Broken Paintbrush

This week it is in the upper 90s here in the PNW and I know there are much hotter places in the world, but it hardly ever reach the 80s here in Seattle, let-alone the upper 90s. Because of this my apartment isn’t set up with air conditioning. This means two things hobby-wise: I’m staying up much later since I can’t sleep and am able to get more painting done, and my paint dries out faster than normal. When doing the washes this is actually a benefit as I can paint the next coat not long after painting the first. The problem though is when putting some paint down on my pallet, I am adding water between each model to keep it liquid. This is causing me to struggle keeping a good paint-to-water mix so my question is this to my fellow hobbyist in the warm/dry climates: what do you add to your paint to keep it from drying out quickly?

So my local GW store announced that next month’s painting challenge is for a 1,000 point army. I know I could easy submit my finished Iron Warriors, but where would the challenge be in that? Instead I see this as a excellent motivation for me to finish my traitor guard army! Well at least the core of it.

What does that mean for my painting schedule? Well I currently have one platoon (with two heavy weapon squads) done, so to get a legal army I still need to paint the other platoon and my company command squad. This would give me 1,000 points if I bulk out the squads with grenades and such, or I could really push my self and try to get my freshly built sentinels painted as well. Four weeks, 36 guardsmen and 4 sentinels, the math doesn’t really add up when I figure it took me over a month to paint the first platoon… but I could also pass that off as the warm up.

My plan is as such:

Week One: base coat both platoon squads and the platoon command squad

Week Two: Wash, highlight and finish the platoon as well as base coat the heavy weapon squads

Week Three: Wash, highlight and finish the heavy weapon squads and base coat, wash and highlight the company comand squad

Week Four: Paint the Sentinels and detail the command squad

This week is going to be a challenge though due to the fact it is in the upper 90s and I don’t have any air conditioning. Painting wise it creates the challenge of trying to finish a coat of paint before it dries out. Week 3 & 4 will be the big push, but with my wife out of town those two weeks I won’t have much else to do besides paint (and try to stay cool!).

I ordered these sentinels a couples of weeks ago from FRP Games and DogStarGames through Amazon (thanks work for that gift card!). Although I normally like to buy things from my LFGS, they don’t take Amazon points. I would recommend both of these stores if you do buy online, they both shipped within a day and were in my mail box a few days later.

Anyway, onto the pictures!

Traitor Guard Heavy Sentinels with Plasma Cannons

Two heavy sentinels armed with my favorite, non-Apocalypse weapon: plasma cannon goodness! I actually got these models because I like how the heavy sentinel looks and the fact it can mount up a plasma cannon is extra bonus points. It did take me a while to figure out how to glue the legs together. The legs are fully positional which is great to pose the model (and you can see some of the variation possible in my models here) but it makes it hard to glue it together. I found the best way was to glue the feet to the base as far to each side as possible, glue the upper leg to the hips and glue the two halves of the mid leg together (obviously connecting the upper and lower leg pieces). This allowed the model to still have some variation of movement possible to finish the pose, but made it easy to drop some glue at the ankle and each end of the mid-leg and let it dry.

Traitor Guard Scout Sentinels with Autocannons

I also  built two scout sentinels. They are currently mounting autocannons but these (as well as the plasma) are simply sticky-tacked in place so I can paint it and possibly magnetize it to enable any of the weapon options. The crew are also not glued in place and since I opted to not include the roll cage they are easy to slip in and out. Some spiky bits give a Chaos flare along with the head from the vehicle command sprue. The scout sentinels still need the rock layer glued down before priming but are ready to join the mighty ranks of the 14th Grand Company.

I do need some suggestions on a paint scheme for my vehicles. I was thinking of something similar to the Modian tank in the IG codex, but have also seen some great looking models painted red/black. The problem is that both of these color schemes clash a bit with the orange of my main troops. Any thoughts?

I have finished painting the 82nd Platoon of the Iron Army of the 14th Grand Company. Some of you BoLS viewers may recognize the command squad as it was entered in their hobby challenge. Thanks for those who did vote for me, really I just entered the challenge to give an example of what is possible with the great plastic kits GW produces and to get any feedback from the community their.

Part of the Command Squad Hobby Challenge was to come up with a few lines of fluff for the squad. Getting a bit of inspiration from the Flagellant model heads I submitted:

This is the 82nd platoon command of the Iron Army of the 14th Grand Company led by Tiresias the Lost. Tisesias was a small boy when the 14th conquered his world and as the Warsmith strode upon the field of victory, Tisesias was brave (or foolish) enough to not look down. The Warsmith had him immediately blinded and promoted to the lead the 82nd platoon. He is accompanied by Niles the Unspoken, who is required to be gagged or else will continue to scream blasphemies until he passes out.

These are the two troop squads with a basic setup of a vox, flamer and Sargentwith a power weapon. I like the imaginary of the Sargentwhipping his subordinates into action with his flail.  I know there are some major gaps on the Catachan models between the torso and the arms but since I’m going for the full look of the army, I’m not too worried about some of the “floating arms.” Maybe in the future I’ll go back and putty the joint and repaint it, but at this point I’d rather spend my energy painting the other platoon, company command and the many other things I need to add to this army.

Two lascannon squads as my anti-tank support, and don’t fret, the heavy weapon teams in platoon two are missiles and mortars, I just decided to paint the lascannon teams first. The heavy weapon teams are not completely done, I still need to finish the base and a few minor highlights but I had the camera out and want to get the pictures up.

My light box is not large enough to fit the full platoon so I am going to have to wait until I bring them in the FLGS to get some in-action pictures.

Next up is to build the four sentinels that came in the mail a few weeks back then paint platoon two. Repainted my Khorne Berserkers may jump in line though, as there is another 1500 pt tournament at the GW store and they were the only squad that wasn’t painted well.

~Update: So I just realized that instead of posting the second lascannon squad I posted the first one twice!

I have nearly finished my Warsmith on a Juggernaut of Khorne (initial post here). I love the sculpt of the model, in fact that is the reason I got it (actually my wonderful wife gave it to me last Christmas!). I did very little modification to the model itself to pull it into the 40k universe, but by the very nature of Chaos, it can easy pass off as archaic MkI, a bit twisted by the warp.

Iron Warriors Warsmith on Juggernaut

Iron Warriors Warsmith on Juggernaut

I did the base coat just I did any of my normal Iron Warriors: Mithril Silver and Shining Gold, Devlan Mud and Badab Black wash. The metals were then re-dry brushed before washing with Baal Red and Ogryn Flesh.

Iron Warriors Warsmith on Juggernaut

Still left to do is the power weapon, shoulder plate XIV, pouches, and the base.