Pretty on the inside?

Before assembling...
     With the idea of using this Valkyrie on a display board, I wanted to make sure that I showed it some extra love.  That meant making sure that the interior was painted.  The exterior of the Valkyrie will be mostly a charcoal black color, and that meant that I needed to brighten up the interior a little.  I selected Bleached Bone as the base color, and I washed it with some Gryphonne Sepia.  I spent a little time detailing the various other components with silver metalics and some simple red and green buttons.  I weathered with some Scorched Earth

     I was able to do some more assembly since this was all painted, but I need to finish the cockpit before I can fully assemble the Valkyrie.  Lots of painting ahead, that's for sure.  With the pending release of Diablo 3, I need to make some progress.  I also picked up some accessories for my display board.  Fun times!

Adepticon 2012 Coverage
     If you were interested in the most in-depth coverage of Adepticon, you could do worse than checking out the Youtube channel of Blue Table Painting.  If you're not familiar with this company, they are a painting service for miniatures of all varieties.  Shawn, the owner of the company, is a pretty positive guy.  He's a little corny at times, sure, but he has a real love for table top war games.  His coverage of Adepticon is fun because it's very much a take-it-as-it-comes tour of Adepticon.

Internet Famous Model
     So I've had a model used on Bell of Lost Souls and my Deff Dread was on Games Workshop's blog and just the other day I stumbled across another model of mine being used.  I stopped by the Independent Characters' Podcast page and noticed my Imperial Vox Caster featured on a banner on the right side of the page.  Apparently they call him Lynyrd, and it's really weird to see your stuff being used like that without knowing about it.  Now I'm not a stick in the mud, and I'm not complaining.  I'm flattered, actually, and I listen to their podcast from time to time, so it's fine by me.  Crazy stuff!

Anyways, here are some more pictures of the Valkyrie's interior:

Saturday at the Bowie Battle Bunker

A Day at the Bunker


     I spent a good portion of the afternoon at the Bowie Battle Bunker in Bowie Maryland (go figure, right?).  A few friends were meeting up to play some Warhammer Fantasy.  While spectating the game, I thought I'd putter around the store and take a look at some of the 40K games going on, and snap a few pics.

     I was disappointed to find only two fully painted armies being played.  The most impressive was this Thousand Sons army that was being played using the vanilla Space Marine codex.  There were some interesting conversions, and some creative "counts as" models.  There were Space Marines on horse back that were being played as SM bikers, and Blood Crushers adorned with weapons that were counts-as attack bikes as an example.  Some great modeling work going on here.

Cool but... um...
     So that's a $640 worth of Thunderhawk Transporter.  From distance, it looks ok.  But when I inspected it a bit closer, it made me sad.

     So the paint that's on there is super thin, and the Land Raider... dear God where do I start.  Some of the model has been, well I guess primed?  Not sure what I would call that.  Yikes.  This thing has been on display for some time now.

     I'll just leave you with a few more random shots...

Now Witness the Power of this Fully Armed umm... pile of... Valkyrie?

Some Assembly Required


     I've been spending some time on my first Valkyrie kit.  This isn't the easiest kit I've assembled, but it really isn't incredibly hard.  My concepts for magnetizing bits and making this vehicle a bit more "tricked out" have been foiled by the reality I encounter as I proceed with the actual model assembly.  What I mean is that my mind's eye concept of how the Valkyrie SHOULD go together and how it ACTUALLY does go together are quite often different.  I had this neat idea of magnetizing the side doors such that they would easily be set in either open or closed position and wouldn't be prone to change during handling of the model.  That was foiled by the fact that the side doors are only slightly larger than the doorway they cover.

     There's more than the doors that I've struggled with, but it's symptomatic of my problem: no experience with this model.  That's okay, as I have a second one of these waiting for me under my desk.  I don't know how that makes me feel, exactly.  I can certainly move faster in the assembly, but there's another problem...

Paint before Assembly


     Yup!  I'm going to have to prime and paint quite a bit of this model before I really can put this bad boy together.  The obvious culprits are the cockpit and crew compartment.  The cockpit isn't large, but it is certainly detailed.  The crew compartment, for the most part, should be pretty straight forward.  The door gunners and their heavy bolters might be a bit of an issue.

     Really, if they had just made the heavy bolters ONLY attach to the bulkhead (or wall), and NOT the bulkhead AND the deck (or floor) in the crew compartment, it would have been no problem.  Now I've got some extra steps to take.  Hopefully I don't do something out of order and screw the whole mess up.

Bunker Visit


     I'll likely be at the Bowie, MD Battle Bunker on Saturday.  I'll just be there to spectate, but looking forward to getting some hours in the atmosphere of some table top gamin'!  See you there!

Chimera (mostly) done!

She's ready for battle! (sorta)


     So here it is!  I like the way it came out.  I hemmed and hawed about so many details, and honestly it was worth it.  This being the first test for what should be a fairly large number of vehicles for my Imperial Guard army, it was very important to get it right.  I think there are certainly some larger risks I can take with subsequent vehicles, now that I've tested some theories.

     I'm going to make sure that I do more to hide the decal outlines.  I used the Micro Sol agent on the skull and the 501, but it didn't dull the look enough.  I'm going to make sure that on my other vehicles I paint over the clear portions lightly enough to take that plastic sheen off.  I hit it up with some matte finish, but it's still there.  All of the infantry didn't show the decals like that, granted they're significantly smaller decals.

     What am I referring to when I say that it's "mostly finished?"  Well perhaps you've noticed it already but the hull weapon is unpainted.  I've magnetized the two choices but I somehow forgot to prime them.  I'll just make sure they get primed next time I've got the airbrush out and filled with primer.

Army Parade


     I've decided that I'm going to participate in the Games Workshop Armies on Parade competition.  One of my early experiences in this hobby, from a competitive point of view, was an early "Army Parade" deal done at the Games Workshop store in Grapevine Mills mall in Grapevine, Texas.  The result of that was a little disappointing to me, but I learned some important lessons:

1.  Size matters! -  Big models get big attention.
2.  Bases count.  -  Dull bases?  Pffftt.... shows you didn't try.
3.  Bring a converted Tau tank you've turned into a Titan.  -  Yeah... for real.
4.  Don't get your hopes up for prizes.  -  It'll be a book... a... book.

     1 and 2, take those to heart for sure.  3 is still important because that happened.  The guy's army was painted ok.  I would say better than average, but it didn't matter because of the massive converted Tau Titan.  Stole the freakin' show.  But number 4 also happened, so I didn't feel so bad about losing.  Hah!

     The main challenge for me, on a personal level, with this competition is going to be the display board.  I've never done terrain, apart from bases, and I'm only moderately competent in that.  This is going to mean lots of foam carving and plenty of mistakes, I'm sure.

     Next up?  Valkyrie!  Until then, here are some more pics of my Chimera, enjoy:

Streaming some more painting

(Stopped broadcasting around 10:31pm Eastern.  Stop back by later for more streaming!  Cheers!)

I'm back and doing some finishing up on that Chimera.  I'll be streaming some 40K Radio to boot so join in and be AMAZED!  I MIGHT be overselling that just a bit.  Okay... watch paint dry on the Internet! Hurray!



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