Had a quiet day on Saturday so in between doing a mess of laundry and whatnot I managed to get a fair bit of painting in!


I really like how the Veterans turned out - all the extra scrollwork and detail on the armour, plus the vaned helmets and loincloths really help sell that this is a veteran unit. I went with bone-colored helmets for these guys, and ended up liking it so much that I pulled all the other sergeants from the squads and painted their helmets in bone as well.


The Seeker squad is pretty straightforward - they're not full-blown veterans, but are the sharpshooters of the legion (what with them being BS5), so they got the fancy shoulder pads to help them stand out. All the weapon housings ended up getting done in bone on the vets and seekers, and think I'll go back and paint all of the various bolters and bolt pistols in the old squads to match (they're currently just done up in shaded metal).


While I was sorting through the bits to see what was left, I ran across the new commissar model I'd picked up - a simple headswap and I think we have a passable Captain Sokhem Vithara to lead the Spireguard! Getting antsy to see the new Conquest book, there's a lot of stuff I'd like to do with both the Spireguard and the Geno Five-Two, but I have to refrain from building too much until I can see how the unit compositions differ from the current-era guard!

As I'd mentioned in the previous post, I'm nearing the finish line on the Thousand Sons but that's not to say I'm shelving 'em just yet! Over the last couple mornings before work the Veterans and the Seekers have gotten their reds done, and are now ready for the detailing process:


That got me thinking - I hadn't updated the painting chart for the KSons recently, and was quite happy to see that I was able to turn a large swath of it green! The intent was to stick with an army that fit the Age of Darkness FOC, so 3 HQ, 1 Lord of War, 4 Elites, 2-6 Troops, 3 Fast Attack, and 3 Heavy Support. I'm leaving a couple slots open assuming that FW will release models when the Prospero book finally drops, Magnus and Ahriman of course, and I'm crossing my fingers for some Sekhmet Terminators and Disc Riders. We'll see! The Spireguard are being built along the same lines - as an Allied force they only get 1 each of HQ, Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support, and 2 Troops. Hopefully by the end of the year Conquest will have been released and I can really dig into finishing up the Imperial Army section of the force (as well as dive into the Geno Five-Two).


In other news, Feast of Blades is rapidly approaching (10th-12th of October), and they're doing a Heresy tournament which I plan on attending. The event runs on Sunday and is set at 1750 points, so I banged together a quick list based primarily on what's painted already. The only outstanding models I'll need to finish are a pair of Deimos-pattern Rhinos (winging their way to me from FW even as we speak) and the erstwhile sergeant from the Veteran squad to act as the squad leader when I break the usual 20-man blob into two 10-man tac squads. Got about a month to finish up two Rhinos and a sergeant, as well as finish up the weathering on the other tanks - should be doable!


Fully plan on getting annihilated in the tourney as I'll basically be running a vanilla heresy army - will be tough to stand up to legions who have had their fancy rules and units released, but it should be a blast nonetheless!

I had to take a little breather from painting the knight, and so I brought out the box of heresy bits to see what i could bang together. I'd picked up a set of the combi-weapons at GenCon, so I knew I wanted to build at least one 5-man Seeker squad:


Pretty straightforward - in keeping with the 'las and plas' theme I've got going with the predators, each of the Seekers got a combi-plasma, and Sergeant Tolbek got a power fist and plasma pistol. Cost effective? No, but it looks cool! As they all have a BS of 5, I figured they should get some more decorative bits to represent their more unique status - I went through the bags of Egyptian-themed shoulder pads and was able to come up with enough with an eyeball motif for all of them, which I thought suitable for the specialist unit. I'm trying to decide whether to buy them a rhino, or perhaps put them in a Proteus with an Explorator Augury Web to more safely deliver them to fire upon their preferred target...


After that I took an inventory of the legs I had remaining (always the limiting factor, it seems) and thought I'd do a ten-man plasma support squad, ditch the third pair of robed legs shown above and do a 9-man veterans squad using the torsos, heads and shoulder pads from the Egyptian-themed bits on all of 'em to really give them a veteran look. That does mean  they'll lose out on the second available special/heavy weapon they'd get as a ten-strong unit, but does fit the fluff (TzeentchThe Primordial Creator smiles on units in multiples of nine), and it means I could attach a character of some sort and pop 'em in a Rhino or Land Raider. That being the case I think I'd build them as an assault-y unit, with a selection of the khopesh-style power blades and forego the heavy weapon entirely. I'll have a plasma gun left over from the support squad (for the one-in-five special weapon), and a combi-plas left over from the seekers (for the sergeant), so I can stay with the theme running through the army!