Flames of War - M4A1 76mm Sherman with winter camouflage

After having these tanks for months, I've decided to paint them to what I've been wanting to go for since the conception of this idea. Just because I saw the picture of these tanks in the catalogue, I knew I had to try and paint them.

So I did the standard paint job.

And somehow I was bold enough and pulled off the camo that I wanted.

The keys are in there for scale reference.

I'm quite pleased with the results and I'll continue building up the entire army.

Lots of painting done in a week.

The past few weeks have been really busy for me. Getting a lot of things done for my shop and planning for War Without End, was also busy finishing all my assignments and exams for now too.

For no apparent reason, I dug out my Assault Squad to be painted. Even though I'm not using this squad in any games, I just painted them for fun when I was over at Yip's place for painting night. I made it a point that I WILL paint my Blood Angels when I'm there, whether or not I will use the unit. Even so, I painted these in less than 4 days.

I got a feeling that my bottle of Satin Varnish is going bad or something, it gave my squad a dusty frosted look. So I fixed it by airbrushing the usual GW Gloss Varnish and got the colour and shine I wanted.


I was also working on this little armoured car.

And the rest of the Firestorm Troops for Bagration and the rest of my German army to be repainted. I aim to finish these in the 2 weeks that I am free.

But I don't know why I'm so inclined to work on my Blood Angels. Maybe it's just an obsession or something. Even now, I got exactly 3,305 points painted and I've got another 3,000 points or so in line. No rest for the crazies! Gotta finish what I started.

Project: Iron Warriors and Flames of War

I'm back at my home town for the holidays which means I won't be able to get much done. But I've brought back 11 Chaos Space Marines and a Chaos Vindicator to work on.

Before I left my apartment, I took some pictures that are blog worthy. These are what I've been working on recently.

A magnetized Iron Warriors Dreadnought. I even did a little extra and magnetized the head so it's rotatable.

As you can see it's pretty much still in progress, not done with some of the smaller details yet. But for the first time ever, it's the brightest I've ever painted for any model/army I have. Though, the silver is actually airbrushed.

I'm still wondering if the basing colour works, I'm out of ideas for now, which is why I used dark brown for the basing.


Also, I need to work on my Panzergranadier platoon. Even though Bagration starts in May, I'd rather finish them way ahead of time just so I don't have to rush.

I'll be working on more infantry models for my Iron Warriors.

Back from the dead!

I only found the title fitting since I haven't posted a single thing for almost 2 years!

To put a little timeline to this, I'll just summarize my years.

2010:

I just had to put Dead Space 2 as the comeback picture for my blog post as I've finished playing the game over and over. It's really good. Apart from that, I went out with some friends and played lots of Left 4 Dead 2. Currently I'm into Diablo 2 again, since I can't wait for Diablo 3.

I moved to my own apartment during that time, and dedicated a lot of hours into making Hobby Forge the store it is today.

I also managed to finish a brand new Blood Angels army within 2 months. I did it so quickly just because I wanted to participate in a tournament that was organized by Oliver Woo from Just Wargame.

I managed to win 2 out of 3 of the games, 1 of them being a draw, but I got the highest overall score. I was shocked when I was awarded the best painted army since I myself knew that some of the marines didn't have their details done yet. Nevertheless, the biggest objective of participating in the tournament is to visit a store that's located in a state at least 1,600 kilometers away.




A shot of the army after it's completely painted. I changed the colour of the power weapons to make them look interesting from a distance.




The Death Company part serves as an expansion to my army, though I really need to finish my Death Company army. More on that later.



I also dabbled into proper IG as I would like to have a nice IG army someday. But now I gotta focus on what I need to finish.



2011:

I think this is the year where I'm super broke.

Went for Games Day UK 2011, stayed in UK for 2 weeks. Spent a crazy amount of money there.

Went to Australia for 2 and a half weeks. Spent not so crazy amount of money there.

I started the ball rolling on the Badab War thing in my store. Managed to get quite a lot of guys interested in the campaign. But the campaign came to a grinding halt when we realized that Forge World is slowly releasing Badab War goodies. Everyone is hoping that their chosen chapter gets a release soon. I too, hope for Forge World to release Chapter Master Lias Issodon.

I chose the Raptors as I think they're the coolest in terms of tactics, rules, and hobby opportunity. You don't normally get to do camo on Space Marine vehicles, so this is the only chance.

I did something different with my Raptors, I tried digital camo. Again, more on that next time. As you can see, some of the vehicles are not done yet, but of course, that's just me being distracted with something else for now.





One of the projects that really got me going was the Ultramarines project. I wanted to paint up an army for beginners to try when they come to the store, a combination of the Battleforce and the Commander box goes well for this purpose. So I pulled a super fast paint job on these.

I think the total painting time it took me to finish them was around 2 weeks, but that 2 weeks was spread out to at least 2 months. Towards the end, I got sick and tired of the Scouts. Not really my thing at all. I took less than 3 days to actually assemble, base, and finish all 5 of them. I wouldn't mind painting the marines, but Scouts? No thanks hombre.






Towards the end of the year, I took part in Legio's Ghemehaal Annihilation Campaign. I played my Alpha Legion in this campaign, and it was totally amazing. I managed to learn a thing or two about running campaigns now, so hopefully I can finish crafting my own campaign in time.

I've also built a German army for Flames of War to participate in the Legio campaign. Didn't take me too long to finish them, but I'll be repainting the Tiger Tanks since they're so dark.


2012:
Now, I'm actually working on the Iron Warriors, I plan to finish this army before the next Chaos codex comes out. So when the Codex is out, I can just bring out the pain and unleash it on the enemy, Iron Warrior style!



I haven't taken photos of my latest progress, but as you can see from the main header picture above, I'm actually done with the Dreadnought.

I'll do my best to post more this time, and not neglect my blog. I also need a constant reminder to finish my last commission project. Not like I need so many months to do it, just 1 or 2 focused painting days and I'll be done. Seriously though, no more commission jobs for me unless it's super easy.

After looking at most of the pictures here, I think it's time for me to invest in a proper camera and rely less on my phone.

Do check back again, I'll be posting more progress on my Iron Warriors.