Okay, so a while ago I scooted past the hallowed 30,000th post, which means I've posted a lot of 40k art and funbags TITTIES in the DCM forums, along with the usual drivel people put me on ignore for. But given the number of posts I hit, I thought it was about time to get a theme going on with all of this and get a bit more optimistic about the good old pre-Heresy Imperial Truth days for a while and do something hobby related with that.
Also, if you don't like things being all wordy, just scroll down for the pics. I like 40k for its setting. I'm not much of a winner when it comes to playing (5 wins to 31 losses as of right now), but if a fun game can be had, I'm all for it, because that's how sad I am. I suppose I'm also big on the whole "Forge a Narrative" thing myself, as I like to not just build an army, but also a narrative around it. My most recent project that I've been working on setting up a campaign for my store and while it could've easily been a map, some flags and a roster of participants, I much more preferred to turn it into a big story involving all players to some degree, where they can record the rise (or fall) of their warlords as they attempt to carve out a new empire or recapture it for glory, honour and those pointless things.
Now then, until recently really the Horus Heresy held no real interest for me, the novels kept droning on and on and on with a (to me at least) noticeable dip in overall quality as let's be honest here, things kept dragging on and while Forge World has released some neat stuff for the era that certainly feels superior to the stuff Black Library does, it was mostly all Astartes on Astartes action anyway with some Ad-Mech sprinkled in for diversity, of which I'm not the biggest of fans in all honesty. Yes, yes, Horus Heresy was a big old marine on marine thing to begin with.
Until the fourth book came out: Conquest. A book not all about hot Astartes on Astartes action for a change? But instead focusing on those sexy Knightly orders and some badass variant of the Imperial Army before it was ruined by GW's autrocious writing? Sign me up! I primarily got the tome for the Questoris Knight army list, because I love Knights and so do my regular opponents thankfully, as to date they've scrapped more of my nobles than I managed to beat them into a pulp! Though one day I will beat the drop-pod-Sternguard-melta-spam-alpha-strike, mark my words!
Plus the list offers some sweet stuff to give the Imperial Knight list a bit more flavour and upgrades (toxic rounds for stubbers? Yes please!), something the Imperial Knight codex doesn't even think about getting into. It's sad really that Forge World is not just doing something right, but also better than GW.
But after I started reading about the exploits of the Solar Auxiliary, which can be best summed up as the Imperial Guard, but not an as poorly written attempt at being a hardcore joke of a cannon fodder do-or-die jarhead army as it is being portrayed right now, I've been suckered in by their "we shall lure them in and hold the line!" professionalism and other bits and pieces of fluff we're given, especially after reading that Rogue Traders of that day and age were also granted armies of their own by the Emperor to go forth and spread the Imperial Truth through diplomacy. Or failing that, mark them for a healthy helping of the Imperial Truth in form of an exploration fleet led by one of the Legions. Plus, their Tempestus Scion equivalents carry rayguns that set people on fire, which is pretty darned neat if you ask me!
So, this is a blog or showcase of sorts that mainly concerns itself with two of my projects: My Knights from House DuChess, also known as the wardens of Minerva, an off-shoot of House Terryn with some horrible fluff to back up how a Freeblade and family ended up becoming a house in their own right. Then there's the Rogue Trader Militant Beauchamp, plus assorted attached Auxiliaries, robots, other Imperial instances and maybe one or two squads of power armour and whatnot, based around the Solar Auxilia army list with maybe a few Astartes allies later down the line to represent attached Legion assets who keep an eye on things before screwing things up their selves. Perfect warriors my ass.
"Bring. It. On. Heretics." - Last words of sir Manfred DuChess.
My main army of sorts right now is a trio of Imperial Knights, well actually, two GW Knights and a 28mm Crusader from Dreamforge Games if we're going to be anal about what's what. I like both kits for different reasons really: GW's Knight is a great kit that fits right into the setting and while it sadly lacks a lot of out of the box customisation (do I leave those decorative eagle heads and purity seals on or off?), it's to me a joy to build and paint. The Crusader on the other hand, it's nice and big, certainly has more options when it comes to posing the fether, and while the modular arms are a great idea, the weapon designs are very toylike and grotesque (in my opinion). Putting them next to one another shows that it's quite a clash of style as well, though I will say this, I prefer the Crusader over the Forge World Cerastus pattern suits of armour. I'm still holding out for the really heavy Knight suits of armour that marry the firepower of the regular suits with the mobility of the Cerastus suits, plus some more armour on top for good measure.
One thing I should point out is that while these suits are flying the iconography and colours of House Terryn, they do not belong to it. At first I wanted to have a custom heradlry and whatnot, but seeing as I'm not that great at freehand and a sucker for blue armour, I decided to just go with a variant of the House Terryn colours, with a lighter blue for the suits of armour. I suppose it can be seen as lazy, but whatever, je suis happy with the results. So, without further ado, let's meet one of the members of House DuChess.
Here's my first Knight, the Paladin known as "Eternal Warrior", which is a bit misleading as to date the poor thing has always been melta'd to slag or hacked to pieces by that donkey-cave fish Farsight! However, I love it, it does an admirable job of blowing things up and when the so-called gak hits the fan, that Reaper is a Knight's best friend, truly an amazing thing to have.
In terms of rules and whatnot it is a standard Knight Paladin with bio-corrosive stubber rounds (poison!), occular augmentics (night vision!) and piloted by a Scion Martial, which is your standard troops ranks when it comes to Knights. I could've gone with the Scion Aspirant rank, which would be more fluffy, but getting a 35 point discount on a suit of armour in exchange for -1 on WS, BS and a 5++ save isn't worth it to me. The poor thing has suffered enough as is already! That said, so far it has proven its worth a few times now, in one game in particular carving up a Riptide, Skyray, Longstrike in his annoying Hammerhead and a pile of other assorted fish before succumbing to several fusion blasts from all sides. As always, the fish need to resort to trickery to win, because they know that nine times out of ten in a straight up fight they'll never stand a chance.
A running theme with my Knights is that I stick a mini to each base, representing the pilot. It doesn't have any ingame effect, but I like it, plus it adds a little more to the base itself. The Eternal Warrior is piloted by the youngest member of the family, who had only recently been inducted into the ranks of House DuChess after picking her throne and merging with it: Meet Salena DuChess. As I said, she pilots the "Eternal Warrior", though it is also informally known as the "Ancestor Suit" because it had at one point belonged to her grandfather Manfred, the freeblade who is responsible for laying the foundations of their house. The mini is Raven Skye from the Bombshell Miniatures range, an excellent supplier of alternate miniatures. Unlike the rest of her family I imagine her still new to the whole thing and as such, hasn't taken up wearing overly military attire yet, instead going for something she herself favours, while still showing off the family colours. She's a fun little steampunk pilot that I really like the look of.
The other Knights will be uploaded and showcased when both the suits and their pilots are done.
In the other corner we have my other 30K project of sorts that I've been toying with, a Rogue Trader and her personal army. Like mentioned before, it all started with the purchase of the fourth book, which was mainly for the Imperial Knight army list, though I was completely suckered in when I read the Solar Auxiliary army list and saw some of the options there, not to mention making a reference or two of Rogue Traders having armies of their own. I've also been a big, big fan of the now sadly dead Rogue Trader line of roleplay books written by Fantasy Flight Games, so continuing that fun stuff is always well, fun. Yay?
This is Rogue Trader Militant Beauchamp, based around the plastic commissar, but with a headswap from Statuesque Miniatures and a new blade for her sword, from the plastic Tempestus Scions boxed set. The base is from Basicks I think, but don't hold me on that. I wanted to go for a uniform that stood out from the rest and in my limited creativity I went with an Imperial Navy uniform, a design I am quite fond of actually. Well, except for the white sleeves on the originals, ugh. So, a navy uniform complete with the bling, the bloodstripes, a fancy leather coat and other flashy bits, because I love me some costume porn. Well, at this point the Imperial Navy more or less doesn't exist yet, so maybe she's wearing a proto-version of what will become the dress uniform for one of the segmentum fleets. But whatever, I like fancy uniforms!
She's quite a beefy lady on the tabletop, or a point sink, depending on who you ask. The model is Legate Commander that I've upgraded to a Lord Marshal (for that +1 to Initiative, silly I know, but also for access to a personal bodyguard and atomic weaponry) and given the following bits and bobs of wargear: Iron Halo, Cyber Familiar, master-crafted plasma pistol, paragon blade and digital lasers. She used to run with artificer armour as well, but I'd rather risk it with a cheaper 3++ instead of a more expensive 2+/4++ armour combo. She also has the option of picking her preferred warlord trait instead of rolling for it and as luck would have it.. Eternal Warrior is one of them, which is a must seeing as certain weapons get spammed an awful lot in the store these days. On the bright side, she can no longer be donkey punched by that Tau commander.
Every dashing woman of action needs a personal guard of some sort and so, here's one of her personal guard, which is made up of a squad of Veletaris, armed with their stock rayguns I mean, Volkite chargers. I went for a simple and functional paint job, with a minimal amount of pop in form of a red visor and a single blue shoulder guard. The blue armour piece is going to be the running theme throughout the army, tying it all together. I wanted these guys (and their flamer toting brethren later down the line) to look utilitarian, bare basics, but still mean and nasty. Plus I'm a sucker for the steampunk aesthetic that's going on with these guys. They really, really remind me a lot of the old Jes Goodwin sketches he did of Imperial Navy crew clad in heavy space suits.
Having a flash uniform and a mean-looking personal guard is one thing, but you need to get there in style, enter Ironclad, a Dracosan armoured conveyer. Again, I wanted a minimal approach with all of this, going for a factory primer look with a minimal amount of decals involved. While not a fan of the Malcador, I am a fan of this design for some strange reason. It really hammers home that classical lozenge shape of the WWI beasts. So much so that to pay homage (though I'm sure grognards and button-counters will disagree) that I added the eyes from the now OOP Elysian aircraft transfer sheet, to the front, along with some personal heraldry and a generic marking on the engine covers. At a later date I will add a line or block of blue somewhere, to tie it in with the rest of the force.
Here's the WIP Thallax cohort and attending Enginseer I've been working on, like the rest of the troops, boring but functional, but with a splash of blue to tie it in with the rest of the force. I went for a cohort with a phased plasma fusil, because why not eh? Everybody else is spamming plasma like no tomorrow, I may as well join in on all of that.
The lass in front is going to be my count-as Enginseer, whom I'm required to field (along with a certain piece of wargear) to "unlock" these units for my army. This is Maelee the Mechanic from the Bombshell Babes range done by Bombshell Miniatures, the pose of this mini is a Kickstarter exclusive. I've had her lying about for quite some time now and I wasn't sure what to do with her. She almost ended up as a crew member of my Wyvern, but seeing as my Rogue Trader force was becoming such a fun oddball mix of minis, I figured why not? Blah blah blah heresy and all that. I just like the look of her with her belt of gizmos and a massive wrench, which of course, has to be bright red, them's the rules.
Finally, a Cyclops remote demolition vehicle. I LOVE YOU, you tiny, suicidal, little remote tank of explosive death. I love you even more because you can carry within you an atomic bomb and dole out Destroyer hits. Kawaii! Sadly, also horrendously expensive with the right upgrades, plus it is really ineffective (For it to explode it must assault the enemy) but so much fun to use in the Zone Mortalis setting. The paint job looks amazingly out of place with the rest of the army, but I really don't want to repaint it again and I'm quite fond of the colour scheme it's got going on. It's a leftover from when I was thinking about doing a Krieg themed army and well.. let's just say that explains the camo pattern.
A general to-do list:
Rogue Trader - Cyber familiar, paragon blade, iron halo, digital lasers, plasma pistol Veletaris Storm Section - Blast pistol, power fist
Auxilia Tactical Command Squad - Plasma pistol, power weapon, volkite charger, grenade launcher
Auxilia Tank Commander w. Baneblade - Heavy bolter sponsons, armoured ceramite, command tank, hunter-killer missile
Auxilia Medicae detachment (4)
Enginseer Auxilia - Cortex Controller, 4x servitor with servo arm
Thallax Cohort (3) - Phased plasma fusil, 3x heavy chainblade Auxilia Lasrifle section - Blast-chargers
Aegis Defence Line - Ammo dump
Auxilia Flamer Section - Power axe
Auxilia Lasrifle section - Blast-chargers
Veletaris Storm Section
Dracosan - Armoured Ceramite Dracosan - Armoured Ceramite, demolisher cannon
Leman Russ Strike Squadron - 3x Exterminator Leman Russ Assault Squadron - Executioner with armoured ceramite, lascannon Cyclops - Atomic imploder
Need to tidy her up, do the base, wash her, do some quick drybrushed highlights and finally paint a pad blue.
After that, twenty more lasgunners and a medic to go and the Tercio section will be done!
edit.
Did some painting late, late last night and earlier this morning, in between working on a special scenario.
Here's the veteran in all her microwaving glory, opted to go with a red beret, which is a sign of veteran or elite status within some military:
Here's a rare OOP sculpt simply known as "Relic 3" that I got from the Bombshell Babes kickstarter. I'm using it as a Navigator (just imagine her mutation is having her third eye waaaaay up her head) or an evil priestess of sorts, she's got a bloody hand and everything. She's also taller than the other models I own, so she shall be a void born.
And here are the two together..
Eyup, she's a void born alright, tall, spindly and well, there's also that weird formal attire that will no doubt fetch odd looks from people wandering into the shop. Then again, Navigators always were one of those weirder aspects of the Imperium and they always get away with a lot of weird gak.
Next up.. an Auxilia medic using an old OOPGW sculpt. Maybe I'll have it done by tonight.
I'm still working on the pilots, though spoilers, they're both from RAGING Heroes: the family matriarch represented by Lady Hilda VON Stroheim and her other daughter, the older sister of Salena, will be represented by Commander Elektra Eisenstein. Mum is going to be piloting the not-Castigator (the Dreamforge suit) and Valentina, her other daughter, is going to be strutting around in a Knight Errant.
In the meantime, I worked on that medic, who is nowhere near as OOP as I originally thought he was:
He's going to be part of the Lasrifle Section, hiding behind an Aegis Defence line while keeping them alive. I decided to go with a plastic green apron and a latex glove because he's a medic and well, to make him stand out a bit from the rest of the mob. Though I fear I may have marked him for precision strikes now.
I've also more or less wrapped up my Thallax cohort, just in time for Sunday, when I'm having a game or two of Kill Team. I just need to seal in the decals with Lahmian Medium whenever the shop gets them again.
I've given each cyborg a fancy Ad-mech icon I had left over from the Imperial Knight decal sprue, along with an official campaign badge from the Elysian decal sprue. I'm going to add the symbol to all large units and vehicles, nicely tying the whole mess together.
Pardon the crap photo's, this iPad is nowhere near as good as the "genius" claimed it to be..
Anyway, next up is my Auxilia Enginseer, who I need to wrap up for Sunday's games and if I get around to it, a start on my Colonial lasrifle section made up of Victoria Lamb's awesome FemCadians range.
I like the Navigator. Best reasoning i've heard for including a near naked Amazonian priestess in an army she doesn't belong in. (Naked in space? Chilly! )
Never had a use for the chap, until now I suppose. He didn't fit in with my other armies.
Navigators are always a weird bunch to be around:
Raan Jaani of the Navis Nobilte house Mahdavi.
Mahdavi navigators are from a unique strain that is only manifests in females and always with the same mutations:
Blue to grey skin, a pair of extra arms and materium blindedness (they can only see the world as it is reflected by warp energy similar to a bat's sonar. thus they typically are acompanied at all times by a retinue of sanctioned psyker slaves who are blinded out of respect to the navigator's station.)
Among other eccentricities Madhavi navigators wear only head-coverings out of consideration to their ship-mates, in an attempt to emphasize the danger of their third eye.
One other item of note, it is a sacrilege for House Mahdavi navigator's to touch the ground. While this bit of legalism is widely interpreted it at the very least means from birth Mahdavi girls never touch the bare flesh of their heels against solid ground. While in some cases this means the Navigator is never without a human palanquin less dogmatic interpretation by some navigators means they merely put on full attire when planet side including especially thick soled boots.
That and there's a sourcebook on them from the Rogue Trader range that delves into these fancily clad psychopaths.
Okay, I lied, not working on the Lasgun Tercio just yet, instead I'm working on..
Inspired by Tallarn Executioner and whatnot. It's going to be for the army of course, but the deadline on getting it done will be the 11th of April, when I'm running a tank arena event at the FLGS. If I get around to it I'm going to try and give it some weathering as well.
It's also nameless as of yet, so suggestions for a good pre-Heresy name are most welcome.
It's odd, being on standby but not getting that call. So instead I keep chipping away at Mortis, as I've decided to call it after chancing upon the nameplates on the Sisters of Battle decal sheets:
Still need to tidy up the coloured bands on the left side, add the decals there as well and move on to the annoying part.. the tracks. Next time I'm keeping them on the sprue and just prime and paint them there.
Once that's out of the way I'm going to look into weathering it a bit with Typhus Corrosion and whatnot.
Much like brookM's collection of pics, I have an image for just this situation thanks to a persistantly *WRONG* dakka cadre who faux corrected their fellow posters on the terminology for years.
Let's try and keep that discussion to a minimum before certain fascist parties get involved and people end up disappearing because their opinion differs from yours.
Yesterday I powered through doing the last bits and bobs on "Mortis", so aside from weathering, which is something I'm going to look into before committing, she's done in time for the next store event, which is the 11th of April.
Next up.. probably a proper stab at trying to finish my squad of Veletaris bodyguards, who just need to be washed, cleaned up and based.
Azazelx wrote: That tank is a real Titan! Looks great, and the transfers work very well. Both on the tank itself, and also as hill scenery, apparently...
Many thanks, getting words of praise from someone who can actually paint and paint damn well (I lurk your thread from time to time), it just makes me
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Snrub wrote: Holy gak. How many transfer sheets do you have? That's a feth heap.
It's a lot I suppose, says a lot about my spending as well.
Kind of you to say that, but having said that - please do feel free to comment in my thread as well.
I think you need to find a TGG figure that's licking her teeth as in our GIF and paint it to match. Seems like someone who could be part of the noble families...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Okay, I lied about the Veletaris. After seeing what a friend did to a Baneblade I gave her (good stuff all round!) I decided to pull out my own chassis and completely renovate it, tossing in a tank commander for good measure.
Here's the gakky before picture:
As of right now I've cleaned it thoroughly, removing all those layers of dust from a year of sitting at the store in a display cabinet. I've also removed all the old decals and fixed some bits here and there, drilling out the aerials while I was at it for future antenna replacements. I've also given the turret and commander cupola their first layer of Adeptus grey, because I am a grey mouse.
And the first layer of grey has been slapped on. If I get around to it I'm going to do a second layer tonight, maybe followed by a drybrush* of Terminatus Stone if I'm up to it. After that I can spend the Friday on the optics, lights, weapons and other gubbinz.
The tank commander is made up of an OOP Cadian tank commander torso by FW, plastic tank commander arms and a beret head from Statuesque Miniatures.
I've also had my friend DarkElf27 whip up a progress tracker, so I can check off things at every stage of the way. Right now the project, with a total of 3182 pts, is already 53% there. Mind, this isn't completely done units, but rather what I've already got assembled and primed.
The only items truly done so far are the Rogue Trader, a single medic, a Dracosan, a Leman Russ squadron, the Executioner, a Cyclops and a cohort of Thallax, which is about 33% of the army at this stage. Still got a long way to go, with all those lasgun tercios.
* I drybrush a lot not because I suck or anything, my hands just suck. I tend to shake a lot and no matter how hard I try to stabilize my hands it still happens. So stuff like highlighting panels and other straight stuff isn't really my forté, instead large vehicles receive a drybrush to pick out the raised details. Any spots that have received too much of this can always be picked out later with the base colour again.
Okay, time to show off that I've been busy and prove to those that this thread won't sink to the bottom of P&M like all those others before it. Then again, I have been hella busy with work, there was the Better Call Saul season finale and well, the excitement of the second Toughest Girls in the Galaxy kickstarter!
So yeah, here's the turret of "Four Queens", a Baneblade command tank with my third HQ choice for the army: a tank commander. I like to think that while personal graffiti and the like are a big no-no with these cohorts, the Rogue Trader in charge of this bunch allows for some leeway, resulting in the Executioner sporting a red turret and the Baneblade sporting the odd bit of personalized art.
Right now I still need to do the stowage, lights, heavy stubber and the oaths of moment before I can call this part of the beast done.
The decal is from an old (even older than me I think!) 1:48 Tamiya kit of a F-84 Thundersomething. It was a pain to remove from the backing paper, requiring quite a long soak before I could carefully nudge it off. An edge here and there got damaged in transit, but other than that it made the transition in one piece. I quickly sealed it in with Vallejo gloss varnish* lest it falls off again!
And the decoration on the barrel, which has been applied to both sides. Ribbons represent small fry that has been blasted away, while the skulls represent HQ's I've blown away. The one with the scroll underneath is to celebrate the succesful killing of Commander Farsight and his retinue (including a donkey puncher), who were thunderblitzed into paste. Yes! When I get around to it I'm going to bust out the Tamiya weathering kit and apply some soot to the end of the barrel.
* Question with regards to the gloss varnish. I shake mine quite vigerously before application and it looks like it always takes on a blue sheen for some reason. Help! Am I doing something wrong?
Oh feth. I knew if I wrote Freehand that would happen! (I was like, well if I write freehand that covers me skimming incase he did that, and if not it's a compliment to his decal ability.)
I'm doing a quick side project while also working on the Baneblade: a 200 pt Kill Team made up of Skitarii, because I always like killing Tau in new and exciting ways.
Currently I'm building..
Skitarii Rangers (9) - Alpha with Arkhan's Divinator, Transuranic Arquebus and Arc rifle
Sydonian Dragoon - phosphor serpenta
198 pts
10 models
Deadline in two weeks.
On the Heresy front, I'm looking at giving my Adepticon 2014 exclusive model, as done by Victoria Lamb, a nice and big banner so she can join the Auxilia command squad alongside the volkite veteran, grenade launcher veteran and a random scrub with vox, as they await the arrival of their commanding officer.
Haven't forgotten about this one, I was working on the Skitarii, but as fun as they are to build, they're such a pain in the arse to paint!
So instead, after receiving a padded envelope from both Victoria Lamb and Raging Heroes last week, I decided to instead focus on my Tactical Command Squad, which is now complete model-wise, but still woefully WIP:
The three veterans, one with a meltagun, a Vexilarius (Adepticon 2014 grab bag model with a Bretonnian banner) and another veteran with a Volkite charger:
The banner is festooned with oath of moment declarations, mainly to cover up the missing bits of banner and because I like to think that the Rogue Trader also likes the idea of making these oaths before the battle commences.
The Strategos (Adepticon 2015 grab bag model) and the Proclaimator (Raging Heroes giant):
I'm glad I haven't gone overboard with the Raging Heroes miniatures for this project.
Bit in the dumps for silly reasons and whenever that happens I get the urge to cut up stuff and build or convert something. In this case..
A standard bearer, or a Vexilla, for my Lasrifle Section. The pose is a bit derpy, seeing as I was using Warlord's USMC arms and a head from Statuesque, the original idea was for a veteran pointing into the distance, but after noticing the vacancy in the section I dug out a spare banner and stuck that to her instead.
And here's the section as a whole:
The black blob with the red in the middle is the troop leader, whom I decided to give a spare Galvanic rifle from the Skitarii boxed set, to make her stand out from the file and rank scrubs. Pity that troop leaders don't have access to fancier rifles, just melee weapons and pistols, not something you want to give to a strictly ranged formation. Also present is the medic, good old Doc Dorden, he'll be permanently attached to this section.
Right then, enough moping, I need to get some actual painting done instead of just adding to the pile of shame.
Still chipping away at stuff, though work has been keeping me occupied like no tomorrow. But on the bright side, I'm going to need the money when next weekend rolls around..
Oh yes, next weekend I'm going to be getting Knight number four! The plan is to build a Knight Warden (with chainsword, the thunderfist is going onto the Knight Errant I'm almost done with) and make that my HQ, so the noble I've set aside for that spot will soon have a place of her own.
That leaves me with the Invincible a.k.a. the Cerastus-Castigator a.k.a. the Dreamforge Crusader without a noble to pilot it. Here's an older picture of it along with the pilot, who has since made a transition to the base of my Knight Paladin.
So, a new side-quest begins.. to find a suitable miniature to represent the Knight-noble in charge of this suit of armour. Suggestions are more than welcome and models of both gender are fine by me. I think at this stage I may need to insert a sausage into the mix before the lads get upset.
Here are the current nobles who are or soon will be gracing the bases of the Knights:
An excellent mix of model ranges in this blog BrookM. The work on the Knight is my favourite, but your tanks are up there too. I am interested to see where this goes, best of luck.
Do you find the Tamiya weathering kit easy to use?
In between work I did some.. work on my models. All are still in varying degrees of WIP.
F.L.T.R.
Baroness DuChess, future HQ of my Questoris Knights and soon to be proud owner of a Knight Warden. I found the pile of skulls really annoying at first, but now, I think they suit the character and how I envision her within her little fighting group, which is mostly made up of family. She strikes me as someone who will take out anyone who even thinks about hurting one of her family members.
Second, an as of yet unnamed Strategos for my Tactical Command Squad. Still need to do the pistol, tidy her up a bit and give the face a wash. Just like the Rogue Trader she's wearing a proto-Imperial Navy uniform. What can I say, I love me some costume porn.
Last, this pompous prick. Can't remember the name of the company I got it from, but I do remember that it is yet another company that got caught up in a highly successful Kickstarter that it has a lot of trouble properly fulfilling. This guy will be an objective marker, he's certainly full enough of himself to believe that he's important.
It's been quite a while since I last used them, from what I remember, they're easy to use and apply, plus the Tamiya site has a few handy and to the point videos on how to use them.
The Veletaris needed some touching up, while the Baroness is now more or less done, all she needs now is a Knight to pilot! The Centurion with a pair of lightning claws is still a WIP and I'm not sure what to do with her just yet, either I'm taking the plunge and start buying Heresy era sets of power armour or I'll think of something else to use as space marine stand-ins. Last is the Strategos, finally done and awaiting the rest of her command squad. A finely sculpted mini like this one really makes me wish I had better painting skills to really do such a gorgeous model justice.
Today I've sat down and powered through my Veletaris, so they're finally done, aside from the bases of nine of the chaps, but feth it, I'll save that for when I've also done the ten Auxilia flamers.
I decided to give every man in the squad a blue pauldron with a red line running down the middle, to denote their veterency and to distinguish them from a future second squad who will be rank and file Veletaris.
Next up.. Hopefully a Knight Warden! That is if the local GW rep deems the non-GW stores worthy of receiving them this week.
Failing that.. I'll bite down and power through the command squad.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ah, also, found a "proper" ponce for my Knight-Cerastus:
He's from Freebooter's Fate and can be found here! From my pile of shame! I originally bought him as a central-American royal or rich big wig of sorts, the corrupt kind propped up by the CIA or American government for games of 7TV.
So, got my Knight Warden today, along with the codex and datacards, so..
And first thing I did when I sat down was..
The armoured cover on the fist will feature (or at least I'm going to try to..) yellow-black warning stripes, like the power gloves of the older editions. The Errant will also be the lucky recipient of an ack-ack mount. Because nothing says "I love flyers" more than a Knight with tank-hunters.
I've also stuck together the skeleton for the Warden by now, sanded and primed the large base and I'm going to leaf through the codex now so I can decide on the heraldry and carapace markings of my baroness.
Tomorrow I'm going to prime the skeleton, give it a good coat of leadbelcher, wash it black and drybrush it with leadbelcher and silver, presto! Knight 50% done!
Today I worked a lot on my Warden and a little bit on my Errant. The Errant power fist is mostly painted by now as well, I just need to prime the top armour plate yellow and see about those safety stripes.
I did most of the work today on the Warden though, managed to prime and get the skeleton (aside from the smaller leg pistols and smoke stacks) + base done, leaving me with just the armour plates..
So, over the next few days I'm going to paint up the armour plates one by one, apply decals where necessary and then glue them in place, slowly dressing the model up as I progress.
The Warden will be packing an Avenger gatling cannon on the other arm, along with a rocket pod.
As for the stripes, I'm going to take my time with those on Sunday, probably carefully sketch them out first with a pencil before committing brush to model.
sweet way to get stripes on a large area sharp is to use masking tape to mark out the stripes. Temper the stickiness first though by sticking the stripes of tape to you jeans and then onto the model so it wont damage te already laid paint
This stuff is looking great! I can't believe how quickly you got that thing put together. I'll second the tape idea - but use blue painter's masking tape - it's less adhesive. Easily and readily available from Hardware stores
Many thanks chaps, I've been freehanding the safety stripes, seeing as I don't have tape small enough for the job at hand.
Meanwhile on Namek.. I'm still chipping away at the Warden, slowly dressing her up as I go, still got quite a ways to go before its done.
However, I did manage to finally complete a proper Knight Errant:
Only two items missing from this suit right now: the pilot, who I still need to paint and the armoured plate that goes onto the Thundah-Stroike fist.
Though it does feel good to get something done every once in a while, especially a model as rewarding as this one. She may not see many fights, but at least she looks pretty on the shelf along with the others.
Stumbled on this randomly today, loving the progress and the time you take to do up specific knight pilots for each titan - gave me a cool idea for my own.
I've been swamped by work these last few weeks and while I did pick up the brush every now and again, it wasn't exactly a lot to show off, so I've been saving it up for one big post to soothe my guilty conscience and all that. There've been several things that I've worked on, including..
Deathdealer, my second Executioner. Not super-happy with the colour of the plasma coils, I was experimenting with that oxide technical paint over Temple Guard blue, because according to a chap at the store it would make for the perfect glow effect. Well, it didn't quite turn out as planned, I may repaint it with the three greens and white that I also used for the first one when I get around to it, along with that annoying search light, but for the time being it is done. But other than that, I'm happy with how it turned out, with its own icon on each flank (leftover US star from DUST) along with the soon to be placed Elysian decal from that FW decal sheet on the red band. There's also a small maker plate of its own on the back and a pair of warning on the back to denote that this tank is dangeresque. The "Deathdealer" decals on the turret are also from DUST, so there's something good that came from that mess after all! All in all, it's good to have a small squadron of these clanking about, at least now I can not only spam six balls of exploding plasma (that don't get hot) per shooting phase, they're also BS4, because screw the 40k rules, 30k sometimes does it better!
Next up, part of the Tactical Command Squad, which is almost done, aside from the standard bearer and some bits and bobs on the vox operator. I still need to apply some decals to the banner, which will probably be of the Elysian variety to tie in with the rest of the force. It's an odd mix of Minervan Colonial Guard and proto-Imperial Navy / Imperial Fleet uniforms, to denote that my warlord, the Rogue Trader, isn't above recruiting from worlds that have seen the light. As mentioned before, four out of five models are from Victoria Lamb's range, including two GenCon exclusives that she made available to us in limited quantities.
Oh well, anyway, the lass in the middle is Leftenant Cassandra Hyde-Beauchamp, adopted daughter of the warlord and perhaps a bit hungry for glory herself. Why does she adopt though? May have something to do with her special condition that I use as the perfect excuse to give a non-Astartes model Eternal Warrior. She's one of the two con-exclusives and simply a gorgeous model, as I mentioned before, makes me wish I was a better painter so I could really do such a lovely sculpt the justice it deserves. She's armed with a plasma pistol and power weapon, options that are perhaps a bit wasted on a cheap HQ unit (75 pts for the squad with standard, vox and once per game artillery strike), but you'll never know when she's got to get stuck in with something and it happens to challenge her to a.. challenge.
I've also plugged away at the Knight Warden, which still isn't finished, but we're slowly getting there. Added on the face plate, the tilting plate, both arms, the right shoulder guard and started work on the remaining plates of armour, which just seem to take forever for some reason. I've also dug a smaller plastic shield out of the bits box, which I guess is from a Space Marine vehicle or the like, which I'll be attaching to the Reaper arm joint in due time as another piece of gear that's going to be covered in victory icons and whatnot, with this suit of armour belonging to the leader of the Lance, or the Baroness, I figure I may as well show off her skills and accomplishments with some extra bling.
Next up? Still need to finish that Baneblade for starters!
I've also been giving my Dreamforge Crusader a lot of looking over, that one will receive some updating as well further down the road. I've had my fun with the Cerastus Castigator pattern, but I find it sadly too lacking in application, with just one ranged weapon (twin-linked at that!) which nine times out of ten blows away the foe before it can be assaulted, wasting a perfectly good Knight. Instead, I'm looking into arm options for it, so I can give it a massive flame cannon and turn it into a Cerastus Acheron, for which I already have the comically oversized chainsword and the two chin-mounted cannons can perfectly double as the twin-linked heavy bolter the suit also comes with. I'm also looking into modifying the top carapace to some degree, it needs a hatch or something along those lines, I've always found this distracting about the model, it not having a clear access point for the pilot.
Incoming crack? Any day now a pack of FW Volkite Chargers and another squad of Victorian FemCadians with universal arms should be coming in, these gals will be my second Veletaris Storm Section, which will be a cheaper option than getting another one from FW, plus I really loved how the Volkite toting veteran from my command section turned out, so I had to do an entire squad of these badasses whom I will probably dub the "Widows" or the like, due to losing their husbands at the hands of the Orks during the liberation of their world.
Added bonus is that I can more easily keep both squads apart, where the "official" squad will act as the personal guard of the warlord (think of them as the hoary veterans who have been with her since Saturn) and the "Widows" being a new addition of veteran fighters.
Also, with the Dracosan out of stock for the time being I'm looking at alternate vehicle kits to fill that niche, especially one that looks nice and big (but not oversized), while also packing a Demolisher cannon or the like.
+ + + FLUFF DUMP + + +
Bit of fluff regarding the massive influx of non-FW models, especially the Minervan Colonial Guard. As mentioned above, a Rogue Trader wouldn't be above replenishing the ranks with soldiers from newly liberated or discovered worlds that embrace the Imperial Truth willingly. Of course, these soldiers would be nowhere near as well-trained or well-equipped as the Solar Auxilia from Saturn and other places that have adopted this template, but got to make do with what's at hand, especially when resupply could take forever to either reach you, or you have to trek all the way back to more established Imperial sectors, which is in itself something of a crapshoot, seeing as the Crusade will first and foremost cater to the Legiones Astartes, because they are the main force of arms in the Crusade.
While most Rogue Traders are simply tasked with scouting ahead of the main exploration fleets, or sweeping sectors that the fleets have bypassed or maybe missed, I like to think that my little lady wants to do a bit more than that. She's been around for a long, long time now and has been hankering to explore the void ever since we shot monkeys into outer space. While she has been given a complete cohort of Solar Auxilia from the Solar System no less, over time, as she went deeper and deeper into the unknown, coming across all sorts of miracles and horrors, the attrition rate would catch up to her sooner or later, forcing her to replenish the ranks where she can.
The latest and biggest source of new bodies, the newly discovered world of Minerva, which was suffering heavily from ork attacks. It was a costly campaign, but the Rogue Trader and her forces managed to tip the balance of these battles enough to see the orks exterminated, though at a heavy cost in both men and materials. So, as the world accepted the Imperial Truth (small price to pay for getting rid of the Ork hordes), a recruitment and resupply effort also got underway, to replenish the ranks of the cohort.
Amongst these volunteers to join her cause would be the "Widows" (working title and all that), brave women who took up arms against the orks after they lost their husbands and family in the war. With nothing left to keep them bound to their own world of birth, many signed up to fill up the ranks and see some cosmic horrors before they met their maker.
Another unit I am working on will be a lasrifle section made up of Minervan Colonial Guard, represented by Victoria Lamb's female Arcadian Guard, armed with regular lasguns. The section leader carries a fancier spare rifle from the Skitarii sprues, along with a bright red beret.
Only problem with all of this, two of the chaps over at the store find that using these models as stand-ins for Solar Auxilia is unacceptable, as they look nowhere near as well-armoured or equipped as the models they're standing in for. But screw them guys.
Only problem with all of this, two of the chaps over at the store find that using these models as stand-ins for Solar Auxilia is unacceptable, as they look nowhere near as well-armoured or equipped as the models they're standing in for. But screw them guys.
Aaaaaand that would matter if they were the ones making the army, so I second that last sentence: Screw them guys.
Also, loving the officer. Rather than the drab colors so often used in Guard armies it's cool to see something stand out - and again, gave me an idea for something of my own.
Well, so far, nothing too bad has happened yet. Not that I really had a budget to begin with!
In other news, first part of my new Veletaris Storm Section arrived this morning, in form of a pack of Forge World Volkite Chargers, plus I still had enough parts left over from other projects to build half a squad:
These five will be regular old scrubs, other batch will include a sergeant and a nuncio vox of sorts. Not 100% done with these yet, they still need to be based and I need to fix the stocks of their weapons, they're not as nice as the one I had left over from the Veletaris set.
So, now I'm awaiting the arrival of a new squad of Victorian Arcadians and a set of beret heads to go with the remainder of the chargers.
While we're waiting on those, the quest to find a suitable not-Dracosan continues.
The Volkites do the job, though they are sadly not as detailed or nicely done as those found on the Veletaris set. However, I am quite pleased with how well they turned out, an old-timey type of uniform with a classic beret paired with a clunky, but futuristic weapon.
I really want to paint, but the weather right now is horrendously disagreeable, to such a degree that I've been puking out my guts every few hours and hardly getting any sleep. Right now I am an outright crotchety and vicious witch.
Instead I've been looking at getting another (what is wrong with me..) Imperial Knight, either a Knight Crusader or the Cerastus-Acheron, though I'm not that keen on getting a full resin Forge World knight, it scares me.
The Volkites do the job, though they are sadly not as detailed or nicely done as those found on the Veletaris set. However, I am quite pleased with how well they turned out, an old-timey type of uniform with a classic beret paired with a clunky, but futuristic weapon.
I really want to paint, but the weather right now is horrendously disagreeable, to such a degree that I've been puking out my guts every few hours and hardly getting any sleep. Right now I am an outright crotchety and vicious witch.
Instead I've been looking at getting another (what is wrong with me..) Imperial Knight, either a Knight Crusader or the Cerastus-Acheron, though I'm not that keen on getting a full resin Forge World knight, it scares me.
Jesus, hope that weather dissipates with a quickness - vomit-inducing weather patterns are no-good.
As for the knight, I'm roughly in the same boat as well, been looking to expand on the single one I bought when they came out...and with the new codex I'll be required to get that too. I think I'm going for a Warden.
The Warden is an excellent choice, even if you're going for an Errant or Paladin build. The extra parts, including two carapace mounted weapon systems makes the extra bucks spent on it well worth it IMHO.
BrookM wrote: The Warden is an excellent choice, even if you're going for an Errant or Paladin build. The extra parts, including two carapace mounted weapon systems makes the extra bucks spent on it well worth it IMHO.
Aside from a great love of all things Titan this is a great point too, I was disappointed with the initial release but with the new chassis and such out now...my wallet is begging me to stop, lol.
Do you have a unit size in mind for your knights? 3,5,7,9? 30? I rarely do games above 2k with my group so I can't justify more than three right now.
Frankenberry wrote: Do you have a unit size in mind for your knights? 3,5,7,9? 30? I rarely do games above 2k with my group so I can't justify more than three right now.
I think I am personally going to call it quits at four models, which is both a personal cap and because well.. People around here see a Knight, most of them immediately either bust out Unbound gak or field nasty alpha-strike lists that I never see the second turn happen. So far, this army has been more of a collectors thing than an actual fighting army.
Once I'm done with the Knight Warden (sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly getting there! ) I'm going to look into getting a Cerastus-Acheron, because I do like the look of the suit, plus it has some grrrreat anti-everything assets, not to mention a secondary weapon system, unlike the Castigator, making it a 1000% more attractive in my eyes. The current plan is to field them as a 1.750 / 1.800 pts army:
Bah, that's lame. I play with friends at one of their houses so I generally don't get list tailoring cheese. Although I do give them fair warning when I'm going to bring a knight as most of them don't have a whole lot to deal with it.
As for the list you're going for it looks good to me. Sadly, I'm not a fan of the FW knights - something about the legs that puts me off - and I've had nothing but trouble with FW stuff I've ordered in the past.
A group shot of the completed Knights of House DuChess will be required once you're done, of course.
Been a while since I last posted some actual progress instead of walls of pathetic mewling. I've picked up the brush again and started the wrapping up of the second Veletaris squad:
One Prime and Veletarii, alongside their mistress, ready for the fight. The other eight are nearly done, so hopefully those will join the rest around the end of the week. When I get around to it I will also provide the squad with a nuncio-vox, because the ability to deep-strike without scatter is quite enjoyable, especially when your warlord has a displacer matrix.
Frankenberry wrote: A group shot of the completed Knights of House DuChess will be required once you're done, of course.
This will of course happen. Once I'm done with the Veletarii I will move onto the Warden, which has been staring at me long enough now in its partially assembled state that I've gotten a few ideas on how to go about wrapping that sucker up.
And the squad is now done, for the time being. I am going to revisit them at a later point, there are some oodles here and there that nag at me, like my inability to get tiny, steady lines on the rims of the aviators.
Next up, something a bit easier to hold onto, my second Executioner still needs some work done.
They look great - quite an effective combination of parts, and painted in a pretty realistic way. They could almost be moderns at a glance if not for the red berets!
Thanks chaps and yes, I also got a USCM vibe from them when I first started out, I even tried to recreate the Colonial Marine camo pattern, but that got too fiddly, so instead I went with a more boring and utilitarian pattern.
However, I do have a pair of shotgun toting girls that I keep around for fun, special Zone Mortalis scenarios:
Because, all together now: "I like to keep this handy, for close encounters."
The girl on the left, Jane Doe, even has a small shoulder-mounted lamp pack, just like those jarheads in space and chances are she'll be my character of choice for the upcoming Halloween event.
BrookM wrote: Thanks chaps and yes, I also got a USCM vibe from them when I first started out, I even tried to recreate the Colonial Marine camo pattern, but that got too fiddly, so instead I went with a more boring and utilitarian pattern.
However, I do have a pair of shotgun toting girls that I keep around for fun, special Zone Mortalis scenarios:
Because, all together now: "I like to keep this handy, for close encounters."
The girl on the left, Jane Doe, even has a small shoulder-mounted lamp pack, just like those jarheads in space and chances are she'll be my character of choice for the upcoming Halloween event.
Hey, sometimes the easier/simplest path is the best, as is evident in how good your squad looks.
And I'm loving those mini's and their great USMC in SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE feel. Also, in reply to your quote: GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!
Here's the mostly painted elite of the fleet, I still need to do the Flamer Auxilia, which is proving to be a real PITA.
Here's the auxiliaries of the Auxilia, with most of the command squad and the lasrifle section still woefully undone:
Finally, the Knights, with the Warden slowly nearing completion, once that thing is done I'll focus on getting both carapace-mounted weapon systems done along with the pilot of the Errant:
Here's the mostly painted elite of the fleet, I still need to do the Flamer Auxilia, which is proving to be a real PITA.
Here's the auxiliaries of the Auxilia, with most of the command squad and the lasrifle section still woefully undone:
Finally, the Knights, with the Warden slowly nearing completion, once that thing is done I'll focus on getting both carapace-mounted weapon systems done along with the pilot of the Errant:
Awesome thanks for that man. Are the auxilia auxiliaries militia? Its really cool seeing your army come together, its helping to inspire me to push forward with my project which is up now in P&M Blogs. Feel free to drop by it should be your cup of tea.
I thought about including Imperial Militia, but decided against it, they'll count as a regular lasrifle section, same with my second squad of Veletaris, they may not look like the FW models, but they pack the same gun and thus, are the same thing.
Also, I'm going to revisit the Imperial Militia army list once FW gets around to releasing a FAQ for it.
BrookM wrote: I thought about including Imperial Militia, but decided against it, they'll count as a regular lasrifle section, same with my second squad of Veletaris, they may not look like the FW models, but they pack the same gun and thus, are the same thing.
Also, I'm going to revisit the Imperial Militia army list once FW gets around to releasing a FAQ for it.
Cool, I'm looking forward to trying out a militia list, I love the flexibility it allows. Anything in particular you wanted to be FAQed?
@BrookM: You wouldn't happen to be ex-military would you? I only ask given how you talk about the composition of your forces, it strikes me as very "I've done this before and I can't not call it this'.
Well, last week I had a week off, spent it doing this and that, including a pair of games.
First up was 1000 pts of Zone Mortalis against Tau, which I lost 2-1, but was enjoyable nonetheless and left us wanting more. Here's a few pics of the day:
Second game was 2000 pts of regular 40k, pitting 2000 pts of Knights again against the Tau, which I won with 16-4. Sadly no pictures, but by the end of the game we were both close to wiped the feth out.
I am preparing to get cracking again, though I'll be ordering one or two things from FW first, including a House Terryn upgrade kit. I did find me a noble for my second Paladin, for when I want to bring my army up to the full 2500 pts for next year:
This will be the future Scion-Martial Josephine DuChess, second youngest in the family. She has a knack for fighting in space and other void-like conditions, but also a deadly fear of dying there, hence the survival gear she wears at all times when encased in "Void Reaper"
Also decided on the noble who will be piloting the future Acheron I want to use:
Ah yes, high and mighty, look at that arrogance! I'm thinking the base of her Acheron will also feature a few charred skeletons.
Picked up another Warden yesterday, though it'll become a Paladin soon enough, I just needed the extra Icarus and Stormspear pods.
The most annoying part (for me at least) of the Knight is now done thankfully, reposing the leg!
Right now I'm searching like mad through my bits boxes for leftover parts from a fantasy building I bought years and years ago, there should still be four Sigmar-themed statues left, somewhere. The idea is if one of the family is a semi-closeted follower of the proto-Cult Imperialis, then another one would be a none too subtle atheist who sees it as a sacred task to topple all religious systems and the bulwarks they hide behind. The general idea is to have this one standing in the remains of something religious, with a toppled statue or two cast down as well.
Awesome sounding games, I've always wanted to play on a Zone Mortalis board - sadly I don't know anywhere that has one, leaving it to me and my 'crew' to purchase a set. Ugh.
As for the Acheron pilot I dig it, seems different than the rest too, breaking up the refined aristocracy sort of feel for more of a hardened veteran who doesn't have time for that noble stuff. Or I'm wrong, lol.
As for the knight construction I'm impressed you messed with how the legs sit. I couldn't summon the courage to mess with mine because of all the required cutting and such.
Awesome looking stuff, Brook. Is that your ZM board and game room? It looks almost like a store. Looking forward to the next Knight - how many more do you have planned? And any plans to add in a Dreamforge Leviathan to the clan?
Frankenberry wrote: Awesome sounding games, I've always wanted to play on a Zone Mortalis board - sadly I don't know anywhere that has one, leaving it to me and my 'crew' to purchase a set. Ugh.
As for the Acheron pilot I dig it, seems different than the rest too, breaking up the refined aristocracy sort of feel for more of a hardened veteran who doesn't have time for that noble stuff. Or I'm wrong, lol.
As for the knight construction I'm impressed you messed with how the legs sit. I couldn't summon the courage to mess with mine because of all the required cutting and such.
It's still quite a sweat for me and it's nowhere near as exciting as I thought it would be, but at least it looks nothing like the other two in my range.
But with the repose done the hardest part is over, now I just need to find the time to prime the skeleton and start work on that, dressing it up from there once I get my hands on a House Terryn upgrade kit from Forge World.
And here's a close up of the latest noble to join the family, lovely, crisp detail, excellent cast with only one pesky vent (inside the fold of her coat), other than that, well worth the asking price.
Azazelx wrote: Awesome looking stuff, Brook. Is that your ZM board and game room? It looks almost like a store. Looking forward to the next Knight - how many more do you have planned? And any plans to add in a Dreamforge Leviathan to the clan?
I wish it was mine, my FLGS has one, he originally bought it as an excellent window display, but we're allowed to take it out every now and then for a game or two of ZM.
The current plans are to get a Knight-Acheron at the end of this month or failing that, to get it around the end of the year, so I have all the models I need for my planned 2500 pts army that I'm hoping to bring to the UK some time next year. It's also a nice finish line for when I want to play regular 40k with them, allowing me to field the excellent Exalted Court formation. I'll lose out on Objective Secured, but every model will be a character with all the usual benefits and the warlord will be a proper monster.
The Leviathan will be undergoing some minor conversions and more importantly, a repaint, as it's shoddy paintjob is quite showing. The plan is though to use it as a Knight-Castigator for the really big games, where I have the points to use a rather poorly designed, but still awesome pattern of Knight.
Ha, no titans for me! I have neither the disposable income, nor the room or gaming club forgiving enough to field one without them resorting to the dirtiest of lists from the get-go to bring it down on the first turn.
I have for quite some time looked at the Warhound titan, but decided against it, it's a big bugger, even bigger when you mount it on it's mandatory but not included base.
I'll get around to ordering another Olga Kurganova whenever those delightful people at Raging Heroes start adding in more TGG models to their on-line store.
Not something 30k related (though it would be if I ever am crazy enough to run an Imperial Militia list!), but after today's Sunday Funday I decided to give this brave little thing a new magnetized weapon:
Today we had a walker only event where we'd each bring a walker, tool it up using the rules found in the spoilers below, then have a go at it until the time runs out or until we got bored of it. We ended up spending a good three hours blowing one another away in melee and with a few well-placed ranged shots. Most surprisingly, I somehow managed to win with 26 VP's, despite being either locked in combat or immobilized most of the time.
So, to celebrate that it's done so well I've decided to give it a proper multi-melta instead of a missile launcher, plus decided to (hopefully) tomorrow apply the camo pattern to its new gun and legs, add grass to the base for the raptor to hide in, apply a decal here and there, plus give the girl herself a headswap, replacing the regular head with something a bit more veteran and grizzled.
Spoiler:
Dreadnought Arena!
Setup:
This game uses the Warhammer 40k 7th Ed. Rules as it's core. (BRB, Page 90 for Walkers).
Played on a 4x4 table and has 2/3's to 3/4th in Terrain.
(Be sure to allow for 60mm Bases to fit in between the various Terrain pieces).
1 Centre Objective.
Game:
Players roll off to determine who Deploys first. This also set's the Player Turn sequence.
Deployment is 6" from the Table Edge.
The Central Objective Marker projects a 12" Field around itself.
Any walker with it's Base wholly within the Field gains the "It Will Not Die 4+" Special Rule.
Victory Points are achieved by removing enemy Hullpoints.
Each Walker Hull Point stripped is worth 1 Victory Point.
Most Victory Points at the end of the game wins!
Even in Death I still Serve:
When your Walker is destroyed, remove it from the table. No wreck remains.
At the start of your next turn, Deepstrike it anywhere on the table.
Should a Walker scatter on top of impassable terrain or another model then reduce the scatter distance by the minimum required in order to avoid the obstacle.
Walker Stats:
Armour
WSBS S F S R I A HP 4 4 6 12 11 10 4 3 4
Custom Wargear:
Walkers can be outfitted to the Players choice using "Hardpoints".
Each Hardpoint can be equiped with 1 Weapon or Support choice.
Each Walker has 3 Hardpoints.
Choose up to 3 items from the following lists, in any combination.
Ranged Weapons
Pulse Laser 24' Str6 AP- .Assault 3
Rattler Gatling 18' Str4 AP- .Assault 6, Rending
Melter 12' Str7 AP1 .Assault 1, Melta
EMP Shotgun 6' Str- AP- .Assault 2, Haywire
Support Items
Repair Servo's - On a 2+, Repair all Damage Result at the start of your turn.
Thrusters - Move 2D6 in the Assault Phase (Cannot move over terrain/models)
Shield Array - 4+ Invulnerable save.
Only thing we added to it after a few turns was to give every model the "Hit and Run" USR, in case certain combats turned into hopeless tarpits. When we added this to the game we also lowered the Initiative value to 2, to make it a bit more challenging to remove yourself from a fight.
That said, aside from adding the camo pattern to the legs, I did do the other things:
Sounds like it was a fun game/event, and your sentinel looks pretty sweet. I like the open hatch look that you've given it and the model peeking out really looks the part as well - what is she made from?
You've also just reminded me that I have a squadron of them that I started bloody ages ago and will also need to finish before I allow myself to start any new cool models. Thanks a bloody lot!
Thanks, the pilot is mostly from Victoria Miniatures, with a head from Statuesque Miniatures and a spare shotgun from Warlord's USMC boxed set.
I still have four Sentinels standing about as well (one more deathworld, three acting as Imperial Knight household guard), I simply adore the model, it's just a pity that it's doesn't perform as great as it looks.
Also, for those interested in the "Walker Arena" scenario, it can now be found here as an easier to print and read .pdf that includes the last minute changes such as adding in Hit & Run, along with an optional (but not really recommended) rule allowing you to shoot into melee's.
I edited the rule document to be a bit clearer and now has an optional pair of rules for shooting into melee's, one that allows you to do so, the other giving the victim a good shot at striking back.
Did some more non-30k work, as I'm chipping away at my Halloween project for the end of next month.
What is basically boils down to is that I'll be running a quick and fast scenario that pits a few Imperial Guard veterans against hordes of the undead as they struggle to complete their mission. It uses a dumbed-down variant of the 40k rules, which surprisingly has a lot in common with Age of Sigmar. I've got a feeling the person who I wrote this with somehow managed to get in contact with GW or the like.
I'd love to share more, but I know that one or more of the people that are going to partake in this scenario also post on these boards, I want to avoid spoilers and have people prepared for what is to come.
But yeah, did some work on the erstwhile Navigator, who is now a warp witch, still not super-happy with her, but I'll chip away at her headdress when I get around to it. I'm hoping to have her done somewhere early November, when we'll be running a psyker-only Sunday event.
Lillie Poots on the other hand, simply love her! Still need to do some touching up, but she's a lovely sculpt, one of those that makes me wish I had better brush control and artistry, because it's simply lovely.
Jane Doe had some minor thingies done, but she's mostly there for scale and because I wuv the model way too much, she's going to be my veteran of choice for the scenario, nothing like facing down the undead with a good old boomstick.
Right now on the desk, three pumpkin markers, a Battle for Macragge plasma cannister and a Taurox. Once those are done I can turn my attention back to 30k, hopefully with some new resin crack to play around with.
Juggling between Halloween and redoing a squadron of Exterminators. Time wasn't at a premium, so someone offered to help out by removing the sponsons from the tanks (Solar Auxilia tanks do not have sponsons) and cleaning up any residue glue and whatnot. Got them back yesterday and damn it, now I'm going to have to do clean-up work myself. He removed the sponsons alright and did some cleaning up. However, the gakker used a dremel for it, normally nothing wrong with that, only.. you can see where he applied too much pressure and none at all.
Well, shame on me for letting someone else do it in the first place.
On the Halloween front it had occurred to me that maybe nobody would want to be a medic, so in order to prepare for this eventuality, I decided to move my new medic from Raging Heroes a bit up in the queue. Still horrendously WIP, not sure what to do with her hair and nurse hat yet, plus way too much that I still need to clean up and whatnot.
As with previous Raging Heroes minis.. the mini itself is nice, it is however not really designed with ease of assembly or sturdiness in mind. I wish this one was metal and not resin. I also wish she was properly kneeling down and not perched on her toes with one foot, her foot has already broken once while I was cutting the bits free from the slotta.
I've been playing and watching far too much Fury Road / the official tie-in game of Mad Max, so I wanted to buff her up a bit: enter a sawn-off shotgun strapped to the leg and a shiv at the small of her back, just like with Max. I like to think the shotgun is there for battlefield amputations and the shiv is there to the end suffering.
Anyway, this is Karoline Rockatansky, MD, who will make the pain go away with a jab to the behind or something equally painful and degrading. Once I'm done with her I'm diving back into the game again, I'm itching to dispense some more wasteland justice, one gut shot at a time.
Those Raging Heroes figures are sweet, I especially like the Sentinel pilot - sort of gives the whole kit that 'outrider-listens-to-their-own-orders' type of feel to it.
Aaaaaand I wasn't interested in Mad Max (the game) until that melee/gutshot compilation. Off to forget completely about models and such and to lose myself in a post apocalyptic desert.
I made that quick little compilation after I couldn't find a proper one on YouTube myself, because a friend of mine needed a bit more convincing that the game is not just the "Perfect Generic Game" (which is in itself not a bad thing, as it does almost everything just right or perfect), but also an excellent tie-in to Fury Road, a movie she's been raving about for quite some time until I finally had a chance to see it myself. Sadly, no Coma-Doof Warrior, Polecats or war rigs, but you can give someone a gut full of buckshot, that certainly sold her on it. That and eating maggots from a rotting corpse, that got her heart beating a wee bit faster, the vile little gore hound.
Anyway, Karoline Rockatansky (gak is that name hard to pronounce) is more or less done. I'll be taking both her and Jane Doe along for the event, just in case nobody else wants to be the medic.
Later today I'm going to try and paint up the rest of those pumpkins along with that plasma canister, which are the last objective markers I need to do to call the preparations for the event more or less done.
As a small side project for this all I'm also looking into a simple and effective way of recreating small smoke grenade markers or the like, just something simple I can stick onto a 28mm base and use as a handy marker for marking.. things.
Still piddling away at the Halloween stuff. I also noticed that one of my favourite artists on DeviantArt, Blazbaros, had commission slots open again and seeing as I still wanted some custom art done, I decided to commission him for some art that could be used on the forums and for the rule booklet itself:
"JANE DOE VS. ZOMBIES"
I spent most of a sleepless night watching him create this one on his live stream and it was a most pleasing experience to see someone execute your request using minimal description (picture of the mini, type of gun used and what she was shooting at) and turning it into something really awesome in my eyes. My first feeling upon seeing it was a massive DOOM vibe, in a good way.
Nice piece of art there, Brook, and the Medic is looking great as well. What are you playing Mad Max on? I've been playing it a bit over the past 2 weeks, and I'm very much in two minds about the game. I've got a "thoughts and reflections" blog post mostly written, but I'm pretty harsh on the game's shortfalls.
That Jane Doe model looks the business. Is it a Vic sculpt, or a RH, or a combo with Statuesque parts? You should send me a figure like that to paint sometime. I'd have a great time painting one of those.
Many thanks good sir. Jane Doe is all Victoria Miniatures, head included, with the shotgun from Warlord's plastic USMC replacing a lasrifle. She's not a RH one though, her limbs are all stubby and malformed, especially when put alongside a specimen of fine European art such as Karoline, who is kneeling, she can barely look over the medic. Then again, Karoline is all leg and if she were to stand she'd be a scary thin giantess. Bah, I like some of what RH has on offer, it is just a crying shame that they don't go well with other ranges due to their love of long legs that are often so far apart that fitting her onto a base is all but impossible. I have their metal witch hunter (really need to finish her one of these days) and her legs are so far apart that she can barely fit onto a 32mm base. Dafuq?!
I've been playing Mad Max on the PC and while it certainly has its share of annoyances (it is repetitive, races are utter gak to do, boss fights are unimaginative, the dramatis personae are lacking) and damn it, glitches, I do find myself enjoying it an awful lot, because it's a nice prequel to the movie and all said and done, a generic game that runs through a set number of conventions and does it well enough. I am looking forward to your blog post on it, especially after seeing Total Biscuit's special on some of the more negative reviews. However, it is for me personally one of the highlights of the year so far, though this may also be due to me loving Fury Road way too much, which has most certainly been my cinematic highlight of this year, alongside John Wick (which was released late 2014 in the US, but early 2015 ROW). Or, it could be a nice sign of how much of a gamer I really am.
This week I was slightly distracted by Kingdom Death Monster suddenly showing up, both the first and second wave on the same day, it couldn't have been timed better. So I spent some time working on getting the minis for the Prologue part of the game done, along with some other stuff. Biggest downside is a lack of instructions along with other things for which I have no doubt pissed off quite a few people.
Anyway, thus far I've painted up the Twilight Knight:
I also painted up is a vanilla survivor (miss Topless Titties) and I've been working on the Messenger of Humanity for my brother, which is something of a honour, as I am not a great painter and we have access to a professional painter for a select few minis.
Today my brother and I will play through the Prologue setting and see just how hard of a game this is going to be. Well, if my solo-run of the prologue is anything to go by.. we're doomed.
+ + +
On the Heresy front, I've been eyeing the Ghostkeel a lot lately, so much so that I've decided to add one or two to my pre-Heresy army as stand-ins for the Castellax. I like to think that these are large EVA suits outfitted mainly with tools needed for I don't know, whatever it is that astronauts do out there, aside from staring at earth all day long. Big bonus is that it has something of an interior, so yeah, one of them will of course have the hatch open and pilot on display. On the pilot, while I spent some time hunting for female astronaut / kosmonaut heads, in the end I decided to go for a slightly more expensive option:
As for the rest, I like to imagine the gear coming from I don't know, a pseudo-Russian world or the like, so I can try painting words like LUN and MIR on panels in Cyrillic. I'll just need to dig deep into the bits box for replacement weaponry to represent the bolters and bolt cannon. But, it is something to look forward to again as a builder.
Seems like an interesting modelling project, I look forward to seeing how it develops, especially with a Ghostkeel involved.
I liked MM:FR a lot as well, though not to the Robot Jesus level that a lot of people online seem to feel that it was. I've been meaning to get back to it to play a little more before publishing, but I've become distracted by Destiny's re-release/expansion and haven't gotten back to it. It's making me keen for Just Cause 3 more than wanting to get back to MM at this point, really.
Man, I take a hiatus from Dakka and all sorts of P&M madness breaks out. MADNESS.
Y'know, it's both frustrating and very cool to see someone who has the mastery of fleshtones down pat - because I can't paint faces/bare skin to save my life. Kudos on the Twilight Knight, the hair and face are remarkably good.
Also, HERESY. The Castellax's...Castellaxi? Whatever, those dudes - look so much better than the standard GW Mechanicus stuff...how could you think of proxying filthy Tau as a replacement!
Nah, I get the idea though honestly, it's surprising to me that the only 'mechs' really, are driving by nearly dead skeletons (dreadnoughts) or can stomp buildings flat (titans). You'd think the IoM would have looked at the Tau stuff and wondered what they could do with it - or even come up with their own ideas for it pre-40k. I'm rambling.
First off, made a start on the Ghostkeel today, which will have a suitably non-Tau name somewhere down the line to represent its new purpose in life as a Castellax stand-in. which in turn will represent some form of heavy-duty EVA gear.
Biggest snag so far, the cockpit and the hatch aren't big enough for the mini I purchase for this project, but I think it'll work this way, one way or the other.
So far loving it, to me personally it's always good fun and rewarding to put together a GW plastic kit. The legs and feet can be a bit fiddly if you repose them, like I did, because I need it to fit onto a 60mm base instead of the 105 oval. Right now I'm digging around for something, anything that I can use as small thruster nozzles that will replace the stealth(?) bits all over the armour, like the four ones on the chest and the others located on the not-yet installed leg armour.
With the body out of the way I can look towards the chest plate, which will most likely receive a wee bit of green stuff to remove the Tau symbol and then the arms and shoulders, where the weapon systems will go. This thing will be equipped with a pair of bolters, a Mauler bolt cannon and the usual close combat things. I have been delving into my bits box for ideas and well, once the body is all dried up I'll start experimenting with how to best represent those weapons. I am itching to use the Taurox gatling cannon and / or Punisher gatling cannon in one way or the other, along with a Tau flamer as fusion torch turned into a makeshift close combat weapon.
But we'll see about that.
Frankenberry wrote: Y'know, it's both frustrating and very cool to see someone who has the mastery of fleshtones down pat - because I can't paint faces/bare skin to save my life. Kudos on the Twilight Knight, the hair and face are remarkably good.
Also, HERESY. The Castellax's...Castellaxi? Whatever, those dudes - look so much better than the standard GW Mechanicus stuff...how could you think of proxying filthy Tau as a replacement!
Nah, I get the idea though honestly, it's surprising to me that the only 'mechs' really, are driving by nearly dead skeletons (dreadnoughts) or can stomp buildings flat (titans). You'd think the IoM would have looked at the Tau stuff and wondered what they could do with it - or even come up with their own ideas for it pre-40k. I'm rambling.
Ha, my secret to painting flesh is Tallarn flesh, devlan mud wash, dwarf flesh layering, then the secret ingredient: a gakky iPad camera. I'm just fething around with the Kingdom Death models. The four starting survivors are all primed white then given a wash or two of Reikland flesh, which gives decent results in a short amount of time. I hate painting flesh tones as much as most painters I suppose. I'm glad a friend is painting up the Illuminated Lady (titties!) for us, I'd die before getting that right.
I get the heresy bit, you're not the first! But yeah, I just want something different, use a cool model and not have to resort to starting a new army for a change. So far, the Horus Heresy rules have not let me down yet, as I've managed to recycle a large portion of my Imperial Guard army along with integrating a pile of other miniatures and ranges I've been eyeing for some time now, but couldn't really find a proper use for, until now.
So the secret's out, liquid talent it is. *shakes fist* I should have known!
And jesus that Illuminated Lady model is astonishing - and I'm with you - there's no way I'd even try painting that much skin.
I'm also a fan of injecting other models that don't normally belong in my armies, notably my IG. I used http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/AFTERLIFE/Republic for some of my veterans (the Grenadiers specifically). I also used some from http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/AFTERLIFE/Unity-Council again, specifically the Marines and the Ajax suits. In my mind they look more like a futuristic army instead of the Khaki Rambos that the Cadians look like.
As for my marines, I'm thinking about replacing dreadnoughts in my homebrew with these:http://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=322. The weapon ranges support the various dreadnought weapons (their own takes on them obviously) and to me, looks more like an assault walker.
But back to your stuff, any more knights in the works?
Frankenberry wrote: So the secret's out, liquid talent it is. *shakes fist* I should have known!
And jesus that Illuminated Lady model is astonishing - and I'm with you - there's no way I'd even try painting that much skin.
I'm also a fan of injecting other models that don't normally belong in my armies, notably my IG. I used http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/AFTERLIFE/Republic for some of my veterans (the Grenadiers specifically). I also used some from http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/AFTERLIFE/Unity-Council again, specifically the Marines and the Ajax suits. In my mind they look more like a futuristic army instead of the Khaki Rambos that the Cadians look like.
As for my marines, I'm thinking about replacing dreadnoughts in my homebrew with these:http://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=322. The weapon ranges support the various dreadnought weapons (their own takes on them obviously) and to me, looks more like an assault walker.
But back to your stuff, any more knights in the works?
Aye, the first thing my friend told me was that he hated me for giving him minis with an awful lot of flesh on display. The other he'll be painting is the girl with the screaming goat armour, whom will no doubt end up as my brother's secondary character at some point, he has already started using the lion armour pin-up to represent his current load-out.
I like the Afterlife range, I got a pack of those minigun tractors from him ages ago, I ended up using the tractors for various Zone Mortalis projects, including two Fire Wasps and three C.A.T. objective markers. I may end up buying several packs of his A.R.C. Drones with basic rifles at some point to represent Tech Thralls from the Ad-Mech list, representing cheaply manufactured combat assets designed to swamp the enemy in metal bodies.
I'm still chipping away at my Knights, slowly wrapping up the Warden, then putting my complete focus on the second Paladin. Maybe some time next year all add in a Forge World suit, either the Acheron or that sexy new Atrapos, though that one may be tricky to field. Well, there's also that Dreamforge Leviathan that I still need to fix up and turn into a count-as Castigator. I dunno, it's a bit low priority right now.
However, right now I'm huffing plastic glue.
Right now the suit is at this stage, almost done, minus some armour pieces and nozzles:
The left arm has a built-in fusion cutter or the like, representing a close combat weapon or something. The right arm is empty as of now, but I've dug around and am torn between the following two options right now:
#1
Taurox cannon and a single shoulder-mounted minigun for the left shoulder.
#2
Ditch the cannon and shoulder-mounted minigun in favour of a Taurox gatling cannon, because gatling-good.
Man, it's a tough call for that right-weapon, they both fit so well - but I'm partial to the gatling cannon.
Also, it's like that figure was MEANT to be climbing out of that suit, nicely done. Was there anything you had to change around in order to get it to look that good?
Also, I'm not sure if you're already done with the feet, but have you considered maybe working up something akin more to the Sentinel style of appendage or are you ok with the Tau-type of foot?
The original idea was for the lower hatch to also be open and have her lean out through that, but alas, it didn't quite work out as initially intended, so I had to either improvise or save the mini for something else. I like this solution a lot, only downside is that with the suit head in place the hatch can't open all the way like GW did with their display model. But yeah, it's a perfect match. Her left hand nicely goes onto the chest piece and her left feet neatly rests on the edge, almost as if GW was looking at this bootleg..
As for the feet, I did dig around and searched for something other than the hoofed feet, but I didn't have anything else, so I just went with it. In the meantime I have added most of the armoured panels to it, with exception of the chest and pauldron pieces, those will need some greenstuffing first.
Weaponry, you have chosen wisely! I decided to go with the shoulder-mounted minigun and the Taurox gatlings for the right arm after talking to my bestie about it. I decide to stick with my beloved "rule of cool" over the usual obligatory WYSIWYG, I'm a collector and modeller first, gamer second at this stage.
Now with more armour and more whirr to your dakka. I'm going to greenstuff the gaps in between the feet armour. It is supposed to be part of the model, but I'm not liking it myself.
Pilot leaning on the chest hatch and whatnot, the addition of the chest plate should make the pose a bit more natural and solid looking. Shoulder-mounted minigun is from Anvil Industries by the way.
I've added in a single cable to connect the arm to the frame, I've thought about adding in a Zinge Industries flexible ammo feed as well, but I'm not sure where it should go into frame-wise, plus I fear it may make the model look excessively busy.
Next up.. greenstuffing stuff, always fun, I'm rusty as hell with that stuff.
As for the ammo feed idea, I like it, but I think you're right - where to put it where it doesn't look cluttered. I know I'd have to put in a ammo box at that point too, so I think what you have is fine - even the side portion of the minigun arm as that raised portion of plastic with rivets on it looks like where spent casings would be ejected. So there's at least SOME sort of detail to it.
As for the greenstuff, I don't envy you, I have a hell of a time with it myself. Are you going to try and get rid of most of the 'Tau-ish' detail across the whole thing or just looking to cover a specific area?
Some WIP stuff, had today off, so I spent most of it working on the Ghostkeel and its pilot, whom are both still far from done, but I like where this is going so far:
I'm at the very least going to darken up the lighter patches of uniform on the pilot, right now I'm getting too much of an Iron Man vibe, something I'd rather not have. After that, need to decide on how to best paint up the fusion cutter, Tau symbol discs, the small radar dish on the shoulder and other little bits and bobs. So far though, I like this kit lots, I may have to get a second one somewhere down the road.
Then there's these three:
A squadron of fast moving Exterminators / Annihilators that a friend did the hulls for, saving me precious sanity on basecoating them. With that out of the way I can focus on the tracks and other gubbins, along with the turrets. Banner on the lead tank is from the Tempestus Scions kit, which now belongs to the Minervan Scions or something equally fancy and whatnot. These will be a future fast attack choice for my army.
They lose access to sponsons, but in return can outflank, become fast for a turn and have access to upgrades normally reserved for the Legiones Astartes or Adeptus Mechanicum, including the Omnissiah-sent armoured ceramite to deny melta weapons their extra D6, which is most welcome against my regular Tau opponent.
Still not happy with how the pilot looks, but I'll revise her when inspiration strikes. Also still need to think of something for the Tau symbol discs, but other than that, I am pleased with the progress thus far.
Left the pilot out for now, still deciding on how to best do her. I did finally slap on the decals, a mix of older GW ones alongside those from the failure that is DUST. The US decals to be precise. I decided to keep it simple and to the point, I want to preserve as much of the cleanliness of the model as possible. But, my "I'm so lonely!" tendencies shine through yet again, as I couldn't resist adding a pin-up decal to the suit as a minor way of making it stand out from the others in the future. That's right, there will be more of these. I had a blast working on this one, so much so that I've already reserved another over at my FLGS. I'm seriously tempted to try and make the second one in a kneeling pose, or failing that, in a more dynamic pose using the lessons learned from this one.
It is indeed, dunno if I mentioned that before, but once upon a time I ordered a pack of five minigun tractors from them, but ended up turning the tractor units into C.A.T.s and Fire Wasps for Zone Mortalis, leaving me with four miniguns (the fifth was miscast, c'est la vie), but as with a lot of bits, you'll find a use for it..
Still struggling with the pilot, so instead I sat down and had a bit of a rummage through my bitsbox today and pieced together the following for my next Ghostkeel:
I didn't have any more Taurox turrets lying about and I'm not that fond of trying my luck on-line in search of bits, it's never a cheap thing, so instead I decided to go with a healthy dose of "fornicate it!" and instead just forget about an uniform look for the suits weapon-wise.
Another count-as Mauler bolt cannon, this time with an ammo feed and another cable for I don't know, hydraulics? The ammo drum will nicely go onto the back of the suit, I already got that all figured out for a change.
Maybe I can dig out one of those Imperial Guard vehicle sprue fuel drums, the one with the carrying straps on it and attach that to the rear of my current suit. Hrm, must investigate.
In this case I felt that a barrel would work better than a box, given the miniature. While waiting for Halloween to arrive I decided to see if I could whip up something for my first suit as well:
I still had a dual feed flexible belt left over, so I figured, why not?
I still need to touch up both the belt and the drum here and there, but overall it adds something extra to the suit while at the same time shutting up the people wondering how it could fire.
It;'s looking good. The feed and ammo barrel start to shift the profile silhouette a little more as well, which is good for those friendly-fire incidents!
It was a good read and you're upfront about what you don't like, without being whiny about it like some of the reviewers. I also agree on some points, such as the tedious mine clearing side quest and the balloon mechanic, which feels deliberately drawn out and slow with you having to ride it up each and every time..
But, I still found it enjoyable, but after completing it, feel little desire to pick it up and play it some more at this point, I got most of the unlocks and side-quests done, aside from the annoying races. I think I can safely say, you're not missing out on much by picking it up again at a later point.
Well, I got another Ghostkeel, I'll take WIP pictures of it when I can later this week.
There was also the Halloween event on Saturday, three out of four showed up, the no-show didn't even bother to chime in that he couldn't make it, though the others have assured me that this was bound to happen, again. No real loss I guess, seeing as he was more anxious to play regular 40k instead of the scenario. But, the event worked well enough, though not having as many players meant that the zombies were a bit more challenging to get rid of, the play test group was six strong and by sticking together they managed to keep things going well enough that while they didn't steam roll the undead, they did not have too much trouble keeping them at bay long enough to not get overwhelmed.
Also, they day after, on Sunday we had a monster session of Kingdom Death lasting about 8 or so hours, during which we had quite a bit of progress. So much so that two of the players have pretty much earned the right to get a custom mini of their very own, mainly because they locked down their equipment choices and weapon proficiencies for the time being. I mean, no use in getting people custom mini's when they keep changing their gear all the time.
First up we got Miller (if you're expecting fluffy or coherently named characters, hahaha, nope!), wearing Screaming Goat armour and having a pair of axes that he can dual-wield due to a lucky draw of the cards.
Then we've got Kirimaru, our sole ranged guy who also carries around a harp to affect any mood cards that may be in play. I really like how this one turned out, as he's 100% WYSIWYG. I may just try and see if I can pull a bit of brass wire across both ends of the bow, but failing that, he keeps his bow strings in the pouch strapped to his side.
And here's the two of them side by side:
I also stuck together the Phoenix, which is a bitch to build without instructions. Thankfully there's an illustrated guide or two out there on-line telling you where all those tiny little hands are supposed to go on the wings. Also, that moustache, feth that thing. I am positive that's going to break sooner or later due to poor handling or general play.
But yeah, with that thing finally stuck together we can finally hunt it, meaning we'll soon have a new building in our settlement and thus, new armour! I've already told the others, seeing as I did both their mini's and the Phoenix, I would very much like to have dibs on the first set of Phoenix armour, as right now I'm still strutting around in the most basic of armours one can craft. Magical sword or not, when they hit me, they hit me good. So, once when we get around to it, this is what I'll be after:
Specifically the Hulkbuster. With a bit of kitbashing, it'd make for one hell of a Mech, and they're quite inexpensive as well. (And yes, I have one on my desk after seeing them the other day!)
Frankenberry wrote:I am LOVING the ammo barrel and feed, really adds a lot of character to the Ghostkeel - I demand MOAR.
I haven't forgotten, I just had a busy week after halfway through our depot had a fire, meaning the rest of the week was a chaos unlike anything I've ever seen. Thus, didn't have much time to pick up the brush just yet. So far though, I've only managed to get the first layer of grey onto the armour.
When I find the time I'll do another layer, redo the black parts, wash the panel lines black, redo the grey where I was sloppy and continue onwards from there.
I've also been slaving away at Kingdom Death stuff, which I hope to get done two weeks from now. Still horrendously WIP, but slowly getting there, Miller:
Azazelx wrote:Hey Brook - have you seen these?
Spoiler:
Specifically the Hulkbuster. With a bit of kitbashing, it'd make for one hell of a Mech, and they're quite inexpensive as well. (And yes, I have one on my desk after seeing them the other day!)
Ooh, I'll have to do a size comparison with a Devastator Centurion suit, because I got three of those right now as my go-to count-as Myrmidon Destructors with conversion beamer stuff.
Just did a quick search, they're €15 around here, which isn't bad at all for pre-paints that actually look of a good quality for a change. I wonder if it'll fit onto a 40mm or 50mm base?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh right, there's also Betrayal at Calth coming out next week, I'll be picking up one of those as well, because one can never juggle too many projects at once, am I right?
Either Imperial Fists or Ultramarines are the main choices and I really like the Legion rules of the Imperial Fists (I mean, who doesn't like BS5 bolters and re-rolls in challenges?), though seeing as I can't paint yellow even if my life depended on it..
He's a decent size. I don't have any built Centurions, but hopefully this will help. Much more Thanatar/Mecha than Centurion.
I'd be buying 4x Calth this week, except my usual go-to place in the US is playing a little bit of sillybuggers, and feth paying twice the USD$ price here in Aust. You could always do the Imperial Fists in a different scheme as either Crimson Fists or Templar Fists sub-chapters of the IF legion?
Maybe if I'm going full Mechanicum once my red book finally arrives I'll use it as a Thanatar or the like, it has enough room for plasma mortar somewhere.
I'm going with one box for now, moderation and a budget and the last month of the year looming and all that.
Chances are I'll stick it all together first and slap on paint a decade from now anyway, as much as I like the Legiones Astartes army list, it's a low priority compared to the Solar Auxilia and Questoris Knights.
I've been occupied with work and yeah, Fallout 4 for quite a bit. But after getting some new paint yesterday I decided to paint up an Ultramarine (not shown in great detail, because man I suck at highlighting) and I also powered through the Knight Warden, which is now done, aside from the carapace-mounted rocket launcher.
So yeah, crappy picture, I blame the bad weather for the poor lighting and totes not my lack of photography skills, but the family is slowly coming together.
From left to right: Hammer of Wrath, Vae Victis and the Eternal Warrior.
Next up, Void Reaper, the second Paladin, which I hope to get done next weekend when I've got time off.
Seeing as I'm a person of pure evil and such vile repute I decided that a lump of coal would be too good for me (I mean, I'd just stick it in the furnace where once a human heart used to beat), so instead I decided to special hobby punishment and made a small order with Raging Heroes, making use of their Black Cyber Discount to get a Jailbirds mecha and Nepharya (in metal).
As previous experiences have taught me, French companies make lovely miniatures, they're just a bitch to stick together.
So, after an evening and part of a morning spent swearing, here's the tech priest, in all her annoying to assemble glory:
I decided to stick her onto a 50mm base for added stability and well, you can hardly expect her to go onto the 28mm base that came with her. She'll be a future HQ for my allied / future main Mechanicum force, when I get around to building that Ulator. To explain away her size and height I'll just say she's got the Abeyant upgrade as well.
As for the mecha, it'll need a really, really thorough cleaning first. I mean, gak, those parts are greasy. I have never had resin parts that greasy before, I hope that the usual rinse and cleaning with washing detergent will do the trick! After that, a lot of moldline removal and the like, because quite a few parts appear to have been spawned by a misaligned mold, or have moldlines in the most annoying of places. The feet in particular appear to have detail eaten away by excess gates / flash.
Also not looking forward to sticking it together, it's going to require a fair bit of pinning, as the connection points are quite small and fragile looking. As for what to use it as, dunno yet, maybe I'll snatch up another two when they're on sale again and use them as Myrmidon Destructors or the like.
On the bright side, the models do look nice, so I got that going for me I suppose.
It did indeed involve a lot of pinning and cleaning, it still feels somewhat odd to the touch, so I hope it takes a coat of primer or else I'll have to bin it, because I've got no idea what else I could use to clean it.
Left arm is still not glued in place, just dangling there by its pin, as I need to look into something of a replacement for the feth-ugly missile launcher block it has now. I wonder if I've still got a Sentinel rough terrain mod lying about somewhere..
I decided to replace both arms with something a bit more fitting for what I had in mind for the suit to begin with, turning it onto a proper mining rig pressed into service as emergency can-opener.
Head of the model is from Statuesque Miniatures, the weapon mounts are from the Centurion kit, the melta barrel and bit of debris the suit is standing one are from the Calth Contemptor.
However, as it is, the kit is a pain in the arse to clean and assemble, plus not exactly priced well enough to compete with other stuff as a valid option for my Mechanicum army (hell, even a box of three Centurions is cheaper than two of these!), so it'll be just that, a one-off model for special events and scenarios.
evildrcheese wrote:Cool stuff. Any idea of a paint scheme for the mecha priestess thing?
I'm looking into that, but red robes for sure, green eye lenses, boring old boltgun metal for the tentacles of love and the mechadendrites, probably gold for the priest itself, a nice warm colour to go with the robes and contrast with the boltgun metal. But we'll see I suppose.
Azazelx wrote:Nice work, Brook. I can;t believe that they sent out that particular figure with a 50mm base, either.
Yeah, 60mm would've been way better imho, especially the way the render is posed, not something you can pull off on a 50mm base.
If you are having troubles getting the resin clean, generally warm (not hot, but pretty toasty) water with dishwashing detergent should do the trick. The mold release is most likely an aerosolized form of vaseline, so a reasonably gentle degreaser and some warmth to thin the vaseline a bit more will do the trick. I use Simple Green in my ultrasonic cleaner (which gets warm) but I don't know if you can get that across the pond.
The Statuesque heads look fantastic too! Great choice on the new arms as well.
I got me a set of Jailbird infantry last week and I tried the cleaning shebang again, with hotter water this time around and a wee bit of detergent, but wow, after giving it a long soak and a thorough scrub with an old toothbrush under a running tap it´s still awfully greasy to the touch. Really makes me wonder what company they asked to do their resins, but this isn't something I like to work with.
An ultrasonic cleaner is something I'll look into next year for sure, they aren't that expensive and seeing as I'll be planning on buying more resin from FW next year, it may be a better investment, both for the overall quality of the kits and my own sanity.
Anyway, did some fething about with resin and plastic today, here's the result:
A Jailbird from the command set, with a sawn-off shotgun and chainsaw from the Wargames Factory survivor boxed set. The fist clutching the chainsaw is from a Kingdom Death sprue, I don't know which one, CBA to check in all honesty, but all in all those hands are a good match for 28mm heroic scale miniatures.
I guess this is another miniature for a future zombie scenario I suppose, or I could press it into service as the veteran sergeant for my Deathworld veterans, replacing Harker when the points are a bit leaner. The original idea was to make a dismounted version of my Jailbird mecha pilot, but after fiddling around for a bit, I like this arrangement better, plus this is about the only head in the set that I genuinely like and isn't screaming "WOOK AT ME, I AM A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE ONE OF A KIND BUTTERFLY LOLLOLLOL" or something.
Looks very nice! You might rotate the shotgun bit some, to have the barrel line up with the bit in her hand more. The webbing of her hand should be nearly touching the hammer/release there at the back of the barrel.
And Wehrkind, yeah, the more I looked at the boomstick the more it started to grate on me, so I decided to replace the sawn-off with a spare laspistol I had left over from a FW upgrade pack or something. It'll receive a black wash for sure, it's a bit too bright green for my tastes, but other than that, I am liking where this is going. Now if I'm brave enough I'll also add something to the torn top and take a stab at something akin to a tribal tat on her left arm.
She's also gotten a name, courtesy of the Dark Heresy name charts, two D100 throws later we've got.. Fatal Jaine.
Merry Christmas to all, nothing much here, though I did get Fury Road on bluray and a rather miscast and ill-fitting miniature that will no doubt be a joy to put together:
Ah, the French. They make lovely miniatures, the execution can be a bit lacking though..
Miss von Gaut will become a future Imperial noble of some sort. But we'll see about that, first things first, I've got four days off, so I'm going to man up and see about wrapping up that zombie apocalypse survivor miniature, sans base, I'll have to get stuff for that some time next year.
May as well post this here as well, a rough plan of what lies in store for me hobby-wise 2016. At the end of 2016 we shall point and laugh at how much of this hasn't been done in the end due to reasons, which will mostly be me being a lazy arse or being distracted by other things yet again.
- Get a Solar Auxilia army of 2500 pts ready for a game in April this year, as I'll be going to the UK for the first time in.. quite a few years now to pay a visit to a friend and his wife, which of course means that one must bring an army along for an obligatory fight to the death. Most of the models for this army are already present, but still need to be painted and based, so it's going to be a hard few months to get it all done. I'll also need to track down a Stormlord for the list, not to mention convert it to give it its Heresy-era armaments, because where we are going we don't want no weedy stubbers.
- Wrap up 2500 pts of Imperial Knights with a small allied contingent of Mechanicum for completion sake and for when my regular Tau opponent wants to go big-game hunting again.
- Build a 1000 pts Solar Auxilia force for Zone Mortalis missions. While I have most of the units already in my possession, the general idea is to also add in units that normally wouldn't see as much play, like the power axe armed Veletaris squad, they make for a great melee unit there.
- Get started on an allied force of Imperial Fists (Heresy-era of course) of around 750 - 1000 pts, in proper yellow and all that for a few games against the Iron Warriors of a fellow local Heresy player, so probably Zone Mortalis themed as well.
- If I'm feeling really brave or stupid, I may look at something along the lines of either a Warhound or Ordinatus Ulator.
So, for the list I'm working on my order just came in, courtesy of Raging Heroes:
One metal Drakenfeld who will become a Strategos, minus the stupid gun and silly helmet:
One box of..
Three boxes of..
A resin nuncio vox operator:
And one metal Tercio Vexilla bearer:
All this, minus the Strategos, combined will become a single Lasrifle Section of twenty models, complete with vox and banner. The metal head of the Strategos will go to the Troop Master of this squad, plus the Vexilla bearer will also get a nice padded helmet to fit in with the rest of the girls.
These ladies will become the Voidborn Hoplites, to explain away their freakish thin and tall builds when compared to the other miniatures in my army. These ladies may or may not also be getting a Dracosan armoured transport, if the order ever gets there in time. If not, they'll be slogging it on foot with the Tactical Command Squad.
Mistakes have been made, as in, while the minis look nice and are certainly crisp (if still fething greasy after cleaning them TWICE, seriously, are these supposed to be suppositories?), they are anything but perfect for the creation of proper squads or units. If there's one thing these sets miss it is enough sets of regular arms holding a rifle or aiming with it, instead we're getting way too many special-pose parts. The running poses are also quite.. active. It's a good thing I got the two specialists to keep me from using more running legs, but then again.. one of them is running, in an awkward direction no less.
So yeah, my own stupid fething fault, mistakes have been made, keep calm and carry on I suppose. That's six down, fourteen more to go, which will be quite challenging as these aren't exactly conversion friendly due to their greasy nature and a severe lack of normal rifle-toting arms!
Yea, I got some wereshewolves and was surprised at the resin. It definitely has a greasy, almost waxy feel to it. It also has a ton of tiny bubbles all through it. Do yours have that? Do they disappear with priming? I am trying to figure out if that is a complaint I should include when I finally email RH about it.
Wehrkind wrote: Hmmm no bubbles huh? Well... time to start drafting that email. Thanks guys.
For what you pay for these models, having flawless casts is the least you can expect from them in my opinion.
Ustrello wrote: Also subbed, you don't see an all female solar ax. army that often
There are some dudes in there, somewhere.
I've got a squad of Forge World flamers and a Veletaris Storm Section, these represent the "old guard" of the army, the original Saturnyne veterans who've been around since before the Crusade kicked off and follow the lady into anything, no matter how deadly. The rest of the army is more or less recruited and taken in over time, from worlds like Minerva and from the ranks of the fleet itself. There will be at least one more Forge World addition before the year is over, a squad of power axe toting troops, because I really need me some can openers for the next Zone Mortalis game!
But other than them, I suppose it's not so much a sausage fest as with most armies.
Though I am getting to the point where I'm slowly reaching the maximum amount of purchases for this army for some time to come. On the list right now is another Dracosan, a commander for that vehicle and a Stormlord, both of which I'll be needing for my game in April this year.
Unless I wind up revising the list yet again! I keep on tweaking it more and more as I look at it. Nothing too major any more, just minor tweaks in an already quite bare bones list.
Looks like a project that'll really shine when they're done. Great models, though cleaning them seems a horrifying prospect.
I finally got the last of my KS1 in a few days ago. Now I need to open the whole lot up and do a QA check to see if anything is missing, miscast, etc. Not something I'm looking forward to...
Azazelx wrote: Looks like a project that'll really shine when they're done. Great models, though cleaning them seems a horrifying prospect.
I finally got the last of my KS1 in a few days ago. Now I need to open the whole lot up and do a QA check to see if anything is missing, miscast, etc. Not something I'm looking forward to...
If I were you I'd bite the bullet and get it over with, replacement of faulty items may be a hassle on its own, seeing as we're part of that infamous group of commenters of the original KS thread.
All I know is, somewhere down the line, probably post-April when the trip is over and done with, I'll be looking into getting an ultrasonic cleaner or the like.
BrookM wrote: If I were you I'd bite the bullet and get it over with, replacement of faulty items may be a hassle on its own, seeing as we're part of that infamous group of commenters of the original KS thread.
All I know is, somewhere down the line, probably post-April when the trip is over and done with, I'll be looking into getting an ultrasonic cleaner or the like.
Nah, they've been pretty good lately. I've had semi-regular contact with them sorting out my missing freebies, so it's all good there, I believe.
I've got an ultrasonic cleaner, but I'm a bit hesitant to throw resin or trollcast models into it without someone else having been the guinea pig.
BrookM wrote: If I were you I'd bite the bullet and get it over with, replacement of faulty items may be a hassle on its own, seeing as we're part of that infamous group of commenters of the original KS thread.
All I know is, somewhere down the line, probably post-April when the trip is over and done with, I'll be looking into getting an ultrasonic cleaner or the like.
Nah, they've been pretty good lately. I've had semi-regular contact with them sorting out my missing freebies, so it's all good there, I believe.
I've got an ultrasonic cleaner, but I'm a bit hesitant to throw resin or trollcast models into it without someone else having been the guinea pig.
Well, it's a nice enough material, though it seems covered in super-astroglide. I've got no idea if it'll be fine or do badly in an Ultrasonic, though.
When I first got my US Cleaner, I put some older, lead-based models in there and found to my horror that they started to disintegrate from the vibrations. Newer pewter/tin models, and even plastic are fine (as long as the plastic isn't heated too much). But with that first find in mind, I'm hesitant to try resin or trollcast models.
Well, If I had resin models to strip, I'd drop one of those forge world offcuts that looks like a Jersey Barrier in and try it, but I've got nothing similar for trollcast to use as a test object.
I have never had problems with resin or Trollcast in my US using Simple Green or water. Then again, I never had problem with lead either, so that's a little worrisome.
How hot does your US get? Mine is warm enough to create condensation on the lid from evaporated fluid, but not warm enough to prompt resin to get flexible etc.
I decided to quit being a little bitch and power through this fething squad in one go, because like feth am I going to end every day with enough rage to kill toddlers and those weak of heart with one of my death glares. Only thing the ghouls are missing right now is extra kit around their waists to bulk them out a bit (and hide their Liefeld Syndrome spines), like a much-needed bayonet, but I'll probably add that when I've primed them and I can more reliably stick gak to their bodies without having to hold it into place for ten minutes. Due to the limited amount of part variety there are some.. odd ducklings in the bunch. Or should I say, the Suicide Girl Hopefuls trying too hard in between the more normal alt models we're used to? Or well, at least I am anyway.
Enough waffling, here we go.
The Troop Leader, nuncio-vox operator and troop vexilla bearer. The two specialists are more or less straight out of the blister, with a headswap for the vexilla bearer. Sadly the nuncio-vox operator came with head attached and quite a bit of hair as well, so she's the only one in the section with a bare head. No worries though, the Troop Leader, straight from the troops boxed set with a spare head from another Raging Heroes metal and armoured plates from Victoria Miniatures is sure to steal any unwanted attention away from her. I very much like to think that the Troop Leader had the same padded crash helmet as the rest of her section until she saw Astartes sergeants for the first time, with their impressive helmet crests. My guess is she got jealous or something and wanted one as well, excellent for being recognizable by her troops in the thick of the fight. She also doesn't need to worry about her troops saluting her in the field, with a helmet like that it's quite obvious who's in charge of the unit. Oh right and I'll be adding something of an antenna to the nuncio-vox somewhere down the line of course, the little dish that came with it was too greasy to glue onto the top of that unsupported, plus it would snap off in less than ten seconds after looking at it.
Next up we got runners. I hope you like girls with long legs and crooked backs, because that's going to be something of a theme with this unit. Not much to say about these other than.. we could've done with less of these extremely posed running legs. One of them is holding onto a landmine / demolition charge, which I'll just explain away as being a breaching charge or the like.
More runners, two of whom are clutching grenades, perhaps opting to deliver them by hand instead of throwing them? The middle one will be cleaned up later this weekend, I'm painfully aware of the dried super glue. Also, the one on the right is stumbling or something?
Another runner, the last one, I swear! Plus, a pair of girls who remembered how to use their grenades. I think..
A pair of girls blazing away and one who is.. not sure what the middle one is doing, take a pick:
-"Take my hand, I need you for the next part of the power ballad!"
- "Come get some then if you think you're fething hard enough!"
- "Don't come any closer or I will have to exercise my right to use deadly force!"
Another lass with a demolition charge, one holding her gun at the ready, while the latter is giving a clear signal here: NO. JUST NO.
Finally.. A rather concerned looking trooper looking on as her comrade is trying to pull the pin from a grenade with her soon to be ruined teeth. I'm not sure if that was the intention of that grenade arm, but I decided to go with it, I rather like it actually.
So, there we have it, another unit built. All that's left for them now is for their Dracosan to show up, because where we are going, we'll be driving in style.
Frankenberry wrote:I'm not sure why, but I absolutely love that nuncio operator. It's one of the couple 'moving' figures you've shown that somehow looks like it should.
The quality of those casts is just jaw-dropping - makes me wish I had the stones to start another Not-Guard-But-Definitely-Guard army.
I'm also surprised how volkite-ish the rifles look.
The quality is indeed really, really good. It's just a bit on the brittle side and really greasy, no matter how many times you clean it. The vox operator in particular is resin and dances around on one foot, I am not taking bets on how long it's going to take for her to break.
Personally I'm not a super big fan of their weapon designs, especially the heavy weapons, they look awfully poorly designed and useless. The rifles are generic enough to be passed off as laser rifles though. Plus.. 30k, everything looked more sci-fi back then.
Januine wrote:some tidy figs there. liking them. Dracosan is defintely the way to go!!! love that model. nice job man
Many thanks! I'm still waiting on when the Dracosan is going to arrive, but in anticipation of it, I've already decided to order the future commander mini for it:
evildrcheese wrote:Very nice indeed. I must say I actually prefer the standing poses to running poses...
EDC
Same here, there are just too many running legs in those boxed sets, along with a severe lack of regular arms holding a rifle in both hands. As striking as they look, these sets are not exactly regiment-building friendly kits.
In other news, work is slowly progressing on the Lasrifle section, nothing noteworthy to show off yet. I've also ordered, alongside the tank commander shown above, this lady:
She may either become a future addition to the tactical command squad as another Strategos orrrr with some sawing and hacking, the commander of the Stormlord / Baneblade (if I can be arsed to magnetize it that is) I may be picking up this Sunday for my list. Yet another option is, especially with the cybernetic eye implant, to turn her into another Imperial noble for my Questoris Knights, who aside from the youngest, all have a cybernetic eye of some sort as a means of communing with their suit of armour.
Wait, what?
I was told my army was too noble bright or something, so to grimdark things up a bit these nobles hook up through the eye socket and not a few dozen plugs in the back of the head.
Love the idea of using Raging Heroes. Unfortunately this may have cemented my decision to not buy any of them myself. The awkward poses and anatomy were my biggest concerns during the KS, and now I see that I was right to worry. The sculptor seems to enjoy making comic book-y poses but does not have the chops to pull them off (or maybe that's exactly what he does, in that Liefieldian way...) I was holding a box of Jailbird troopers in my hand the other week but decided to hold off. Either way, really looking forward to seeing what you can do with them!
You can't see it in the shots I put up, but all the girls from the troop boxed sets have crooked backs like they're posing on a bike or fast car or are from a Rob Liefeld comic..
My boxed set of Jailbirds doesn't seem to have it as bad as the KST's though.
Okay, so for another thread ("A Tale of Thirty-Three Gamers", seriously subscribe to it, loads of great stuff in there with the occasional thing from me! ) I pledged that I would paint a lot of minis this month. Sadly, due to an increased workload and me being a big old girly-man, not a lot of that has happened. I did get my Voidborn Hoplites primed and roughly blockpainted, but stumbled on how to best proceed with the smaller details like the belts, rifles and whatnot, so I decided to use another model as a test piece to see how it would all turn out, shown below:
Strategos Alicia Beauchamp, adopted daughter of the Rogue Trader, a soon to (hopefully) be reliable source of orbital strikes and handy ballistic skill buffs thanks to her Cognis-signum. More or less done, aside from the base and some minor details that require tidying up. An odd model for sure, from the Raging Heroes' KST range. Comes with both a fur-trimmed cloak and something akin to a fur-trimmed scarf or the like? Not too sure in all honesty. However, she looks suitably commanding enough for the command section.
I've also decided to do a "slight" rewrite of the list, seeing as I've got a feeling my Dracosan will not arrive in time for me to get it together and painted for April, so instead of potentially having a squad slog around on foot, I've decided to put the knife in and do the following: drop the second Lasrifle Section, their Dracosan dedicated transport, the attached Auxilia flamer section and one of the medics, giving me a whopping 420 pts to play around with.
And play I shall, instead I'll take along a pair of Leman Russ Exterminators (they're both fast for one turn and they can outflank, yes!) and an Enginseer Auxilia with 3 servo arm equipped servitors, who will hitch a ride in the Stormlord and keep it in one piece throughout the game, because I really need those Battlesmith rolls on a 2+!
Anyway, tomorrow I'm hoping to at the very least get some of my Voidborn Hoplites done, in particular the command section.
And another test model (almost) done, the Troop Master this time around:
Still need to work on the yellow and add in a few black slashes, as is something of a requirement on at least one chainsword in your army. Quite happy with how she turned out so far, the rest of the squad will more or less be the same as her, minus the sniper-baiting helmet and extra golden bling on the armour.
In other news though, need to rework the army list even more, after I heard yesterday that the Baneblade kit is no longer available to stores and is now a direct only item, so alas, I'll have to drop the Stormlord, as 20% off at the store is something that isn't matched elsewhere without twisting my arm for shipping.
No relation to Bianca? She looks good, and if she's a hero it can still count. (Hell, that's what I did!) Let me know and I'll add her in as your monthly tally.
Speaking of which, I have a wonder about something; I've recently gotten some of the Stormcast Eternals (I know, totally on topic with what you've got going, right?)and as the lore says they're all heroes reborn via Sigmar yadda yadda yadda, I've thought - that would include some of the female persuasion surely?
My question is, how would you go about representing this? I've considered different heads, entirely different models (although I can't seem to find a decently plate-armored, mass-produced female sculpt that fits in line with the Stomcast), or some other angle I haven't considered?
I read somewhere on Dakka that within the fluf it essentially says that the Eternals contain warriors of both genders as well as Elves (Aelfar?) Dwarves and other races. I get the feeling that the armour is supposed to almost be like animated suits with the souls inside, so not armour as we'd recognise it. Hence no characters with their helmets off, but faces on the armour itself.
Azazelx wrote:No relation to Bianca? She looks good, and if she's a hero it can still count. (Hell, that's what I did!) Let me know and I'll add her in as your monthly tally.
I'll be making a more formal post of the tally once I've got a few more models done. I'd rather have a sizeable update instead of having it come in by the drips and drops.
Frankenberry wrote:Man, that Troop Master model is awesome.
Speaking of which, I have a wonder about something; I've recently gotten some of the Stormcast Eternals (I know, totally on topic with what you've got going, right?)and as the lore says they're all heroes reborn via Sigmar yadda yadda yadda, I've thought - that would include some of the female persuasion surely?
My question is, how would you go about representing this? I've considered different heads, entirely different models (although I can't seem to find a decently plate-armored, mass-produced female sculpt that fits in line with the Stomcast), or some other angle I haven't considered?
If I remember correctly the fluff already addressed this and chooses to simply state that what's inside the armour could be anything, as long as it was suitably heroic and brave in their previous life. I can't remember the exact source, but not every one of the Stormcast are male, or even human, as there were also Dwarves and even Orcs who were chosen for this.
If wanting to go for a more total conversion, dunno in all honesty. The models have quite male physique styled armour that shows off those pecs. You could always do a headswap, or if brave enough, do a wee bit of resculpting on the torso, just don't go all 80's Italian Shemale with a thirst for Vengeance on it.
evildrcheese wrote:Damn that Troop Master is cool looking.
As for, "Gee BrookM, do you ever do anything aside from posting <REDACTED> in the DCM forums these days?"
I got a bit annoyed with those Raging Heroes models, so I decided to "reward" myself with a few tanks instead. Mind, I didn't get any new ones, but instead I decided it was high time to get them done, especially now that they're needed in April!
Both Executioners, aside from sealing in the decals, are done now. So that's one Assault Squadron ready for war. The Exterminator still needs some things done (searchlight, vision blocks and cable), but other than that, almost there. This is the third vehicle of the Strike Squadron, so hopefully tomorrow.. one down, two more to go!
After that, ugh, back to those Raging Heroes models for sure. Just nineteen more to go. Nineteen.
In between working on my Solar Auxilia tanks, organizing foam trays for the trip and looking into a good bag to carry it all in, I've also decided to stick together a pile of Jailbird bits I had been looking at for a while now, turning it into a little kitbash with the addition of some other parts for the sake of coolness and making it look more real? Dunno. Flexible belt is from Zinge Industries, the head is from Statuesque Miniatures and the backpack is a few thin strips of plasticard for the ALICE frame, along with a pair of backpacks from the Warlord WWII US Infantry and the Wargames Factory survivor sprue.
Annoyingly enough, after thoroughly scrubbing and cleaning the resin bits, first in lukewarm water with a drop of detergent, then hot water with a drop of it, the parts are STILL GREASY.
Also, the girl is more leg than anything else. Due to a severe case of legs akimbo she's set on a 32mm base, because regular bases are too small for her.
As a final touch I may try and see about creating something of a strap to go over her shoulder, keeping the weapon better secured, as unlike my Harker wannabe, she's not as beefy.
Not dead yet, just been very busy with work and being quite sick.
Anyway, my Victoria Lamb order came in last week, a squad of female Tannenberg with plasma rifles and a pair of drummer girls. Only ordered one of those, but as they say, score! One of the girls will become the standard bearer for the command squad, the other may well become the first model of a not-Mordian themed Lasrifle section, where she'll act as the section banner bearer.
The girls were all, except for one, built as is, the plasma rifles counting as a variant of the volkite charger. Two girls also got armoured torsos instead of the regular dress uniform ones, these will go into the command squad somewhere down the line.
A quick crappy photo as proof of life.
Also on my desk are three unpainted Kataphron battle servitors, a long overdue Christmas present that had at long last reached me. I'll be using these as Mechanicum Myrmidon Destructors, seeing as I'm not that fond of the actual models, plus they don't come with a unified loadout, making WYSIWYG a bit of a hassle with some people. But that's for another day and another opponent, though I am tempted to use them in a Zone Mortalis setting now.
With four weeks and five days to go, I'm hoping to feel a whole lot better this Sunday and get back to work, as I still need to finish..
- 2x Leman Russ Exterminator
- 1x Leman Russ Vanilla
- 3x Tactical Command Squad models (two veterans and the drummer)
- 1x Quad mortar (artillery piece + 2x crew)
- 19x Lasrifle Section
- 1x Tank Commander (magnetized model for Leman Russ vanilla)
Okay, time for another update, it's been too long, shame!
First off, nearly done with these three. Just need to do the decals on two of them and pick up a new bottle of Vallejo something light blue when I get the chance in a week or two. Also need to wrap up the tank commander and banner for the Vanquisher. With them done, I'll only have four more models to work on:
- Dracosan armoured transport
- Malcador Infernus
- Malcador with battlecannon
And a tank commander for the Malcador vanilla:
Spoiler:
Yeah, I with my birthday coming up I decided to spend in advance and ended up revising the list yet again, to include my sudden fetish for the Malcador hull:
ONSLAUGHT FORCE ORGANISATION CHART - 2500 pts
HQ Lord Marshal - Archeotech pistol, master-crafted Paragon Blade, digital lasers, displacer matrix, artificer armour, grav-wave generator, psi-jammer
Tank Commander
Tank Commander
ELITES Household Retinue - power weapon, shroud bombs
Dracosan armoured transport - auxiliary drive
Auxilia Medicae detachment (3)
TROOPS Veletaris Storm Section
Dracosan armoured transport - auxiliary drive
FAST ATTACK Auxilia Leman Russ Strike Squadron (2) - Exterminators w. heavy bolters and dozer blades
Auxilia Leman Russ Strike Squadron (1) - Vanquisher w. heavy bolter
HEAVY SUPPORT Auxilia Leman Russ Assault Squadron (2) - Executioners w. multi-lasers
Great stuff! I look forward to seeing what you do with the Malcadors. Mine is still in unassembled pieces in a box, along with most of the rest of my FW stuff.
Will the commander be painted as wearing skintights, or "cheeks out" as the promo model?
Azazelx wrote: Will the commander be painted as wearing skintights, or "cheeks out" as the promo model?
Skin tight for sure, I'm not that lonely just yet.
We'll see how the Malcadors go, I've heard a lot about their track assemblies and just how much of a pain in the arse they can be. Their assemblies won't be too involved or different, I just need to magnetize the sponson mounts of both models and the trailer of the Infernus. Maybe magnetize the forward mount of the vanilla as well so I can swap between the Demolisher cannon and autocannon.
Okay, the order came in yesterday. Not going to bore people with a stage by stage unboxing and whatnot, here's the nitty-gritty of it all:
- Box was pretty banged up and quite ill-fitting for three large bags of resin.
- Every kit was after a quick inspection complete with no parts missing or damaged.
- Both the Dracosan and Malcador have been cleaned.
- The Dracosan has been fully assembled and is awaiting priming.
- The Malcador is partially assembled, but will probably be done by the end of today, should my patience hold up when assembling that second set of tracks.
- The Malcador Infernus still needs to be cleaned, then get dry-fitted an awful lot as I look into how to best magnetize the fuel bowser to the tank.
All in all though, I feel that I am on schedule and have good hopes to at the very least have one of these three done before my trip to the UK.
Now then, pictures of "Mother", the Dracosan armoured transport:
- The twin-linked lascannon will be left off until the model is fully painted.
- The extra fuel tank is from the vanilla Malcador kit.
- The tank commander is Jaheda Kano from Raging Heroes. Had to amputate her legs below the knees to get her to fit into the cupola. She's not glued in place, I may stick a small magnet under her so I can swap commanders in the future.
- Before priming I still need to do some gap filling on the left side of the hull. Despite the kit not being bent out of shape, it was a bit of a bother to get it all to go together nicely.
Naming conventions.
The second Dracosan is called "Mother", as a homage to the first prototype tank, going alongside "Ironclad", my other Dracosan. The Malcador will be called "Dauntless" because I still have a few of those decals somewhere plus with the demolisher cannon in the hull, it will become quite the miniature Baneblade for sure. The Infernus will be dubbed "Fireball", which isn't the most original of names, but fitting I suppose.
While we're at it, an updated picture of the Russ squadrons:
Did decals for the three Strike squadron tanks, plus I found a new dropper of Vallejo sky blue for the vision blocks, so in a next update (whenever), I'll be able to boast about having painted up their cupola vision blocks as well.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Managed to get the Infernus scrubbed down, it's drying now, so I decided to power on through the Malcador build:
Thankfully not visible from this angle, but both sides had the tracks not completely meeting up for some bloody annoying reason, luckily for both sides it's on the bottom, so less obvious.
I couldn't get the sponson guns magnetized, so instead I pinned the autocannon barrels in place, an acceptable alternative for transporting the model.
Sponsons, demolisher cannon and crew member will all be glued into place once the model is completely painted up. The engine covers will be glued in place once the rubber bands can safely be removed. I thought about doing an exposed engine deck, but decided against it in the end.
I really lucked out with the Dracosan and the Malcador, as they were quite the joys to stick together. The Infernus on the other hand.. there's always a kit in the bunch that's quite miscast or at the very least doesn't go together as planned.
It took me longer than expected sadly, but I finally got the bastard together, aside from the hatches for the commander cupola. The trailer has been magnetized. It's sadly not a strong bond, so moving the vehicle will quite quickly break the bond, but as long as it remains stationary it will stick together, which is good enough for me.
I also magnetized the two sponson mounted weapons, so I can swap when needed, plus it's a perfect way of transporting them without the fear of something breaking.
The commander is the Forge World limited titan princeps, so yeah, collectors may be a bit upset about me snipping the legs off a mini they would gladly sell for millions on ebay.
And here's the three of them together:
This Sunday I'm hoping, weather permitting, to get them all primed black and then primed grey, leaving me with just the tedious job of picking out all those details.
Cheers, always good to hear that my faffing about inspires other people to put some money into the accounts of other companies.
I spent most of today priming the big three, first in chaos black, then with several layers of Mechanicum grey. Quite tedious and time consuming, but thankfully the weather was most cooperative and agreeable for a change.
Tomorrow I'll be making a start on the real tedium of these three, painting parts like tracks, exhausts and all that.
Yay spray time!! Always a treat when the weather behaves itself for a change!! Love that Dracosan - really want to get one at some point and convert it AdMechy
Januine wrote: Yay spray time!! Always a treat when the weather behaves itself for a change!! Love that Dracosan - really want to get one at some point and convert it AdMechy
I'd love to see your take on the Dracosan, while I may be a mute, I find your take on non-red Adeptus Mechanicum/s most inspiring and awesome to say the least.
Time for an update on where I am with the new toys then. Right now I'm working on the Infernus, which I probably shouldn't have assembled due to some hard to reach places right now, but oh well, learn something new every day. It's still quite fun to work on, despite using a limited colour palette (not because I must, but because I can, plus I want to keep it mostly uniform across the board) for the pipes and cables. I'm saving the fuel bowser for last, which may or may not end up being a bit more colourful than the tank itself.
Meanwhile, both the vanilla Malcador and the Dracosan are, aside from minor tidying up (which never seems to end!), done for the time being. I still want to lightly drybrush their hulls with Terminatus stone, but that will have to wait until I'm back from my trip. Ditto on the decals, I will not be adding those until all the painting is done.
Once I'm done with the Infernus I'll jump right on to the tank commanders for all vehicles and after that, Salute?
Didn't get the Malcador Infernus done on time, despite having two weeks of vacation now. On Saturday my brother got me Factorio as an extra birthday present and we've played the hell out of it in coop these last few days, as it is quite rare that we both get the same days off. Especially with him now lost to Dark Souls 3.
However, I will be bringing my brushes along because I know my host has an extensive collection of Citadel paints at his disposal, so I can always finish it there on location, plus work on the various tank commanders for these vehicles.
Hopefully by the time that I return from the UK I'll have those three done (minus decals of course), plus bring home some new goodies from both Salute and Warhammer World.
Okay, game face time, it's been too long since the last update!
Since the last update I spent a week in the UK visiting friends and going to both Salute and Warhammer World, having an all round good time with a few games in between as well.
My 2500 pts army did well enough against my opponent, so much so that I did end up feeling a bit bad about taking such a vehicle heavy list against an opponent who due to some really bad rolls couldn't do much against most of my list.
Aside from a game of 40k we also played Bolt Action (500 pts of his Germans against my US Infantry), intro games of Malifaux (they also got me a starter, so I'll be playing that around here as well if I can find interested parties) and a demo session of X-Wing.
Anyway, home again with a pile of things I need to do:
- Finish the Dracosan, Malcador and Infernus (detailing, drybrushing and decals)
- Paint up a third squad of Veletaris with volkite weaponry
- Wrap up Knight Paladin #2
- Paint up a squad of Veletaris with power axes
I also picked up both the Imperial Space Marine anniversary mini and the Imperial Knights: Renegade boxed set, so once I get more plastic glue I know what I'll be doing.
Picked up plastic glue yesterday, so I could continue my descent into TFG territories:
Knight Crusader "Relentless" and Knight Paladin "Equus Astra" for the family, bringing the army total up to 2730 points, with some room for Mechanicum allies (Magos with jetpack and machinator array, Enginseers as troop choices, hue hue hue).
Next Sunday I'm going to be facing off against my regular opponent the Tau player again, should be fun, I'm tempted to bring along the Knights, something he doesn't object to, actively encourages even!
HEAVY SUPPORT Knight Errant + Scion-Arbalester (450 pts)
Only model unused as of right now the is Dreamforge Crusader, which may either become a Cerastus Knight-Castigator + Aucteller (415 pts) or whenever the rules for it are officially released (plus a cheaper, more local source of alternate weapon arms), a Knight Porphyrion + Scion-Arbalester (460 pts).
We'll start off with how the battle went between my Knights and the infernal Tau: poorly! I had some of the worst rolls in ages against this guy and was quite soundly thrashed by the end of the fifth turn, my army torn apart piecemeal turn by turn. Can't win 'em all I suppose, but fun was had by both sides at least.
For our next thing, it's two things actually, the first being a Zone Mortalis mini-campaign of three linked missions using the Blood in the Void rules found in the third Horus Heresy book. These rules detail the rather brutal affair of boarding an enemy ship, doing damage to one or more critical components, then escaping again. While we haven't decided on who is the attacker and who the defender we did settle on a point value: 750 pts, which allowed me to crank out a pair of lists, one for the Solar Auxilia, the other for the Mechanicum.
All I need to do now is paint that new squad of Household Guard with power axes. Only my good brushes are missing for some damned reason, really frustrating. So instead I'm focusing on my other project, which will be kicking off this weekend!
The second thing is a small vehicle-oriented campaign set up by GW called "Tank Shock - the Renegade Foundries" which we'll be making a start with on this Sunday and the Sunday after, playing small games of 750 pts with the catch being to include at least one armoured vehicle of sorts in your army list. So, using the Solar Auxilia army list I've decided to go with the following:
HQ Tank Commander (joins Vanquisher)
TROOPS Veletaris Storm Section
Dracosan Armoured Transport
Veletaris Storm Section
Dracosan Armoured Transport
FAST ATTACK Leman Russ Vanquisher - armoured ceramite
It's not a 100% technically legal list, seeing as the Auxilia Tank Commander is not allowed to be your compulsory warlord (though funny enough, the Auxilia Tank Commander is perfectly acceptable as an allied detachment warlord!), but given the theme of the scenario and the point limitations this is one of those instances where I prefer to go with the narrative over functionality. Knowing my opponent though, he won't mind one bit, as he's also moving away from the general attitude held by some in the store in favour of a more laidback approach to gaming. Plus, unlike my opponent, I will not be rolling for a warlord trait (But I will be rolling on the elite vehicle asset table, yes!).
That said though, not having a warlord trait will be generously averted by having a Vanquisher (with an armourbane main gun) backed by a BS4 Auxilia Tank Commander who can pick the Tank Hunter USR, which is quite delicious, if not somewhat necessary as my rolls can be quite abysmal! Only problem is, my opponent will probably jink the hell out of his own tanks! Here's hoping my ace can get the Ignore Cover elite vehicle asset, that would be the bees knees to say the least, as I foresee him doing everything in his power to keep his own Hammerhead alive.
So, in the meantime I've been chipping away at the forces for this venture, slowly getting them ready for the upcoming event. The Vanquisher is almost done now, with the magnetized tank commander finally done and the banner slowly getting there now that I've decided on what colours to use. It still needs a few layers of paint, plus a crapload of tidying up and whatnot though. I've also added spare trench rails left over from the Malcador tanks to this vehicle, having them act as a dozerblade stand-in.
Only thing aside from the banner of the Vanquisher is putting the decals on Dracosan number two and tidying it up here and there, plus if I can find the time to do so, paint up a commander for the cupola, though that would be purely visual and have no real in game impact, so is at this point quite a low priority in my opinion.
When those two are out of the way I can focus on the next step with the list, which is moving it up to 1250 pts by adding in more tank:
FAST ATTACK Leman Russ Vanquisher - armoured ceramite, dozerblade, lascannon, extra armour, hunter-killer missile
HEAVY SUPPORT Malcador - armoured ceramite, demolisher cannon, flare shield, 2x hunter-killer missile, pintle-mounted multi-laser, siege armour
Bit of a cheat, but I only need to wrap up two models then: the Malcador (tidying up and decals) and its Auxilia Tank Commander. I admit that I sunk way too many upgrades into the tanks at this point, but I want to keep things mechanized and not have any footsloggers in the list, once again potentially shooting myself in leg in favour of sticking to a theme doggedly. However, at least now my opponent won't get the most out of his waves of deep-striking melta suits!
Rest assured, for the next bump in games, up to 1750 pts, I'll be dropping most of the upgrades in favour of another Malcador (Infernus!), an Exterminator and a third tank commander, who will either drive in the Exterminator or the Infernus.
Enough blabbing, time for horrible WIP pics!
WIP tank ace banner
So, here's to the potential glory of Hussar Captain Josmaine of the Minervan Scions.
Done! Except for commanders for both vehicles, but details really..
The second Dracosan armoured transport of my Solar Auxilia cohort. I decided to keep it simple, like with the first one and went with nice contrasting images that don't stand out too much from the overall model.
The Malcador "Dauntless", with extra overpriced decals from Dust. I've decided to have most of the crew positions, minus the commander and main gunner up top, paint their names near to their crew positions. Not shown (due to a dodgy decal on the other side) is the name "Amanda" on the left sponson.
Next up, when I find the time (and the brushes), a pair of commanders for these two, along with the finishing touches on the banner of the Vanquisher, then hopefully onto the Malcador Infernus, which is awfully unfinished in comparison to these two.
Nice work, Brook. That's an effective grey that you've chosen and the decals work well on them. What is it? It seems to have a touch of both blue and green in it.
Do you plan to wash them, or dirty them up, or keep them clean?
Azazelx wrote: Nice work, Brook. That's an effective grey that you've chosen and the decals work well on them. What is it? It seems to have a touch of both blue and green in it.
Do you plan to wash them, or dirty them up, or keep them clean?
Thanks, I want to say it's my impeccable skill as a painter, but that would be blatant lies. I used GW's Mechanicum Standard Grey primer for both vehicles, which has a nice military primer feel to it.
As for weathering, it is something I keep meaning to have a go at, but ultimately always decide against as I find it a rather daunting task and always worry about ruining the model by misapplying it or using too much of it. One of these days though..
Been curious about the RH minis troopers, the commanders however seem well enough. I have also contemplated the fully clothed female brigade minis from Brother Vinni.
shasolenzabi wrote: Been curious about the RH minis troopers, the commanders however seem well enough. I have also contemplated the fully clothed female brigade minis from Brother Vinni.
You mean these ones?
It's €24,- for five models with not a lot of conversion options though. Plus their uniform jackets all seem to be a bit too short for some reason, unless exposed midriff is a cultural thing with that regiment.
I do like his Imperial Navy mini though, had to get one for my own naval project:
So, the first two games of Tank Shock - the Renegade Foundries, have been played yesterday. Both were quite disappointing defeats for me, but fun was had by both sides and I gots to play again, so I'm quite happy. Only real big downside was the absence of the rules for the event, which were probably misplaced by the store owner. On the bright side, I do have a set of tokens and a pair of buttons (Tank Hunter & Tank Ace) now to further motivate myself for this event.
So, with no official scenario rules in sight, we decided to wing it and instead run a pair of missions from the rulebook on a 4' x 4' table, which we thought would suit the smaller scale we would be playing at. We did roll for our elite tank ace skills, but well, it was a bit of a mixed bag for both of us.
Here's where we would be fighting our engagements, at the Rebergen Shipping Yards:
Small table with a moderate amount of terrain to avoid having too much out in the open, though upon reading some scenario rules found on-line later.. They encourage a minimalist approach to the use of terrain, favouring slug matches with high kill-ratios over drawn out tactical bouts. Something to keep in mind for the next game then, as having my opponent jink and boost via cover save saved his vehicles from more than one kill-shot.
First game, (Dawn of War, The Emperor's Will), that I lost with something around 7-1 or something, oh my!
Ace skill Solar Auxilia: Battlefield Scanning (+2" on flat out and no Dangerous Terrain tests, yay..)
Ace skill Tau: Aerial Tracking (Skyfire, yaaaay..)
As we can see here, the Tau aren't above charging into melee their selves, as long as the target is incapable of fighting back!
The MVP of the first battle:
This chap managed to remain locked in combat with three different enemy units for three turns before finally dying! As a reward for his stellar service to the Emperor and the Expeditionary Fleet he'll soon
The other highlight was my Vanquisher blowing the enemy Hammerhead away, despite possessing a rather worthless ace skill. Yes!
As for the second battle (Hammer & Anvil, Purge the Alien), I lost that one with 3-6, a score I can actually live with though.
Not shown: a whole lot of deep-striking fusion blasters in reserve, along with a lone Leman Russ Vanquisher.
"Take careful aim, be mindful of our own forces and.. Did you just miss again?"
Last stand of squad Dieudonné & Dracosan "Mother"
The final result:
Oh well, not a great day for the Solar Auxilia, but still a good day to play a pair of games of 40K again. With thanks to ShasODerpy for taking the fight to me once more.
Also, at least my ace got at least one confirmed kill in the pocket!
Alrighty then, time to start working on the next step in this endeavour: 1250 pts! Our next clash will be on the 4th of June, after which we'll either play a few more games of 1250 pts, or move on to 1750 pts, at which stage I'm hoping to field something big and nasty as a counter to all them Tau!
Spoiler:
Why yes, I am very insecure about myself.
As for the 1250 pts list, I've made some changes to it after the two games from yesterday:
HQ Lord Marshal - Displacer matrix, power weapon, plasma pistol
Tank Commander (joins Vanquisher)
Tank Commander (joins Malcador)
TROOPS Auxilia Lasrifle Section
Dracosan Armoured Transport - armoured ceramite
Veletaris Storm Section
Dracosan Armoured Transport - armoured ceramite
FAST ATTACK Leman Russ Vanquisher - armoured ceramite, lascannon
HEAVY SUPPORT Malcador - armoured ceramite, demolisher cannon, siege armour
Up against the Tau player armoured ceramite is an overpriced must sadly, as he fields insane amounts of cheap, deep-striking fusion blasters that can easily take out my vehicles with a single blast. I've also decided to free up points from the many, many upgrades of the previous version in favour of a Lord Marshal so I can either take Blind Barrage (all my units count as shrouded on the first turn) or Shattering Bombardment (single ordnance weapon within 6" is twin-linked) and give my troops a much-needed buff in either survival or fire power. I've also swapped out one squad of Veletaris in favour of an Auxilia Lasrifle Section, swapping fire power for more raw numbers, which may or may not be useful in the long run. But we shall see I suppose.
So, on the painting table right now then for the next game are..
- Vanquisher banner
- Dracosan tank commander
- Auxilia Lasrifle Section
Wistful thinking here, but I hope to have at least two of those done before the arrival of the Stormsword kit.
shasolenzabi wrote: Been curious about the RH minis troopers, the commanders however seem well enough. I have also contemplated the fully clothed female brigade minis from Brother Vinni.
You mean these ones?
It's €24,- for five models with not a lot of conversion options though. Plus their uniform jackets all seem to be a bit too short for some reason, unless exposed midriff is a cultural thing with that regiment.
I do like his Imperial Navy mini though, had to get one for my own naval project:
if they have bellybuttons, I could fill those in and paint the bare mid-rifs to look like military T-shirts under the jackets. and yeah they are a bit pricey for what you get.
shasolenzabi wrote: if they have bellybuttons, I could fill those in and paint the bare mid-rifs to look like military T-shirts under the jackets. and yeah they are a bit pricey for what you get.
It's been a while, but I'm sure he'll have a sale again sooner or later, which is always the best time to get his stuff.
shasolenzabi wrote: if they have bellybuttons, I could fill those in and paint the bare mid-rifs to look like military T-shirts under the jackets. and yeah they are a bit pricey for what you get.
It's been a while, but I'm sure he'll have a sale again sooner or later, which is always the best time to get his stuff.
Just what I was thinking
Liking your army BTW, good colors, and the troops are all looking good too!
Tomorrow we're having the next round of Tank Shock - the Renegade Foundries! In preparation for this I've been working as much as possible on both the Malcador and the Malcador Infernus in an attempt to get them both done in time. So far, aside from the banner, the Malcador "Dauntless" is now done, complete with an Auxilia Tank Commander for that delicious Preferred Enemy (Infantry) buff on all those guns. The Infernus on the other hand.. slowly getting there sadly. It's just one of those models I work on, then set aside to work on something else more fulfilling and fun.
I've decided to add the two colour banding to these super-heavies as well, to better tie them in with the rest of the army, seeing as red turrets isn't really an option with these two. I've also found some extra name decals so that all crew stations are now named. Just imagine that the hull-mounted Demolisher cannon has an auto loader or something!
For the Infernus I've whipped together a custom tank commander, complete with a pet lizard on her shoulder and a cuppa tea in hand, because this was demanded of me by a big Girls und Panzer fangrrrl:
Meet.. not sure yet what to call her, it will either be Darjeeling, or some other tea-related name to tie in with the general naming conventions used by the St. Gloriana Girls High School of the setting.
Next up, I've also started work on my Surgeon-Primus for the army, using a Raging Heroes Doctor von X mini enhanced with a servo-arm array from Anvil Industry to make her look more menacing and capable of stitching wounded back together.
In hindsight I should've put her on a 32mm base, seeing as she's so busy op top, but oh well.
For the final round of the event, which cranks things up to 1750 points, I've decided to take a(nother) level in bastardness and gotten an Imperial Guard super-heavy tank kit, which I've magnetized and whatnot in such a way that it can be fielded as either the Stormlord, Stormsword or Shadowsword, though mainly as the Stormsword, because of that delicious 10" blast with Ignore Cover. Try hiding behind rubble or jinking now, eh?
It's currently primed grey with the same two colour banding added to a section of the hull, once again to tie it together with the rest of the army.
The Infernus, Surgeon-Primus and Stormsword are this months pledges for the Tales of Thirty-Five Gamers thread (seriously, if you haven't already, subscribe to it right now, it has so much amazing talent on display!) and I am dearly hoping to at the very least get that blasted Infernus done now, once and for all!
Sooooo, the battle today, I lost 17-1 or something like that, but I claim moral victory for scoring two kills with my aspiring tank ace, who now has three kills to her name. Just two more and she can claim ace status and all the perks that come with it. Something I still need to work out, as the scenario package is woefully still missing, so I may have to check in with my regular opponent and see what we can whip out.
The Infernus did well enough though and the Dracosan plus some of her passengers held out until the fifth turn before being blown away by what remained of the enemy army. Wish I could say the same for the Malcador itself, but alas, it underperformed a bit by not doing any damage during its one round of shooting, then going under in a flurry of fusion blades.
Overall though, as far as my usual fights go, this wasn't a bad one by a long shot, plus I stuck to the overall theme of these games like a champ.
Or a git depending on the sources asked.
Oh well, my opponent did not object to the tanks I brought along and found it a fun game, even lamenting that his own warlord was perhaps a bit too overpowered and too well tailored for the task at hand, taking out the Malcador, Infernus and the Dracosan in assaults, then surviving the resulting explosions with contemptuous ease. Though he did almost die to a few volleys of Volkite fire. Ho-hum..
To reward myself for having fun I decided to get another Leman Russ kit (with an old accessory sprue thrown in for free, double win!) as the starting point for another tank squadron, as I love building stuff a bit too much, plus I promised a friend I'd try and create her new favourite Girls und Panzer character as a tank commander for the army. Before anybody asks, that show is a guilty of mine, okay? Eh, feth it, we saw the movie earlier this week and had a blast, so there.
I also picked up a pair of Vallejo weathering effects bottles, competitively priced for a change, unlike a lot of their stuff, at €5 per 40ml bottle. I went with streaking grime and engine grime, though if this stuff really works out I may also have to pick up a bottle of some sort of mud, seeing as weathering is still something I need to do for these vehicles of mine!
Great work - the splash of colour that the banner adds to that Malcador really makes it pop, and feel much more "40k" in so many ways. The commander leaning out of the top hatch makes the tank's size seem so much more imposing, as well.
Cheers, I spent way too long trying to get that banner right, goes with being a complete bellend when it comes to putting colours together that don't make people vomit.
Didn't get all that much sleep last night due to the weather and loud, noisy family, so instead I decided to do something I enjoy way too much: build stuff.
Tracks, armoured panels for the turret and maybe track guards will be added in once they're all painted up.
A kitbashed tank commander using bits from Victoria Miniatures (legs, torso & arms), Kingdom Death (head & hands) and Tamiya (headset), making for hopefully a nice enough version of Rosehip, as requested. She is of course magnetized, so she can be put in any other plastic Leman Russ variant with an open cupola.
I've added a fuel tank to the rear to represent that this is a fast vehicle capable of making outflanking manoeuvres and whatnot, should appease the folks who like to shriek those things aren't possible in 40k. I've also slightly converted the exhausts of the tank, but nothing too involved or extreme there.
Finally, a kitbashed multi-laser with quasi-realistic ammunition feed and a holoreflex sight from Anvil Industry.
I've also decided to hammer out a few things for the Tank Shock event, thanks to Google and whatever else people uploaded online. Some of it is a straight copy-paste from materials found, other things have legalese added to it (this is 40k after all) or still need to be expanded upon when I find the time.
Oh wow, a 40k Rosehip, so that reddish deep pink like hair, I suspect that she will do something wild and remove the engine restriction governors for more speed!
Automatically Appended Next Post: A human analogue to the Speed Freaks!
And there was some rejoicing, for another fan has appeared.
She certainly was one of the better new characters of the movie, having her own style and behaviour so unlike the rest of the St. Gloriana cast.
We like to compare her to a Chihuahua, she attacks everything on sight and doesn't afraid of anything!
Here's a crummy WIP shot for now:
edit.
She is a fluffy match for the 30k Leman Russ by the way, which can Outflank and become a Fast vehicle for a single turn, which is nicely in line with her removing the speed governors to get that extra bit of power out of her ride.
BrookM wrote: And there was some rejoicing, for another fan has appeared.
She certainly was one of the better new characters of the movie, having her own style and behaviour so unlike the rest of the St. Gloriana cast.
We like to compare her to a Chihuahua, she attacks everything on sight and doesn't afraid of anything!
Here's a crummy WIP shot for now:
edit.
She is a fluffy match for the 30k Leman Russ by the way, which can Outflank and become a Fast vehicle for a single turn, which is nicely in line with her removing the speed governors to get that extra bit of power out of her ride.
I see you even gave here the red coat with the hair, cool!
Yeah I liked her contrast of that fiery go and get them attitude she showed vs the cool, and patient approach of Darjeeling. Very different, and she is slopping tea around unlike Darjeeling.
BrookM wrote: Half of the Leman Russ variants are fast attack choices.
Oooh snap! that means they found a way to resurrect conqueror class LR rules
While the Conqueror isn't in, the Leman Russ, Exterminator, Annihilator and Vanquisher are all found in the fast attack slot. The Demolisher, Executioner and Incinerator are all heavy support choices, but with +1 HP, +1BS if more than one tank is in the squadron and best of all, no Get's Hot! on the Executioner's main gun.
BrookM wrote: Half of the Leman Russ variants are fast attack choices.
Oooh snap! that means they found a way to resurrect conqueror class LR rules
While the Conqueror isn't in, the Leman Russ, Exterminator, Annihilator and Vanquisher are all found in the fast attack slot. The Demolisher, Executioner and Incinerator are all heavy support choices, but with +1 HP, +1BS if more than one tank is in the squadron and best of all, no Get's Hot! on the Executioner's main gun.
Very nice! Old Conqy had the "weakest" cannon as IRC, S7, but could fire on the move back in it's day. Oh well, new times with new rules.
Been a while since the last update, been busy with work and all that (so much mail to deliver, so many vacancies), but a big old hobby update will be coming before the end of the month for sure, this I command!
In the meantime, today I've ventured down to Utrecht again for another game against my usual opponent, the Tau player! We've played another Tank Shock session, which is slowly becoming something of a mini-campaign or the like, with his DarkWalker Cadre once again trying to take the fight to my mechanised Solar Auxilia, who were out for some revenge after the last three disastrous games.
Today we played the custom mission Operation Linebreaker (Hammer and Anvil, Purge the Alien, 1250 pts), that I won 11-3.
Additional Secondary Objective Breaking the Line: At the end of the game, every unit completely within 12" of the enemy's table edge is worth 1 Victory Point.
We also used the following custom campaign rules gleaned from other Tank Shock organisers in the US:
Destroy the Enemy Command Vehicle: Instead of Slay the Warlord players earn one Victory Point if they manage to destroy the opponent's Command Vehicle/ Legendary Beast.
Strike True:First Blood scored by a Command Vehicle / Legendary Beast is worth two Victory Points instead of one.
Lead by Example: Linebreaker is worth two Victory Points if achieved with the Command Vehicle /Legendary Beast.
Also, Slay the Warlord was still in use, which meant that if my tank commander was shot away she'd be worth between two to four Victory Points.
The table setup this time around was pretty crowded, opting for more buildings and LOS blocking features this time to prevent this game from becoming one massive shooting galleria.
Deployment from my point of view, with the Leman Russ and Vanquisher + Tank Commander held in reserve.
Tau deployment, with everything deployed from the get-go aside from a single Crisis Suit with fusion blasters.
The end of the first turn, with some ineffective shooting but no real lasting damage done as of yet, though the front lines were crowded by a lot of drones all of the sudden!
Second turn, the Crisis suit jumps in, but thankfully scatters to the side armour of my Executioner.
A stealth team tried to flank and fry my Malcador but thanks to a combination of thick armour and armoured ceramite it is unable to do much damage.
The Hammerheads are quite content to camp, however..
Outflanking Vanquisher! Josmaine takes aim at Longstrike and..
Kill confirmed!
Oh, gak..? Actually, I got this! Imperial Tank > Tau railgun.
The Crisis Suit tries to wreck the Executioner with its puny fish arms, but fails to do so, because the Leman Russ is superior to weak fish technology!
A weaponless Hammerhead tries to ram Josmaine's tank, only to explode upon impact. Imperial tanks > Tau tanks.
With most of the Tau's anti-tank weaponry taken out the infantry decides to dig in behind their fortifications.
Linebreakers! With the Tidewall under fire from both sides the last Fire Warriors can only hope I miss a lot.
Linebreakers! The enemy units that managed to get away dug into a little corner of my deployment zone and clawed out a few VP's for the Tau player.
Aftermath: Losses were surprisingly light, eight out of ten Veletarii were killed, some of the vehicles lost a few HP's, but other than that, I did not lose a single unit! Wow..
So, while I won, the last two turns of the game were quite one-sided, especially seeing as my rolls (aside from the Dracosan, despite having a twin-linked lascannon) were doing quite well for me, but kudos to my opponent for not quitting straight away and instead shifting from trying to kill me to instead gain points through Linebreaker and denial instead.
Aside from winning this game, there was another bit of silver lining to celebrate: Josmaine had scored her fourth and fifth vehicle kills, meaning that the plucky tank commander could finally consider herself an ace as well! To properly celebrate this next session she's going to get her second Elite Vehicle Asset, to complement the already awesome Tank Hunters!
I'm quite surprised with the outcome myself, especially when we were sizing up armies and commented that I had once again brought so few models to the game whereas my opponent had quite a lot arrayed against me, including four railguns, but surprisingly little in the way of the much more feared deep striking meltaguns he's normally so famous for.
But as mentioned before, due to some very unlucky rolls he didn't get as many punches in as he would've liked, especially with his railguns, which were both BS5 and had the benefit of Longstrike's Tank Hunters buff. Though I do commend him on trying different approaches every time, he's usually someone who goes in heavy with a lot of Crisis Suits, so for him to bring only one this time around and going in a bit more vehicle heavy was quite the surprise.
However, he has already posted the following message on our FLGS forums:
**
Signal located...... Establishing Battlefield Uplink. Stand by.
Querying... Querying....
Gue'la forces have entered the perimeter.
Combat effectiveness: 0%
Remaining support assets: 0. Critical Failure, Disengage.
Identified. Vehicle Ace "Josmaine" Priority: Extreme. Operator assigned.
--All Shas'vre, Infiltrate and Track target "Josmaine" by any means.--
**
Super potje! Een hoop geleerd over het gebruik van Squadrons en de Tau Tidewall!
Next time :Twisted Evil emote:
-Derp
Translation: "Fun game! I learned a lot about the use of both squadrons and the Tau Tidewall!"
So yes, the Tank Shock campaign is still far from over!
With that on the horizon, onwards to the next project then! It's raining right now, so no painting, instead I'll just have to amuse myself with a pair of Leman Russ kits I got to bulk out Rosehip's squadron of outflanking Leman Russ tanks.
Chances of the full squadron seeing any table time will be slim to nil, but I have more or less crossed over into collector territory myself these days, so having a full squadron of these is more just for funsies more than anything else.
Rosehip is under evaluation for the time being, as she botched all her reserve rolls and didn't turn up until reserves automatically came into play. While she did pass her Outflank roll well enough to show up where she needed to be, it was perhaps a bit too late at this stage, but at least she got her Linebreaker in with the tank ace and Malcador.
"The real fighter is here!"
That said though, her two squadron mates are about half done by now, I worked on the hulls for most of the evening and aside from the coloured banding, some tidying up and the decals, the hulls are nearly there, then it's on to the turrets.
Also, to celebrate that Josmaine got five kills over the course of the campaign, thus becoming a tank ace, I'll be working on this for her future fights:
It's a Stygies VIII turret that the store owner just had lying around, truly his shop is a bag of holding sometimes. I made some modifications of my own with part of the barrel and the coaxial storm bolter removed, added in a smoke launcher, coaxial multi-laser and a magnet to the cupola for the swapping of commanders.
I'll probably pass it off as either a Tygrus pattern or Mars pattern Vanquisher turret, fluff-nazis permitting. But it should make for a fine turret worthy of an ace until I can scrape together enough coins for a Demolisher kit so I can use that hull, along with parts scrounged together from other kits and whatnot to build a proper up-armoured Vanquisher hull.
shasolenzabi wrote: Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks
I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.
evildrcheese wrote: Awesome pics from the bat rep. Looks like you had a blast.
EDC
Thanks and yes! I was glad my opponent felt the same way at least, otherwise I may have felt dirty afterwards.
Azazelx wrote: Looks like a great fun battle, there. Great to see all that armour on the field! The Vanquisher should make a fine addition to your Mailed Fist.
Cheers! It may be due to the Horus Heresy setting, but this is the first time I've found a Vanquisher to not only be of actual use, but actually performing well enough to not consider it a waste of points in the long run.
- - -
I'm still hard at work on my tanks for the most part, I've got another game lined up for next Sunday, 2500 pts of Horus Heresy, I'll be going up against Iron Warriors and allies, which sounds a bit worrisome, but I'll hopefully have one or two aces up my sleeve by then as well.
I've also picked up the digital rules for Stormcloud Attack while waiting on my order to arrive (the Eldritch and the Beast + Deff Skwadron graphic novel and the Flyers of the Dark Millennium splatbook) and the rules have sold me enough on the concept that last night I've decided to kitbash together a pair of pilots, who have no real ingame purpose whatsoever, but after seeing it done on the Webstore Blog I had to give it a go as well!
Lieutenant Daniel Swift and Major Olivia Marion, who will both be piloting a Lunar pattern Lightning Strike Fighter (they'll both be using a Nephilim jetfighter, both model and stat wise, because the Imperial Guard has no great flyers for this thing) for a hopefully upcoming aerial themed campaign over the skies of Medusa V. I guess this means I'll have to get another Nephilim one of these days..
Had me a game of 30k today, 2500 pts of pure mechanised Solar Auxilia versus Iron Warriors allied to the Mechanicum. I didn't take any pictures of the battle itself, as I was quite frazzled from a fething busy week at work. I did take one picture of my opponent's army before the game began:
The outcome of the battle was a tie, with three points for the both of us. We played a Horus Heresy mission (Tide of Carnage) which saw the board divided into three zones (your deployment zone, no-man's land and enemy deployment zone), with the holding of each zone conferring a certain amount of points. In the end, we both held our own deployment zones and contested the no-man's land, with large parts of our army outright destroyed or close to destruction by the time the final turn ticked over. We were both left with an equal amount of units standing, meaning neither of us could gain an extra point from the Last Man Standing special rule.
We've also agreed to do some Zone Mortalis some time in August, 750 pts, meaning I can field some infantry at long last!
No time for games or hobby-stuff recently, due to being swamped by work and my newfound Horus Heresy opponent being in Japan of all places. Oh well, finally found time today to pick up a brush again and get some work done..
Scary enough, almost all of that is done. Just need to put decals on the Stormsword and the two vanilla Russ tanks, plus paint up the Vanquisher turret, Stormlord and the bowser of the Infernus. There's also a Baneblade on the shelf, but I'll get to her when I feel like it.
Perhaps even scarier.. I don't see much need to add more to the collection as is. Just one more heavy-chassis Leman Russ tank to act as a proper hull for the Vanquisher, another Dracosan that will be pimped up as HQ transport, maybe one more Malcador with battle cannon & demolisher cannon combo, but other than that, quite chuffed with what I've got right now.
If only painting up infantry was as easy.. :gonk: Still got loads of those to do, not to mention twenty more on the way from Anvil Industry for a future Zone Mortalis list. :sweat:
Well, trying to cure that by moving towards infantry now..
My order from Anvil Industry came in today and while I'm still strapped for spare time this week, I did manage to stick three together to see how they would turn out, this being my personal favourite of the bunch, with a head from Statuesque Miniatures and a book on her belt from the plastic Storm Troopers kit, making for an excellent count-as Veletarii or some generic pulp science fiction space cadet with an atomic raygun.
For 30k these will be bulking out my troops slots as regular Veletarii, allowing me to field their Forge World counterparts as the old guard of the fleet, acting as Household retinues for the HQ's.
So here's Prime Drusilla of the Saturnyne Amazons, continuing the theme of me being sad and lonely and in desperate need of good company.
I do like your simple grey tanks, and the red/blue banding is jolly nice.
I am also now a massive fan of the Statuesque Minis' heads, and that headswap you did with the plastic Commissar Lord actually makes me want to buy one - a sensible female Commissar to join my Commissariat ensemble!
Top hole stuff, keep going, I want to see more Knight Titan goodness!
shasolenzabi wrote: Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks
I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.
Those little hatches are known as "pistol ports". Most allied and axis tanks had them in WWII.
Well, actually, that hatch in the Char B1 bis is actually an entry/exit hatch, much the same as the cupola on the top. Pistol ports were much smaller and rapidly fell out of use post 1940. [/nerd]
I haven't forgotten about my thread, it's just that these last two months I've been really, really busy with work and wind up all burned out when I get home again.
Hopefully some serious productivity will pick up again in three weeks when I'll finally have a vacation of my own.
shasolenzabi wrote: Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks
I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.
Those little hatches are known as "pistol ports". Most allied and axis tanks had them in WWII.
Well, actually, that hatch in the Char B1 bis is actually an entry/exit hatch, much the same as the cupola on the top. Pistol ports were much smaller and rapidly fell out of use post 1940. [/nerd]
Yeah, looking closer I can see the crewman sitting on the hatch. Thanks for the clarification. I'm not up to snuff when it comes to French tanks of that era.
And you are indeed correct that pistol ports started going "out of fashion" after 1940 (they were considered by some to be a ballistic hazard). But they remained popular among crews in some military forces in the war, so they remained common on many variants of tanks until war's end.
When U.S. Army Ordnance commissioned new turrets (D50878 75mm turrets) for the M4 without the pistol ports, crews and officers complained. They ended up going back to the pistol port with the D50878 turrets, along with a loader's hatch, in late 1943.
The Germans also had pistol ports on the Tiger. At least, the early production turrets did. So did the Panzer IVs up until the Ausf. J.
Pistol ports - for when you're being attacked by suicide infantry! Or you can just take the easy route and have a nearby tank machine-gun them off. I always liked that the Hetzer had a remote controlled MG42 for urban close defence.
Anyway, MOAR PAINT from BrookM, even if it causes him a prolonged nervous breakdown
Many thanks for not quoting that image again. I've got nothing against the discussion itself, but please-please-please, don't requote that image all the time, lest the mobile users start whining.
I picked up the Kill Team boxed set today and built its contents, I'll spare all the pictures of unpainted plastics, but it was most pleasant to be building something again and well, generally do something with the hobby again aside from offending a lot of people with innocent remarks.
I've also decided on my vacation project good and proper now.
Seeing as everybody and their mum at the store has snatched up Deathwatch, plus having watched a fair few how to paint video's on YouTube, I'm going to go with Tempestus Scions for my own Kill Team, having ordered a getting started boxed set so I've got all the models I'll need for the project (and then some).
So, in three weeks time I'll be starting work on that, going for the perhaps a bit boring, but still excellent looking stock colour scheme, though this is mainly so I can focus on actually trying to get better at painting without having to worry about experimenting with what colours go best together!
I've worked out a pair of lists for future games, one including a Taurox Prime, just in case I roll attacker on Infiltrate the Camp mission.
41st Omega Banshees - 200 pts
Tempestus Scions (5) - Bolt pistol, power weapon, hotshot volley gun and plasma gun
Taurox Prime - Taurox gatling cannon and twin-linked autocannons
Just in case a Taurox is frowned upon, we can always go full commando instead...!
41st Omega Banshees - 200 pts
Tempestus Scions (5) - Bolt pistol, power weapon, hotshot volley gun and plasma gun
Stormtroopers are the quintessential kill-team, in my view. Well, other than Schaeffer's Last Chancers, that is. Can't wait to see what you do with the new plastics!
Hope you get over the burnout soon, Brook - I know all about it. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the Stormtrooper Kill-team. I can only assume that it'll be...
Cheers, I doubt it will be eye-popping or original, but with help from the ever patient Duncan I'm hoping to improve my skills, even if it's just a little bit.
In the meantime I'll hopefully be able to teach my brother the basics of 40k, as he's shown interest in Kill Team, having claimed the Tau from the boxed set, thus keeping myself occupied with the hobby for a little bit until my vacation.
Tau Breachers it would appear, have guns that become more powerful the closer you get to them. Seeing as my thing is to get in close and feth them up, I may need to revise this strategy, as those things are powerful enough to blow straight through power armour.
Seeing as I had all those heads on hand, I decided to, perhaps a bit prematurely as it's still three weeks until this all starts, start assigning heads and names to the ghouls.
Good names as well good assignments! Definitely want to soften up the Tau Breachers with some long ranged dakka/templates like a GL firing the frag or krak rounds. But Plasma/Melta and volleyguns will do nicely.
Andrew is my go-to source for nicely done alternate heads for ghouls of various sorts, though in my case mainly Solar Auxilia and the Militarum Tempestus, though maybe the odd female space marine whenever the Deathwatch fad dies down over at the store.
He's slowly been expanding his range, soon adding in heads with cybernetics.
Not quite my cuppa, but still nice for those in need. Maybe something to look at once we settle on a good cyberpunk setting and ruleset that isn't Shadowrun.
His pulp range is damned good as well, his little Miss Lilly Poots in particular is the most adorable objective marker one could ever have:
The Taurox (or one of your vehicles) should be Aleksandra (Алекса́ндра) or Aleksandrina (Александрина)
>
Feminine form of Russian Aleksandr, meaning "defender of mankind."
>
Russian form of Greek Alexandros, meaning "defender of men."
>
Greek name composed of the elements alexein "to defend" and andros "man," hence "defender of mankind."
I've decided to go with Sentinels partially because of how potentially good they can be in the setting, plus there's this old fluff where storm troopers used to receive direct fire support from Nightstalker pattern Sentinels, with muffled engines and whatnot so they could be all sneaky behind enemy lines. I think this is from the Third War for Armageddon fluff IIRC.
While we're at it, here's the updated crew roster then, including vehicle crews as well:
Bah, that's probably the anti-GW brigade upset with me buying GW stuff instead of other items again.
Second attempt:
So, plenty of stuff to do!
Only downside is that I need new superglue now for the ghouls, the old stuff has turned yellow and quite.. solid somehow, despite not being all that old to begin with. So in the meantime I'll assemble what I can until I can get the superglue and the upgrade kit for the Taurox.
Sentinels! I do love me a good Sentinel. I have nine. I keep thinking about how I need more. Maybe a full Sentinel Scout Battalion. But that would just be madness, right?
In the meantime I will sate my lust for Sentinels by watching you make yours!
First day of my vacation and things are good. I may or may not marry the Leadbelcher primer I got this Saturday, it's good. It is perfection. Now I almost no longer have any reason at all to keep in touch with Army Painter and their rather disappointing quality products, aside from their excellent Leather Brown, though knowing my luck, they'll be bound to change that one sooner or later, so it no longer matches older works.
While waiting for an opportunity to buy new superglue I've decided to get started on the buildings in the meantime, with the statues being a fun exercise in whether or not I can master Nihilakh oxide. The Basilica will be for a Kill Team mission (High Ground, which requires a tall building) and the Sanctum is one of two small buildings that I built from the sprues supplies with Imperial Knight Renegade.
A pair of spare Kingdom Death models, useless otherwise, but in this case excellent statues dedicated to false gods or saints of aeons past.
Still need to pick out some of the details on this one, but not everything! I may just bling up the arches around the doors and leave it at that, both for my own sanity and well, it's a ruin.
Still need to do the doors and the decorative arches at the very least, but as with the Basilica, minimal work will be done on these.
Also, shot on a potato all of the sudden.. heads are in place and aside from some wheels, everything is assembled and ready for priming:
When I'm done with the buildings and statues I'll get cracking on the Scions, something I have been looking forward to for quite some time now! But I'd rather finish up the buildings first before painting up the ghouls, want to take a stab at this whole discipline thing.
Also on the workbench but not shown.. six quonset huts, various parts belonging to three Imperial Knights (finally primed at the very least now!) and thirty Veletarii of various origin, which have now also been primed in glorious Leadbelcher.
Discipline! Pah! That's what Commissars are for. Which wheel mod are you using? The Victoria Miniatures one? It's an excellent little aftermarket kit that. I have it on all my Tauroxes.
I've got one of her upgrade kits, after the long wait I'm sadly a bit disappointed by it myself, it's not as sturdy or as robust as I would've liked it to be. I've decided to go with an upgrade kit (which for some reason does not include hubcaps!) from Zinge Industries:
A nice package that has everything! Well.. except for the hubcaps of the wheels..
Armoured plates for the view ports, an armoured plate for the front, an upgrade for the main gun and..
Nice, chunky tires!
Plus a pair of sturdy suspensions that are cast in one piece, so sturdier!
I'm hoping for it to pop up before the end of the week, so I can wrap up the construction of the Taurox and get it primed alongside the two Armoured Sentinels.
In other news, day two of my vacation has been semi-productive, as I also needed to replace the front wheel of my bicycle, which had a nice shard of glass in there.
But at least I did manage to get the two smaller buildings done, more or less. I still need to clean up the Basilica and pick out some of the details around the doors, then wash all of that.
Once the Basilica is done, on to the Scions. Well, one first, I need to see if I can master the new paint scheme I want to use for the squads.
Some progress has been made on the test model, which is at this stage about 80% done I'd say. I still need to do a final highlight on the fatigues, bedroll and book, then paint up the screens on her arms and do the sword all good and proper. Oh, must also not forget to touch up her hair while I'm at it.
But at this stage, I am quite pleased with what I've got so far.
Note to self, track down Armageddon Dust next time I'm in Utrecht, it would be a shame to field these unbased.
Cheers lads, another one is done, specialist Natalya, who has Preferred Enemy (Everything!) and to stand out from the others, is the only one aiming and toting an eyepatch.
Next up, either the plasma gun, the hotshot volleygun or the scrub! Not too sure just yet which catches my fancy, as I batch prep the girls until I get to the detail work, that's when I go 1:1.
I will revisit this model later down the line and add something, either a water bottle or a book to her left side, it's looking awfully empty right now and for some reason it is bothering me quite a bit!
The heads are heroic scale, using a selection from both the regular beret set and the veteran set.
I've also gotten around to priming both the Taurox and the two Sentinels, so with that out of the way there's nothing but painting to do now!
I've batched up the last three of the first squad as best I can, while waiting for the washes to dry. I'm hoping to at the very least get one more done today, seeing as tomorrow I'll be at the GW Open Day.
Taurox Prime, sans bull-bar and turret for the time being, those still need to be painted. Wheels and kitbash are from Zinge Industries in case it was missed the first time around.
Still got a load to do on it, including all the metals, the stowage and the vision blocks for starters, which are Stormhost Silver for now, but will later this week be experimented on with Waystone Green, from GW's gemstone range, seeing as I can't paint shiny glass worth a damn!
Also almost done with the first squad of Scions, just need to do their berets, faces and some final highlighting / cleaning up of the gloves and boots.
Most peaceful = easiest target on the list, just ask Cain.
Update time!
Aside from some minor details and their bases (which I plan on doing with a technical paint, maybe Agrellan Earth), Kill Team Rayet is done!
Weapons specialist Katya, the only member of the squad to not wear a beret, but instead toting some glare goggles. She's also posed to be in a running position, to represent her being Relentless.
Weapons specialist Anna, who has a slick pair of mirror shades to keep her from going blind when firing her weapon. I will revisit these at a later date when I feel confident enough to do so.
To represent that Anna has the Ignore Cover special rule I decided to give her a vox caster array, to represent some sort of off-site aid or sophisticated wallhack she can use in fights.
Scion Narkiss, nothing special about her, she's just there to round out the squad.
With the ghouls done (for now) I think it's time to get the Taurox done. Or at the very least, I'm hoping to get the main vehicle done today now, with the turret tomorrow at the latest. Still need to do the metals and the vision blocks.
and a good simple colour scheme to match with just enough of a splash of colour to make it interesting.
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