Progress Report - Sat 15 Feb 14

OK, so a quick update:  Progress to Sat 15 Feb 14 is shown in Purple. 

More DKK (a Siege Regt)
DKK Infantry - These guys should be in the warp and on their way here. Delivers soon
DKK Fd Arty (in a box)
DKK Cavalry (in a bigger box)
Void Dragons - Nearly done, delivers soon
Half a dozen Inquisitorial Warbands (sent away - now WIP)
Corbanian 2nd Regt - Now WIP, delivers soon
Small AT AT command vehicle (needs rebuilding and Vostroyan paint scheme) no progress
Additional Officers (Imperial - sent away) Nearly all done - already blogged progress. 
Additional Officers (Not Imperial - just a pile of parts at the mo')
"Word Bearers" er, um, tbc. 
T-Hawk.  Just needs paint. Now WIP but no progress for ages. 
DKK Salamanders - need finishing off. Slow extra steps taken
Leviathan Mortis' - need construction, conversion & paint. No Progress
Additional Heavy Weapons - need paint Mortars, Las Cannons and Carriage guns done.  Only HBs outstanding. 
DKK Engr Chimera - needs assembly (needs Chimera !  hahahahha) Still needs Chimera
DKK Grenadiers (lost children of another army....you guessed it, in a box.) No Progress
Valhallans (need paint) Done !  Need a major basing event, though. 
3rd Thunderer Conversion.  (Then all three would be ready for paint) No Progress
Full Size ATAT fleet (need assembly, conversion and painting) No Progress
DKK Hydrae (Always keep six spare Chimerae kits waiting; need assembly and painting)
Devos IV "Fen Guard" unit Done and on their way.  Delivers soon. 

Thunderbolts
Clone wars Vendetta conversions
World Eaters Land Raider
Meridian Infantry
TGG Kickstarter girls
And then a trawl of what's left in the boxes.
Other KS stuff that's due to arrive
The Basilica of the Emperor's Ascension. 

There are other things to be considered as well; a trawl of the boxes is going to uncover half remembered projects and there is always the chance that the rumours are true and there will be a wave of iggies and knights released.  Which will upset my new 'spend on to finish WIP projects' scheme (so far intact !).

The things for me (specifically) to do next are the DKK salamanders, the DKK engineers Chimera and Cyclops and the third Thunderer. 

Sat 22 Feb 14 - Broken resolution: they're Imperial Knights; how could I not ?!?!  Two on the way...

High Command. Elements of 72AG Leadership. 17 Korps

And another in the continuing series. Officers of the general staff from Left to Right:

Inspector General of Infantry Mib Alas Sim.  Inspector General of Infantry Mib Alas Sim wearing the uniform of a Corunna Grenadier.  His job is to make sure that all of the Korps’ infantry assets are fit for role, in terms of quality, quantity, readiness and morale. 

Colonel Abas Khurran, Chief of Security, wearing the uniform of a Corunna Grenadier.  Colonel Khurran’s task is to ensure the security of 17 Korps Headquarters, its officers, men and material.  He is well aware that the Necromundans who comprise his command refer to Inspector General of Infantry Mib Alas Sim as ‘the milk man’.  But that’s just soldiers talk.  He is however quite observant and not beyond bugging fellow officers, which you wouldn’t think, to look at him.

Captain Yinka, Vostryan 157^th.  Captain Yinka is the data control officer for 17 Korps HQ.  He leads the team who process data for the other branches of the Headquarters.   The rest of his regiment are split amongst the various Corps HQ.  Captain Yinka appreciates that this is a chance to further his career without quite as much personal danger than his contemporaries in the line.  But he cannot help yearning for glory, it’s in his Vostroyan DNA.   Hence his retention of a powerfist, even when carrying out his normal duties.

Major Krasimir, Vostroyan 111^th Major Krasimir is the Korps communications officer.  A hobby bazuki player, Major Krasimir has a fine singing voice and his a talented dancer.  He’s also good with the comms systems; they are made in his family’s manufactorum.   His relative youth, for a Vostroyan Major  and abilities as a dancer mean that he is the fencing champion of 17 Korps General Staff. 

High Command. Element's of 72 AGs Leadership. Imperial Navy.

Hopefully, I'm back from Borneo and havn't been eaten.  Continuing the series, showing off PVP's work, and introducing more members of High Command:

Commodore Shenandoah Imperial Navy.  Commodore Shenandoah is the Close Orbit Superiority Commander in theatre; Commander Amodis’ deputy and highest ranking Naval Officer in this theatre of war.  He is with 17 Korps because they were where the action was at the beginning of the campaign.  He is an experienced Cruiser Captain and may well, assuming he survives this posting, find himself a Vice Admiral soon enough. 

Fleet Captain Ferdinand Santiago Imperial Navy is the Orbital Bombardment Officer.  Actual details of the Orbital Bombardments are done by the Orbital Bombardment CoOrdinator, Captain Caberra.  Fleet Captain Santiago’s actual job, regardless of the title, is to de-conflict the various assets in the airspace above the battlefield.  Ferdinand lost his arm years ago in a boarding action - it was bitten off by an Ork.  He has a prosthetic one, but doesn't wear it. 

Captain Zanti Caberra,  Imperial Navy.  Captain Caberra is the Orbital Bombardment CoOrdinator, his job is to order naval strikes from orbit in response to calls for fire from trained officers at the front line.  His previous job was as a Destroyer Captain and he hates dirtsiders and being on a planet.  This is just something he has to do before he can continue his career.

Captain Tablet Mostue Imperial Navy.  Captain Mostue is the Orbit/Surface Interface Officer. His task is to ensure that the vital communications links (vox and data) between Navy assets (both orbital and airspace command) are not lost and remain secure from interference.  His previous job was as Captain of the Frigate 'Jericho's Fortune'.  He likes to think of himself as a swashbuckler. 

Squadron Leader Samine Gibbres, Imperial Navy.  Squadron Leader Gibbres is an experienced Fury pilot. She was posted to a Thunderbolt Squadron at the outset of the Devos IV campaign and so far has ejected from three airframes for both mechanical and combat related reasons.  Commodore Shenandoah has decided that whilst a good space fighter pilot, she's a liability in a Thunderbolt.  She now serves as his aide-de-camp, a role in which she appears to be flourishing.  Despite being a space-sider, she manages to get the Imperial Guard to listen when protocol and logic fail.  Funny ol' thing.

High Command. Element's of 72AG's leadership. 18 Corps.

You may have seen these pictures before on PVP where Jeff describes how these guys were painted and his ideas behind the colours used.  But I thought you might like to know who these noteworthy individuals actually are:

18 Korps HQ is headed by 2* Gen Romos.  General Romos is nearly 350 years old.  He has had a long and illustrious career, beginning in the MacRagge PDF; transferring to the Sabat Worlds Crusade under Lord Militants Slaydo and then Macaroth to act as a liaison officer between the Adeptus Astartes units and the Imperial Guard.  Unexpectedly finding himself with a combat command on Ballhaut he continued to serve with distinction for a number of years.

His last combat command was a brigade of storm troopers on Agripinna itself, fighting the plague zombie outbreak.  Certain factions within the higher levels of the Departmento credit his formation with being the men who turned the tide and allowed Agripinna to eventually return to order.  His staff roles have been many and varied, including being the Commandant of the Obscura Sector’s officer selection and training programmes, Lord General of the Staff College and lately Lord General of Driftward Command itself. 

At ~350 years old, with a life of hard service, including over a century on the front line of the Imperial Guard’s toughest warzones, Gen Romos is no longer in the best of health.  He is entirely dependent on his chair for personal mobility and life support.   He has dropped three levels of seniority in order to become junior enough to actually return to a proper warzone and achieve a glorious end, rather than simply waiting for what’s left of his natural body to just give up.

He is acutely aware that despite the drugs and augmentics, he has increasing trouble in remembering current detail; his memory of the Sabat Crusades is sharp, but he knows that he keeps forgetting where he is now.  His aim is to lend his formidable experience to the, er, um, the er, current campaign and more privately to make sure that it is his last.

He does know 4* Gen Zhukov; the Vostroyan went through selection whilst Romos was heading up the selection and training programme and attended Staff College whilst he was in charge of that.  Romos’s informed opinion is that Zhukov is a perfectly adequate Imperial Guard General but his personal opinion of Vostroyan officers in general is that they all find their personalities by fishing around in Abaddon’s toilet bowl, rather than the crucible of service that a Cadian or Kreig man might find his.

Colonel Eatuthor is Gen Romos’ Chief of Staff.   Gen Romos’ misheard that the first time Colonel Eatuthor reported for duty and shot him.  He still calls him “Colonel Etugaur”. 

Brom Eatuthor is a product of Preatoria's Military Colleges; although not spireborn, he was one of the very very few to be good enough to be selected for elevation to the Officer Classes.  He has been hard working, diligent and loyal throughout what until recently has been a glittering career. He was Colonel Winterbourne's immediate predecessor commanding 1/4 Preatorian Mechanised.  Marked in his early career for greater things, he handed over his command and attended the requisite staff courses for his next appointment. He embarked for 72AG with a spring in his step and steely glint in his eye.

His recent career includes being shot by Gen Romos when he initially reported for duty and being sent to the only place he knows of where the Preatorian Regiment appears to have turned traitor.  He would like to turn this around but in a staff appointment for senile old walrus, he is staring the death of his career (far worse than his own possible demise) in the face.  He now looks worried and doesn't sleep well, as he is worried about developing a tick or stutter.

As I write this (Mon 11 Feb 14), it occurs to me that the rumour mill is grinding away at the ASL; Some readers may recall that the Commander of 902 Div of 17 Korps (where my DKK sit) is one Col Commandant Wellbahn, son of Armageddon. I've already selected a miniature to represent him, but this may give some seriously good possibilities for the Steel Legion bits of the army.  Flying in the face of my fiscal rules for this year, but I'll just have to see what happens.

DKK Progress.

Greetings from Kuala Lumpar, all things being well. 

These boys are the first Landsers of 262 Line Infantry Regt.  Like many other Imperial Guard Regiments, the DKK 262 Line Infantry Regt probably does have an illustrious past; a previous iteration of 262 Line Infantry Regt may still be out there somewhere, but as far as the departmento munitorium on Krieg are concerned, the number has not been used for two hundred years and so a new founding has been issued with the number.

All of these pictures are from Possum Painting.  Who are doing all the hard work with these fellas. So unlike my photos, hopefully these show off his handiwork, as well as higher standard of photography.

I asked for the first small squad to be sent on ahead so that I could covert them from the comfort of my own sofa.  I did individual photos of the little bunch at the top but the piccies are rubbish.  The issue with a lot of the photos I have blogged recently is that they were taken in daylight and waiting a bit (until it was dark) would enhance the effect of the spot lights etc.

Anyway, these guys look good and Comptroller Bellormus has done well to divert another Krieg Regiment to Devos IV from where ever it was originally destined to go.

Anyway, I had a quick email conversation with Col Scipio about organising a regiment that was easy to keep track of (ie built of blocks of 1000 men) and also fitted the DKK fluff.  We went for the easiest iteration of a DKK Infantry Regiment; no engineers, no vehicles, no Death Riders, just riflemen, Close Support Field Arty and heavy weapons.

Many thanks to Col Scipio for this.  If it needs further explanation, just let me know and I'll break it down.

Machinas (not really)

OK, then, If you have not been following Carmen's Fun Painty Time and his amazing work with large cowboys and samurai, you've missed out.  But the coolest thing on his blog (and he has retro 1950's space ship racing there somewhere) is the Machinas post apoc car thing.  Which has even spawned a kickstarter card game.

Now this is not actually anything to do with Machinas.  What 'Evil Cartoonist' has done with some toy cars to turn them into post Apoc cars is innovative and well executed.  Which is something you'll not see here:

These are the cars with which I whiled away the endless summer holidays of my youth, building roads around my grandparents flower beds: When I found a place that did not cause any conflict (at the bottom of the garden under the apple trees) the roads and little mud walls stayed there for years.

So you can see, a lot of the cars ended up with alternative paint jobs.  I probably stopped playing with these about 31 years ago (at a guess) and started crashing BMX (short-lived) and soon embarked on decades of AD&D and MERP.

And then festooned with decals, mostly left over from airplane kits.

Now, I spent years keeping these clean(ish).  Now I spend ages trying to get my 40K models to look this weathered.

You can tell the age of the car by how many times I re-decorated it. These two range rovers are my favourites.

And you can see the newest car there is the 1982 car show XJS.  Sheesh.

Now, as a car owner who has cars that looked like this (not teeny tiny, but obviously old and battered to heck), I'd hate to think what these would look like inside.  My W reg golf (old W, Scipio, you do the math) was never clean, it looked like one of those awful Topgear experiments.  IRL, these toy cars are full of dirt.

Now call me sentimental, but these cars are a link to a very happy childhood now long gone.  So they'll be lovingly hidden away in the loft.

And these plastic men were all dug up from the flowerbed in the few years after my grandfather died - when he was still gardening, he left that shady corner alone.  There's a shop in the town I grew up in which used to sell models and toys as well as art supplies (it only does the art supplies, the last time I was back there).  It was a brilliant place and I have fond memories of going there with my dad.  All of which leads me to think that there are about 200 airfix soldiers in the ground there somewhere where my grandparents lived.

And finally a confession - I was on ebay and there was an Elysian army advertised.  I put in a bid, not expecting to score.  But incredibly I did win and it's a not insignificant dent in my resolution not to buy more stuff.  Oh well, at I now have something to put in my Valkyries.

Perfidious Eldar

So, I needed to recover a particular set of Scorpions from their hiding place (not in a wall in Chatham dockyards, this time). And Lo ! they were where I left them.  Good start !

So this is yer common or garden codex sized nest of Scorpions.  Unlike some of the other Scorpions I have, which are in their Craftworld colours, I thought; well, they are supposed to be sneakatious, so I'll do them camouflage.

These boys were done before we moved here, so prolly about 2004.  And like most of the Eldar, have ne'r seen a tabletop in anger.  But.  That may change this year, so I was having a butcher's to make sure that they don't look naf.

They look OK in the flesh, perhaps they need a light wash just to unify all of the colours, but perhaps that's just me wanting to wash everything with oil paints these days.

The patterns are supposed to be sort of camo, sort of ritual pattern on their armour.  I'd imagine that their psychoresponsive armour would actually change as they crossed terrain, bleeding into the background etc etc.  But unless you we're doing a diorama, that'd be quite hard to pull off.  I think I saw someone do it nicely on CMoN, with an assassin bifurcating an Orca.  Nice scene, but not something I'll be attempting any time soon.

And I really like the artwork from the first of the Path of the Eldar books by Gav Thorpe.  Incidentally, I think the books are good in that they illustrate nicely what I always understood the Eldar path to be.  Not sure I really like Gav's fiction (I struggled with the Horus Heresy book about the Raven Guard), but I generally concur with his ideas about the Grim Dark.

More shots, as the next time you see them will be as they pull their chainswords from torso, Mon Keigh !  Bwa ha hah a *cough* Ha ha har.

I'm not sure that even the Dark Kin would speak like that, really.  Part of the attraction of the Eldar is that they are all yoghurt knitting socalistic liberal mystics who get hung up over poetry and sculpture.  Then the masks go on and they all turn into psychopaths.

Whilst I was in the box, I pulled this guy out to show you.  I was going for sort of stag beetle with the armour.  and Mr T with the wings (If you're gonna wear wings on a battlefield, there's no point in hiding them).

This is not the guy who fought the centre of Karitas' space Loganstar to a stand still on his jack jones.  This is his brother.

I kind of imagine him flitting around midfield and picking off annoying ICs with the reaper launcher and his outrageous BS.  The wraithsword is just to bat off the assault marines whilst he does it.

Rightiho !  I'm off to Kuala Lumpar for a couple of weeks.  The blog'l still have stuff on Tuesdays and Fridays.  See you later.