Dauntless/Diabolical December 2018: Personal Round-Up

So here we are. The night of January 9th, 2019 and I’ve finally taken the photos of my December stuff.

Not quite what I’d hoped to get done, but not too bad, considering how December turned out. In the middle of my final week of work, the week before Christmas, just when the torrent of craziness of work had finally subsided (like, literally, the day before), I was at the front door in the morning, literally leaving to go to my Physio appointment, and then to work when I got the call that my father has suffered a stroke and the ambos were on their way there. I literally wrote literally too many times there, but fuck it.

Long story short, the stroke(s) weren’t huge, he spent a couple of weeks in hospital, including Christmas. We brought him BBQ and had Christmas Lunch in a Hospital courtyard. Not the best Christmas, but also not the worst I’ve had, either. He showed a good attitude, did the exercises they gave him like a madman, recovered the use of his arm very well, and we were able to take him home just before New Year’s. He’s still not 100%, and Marouda and I are around there constantly bringing him food and doing all the little things, but after how last year turned out, this isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

Still, that took a lot of time, and even once things had settled with the Nurses looking after him as he started to recover giving me a chance to stress a bit less, there was still a lot less hobby time, as you’d appreciate. Daily visits across town are real timesinks in travel time alone. So my blogging and catching up on people’s blogs has obviously suffered, but I’ll catch up as best I can, when I can. I didn’t write about it at the time and just carried on as best I could here because the last thing I’m interested in is a pity party – especially after talking about how shitty the last few months have been a few times. So now that things are mostly okay and we’re past that stage, I’m not fussed. I’ve also been really busy in these opening weeks of the new year besides all of that which has delayed this post (and the Community Round-Up for December), but I’ll talk about that in a future post.

So under the circumstances, I think this has been an okay number of models overall. It works out to 12 or 13 figures including the APC depending whether I count the removable crewman as an extra, as well as 29 pieces of scatter. So that’s 41 or 42 for the month. The 3 Uruks are included in the photos, because they missed their Orctober pic.

I was up to 536 at the end of November, so adding these 41/42 to the total, plus the 3 Uruks, I’m brought to 580 completed models for 2018. Or 581.

Here’s what I managed to complete for the actual December challenge in the end. Not nearly as many Dauntless and Diabolical heroes as I’d hoped and planned, but not too bad, either. Some of the ones who didn’t make December  will be turning up in the next few days and weeks. I’ve already got a backlog of new shit to post up, because even though I haven’t been posting and my commenting and replies have been limited, I’ve still been painting.

I’ll try to get the December Round-up done by this coming weekend. That’s only halfway through January, so it’s still okay, right? I’ll also have a 2018 reflection-roundup once I find all 580/1 models, set them up together on a table, take the photos, and write the actual post. So basically, after I’ve had time to do the whole bloody lot.

Minotaurs Space Marines – Librarian Theophanes (Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995): Dauntless December ’18

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

My final model for the month of December – and as such, of 2018 is this model of Chief Librarian Tigurius, sculpted by Jes Goodwin. As I had a spare, I decided to do a minimal amount of work and use him for my Minotaurs Librarian. A tiny little brass-etch Minotaur over the top of the Ultramarines “U” icon in the middle of his chest, and we’re golden.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

He’s a pretty busy model, absolutely covered with bling, but a great one nonetheless. I also think he’s a far superior sculpt to the completely unnecessary resculpt that came later on. I can only guess that the resculpt happened because models of this vintage were often quite flat, and “2D” in their posing. While the newer one isn’t objectively bad, it doesn’t really appeal to me. No matter, I’m sure it’ll be replaced by a plastic Primaris-ised version sometime soon.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

In terms of paint, I’ve never been fond of Ultramarines Blue as a Librarian designation, despite not having a problem with White for Apothecaries/Medics, Black for Chaplains or even Red for Techmarines. With this in mind, I still gave a nod to the blue by combining my usual Minotaurs Brassy Bronze with some metallic blue on both pauldrons and his left arm. There’s a golden Minotaurs decal on that shoulder that no-one will ever see, too.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

Aside from that, I kept to the usual elements. Mostly using silver and iron for (most of) the skull iconography, but using metallic green rather than blue for his Force Staff. I also did the “glowing eyes” thing using white and Nihilakh Oxide. Freehand Lambdas/Chevrons on his tabard because they fill the empty space in a way that looks good and because I can.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995, Minotaurs Space Marine Terminators

December (finally) brings reinforcements to the Minotaurs Space Marines.

And with that, 2018’s new models come to and end. To wrap up, expect my personal December wrap-up shortly, followed by the Community Round-Up for Diabolical/Dauntless December, and then a 2018 wrap-up/reflection/”New Year”/2019 goals post sometime after that. Probably around the middle of January at the rate I seem to get these things done!