Jaakko and Forin - Rank & File month #4

Squat armourers are adept at forging rather striking exo-armour, usually embellished with the visage of a Squat Ancestor Spirit. These finely wrought suits of exo-armour become the prestigious war panoply of great Lords and their Hearthguards.

Warhammer 40.000 Compendium

With the completion of the final Rank & File month I can really feel how the pressure is off. I had a lot of time to paint and model and even though I didn't finish my main goal of this month I have several things to show you. I spent a lot of time painting tanks but the rhinos and landraider are still in a WIP-stage. They will hopefully be included in the coming months. Anyway, lets check out the stuff I did finish:

I finished a Combat Squad, a Guildmaster with an Imperial Robot and a Guildmaster in exo-armour on bike. I'm spoiled with Guildmaster options so another Guild Bike Squad would be nice to unlock the option of playing with an Engineers Guild Expeditionary Force. Instead of the promised buildings, the main terrain project for this month was radioactive waste containers and some barrels. I also painted the remains of an Eldar Dreadnought and a statue.

 

TROOPS:

A Combat Squad with heavy bolter. I try to paint two more to expand the army to two Brotherhoods.

Guildmaster with an Imperial Robot of Crusader Class. The chance to buy two of these emerged and I had to add them to this project. The other one is almost finished. A Robot Maniple consists of four robots so I still need to find two more of them.

I took the maximum amount of rolls for gear for the Guildmaster and also did the rolling. He ended up with a sawn off shotgun, a hand flamer, knock out grenades, virus grenades, a bionic arm, a refractor field, a bio scanner and an energy scanner. The sawn off shotgun was a nice coincidence as I can use the biker from last month as the same personality. This one just has it hidden under his trench coat. The plastic arms don't fit this sculpt very nicely.

A Guildmaster in exo-armour with a bike. I have been acquiring exo-armoured Squats to add another Warlord and his Hearthguard to the leader month and happened to get this one in my hands in the process.

This month in points:

 

TERRAIN:

The radioactive waste containing units were made from soda can bottoms with some bitz. I made a mix of green paint and water effect resin to fill the central part and added some clear water effect as another layer. Naturally radioactive waste is stored in an open receptacle.

 

The remains of an Eldar Dreadnought. I have some Eldar Jetbike parts too and try to find the time to use them in a similar fashion.

A broken statue of an exo-armoured Squat Ancestor. The Squat is acrylic resin and the pedestal is a 3d-print.

That's it, until next month!

Jaakko and Forin - Rank & File month #3

On one side of me stand my Homeworld, Stronghold and Brotherhood; On the other my ancestors. I cannot behave otherwise than honourably.

Warlord Kettri son of Egil, Grindel Stronghold

 

 

I know what people think of February but for me March has been the hardest month so far. I had trouble staying focused and painting felt like a chore at times. I think it was mostly because I had allocated a squad of bikers for this month and there was a lot more work in them than I anticipated. I struggled last March too and hopefully it is just a case of passing mid challenge blues. Anyway, I think I'll make some adjustments to the remaining months to make sure I have something inspiring to paint every month.

 

Despite the hardships, I'm very happy with what I managed to paint. I'm also glad that I didn't have to tap into the buffer I painted in February and prospects for April look bright.

I finished one Combat Squad with a lot of heavy weapons, a Living Ancestor and a Guild Bike Squad. In addition to these I kept the terrain pledge alive by putting my imaginary Squat Sappers into work with field fortifications and by modelling and painting an objective marker in the form of a wounded Squat in exoarmour.

 

TROOPS:

A Combat Squad with heavy plasma gun and six! heavy bolters led by another Sqt Bylcow. Yes, Squats love heavy bolters and you can give one to every trooper.

A fragile looking Living Ancestor. There were many other sidearm options but I went with the dreaded laspistol. He is a real hindrance with his movement value of 2 so I will try to include another one in a sidecar later.

A Guild Bike Squad with a leader and seven troopers. I got some more bikes to make this happen, but I ran out of parts and had to improvise as the leader's bike was missing a headlight and rear wheel. I made a blue stuff mold and casted a headlight from acrylic resin. The rear wheel was made from green stuff. I'm pretty happy with both of them. The mark II bike someone might have noticed in the intro post is put aside for a possible hearthguard biker and is also still missing parts.

 

 

I love these bikers now even though they were a pain to paint. I painted these with headlight covers but unfortunately could not source the mentioned fluorescent paints in time. I'll try Tom's recipe and will give them a full fluorescent treatment at a later stage.

 

A close-up of the leader. The Squat lovers among you have probably noticed that it's actually a Guildmaster model. If I have the time and resources I might replace it with another leader and use this as one. The banner is a slight variation from one featured in WD 111 and Warhammer 40.000 Compendium and I used an enlarged version of the original to make the scetch I painted over.

 

This month in points: 

 

I use the OWAC adjusted model count so a biker equals two models.

 

TERRAIN:

For terrain I made a wounded Squat to function as an objective marker and some field fortifications.

 

The intact arm of this poor Squat is a surplus metal part, the body I modelled from resin and green stuff and the wounded side has tubings made from green stuff. The body is broken, not complete and only has the front part to make sure it cannot be mistaken as an actual exoarmour body.

 

The poorly hidden message here is that I have acquired some Squats in exoarmour and will hopefully be able to include an alternative Warlord and Hearthguard into the leader month.

The barbed-wire entanglements are made from toothpicks and a barbed-wire basing product and the dragon's teeth only needed to be glued to their bases, based and painted.

The next, and possibly last, terrain project will be scratch built buildings.

 

Thank you for reading this far, until next month!