Progress, and future plans.

Damn, I have not posted on this blog in a long ass time, however this should be changing now that things have slowed down a bit at work.

Anyway, lets get to it. 

I have recently continued working on my N7 army, however, I am not too happy with the outcome of my Terminators. I am ok with the freehand on the shoulders (although one of them is incredibly sloppy), I am ok with the shading, and the highlight (but I need more practice. What I am unhappy with, and has really dropped my morale, is the outcome of their helmets. I don't know if it is just really hard, or if I just suck at it, but I can not do white helmets to save my life. I tried on all 4 terminators with helmets, and I failed miserably on all 4 with no indication of improvement on any of them. I guess it's just a question of practice, so I will continue to practice because I want to eventually make commissions my side job. I don't want to make it my full time job, but I would love to make this a side gig to earn some "beer money" as they call it.

Remember the guy on the right? Well the helmets never improved

Above is an older image of the terminators I was working on. Obviously I still need to work on my basing, and highlighting skills. With practice I was able to get relatively good with the highlighting, however, I have not managed to nail down the while helmets, thus I have given up on their helmets as of now and decided that it is best to just finish up the project, move on to the next guys, and try again with another set of terminators later on. 

Struggling with the helmets, but will continue to practice in order to get better at it. For now they will remain as is.

See the picture above to see what I mean about the poor work on the helmets. 

Enough on the terminators though. Let's take a look at some of the stuff I am working on to complete the N7 Army. 

I am still working on my scouts. When the scouts are finished that will bring my army to 20 scouts, however, I have only finished painting 3 of them.

I am planning on getting rid of the the rocket launchers in the scouts, and instead substituting them with anti-material rifles from Anvil Industry, figure it makes more sense wit ha scout squad, and I can just make it serve the same purpose. Really the anti-material rifle is really only there for aesthetic, and when ever it is that I play a game, I will simply make sure to inform my opponent that the AM rifle counts as a rocket launcher, and so we will play by the rocket launcher rules. 

I have also swapped out the original Scout heads for some Anvil Industry heads, because let's be honest, the original scout heads look pretty stupid. 

Here is the one unpainted tactical squad. I need to get them with a shot of the chaos black paint before I start painting them though. I regret assembling them before painting though because now I have to deal with trying to paint all the detail. I will continue the N7 Dark Reaper color scheme on the tactical marines, just like I did with the scouts, and with the terminators. However, I may alter the scheme a little bit to add some flare, however I am not sure what it is that I want to do just yet. 

To lead these guys I have been working on a leader. The boss man of the N7 army is this glorious bastard.

He is still a work in progress, as I try to acquire new bits, but he is going to be Chapter Master Shepard of the N7 army. He is about as tall as a primaris marines because of the bionic legs, but he is a regular ol' Space Marine. At the same time though, I was considering making him a Sgt for my custom assault squad, not 100% sure though. Leave a comment with your suggestions! and don't forget to follow us on

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Done with the Terminator - Starting on the Scouts

I finally finished working on my Terminator Sgt, and although I have 3 more terminators to go, I decided I would take a break from them. Since I got my Anvil Industry heads in the mail I have been dying to get started on my scouts.

Let's be honest, the stock Scout heads makes the scouts look like their fucking retarded. So for that reason I decided that I was going to go with Anvil Industry or Puppetswar heads.

Look at this shit. Guy at front and center is shitting his pants, while the asshole to his right is playing some fucking Oculus Rift. Big chinned motherfuckers. Also is that their hair? or their helmets?

Before we take a look at my Scout WIP, here is a look at my Terminator.

I went with a blue power sword, while trying my hand at the lightning effects. I am pretty happy with the result. I also like the end result of the muzzle flash effect. Now that that is out of the way, let's go ahead and take a look at the reason why we are here. Brother Garrus, my Scout WIP

Still need to do several things, such as drill a hole for the barrel, add tall dry grass, and a bunch other things. Please leave any suggestions in the comments. Thank you.

N7 - Terminators Squad - WIP

I am continuing my work on my Terminator Squad. This squad has technically been in progress since back when I first got "Assault on Black Reach". I only ever finished the Dreadnought that came with the set, along with the tactical Squad, but I never finished any of the other models, including the Terminator Squad. Back in December 2016 I got back into the hobby after my supervisor showed an interest in it, so I ordered a "Start Collecting.." set of Space Marines from Games Workshop.

I was originally going to go with Ultramarines, but ultimately decided I wanted to create a unique, custom chapter for myself. That is when I decided that I would go with an N7 theme for my chapter. I have also ordered some bits from third parties (Anvil Industry, Kromlech, Puppetswar, and others) which I will use on later models since I have already built most of my current models. I also plan on writing some sort of back story as to how this chapter fits in the over all 40k universe. Anyway, here is my work in progress for my Terminators.

The Squad.

I have been focusing on my Sgt. I finished one of the other Terminators, I am not pleased with the outcome of the other guy, but instead of fixing him I am just going to leave him as is. The point is to have something to look back on, in order to make note of any changes as far as skill, and also to learn from my mistakes as I progress in the hobby.

Side view showing where the N7 Logo will be painted on.

Front View

Other side view of the Terminator Sgt.

One last look

I also plan on using some 3rd party bits as I build my over all N7 army, this here is some "Muzzle Flashes" I bought from Anvil Industry which I plan on using with some of my models.

First N7 Terminator - Done

First N7 Terminator is done, the rest of the squad is still WIP.

Here he is still a WIP

Showing the WIP next to an unpainted WIP

Final product side

Final product other side

Final rear....although I just noticed areas I need to improve

My N7 Space Marines - WIP

I first got into Warhammer 40k back in like 2005/2006 or whenever it is that Assault on Blackreach came out. At the time I really did not know much about the lore, I just knew that the figures looked fucking awesome, and so I wanted in on this hobby. It was that Christmas that father then got me a starter paint kid, Assault on Black Reach, and the Space Marine codex (5th edition I believe). At the time I just took great pleasure in painting my figure and didn't really pay much attention to the game aspect of the hobby. As far as I was concerned, painting the figures was fun, and it was a great stress reliever.

Recently I got back into the hobby when one of my supervisors made a comment that he wanted to get into Dungeons and Dragons or a similar hobby. I suggested he look into Warhammer 40k which he did, and immediately dismissed as it was too expensive. It was not long before he began to browse the Games Workshop website though, soon settling on the heretical World Eaters as his army of choice. Naturally I was disappointed in his decision to choose a traitor legion, but said fuck it, at least I would have someone to learn the game with me, and to talk about painting with. Next thing you know, we have two other people at work looking into the game. One of the men was a friend of ours named Ben. Ben decided his best option was to go as the Imperial Guard, although they are no Adeptus Astartes, I told him it as an acceptable choice to fight for the Imperium of Man. The second man, he was one of my subordinates who was surprised to find that I was into Warhammer 40k, but soon started looking into buying a Tau Army, good for me as far as I was concerned, their squishy bodies were of no threat to me.

Once I ordered a few marines I decided I was going to go Ultra Marines, my assault on black reach tactical squad and Dreadnought were already in Ultramarine Blue. (see below)

Not all my 5th edition guys, only some.

 As you can see, I never got around to painting my terminators. Hell I never even finished the commander or sergeant that came with the unit. Since I still had a few unpainted units, I decided that I would take my brand new units, and take the unpainted units from the 5th edition set and simply create my own custom chapter and color scheme.Since I am a big fan of the Mass Effect series I decided that my best option was to start a chapter based on Mass Effect. This Chapter soon became my N7s

Brother Wrex in the Venerable Dreadnought Armor, Brother Presly in the Terminator Armor, and Scout Sgt Vega.

The truth is that the N7s didn't start off as the N7 marines, I actually played around with a few ideas. First I thought I would paint the marines on a "type of squad" basis. Tactical Marines would be painted in Blue Suns, Devastators in Blood Pack, and Scouts in Eclipse. Veterans would all have N7 armor, and Dreadnoughts would come in Normandy's colors. Then I decided all my Marines would be Cerberus, then eventually I just went for N7.

Now, I know what some of you are going to say "But N7 armor is black and red" and to that I have a response. N7 armor is whatever goddam color you want it to be when you go into the armor's appearance settings, so there you go. In my case I went with "Dark Reaper" as the main color on my Marines. Each Marine, Dreadnought, and Scout which is to be painted in the N7 colors will also have an "N7" on a shoulder-pad, or anywhere on their armor or equipment. Since I decided that this is an Ultra Marines successor chapter, every now and then an Ultra Marine emblem can be seen on some of the units.

The thing is I do not want to stick to creating straight out of the box Space Marines, I want some sense of individuality in my builds. So after I heard that third parties sell their own upgrades (at varying levels of quality) I decided that I should also give it a try.

At the moment all of my space marine units are fully built except for my space marine scouts, and my land raider. Since these are the only units not currently built, these are the ones I will be focusing on for my first attempts at conversion and customization. For instance, here is a squad of scouts with sniper rifles.

Notice their heads, with the night vision gear, and all that jazz. So Nifty and tactical, but I though, man there has to be something better. After looking online I found several products I felt would better fit these masters of stealth. The following products are from Anvil Industry, these are just some of the products from them that caught my attention and will tested to see if they go on my final product.

I purchased some items from bits of war, But these were mostly for the land raider weapons. 

Here is one of the products

Here is a set of heads I may used for the Sgt Telion figure I ordered.

I have also started thinking about using a combination of Citadel parts, and parts from third parties to create my own battalion of what I have learned to be called "Reasonable Marines". Reasonable Marines are a sort of joke chapter, which you can read about, which I feel is a project which will allow me to really test my creativity in customizing my characters.

Stay tuned, as I will continue to post my progress here on this blog when ever it is that I finish my current work-in-progress figures. If you have any suggestions, make sure to leave them in the comments. Also dont forget to check out our social media pages listed below

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