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Handro - Pledge Complete - XV25 Stealthsuit Team

It is done. Step one on what will hopefully be a long and fairly productive road to hobby progressville. Pledge 1 was the mountainous molehill that we had to get over else we lose ourselves 'midst a sea of sprues and broken army lists. I painted some models, like.

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Despite repeated urging from Der H to attempt a crazy 'stealth field engaging' look, I just went for the normal Vior'la scheme. It looks good, is fairly simple to pull off and crucially gives that clean, hi-tech look that is the Tau's signature. Also painting a new scheme on a model that's bigger than their standard infantryman is a nice way to ease yourself into a new army.

Fusion Blasters - For cooking things at medium range!

Fusion Blasters - For cooking things at medium range!

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I'm branching out from modelling sand/train ballast with GW's Armageddon Dunes and Dust for my basing. (These guys have Dust). It's a nightmare to apply to bases with models already attached but I'm lazy like that. (Finished models, not award-winning ones!) It comes out well with a coupe of drybrushings.

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So...one pledge down, several more to go (hopefully!). Something vehicular next methinks...

Handro

 

Thought for the day; 'Listen not to the alien, look not upon the alien, speak not unto the alien!' 

Der H - Pledge Complete - Lord Commander Eidolon

Welp, after a whole day of hobbying with my good buddy Brother Handro, I can now call my monthly pledge complete.

This month, and every month from here on, Brother Handro and I are pledging to complete something from our hobby wall of shame in order to justify this whole exercise.

For August Brother Handro pledged to paint an XV25 Stealthsuit team, with homing beacon and some form of drone - After today these look pretty near finished, so keep an eye out for those!

I pledged the rather meagre-sounding challenge of completing Lord Commander Eidolon of the Emperors Children, and so it has come to pass...

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As with some of my previous projects (that I might get around to talking about...) I have magnetised the arms, head and backpack to allow complete customisation of the model (Der H: "Just in case....").

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I have stayed pretty close to the Forge World scheme. The golds are a variant of my usual gold scheme, but I added Druchii Violet for the first time...I think it works.

The face was always going to be an issue as they are my weakest area of painting. This has altogether too many layers if I'm honest, but the final result is OK. Saying that, at least my camera recognises it as a face!

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Overall I am reasonably happy with this character. What I am VERY happy about is that despite a pretty shit month in terms of real life events (even before my Kitten was run over) I have still managed to find some time to sit down, relax, and spend some time engaging in my hobby - It can't all be that bad then really can it...

Stay tuned for updates from Brother Handro on his August pledge, plans for the September pledge, and more general madness over the next few weeks.

Der H

Thought for the day: "The price of perfection is prohibitive" (Watch the video here!)

Project Update - Lord Commander Eidolon

I actually got some more painting done yesterday!

Naturally Lyro (my smaller cat) wanted company so we had to sit and paint together.

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I got some more paint on Eidolon. Still a long way to go but I've almost blocked out the colours.

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Ive gone for a pretty standard theme. Gold trim is a pain - or rather it was until I opened my new gold and suddenly it worked - still have some tidying up to do before washes/highlights etc.

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Ive gone for a black pad on the right. It will have silver studs on the gold rim and the III symbol. Laurels will be white to tie in with the laurels on his chest and his hair.

What do you guys think? Im hoping to get this finished tomorrow so look out for an update then!

Der H

Project - Der H's Custodes

Bit of a crap week this week...my little cat, Sam, was hit by a car and killed on Monday. Died instantly, no pain, didn't suffer, etc, etc. Our other cat has been looking for him and needing a lot of support so not had much hobby time.

Sam when he was about 12 weeks old. He would be one year old next month.

Sam when he was about 12 weeks old. He would be one year old next month.

My wife and I have been supporting each other and trying to distract ourselves (and Lyro, our other younger kitten). I haven't managed to paint anything, but did sit down and build for a few hours to distract myself.

I'd seen some great conversions of Ixion with shield (see below) or with different weapon options, and If you've watched the video/read my earlier blog post then you'll know I intended to use some small magnets to given him the shield option.I didn't have any magnets small enough, so a small 1mm brass rod has served well enough.

Ixion Hale with shield - Marcel Kinrade found here

Ixion Hale with shield - Marcel Kinrade found here

The project started with some VERY careful drilling and dry fitting to make sure I could preserve Ixion Hale as is.

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Few pictures of the options!

What do you think guys? Good use of spare plastics?

I've also built my Aquilon pattern terminators. Need a bit of gap filling, might get to that over the bank holiday!

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....and finally I have my plastic Custodes built (Brother Handro: "How long have you had these now?.....")

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 I went for 4 with spears, 1 with standard and sword, and 5 with sword and shield. One of them has a magnetised arm with a converted chaos power talon - I'm not sure if I like this given how nice the actual talons are...I have a Blood Angel power fist somewhere that I might convert to a claw instead...more bling and all that!

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What do you guys think? check out a video for Ixion and the Terminators below:

Hoping to get some more painting done - end-of-the-month pledge rush and all that!

Der H

Thought for the day: "Yime spent with cats is never wasted"

 

FARSIGHT: Crisis of Faith, a review

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Like many of you I tend to have a swift Google for a review or video review of a potential purchase. Not so much when it comes to Black Library products, as I usually buy things that I know I'll like (with a few bitter exceptions), but I did however search for any clues as to whether this particular novel was any good as I had just embarked on my own Tau expansion, and it would be my first step into Tau fiction - I found very little, good or bad, so I'm adding my tupp'orth and hopefully you'll find it useful.


So no major spoilers ahead, indeed my review will be more of a comment on the Tau's and Xenos in general's fiction (or lack of), and the community opinions/response to this. Don't worry, I'll talk about the book too!

So what do you get for your £18.99 or regional equivalent? 

A hardback, fairly large print novel of 355 pages by Phil Kelly (more on him later), centering on the eponymous hero's exploits crossing the Damocles Gulf and generally plot device-ing himself and his super awesome squad of justice and tolerance out of the various slightly sticky situations they find themselves in. Presumably there's more to come too, as we don't get any Enclave action at all; this is a prequel, or backstory of sorts.

That's the plot in a nutshell, without spoiling anything - there are subplots involving the Inquisition, an oddly-behaved member of the Water caste, the machinations of the Ethereal caste and the best efforts of the Scar Lords chapter to derail Farsight's expedition. Beyond that, we glean something here and there about Farsight's relationships with Commander Shadowsun, That Guy Kais and his old mentor Puretide, but nothing anyone with a basic grounding in Tau lore wouldn't be au fait with. (I'm not including myself in that group, as a Tau noob).

As for Commander Farsight himself, there's plenty of him getting slightly miffed and emotional about things not going the way he wants, presumably as a prelude to him having the eponymous crisis of faith (at some point). Whether you find it natural or too jarring with the traditional ideas of the Tau obediently going about their for the Greater Good business is largely down to you. His command team are blatantly OP though. One of them is basically a Dreadnought and another is a Cylon. Come at me, bro! 

You also get a brief but useful Xenolexicon at the back, (although if I'm being uncharitable, it would've been nice had this been mentioned in a contents page, I only found it about a fifth of the way through my reading...)

This brings me onto a more general discussion - many of the Tau's hardcore fans have very strong feelings about Mr. Kelly, usually positive in regards to his original involvement with previous Tau codex fluff, and vehemently negative when it comes to his recent move into novel writing.  

I'm as bad as anyone else when it comes to debating my favourite sci-fantasy universe, but the 'colour of Tau blood' debacle (alluded to in the recent Community post announcing the novel) and the somewhat shaky ground of the 'kind of make it up as you go along' Tau language are problems laid at Phil Kelly's feet. As a Tau noob, these things don't bother me unduly, but I know instinctively that they probably would be doing if I'd had a longer relationship with the little blue guys.

On a wider scale, these issues are felt more by a fan base when that group is smaller; write a bad Space Marine novel and enough people will buy it and/or think it's half-decent, and encourage the company to publish more - write a 'bad' Xenos novel and the relatively few people who buy it will desperately wish for it to be good and be all the more enraged when it's not, usually leading to no further novels for that particular faction for a while. It's a vicious circle but hey, newsflash, Marine stuff is popular, sells well, and thusly gets more stuff published for it.


In summary, this is a decent read. Caveat: I have notoriously low standards when it comes to films, TV, etc. It's not that I like bad things, it just that something can be 'ok' and as long as it's vaguely enjoyable I'll be accepting of it. We live in an age where anything and everything is held up to the light and picked apart, and whilst this is good insofar as it encourages things to be done better, it also frequently takes some of the magic away. Everything will seem a little worse if you stop to really scrutinise it. If I hadn't delved a little deeper online in trying to gauge the community's response to this book, I probably would've had a higher opinion of it. Make of that what you will.  

Equally, if you want to read something Xenos-related, you never have much choice. If I had to compare this book to another (in order to give you a sense of how it feels, not in terms of quality) it would probably have to be the notorious Descent of Angels from the Horus Heresy series; it gives a flavour of its subject but leaves you feeling somewhat let down by the lack of actual content/progression.

Not so much a 'crisis of faith' as a mild perturbation. Here's hoping for more to follow.

Handro.

Project - Der H's IIIrd Legion Librarian

Progress for the Progress god!

I did some more work on the Forge World Cataphractii Terminator Librarian for my IIIrd legion. We discussed on this blog (here!) and over on Youtube (here!) the issues that come with the Emperors Children and Librarians. Aside from them looking awesome (Shout out to Lil Legend Studios!) I really wanted to add some late heresy goodness to my force. A psyker who can channel the excesses of Slaanesh to the extent that he can summon a Herald of Slaanesh to the table would surely warrant Fulgrim's favour.

Lets look at some pictures!

First off, the flames...these needed some serious cutting and re-sculpting...

The resculpting itself was relatively easy, but took time - I think the effect works but I'll no doubt find out when painting!

Next I had to sort out shoulder pads. The originals were very pointy, and fitting for Cataphractii armour and for the Night Lords/Sons of Horus, less so for the sleek lines of the IIIrd. I settled for the pads from the Primus Medicae (my own take of this is the topic for a future blog post!).

The Phoenix power spear replaced the force axe very nicely, the hand was simply swapped. Im glad FW released the Phoenix power spear upgrade set - saves a lot of eBay trawling!

The finished model is quite effective, if a little tall - I can't see this guy squeezing into ruins any time soon!

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Until we reach the later stages of the heresy in the Forge World black books I doubt we'll get much in the way of traitor psychic powers. For now, and in 7th, 2 mastery levels from Telepathy would work well. The Primaris Power Psychic Shriek works well for the IIIrd, and anything from Dominate, Terrify or Hallucination would be fitting powers granted by Slaanesh.

What do you think guys? Do you like the conversion?

Der H

Unboxing - Warhammer World Exclusive Librarian in Cataphractii Armour

Another quick article to link in with a video due to appear on our channel this week: an unboxing, review, and my plans for the Warhammer World-exclusive Librarian in Cataphractii Terminator armour.

This is is a contentious model which initially received mixed reviews due to what was seen as legion specific detailing. The Cataphractii armour is the most popular, but the spiked pads, the skulls and the tattered cape all screamed Night Lords (probably influenced by the midnight blue paint scheme...)

Hope you like skulls...

Hope you like skulls...

As an Emperors Children player I didnt pick this guy up last year; partially as I had other purchases in mind (Brother Handro: "whatever happened to those Crimson Fists?"), partially due to the legion specific issues mentioned above, and partially because the IIIrd legion didn't make use of librarians....that one is a stumbling block really!

Not to worry, I have a plan! Fulgrim did support the Librarius project at the council of Nikea, and so early to mid-Heresy I imagine those flawed members of the IIIrd legion who consorted with the forces of Slaanesh might be rebranded as gifted. I have no back story yet, but it shall come...

Lets take a look at the kit!

Nice details with the skulls, the scrolls and the face. The small skulls around his head are really well cast!

You didn't want this in focus right?

You didn't want this in focus right?

The flame effect is also inconsistently received by most hobbyists - SFx on models is difficult, but this works (IMHO). The bloodletter though.....less so....

What ever could these parts be for....watch the video below to find out!

Overall a great kit guys - if you were holding out on picking this chappy up then.....well....don't. Hopefully this week you will see a blog post demonstrating that he might not be as legion specific as you might think!

Der H

Unboxing - Legion Sicaran Punisher

The second of our un-boxing articles is the mighty Sicaran Punisher - this time added to the mighty Word Bearers for Brother Handro (Der H: "Add it to the wall of shame!").

We've done a YouTube video on this one - check it out over on our channel The Hobby Butterflies and check out our other videos as they arrive!

Ooooh, a nondescript box!

Ooooh, a nondescript box!

The new white boxes from Forge World are quite nice - makes things feel more cared for than the bags of loot!

The hull for the Sicaran hasn't changed (as expected!) and is still very crisp considering the age of the model. The attachments for the track/sides is still unfortunate in that this rear panel is often warped and needs some TLC after de-spruing!

The parts for the new turret are really nice - crisp detail (the mould is BRAND new so should hope so!) and a relatively straight barrel. The detailing on the ammo feed is particularly sharp.

Overall a very nice kit - check out Brother Handro's progress in a future blog post!

Der H

Thought for the day: "Heresy grows from idleness"