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Well, it's been a while since I blogged last...too long in fact. I was only supposed to have a short break while I finished my Bladeguard and Assault Intercessors (and Bladeguard Ancient, and Captain...). They didn't end up being done till late November time as other things piled up. Here's how they turned out: This led to me finally starting the Marine half of the Leviathan box (I think I said before I wanted it done before New Year...That didn't happen). I started with my favourite Marine sculpts, the Terminators. While I may of saved the best till last with the tyranids, I wasn't following that trend with these. So seven models hit the table (Captain, Librarian, Terminator Squad): and at some point I added the old Terminator Marneus Calgar finecast (I didn't know this when I bought it) model to this. They got a coat of blue, and silver aaannnddd that was it for a month or so. Flash forward to January (same time I revived my thread in the wip area) when I picked up the paintbrush again. I tried something new for these which I had only done in trial cases before, and that was building up to white (and going further for the chest aquillas, up to gold). I worked through dark grey to light grey to white. With the helmets, I worked in as layers, leaving grey showing as shadows. It was a time consuming process but I liked the results. The capes on the captain and Calgar I'm particularly proud of, more so than my primaris calgar. I was grateful that the captain's base gave me an opportunity to do another tyranid...even if it was a dead one. I also attempted my first free handing here, and clearly I need more practice. The rest of the models turned out quite well, I also held back a little on the blue highlights, not sure if it was effective or not. It was about this time I realised that Calgar's little shield wing was glued on by the previous owner the wrong way. I didn't push myself on the Librarian as I should of but the GW standard paint scheme didn't appeal to me. The Terminator Squad though, I'm quite happy with these guys, in fact I'm itching to get the multipart set now, just to have their various weapon options. So, there was 25 models for the space marines in Leviathan, and I've done 7 models here. By my quick and dirty calculations, I've almost done a third. This brings us to the next batch for this mini project: Orto Cassius aside, it's another 7 models (one being the big boi of the Ballistus Dreadnought). Completing these will take me over the half way point. Let's see if I can get them done in under three months this time! People who follow my other thread will have an idea of where I am with these guys... Till next time, Keep hobbying! ZeroWolf

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!

With a crestfallen heart, I must announce that we've come to the end of this little Building Leviathan series. I mean, It's hard to continue something when it's all built! Today, all I had to do, was 10 Infernus Marines and 1 Dreadnought... First up: These went togethed easy enough, though I did wonder about why GW designed them to go together as they did. Like the one Marine where you put the pieces together verticality. Still after an hour or so, I had the full squad ready to do some burning. excuse the fact I'd already clipped some parts out, got a bit eager to complete the last model. The build was straightforward but not without problems, namely that nothing wanted to fit securely. There was a definite wobble within the torso and the legs. With the dread complete, we get a final day's group shot. and here's all the marines: and here's everything for a glorious mayhem! Overall the box delivered what it promised, 72 models with some classics amongst their number. I'm itching to get started on painting duties. From now until the end of September, I'll be using this blog to catalogue my Call to Arms attempt, so expect the first post about that soon! Till then, Keep on hobbying!

Day 6 of building Leviathan and I inch closer to having the whole box built (for comparisons sake I did Indomitus over a period of months and I technically haven't completed AoS's Dominion yet...) For (Thursday) I completed the Sternguard, and all of them were pretty straightforward with no issues, and I tackled these big boys: Not going to lie, these Terminators went together like a dream. No seams, no awkward fitting parts, just perfection. I'm looking forward to painting up some first company Ultramarines (not before September most likely!). Then it came to the homing beacon and I realised with horror that I was a base short. That'll teach me for not making sure I had all the bases before I started. All in all though, a building session with no problems whatsoever. I like those. On the tryanid side of things, I managed to get everything primed with wraithbone. One day to wait boys, one day. Stat wise: 9/12 sprues done. 14/25 Space Marines 47/47 Tyranids and all primed. Tomorrow: endgame. Till then, Keep on hobbying!

Day 5 of building the Leviathan box and I finally reach an important milestone! I started off by going back to the last Tyranid sprue (the one with the Neurogaunts and Barbgaunts) and started clipping off the Barbgaunts. This was a unit that had piqued my curiosity during the reveals, and their unique ability to slow down opponents (doubtful they would actually kill anything but luckily that isn't their primary function). Some of that enthusiasm was drained away by the build as several pieces refused to fit together properly, leaving the worst gaps on any of the Leviathan models so far! I did manage to finish them, and I still like them, just the torso gaps annoy me. With the Barbgaunts complete however, it means I can do this... The Hive Fleet grows ever more. Painting will start for them Saturday where I may (or may not) have pledged them for A Call to Arms! It felt really good to pass this milestone and to see the beginnings of my revitalised Tyranid collection. With the Nid side of the box complete, it meant I had to turn my attention to the Space Marines... As it was getting late, I only did the Apothecary Biologis and the Phobos lieutenant but both seemed to have their own little niggles. For the Apothecary Biologis, it was a problem of my own making as I made an error when cutting the head off from the sprue, taking some of the helmet detail off along with it! Guess it's battle damage now... With the Lieutenant, not of his parts seemed Stable (and the strap never wanted to reach the weapon). I may try and fiddle with him a bit more before he's primed up. Not a lot done I think you'll agree: Looks like five dead xenos! Current totals are: 7/12 sprues done. 47/47 Tyranids (Woo!) 4/25 Space Marines (not so woo) 51/72 total. Tomorrow I'm hoping to have the Sternguard and the best unit of all, the Terminators, done, that'll help even the score some what! Keep on hobbying!

Day 4 of building Leviathan and the end is in sight for the Tyranids. I should point out that on average, I get about an hour and a half of free time a day, which isn't a lot for building a box of Leviathan's size! However the building today was focused on the gaunts. My first task was to get the lsst sprue of Termagaunts done and dusted, bringing the total to a healthy 20. Needless to say, these will not be the last Termagaunts I'll ever build. With them done, I turned my attention to some other gaunts... First up was the Neurogaunts, and while small and simple, boy were they annoying! The issue I was finding was that, for whatever reason, they refused to sit flush on the base, and I found little room to apply pressure to make them fit. The Nodebeast was the only one of them to consist of more than two parts. I had wanted to get the Barbgaunts done but as I almost fell asleep holding the clippers, I knew I'd have to leave them... So end of Day 4 added these: I really underestimated the size of the Neurogaunts on their itty bitty 25mm bases. Tally so far: 7/12 sprues done. 44/72 figures built 42/47 nids Just five more nids till prime time... The Space Marines however...I'm sure 2 very 42 is fair! Till next time, Keep on hobbying!