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Made some good progress on the Stormsurge today. Firstly, I built the weapon "arms": Decided to just go with the flamers as I like the look of them the best. I probably won't choose the frag projector and I hate painting burst cannons ... all the bits that should rotate freely, do so, so far. Might need to glue the flamers later though as they seem to droop a bit when the thing is upright. Main body section was next: I've not built the open cockpit with the crew, for reasons that are about to become clear. I have other plans for them later mwahahahah .... I left it til now to carry on the build as I was waiting for a special part to arrive, all the way from Spain... dada: Here we have a resin top cover which protects the cockpit! The one thing I don't like about this model is the open cockpit, as I just think - why???? This only took a few days to get here from www.thecustombit.com and is a perfect fit: Really pleased with this. Now. I need to choose a pose. To help me choose, I've built the heads and blu-tacked the pieces together and photographed them in a couple of different positions: 1: or 2: My son managed to sneak his part-painted knight into the photo lol! I'm currently leaning towards 1, because this thing is always nearer to position 2 in the GW photos, and I like to be different! Can't quite decide which to go with yet though, so I'll post the blog and see what you guys say, and take a break from the build for now to give me time to study the photos and make my mind up. Until next time...

Right so in this entry the construction will be completed. First task here was to decide how to do the main gun. I know that in most circumstances I will want to take the Pulse Blastcannon, just because it is so damn powerful! However, I much prefer the look of the Pulse Driver Cannon, as it is longer and doesn't have so many pipes (I hate painting, and specifically highlighting, pipes). I eventually settled on building the rear section of the pulse driver cannon: Luckily, the way the front half of the weapons fit means I actually don't need to do any extra work to magnetise them or anything. They "clip" nicely in and out of the rear section so that I can have both options available to me, which will probably end up being the longer gun for display and the stubby Blastcannon for gaming: I decided to leave out the vent covers on the pulse driver cannon (above) because I plan to make some nice glowy plasma effects on the coils and I didn't want the vent covers to get in the way. Thanks for the posing suggestions. I went for a slight upward angle on the missile launchers to look like they are being aimed upwards to allow a trajectory towards long-range targets. For the main pose of the machine, I went with the suggestion to face the body right, but because I still wanted to give the sense of forward momentum, I angled the head to the left and the body slightly downwards. Because I've closed off the cockpit, I wanted the head to be more of the focus point for the model than it usually would be. I think this makes the model look more dynamic, but see what you think: Finally, I added the basing materials and left it resting on the Knight Castellan to keep it held in the right pose while the glue dries. Once dry, it will be ready for priming and getting started on the paint job! Edit: added photo of the primed model :)

OK. So it's time to do something about the last bunch of grey plastic sprues I have. Most of my leadweight is composed of built and primed or partially painted stuff, but I do have a bunch of T'au stuff still on sprues. This is, of course, the most exciting stuff, as it is the most like new stuff! In the photo below are two Crisis Battlesuits left over from my Start Collecting! box that my wife bought me for Christmas more than five years ago, a handful of pathfinders and the Stormsurge that I bought with money from selling my Eldar earlier this year. Of course, by far the most exciting model in this pile is the Stormsurge, and seeing as my son got a Knight Castellan for Christmas that is already built and partially painted, this had to be the first model to build. I wanted to do something interesting with the base, partly because it was so big and partly because my son said I had to! So... I had some spare bits from my guard so I thought I would use these to tie the model into another part of my collection. I'm using a 3D printed turret that came spare with some tanks I got cheap on eBay a few weeks before Christmas, and the one spare guardsman that didn't find a place in my army. I'm not going to bother doing any complicated chopping with the turret as I can cover some of it with gravel and/or sand to hide the slightly odd connection in the middle: First stop for the Stormsurge: leg assembly. Now... I knew the legs wouldn't fit right on the custom base if I built them exactly as per the instructions, as I wanted the thing to stand on the Leman Russ turret, so I removed the little tags that fit the notches to give them more freedom of movement. For example, that sticky-out squarish bit on the joint in the middle piece had to go. Partial leg assembly underway in seven sections: I did attempt to blu-tack the pieces together to test the positioning, but they kept falling apart and wouldn't hold, so just bit the bullet and put glue on every piece. I found this with my Ghostkeel previously - I just had to hold them together in a weird Gollum-esque fashion to get them to stay put how I wanted them until they were dry enough to hold. Ended up with this, which I think works OK: The Leman Russ turret has that nice flat bit behind the cupola which was perfect for the foot to stand on. Can't decide whether it is going to be sat back and pointing to the right (left as you look at the photo) or aiming over the bent knee and looking more like it is moving forwards to the left (right as you look at the photo). I will have to play about with it at a later stage (N.B. The other T'au in the photo belong to my son - just in case anyone thought I was fibbing about how much I have to paint!). Last step of this blog entry, I added the guardsman to the base. I was going to add the whole guy with the melta, but then I thought "no, I'm not going to give him such an easy shot right up at the Stormsurge's knackers (!!)," and decided to chop him up. There is a nice arm holding a helmet on the old command squad sprue, so I gave him a bare sergeant head as I wanted him to be obviously shouting in fear or generally freaking out. Unfortunately, I still needed to chop the original guy to pieces to get at his body as I don't have any torsos spare, which was a shame because other than that he was built with all new parts. A couple more bits from the command squad sprue and a spare lasgun from the heavy weapon sprue finished the model. I've got him running away from the wreck of the Leman Russ and dropping his lasgun in the process - I know, an offence definitely punishable by summary execution! And that's where I'm up to for today. Got to go and make a Sunday roast now!