Holier Than Thou

Progress on the Night Lords continues apace- by which I mean that I'm more-or-less on course to have the first Tactical squad finished by the end of the month.

There's been a minor change in the plan- originally I was going to do two ten-model Tactical squads as the core of the army, but with the background of the Night Lords being all about the hit-and-run, plus the Forgeworld Assault models looking so good, I've decided to have two token five-model Tactical squads and to tailor the rest of the army towards getting up-close and personal. More jump troops and assault terminators.

Though I'm thus sixty percent through the first squad (three models done), I have no photos of them. This is because they're all still missing a shoulder pad. I'm still trying to decide if I can afford the expense of trying to source sculpted shoulder pads with the legion sigil on, or whether to use 'standard' pads with either transfers or attempted freehand work.

I did, however, feel guilty about not having any images to put up, so in honour of James Swallow's excellent Hammer & Anvil I dug out one of the old Adepta Sororitas models and had a play with the Order Of Our Martyred Lady colour scheme.

This model's still a work-in-progress- some more detail work and tidying up needs to be done, and I'm tempted to put a coat of gloss varnish over the armour to finish it off. I worked out that my bitz-box contains the better part of a thousand points of Adepta Sororitas (in various stages of painting), which originally I was going to try and flog. However, reading H&A has inspired me to keep them, repaint them and use them as a small allied force alongside my existing Imperial Guard. So there'll likely be more where this one's come from, once I've broken out the Nitromors again...

In Midnight Clad

Well, it's taken a while, but work on the first Night Lord is, for the most part, complete. And here he is:

There's a few corrections I want to make- seeing the photo blown up I noticed a few slips I want to go over- but for the most part I'm pleased with how this went.

Painting lightning bolts is harder than I remember. It's something I used to do quite a lot, particularly on weapons, but worsening eyesight and an over-reliance on caffeine have served to erode my abilities. They didn't come out too bad though, bearing in mind there's three shades of blue there (not counting the armour behind).

The blue armour looks lighter in the photo than it actually is- the downside of flash photography and a slightly glossy finish. I used a deep, dark blue over a black undercoat, with a turquoise glaze over the top- it's the only glaze I still have and as luck would have it it's exactly the shade I was looking for.

I'm undecided on whether to use my normal anti-shine varnish over it, or the standard GW matte varnish (which still has a tiny bit of shine in it)- I quite like the way the light catches it.

Whatever I do I still need to find a fitting base to put him on. It's normal to use a 25mm base (as shown) for models this size, but I'm tempted to use a 40mm scenic base for him- he's going to be a centrepiece character, after all.

Anyway. Now that he's done, and now that we're into February, it's time to pick up some more miniatures and get to work on the next unit. I'm still waiting for some custom components to build some Crusade-era Terminators, so the choice has come down to a tactical or an assault squad. It's probably going to end up being tactical, given that A) I'm going to need to do quite a few of them to make them rules-compliant and B) the assault squad's more expensive. So, coming soon: Third Claw, VIII Legion (Night Lords) 10th Company.