Nicolas' Chaos Army of Tzeentch - Rank and file Month #1

 Back in the game!

January was a packed month for me with the family... and I saw it coming! So in my head, I needed to start with an easy pick, and one that would let me get back a painting routine.

Here they are, my firt 1260 pts of flamers!

As you can imagine, they do not stack up too well in rank and file on 25mm, and actually this edition of the flamers was not meant to.

They were for me and opportunity to test my color combinations for the disks and the wyvern that will follow... Although I might have gone a bit to much "Toucan Sam Froot Loops" on them 😅.

And here are my 3 favorites zoomed in;

Waill and Roll's First Wave is Birthed. (399 points)

It's 6mm Warhammer 40,000, NOT Epic 40k!

Pict Capture of Hive Tyrant on Chordelis

> Reinforcements needed...Hab Block Maximus has fallen...

> Massive Xeno-form nesting in ruins...Bombard location...

> Swarms everywhere...current position compromised...

> Is anybody there?..

> Oh Emperor... It's...

> Ruins of Maximus occupied by gargantuan xeno womb beast...

> Birthing more of the gunner beasts, dozens...

> There's something else...

> I'm taking the shot...

> ...

> It sees me...

I can't believe we are already at the end of January and it's time to post some ShortyK progress.

In order to get a little ahead I started the month by priming and basecoating absolutely everything, it felt really good to tick off a few processes for the entire horde. The real biomass of this months painting however was the following 26 models (points values as per 2nd Edition, where possible): 

1 Hive Tyrant with Venom Cannon, Bonesword and Lashwhip 219 points, 

1 Exocrine N/A points, 

20 Termagants with Fleshborers 120 points, 

3 custom Ripper Swarms 60 points, 

and a 3D printed Tervigon with hand sculpted additions N/A points.

Total points for the month = 399

The vintage Epic40k Tyranid sculpts are a bit of a mixed bag. The plastics are almost two dimentional, reminisent of Egyptian bas reliefs, the metals on the other hand are very characterful sculpts though many of them are radically different from the modern versions of those Bioforms. This is most evident with the Exocrine, a creature that bares no resemblance to it's modern plastic version, here it is a strange bug tank, a flesh gun with seemingly no means of self propulsion. Tee Hive Tyrant on the other hand is a more direct ancestor of the modern beast, I have painted one of the three available Tyrant models, the others shall follow in future months. The Gaunts were very easy to paint and took contrast paints well, I think these Epic40k Tyranid plastics are a little oversized compared with other 6-8mm offerings from GW but that's fine by me, it makes them nicer to paint.

My Ripper Swarms are made from 40k Tyranid Toxin Sacs mounted on Legions Imperialis bases, I saw this done on Reddit a while ago so cannot take credit for the idea but I think they work really nicely. The eagle eyed amoung you may notice that the relative scale of my ShortyK bases is a little fast and loose. My Rippers are on bases that are too big, but I do not care, these are purely for my own enjoyment and this kind of base-scale-wonk is an unavoidable element of this project. Perhaps this will slightly unbalance my games? It remains to be seen.

The Tervigon is a modern 3rd party 3D print, not Old School at all! I know, I know! I'll not be using many modern minis in this project but there will be another couple in future months, I own them so they're getting painted. I had to hand sculpt an extra pair of arms and some head crests on this one in order to make it a true Tyranid.

I'm really just laying the groundwork at this stage, there's so much more to come. Next month Leviathan will be vomitting up more Gaunts, this time with airborn support.

Finally here is a cheeky Blood Angels Terminator that I am sending to Jaakko, this is my first ever Blood Angel and it feels great to tick off such a classic. Of Course I hope he will be ripped open by a Genestealer as soon as possible.

Pokrzyw's Empire Army - Month 1 - Heavy Metal Knights - OWAC IX

"Reiksguard Knights, your Emperor is calling! Death or glory await us, but if we die, we will die as warriors, with swords in hand, and there can be no better death than that." - Kurt Helborg motivation call - from Warhammer:Armies 8th ed

Kurt Helborg - Grand Master of Reiksguard Knights

 Plans for January:

I decided to take one of the most iconic units of Oldhammer Empire - Reiksguards on foot. They are slow, they don't have good offensive or defensive skills, but they look impressive.

Before

Realization:

I started month with huge entushiasm, although after week of paintwork I had two weeks of other activities.. And it means that last week was really busy ;)

My idea was not using contrast nor speedpaints. I forget how hard and time consuming is classic painting without modern cheats..

Final Gallery:

Sorry for quality of photos, taken in very bad light in last evening.. 

Steel, feathers and saches. Impressive drill.

Together with their grand master

Frontal photo

Kurt Helborg impressive helmet

Kurt Helborg

Points:

• Kurt Kelborg (147)
• 20 Reiksguard on foot [with FCG] (286)
  

Plans for February:

February is short, but I would try to struggle with Moot forces (marked as 1)

Gift:

This year I decided to prepare and paint one of old gobbos. There are small issues with parcel, but it shall start it's trip to Byron on Monday.

Ben D's Skellibobs - Janu-Scary

January - Rank and File

Weather: Yuck

Mood: Efficient

Music: Grimdor

http://Welcome back to "Gnomes, but dead this time," where we follow the painting of an army of gnomes, who are this time, undead. Since the backbone of the army is mostly skeletons on foot, the manager of the project took ten of them to task, creating a hopeful dent in the sea of skulls.

"Since this is my second go at painting these clowns," says Ben, "I wanted to try something different. Originally they'd been painted with a ochre-heavy scheme to play into grimdark aesthetics (which were the style at the time,) but this spin I had set to work with the Gallagher palette in mind. I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out, with the high saturation halberds and the blue from within boniness."

 

This first batch actually uses much of the same color set as the Chaos Gnomes did in last season, which feels like quite a cheeky decision, but works out satisfactorily all the same. Bones here start off with a Night Lords Blue (Citadel), and then gradually brighten with Celestial Blue and Trooper White (both Two Thin Coats again.) The same basic technique goes for the halberds with a mix of Corvus Black and Khorne Red (both Citadel) up through Demon Red (Two Thin Coats) to give them that otherworldly cartoon brightness.

While there's a lot to say about this batch now, there'll be thirty more skeletons just like them in the coming months. Rumor has it that the project manager may play with an inversion of the base colors, which is to say that some bones may be red, and some halberds may be blue, likely to help differentiate the units and break up the monotony. Another way to distinguish the sections could be changing the color of their hats, a tactic which we saw in OWAC 7 for the Alpine Gnomes. 

Whatever strategy Ben ends up using however will eventually have to answer to the gods of lore. Where are all these bone-gnomes coming from? What do they want? Why are they so cute? While the word is still out on all of those questions, we do have a statement regarding the history of this force, and elements that may resurface as the project progresses.

"In 2024 I hosted an event for my LGS called Gnomemageddon where the earliest iteration of the skellignomes invaded a small village on the orders of Gneil the Gnecromancer. While story has it that he died that day in the shadow of his Abomin-umpkin, maybe that's not how the story ends. As far as I know, gnomes in Warhammer are quite longlived, so its not out of the question that it might take a little more than a sour fistfight to end the career of such an illustrious sorcerer."

Maybe that's true, and maybe its not, but there’s no time to dally since we've sunk all of our time into taking a really sweet picture of the unit as a whole... minus the frontmost, leftmost skellibob. 

He was not ready for his closeup, and we will shame him later.

 

10 skeleton warriors with halberds, musician, and banner = 120 pts

120/2003

And with that, we’re at the end of the month and this bit. 

Thank you all for reading, and good luck out there!

 

+++++

Next Month’s Preview:

I hope the suspense does not kill you.

Jaakko and Rugluk - Rank & File month #1

The warband crested the ridge at dawn, tired, hungry, and down to numbers Rugluk could count without taking his boots off.

Smoke rose from the valley below.

Rugluk narrowed his eyes. “Dat’s a camp.”

Hope stirred. Maybe a tribe. Maybe deserters. Maybe lads wot hadn’t heard about the whole “failed siege, mutiny, near-death” business.

They marched down, weapons ready.

They stumbled into a circle of snotligs arguing with a cooking pot. One snotling kicked the pot. Another tried to wear it. The only weapon in sight was a spoon. Bent.

Rugluk stared.

“…Dis is wot fate sends me?”

One of his orcs scratched his head. “Dey’s enthusiastic, boss.”

A snotling looked up, saw Rugluk, and pointed. “Oi! Big un! You 'now how ta make stew?”

Rugluk’s eye twitched.

They heard loud noises and the ground shook.

THUD.
THUD.

Two trolls stood behind the snotling mob, blank-faced, drooling, watching the fire with empty eyes.

One sniffed a snotling.

Rugluk’s grin spread slow and mean.

“You two - you’re hired.”

Hello again! This is one of my favourite stages of the challenge. The first month of OWAC is behind us, and the first batches of painted miniatures are starting to emerge before our eyes. Last season, I focused a lot on the core of the army to meet the minimum requirements in the Warhammer Armies army list. That meant many large units and a lot of batch painting. This year, I hope to add some spice to the mix.

I decided to start the challenge with snotling bases and trolls. I caught a nasty flu and didn’t achieve quite as much as I would have liked, but I’m really happy with these guys. I managed to paint five bases of snotlings (with 28 snotlings) and two trolls. A third troll is nearly finished and will join the force at a later stage.

Enough talking, let's move on.

These little guys are full of character, and I really loved painting them. I hope to paint more at some point, and I have enough of them to fill a few more bases and man another pump wagon. But, they are also tiny, and the bases are quite crowded, so I don’t mind moving on to something else for a little while.

Painting the trolls was also a lot of fun. Trolls from different eras have one thing in common: they are all amazing sculpts.

This month in points:

And that's it for the month. See you later!

ChrisP's Orks - January - Rank and File Month 1

War Buggy with heavy plasma gun - 50pts

Deathskull Nob with bolter and chainsword - 18pts 

6 Lootas with 3 kustom kombi-weapons, 2 heavy plasma guns and 1 autocannon - 185pts 

 

Really happy with how this lot turned out. I stuck to my new year's resolution to paint for at least a few minutes every day, and I think it paid off. The buggy was fairly straightforward - I looked for some good examples online, and brought in the elements I liked most. Deathskulls can be more of a struggle, since it's easy to make them very visually confusing, so I stuck to a limited pallette for the clothing. There's also a little tribute to my Deathskull wierdboy from a a couple of years ago, with his pinkish sunglasses. I hardly ever risk freehand work, but I have no regrets this time.

Sybou's Chaos dwarfs - OWAC 9, January Post [Rank and file 1 - 345 points]

 Hello everyone! Let's go for our first posts of Owac 9!

I started with one of my two big units : The Berserkers!

You can run but you can't hide!

This unit of 20 fighters are ready to take care of monsters units and won't break easily.

Here we got rank 1 with a dwarf slayer who betrayed his old kins. Three classic chaos dwarfs berserkers and a ral partha more recent sculpt.

Rank 2: Again, more traitors! These old slayers are not all with their classic mohawk haircuts and could go easily with chaos dwarfs. I also gave them some different skin colours in order to make them more chaotic.

Rank 3: More bearded fellow with different kind of weapons. I like the one on the left the most, he's like a dwarven Conan the barbarian.

Here is the command group, with more mutated fellas. The boss is the famous Foaming Mad Furrikson!

The complete unit

In order to control these frenetic guys I had to add one of my character to keep them under control:

A half daemonic chaos dwarf wizard!

Here is my post for january a total of 345 points!

For next month, some firepower in order to blast the ennemy.

Cheers                                                                                                                            Sybou