ACT Painting Challenge - Ultramarines Pt.2

PROGRESS!

Well, not really enough to warrant an exclamation, but any progress is good progress in my books.

I'll start this post of by going into a little bit of detail of the work I've been doing before (and will complete during) this challenge.
As stated in the last post, I have a pretty sizable force of Ultramarines, many of which are admittedly on their way from overseas to bolster my options for events (including the ACT one) or I painted in a relatively rushed fashion a few weeks before the Inferno I event in January this year.
As a result, many of my ultras sport some pretty lackluster paint jobs, due in part to their rushed nature and also because I'm not a fantastic painter either (compounded by NEVER having painted blue miniatures before).

ACT Painting Challenge - Ultramarines Pt.1

Well, it's been quite some time since this blog has seen use, though despite that, my Heresy era hobbying has honestly continued in earnest.
Where I was last posting about having a meager few marines done, I've since bolstered my army to roughly 5000pts of blue armored awesomeness!

Now, however, the point of this post isn't to boast about the size of my army, but rather, discuss a new challenge that has been brought up by mr. Wiseman now that the ACT 30k event has been confirmed for the start of next year (23rd - 24th of January).

Painting the Deathwing

I'll be there first to admit I love my dark angels a tad to much, it didn't matter what army I go to collect (and I've had a go at most of them at some point) I always come back to my dark green marines. This time is no different, sheet working on my Taghmata Omnissiah list for a while, I'm now preparing for the Apocalypse Tournament in November, 10,000 points. To start off this ordeal, Im back to painting my deathwing terminators, so far I've finished the first 25, so im just about a quarter of the way through them :) I figuired I'd posted a quick guide to how i do it. I apologise for the picture quality, its the best i can do with my current camera

Starting with the base colours, i spray the whole model bleached bone army painter spray, and then put the base colours on the rest of the model, so they look very flat

Next up is chipping, lightly dabbing the colour you want, in this case rhinox hide (actually i found a 50/50 mix of rhinox/abbaddon black is preferable, as it gives two tones in the chipping), then fold the sponge back slightly, to spread the material out, giving less blobs of paints, and more chipping effect

This is then followed by washing the whole model with Oils, i really like the burnt umber oil, with AK White Spirit, theres cheaper options for white spirits out there, but this is what im comfortable with, i actually just pour some of the oil paints straight into the small container, and then mix it through, so it becomes a pot full of the wash, instead of having to mix it each time individually. That definately stemmed from efficiency, not laziness ;)

This is then followed by a spray of mat varnish, to seal it. The bases for all 100 terminators will be done together, this is to minimize variations in the basing styles.  

Ultramarines Pt.3 - Painting Blue!

SO,

After a couple of days of procrastination and uncertainty, I've managed to knock out the five tacticals and the MK.IV command guys I have (almost...one guy still needs finishing touches).
Now admittedly, I haven't started weathering my guys yet, largely because I lack the right tools to weather them the way I want to, so naturally, once they're weathered expect them to feature again.

Post Inferno

Well I ran my first event since I left GW on the weekend just past, a 2500 point Heresy tournament. The quality of the armies there was generally fairly high, with only a few needing to see more paint, but even these you could tell had a huge amount of work done on them, be it in conversions throughout the army, or the painting so far. It was a shame that in the last week we saw a few people have to drop out for one reason or another, but we still finished up with 10 people taking part. Next time we'd like to double that though

Congratulations to Nath and his Iron hands who took out Best General, Aaron whose Death Guard won Players Choice and to Andrew who picked up Best Sports.

The event was great fun to run, with the guys not having many rules questions, and those that did, sorted it out with what would be cool. I'd definitely like to run another event down the track.

If you'd like to check out more pictures of the event here's some places you can (thanks to everyone who had their camera out on the day, especially Tim whose been doing match reports up for his Ordo Reductor)

Match Report 1

match Report 2

The Facebook Event Page

Pictures of the armies taking part

Ultramarines Pt.2 - The Arrival

So after an incredibly long wait, the first portion of my Ultramarines army has arrived!
5 Mk.IV tactical marines, a Mk.IV Command Kit and a mighty Spartan!

This is just the first of several deliveries I am anticipating and whilst I'm waiting impatiently for the rest, I'm still SUPER excited to have some blue to paint!

So here's what the first members of my legion look like;

Adam's Friend

Hey guys and girls,

Well I'm Nick and I'm here invited by Adam as I have somehow convinced him that I have some ability when it comes to painting minis.

So a bit about me.... I have been playing Warhammer 40k for longer than I care to admit, (somewhere around 2nd Ed I think) on and off the whole time and always seeming to need to start again when my interest peeks and I succumb to the call of war. When I think about it, I have dabbled with every army when it comes to painting, but each time it comes to starting an army, I am always drawn to the mighty space marines. Nothing screams "bad-ass" then shoulder pads bigger than your head and a gun with a muzzle big enough to eat small children that shoots mini-nukes at anything that get in your way. 

For me the hobby began when a friend of mine was playing the wizards of the coast game "Magic the gathering". I opted to fill in for one of his games he was short, using his deck and I beat him.... Long story short and much frustration for him being beaten by his own decks repeatedly, we opted to have a go at something that required more tactical acumen, that had more diversity and there was no chance I was going to beat him.....