Painting the Onager Dunecrawler - Dreadtober 2017 week 3

So, the end of the third week of Dreadtober looms, and how am I doing? Well, to put it bluntly, I've finished!




Oh yeah!

Ok, that's not quite true, as I did say I would paint the other weapon options and I have yet to do so. But even so, the Onager itself is complete along with the Eradication Beamer I showed off last time.

Time to Eradicate!

Painting the model in sub-assemblies really helped me to get it finished quickly and made the whole process a lot easier. It's much simpler to slap on a basecoat with a big brush when you don't have to worry about all  those pesky details!

Love the cog and skull motif.

I think this is the first time I've applied a transfer since I was about twelve years old. I must say, transfers have definitely improved in the decades since then! I also used some Micro-Sol to help blend the transfer into the paintwork which worked quite well.

How many lenses can you count?

In case you can't tell from the rampant photography, I really am delighted with how the Onager turned out. The pink and green scheme scaled up really well to a larger model and the brass details really set it off. The most fiddly part was probably painting and assembling the turret gunner; but when you can have a heavy stubber for only five points, I wasn't going to leave him off!

Feel free to count the rivets too!

So, thanks to Todd and all my fellow Dreadtober-teers! Once again, the threat of community humiliation has spurred me on to complete a model that would probably have languished in indefinite undercoat. As I mentioned in my first Dreadtober post, I'm also participating in a build-and-paint campaign at the moment so I have a few other models on my list for this month. Check in next week to see if I have a further Dreadtober update or something different entirely!


As usual, you can read my Dreadtober story here, here and here.

Painting the Onager Dunecrawler - Dreadtober 2017 week 2

Welcome to Dreadtober week 2! So, how's it going? Well, it's going pretty great, thanks for asking.

Finally glued to the base!

It's been a solid week of progress for me. I've finished painting a lot of the smaller parts that will be glued in place once the main hull is complete. Not only that, but I've finished painting the lower half and stuck it on the base!


Following in the footsteps of the rest of my Skitarii, I'm trying to keep things simple with the paint scheme. Not getting bogged down in too much of the detail (because these things have tons of it!)

Eradication Beamer! Such a cool weapon.

I'm delighted with how the scheme is turning out. I'm always worried about transferring a colour scheme to a larger model, but so far it seems to be working well.


As far as assembly goes, the legs were a bit of a bitch as I hadn't realized that you can't just slide the funny snowshoe type things around the feet once they're fixed down. This led to much cursing as I had to rip the legs off the base and then reconnect them with the 'snowshoes' in place. However, it doesn't seem to have damaged the finished product.

Other assorted gubbins. All WIP.

Still, so far, progress is good and I'm well on the way to finishing the model by the end of the month. You can check out my previous progress here and here. Also be sure to stop by the main Dreadtober blog to see how the other participants are getting on.


Tune in next time for another batch of hot, steaming progress!

Painting the Onager Dunecrawler - Dreadtober 2017 week 1

Well the first week of Dreadtober is finished and things are going ok for me. I've decided to build the Onager as a series of sub-assemblies for painting and have made a start on painting most of the bits. I've even managed to finish painting a couple of the smaller parts!

So many parts!

As with most modern plastic kits, the Onager is a joy to build. The components fit together nicely and there are very few mould lines. You may just be able to see from the picture above that I've built both the neutron laser and the eradication beamer as weapon options. I have drilled and inserted magnets behind the weapon housing so that I can pick and choose. If I get the chance I will also magnetise the heavy phosphor blaster, but realistically I would probably always use the eradication beamer instead so it seems a little redundant!


I've noticed that a lot of people tend to magnetise the weapon barrels instead of the whole gun chassis. In my experience this tends to make things a bit wobbly on the tabletop and if you aren't super careful it can lead to some very wonky gun barrels.

Nice legs! Just test fitting the armour panels.

For the colour scheme I'll be using my usual Skitarii scheme which you may have seen here. It's an attractive (if I do say so myself) combination of deep green and bright pink; with plenty of metallic thrown in for good measure. They are armoured cyborgs after all!

Complete! Turret gunner and....whatever that thing is.

Mostly, I'm just delighted to have finished some of the bits (even if they are tiny!) Hopefully finishing a part at a time will give me the motivation to push through and get this thing finished.


Check in next week to find out if I've rocketed ahead with the painting or if it's slow going. Right now the motivation is high and I feel like I'm on a roll. Oh, and if you're interested, you can check out my intro post for Dreadtober here.

Painting Skitarii - 500 points complete

I reached an important milestone this weekend with my Adeptus Mechanicus army. Painting a 500 point army to completion.

Sorry for the glare....and the curtains.

I guess thirteen models doesn't seem much to write home about (especially as I completed the bulk of these models this year during Squaduary and Monster March.) But it's very significant for me. Having a fully painted army of a certain value is quite a rare event in my hobby life, so it's definitely one worth documenting.

The final model.

Some of you may recall that when I took part in Squaduary I had painted the rather inadvisable combination of an arc rifle and a plasma caliver for my squad of Skitarii Vanguard. As it turned out, the lack of a second identical weapon really damages the focus of a squad on the tabletop, so I felt I needed a second plasma caliver before I could honestly call the army complete. I painted up the guy above and added him to the vanguard squad for a double dose of hot plasma death!


I'm also taking part in a campaign over the next few months run by my buddy Lewis over at Canis Aureus. The concept is to increase the army size by 250 points per month and play a series of games over a system map of the Charadon Sector. Hopefully this will push me on to complete 750 points by the end of October, which ties in nicely with Dreadtober as I will be painting an Onager Dunecrawler to add to the force.


Stay tuned for more updates on Dreadtober and, with any luck, a fully painted 750 point force in a month's time!