AoBR Dreadnought...now with weapon arms!

Did some more work on my AoBR Dread, just finishing the arms really so he actually has something to go into battle with.  Granted it isn't really the loadout I'd like to use in games but it's something to make him look whole for now.  Here he is with lascannon and missile launcher arms:

And again with Multi-melta and Dreadnought close combat weapon (and flamer):

Here's a few shots of all four weapons laid out:

And a couple more close ups of just the weapons:

Really really happy with the way all of this turned out.  With the exception of the photos, gonna have to work on my setup for that.

Blu Stuff is here!

I found a video for this stuff a little while back and it intrigued me enough to want to mess around with it a bit.  It's basically the perfect complement to green stuff.  Sculpt something, a bit, a detail, whatever and press it into the Blu Stuff and in about 3-4 minutes you have a nice, semi-flexible mold to use to make however many more you want.  You don't even have to fool around with release agents and the like to get your new pieces out.

What's more is that I ordered this about a week ago and only paid £2 for shipping.  I got it today!  Six days to get from the UK to the US for that little price is astounding!  Thumbs up for Blu Stuff!

AoBR Dreadnought Progress

Made significant progress on my AoBR Dreadnought tonight.  Pretty much got it finished other than the obvious lack of weapon arms and some additional weathering/damage that I intend to add.  Really glad that I switched to black primer instead of white as doing so made the metallics on this very easy to do.

First up is a frontal shot.  Made sure to mix up the colors of the wires and hoses attached to the sarcophagus.  Did some extensive Boltgun Metal drybrushing to give an initial weathered look on the armor panels/plates.  I'll add some real dings, dents and scratches later for sure.

Then we have a left side view.  No real point to this angle, just wanted another shot.  I guess I could point out that the arms are magnetized and you can't even tell!  Magic!

 

And the rear shot.  I'm still pretty shitty at doing lenses.  Oh well I'll get the hang of it eventually I guess.

Really seeing an improvement on my efficiency in getting a decent paint job applied quickly.  So that's one notch in the plus column.  This was my first chance to use some of the bigger Army Painter grass tufts.  They amaze me more every time I use them.  The front one let me cover up a pretty big glob of glue that surfaced after some of my sand flaked off during the initial drybrush. 

The rocks are made from Woodland Scenics lightweight Hydrocal (fancy plaster) in a boulder mold that I bought from Hobbytown.  One fill gave me about 40 different size/shape rocks/boulders that are very useful for basing large models such as this.  Oh and they paint up pretty nice too!

Chaplain done!

In only a day's time, I managed to pretty much completely finish my first HQ unit, a Space Marine Chaplain with jump pack.  I originally intended to grab the Finecast version of this but a coworker had a metal one laying around that he wasn't using and he was nice enough to let me have it.  So I figured I'd do it proud and give it my best effort.

Primed in black, then basecoated in Liche Purple with Burnished Gold trim, it started looking decent pretty quickly.  Being covered in skulls, a little Bleached Bone washed with Devlin Mud made it easy to knock out a lot of detail.  The chains, wings and other gold details were easily dry brushed on with touches of Burnished Gold, Mithril Silver, Dark Angels Green and Boltgun Metal.  The base was covered with black sand from Michael's and drybrushed with watered down Calthan Brown and then again lightly with Bleached Bone.  Then I added the aforementioned ArmyPainter static grass clumps.

 

The highlight of this whole thing (other than the model being free :P ), was the plasma pistol.  That was my first attempt at that kind of glowy highlighting and I'm actually quite pleased with the result!

More supplies!

I had intended to put everything in one post but the first one got a little long winded.  So here's the other stuff that I picked up.  First are the Army Painter premade static grass clumps.  I've had pretty good success with the GW static grass applied directly to the base with a little PVA glue.  These bad boys eliminate most of the effort as they're preassembled in little realistic clumps for direct application to your base.  Just peel one off that's the right size for where you want it off of the "flypaper" they come on and glue it to your base.  Voila, instant clumps!

The whole package was $5.99 at a local gaming store.  I've only had a chance to put it on one model so far, but its been enough to convince me that this is the real deal!  I'll be adding a pic of my Chaplain later showing it off.

Next up I decided to get some fancy 3rd party resin bases.  I wanted something that looked rocky for my Assault squad to appear like they were leaping from them and these fit the bill.  I decided to pick some up from Jawaballs, who I follow on Youtube as he has some pretty good painting vids and tutorials.  They were about the same price as any of the other online retailers.  Like the LITKO mag bases, these took a while to get.  I'm sure casting quality resin bases isn't something that you can crank out thousands in an afternoon, but it still took a little longer than I'd hoped.  This may be the one major argument for paying a little more to get stuff from an established online store who's only purpose is to sell stuff.  Regardless, just looking at them and cleaning them up this afternoon was enough to impress me.  I bought two packs of 10x bases and looking at them or a while I can only find two that are actually duplicates.  So they're pretty nice and will offer some incredible variety.  So despite the lead time on the order, I'm very pleased with the product.

One other thing I wanted to add is that after reading on his blog, he apparently can cast these in black as well.  They don't show up on the website for order but apparently if you email him beforehand you can get them.  This would be very nice in that after you've based and finished your models, if there's any chipping or anything then you'd be left with solid black underneath instead of the glaring white resin.  In most cases you probably wouldn't even notice it.

New products arrive!

Over the past couple of weeks I've ordered online or bought at retail a few things to enhance the appearance of my army.  The first thing I got was some of the Gale Force 9 magnetic bases.  They're not bad at around $10 for 25x of the 25mm size.  They're very thick, nearly twice that of a normal GW base out of the box.  The top is textured and on the bottom is a thick circular piece of magnetic sheet.  The magnetic force is pretty good, not good enough to attach it to a metal cabinet perpendicularly and have it stick, but it's definitely going to keep them from moving in a box if you have something on the bottom to attract them.  Aside from that, I recently found another alternative from LITKO Game Accessories.  Much, much cheaper for way more quantity.  They're quite a bit thinner but still hold up pretty well.  Rather than being an entire base, these are simply machine cut pieces of magnetic sheet that attach to the bottom of your standard bases.  This is nice if you've already got a lot of pieces and you don't want to rebase them.  You simply peel off the backing and stick it on!

A couple of coworkers and I ordered about 200x of the 25mm, 25x 60mm and 10x 40mm.  I've got enough of the 25mm to last a while, the 40s were just for my Termies and the 60s were for my Dreads and a friends Cadian HW teams.  Unfortunately the 60mm's don't match up with the bases so that was a bit disappointing.  The only other problem we had was that these are all custom ordered and produced.  Even if you order something standard like 25mm bases, they are cut to order so this means a little lead time on delivery.  In our case it meant a lot of lead time as we caught them at a bad time apparently and it took just over 30 days from the time of order until we had them in our hands.  Overall its a nice product, just don't expect to have them this weekend for a tournament if you order them today.

Magnets, magnets, magnets!

And lo there was much rejoicing as the mailbox was opened and my shipment of magnets had arrived!  Only 4 days after ordering (and that's spanning a weekend too), I got my replenishing supply of rare earth magnets today from K & J Magnetics.  I ordered 100x 1/8" x 1/16" and 100x 1/16" x 1/32", plenty enough to get me through my backlog of building and modding.  But not only did I get them in a timely fashion, I also got about 10 extra of the 1/16" x 1/32".  The baggie just said "100+" and I don't blame them, those small magnets are a bitch to count! :-)  But props to K & J Magnetics for some damn fine customer service, quick shipping and great prices!  If you need magnets, that's the place to go!