Chaos strikes back!!! --- Shadowspear arrived!

The gods of Chaos apparently got jealous of my latest devotion to the Machine, and promptly send some new troops from the Eye of Chaos into our realm -- and what monsters these are!!!

Unless you are living below a rock (or without the internet, which is probably a healthy (and money-saving) decision), you know this of course, so without further redo, I present you the mighty Shadowspear box which was kindly broad by our friendly postman to my doorstep this morning:

The box is the same size as the previous such boxes like, e.g., Forgebane, and full to the top with sprues:

And it contains this lovely cover sheet functioning as a separator between the sprues and the other materials:

I absolutely love this invention of GW as I put those up as art prints on my wall! Thank you GW!

Here the overview of the sprues:

1. The Loyalists troops consisting of one big and two small, identical sprues:

2. Chaos Space Marines aka Daemonkin with two big sprues, one with the Chaos Space Marines and the two Greater Possessed, and the other with the awesome Obliterators and the Venomcrawler

3. And of course the characters sprues aka the loyalist Captain and Librarian in Phobos Armour and the Master of Possession of the Black Legion

And then there are the book(let)s, one for the Shadowspear story/background, two mini-dexes for the Vanguard Space Marines, and the Daemonkin, the assembly instruction manual, core rules, and a cute little sample chapter from the Black Legion novel. In case you do not know these novels of Demski-Bowden are totally amazing and elemental lecture for every Chaos-devotee!

And, there is even a little transfers sheet:

So in summary, needless to say the box is absolutely worth the money, and I love the new models!!! Even the loyalists who are normally a bit boring to me (cough) got some really cool looking models in this box! I like the Phobos Armour and the stealthy feel. I am going to paint some of these as Raven Guard for sure (one of my little project ideas on my long-term hobby dream list! ;-)).

But the absolute beasts and my personal favorites of this box are the Greater Possessed and Obliterators! Naturally, I assembled these straight away:

EDIT:

Here the beautiful Venomcrawler:

And finally, a little gallary of the new faces for both armies to serve as inspiration (also for you conversion freaks out there ;-)):

Necrons Rebooted -- First Necron Warrior Unit -- Finished!

Fellow Overlords!

It just took much longer than expected but here they are finally! The first Necron Warrior Unit finished in shiny metal and fluorescent glow!

The Despoiler is back!! Bigger, better & more evil!!

FINALLY! I can not believe it! When I started collecting Chaos Space Marines back in 2003 (yep that is 16 years!!!), the Abaddon model was already oldish and ugly. And now! Look at this beauty!

Needless to say that I am super happy that they scaled him up and did NOT go overboard with new bling and effects but instead stayed close to the original style/design!

Here some size comparisons for those who always wonder about those things (like me! ;-)):

As you can see everything got scaled up but the ridiculous top knot!! Yeah!

Versus Primaris:

And of course, the duel we will see a lot in the future:

Who will win?!

Anyway, for completeness, here the reason for why we REALLY needed a new model:

Quicky: Shader comparison: Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone versus Agrax Earthshade

Hi,

just a "quicky" this weekend (while I am still working on finishing the first Necron Warrior unit):

A comparison of the Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone with the "classical" shade, in this case, Agrax Earthshade from GW. Test subject is a toxic zombie from Zombicide (awesome boardgame by the way!):

Strong Tone is the medium strength of the Quickshades of Army Painter, and also the first of these Quickshades that I ever tried. Here my experience: As recommended, I have indeed dipped the zombie inside the pot wholly (after shaking the tin thoroughly of course). I was surprised how thick and opaque the paint inside is! After taking the zombie back out, I had the feeling that it was covering too strong and too much paint had stick to the miniature. But I decided to trust the instructions and just removed some excess paint, pooling in certain places (for example around the feet) before letting it dry over night. The above image shows the result. I have to say that it really settled well in all the crevices and left excesses only in very few places. So that is quite nice. Something that I completely overlooked though, is that it dries very glossy! (The recommendation is to spray with some matt satin varnish after.) You can see this in the above image in comparison to the Agrax Earhshade which is much more subtle, after one layer at least, but much "matter" (does this word exist in English?).

So in conclusion, the Quickshade works as promised but certainly has its (prominent) perks, making it not really suitable for my needs (at the moment at least). Anyway, alternatively, one can apply the Quickshade also with paint brush (maybe thin it down a little), so I might do some more experiments to see what it might be "abused for" (One thing that immediately jumps to my mind is to use it as "oily liquids" in our Necromunda Underhive... ;-)).

And with this, happy experimenting out there!