company will be based on the new Huron Lufgt model with some obvious changes on my behalf but that little project will have to wait of course :P.

Anyway I have also revised the overall theme of the Chapter  and its background, its in its final draft and I will be subjecting my wife to it (the author and writer in the family) to go over it and give me feedback.  Im hoping to provide as well as text some graphics of some of the different companies markings as well work up some cool fluff graphics of the Haldor sector and key planets and what not.  Its all "slowly" getting there.  On top of that I'm working on the 1st High elves Seaguard regiment, and just because I'm crazy will begin to paint a few Napoleonic miniatures again if you want you can see that project on this blog http://1809project.blogspot.com/ which covers my Napoleonic obsession.

So lots going on, never enough time and the constant denial about being a megalomaniac!

Anyway he's about done give or take another evening so till then

Cheers

JP

All the Glory to... The Forsaken!

Well its been a roller coaster of a time, Illness, Study, Work, Life, Turning 30 and some hobby! I must admit when I got into this addiction I had a clear plan. Build, paint and play a small Chaos Space Marine army. Well one thing lead to another and the CSM army got bigger... more units to add... different ways of playing and WHAM now im playing tournaments... wtf! But at least I had focus, yup I was doing the Astral Wolves and everything was done with the intent of doing them... but lo what dark shadow lies on the horizon? Its the bloody Blood Angels codex release. All my dreams of doing BA from when I was but 13 years old reading White Dwarf were coming back to smack me in the face.

 Let me know what you think of the freehand Chapter name!

So some time had passed and the work on my BA chapter moves ahead slowly. Most of the models I require for 1750 points have been assembled (most of the conversions, barring the Storm Raven) and now have a base coat of codex grey, mechrite red and iyanden darksun. So for intents and purposes most of the army is playable I guess, if you can call that playable. However as a special treat I decided to paint the honour guard first and to really make it special I wanted to paint up my Chapter Banner Bearer first!

Its not easy to make out but this guys name is Vulcan, The other Honour guard will all be named for Roman gods and the Librarian at this stage will be Jupiter.

As you can see he has really come up a treat, When I started doing the red/white quarter I wasnt sure how well it would work but im glad that it has.

I wanted to show off the scroll on the right shoulder, chiefly the "Water Mark" that I freehanded on. I may post a how to on this at some stage but in the meantime just drop comment if you want to know how!

So thats right im finding a steady state once again, The Asral Wolves are for the time finished, there will be a new Daemon Prince down the track but for all intents and purposes they are on hold. The Forsaken are growing at a slow rate and will never be a large army (I think) so I can breathe again... OH SHIT, There are hundreds of Skaven to paint now... *sob* When will this torment end!

Being sick sucks. I blame the Skaven.

Disease carrying rodents... It must be their foul perfidious scheming no doubt. But in all seriousness I got the flu and it sure sucks.

So between all that Im afraid your not getting an army update today, work grinds ever so slowly on the Forsaken and I will update with pics soon no fear.

In other news I had my first ever game of Warhammer the other day against my mate. High Elves vs Skaven in what can only be described as a comedy of errors. As it was my first game however and JP's first 8th edition game we made some serious errors. Either way at the end of the day it was a Skaven loss, due to a failed morale check causing panic in my whole line and well the fact that I played a horde assault army on the back line firing, apparntly thats a bad idea... go figure!

Anyway more to come soon I promise! Until then

Good Gaming.

The Raven Company

Well the weekend was a blast, stacking on the 1st day I was in the snow, and then spending the rest of the weekend with a good bottle of scotch the roaring log fire and my laptop to mull over back story and the list in general.

A few weeks back I spent some time working on a list that is basically not what the internet alludes to as competitive.  My Good friend is working on a jump pack army but I felt Drop Pods where far more fun.

So I sat down with the intention to create Raven Company of the Arctic Templars.  A drop pod orientated army thats main mission is most engagements is to hit hard and fast and break entrenched lines with the aide of the companies dreadnoughts, the company also has the highest  concentration of marines who belong to the brotherhood of the "Uhlfen" the berserk trance that the Halldor society (refer back story) warriors would enter into when engaged in combat.

To do this the Blood Angels list in my view is the best codex to reflect this company. In Apoc games i can obviously look to deploy both Wolf and Raven company together but for normal play I wanted to have two distinctive armies to mess around with but continue to build the character and depth of the chapter.

So the basic premises is drop pods, its the one restriction in play with the list everything in drop pods. So it excludes a whole range of elements but does leave open down the track Stormravens and potentially for Apoc Thunderhawk Gun ships.  I do envisage one day have for Apoc games enough assault craft to deploy both companies via drop pod Thunderhawk and Stormraven but thats a long way away.

So the list

The Company is lead by the Senior Chaplain of the Raven Company (insert name here) in Terminator armor.
He leads 5 members of the Uhlfen Guard (death company) in a drop pod.

then as follows:

10 Assault Marines 1x Thunderhammer 2x meltaguns in a drop pod

5 Assault Marines 1x meltagun 1x Powerfist, Drop Pod

5 Assault Marines 1x meltagun 1x Powerfist, Drop Pod

5 Sternguard Marines in a drop pod

2 Uhlfen Priests (Sanguinary Priests)

1 Death Oath Brother (Death Company Dreadnaught) in Drop pod

1 Iron Raven Brother (Furioso Dread) in a Drop Pod

1 Honored Raven (Dreadnaught with Autocannon upgrades) in Drop Pod

So for 1750 Points thats 8 Drop Pods 3 Dreadnoughts and a whole lot of fun

The Forgeworld Order has been sent off the models are on their way and with the momentum I've gained from the success of the modeling of Uhlfen Guard Im really looking forward to this project.

Im also due to my extended break reworking and filling out the corners of the back story thanks to the recent article on BOLs, so in the coming days ill throw that up as well.

Anyway back to the hobby desk

Cheers

JP

Forsaken Update

So its been a busy week with birthday celebrations and the what not but amidst all the chaos ive managed to slowly work the new army up to a near level of playability.

So I have managed to assemble and undercoat the 20 assault marines I need for this army, Most with the jump packs set aside as I have discovered that its much easier to paint the models themselves with them off.

 

Next up is the Sanguinary priests. The first one is a legion of the damned model hacked up to fit on the bike, the second is a pretty basic swap for the jump pack priest and the last is the sanguinary noviate who has undergone some radical changes to remodel the powerfist into an arm holding a bolt pistol. All of my sanguinary priests however feature the distinct Chaplin look as I think it a far more fitting feel to what are essentially the pinions of a whole army.

And last but not least is the Honour Guard squad, These guys will be accompanying a termi librarian in the stormraven when its built, along with a furioso  dreadnought. 

Anyway, I will post more comprehensibly at a later time but for now Uni and Work demand far too much of my time.

Good Gaming!

Off to the Snow but one last post this week!

Heading up to the snow fields for a long weekend, yes Im over the sickness now for some snow and alcohol !

Anyway started work on the 4th marine of the squad of 5 I've had to order more bits as i miscalculated the last order so the last guy may not be completed in the short time but that being said they have taken on allot of character in the last week.

The key objective is movement I'm looking to tell a story with these guys, they are moving under-fire say from a drop pod or into the enemy as such the Uhlfen should as their berserk rage takes them over and i think im really getting that into the squad especially with the last guy who I'm working on the idea he's seen something to his right and is snapping off a few pistol rounds for good measure.

Anyway here are the pics and if there is any feedback please drop a line, as a note the last guys is far from finished but thats all I could get done before I left.

Till next week

Cheers

JP

Are those new slacks?

I have been remiss, it seems near a week has gone by and no post since my birthday!

Well this is just a stop gap in the interim as I cant seem to find my camera, no doubt im getting forgetful in my retiring years. That or its underneath a pile of sprue on my massive two wall desk.

Anyway I'll snap some pics and update you all on my progress then, needless to say the Forsaken are growing with 20 assault marines assembled and base coated ready for the next stage of painting, a fulll bike squad waiting, honour guard ready for converting and a slew of other models to be done. Oh I am now also the proud owner of a venerble dread or two ;P

What else did I get... Oh yeah a new Daemon Prince and a Forgeworld Ork Warboss Biker (very nice models) as well as 97 little Rat Men aka. Skaven. Thanks Jp :D

So stay tuned, in the weeks to come I will be doing a Librarian Dreadnought conversion, Building and painting a Daemon, Building the Ork Warboss, Basing and basecoating the Skaven and perhaps if im feeling game attempting to learn how to use an Airbrush which I have on order and scratchbuilding a Stormraven... Its going to be a busy one!

Good Gaming

Two more to the squad!

So being sick and stuck at home presents frustrations of not being able to get work done but at the same time ive been able to under the promise to keep my activities light and not to excessive get some modeling done.

So I have been able to get two more lads completed from the squad.  A nominal leader for the the Death Company unit which I'll work out their Templar name soon enough, they are meant to be Uhlfen who have entered that berserker rage, so Uhlfen company might be the go, but unlike the Blood angels they deliberately go into the rage.

anyway enough with the fluff here are the models

Still work to be done on the Thunder hammer guy but I am so happy with how these guys are working out.

cheers

JP

Update on MK3 armor conversion

So this is the 1st finished member if the squad of 5,  as you can see he has gone through quite a bit of work and this will be what all 5 will look like with obvious variations to ensure variety.

Ill get to work on the other 4 soon as well as the High Elf Seaguard regiment.

Enjoy cheers

JP

The 2nd Strike Force

Well I've spent the last few days working on and messing around with the idea of a new painting project that would include a new chapter.

Suffice to say I messed around with allot of chapter names an color schemes, much to the mirth and amusement of the good opponent who I'm sure thought it was all very silly- if his constant LOL and what not in msn was to go by.

In the end I found the inspiration to continue with my existing chapter.

I was surfing the web and I found a link back to the 1000 chapter project

http://www.philipsibbering.com/index.shtml

So the next army will be a BA based list with 8 drop pods and 3 dreadnoughts

Ill throw the list up tomorrow but this will be the Raven company Led by one of the senior chaplains of the Arctic Templars.

Cheers

JP

Conversion Work and new Armies.

Today I first went out and got myself 2 Box sets of Island of Blood and drooled over the contents, ill post some pictures up in the coming days, but after that I decided to get cracking on the new Mk3 amour that arrived from forgeworld this week.

1st up as usual the moulds are truly excellent.  They are clean with very little flash and the detail is exquisite to say the least.

Looking at them in general,  they are fine as they are for the most part, but as is my nature I want something a little more. The lads are going to be either the death company or honor guard for the new army im working on so they need to a have some movement in them through the arms as well as change up what they are carrying.

In a previous post i discussed using grey knight nemsis force weapons as the power weapon of choice. I like the weapon in general for a Guard/ special unit option. It just screams elite/ relic to me.

Luckily I picked some up at mind games in melbourne cheap so with that and the mountain of bits  and new miniatures I went to work.

The key changes are of course the head, I like the plume look and feel with the helmet design used here it compliments and even improves the model.

I did this  buy using a dire avengers head and working with green stuff and pinning the add the element.

The next two major works are the arms. these had to be completely rebuilt to allow repositioning. shaving the weapon from the arm and then also separating the fore arm amour took time, it was then attached to a arm shoulder that angled out more with wire working through the shoulder fore arm and hand to pin all of it together.

All in all this took about 3 hours of work to achieve this look.  There is still all the little bits and pieces such as purity seals and what not to be worked on.

What chapter I paint for this new army though is a tough question,  with Badab coming out i was thinking one of the loyalist chapters and if anyone has any suggestions I would really appreciate it.

Also if anyone is interested ill take step by step photos for the next model so people can see how It was done in detail, leave your feedback.

Anyway good gaming

cheers

JP

Damn it.

Ah crap I'm 30. At least this is counter balanced with what i'm hoping to be a day of awesome presents. So long 20's, you were good to me but alas our time was short... well exactly 10years and 1 third of my life but still too short.

If your looking for modelling updates there will be some bling to show off later as well as a terrain project ive been working on, stay tuned!