422nd Elysian Drop Troopers

Elysian Heavy Bolter Squad As mentioned last time I'm scaling back to weekly updates, and they will probably be posted during the weekend or soon after. I want to keep providing useful information, and not just a procession of progress updates, while interesting to me hold little value to anyone else. So Elysian bolter teams come in three variants as shown in the FW website. There are two with the Heavy bolter gunner prone, of which one of these has the 2nd trooper prone and loading the gun, and the other has the 2nd trooper kneeling with his lasgun and carrying an ammo box. These poses both look alright, although the one where they are both lying down does make the whole model extremely low, and will have implications for getting line of sight to enemy models. The third variant is the more interesting one, and has the team kneeling behind a crate, with the Heavy bolter resting on the crate. As you can see I have been progressing with my painting and have mostly fini...

Elysian Drop troopers I like to have decent amounts of infantry so am planning to eventually have over a hundred of these guys, and I have assembled a decent number so far. There is not a lot of variety as expected, and most of the variety is provided by the different legs. There are 6 different leg poses, each giving the trooper a different look. However one of the types is a running leg variant, which not so bad on it's own, makes the model lean a long way forward and I don't like it, so I haven't used this for any of the troopers. There are 2 kneeling poses as pictured below. One with the left knee forward, and the other with the right knee. For Cadians the kneeling legs are quite sought after as they enable you to make extra heavy weapons teams from the heavy weapon kit, but with Elysians they are much more readily available, and the Elysian Heavy weapons teams come as individual kits anyway. The other legs I use are 3 different standing poses. ...

Colour Scheme test model - Elysian Drop Trooper with Lasgun As I mentioned I am up to the stage where I want to get my colour scheme sorted, for my infantry at least. So this is the model I have chosen before any paint was applied. A standard lasgun trooper with grav shute and some belt equipment. First I primed him with Vallejo Skeleton bone primer. Then I applied the base coats, Green for the armour and equipment, black for the weapon and boots, blue for the visor, flesh for the skin, and some silver highlights. Following this I applies a flesh wash on the skin, and Nuln Oil on the rest of the model. Then some sand a little grass to on the base to finish things off. In all I am quite happy with how it turned out, not just visually wise, but at the time it took to do. I freely admit I am no pro-painter, and my main aim is to get large amounts of model to table top standard, and this will do for that, especially as I have over a hundr...

Elysian Sniper Squad The Elysian team is point wise one of the cheapest snipers in the game, if not the cheapest. 7pts for a 2wound sniper with a 2nd shooting attach is a really good deal. They can also deepstrike but I can't really see that option being used very often as Elysains have much more useful units to deepstrike with. The best use I see for these is to set them up in cover somewhere in the backfield, and snipe characters, and with their large footprint they will be superb deepstrike denial units. In the squad you get 3 different poses for the sniper, and while you could customise the pose I am happy with how they come. First is the lying down aiming guy Next is the lying down guy loading the rifle And finally the kneeling sniper. For the 2nd guy I just used a generic kneeling guy, except for the loading one where I used a spotter. One really good thing about the Sniper squad is that you get a lot of useful arms for making sergeants and...

Sky Talon So as mentioned last time I got my Sky Talon commission assembled and painted. I paid $65 including magnetising the weapons, and the hazard stripes did cost a little extra. So onto the pictures.   As you can see I got the pilot pained and the glass left clear. I dislike painting the canopy as I see it as lazy. But I am pretty happy with the work overall, and will perobably get him to do my 2nd one the same, although he did say it was more work than expected, and the next one would cost $75. And for my 2nd piece of news I have started painting a model to test out a colour scheme. I'm going to stay fairly close to the standard Cadian colour scheme as I like it, and it matches my Guard army. So here is the guy I will paint up. Just a standard lasgunner, and I have attached the grav shute and some equipment to his belt. I have now primed him with the air brush, and will do the base colours over the next few days. This is the pri...

Elysian Mortar Teams Mortars are great in 8th edition for the amount of firepower they put out compared to their points cost, and the Elysian ones are no exception so I want quite a few of these, and as they come in packs of 3 that is not hard to achieve. In fact at this moment since the chapter approved changes an Elyian 3 man mortar squad is cheaper than the Astra Militarum equivalent, but I don't expect it to remain this way for long with the rapid pace of GW updates. The mortar squad can be assembled in a carrying position, or a firing position. The kit has parts for 1 of the carrying pose, and 2 of the firing pose. I assembled a squad in the carrying pose first, and I am not happy with this pose. Assembly took a significant amount of time, and due to only 2 points of contact with the base for the entire squad and mortar it isn't very stable. Also the hands had to be fit and glued into the mortar handles, and the whole thing didn't come out as neat as I would hav...