Lucky

Sorry for the long silence, I moved again for work. Quite close to the new town I live in I found a comics shop which sold me two absolute goodies such these:

OOP imperial guard Stormtroopers, 1997 circa

The famous female catachan jungle fighter with grenade launcher!

I had them still sealed for 10+5€. Stormtroopers are very rare, the catachan girls is quite rare in europe this is why I feel very happy about the purchase! I hope to paint them soon!

Ral Partha oldies but goldies: STORM GIANT

Yesterday I found this extremely rare goodie, OOP since ages. i can't wait to paint it. oh man, I can't believe how i love Sandra Garrity's stuff!
...and yes, I feel lucky!

Old school Ultramarine meltagunner!

Did i ever tell you that i love early 90s Space Marines range?
I find these miniatures amazing even if they look kind of goofy and dolly somehow. Yes, i know: in a world where everyone is looking for true scale Space Marines this may sound silly. Anyway that's how it is, i consider them quite a rarity.

+++ If you own some and want to get rid of them, please contact me +++

This Ultramarine has been built combining all the old stuff (metal body, plastic arms and backpack) with the 1999 slim looking metal meltagun. I was afraid that the overdeformed hands could look awkward with it but on the opposite it seems they quite fit.
Above, the Ultramarine symbol has been painted by hand.

The Tactical designation has been painted by hand as well. the roman numeral is the only decal on this miniature.
The whole model has been painted the usual way, with Vallejo colours plus Citadel's Ultramarines Blue. They fit very well for my personal taste: i love the way 'Eavy Metal studio painted space marines in the 90s and i'm painting every miniature this way. I don't like that much the new Citadel's paint ranges.

Do you like it? Suggestions?

Tigurius WIP

Still WIP but i simply couldn't resist to post this awesome old school miniature! I hope to make this my very best masterpiece!

Ral Partha Wizard!

Sorry for the long wait friends! I hope to be more productive!
I bought this miniature when I was living in Edinburgh. I consider it rare because we can't find anything by Ral Partha here in Italy and I'm sure it is out of production which is in my opinion quite a pity: there are few old school looking fantasy miniatures around these days.
Anyway, I painted it in order to represent in Dungeons & Dragons the usual evil or chaotic wizard you always encounter in towns at night coming back from a long quest:you and the party have no more enchantments nor potions and there comes this guy with his own mob of monsters/thugs screwing up things and maybe even killing someone.

To be honest i'm not satisfied at all with the colour scheme. The main problem is the hat, looks too orange to me while i wanted to paint it yellow with just a bit of depth. I guess I should have not used two layers of orange as background. Well, I will re-paint the hat in some time. Suggestions?

Sol'Kanar, elven ranger of Cormanthor

The second D&D character I ever had was a ranger. In those days the ranger was the only fighter that could wield two weapons at the same time and this was why in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons there were plenty of them.

My ranger was, and still is, a wood elf from the Cormanthor forest who even spent some time living in the elven fortress of Evereska. With him I played lots of adventures and also the second chapter of Baldur's Gate saga (Shadows of Amn) and both Icewind Dale games during my high school years and later. After a first cycle of adventuring (and some planar travels) he retired for a while, because i switched to a different kind of characters like spellcasters for some time. Then came 3rd edition rules (Dungeons & Dragons 3.0) and I chose this guy to approach the new game. Lots of tales again. Lots of enemies slain in the name of Rillifane Rallatil.

His name is Sol'Kanar, taken from a legendary creature of the game Magic The Gathering which has nothing else to do with my ranger. I just liked the name when i was a really young D&D and Magic player at the same time.

I chose a quite rare miniature (that came for free together with White Dwarf) to represent him: it is Aenur, the Sword of Twilight from Mordheim, the 1999 GW game. He was a high elf mercenary, kind of a swordsman. I like this miniature basically because of the cape and the sword, i found those things well representing the ranger fashion tipical of Sol'Kanar Fireblade.

I can't wait to play a new D&D campaign with him!

Last Imperial Guard Tank Crew member!

This running guy is painted in the same way the previous were. The thing i like best is his green pants. Anyway there's not that much to say about him! do you like it?

OOP Commissar into veterans 2nd squad sergeant

More veterans! This guy is an old commissar miniature, 1996 circa i guess, which i used to represent sort of "improved" infantry sergeant so, because of his veteran status, i thought it could be a good idea to replace the usual Valhallan Ice Warriors sergeant with something more sofisticated. I find it very suitable to Valhallans because of his greatcoat and his peaked cap makes him look pretty well like a hardened commander.

His pistol is a now almost disappeared hand flamer which i think is only available to Battle Sisters and Blood Angels but i'm not sure. Anyway even if this isn't available anymore to Imperial Guard, i chose not to replace it because of the beauty of its aquila marking on the side and the rarity of this OOP miniature.

Another Imperial Guard Tank Crew guy!

Welcome back!
This guy is basically the same than the previous one, except he is standing instead of kneeling and he's armed with a lasgun instead of a laspistol. It is quite clear to see what i was telling you before about the black "armoured corps" vest, which makes him quite "panzerdivision" looking. Beside of that, his leather helmet and his black leather boots give him a Soviet taste.

I painted of course a squad patch on his left sleeve.

OOP Imperial Guard Tank Crew, limited edition

I'm particularly proud of these miniatures: this is one of the three members of the Imperial Guard tank crew that i own. These models came out in 1999 when, with the first 3rd edition codex, you could give tanks a piece of equipment called Crew Escape Mechanism meant to save a D3 members of tank crew in order to avoid losing completely the Victory points of the tank. Very fancy wargear, i wish i could buy this right now for my Russes (i deploy three). These miniatures were available only from GW Mail Order so this made them pretty rare stuff.

I decided to use these three models because i wanted to give my army kinda "survivor" feel, like if it has been deployed for a really long time, so starting from the day this guy lost his tank, i got attached to a veteran infantry squad to allow him to go on fighting.
The colour scheme is a bit different from the other veterans: the trousers are the same but the jacket is, instead of grey-black urban camo, plain black to represent his status of elite tank crew, pretty much like the way WW2 Germans did. In fact in my army i painted tank crews from Leman Russes or artillery with a black vest while the Chimeras' crews just plain olive green (quite Soviet looking).
Anyway, i really love the way i painted the potentiometer on the laspistol! looks like it is glowing in the dark!

Cadian veteran!

I began to paint seriously all of my guardmen: this is the first of the first batch. the camo scheme is the usual urban camo made of medium grey as main colour and black stripes.

Right now i'm using Vallejo game and model colours and for the grey i combined:

• German grey
• Basalt grey 
• Cold grey

Black stripes are painted with:

• Black
• German grey
• Black wash or Lifecolor's Panzer Uniform instead of German grey

 Green fatigues are painted with:

• Yellow olive
• Cayman green
• Camouflage green

I'm particularly happy with the red patch of the squad's number on the left shoulder. This make my guardsmen really tidy, very clear to understand who is who on the battlefield!

Command squad part IV

Fourth and last meltagunner: this one is Animal from Schaeffer Last Chancers. quite rare miniature, out of production of course even if still available from GW mailorder i guess. its rarity is why i've decided to include it in my Valhallan command squad even if it doesn't make much sense to make an almost naked man to walk into a snowy environment. i imagine this guy like a prisoner of war used by the other members of the squad like human shield and/or expendable soldier when the firefight gets tough.

 

this was the last command squad member so that's all for now! see you in a couple of days!

Command squad part III

Third meltagunner of the company command squad, classic Cadian trooper! i love these models, i think they are much better them the actual Cadians which are kind of toy soldiers with those huge helmets and that vest quite looking like a skirt. i know, plastic models are much better to convert and i'm agree (in fact you can get great troopers with converted cadians, just swap their heads with something better!) but this classic metal stuff has a lot more of charme.

Kill Team camo scheme part II

 

more Killteam camo scheme! i chose to paint the flak armour grey in combination to the camo scheme of the fatigues just to give this soldier a ww2 feel... just think to Wehrmacht/SS soldiers on the western front in 1944, you couldn't find two men dressed in the same way, so this is what i'm trying to achieve.

the camouflage is done this way:

1. black primer
2. catachan green basecoat
3. bestial brown spots
4. bubonic brown spots
5. black wash
6. 50/50 camo green + catachan green highlight
7. snakebite leather highlight

This is a great day...

because i've just bought this

First batch of veterans finally painted!

this is the first part of my imperial guard mixed Valhallan/(classic) Cadian veterans. their scheme is a bit lighter than the testpaint because i made a softer highlight. i really like the combination of olive greens and greys. if you like, i'll post a tutorial about painting wood.

look at the meltas' muzzles: i've managed somehow to get a burned effect with a nice method explained on Citadel's "how to paint Citadel tanks" book: after painting metal, wash with watered down snakebite leather and then with bestial brown (and also with schorched brown if you want. i didn't), finally wash with very watered down black in order to merge the previous layers of paint. i find this method quite successful.

final goodie: a better pic of demo-charge dude.
that's all for now!

Veterans repoting!

here are my veterans, ready for the battlefield! i really love this scheme, pretty detailed and really close to the ground colours. this scheme will be the one with which i'll paint the veterans only, the platoon troopers will be painted like this lascannon team in order to distinguish them well and to reflect the fact that veterans get better equipent like camo uniform and extra stuff (not on these miniatures)... and i love that snow, yeah!

Veterans update

new things:
- light grey highlight, it looks much better now
- leather
- camo stuff
- wooden rifle shell
not that much to say

New colour scheme for my veterans

these pictures suck but i can do anything better for now. i'm painting with a new scheme some veterans (i have not stripped the others yet!) to test the colour scheme and, i must say i like them mainly because it merges well valhallan with cadians.

...and look at that flag on the shoulder!

Dear old cityfight cadians...

a bunch of years ago i painted a squad of classic cadians (but never finished) with the old urban camo scheme shown in the book Cityfight (3rd edition), led by colonel Schaeffer, that now hasn't any special rules. i want to create with them (i've got 10) a pair of veteran squads mixed with some valhallans, in order to get an informal mix of uniforms that emphasizes pretty well their veteran status. obviously they will be painted il a camo scheme to represent the camo cloaks similar to the one applied to my tanks so they will be somehow coherent with the rest of the army. the only thing i wanna read from you is: "ok man, you should strip that paint away" because it's kinda hard decision to take :-)