Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

 Well, welcome to 2021:

With the UK going into a third lockdown straight after the New Year, things have been a bit hectic and I've not had much chance to hobby in general.

I've pushed on for a few hours here and there though and thought I'd post some progress photo's of the first models I intend to get finished in 2021.

First up is a unit of three Eliminators for my Space Marine army*:

The unit together, I decided on a dark black armour with. The chapter colours on the shoulder pads and knees in order to emphasize that these guys are stealthy snipers, and would be skulking around rather then charging forwards.

I'm trying to emulate the camo on the cloaks which GW painted, but also a little of the Berlin Brigade of the British Army in the 1980's. This is just the first step mind, there are other colours to go on-top and then wash everything with an Earthshade coat, so hopefully it'll look better when finished.

Secondly is this unit of five Deathwatch Intercessors:

With the black this time I've gone for a slightly blue-green tinge rather then flat black. I liked the effect on my friends Reaver Titan, so wanted to try it on a smaller scale. Classic red boltguns for that old-school GW asthetic works well I think.

I'm also practicing freehanding on their shoulder pads:

L-R: Mentor chapter, with additional sergeant stripes (once I've tidied them up). Red Templars marine and a Minotaur marine (with additional Lambda symbol behind the chapter symbol).

The other two members of the unit will be a Mantis Warriors marine and a Wolfspear marine (if I can figure out how to paint the wolf's head).

I wanted to do successor chapters for the entire unit because everyone seems to always to the big first-founding chapters.

Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, White Scars, Iron Hands, Space Wolves, Raven Guard.

I know that GW do specific moulded shoulder pads for those chapters, but there are over a thousand chapters in the lore, some great second or further founding with buckets of character. So I decided to push my freehand skills and try to work up an entire unit of lesser known chapters.

Hopefully they won't be too long to finish now...

And thirdly, are a unit of five Battle Sisters I picked up for a song off eBay:

Early days on these girls yet. Their armour is another variation of painting black, this time Black Templar contrast over a grey undercoat, then washed with Nuln Oil to add some darkness. 

I'm going to limit the palette of colours on these girls to just black, white, red and a little gold and silver. 

This should make them very striking and easy to paint (yeah, right) and quick to knock up**.

That should allow me to move onto other half-painted stuff from the "pile of potential" soonish.

Hopefully I'll be able to find the time to post a few thoughts which have been bouncing round my head recently, in the context of getting some games going, and looking at my samurai gear again.

Until next time...

 - Lewis

*I said Space Marine army because I've decided to switch them from being Imperial Fists.

When I decided to do Imperial Fists it was simply because I had never painted a yellow army, in 22 years of gaming!

All of a sudden though, with Indomitus being released all you saw was "MY IMPERIAL FIST ARMY", "HEY GUYS, HOW DO YOU PAINT IMPERIAL FISTS" etc.

So I'm not going to repaint the models I've already finished or gotten halfway through painting as I like them. I'm just glad I never added any iconography to them, as it'll be very easy now to make them into a Crusade successor chapter and just go from there with them.

**Oo-er, did someone mention Slaanesh?