Armies on Parade in a Space Hulk

Agh, can't believe that the Armies on Parade comp was over three weeks ago now! Thankfully I managed to get everything finished in time and I was pretty pleased with the board in the end, having successfully managed to play with some weathering powders to create some different effects. Again, our local store had the most entries on the planet, beating Warhammer World itself as well as the previous record set last year. The entries were fantastic, so many different styles of painting, force composition and narrative on display. My particular favourite was a multi-level Genestealer Cult vs Inquisitorial force, complete with atmospheric lighting! I didn't manage to take any of my own photees, so I've nabbed them from the local shop Facebook page.

Who's competing with that? So sick!

There were so many other great entries too, standouts including Lewis's fantastic Vampire Counts army complete  with a towering, skeleton festooned tree, Gaz's Orcs with a beast of a Mawcrusher and a great narrative board based on the film Zulu, featuring the excellent and under-exposed Praetorian Guard regiment against some brutal looking Orks which came complete with a soundtrack! An honourable mention goes out to the excellent Helm's Deep diorama, a Khorne / Nurgle Daemon army which featured some excellent freehand and loads of sculpted eyeballs and the the pictured Imperial Guard / Mechanicus force that had some great airbrush and weathering work.

Such symmetry, very balanced, much pleasing to my OCD.

Here's my entry, in it's final form.  kind of wish I could have done a little more the the board, but overall I'm really happy with it. I particularly enjoyed painting up the battered gold Shrine of the Aquila and working out how to do scorch-marks with the sooty weathering powders. It was awesome to get good feedback too, I was a little worried that after the varnish frosting incident the army would look a little dull.

The faithful few of Istvaan.

I've already got plans for next year and I'm hoping to pull off a narrative board, based on a battle between my half completed second edition Tyranids and another force I've yet to decide upon. Either way, it's going to be super fun to do. In the meantime, there's a fun little mini competition coming up in December based on whatever you can fit onto one of the larger model bases - I'm hoping to use that as an incentive to finish off the Emperor's Children force. Since finishing off the Armies on Parade project, I've returned to painting up more terminators. I've pretty much finished the RTB09 boxed set and saved the best of the classic figures for last - the Captain and Librarian.

Nearly thirty years old and still rad as fuck.

These are figures that have been on the 'always wanted to paint' list. I think I've painted the Librarian before, but the Captain was certainly a first. Sadly, the Captain's left shoulder icon was a little battered, but aside from that, both models were still pretty sharp casts. The Librarian provided a great excuse to try out contrasting colour highlights on the weapon, something I may play around with more in the future!

In the 41st Millennium, 80's Van Damme haircuts are legit.

The Captain stands out as one of Jes Goodwin's (have I mentioned how much I love Jes recently? Because I do) most iconic sculpts. There's something so solid about the composition and feel of this figure. Despite it being a relatively simple three-piece model, it oozes presence and character. One of my old friends had this miniature and I always loved the way he'd painted it. Whilst it's not an exact replica ( I seem to recall more yellow / white on his) it's definitely a little nod to the past.

Iconography based on the sculpted kneepad

May add more to this one, feels like there's too much blue space now!

I'm really pleased at how the freehand on the right shoulders turned out. I've recently changed brushes and I'm having much better results with the new ones as they hold a point without splitting and seem to be a little more robust than the older ones I've used. So now I've only another squad of five of these to do and I can officially play nearly all of the original Space Hulk scenarios! I'm also currently working on a squad of five second edition Deathwing as well as finishing off the five Emperor's Children Cataphractii terminators. It's amazing to see how much the scale of these figures has changed so much over the last three decades whilst still remaining some of the greatest models to paint. I hope to have all of these project wrapped up before Christmas so I can start on something different in the new year - need to get a move on!