Correspondence From Limbo

I’m a little bit late with this month’s hobby progress blog, for which I can only apologise. Unfortunately, life does sometimes get in the way. This month’s blog will be a little bit shorter than previous months, but I will explain that a little more below.

Without further ado…

Going on crusade

I actually started this month in a bit of a hobby rut. While I had seemed to have almost limitless energy and enthusiasm earlier in the year, I now found myself without the motivation to pick up a paintbrush or glue a model. So, I took a week from making anything, to try and get some energy back; sometimes it is important, whether it is with a hobby or with work, to take breaks and pace yourself. I had been working pretty flat out earlier in the year to get my Word Bearers ready for the GHO in May, and I think some of that exhaustion finally caught up with me. Coupled with stressful conditions at work and multiple trips away I had not properly recovered from, I was not in the mood to do any hobbying.

Eventually, however, I recovered enough to kitbash this guy. I had an Emperor’s Champion mini, which came with my Black Templars’ Combat Patrol. Unfortunately, some overzealous spray priming led to it being more or less unusable until I strip it, so I decided to kitbash a new one. I doubt there is going to be any world where I have to use two champions in one list, but it allowed me to put my own spin on the model. I find that, for whatever reason, a lot of the Black Templar character models seem to be posed a bit awkwardly: the Marshal model looks like he has thrown his back out, and the Emperor’s Champion does look a little bit like he’s falling over. So, kitbashing a new one felt like a good challenge. I took inspiration from a couple of different conversions I saw online, and combined a Company Heroes box with a Black Templars upgrade sprue and some 3D printed bits from Archie’s Forge.

I think the result looks pretty good, although a little bit more blingy than my initial idea. I can’t wait to get some paint on it.

I also finished painting up some initiates for my Crusaders squad. These took quite a while to do, which does make me worry a little bit about how long this army is going to take – one month for six minis is not exactly lightning pace. At this rate, I expect I’ll have a full, 2,000-point army ready for the launch of the 13th edition. Oh well…