The Flesh Tearer marines are ambushed from the shadows by Death Skull Ork boyz! It's been a while since I've updated this blog but I plan to change that soon. Very soon. I decided a few months ago that I was going to box up my armies and only focus on painting and playing my Orks. While I didn't really box very much up, I did get some paint on a big hand full of boyz and lootas. Then the new Space Marines codex dropped. Wow! I was to dig my White Scars out of cold storage and begin painting and re-painting them for my updated list. Then I saw a cool batrep from Skardecast and painted on a few of my Dark Eldar. Then I found some Hellblasters I started months ago for my Salamanders and I thought their new codex will drop soon so I better finish those off... Now my desk is a big ol' pile of minis from various armies and I don't feel like I'm completing anything. Focus dropped. Enthusiasm waned. I needed some motivation and while looking up some paintin...

I've stripped and repainted a few of my "old hammer" models more than a few times and I think I'm going to take another stab at an army. This morning, I threw on a few coats of paint on a couple of models for chapters that I've considered. Test paint jobs for chapter options for my Old Hammer army. From left to right: Raven Guard, Salamanders, Flesh Tearers, Raptors, Mentors, Emperor's Spears I've long considered painting a Raven Guard army and the rules are really good right now but a black army is so boring to paint. I know a few people really prefer "grim dark" models but part of the attraction of an old hammer army is brightness and color. The Salamanders would fit with my 30k and 40k armies. Plus, I get a cool alternate scheme with the yellow and black salamander pattern, however, the rules aren't great for them as I feel a unit that doesn't allow overwatch is a must thanks to Tau and Eldar being so good at blunting ...

Here's my Warhammer 40k techmarine for hire! I'll use him in my variety of Space Marine armies... White Scars, Astral Claws, Flesh Tearers... everyone except Salamanders. With the new way of building armies in "formations" in 8th edition techmarines are an excellent choice for an HQ option to take a second or third formation that only requires one compulsory HQ selection. Have spanner, will fix or smash. In hindsight, I may add some static grass to his base.

Since seeing him in action at the Midwest Conquest GT, I decided to add Roboute Guilliman to my forces for the Bug Eater. He's an incredibly intricate model to buy, sand, glue, prime and paint for a tournament. I'd like to spend a lot more time on him, but I'm not ashamed of what I've got here. I'm not quite done but he's well on his way. Also, here's a Flesh Tearer that's nearly done.

One of my favorite armies to play is Blood Angels. You can build all sorts of crazy lists, like dreadnoughts in drop pods, Death Company companies, the Golden Host, librarians in dreadnoughts, dreadnought in Relic form... and I find them fairly fun to paint. When I was at the Las Vegas Open (LVO) this year, I got to chat with famous violinist and Blood Angels enthusiast, Pascal Roggen. Pascal brought a very nasty Blood Angel drop pod list similar to my own Drop Dread army, however, he had added a close-combat build Leviathan and a Relic Deredeo - both in dreadnought drop pods. It was pretty cool to chat with a famous 40k player and it was nice to pick his brain for a few minutes. One of the things we we spoke about was that dreads and the Golden Host formations teamed up together would make for an awesome 1-2 punch. When I got back home, I dusted my dreads off of the shelf and I was a little ashamed of my paint jobs on the Drop Dread army. The drop pods had been repainted, some ...