Baneblade! Plus Gaming and Painting Progress

Hello one and all. Long time no post again, but I intend to update much now often now given the changes that have occurred in my gaming life, namely that I'm actually gaming!

I've recently gone from being a hobby painter to playing games, and it's amazing what a difference it's made to my overall painting work ethic. I finally went to a local gaming club and dipped a toe in with Warcry, which I found really fun. So I picked up the Corvus Cabal warband, although it was close between them and the Splintered Fang.

I painted the Corvus Cabal in a week! The fastest I've ever painted a group of nine miniatures to a decent standard. I gave them the name the Birds of Paradise, giving them a brighter colour scheme than the GW standard. I gave all of the gang members names based on the taxonomic names of various birds of paradise, which fits thematically as they're related to the Corvus family of the crows and ravens etc. The bird that accompanies the gang is the Javan green magpie.

In the course of playing Warcry I've been introduced to a brilliant group who play all sorts of tabletop games, including 40K, Age of Sigmar, Star Wars: Legion and many others. This has rekindled my passion for getting into 40k and specifically the Imperial Guard, or Astra Militarum these days, so I finally painted my Baneblade, which I bought and assembled but left on the shelf for many months. When I finally got on with it, it took me two days of fairly solid painting. It's not going to win Golden Demon but I'm really pleased with it and it sets a standard for style and colour for all my future armoured vehicles. "Drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword!" was ringing in my ears as I assembled, so I had to put the Baneblade commander sticking out of the top!

I've read a lot about magnetising to get all eight Baneblade chassis variants out of one kit... but I couldn't be arsed. In the end the very easy option is to make a Baneblade variant - Baneblade/Hellhammer, and then make your favourite other variant, which for me was the Stormlord, these can then be slid in and out without magnets, and I reckon any damage it causes to paintwork will be invisible.

It would be very easy to magnetise gun barrels for the various varieties, but again I cannot be bothered, from what I've read it seems that there is usually a best option for weapon choices and that many options are impractical to use. If I get a few more Baneblades in the future I'll build the top section differently to get a good mix, as I can't really see a situation where I'll need a variety of super heavies on the battlefield!

My next project was my unit of Bullgryns. I've already had a unit of these part assembled for years, but without the impetus of actually wanting to use them on the battlefield my enthusiasm for them waned slightly. Now that I wanted to field a unit of them I bought another box and brought my contingent up to five, plus Nork Deddog (not pictured). I'm pleased with how they look, they just need some weathering pigment on the bases and they'll  be done!

Last up is a shot of my Imperial force force so far, around 1600 points of Guard with the Baneblade if Battlescribe is correct. The Space Marines will make useful allies and the Blood Ravens Primaris Marines may become the subject of a future post. They've been an interesting experiment in contrast paint, drybrushing, edge highlighting and deciding what quality I'm happy with for a tabletop force. The eagle eyed may spot the Militarum Tempestus, which I also painted this month, in a Blood Ravens colour scheme so that I can distinguish my elites from my regular troops. Next up is another Leman Russ and two Basilisks, then we'll see!

The next post should be less of a wall of text! In the future I'm aiming at updating when I finish a miniature or a unit. I've found it useful to look back and see when the first Cadian Armoured Fist was completed, as I've made no record myself except this blog and it's clearly an expanding force!