Painting Alpha Legion Snipers 2. Metallic Blue

When "Extermination" came out, a lot of people were impressed with the rich azure blue and metallic blues that were seen for the Alpha Legion marines contained therein. The colours of the Alpha Legion have traditionally been many and varied - ranging from purples to blues, to silver, and even green and red in some very old publications! I personally liked the painting of Forge World's contemptor dreadnought for the Alpha Legion and initially wanted to emulate what they had done - but perhaps a bit more moodier or darker.

To achieve this, I tried out a VAST number of recipes, including even using nail polish / nail varnish to try to achieve the tone and level of sparkle that I desired. Let me say for the record that working with nail polish was very tough indeed -- it dries far too fast to be useful and the brushes that they come with are simply no good for detail. So don't do what I did and ruin a paint brush trying it out.

In the end, what I turned to was Vallejo paints. And one in particular: Gunmetal Blue (pictured). 

Using my airbrush, I went over the rune fang silver base layer with a thinned down gunmetal blue layer. Note the words: thinned down. In order for the silver layer to (literally) shine through, it needs to be relatively thin. One way to consider this is that its always better to be too thin as then one can apply extra layers on top to thicken it up. But if a thick layer is placed on top, it is impossible to thin it down without starting over again. Hence the advice here is to go thin and do multiple coats if needed. 

For the snipers, I applied a thin coat and then doubled up on the lower regions to give a richer colour (darker and a bit less silvered) on the legs compared to the zenith direction. The photo does not quite do it justice, but there is a certain twinkle there that can be seen in the paint.

Whilst I was at it, I also did an Alpha Legion Tartaros terminator (below) to get a better feel for zenith-applied gunmetal blue. The shine on this with the lights is terrific. I really like how they all look, but will now wait until they are all fully dried before proceeding to the next level of detail application.

Painting Alpha Legion Snipers 1. Airbrushed Basecoat

The next few posts from me will be featuring a (semi-) live blog series of how I'm going to go about painting my Alpha Legion Snipers. For a very long time, I have been experimenting off-and-on about how to get the paint scheme that I want for my growing Alpha Legion forces and I'll be sharing it in this series of posts, step by step.

The models I'm going to be using for this are my Reconnaissance Squad -- a squad of five Alpha Legion snipers armed with prohibited necron weapons that I've kit-based and converted from a variety of sources. What makes these models stand out even before any paint has been applied to them is their load out: a series of necron death mark gauss-based weapons coupled with Dark Angels hooded heads. Perfect for what I'm envisioning here.

Links to several of these models can be found here: [ One | Two | Three ]

Although I thought about painting these guys in dark / blend-in or camouflage colours, in the end I decided to opt for core Alpha Legion colours and let the capes do the job for "blending in" or "camouflage". I have a particular plan for the camo that will be coming later on in the series.

Here, the first two steps are done using an air brush. They're relatively simple in essence:

(1) undercoat using black;

(2) base coat using silver.

I use an airbrush as it provides a nicely thin layer that preserves the details of the miniature's sculpt very nicely and allows me to control the paint being dispersed much more accurately. If you've never used an airbrush for painting miniatures before (and I hadn't until 2014), then I thoroughly recommend it.

For the under coat, there are multiple options available of course. I've seen many people use grey spray cans and the like, but I still prefer black these days since as long as it gets in to all the recesses the job is done. Moreover, it also means that the next coat need not be 100% perfect or 100% coverage - the black in the recesses will serve a shading purpose if nothing else.

For the base coat, there are lots of different options in sliver these days. Here, I've used a combination of rune fang and lead belcher from citadel paints. The first base coat was simply a combination of these two paints all over the model. The second part of the base coat featured using pure rune fang steel (a very bright and vibrant silver) over the upper parts of the models. This effectively provides an azimuthally bright region for the next coat to go on top on and is something that I feel is essential to pulling off a metallic looking Alpha Legion layer in the next step. The image below shows the models at this stage. More later!

Alpha Legion Assault Squad Sergeant

This is a wide-scale kit-bash, featuring parts from all over the place and is intended to be an Assault Squad Sergeant for a Pre-Heresy Alpha Legion force. The components are as follows:

Head: Chaos Space Marines troops;
Torso: Resin Mk.II power armour from Forge World;
Legs: Chaos Space Marines raptors (I removed the spikier bits to de-chaotify it a little bit);
Arms: Space Marine troops;
Thunder Hammer: Dark Angels (Raven Wing);
Plasma Pistol: Space Wolves Grey Hunters;
Shoulder Pads: Space Marines;
Jet Pack: MaxMini Iron Pattern.

What I'm ultimately gunning for here is a unique looking miniature which could double up as (e.g.) a Chaplain or alternative Legion Consul. Hope you like it!

Wargames Gallery: Age of Sigmar Portals

This is a picture that I took whilst at Games Workshop Manchester, but omitted to put in the said post. It features the Age of Sigmar starting set with eight portals all in a circle on a realms of battle board. I was very impressed with all the colourful portals and the set up it had. Enjoy!

Games Workshop Manchester (Central)

In the heart of Manchester (UK) lies the Arndale Centre. Boasting some 41million visitors per annum, the Arndale Centre is the third largest shopping mall in all of Europe, located in the extensive retail district of the city. 

As you can imagine, such a mall sees a large amount of footfall. The Games Workshop store is located inside the mall, but near one of the outer edges on the first floor, next to Boots (a British chemist chainstore) and a bridal store. The first picture below shows the store front. 

The store itself is very spacious inside (depth wise) and has a lot of room for gaming tables and more besides. The next image below shows one of the displays in the window (on the right from the above image):

Yes. Its a TITAN. A large dakka-ing titan. In the window of GW Manchester. Hats off ladies and gentlemen, you stunned me with that before I even went in to the store.

And then I went in to the store and was greeted by not only very enthusiastic staff, but also some seriously good displays:

Seriously -- check out that second one -- totally worthy of a display in Nottingham itself I'd think!

More than that, check out the Apocalypse sized gaming table toward the back of the store as well:

Blown Away. 

So totally impressed with you Games Workshop Manchester! Congratulations not only on your staff who were polite, friendly, talkative (but not pressuring like other localities), but your displays were amazing. 

I hope to get to Nottingham one day, but you guys rocked the Games Workshop high street retail store experience for me. 

Horus Heresy Review: Roboute Guilliman

Background.
Thanks to the Black Library books, we now know that the Primarch of the Ultramarines should have his name pronounced as Roe-BOO-Tay Gill-Uh-Man. Beyond that, Tempest gives the 30k overview of the primarch that much has already been written about. Surprisingly to me, he got a little bit more grim-dark than how he has been portrayed in 40k. Specifically, he is noted to have run a kind of secret police to ensure the 500 worlds were loyal. Sure, he was intelligent, and conquered many worlds (second only to the Sons of Horus) and left them easy targets for the iterators to install the Imperial Truth in.

Strengths.
On the tabletop, Guilliman is both a force multiplier, and a character that can handle himself in one-on-one combat situations.

For the former, he increases all of his sons Ld values by one notch whilst providing any unit he joins with some valuable bonuses. This alone argues that Guilliman should have a command squad (or equivalent) around him.

He is able to mess around with the opposition in a comparable (but not as complete) way as Alpharius is capable of. This includes the forcing of seize the initiative rolls to be re-rolled. He can grant a a single unit entry in his detachment one of implacable advance, interceptor or tank hunters. Clearly this can be a great boon for his army and I would strongly council having options for each of these choices that does not already possess it (e.g., lascannon equipped heavy support squads for either tank hunting or interceptor (similarly for all predator units); dreadnoughts other than mortis ones for interceptor, and so forth). I think this is a great boon that needs careful planning about what units will come on to the board with this primarch.

Should he need it, he actively learns during combat and increases his WS by one every round after the first up to WS=10 after the fourth round. This will re-set though if someone else challenges him. On top of this, he never suffers negative Ld modifiers due to deny the witch. Hence he's capable of standing up to even Lorgar. But perhaps not Lorgar plus blessings.

For his one-on-one combat he has 2+/4+ armour to rival both Vulkan and Perturabo. This allows him to re-roll the first failed invulnerable save in each phase (not turn: phase!). For weapons, he has two specialist ones: a paragon blade that shreds up enemies and has murderous strike, coupled with a concussive "hand of dominion" for S10 AP1.

Unlike some of his brother, he also has a ranged weapon in the form of "The arbiter". Although only 18 inch range, it does have a valuable AP3. Pity it is not AP2 to be fair though. Hence I can see him loaning his BS to an attached unit thanks to his Cognis Signum.

Weaknesses.
Although he can handle himself in a fight, he is vulnerable to swarms due to his low number of attacks. Hence the only way to play him is as part of a bigger unit. He needs his sons around him and this is arguably going to be something like an Invictarus squad (which along with terminators, he makes count as troops).

Overall.
His is certainly worth his points cost. In many ways he is an analogue of Alpharius (which may explain why they didn't get along). Alpharius does the army buffing much better, but Guilliman does the individual combat much better.

Take him as part of a large squad and deploy him accordingly. Use the Cognis Signum to help with shooting. Aim to take out any and everything short of Horus embedded in a unit of Justaerin Terminators.