Hobby Progress February 16 - Damn you free shipping!

It's still too cold to do a mass basecoating of the models built thus far, so I continue to focus on assembly.

The Gorgon Terminators are all ready for their basecoat. These are gorgeous models with some very cool rules (basically FNP and blind) for just five points more than a regular termie. I'm only going to do five and put them in a land raider as I've chosen to take the cataphracti to ten models and give them the Spartan. They'll be equipped with a thunder hammer for the sergeant (comes free), two force axes and two chainfists (sourced from the plastic 40k terminators). They'll also be taking the graviton gun as their heavy weapon. I'm loving the design of the graviton gun; it wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Flash Gordon.

The tacticals have also had some love, with the marine backpacks, bolters and melta bombs being mounted on clips in preparation for basecoating. Managed to jam a scalpel into my finger whilst doing this, so hopefully the blood sacrifice will brings the models luck.

The cataphracti have been assembled as far as they can be, prior to taking delivery of the new shoulder pads that just got announced at the Horus heresy weekender today. Also in shot can be seen the marine heads and rhino track sections that have also been prepped for spraying. 

Thanks to a bout of flu, hobby progress ground to a halt mid month. Fortunately my copy of Retrubution arrived so I was able to read through that whilst on my sick bed. As well as the new book, my Forgeworld order also came with a Spartan, a Deredeo dreadnought, some legion tank crew, a set of Pintle mounted weapons for my vehicles and special weapons for my cataphracti terminators. The order also includes 30 shoulder pads, an extra set of rhino doors,  a set of landraider doors and the gorgeous new Iron Hands transfer sheet. Once again the free shipping offer is my undoing...

The landraider side doors are going to be used for the Sicaran Venator. The doors will be cut down to just the iron hands symbol in the middle of the door and these will then be used to cover the sponson housings. There is no point taking sponsons if the main weapon is ordinance. Otherwise, the Venator is ready to be basecoated with all of the green stuff having been applied and then then been filed down. Of course, by the time I've finished it they'll probably have changed the rules on ordinance.



This left me with with a spare Iron Hands assault ramp door, so the only logical thing to do was to buy a landraider to fit it on. I’m sure you’ll agree that I had no choice. As with the rhinos, I’ve chosen the plastic Mars pattern vehicles, as I prefer them.

Also pictured are the test paints I've bought. These are Scale75 paints for the metallics,which I've read rave reviews on, and Vallejo for flat colours to be used on the armour. I've also bought 200 4mm plastic beads to act as agitators, as when I've used Vallejo in the past the paint has separated incredibly quickly and been a pain to mix back together. Finally I've bought a load of texture and technical paints from citadel so I can experiment with the best basing options.