Hobby Progress January 2016 - Time For 30k

The Tyranid project is almost at an end. There is just the Dimachaeron left to paint and he's waiting for better weather to allow undercoating. That means it's time for a new project. Yay! This is probably one of the most fun moments in the hobby: when you have loads of different options and you can look forward to trying new techniques on completely different minis.

Having three large xenos armies with Dark Eldar, Eldar, and Tyranids, I'm really keen to build something different. An imperial force based around a core of space marines with an opportunity to add allies in such as mechanicum or imperial army will be a complete change from painting gribblies and give loads of potential for variety. Plus, everyone in my local gaming group is going 30k and producing some gorgeous armies and I really want to get involved.

The big question has been which legion to go with, a problem I've solved by applying the following criteria:
- no taking a force already represented in my local gaming group. That rules out Death Guard, Blood Angels, Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Ultramarines and Salamanders that I am aware of
- no painting white armour. All my experiments with white armour to date have turned out poorly, and expensive resin isn't the place to make mistakes. That rules out White Scars and World Eaters
- I'm not going to be using an airbrush. That rules out armies that in my opinion really need one such as Alpha Legion or Thousand Sons
- no legions that don't have rules, so no Space Wolves
- I don't like the fluff of the Night Lords or Emperors Children

So that leaves the Imperial Fists, the Sons of Horus, the Iron Hands and Dark Angels. Out of these it was the Iron Hands that really caught my attention.  I'm keen to do a mechanised army based around heavy armour and they're a great fit for that. They've got some great legion specific models such as the Gorgon Terminators and the Iron Father that I'm really looking forward to doing. Plus I'm really enthused about doing the paint scheme. I had a lot of fun panting black with my Ulthwe Eldar and also really enjoyed painting the Blue Rinse Grey Knights (photos in the archive on the right hand side of the page). The hope is to combine the two schemes with the Iron Hands black and steel armour brought together with blue washes and maybe a glaze. The effect will be a very cool, cold black, quite different from the warm brown black used by forgeworld on their Iron Hands.

I've started the build with a couple of rhinos. I've gone with the plastic Mars pattern rhino, rather than the forgeworld Deimos pattern. For one I prefer them. Also they allow the use of the gorgeous forgeworld resin doors and that for me is a clincher. I've added some brass as well to give them a bit more detail.

One has been built from a chaos kit and this has let me add a havoc launcher. The other just has a twin linked bolter. Very tempted to do a third rhino with a heavy bolter just to give it a bit of reach and to allow it to be useful from turn one. 

I got the amazing Betrayal at Calth set for Christmas (thank-you Stevie T!) and it's going to provide the basis for my Iron Hand troops sections. Ideally I would have liked to use MkIII 'iron armour', but I'm not so attached to MkIII that I'm willing to pay a three time multiple rather than use MkIV. 

For the price, B@C is great value, and I'd be tempted to use it for any chaos space marine project and potentially for a 40k marine chapter. The sprues are marvellous, with a fantastic selection of weapons and options. Which brings me on to the tricky decision about how to fit my guys out. This is made all the harder by not having played 30k, so all my decisions are based on theory hammer.

To make things simpler, I'm only going to build tactical squads. There are only three of each special weapon in the set so building a support squad or a heavy support squad isn't possible without investing in an additional B@C set. If I do buy another one  then I will think about support and heavy squads then.

So the question with tactical squads is how big to go? I like the idea of big twenty man squads with an apothecary, as this selection has great synergies with the Iron Hands 'inviolate armour' rule. That rule reduces the strength of shooting attacks down by one, so a squad with an apothecary will get a feel no pain save against even strength eight attacks. A one in three chance of walking off a missile launcher hit is very nice to have. 

Against this is balanced the fact that I want this army to be an armoured force and that means rhinos, which in turn means ten man squads. I know I can go with Spartans (or even a Mastadon!) but that feels a little ambitious at this early stage. 

So I'm going with a compromise. I'm building two ten man tactical squads with standard bolter dudes, no extra hand weapon. The sergeants are loaded for hand to hand with artificer armour, force axe, bolt pistol and melts bombs. There isn't a force axe in the B@C set so I've used two axes left over from building 40k assault marines. The thinking behind the sergeant is that the artificer armour should keep him alive against most opponents that can challenge and strike at above initiative step one. The force axe will be as effective against most opponents as a power fist and is five points cheaper. Those five points can then be spent on a melta bomb which will be more useful than a power fist when assaulting vehicles or walkers.

The final ten marines in the B@C set have been used to build a further ten man squad. In this case the sergeant is only differentiated by the lack of a helmet. Otherwise he is outfitted just like any of the other bolter marines. That means that he can used as a tactical marine who has decided to go sans helmet (perhaps it's damaged or he has very bad flatulence and just can't stand it in there anymore). This means that the final squad can be lumped in with the other squads to create two fifteen man squads or a ten man and a twenty man squad. 

Assembly was really straight forward as the kit is very well designed. Heads will be painted on sprue and bolters, backpacks and shoulder pads will be painted separately as well. 

I've also made a start on some heavy support by getting the hull of a Sicaran Venator assembled. It's a great looking tank and I'm really looking forward to getting it done all the way, but it is taking a lot more effort than any of my other builds.

Removing the large gates from the side track sections was a laborious task. For the first one I just snipped it down as far as I could and then slowly filed it down. For the second I decided to innovate and use a sanding block to speed the process up. I went too fast and took a chunk off of the edge of the armour plate. This then had to be built back up with green stuff. It's not going to look great, but I've got plenty of oil cans and ammo boxes from old razorback kits that can be stacked on top of the damage so it will be obscured. Entirely my fault though, will have to be more patient going forwards. 

The next problem was actually getting the hull to lock together. It just did not want to come together in the correct plane, the top section always ended up about three millimetres too high. I'm used to the forgeworld tyranid kits that require minimal green stuffing and go together quite readily once they've been filed down. I haven't got the experience with resin armoured vehicles so it is difficult for me to tell if this is just standard for resin vehicles or a difficult kit. After a load of adjustment and some trimming I eventually got it to lock together but I had to pull it apart a few times to get there. 

The venator is now going to need the join between nine different armour plates to be green stuffed. The gaps aren't huge (about 1mm) but it's going to delay the next stage which would have been adding all the ancillary parts to the hull. 

In the pics below, the model is still wrapped in the elastic bands I'm using to make sure the parts don't shift while the glue dries. Am now wishing that I hadn't attached the gun as it would have been a much easier paint job with it separate. Unfortunately it's now quite heavily pinned in so no chance of removing it.