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Well, it's over. Took a week longer but.. My Call to Arms Vow is complete! A few closer looks... Yup, still haven't fixed that Barbagaunts Of course, the Parasite of Motrex was just sitting there, begging to be let in on the fun. So here it is, my full Tyranid swarm (was worth over 900pts but now has dropped below this.. Thanks GW! ) For even better pictures look at the included galleries. These past few weeks have been eye opening for me and for what I can accomplish. It also was the realisation of a goal I had over 20 years ago but never did back then: a painted Tyranid army. What was once a pile of grey plastic, is now a hungry swarm, wanting to consume as much biomass as possible! To say I've had a blast would be an under statement. Till next time, Keep on hobbying!

I wanted to show you a completed vow this week. I wanted to show you my swarm as it stood at the moment but alas, I can't. Why not? I ran out of Valhallan Blizzard! So, guess those pictures will be up next week. However, I'm pleased to say that all the bases are now Ice Blue! Termagaunts and Rippers Neurogaunts At least I got something done. Non-nid related though, I've gone back to my Bladeguard and got them all shaded, and I've started re-layering the blue. It's funny going back to the Ultramarines, as I could the Tyranids a vastly different experience with how quick I was able to get them painted. Till next time, Keep on hobbying!

Well I did it. Last Saturday, I posted this picture of the Screamer Killer: Then, a few days later... And now... The Screamer-Killer was the model I was most looking forward to painting on the Tyranids side of Leviathan. I was a little nervous, as while the others had painted up well (see the attached gallery), this guy was bigger. I've also had some trouble recently with my drybrushing, in that I wasn't getting consistency with the amount of paint on my brush. The large carapace on the back was a prime target for mucking up. Luckily it didn't turn out too badly. From several comments, it seems that my decision to do the white teeth and tongue (white scar and Screamer Pink respectively, followed by nuln oil) has added to the figures, which was a relief. While the Ice Storm was out, I sorted the base rim out on a few other units, resulting in these boys being completed (and added to the gallery): All thats left with the white rims is 9 Termagaunts and 8 Neurogaunts. I expect these to be changed within the week. What does this mean for the blog? Well, next week will be another Call to Arms piece as the Vow won't be complete till they're all based! Of course, I'm thinking ahead about a 2nd Vow but it would all depend on other factors... Otherwise, it's time for the Ultramarines to take centre stage as my Bladeguard have been sitting patiently, waiting to be finished...alongside a lot of other minis! Call to Arms Statistics 47/47 Given what I said above, you weren't expecting anything less were you? Of course, there is 5 figures left to base. Till next time, Keep on hobbying!

These weeks are flying by it seems... No rest for the wicked! This week was a marked change of pace, not least because I didn't get many painting sessions in. Like the Winged Prime last week, this past few days belonged to a single model... The Psychophage! At this point, all it had was Ork Flesh, Dark Angels Green and Leviathan Purple on it (all contrast paints, all a godsend for a scheme like this). The patchiness aside, things look OK already! What it needed, was details! A dead space marine's arm and a mouth filled with more teeth than the osmond family (virtual cookie to anyone who got that refrence). With details done, it was off to the last step. You know what it is...Drybrushing time! An alternative angle: Aside from the usual (moot green/ White Scar + Moot Green etc etc) I also attempted to get a nice fade to black going with the smoke, drybrushing with Dawnstone, then manufactorum grey before a last going over with Abaddon black. I may have over did it with the black. As I had Ice Storm out for the base, I took the opportunity to redo some of the other base rims, getting them to match the new style. You can see some of these in the gallery linked to this post. Some that I did, you'll get to see next week when everything will (hopefully) be based. With the Psychophage done, let's have a look at the stats: 46/47 One model left to do...Wonder who that could be? See you next week to see how he turns out! Till then, Keep on hobbying!

Week 6 of Call to Arms has come and gone, and if my maths is correct, this is the half way point! This week I technically didn't get that much painting done, but I finished stuff, like these Von Ryan's Leapers: I tried to have a transition going on with the top most scything talons, and it sort of worked, well, worked enough that I set about trying it again on this fella: Can't see it at this angle but I darkened (with extra layers of Leviathan purple) the points of its claws, the edge of it'd knife horn, and the tops of its spine ridges. A session, some syabrite green (I keep spelling that wrong), and a helping of Nuln Oil later, I had this: Around about this time, I did a small test to find the new base rim colour I was going to use following several helpful comments. The choice was between Administratum Grey and Arky Painter's Ice Storn, the one I went with was... Ice Storm. Its really effective at catching your eye and goes well with the rest of the colours. Then it came to Friday, and I got my basing groove on. Barbagaunts Termagaunts I've started the long process of changing base rims over to the new colour, a little work here and there. Call to Arms stats: 45*/47 miniatures painted *3 aren't based yet, and that is the Von Ryan's Leapers. I suspect they'll be finished with the Screamer-Killer and psychophage. So close to finishing now, so close in fact that I've already been thinking about what to paint afterwards! That will be a topic for another time. Till next time, Keep on hobbying!

A quick update this week! Last week was spent working on batches of Termagaunts and a couple of Barbagaunts, and this week....I spent working on the last batches of Termagaunts and Barbagaunts! The 3rd batch begins: By now, everything is running like clockwork on these, so within a day, I had them at this point: and then the 4th batch from here: to here: By the end, It took me two sessions (roughly 1 hour a session) to get one batch done (5 Termagaunts and 1 Barbagaunt). If you're wondering why there is no group shots of them all together, that would be because I didn't get any basing done this week so hopefully next week I can get the full 20 Termagaunts up here in their glory. Same for the Barbagaunts. What else did I do this week? Well, last week I actually got a game in! It was only a 750 pts a side game against my sons blood angels and most of my units performed really well (the Von Ryan's Leapers were men- Err things! Of the match). My Winged prime however, didn't do so hot. In fact, he landed like a wet squid and failed to do anything. As I look to the future, it's not looking like he'll have a place in the army list unless something changes (like shrikes). Other than that, I started these 3 bad things: an hour and a half to do 3 lots of purple armour! Lets hope it was worth it! My Call to Arms total then is as follows: 41*/47 The end is in sight! * okay, 12 of them aren't based but you know, the main painting work is done. Till next week, Keep hobbying!

Week 4 has come and gone, so what did I do? Paint gaunts. It took one session to complete the 1st batch (of 5 Termagaunts and 1 Barbagaunt) from where I left them last week: So with reckless abandon, I started the next batch straight away There was nothing new that happened with the 2nd batch other than deciding to do two Barbagaunts now instead of later. I spent a lot of time going around and fixing mistakes where I found them, trying to eradicate white gaps in the green flesh. Eventually though (after 3 tedious sessions), I got them complete as well. I want to point out here about the white base, specifically the rims of the base. Given that I was going with a snowy theme, I thought it made sense to go white. Little did I realise how much of a headache it was going to be. I've been using white scar as Mt go to white for a little while, finding it superior to Crovax White as that one was a chalky mess. The colour though is very transparent, and that's before it's thinned down. Given that, I wanted to look at an easier way to do it. I tried Army Painter Lawful White (and ran into the exact same problem). Then I tried store brand paint (in this case Wilkinsons) and found it even worse. Until I can get a different brand White again, I'm stuck using 4-6 layers of White Scar. Friday came, and with it... Basing. That's 10 Termagaunts and 3 Barbgaunts based which brings the Call to Arms total to: 29/47 I'm officially half way through! Next weeks update will probably be a short one as I've still got plenty of gaunts to get through! Till then, Keep on hobbying!

Another week gone, another week bites the dust! You get the idea... In some sense, I didn't get too much done, but in another, I got a bit done! From my last blog post, I started the week by continuing with the Neurogaunts and Ripper Swarms: At this point, all their base colours were done, which meant time for fun with drybrushing! Here, I pressed ahead with the Ripper swarm and got them finished. The Neurogaunts also had their flesh drybrushed like the Neurotyrant before them, though I added an extra stage here where I mixed more White Scar in. Didn't quite go the way I planned in my head but that's life! Seeing that the finish line was close for these gaunts, I pressed forward! Heres the completed Neurogaunts, standing proud, despite their likely hood of being used on the tabletop being quite low at the moment. Having them done meant I could turn my attention to the Termagaunts. I decided on a different approach with these guys, in order to preserve what little sanity I had left, I moved to paint them in small batches of 5...and I threw in a Barbagaunt for good measure! Wasn't long before they were at the drybrush stage as well! I added a new shade of green to the mix here to help differentiate the normal flesh from the guns. I used Dark Angels Contrast for this task, and it appears to do the trick. Of course, the biggest news this week? I got things based! Neurotyrant (and Neuroloids) Ripper Swarms Neurogaunts I can officially say that I've now fully completed 16/47 miniatures! With any luck, I might be able to push that to 28 by next Saturday...wish me luck! I'm hopefully taking better pictures of the completed units this week, and I'll add them to the Tyranid gallery. Till then, Keep hobbying!

Week 2 as come and gone! While I'm aware that this blog is going up later than it should, I'm still covering the same time scale, and I'll promise to do better next week! Anyhow... When I left it last time, I'd done the task of covering every flesh with Ork Flesh (and knocking it over in the process) while also starting on the neuroloids. I promised a Neurotyrant afterwards, and here we go: The aethermatic blue came to the rescue again and I also put colours on the base (including the poor space marine who lost his body at some point. I also used white scar on the teeth, followed up by a coat of nuln oil. As I was going for a unit by unit approach, it meant I could go to the next step for this three, bring on the drybrushing! My drybrushing recipe is simple. For the flesh, it's a go over with moot green, going pretty heavy with it. After that, I mix some white scar in there, approx a 3:1. Usually, that's enough but looking at some figures ahead, I'll probably go further by adding in more white scar. The purple parts is actually the same except instead of moot green, I use (rather fittingly) Genestealer Purple. These new tyranids are made for drybrushing, the texture on them catches the brush at the right points and it looks great. The brains, I was initially going to leave, but in the end, with the white scar still out, I gave them a drybrush on the top most part of the brain. It's subtle in the pictures but more noticeable in person. All that's left now is basing, which is what I'm hopefully doing this soon, taking these three and this next squad I'm about to talk about. The Neurogaunts, the purple on these seemed to take forever, and while it probably didn't help that I added the Ripper swarms, the amount of time it took to get these done was a bit much...Knocking over the Leviathan Purple over twice (twice in one session!) added some salt into the wound. As of the Friday (the day I'm using as the cut off for these blog posts) this was the state of things: I gave the rippers some tongues using Screamer pink, and I had to keep going back in to what I'd done with the Neurogaunts as I noticed gaps of undercoat everywhere. It drove me mental. Goals for week 3? Neurogaunts done. Neuroloids, Neurotyrant and Neurogaunts based Termagaunts started. I'm going after the Termagaunts in blocks of ten, but I may revise that given how much of a pain the Neurogaunts were. We'll see. Till next week, Keep hobbying!

Last week, like many of the people here, I embarked on the Call to Arms forum event, (perhaps foolishly) vowing to paint the Tyranid half of the Leviathan box. This is 47 miniatures in 3 months...easy right? Let's see how I got on... The painting started on Saturday night as I drybrushed all the models with White Scar, this didn't take too long and I was set up to move to stage 2 of my process, the green flesh. I use Ork Flesh Contrast paint here: This was the first batch painted, and as the week progressed, more and more were done. So stage 2 is done...and I think I'm going to be focusing on squad level from here on out...as seen with these two: I used Leviathan purple contrast for the bone/armour and aethermatic blue for their brains, which worked out well. End of this week, I'm hoping to have these two ready for basing with the Neurotyrant on his way at the very least. Let's see if I make it that far! Till then, Keep on hobbying!

Greetings Lords, Ladies, Sorcerers, Apostles, Champions, Warp Smiths, Masters, Mistresses, Princes, Princesses and Other Entities Favoured by the Warp @Grotsmasha and @Triszin are putting on a Forum wide event from the 1st July until 30th September to celebrate 10th Edition's release! The forum is split up into 3 Strongholds: Imperium, Chaos and Xenos with all 3 factions competing against one another to paint the most in the 3 months time limit. There will be a Central hub thread for each of the Strongholds in the WIP Section which I will link once it's live. We can use thread to cross post in and track/give motivation to those participating. Check out the full rules here If you've got any questions, give one of the Mods a shout!

Greetings Lords, Ladies, Sorcerers, Apostles, Champions, Warp Smiths, Masters, Mistresses, Princes, Princesses and Other Entities Favoured by the Warp @Grotsmasha and @Triszin are putting on a Forum wide event from the 1st July until 30th September to celebrate 10th Edition's release! The forum is split up into 3 Strongholds: Imperium, Chaos and Xenos with all 3 factions competing against one another to paint the most in the 3 months time limit. There will be a Central hub thread for each of the Strongholds in the WIP Section which I will link once it's live. We can use thread to cross post in and track/give motivation to those participating. Check out the full rules here If you've got any questions, give one of the Mods a shout!