The 90 Minute Minute Man (Speed painting challenge)

Travel tools!

Well, I went away to Napier for the Highlander Tournament. Being a fool I decided to

A.) Change my list the night before the tournament

and B.) Buy and paint a new warjack the evening before the tournament started.

This was met with a chorus of "YOU MAD CRAZY FOOL" by many of those who travelled to the tournament. I was also determined not to miss out on dinner/drinking or socialising.

I left the dinner early and went back to our accommodation to glue the model together. I had brought all the supplies I needed from home and arranged them on a handy table in the room. I had really bad light to work by.






















I rapidly assembled the Minuteman with glue purchased the night before, took roughly 30 minutes to do and was probably the most annoying part of the model. The base is an old 40k land speeder base that I chopped up with clippers and then surrounded with a clump of Milliput.

The base is drilled into the model using a small drill and wire and fixed in place with green stuff. I also grabbed some green stuff and rolled in "jet exhausts" which i fixed to the model. I then went and had some beers with everyone after they got back from dinner.























After 4 or 5 beers I went upstairs and under-coated the model with a brush, which is not the best technique ever, but I didn't feel comfortable using a spray at rented accommodation. The key to the undercoat with a brush was to get it covered without obscuring everything. It took a little retouching (And being able to paint it on the base was helpful). After this I went to bed.

Getting up in the morning I had to at least base coat the model for the first rounds (I didn't take any photos of this though, so all i have are "in game" shots from the day).

Three colours, Tin Bitz, Macgragge blue, and Leadbelcher. The key to painting fast is this stage and it is this.

Don't care about going over the lines.

Just go for it, get the basic areas covered in paint, if you slip up you can always retouch it later. To base coat the model I used a citadel basecoat brush and lathered on the paint (watered down of course.... having a sink in my room was very hand).























After day one was over I really didn't care about finishing off the paint job and spent the evening hanging out with the other tournament go'ers (And having AWESOME BBQ...... yeah.... awesome..... pfffft). Late in the evening I headed off to bed but the local nightclub was still playing music so decided to pain some more.

The pic on the left was from when I finished up, the base and inks are still wet. The key to doing detail quick is wet blending.

Those blue areas have three or four sets of highlights, all done within a short space while the paint is still wet. I simply get a big blob of blue on my palette and do each layer of highlighting one after the other with thin watered down paint. It all blends in and looks very smooth even though its basically cheating.

The metal area are even simpler, one highlight, one layer of ink and one layer of fine dry brushing the morning after (see photo on right).

Having the Minuteman at least basically painted on day one, and almost finished on day two was a good feeling for me. I hate playing with unpainted models, but I also wanted to spend time with the other guys playing the tourney. Painting quickly allowed me to do both, which was great fun.

Oh, there will be a battle report coming soon, Forbidden temple - A tale of two days.

Master of the Forge - Sons of Medusa HQ

What happens when you combine the following models into one terrible gestalt? (yes gestalt is a word, look it up)

• An Attack Bike
• An old 2nd edition predator
• A old 2nd edition Baal Predator
• A land speeder
• A blood angels techmarine
• A cyclone terminator (2nd edition)
• A Iron Warriors warsmith
• A chaplain bike

Well simply put, you get the following.

A bad ass Master of the Forge on an attack bike with an epic conversion beamer. 

I am really looking forward to fielding this guy in a game. Every army needs an HQ choice to lead it, and I can't think of a more appropriate choice for the Sons of Medusa than this.

If your wondering where all the parts went ill explain. The chassis is obviously the attack bike. The blood angels techmarine torso forms the rider with the Iron warriors Iron Smiths servo arm on his back.

The Chaplain on bike gives us the wonderful winged front to the bike.

The old school cyclone terminator contributes the left hand that is functioning as a targeting device for the conversion beamer.

The Land speeder contributes the communications aerial at the back of the bike. (My land speeders are munted and have been consigned to the bits box of the damned).

The Baal Predator adds in the triangular armour plates that appear below the cannon on the front of the model.

The old school predator adds in the cupola and cannon that forms the conversion beamer itself.

I used green stuff to make the funnel on the end of the conversion beamer. It's not a perfect job, but making a funnel out of green stuff is a very very annoying task.

The last thing left to do with this guy is mount him on a base. I popped into GW Wellington earlier this week and grabbed a set of bases to use. The pack comes with some 40mm bases, some bike bases, some regular bases and a 60mm base.  I wanted to put him on the 60mm base but its just too small. I may leave him unbased for the time being.

Oh, the big cable out the back of the conversion beamer into the bike is a guitar string. 

Not my most amazing paint job of all time, but certainly the most conversion work I've done on a single figure. I may return to this guy later and do another level of highlights and detailing. Until then hes going on the shelf of honour in the games room.

Army planning - Sons of Medusa

Ok, so getting down to planning out the army. I like having a pretty solid idea of how the army will look, and i like to build up to around 2000 points or so. That allows you to play some big games and mix and match at 1500-1750 points.

Chances are it will go slightly over 2000 points, but that's not really a big issue.

Also of note is that i have a big box of marine models from an old crapily painted 4000 point marine army that i am stripping and reusing. This will limit my selection somewhat as i want to reuse as many of these models as possible. (many models are wrecked or being reserved for a different themed army in the future. A hint is that my Sons of Medusa won't require 20+ jump packs but these guys will). I even started painting a small amount of them in the army colours years and years ago but never got anywhere with it.

HQ selections

Well I have a terminator captain, hes even painted quite well (not by me) in the army colours. There is only one problem. Hes an old model and the new terminators make him look like a midget. In fact all the old terminators look tiny these days so that's two squads from the old army going into the box of the damned.

So a new HQ is required, and it's pretty obvious who its going to be. A master of the forge is a no brainer for an army of technophiles. So I look up the master of the forge and i see he can have the servo harness or a conversion beamer. Seeing as started playing Warhammer 40,000 back in the rogue trader days I had to have the conversion beamer.  I then made a startling discovery

The master can carry the conversion beamer on a bike.

WTF? A bike mounted conversion beamer, that's just insane. A few Google image searches later and I found people had done just that. Amazing!

Also, bikes can look hot in the Sons of Medusa colour scheme as shown here.

Someone probably paid that hooters girl to sit on his bike so he could get this photo, a bit sad really. But the bike looks cool!

Any way I dug  into my pile of spare parts and found an attack bike to use as a basis for this model, HUZZAH!

Troops selections

Marines are not blessed with a great variety of selections, it's scouts or tactical marines. Digging through my box of models I find i have 15 scouts, at least 20 tactical marines, and a plethora of heavy weapons. That's very good.

I also found that games workshop sells an Iron Hands tactical squad complete with bionic bits

One credit card transaction later and these bad boys are on their way to me.

I also have a few techmarine models and decide to make these guys my squad sergeants (I may order some more for the other squads as well)

I'm looking at 2-3 Tactical squads and possibly a scout squad with sniper rifles. Close combat scouts don't really fit the theme of this army to well, but i really would like some variety in my troop choices and cloaked snipers look like a good option. A rhino or two would help out here as well. (the box of the damned contains at least 3 old rhinos)

Fast Attack selections

This army isn't one I imagine will use a lot of land speeders, scout bikes, or assault troops. It's not really the flavour I'm going for. (Also, the assault marines are set aside for another project and my land speeders are broken)

Digging through my box of marines (The good box, not the damned box) I find a Bike squad. Now normally I wouldn't think a bike squad would be 100% thematic with this army, until i remember my master of the forge is on a bike. He really needs a escort squad and the idea of bionic bikers has a certain amount of appeal. Also, I have the models.

No idea what to do with conversions at this stage, but i'll think of something to make them look like cyber bikers from a post apocalyptic future

Dreadnoughts totally rock

First things first, the Master of the forge allows me to take dreadnoughts as Elites and Heavy support. Looking in my box i find 4 metal dreadnoughts and think "BRILLIANT I'LL FIELD THEM ALL!"

Then i realize a few things.

One, that those dreadnoughts include a Furioso (can't field it) a Chaos dreadnought (too disloyal) and Bjorn the fell handed (too specific)

and two, I really really really want an Ironclad Dreadnought in this army

Look at this bad boy. If anything screams "I MUST BE IN AN IRON HANDS ARMY' it's this guy right here.

Steam powered seismic hammer that looks like an industrial mining tool? YES SIR!

So I settle on using my current Lascannon metal dready, buying an Ironclad and possibly another dready or two.

Other Elites

Fitting with the technophile theme I decide to go with a Sternguard squad as an elites choice. The idea of custom ammunition, high-tech bolter variants and combi-weapons really fits well.

I'll make sure they have lots of bionics to show their veteran nature and mount them in a razorback.

Heavy Support

Well, the obvious selection in the heavy support section is obvious.

A techmarine armed with a giant seismic death cannon..... it's almost as though this unit was designed with this army in mind. Gentlemen, I present the Thunder Fire Cannon

Now apparently these aren't out in finecast yet, and the metal ones are a pain to put together..... but hes so dam cool. I will certainly add one in. But that might be later on in the project.

The other selections are more contentious

I have a lot of heavy weapons guys, enough for 2 Devastator squads. I'm torn between having a dedicated Devastator squad or painting them so they can swap in and out of the tactical squads as optional weapons.

Devastators are very expensive points wise to field as a dedicated squad and at that cost it limits what else I can field. A compromise could be fielding a small heavy bolter equipped squad and putting the lascannons and plasma cannons in the tactical squads.

I'm also considering a vindicator, I have one currently, painted in the army colours but its an old model and the pain job is just terrible. But it served me well in the past and the new model is totally boss.

And of course, I can field Dreadnoughts in this slot as well. So many choices, if only dreadys were troops :)