Quick teaser and thoughts from the work bench

I've been getting somewhat excited about Space Wolves - and skimming through the new Grey Knight and Space Wolf codexes, gave me an idea to quite possibly move to the "count as direction" from GKs to SWs, as my army structure was seriously hosed by the changes and disappearance of Inquisition units.

The real dilemma is the two Dreadknights that I love and would like to include. One option might be to make the "Sentinels of Mars" (Imperial Fists rules Mechnaicus units in the army) the main detachment, and try an ally Grey Knights and inquisition and see how that goes. There is a new GK detachment that only requires one troop unit and gives you up to two DK.

Any ideas and opinions welcome! I've been overloaded with the amount of rules, detachments and options and can't quite possibly see the forest for the trees.

At the same time, working on the Librarian. Warpaint, alien runes, skulls, feathers, a grimoire, and hopefully the end result will be an intimidation warrior mystic. Part classic Space Marine imagery, part tribal shaman and a little bit of samurai vibe thrown in. The end result obviously need to fit in the squad.

I also "primed" the trench network with Tamya paints and opened my Forge World imperial stronghold tile to find it cracked. I glued it back together and will see if it holds, or if I need to try and see how FW customer service treats me.

Pictures of something finished this weekend. Until then:

A point in time - Old and new ventures.

The trip to Nottingham and Denmark was inspirational to say the least. And I'm back to working on stuff in a nice state of exhaustion and excitement.

7th Edition Warhammer 40000 seems to have spiraled in to a release cadence and data-slate sanity where it is close to impossible to keep track, or even know how to build an army. Just as I had my Legion guys ready, the new Grey Knight book mixed things up again. Not complaining, mind you, just acknowledging I'm too busy and old to keep up.

I am how ever excited and focused as ever to pushing the project to new heights.So very thankful of all the new models. Having just seen a vast range of unbelievably cool models in Europe, it's exciting to see that the coolness in my own cabinet, at army scale, can stand proud! The sheer intimidation of a full squad of "art-scale" Space Marines and all the adjacent craziness keeps me going with this particular labor of love. The Knight came out quite nicely too.

So next,

I will finish painting the Librarian. He is going to a very sinister, warrior shaman direction. Every bit the super warrior a space marine is, but with clear, sinister, mark of the witch, and master of forbidden lore. Hoping to get this done soon to show you.

I also need to find the stamina to paint 4 more Mechanicus storm troopers, to finish the squad of ten and reward myself with more esoteric Mechanicus characters. Fabricator Captain Siimon, desperately needs a new model, and the old one will be demoted to his aid.

To enable new additions, I just ordered way too many models and some terrain from Forge World and Games Workshop, and am now fighting a pretty cool Space Wolf idea to not get derailed. That might include Horus model and some Gal Vorbak into Wulfen work.

...and then there is Aquila Illuminati - part 3 of the trilogy.

I'm grateful for the blog and all of your comments. Humans are social beings after all, and it doesn't help to have all of my modeling friends the wrong side of the atlantic. Lets see if I can get you pics soon.

It's been a while - from nothing to Epic!

So far 2014 has been the busiest of my life and it's been hard to find time for the hobby.

To balance the quiet, I give you a pictorial of an EPIC +I+munda event that took place in Nottingham very recently, followed by a special get together in Denmark. It is incredible what amazing experiences and friendships this hobby can create.

I'm sure this game will be reported and documented properly else where too. What it really is, is a celebration of the hobby that also involved some random rolling of the dice. But the focus and genius is really on the narrative and the spectacular models and terrain.

Very soon, it's time to talk about the future, and the third installment of my Inquisitor Trilogy. Powered by this inspiring experience.

The gorgeous terrain, together with an insane host of Mechanicus things and marketplace goods built and painted by JB

More of JB's genius, with Peter's gorgeous rusted gear

JB's robot, with Kari's arco unit, "integrated".

JB's robot II

Neal's incredible Market Place quarter master. Neal brought an utterly brilliant set of weird, dystopian, war hammer gear.

Tim's Mechanicus models. Wish I had more pictures of these lovelies. Tim teamed up with JB for the game

Johan's Radical =I= and my partner in crime for the day.

Johan's models travelled in style

Peter's classic beauties. Don't have enough photos of these, but they have been well documented elsewhere.

my Alter Daemon, one of two new models I brought - which is pretty pathetic considering what all others did!

Johan's guys advance

Borsus and Curze set up

Silas and crew sneak forward

towards and inevitable clash with JB

Kari's Flagellants versus Silas

who would kill both

before cutting open the injured to unleash the Alter

who would go on a tear

one of Tim's gorgeous mechanicus horses

group shot of my guys

Flagellant Ambrosius

Peter's stunning rust work and Mechanicus guardian

War!

our survivors from a bloody game.

And then on to Denmark... To meet with Jakob and Stefan

Stefan's vintage GD winner

Jakob's Crystal Brush best of show.

Miracles do happen, Stefan is back to painting! and I'm honored to have one of his to join a few of Jakob's and a few of JBs in my collection :)