The year is 2012. It is now five years since the site was last formally updated and nearly eight years since I last made a single model as part of the hobby. The heydays of the third edition and its udates for the Dark Angels have long since passed. An entire edition (Fourth) has come with much promise with the Dark Angels Codex heralding a new approach by Games Workshop, then followed rapidly by the current fifth edition of 40K leading to the Unforgiven being placed on a back foot. More recently an udated official FAQ has provided a much eneded ease of life to the unforgiven brethren, especially the Deathwing and Ravenwing. Now the the fifth edition lies like embers in a dying fire as rumours of the soon to come Sixth edition rises like a demon. It is said that the dark Angels may be part of the sixth edition box set and that the new sixth edition Codex may be released as early as April 2012 just prior to the sixth edition rule book soon to be followed by Codex Chaos Marines.
yet, amongst all this madness and the morass of real life there was a time of sheer inspiration brought about by the famed Bolter & Chainsword's Librarium Painting Challenge in 2011. This had me inspired enough to vow to complete an entire army of 25 Deathwing Terminators. Such was the allure of the competition that I not only managed to commence greenstuff sculpting for the first time in my life but also started using washes for the first time. Each of the 25 DW terminators and GM Belial were individually psoed and greenstuff detail added. An extremely proud two months of my life which unfortunately was scuttled by real life in the last two weeks. I decided not to rush the detail painting and elected tofail the LPC in order to complete the army properly.
As usual time has flown and I have only done minimal work on the project and now the new LPC for 2012 has commenced.
After much thought that i would try and wash away the shame of failure with a much more realistic aim of painting up a single five man scout squad as the first step in my long awaited Scout Army. No vaunted aims this time but a single squad of five men. I do hope to sculpt camo cloaks for all of them.
In addition as a personal goal I will also try and make progress on last years LPC project in tandem.
My vow was made on the 31st of January 2012 and is as follows:
"I, Shadowguard of the Dark Angels Forum, vow on the honour of my Chapter to paint and present at least a single squad of fiveDark Angel Scouts on or before the 31st of March, 2012. I promise to provide at least two WIP updates, preferably with pictures, in that time. I vow that if I should fail, I will provide the Librarium with an article and wear the Signature of Shame until my penitence period is done."
PLAN:
The plan is simple. Five scouts all armed with boltguns. I will sculpt camo cloaks on them, undercoat with black and then get on with painting. Unlike my 2011 LPC vow I will spend most of my time painting rather than sculpting.
PHILOSOPHY:
I hope that this will slowly go on to expand in to an entirely scout army made up of scout squads, scout bikes and landspeeder storms led by a chaplain on a bike. The current DA Codex does not allow this as the scout squads are an elites choice. I am hoping that the new DA Codex will revert back to the Codex SM style troop choices for the scout squads and hopefully Naaman as a special character.
PROGRESS NOTES:
Phase 1: completely model the five scouts
Phase 2: Add icons and additional paraphernelia to the models;
Phase 3: Paint the squads
PHASE 0:
Commenced: 31 January 2012.
At the moment this consists entirely of the five models being held together by blutac in order to fit out their combat poses. One has a shoulder and arm from a Cadian trooper.
PHASE 1:
Commenced 11 March 2012
Well, despite the very small size of the project I have managed to procrastinate myself in to the sixth week of the LPC. Sadly, the real life issues tend to pile up for me in the months of January and February, hence the difficulty. After all that waiting I finally managed to put in about 3-4 hours work last night and this morning doing up the camo cloaks.
This is my second actul attempt at green stuff modelling, the first being my Deathwwing LPC project from 2011. I don't think I got exactly the effect I wanted but I think it will suffice.
Close up of the scouts and their green stuff camo cloaks. I was trying to capture the effect of the scouts rising up from hiding, firing their boltguns, hence the cloaks actually touching the ground.
I hope to add some foliage to the bases in from of them, preferably of some height to add to the effect.
