February HPC Commitment Finished

February has gone well for hobby progress! Apart from the various distractions that took up some time earlier in the month, I've completed my Hobby Progress Challenge commitment and a little extra to boot!

2nd squad, 7th platoon, B company, 82nd Arcadian regiment.

Inquisitor Hera of the Ordo Xenos, ready to put insidious alien filth to the sword!

So, this is my Voss-manufactured Arcadian-pattern Leman Russ Battle Tank. Notable features include extra (ablative ceramite tile) armour designed to protect against heat-based melta and fusion weapons, external stowage racks and rust-proofed tread plating on the upper track-guards - all of which are extremely common among Arcadian operated vehicles. This particular vehicle, 'Five' is commanded by Lieutenant Caruchinko the 5th in the company and has been outfitted with an additional servo-skull operated auspex unit above the main gun, courtesy of a friendly tech-priest. 

I'll have a full ten-strong armoured company as part of the army. Each vehicle will have two number-markings on it: the vehicle number within the company (tank 5 in this case) and the overall regiment number (randomly, 362). It also says which platoon they're assigned to support, in this case 7th platoon.

Vehicle two of the second squadron in my armoured company...

I wanted to make use of the various decals that I had so I also listed the forge world that the tank was manufactured on and the name of the current commander. I imagine that the crew would almost have a kind of ritual to go with changing that name. Maybe the names of former commanders are on the inside somewhere, imperial machinery can be pretty old after all.

...which makes it tank number five.

I can totally paint nine more of these, right?...

Current Distractions

Still working on my Feb commitment for the HPC but have been side-tracked a little bit as other projects come to my attention.

I have a lot of stuff to paint and, as always, my preference is hugely for building over painting... one of my rules is to have everything at least built and primed. I thought I'd share a picture of my Kanban board to give an idea of how many things are outstanding:

As you can see, most of my stuff is primed... that column goes on for a while. Yellow items are part of the 2014 HPC and red things are being actively worked on as 'side-projects'. I'm confident that I can easily complete the HPC commitments as long as they're 10 or 12 models a month, so I plan to get a lot of other stuff progressed 'on the side'. I'll be priority-targeting those units that are in my Overlords Escalation League army list. This will mean that I rarely get my HPC commitments finished super-early, as a lot of people seem to be doing, but I'll be getting a lot of other stuff worked on in the background.

By way of example, these are the things I've been working on in February:

I bought the one on the left at last years Forge World open day... figured I better get it built before this years...

This was my Christmas project and has been painted for a while but I added decals and varnished it this month. 100% finished now!

Going to move the Tauros into the Primed column today since the weather is favourable. After that, I'll be finishing up the decals and the last few fine-details on my first Vendetta so that she can move into the Finished column - that will be a proud moment! God, I hate working with those Forge World wing decals... the remainder of my flyers will have much less detailed wings!

Feb Commitment & Progress Update

For Feb I decided to work on the following:

It's a squad of standard infantry and my Inquisitor - I thought painting a character model would be good for a couple of reasons... mostly just for a change of scene but also because it will give me a painted HQ choice - I'm trying to move swiftly towards a fully painted legal army.

Made quite a lot of progress on her so far - she may actually be deemed complete for the moment as I'm not really sure what to do with her next and I want to get back to the infantry squad now.

I have several projects active at the moment so I'm currently trying to get each of them to a point where I can set them aside and just focus on my monthly HPC commitments. Any spare time will then be spent on whatever other units are in my Overlords Escalation League army list. If I can get the second infantry squad done over the next week or so, I'll start on the Demolisher (I have 8 tanks and none of them are painted so that would be nice to finish) and put the platoon command in as my March HPC commitment, probably alongside another small unit.

Currently the Escalation list is (with items in green fully painted and yellow in progress):

Primary Detachment - Imperial Guard

HQ:
- Primaris Psyker @ 70 pts

Troops:
- Veteran Squad @ 205 pts (Plasma gun x3; Plasma Pistol)
Chimera (Heavy Bolter; Turret Autocannon; Pintle Heavy Stubber)

- Infantry Platoon @ 187 pts
Platoon Command Squad (Sniper Rifle x3; Boltgun)
Infantry Squad (Grenade Launcher, Missile Launcher)
Infantry Squad (Grenade Launcher, Missile Launcher)

Heavy Support:
- Leman Russ Demolisher @175 pts (Heavy Bolter; Pintle Heavy Stubber)

Fortifications:
- Wall of Martyrs Imperial Defence Emplacement @ 40pts (Improved Arc of Fire; Stalwart Defence)

Inquisitorial Detachment:

HQ:
- Ordo Xenos Inquisitor @ 73 pts (Power Armour; Psyker; Plasma Pistol; Warlord)

Total: 750pts
I'm thinking of adding a bunch more troops when we jump to 1000 points and another tank plus extra fortifications (network) for 1250. After that I don't have a plan but I think a flyer or some solid AA will be needed! Of course... by then the new IG Codex will be out.