Ok where do I start this week? It seems like all my plans have gone out of the window and I’ve headed of on down untrodden path. Well maybe not that untrodden but unused for some time. I’ve come over all 40k this week and I’ve spent just about all of my hobby time working on the Looted Primarus Redempter Dreadnought project, which has turned into something of a monster. In true orky fashion it has been christened with blood from a couple of carless cuts but it all adds to the character and should make it faster before I’ve even got round to painting it. Once I got started I simply got sucked in and kept adding and cutting away until I got something that I was happy with.
I’ve added quite a few work in progress pictures and I’ve also shared them over on the Beasts of War website using their new ‘Project’ feature which I think is a really nice touch on their updated site. Instead of creating a thread on the forum you can now use the project feature and just keep coming back to it and updating as you do now work. When you add an update it goes back to the top of the list of projects so that people can easily keep track of what is happening with it. They also have a nice feature that also checks when it was last updated and only moves it to the top of the list if there hasn’t been an update in the last twelve hours, which stops people form simply spamming their projects to the top of the list.
One of the things that sort of evolved as I was going along was that I’ve ended up with quite a few sub-assemblies that are either pined or magnetised. This wasn’t an attempt to make it modular so that I can swap things out it was more about how I would get access to different areas to paint them. A lot of these bits will get glued into place once the tricky to reach areas have been painted but I will leave a couple of bits unglued so that I can break the model down for transport and storage. The arms slot into place so I will leave them as they are and I will leave the magnets in place to join the body and legs but just about everything else will get locked into place. These are the different sections that are just about finished, although I may add a couple of extra bits before it goes to paint.
Because it stands on quite a large base I wanted to do something that would add to the conversion but didn’t want to spend an age trying to do something really elaborate. So opted to go with some textured plasticard but cut it into sections so that I could have the different sections at different heights. I feel it just helps to break up the large surface area without being overly complicated. I’ve then added a few bits of plastic tubing and I beam sections along with some green stuff corrugated pipe work to give it a bit of scrap yard feel. It took a bit of time to glue everything together and then added the damage but it’s really simple work. Just scuff things up with sand paper and cut the chips out with a sharp model knife, although I my thumbs are now covered by what feels like a thousand paper cuts.
When everything comes together you end up with I hope is a suitably Orky contraption. Ready to lay waste to anything that crosses its path. I could probably continue going over it for a few weeks thinking of other little bits of detail to add but I’m going to restrain myself and get it primed this weekend. My thinking being that I’m on a bit of roll at the moment and I’m hoping to carry my enthusiasm from the build over into getting it painted. And there is going to be a lot of painting on this.
On the subject of paint my plan is keep the same colour scheme as the rest of my existing Orks which is red and blue, fast and lucky. I’m going to paint most of the original parts in Ultramarine blue, the thinking being this was the original colour and as its lucky why would they want to change it. For all of the other bits that have been added I’m going to go with red which I’m hoping will balance things out for me. There will be lots of bare and damaged metal sections but I’m not going to go down the route of lots of really heavy weathering. It’s not a look I’m personally a fan of and in this case it would be out of kilter with my other stuff so I’m going to stick with what I’m used to. That doesn’t mean I won’t try and add few extra touches like rust streaks and oil leaks, after all giving these things a go is the only way I’m going to learn. Just that I want them to be things you notice as you look more closely at things as opposed to them jumping out at first sight.
Game night this week saw a couple of games of 40K underway, although I was just watching. Its one thing to get the bug for building but it’s another thing entirely to want to play at the moment. I’m sort of hoping that with everyone else getting back into the game that I will be slowly dragged along with them. I think I can safely say that the last version of the rule I actually bought was version 4, played some version 5 but nothing since then. Watching the games things seemed to flow well even though everyone was learning, some completely new to 40k and some getting up to speed with the new rules. Games were Marines against Dark Eldar, showing my age there, and Marines against Marines. I think it was 750 points they were playing with and everything seemed to quite well balanced. Although I have to say that when a multi melta from a speeder hit a Pred it did a horrific amount of damage, granted it was good rolls. But that’s just the way it goes.
We didn’t get any D&D in this week, just couldn’t line things up to have more than three of us available at one time so differed for a week and we will try again next week. I have to say though that I’m really enjoying this adventure, I think I’m going to get killed every time we get into a fight but I’m also learning when to get suck in and when to let the others soak up some of the punishment. My monk may be on the path to wisdom and enlightenment, or I’ve just given him the kiss of death, only time will tell.
Nothing to do with gaming but I’ve also started another eight week course at the gym which started on Monday and even though I’ve only had a week off, although I’ve been doing some running, it killed me. We have a new instructor this this course and she’s a harsh task master. No slacking here. But I’ve added it here on the blog as it keeps me out of the pub, sort of, which is giving me more hobby time. Which is something of a win win. That just means that with this extra time I may need a new Ork project to fill it, and the grot riggers are whispering in my ear that they want a flyer so watch this space and see what happens. That’s it for this week. Have a good hobby week and I hope to catch up with you all again next week.
