The Blue Man Group

Hi, what's up,

Bjørnar here, and I've painted more Ultramarines!

The first squad of 10 is nearing completion, sans weathering and some minor details. I'm looking at having two squads of ten in rhinos as my troops choices for this army, that will end up around 2500 points. The sergeants get power swords, melta bombs and artificier armour, of course. I had some spare Mk3 torsos left over from the death guard, so I just used those.

As I wrote earlier, I based the blue armor on the Painting Buddah tutorial form YouTube that I linked in my first post. I mention bastardizing the scheme, and by that I mean that I used mostly the same colors but skipped a lot of the time consuming glazing. I don't use an airbrush, but I whipped out a wet-palette for this project. I'll break it down.

BAD ASS ULTRAMARINE POWER ARMOUR:

From a black undercoat, I basecoat the armour with Kantor Blue from Games Workshop. After a line-shading of Nuln Oil, I tidied the model back up with a new pass of Kantor blue.

Then I mixed in a little Teclis Blue and glazed on the highlights where I figured light would catch the armour. Much like you would get if you airbrushed it with zenithal-ish highlighting (which I don't) from above and to the left of the model.
Highlights were then slapped on with a few passes of so thinned down Teclis blue that Duncan Rhodes would totally high five me if we were in the same room. I mixed in Vallejo Model Air light Sea blue for the final highlights. So. just a few colors, but several thin layers and some glazing where the transitions were too stark.      

For weathering, I'll probably go with just some painted on chips and some glazes on the lower part of the legs, much like Painting Buddah's tutorial. If you take a look at the dude at the left in second row, you'll see that I've started a little with the chips. They are pretty fast to do, you just put down a little line or chip-shaped blob of the highlight colour (for me this is Vallejo model air light sea blue) and mix some black with dark brown (rinox hide for me) for the actual chip, leaving just a little of the highlight color where the light would catch it. Dont overthink it, and don't overdo it.

I call this look "Blue Steel"

When he is not pursuing his modelling career, Sergeant Killfucker enjoys curbstomping xenos and traitor marines alike, flaunting his ridiculously good looks. Again, the face is painted with just a few colours, but it's a couple of thin layers that makes it look good (if I can say so myself. And I just did).I basecoated it with Ratskin Flesh, did a wash of Reikland Flesh, before going back with the basecolor, mixing in more and more Pallid Wytch Flesh for highlights. I wanted a bit more contrast in the face, so I painted a little Agrax Earthshade in the deepest recesses.

For the stubble I did a few glazes of Ratskin Flesh, mixed with a little Mechanicus Standard Grey .
Again, the awesome Dunchan Rhodes did a great little tutorial in the Warhammer TV YouTube advent calendar.  

I did try to paint his sword following another advent tutorial for Grey Knights nemesis force weapons, but I could not pull it off due to a funky groove that runs down the middle of this particular sword. In the end, I used mostly the same colors as Duncan, but kinda wet-blended/glazed it up from darker to lighter. A little homage to 90's 'Eavy Metal swords if you would.

So, I'm waiting for some Dreadnought close combat arms and a Leviathan from Forge World (The order has been pending since the 18th, I'm guessing they have their hands full theses days). In the meantime I'll get cracking at a Fulmentarus Terminator Squad. Yeah, that's right. 5 of the baddest of asses, ALL sporting frikking Cylcone Missile launchers! You heard me. Cyclone Missile launchers.

"

"What Perturabo, you mad brah?"

I got ten of these bad boys from Spellcrow Miniatures. Fits the Cataphractii Terminators like a frikking glove. Comes highly recommended. Great casts, quick delivery. Pretty cheap as well.

Ok, peeps, I'll get back to you when I've painted the whole squad. Then it's on to either a Contemptor or a Primaris Lightning Strike Fighter. Can you say "Kraken Penetrator Missiles"? BOOOOOM!

Introducing the Death Guard and Ultramarines

Hello you savages!

So I'm Bjørnar and what you can probably expect from me are posts showing the development of my new Horus Heresy army - The Ultramarines. I say probably, because I have a short attention span when it comes to the hobby, and I often jump between projects. This is something I'm planning to address in a later post. Probably.

I've been Horus Heresy-curios since the first big book dropped from Forge World, but meeting another player in Trondheim that also was into it sealed the deal. Seeing Adrian's awesome Mechanicum army had me all over the Death Guard like Connor McGregor on a press conference. Expect to see some posts about them as well (including this one, it seems).

"Surprise, cockfags!"

Mortarion's Stag Party, featuring Deathshrouds,
Typhon and a Primus Medicae, putting the heavy
weight division on notice.

My Death Guard features a lot of heavy armor, artillery tanks, the option to take a lot of footsloggers and of course the Main Man himself with a Stag Party of his Bestest Dudebrahs in a Spartan Assault Tank

The army, like a lot of Death Guard armies, is painted with a lot of weathering, using sponging, pigments, some oils, washes etc etc. It turned out looking quite drab so I've tried to introduce more color in the weathering and some of the weapons and such (still a work in progress).

Playing this army has seen me pushing scary shit up the middle of the table inside a spartan supported by artillery and longer range fire. Plans for the future include doing the mandatory zombie Cult allied detachment, and introducing more daemon stuff as we're getting closer to the Siege of Terra.



So, with the new Betrayal at Calth box I knew I had to get cracking on my next marine army. But if I was to start another army, it had to be one that was decidedly different from the Death Guard. Visually, so painting-wise, it had to provide me with new challenges and to push me to learn new techniques. It was also important for me to build an army that played to different strenghts than Mortarion and his merry men.

I looked at Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, Iron Warrio....you know, this is getting stupid. I was looking at all of them at one time or another, writing lists, surfing the shit outta the Heresy 30K forum, the most excellent blog that is A Galaxy In Flames and listening a lot to podcasts (The Eye of Horus podcast in particular).

But in the end I was won over by the idea of taking on the Ultramarines. In particular, I was taken by the idea of making a striking, yet brutal and remorseless Ultramarines army. An army that combines Assaulting, Shitkicking Walkers with Guerrilla-Themed Tactical Elements (SHIT YEAH!). An army that is so up in your grill that the World Eaters go "Hot Damn, I thought WE had issues!". Not Space Smurfs but Man Marines. Killfuckers. Apocalypse Dudes.

In my book, nothing says shitkicking like Contemptor dreads with dual claws and graviton guns. And a Leviathan. So that's coming up. But let's start at the beginning. The Betrayal at Calth set. And some regular dudes in yet shiny armor.

"I'm still a bit shiny, but I WILL stab you." 

  

"

"We're all gonna stab you!"

The scheme is a bastardization of the scheme featured in the excellent series by Painting Buddah. Go on, give those guys some love. Of course I had to cut some corners, but I guess that's what my next post will be about.

So! If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you will join me as we dwelve into the Death Guard, Ultramarines and whatever else strikes my fancy as we go along.