Slow but Steady Catches The Loyalists

Well, a long time since my last update, well over a month and a half. Last time the Night Lords were seen, they were preparing for a forum meet-up at Warhammer World and Black Library Live. It was an amazing weekend, met some great guys from The First Expedition, killed various legions during our games and found out much about upcoming BL stuff. Hopefully I'll be at the Horus Heresy Weekender in a couple of weeks but it depends on whether I can get out of working.

While up in Nottingham, I bought pretty much all the infantry planned for the army and apart from the seeker claw, they're all built. And with the recent release of Breachers, Recon and Thallaxii, they've also been added to the army, the Breachers are unbuilt as of posting, soon though...

XXIXth Claw, XIVth Company. The last but one of the Company's Claws, their autocannons reaped a high toll on Cherautii light armour and infantry during the advance on the Senate House. 

Once I got the guns and ammo belts to sync, these guys were easy to do. I may add the other 5 of them at some point, I'll have to see how they perform in game first but not for a while, I'm not going back there. Slightly annoying to store in my case, the barrels keep getting slightly bent, I'll have to work something out.

XXIInd Claw, XIVth Company.  Led by the Nostraman sergeant Ticarius during Cheraut, XXIInd Claw had always attracted the more brutal marines within the company, having a long established reputation for excessive force both on and off the field. The members of XXIInd Claw had, by the time of Cheraut slain more brothers in 'duels' than the rest of XIVth Company put together. Several members of the claw bear chainaxes, a weapon that while usually associated with the World Eaters can also be found wielded by warriors from the Night Lords, Blood Angels and Space Wolves Legions. A couple of claw members bear the topknotted helms gifted to them by the Luna Wolves Legion during XIVth Company's deployment alongside them at the Siege of Vatarian.

I plan to make that a occasional part of the army, both the topknots in general and also little references to XIVth Company's deployments with brother legions, whatever form they take.

VIIth Claw, XIVth Company. Also led by a Nostraman, not that you'd know with him missing a head. I'll likely wait for the NL conversion set FW will make at some point for his head, I'll see. And yes, the Vox is lacking a left arm, I need the pointing one from the Rapier crewman but can't get my hands on one at the moment. But E-bay may be my friend here. The last of my Tactical squads for now, no real difference except for the Claw leader's heavy chainsword.

1st Claw, XIVth Company. Known as the "Knights of Terra", a counter-point to XIVth's Company's nickname "Sons of Terra"; many outside the company believed the names though correct in theory, missed out one key word "Forgotten", though the word's location within the nicknames varied depending on who was speaking. The only claw within XIVth Company to be completely Terran in composition, a state of affairs they have maintained since the company's founding on Terra, selective recruitment ensuring the squad's purity in their eyes at least, when all around them dilute themselves with Nostraman blood.

Game wise, they're a Legion Veteran squad but background wise, they are just the senior tactical claw within the company hence why they are kitted out the same as a normal tactical claw. There will likely be a couple more marines built with heavy and special weapon options so they can be a bit more tactically flexible.

And their new ride, a 'gift' from my cousin. I had to do a fair amount of cleaning and re-building to get it this far but she's pretty much done, just needs a pair of combi-bolters on top and a rear hatch fashioned somehow then spraying.

 XXIIIrd Claw, CIInd Company. CIInd Company, one of the Legion's 4 Recon Companies was deployed to Osmium and as is standard practice with these companies, immediately broke itself down into decentralized squad formations, assigning themselves to the other Legion Companies as needed. XXIIIrd Claw linked up with XIVth Company as it pushed towards the Senate House and spent the following battle eliminating Cherautii commanders and engaged in counter-sniper duels across the Plaza.

This is half the squad planned, it was just going to be 5 marines but having built the kit, I like it enough that I want to do more. Likely they'll be in the next order.

And half of Legion Thallax Cohort Munda-46. Same as the recons, they'll be doubled in size in the next order, with the addition of a pair of special weapons, likely a multi-melta and either a second multi-melta or a multi-laser. Or maybe both, if I E-bay a lone Thallaxii. Started painting them today, the lone one is at stage three of painting, the others are both stage one, being just the metal. Hopefully I'll have them done by next weekend.

I've got a forum painting competition I need to get done by the weekend, if not sooner since I'll need pictures. I can't show you yet due to the rules but as soon as it'll all up on the forum, I should be able to put it up here, same with the last one. It's a bit different to the usual power armor you've seen on here. That and slowly working on my entry for their short fiction competition. And hopefully myself and Vangar will get the last couple of Night Lord force org charts completed quite soon as well so they can go up on my DA page and probably here. It will all depend on our separate working schedules. But anyway, until next time people.

The Promised Update

Well here it is, I can show you how stripping my Salamanders is getting on.

It's not very well, purely as I haven't had enough time to sit down and scrub them clean, but when I've tried with a toothbrush the paint has started to strip so it looks like with time I'll be able to get them ready for painting by the end of May.


















 My latest order from Forge World arrived yesterday, and my goodness was it a good one!

The bikes are a beautiful kit, nice and simple to put together, only issue being the back part taking longer to stick than anything else. They will fit perfectly in my Emperor's Children army and fit the fluff too, which is a big bonus!

I'll leave you with a picture of my production line for this evening for after Dr Who!

Salamanders Update

This is very early, but I've just got in from my paper round. As in yesterday's post I plan on starting my Salamanders over again, but for this I need to strip them of their paint, hence why they are sat in a tub of Cillit Bang as we speak... this being because it was the only degreaser that I had around the house and without access to a car I chose not to go and buy some Dettol. Whilst prepping the models to strip, I actually counted them and decided that I should go the full distance and buy special bases for them, hence my second order from Secret Weapon of the week being placed just now. The bases I have settled on are a set of Trench Work ones, along with one of these for the Relic Contemptor, two of these for the other Contemptors, and one of these along with a flight widget for the Assault Ram. Now the way I've ordered the last base, Secret Weapon will drill the base to allow the stand to go into the base, as the one from Forge World that I've got at the moment just isn't stable enough in my opinion.

This order wouldn't have been to bad, until I counted 62 marines, so 70 bases needed ordering, taking the total of the spend to nearly £100, fortunately for me my parents are willing to lend me the money of the bases as I've just spent the last week working near enough solidly on a bitch of an essay!

I'll hopefully be able to share some photos of my progress of stripping the models later today or tomorrow so stay tuned in to see how the process is getting on.

Captain Cryptus of the Emperor's Children's Twenty Seventh Company

Sergeant Cyrptos was originally assigned to the 27th Company, and had seen many victories during the Great Crusade. It wasn't until the aftermath of the cleansing of Laeran towards the end of The Great Crusade that Cryptos was promoted to Captain of the 27th Company, in part because of his expert skill with the blade and ability to kill anything that stood before him, but also for notably saving Captain Lucius' life when a Laer took him off guard, Cyrptos slicing the xenos' head clean off with one fell swoop of his combat blade. Since that day Lucius has sworn to pay him back for his actions, Lucius' arrogance does not allow for him to be in anyone's debt, except perhaps Chief Apothecary Fabius. As a result, it is common to see the two of them fighting alongside each other on the plains of war killing like for like, Lucius in an effort to remove the debt, Cyrptos to maintain his position of power over the 13th Captain. This relationship was tested when Lucius was assigned to the first wave of legionaries sent to crush the rebellion upon Isstvan III, while Cyrptos was not. Captain Cryptos was however, part of the second wave during the Isstvan III betrayal, during which Cryptos personally executed the Captain of the 11th Company, Vester. There is a belief that Cryptos planned to seek out Lucius upon the field and prove once and for all that Lucius' life was his to take. Whether they did face one another is unknown, though based on both surviving the betrayal it is unlikely; if they did fight, they did so without any real malice.
Armed with a power sword Cryptos was a born swordsman, and regarded as one of the best in the Legion, only bested by Lucius, Kaesoron and Cyrius. Records of Cryptos' actions after Isstavan V are scarce with some saying he was killed by Primarch Vulkan's Pyre Guard on that blood-stained field, though other accounts talk of him being assigned to the legion's reserve during the battle. It is not until Terra that we actually see any solid evidence that Cryptos still remained with the legion. He was present during the fighting, but all Legion records say on the matter is that he died in the final hours of the Siege but to whose hands it is unknown. The Emperor's Children have their own opinions and they keep them well, though the other key figure in Cryptos tale refuses to be drawn on his rival's fate...

We've been a bit pre occupied

Right we haven't really kept up with the blog well since Christmas. This is a group issue as we haven't really kept an eye on each other and pushed them to keep posting. To solve this, I propose we have a schedule as to when we will post just to make things easier to keep track off.

Since my last post I've been active but not nearly active enough. I've had a tone of work to get done, 10000 words in essays... I haven't painted any more Salamanders yet, which is a real shame, but I have built the assault ram and one of he predators I got for Christmas. I've decide that I am going to strip all the models down and start again, as I'm not happy with the way the base coat has actually applied to the models, and will go down a pure GW paint scheme this time round.

Although I haven't been painting Salamanders, I have been painting some stuff. I was fortunate enough for my Uncle to offer to buy me some stuff from Forge World, the outcome being an Emperor's Children force being born. I am currently nearly fully painted on my two 20 man tactical squads with a couple of surprise units being processed at Forge World right now, more about those when they arrive! I'm currently finishing off the gold trimmings base coat and rivets on the last 10 marines before highlighting them and then adding some battle damage to the whole model. I then need to complete the power packs, bolters and sergeant's plumes and then I'm done! I'll add some pictures when I'm done and find time to take some proper ones!

Up next for the EC is a Praetor version of Lucius, and the parts are slowly dropping through the letterbox as the days go by, just the legs and base to arrive now!

Hopefully we'll have a regular schedule set up over the next couple of weeks.

I'll leave you with a picture of Captain Cryptus of the Emperor's Children's Third Company.

We're Back....

And we're much more sober. Couldn't resist but anyway.
Well, it's now over a month since the last update, which is really bad in the grand scheme of things, for all of us. Myself and Harry (sorry, Vangar as he will insist we refer to him) have both been busy in our own way.
Myself, a bit of painting and building the last FW order which was: 5 Cataphractii, 5 Justaerians, a Demios Rhino, a Demios Predator, a Land Raider, one Fellblade, the new assault weapon pack and some weathering powders. I have never seen as big a box as that one, seriously it was fething huge!
Vangar however has been very steadily working his way through that roster image. As it currently stands he's done 10 members of the 20 man tacticals, 6 of the tactical assault squad (the ones with the knives), the 5 melta marines and the 5 missile launcher marines, as well as a legion champion made from FW's event boarding marine from a few years ago, who looks reasonably cool, just less so compared to the marines around him. Which is bloody impressive work in just over a month.

But enough about him, this isn't his log, or is it? No, no it's not, it's mine. So Night Lord updates it is.

1st legion Rhino, and it's interior. It's the second interior I've done, one on my 40k marines and one here. This one is way better, mainly because I took my time on it, and also because I painted the lenses properly with reflections and not just a single colour. As for the cream, Harry thinks it is wrong for the Night Lords and that it should be dark. Well, it's his opinion but I take the view that the Legion serfs probably repaint the interior between battles, hence why it's clean and also the Terrans might not want everything dark, they won't have the same low tolerance to light that the Nostramans will have.

But the bottom line is it's my army and I'll do as I want, at least until Massacre comes out (the next FW HH book, if you don't know). When it does, probably everything I've done will be invalidated but I've said that before.

 XIVth Company's Chaplain. Nothing too special, it's another one of my kitbashes, made from a mix of FW and Chaos space marine bits. He's got MkIII wrist armour which was f***ing annoying to cut off the original model without damaging them, but I just about managed it, only a slight nick on the left one. I plan to do a similar thing when it comes to making XIVth Company's captain and second in command, one of them will have them, not sure which yet.

An Atramentar Command squad, made using FW's excellent Justaerian models with a bit of fileing off of the more overt Eyes of Horus. You may be able to see that they still have a few Eyes on them but these are the Eye of Terra, which is completely fine for all legions pre-heresy, Horus' has little sharp bits. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. In case you can't see, the banner is a load of skulls on chains, I felt it fits more with both the VIIIth Legion and with the Atramentar than a rag on a stick. Background wise, I see them as not part of 1st Company as such, they'll be drawn from there but serve as a retinue for VIIIth Legion representatives or key Imperial personal. Though what sort of diplomatic missions would require a bodyguard like this?...

As of yet, they are not a legal unit simply because you need a terminator Praetor to give a command squad termi armour and I currently don't have one, ideally I will by this time next week.

 The second of my Atramentar squads, same overall loadout as the first squad except with a heavy flamer. Having built one unit already, I knew what to expect with these guys and make better poses as a result. They've had one game so far (see Blood on the Sand), only the chainfist survived the battle but they took down one entire flank almost on their own, so I'm pretty happy with them overall.

My new Land Raider, currently named "Primus", no prizes for why. It will likely take the lead in my planned Armies on Parade this year, being XIVth Company and armour support moving through the streets of Osmium. Hence commander's pose, signaling the tanks behind to stop while the way is cleared. It will all make sense soon when I get the board and start work on it. It was going to have a completely painted interior but annoyingly, the ramp mechanism got ballsed up so that plan got scraped. Pity, it would have looked awesome ideally.

"Halt!"

And I have painted stuff!!! This is almost unprecedented, at least at the moment. But I have Black Library Live and a forum meet-up game at Warhammer World next weekend so I aim to at least have a couple of units done by then, probably the melta squad and although unlikely, perhaps one of the tactical squads I've sprayed blue so we'll see how that goes.

Nothing really new here, the termi squad you first saw in October (Yes, it has taken that long) now with paint. The flash makes them look too bright, they're darker in real life, just as they should be.

As usual, C+C's welcome. Now that something is painted, you may have an excuse to do so. Next up, the large FW contingent I will add after next weekend, got to love having the complete range literally at your fingertips. Oh and the Fellblade from the last one, still need to build that, hmmmm.

I also plan to make a couple of VIIIth Legion company rosters, so you can see how I imagine the Night Lords to be organised. Currently, it'll be one of XIVth Company at Osmium, one of the Assault Companies and probably one or two others including my idea of 1st Company. Since I would guess at differing organisation dependent of company specialism, it make sense to do so for completeness/ fleshing out. It depends on time really and how well I can make my ideas work on paper. 

Once all those models are done, next purchases are just the remaining few rhinos, a few other bits and bobs and realistically with that, the army is done for the foreseeable future. Unless Forge World throws a spanner in the works, as they surely will. Damn Massacre.

I hate them. They make me cry.

So it Begins, or continues...

Right, better late than never.

So I am the elusive 3^rd member of this blog you may  have been hearing about from my bro’s, you may call me Vangar, not my real name, rather my username, but I like it, you may also call me your liege lord, because that is what I am now. Deal with it. You wish-Daniel

Anyway I'm sure you’re all dying to know where I've been all this time. Well I haven’t been sitting idly these past few months. While I haven’t made time to buy and build things, due to university essays and Christmas and whatnot, I've been planning and pondering. Perhaps another reason I haven’t posted is because, unlike my fellows, my style of building and painting doesn't accommodate WIP’s, allow me to explain.

The method

While my bro’s have already thrown up a load of picture of model parts, built and sprayed (but unpainted) units, to be sprayed and painted as a whole model or unit, I don’t do that. I paint my models while still on the sprue, normally I put bodies, heads and legs together, but that doesn’t work for this project. As such, my models come out completely finished. Now there are pros and cons to this method, the con is that it takes a very long time to churn out an army, because I have a to do it a few models at a time, however, the pro, which I consider to be worth the time taken, is that the army is completely finished by the end of construction. I will never have the issue my colleagues do, which is that they end up with an entire army to paint; I’m not sure poor Daniel has ever wholly finished an army as a result, not that he seems to mind (except when I bitch about it to him of course >:3). The tragedy is that even though I will not have a working army for months after my bro’s, by the time I do, my nice shiny army has only bare resin and mat black armies to face. Such is the way of things.

The story so far

So the reason I post now is that I’m finally making some headway in the legion, as it stands at the moment, I have 5 marines done, I know, impressive right. When I first started collecting the parts for the project I tried to do a counter to follow my progress, like the mark system the ultramarines use in know no fear. Unfortunately it became hard to track the hours when it moved into weeks and months, so I gave up, but this is what I managed to keep track of:

[Mark-00.00] (12:00pm 28.11.2012)- first forge world thousand sons order purchased

 [Mark-34.51]- Bases ordered from secret weapon miniatures

[Mark-37.03]- Parts for Phosis T’kar are purchased on eBay (body, legs, head & weapons), and other parts are negotiated through owned bits (hand) and future kits (bolter, arms & backpack)

[Mark-84.57]- parts for helmet crests bought of bits and kits

[Mark-316.14]- paints, sprays and test models purchased from games workshop

[Mark-794.46]- rearranges and de-flashes infantry components by body type

[Mark-816.12]- begins attaching crests to heads

Man, several hundred thousand space marines managed to destroy each other in only 24 hours, and here I am, now in the thousands, with little to show for it. Moving on though, it should be apparent (and if it isn’t, it should be made clear now) that I am the blogs dedicated artist, and I’ve produced both banners for the site so far, and will probably doing bits of art or doodles here and there where appropriate. But this is also important for my legion building. You see, I didn’t want my army to end up like Paul's, being... well, alpha legion-like, in that all his marines look identical (shut up Paul, you know it’s true). No, I wanted every marine to look slightly different and unique, but you can’t just go building and expect this to just happen, I needed a plan, a roster, thus it was I spent a day and a half making this:

Pretty good right? Every marine i have so far planned to the last detail (ok, almost), I will add and update this roster as time goes by, and every time I update, however yonder that is, I will indicate my progress through said roster. I will also likely refine the method and build a roster for the Night Lords, I’d do the same for the salamanders, but I feel like all I’d have to do is make a single mark II marine with a phobos bolter and paste it 60 times, seems rather dull.

Lastly I may as well leave you with some indication of what the army will actually look like, so I took this picture of the first regal marine of the legion, you should be able to tell who he is on the roster.

That’s all for now my loyal subjects, Magnus be with you.