Grey Knight Terminators - The archetype approaches

When starting a new series of minis a pilot model is often painted to try out the colour scheme or technique. So it goes with the Grey Knights. Last week all 5 were undercoated and then given a careful boltgun metal over coat except for the embossed text on the armour which along with the weapon got a coat of dwarf bronze mixed 50:50 with tin bitz. Then came the archetype. A wash with devlan mud followed by a thin highlight of boltgun metal on raised armour surfaces or a thin coat of mithril silver on shiny bits of the armour or weapons such as
the blade of the halberd. Some red for the purity seals and power cables, a light dry brush with shining gold on the decorative lettering and that's it so far.

The remaining 4 terminators in the kit are now getting their devlan mud wash while the heraldry is planned. Next up however is an improved base. Looking at the mini it seems that a standard dry brushed sand base would not do it justice. What seems better might be a base that combines the styles of the daemon hosts and Grey Knight Dreadnought that have been used before.

Grey Knight Terminators Progress 2

First pass paint on the Grey Knight Terminators. The idea was to use the "From the Warp" paint suggestions. It is possible that the minis might have strayed from this excellent advice. Anyway all the base colours are on. Next to come are some washes and highlights or highlights then washes to pull all together. The question is should the armour wash be devlan mud or badab black.

Sisters of Battle Tanks

Tread head madness for the Sisters of Battle progresses. The extra armour for the Immolator has been trimmed down to the smooth space marine type. It proved easy to remove the extra decoration from the resin components as the resin proved quite soft. Getting the extra large dozer blade magnetised proved rather harder as the small 3mm x 1mm magnets embedded in the mounting arms of the blade proved too weak to hold the blade to the hull. More powerful and slightly larger N50 magnets have been orderd and hopefully will do the job. Work has commenced also on the 2nd Exorcist. Initially there is little to see as additional plasticard side panels and decoration need to be constructed similar to the original Exorcist conversion seen also in this image and in previous blogs. Secondly the metal panels need to be sanded to fit snugly to the hull and each other.Some green liquid green stuff has also been acquired. The usefulness of this in sealing joins will also be explored later.

Below is the original converted Exorcist. This project should create a similar conversion but not identical as these ancient and revered instruments of the God Emperors Justice are individual crafted by the Techpriests of Mars and not mass produced in the Imperium like lasrifles.

Sisters of Battle Immolator Treadhead Madness, Grey Knight Sanity

The Sisters of the Order of the Verdant Deed started as a single Immolator with rhino extra armour and the Forgeworld rhino large dozer blade. The Order has expanded to include 2 SoB squads mounted in rhinos, a celestinian squad, a cannoness with command squad body guard, a squad of 8 seraphim, a penitent engine and an Exorcist as well as a couple of priests. Most have featured in this blog at some time or other.

The new madness is the decision to add a second Immolator, a second Exorcist and a third Rhino simultaneously. 2 Immolator kits have been started and a third has been ordered with Exorcist bits. But Forgeworld had stopped producing Rhino extra armour, and the Predator extra armour package. Bargain extra armour on ebay slipped through the workshops fingers literally while the bits shown in the image on ebay were checked against the requirements. Gnashing of teeth.

All that was left was to buy the Chaos Rhino extra armour package from Forgeworld and tweak it for the Immolator. That path was chosen, bits arrived and started in to the production line. And what happens next is that Forgeworld announces new predator/rhino extra armour priced slightly less than the stuff just bought. More gnashing and some foaming at the mouth. Anyway the path has been chosen and lets see if a better cooler magnetised second SoB Immolator can be made with these bits. If not it's back to spending with Forgeworld. Below in order is the archetype, next is what has been bought from Forgeworld after washing in detergent and while drying on some kitchen roll, and finally what is also on the painting table for moments of sanity - some Grey Knight Terminators to be painted a la "From the Warp" tutorial about painting metals.
Busy times.

Sisters of Battle Command Squad Finished

The Command Squad is finished for the time being. With the new codex 2 celestinians had to be removed and a hospitaler and a dialogus added. Given that these 2 are not truly combatants I decided to make their bases differently form the rest of the squad. Its probably not obvious but the hospitaler is standing on planking and the dialogus on the remains of a tiled floor. All irrelevant to this image of the completed squad based in a ruined building. They have not been tried out yet so how the squad will perform with the blessed banner, a laud hailer, and chirugeons tools is an unanswered question. The fluff is important, otherwise why involve the 40k universe where life is a dark struggle against the encroaching gotterdammerung of the end of any remaining sanity within the order of the universe.

On another note Artificer was moved to comment on a post on the "from the warp" blog regarding a realistic style of painting for 40k. Realistic was used to mean the gritty well worn, battle scarred style of painting. Fair enough but there is nothing realistic about 40k, and not even the realistic style of painting. Have a look at photos of combat vehicles and combatants from any modern conflicts. Only the knocked out vehicles and weapons are are battle scarred as the realistic style of 40k painting. Having said that it still looks good and adds to the fluff.

Hospitaler Sisters of Battle Command Squad

Sisters of Battle command squad progress to date. Here silence does not mean that nothing is happening. Both the Hospitaler and the Dialogus have progressed and are close to completion as is a squad of Celestinians. The posture of the Hospitaler as can been seen from the pictures is not the best that GW has managed. She seems to be flinching as if horrified at the cruel things her Celestinian colleagues in the command squad are inflicting on heretics and aliens, or perhaps she is cringing at seeing what they have inflicted on her Canoness commander.

The mandatory inclusion of these 2 minis in the command squad allows 2 extra special rules for this squad. With the Hospitaler it is the feel no pain special rule. Hence other than instant death wounds there is a 50/50 chance the mini will survive. The squad already has the Shield of faith special rule giving them a 6+ invulnerable save. Also the unit has the Endless Crusade act of faith giving the relentless and move through cover special rules but they do not have the Celestinian's own act of faith of Hand of The Emperor, which is odd as the unit is composed of the most dedicated and distinguished Sisters of Battle.

On the other hand they benefit from the Canoness's Act of faith of Passion. This gives them the preferred enemy special rule but even so some extra strength would be handy.
The result of these special rules suggests a squad with 2 heavy weapons and perhaps a Blessed Banner to support other units and win any combats.

Has anyone else spotted the GW used 2 different spellings of Hospitaler in the 2 White Dwarves. Sad isnt it.

Rant ..... PCs Windows and Security on the Internet

Suddenly this week blogger images from blogspot.com became undisplayable on my PC. When I browsed Bols (Bell of Lost Souls)  website - no images, but images on From the Warp, but not on Admiral Drax or Fritz 40k and so on. Most blogger images hosted on http//*blogspot.com/* had disappeared. How or why, it was not clear. Artificer had installed nothing. The PC was protected by Kaspersky, and Windows defender and kept up to date on Windows 7 by automatic updates. Firefox was affected and so also was IE (exploder). The only thing that had preceded this loss of functionality was an update on windows - thank you Microsoft. Quickly the laptop was turned on. It was OK blog sites images were OK. Wait a minute, as it was shut down it installed some windows updates. Lo and behold the laptop had the same affliction once it was rebooted. Logically blogger.com was being blocked by some security change but what as the lone user had done nothing! Eventually a solution was realised by the humble user - help pages and requests for help rendered as much assistance as a mirage in the desert - set blogger.com to be a trusted site for Kaspersky. Ok, but why did windows update break the usability of blogger? Is it deniable collateral damage from the war for dominance between Google and Microsoft. Is it a bug in Kaspersky uncovered by the latest Microsoft updates. Actually here at Artificers Workshop we do not give a damn. If software houses had to pay compensation to consumers for their waste of consumers time as a consequence of their dysfunctional behaviour there would be a massive change in behaviour. My bill to Microsoft and Kaspersky for the time wasted by their incompetence is prepared. As users we need to campaign for a change in the law. If petrol companies sell petrol with too much water in it and it breaks engines they are liable. If software companies update software without explicit permission for each change that breaks the Internet for users they must be liable also.

 Back to Sister of Battle Command Squads :

 Work has progressed.

Sisters of Battle Command Squad

The new command squad or Celestinian Body Guard caused some reconfiguration of the order of battle for the Sisters of Battle.

Also the acquisition of 2 new models, doubtless part of GWs cunning plan to shift some of the less popular minis - here is one below. The basing for these two has been causing some thought as neither would be front line types. Here therefore is an attempt at a wooden strip floor in progress.