Monthly Vow, December the 12th to January The 12th

What's the plan for the last month of the year? Not sure, there's 20 Sniper Scouts and 16 bikes and 2 attack bikes, I think I need a third attack bike to finish the 2nd Company properly, but can check that on Thursday. I do need some more bases for the second lot of bikes though. There's also a confused buy of the Forge World Grey Knight dread, it was a steal at £22, and I have got Christmas shopping out of the way, so it's not that bad. My purchase plan, vaguely is one lot of Inceptors, hopefully there's still some of the Space Wolf ones on ebay, 1 attack bike and some bases for the bikes.

Review Time

First thing done this month was to green stuff the magnet on the frame and front wheel of Hagrid's motorbike, as I know I'd drop and brake it off at some point.

Painting the bike took a couple of nights, with an interesting find with doing Hagrid's jacket. Hedwig was a nice change of pace and I thought I'd gone on a wrong path with it until I put the bird on the coat and it looks great.

The Keyboard player got a tiny bit of work done on it with the Storm host silver edging.

The replacement Night Lords dread got it's assembly finished with those lovely Zinge Industries bendy ammo feeds put on. Once Armies on Parade is done this is getting painted for the Lion's Blades to join the Mortis Talon.

I also magnetised the missile launcher on this guy so I can use it as a Mortis with optional weapons, there's the assault cannons, plasma and multi melta so far, just need a las cannons set to finish the options. For now this is getting painted for the Death Guard dread Allurn of Dale and used on the Armies on Parade board, after that, I'll strip it and repaint it for the Lion's Blades, to round out my Mortis Casterferrum Talon, will also take one of the dreads out as well.

Moody , Ainsley Shacklebolt and Tonks got based coated and block coloured.

Before I focused on Mad Eye Moody, doing the coat in the same method as I'd done Hagrid. I think I've got this very close to film accurate.

Ainsley Shacklebolt is pretty much spot on film accurate.

Tonks less so. I do like this range.

I think that Myrtle isn't right but I went more ghostly with her and Dobby was really quick and easy to do. Colin Creeve and Tom Riddell both got the same steps of layers of grey then the house colours.

Filtch was nice to do and I had to compare the 2 versions of him.

The Basilisk had me worried at first, I knew, like the spiders I was not going to keep it film accurate, and with plenty of blues I chose to paint it in blue, only point I'm not 100 happy with are the eyes but outside of that I think I did a great job on it. Even my dad was impressed with it.

I borrowed the spider from work and will be doing some work on advancing the Necron Knight, although I think it might just become a bespoke Doomsday Arc / Ghost arc yet.

The issue of Conquest that I'd been waiting for since February arrived at long last, and I was able to finish the Relic Armour Terminator squad off.

These 2 came with a couple of plastic Contemptors that are planned to be used to make the Lucius and Arhiman Contemptors, I cut one of the multi meltas off and magnetised it, happily I guessed right when fixing the magnets in place and this can be used on the other magnetised Contemptor weapon mounts.

The replacement Blood Angel dread, the lead and backing singer all got a bath.

And I went on a bit of building binge for the armies on parade board.

As well as putting together 12 Intercessors, 2 Hellblasters, 1 Inceptor 4 Lieutenant's and 1 Ancient, although some of those Lieutenant's and the ancient are going to be used in the Intercessors squad. I still need 10 more Intercessors to finish this project off.

And lastly this month I got my 8th alternative Björn finished. Ordo Chronos Inquisitors Sapphire and Steel are going to have to sort this cross dimension crisis out.

The Warp Rift tears open again and another Gregor Fell Hand strides through to help defend the Imperium in their hour of need, or those Chronos Inquisitors Sapphire and Steel sort the situation out, with some aid from the Radical Inquisitor in the blue box.

Gregor Fell Hand In Cataphractii Armour

I'm rather happy with how the head has come out, uses tau Ocher on the skin and flash git yellow on the hair, both had an agrax earthshade wash, the hair got a touch up of flash git yellow, the moustache and beard had a careful touch. A final high light of screaming skull was done and was used on the eye brow ridge for a crack at eye brows for once.

All the armour got a base coat with the Macragge grey mix and then a coat of dawnstone.

There's still a few things to do like gems and metallic stuff but I'll concentrate on that tonight.

And the first thing I did last night was to get the 4 of these built.

The Relic Squad

And Part Of The Plan For 2020.

With the arrival of the Conquest magazine with the Cataphractii Armour I was able to finish the Relic Armour squad that have been untouched since February. The story behind these is that while The Lion's Blades have plenty of Terminator Armour suits the second most prestigious suit they can wear , behind the Deathwing Knights (and Boltstorm Aggressors), is this squad, each member is a veteran of long standing in the 1st Company and must at one point have won the Honour Dual with a Space Wolf, hence the Wolf head on the claws.

Next Wednesday is the Sniper scouts which with the 10 snipers I have already and the 30 scouts I put together with the last lot plus the squad of 5 gives me 55 Scouts, which is way more than enough. Beyond that I was building tonight to see what else I'm going to need to get my Primaris Demi company up to a full company. All together I've got 20 Intercessors, I can either repaint 10 or get some fresh ones which takes me to 30, 10 more Hellblasters, taking those to 20 and 3 Inceptors, I really do think I'll get a full box of Inceptors as I already have 3 pairs of plasma guns and the full box will give me the choice of 12 plasma gunners or 12 assault bolters on those squads. After building all those Primaris Astartes I started on the attack bikes, those side cars aren't very securely mounted. . . And with those built I was able to devote some time to the last 8 bikes I've got, I only need 1 pair of legs to finish that squad which will give me 6 bike squads and mean I have to build another Talon Master to cover that side of the 2nd Company, but that is not a plan yet.

Last Of The Relic Terminator Suits

I started the night by adding a paw to the hip plate of the Björn as well as green stuffing the sword hand on the arm. While that set I set about painting the lightening claw Cataphractii and the 2 Contemptor multi meltas. The straps got the agrax earthshade wash treatment, the armour got an ushabati bone base coat, then 2 light coats of screaming skull, the cape got a base of Mephiston Red, then a light coat of evil Sunz Scarlet and then a highlight of wild rider red. I painted the badges on, only after I glued it together did I notice I'd painted the chapter and squad icons on the wrong sides.

The multi meltas got van ushabati bone base coat, then black, will do highlights and metallics tomorrow around assembling the various kits I'm building when I get back to work.

Run In To The 12th

For the last few days of this Monthly vow I'm looking to get the 2 Cataphractii Armour marines done, after that the plan is put together the last few sprues of the Conquest Intercessors to see how many I actually have and how many I need to rob from elsewhere to make the number up to 30 Intercessors, 10 Hellblasters and 6 Inceptors, as I have 6 Boltstorm and Flamestorm Aggressors already. The next lot of Conquest magazine loot is the sniper scouts, so with the 10 I've had sat since the last lot of scouts I'll be doing December to January along with the 2 attack bikes and seeing if I can make enough bikes to get 2 more squads, again next month, I can sort that before the 12th but only paint and order any bits I need after the 12th. Any time left over I intend to try to finish off the first book in the Solar War series as I've asked my dad for book 2 or a bottle of Tequila for Christmas.

Weekend Off, Run Up To Christmas

Since Thursday I've not really done much, just stripped 2 old metal Sisters of Battle and that terrible red dreadnought. The Sisters are going in the band and the dread will be painted for The Lion's Blades to give me a seperate Mortis Casterferrum Talon, once we've got Armies on Parade 2020 out of the way, for now the Mortis arm is going on Allurn of Dale with dual plasma cannon. Speaking of Mortis weapons the 2 Contemptor multi meltas have been worked on with one side getting trimmed and magnetised, happily I guessed right when fixing the magnets and I can swop the gun around with most of the other Contemptor weapons that have got magnets on now.