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Hello Dakka!

After playing around with Marines and Orks for quite a while, I finally decided to start with the army I wanted from the beginning: Imperial Guard! A mix of reasons pushed me then into the direction of the Catachans, defiance being a major part of it, I think. Everyone loathes the Catachan models, my girlfriend thinks they're the ugliest minis I've ever bought and that even squiggly tyranid bugs would've been better, hell, even my mother (who from times to times comes over to look at the minis) was in favour of everything else. So, despite all odds (and votes), I started the 3rd Catachan Rangers!

The final army will be around 750-800 points for starters. It will consist of:

Company command squad
(Chimera)

Veteran team "Torch" (2x flamers, heavy flamer)
(Chimera)

Veteran team "???" (3x meltaguns)
(Valkyrie)

Veteran team "???" (long-range dakka)
(Chimera)

Scout Sentinel

As you see, it's going to be a mechvet army. I'm still thinking about parts of the fluff, but the idea is clear: The 3rd Catachan Rangers are usually used as a reconaissance force, scouting out enemy encampments and being a general guerilla warfare nuisance. You might ask: Catachans in Chimeras? Tanks are no use in the jungle! However, I find them quite useful: As armoured jungle river boats! That's right, Chimeras are amphibious vehicles. The 3rd uses those things to move quickly between the dense jungle areas where it accomplishes its scout missions. And when there's the need for a full assault, they call in a Valkyrie from sector command and bring out the Chimeras for mobility, armor and fire support.
There might be some fluff pieces I will post here; still thinking about if I might write little stories about squads, persons or situations.

This will be my first real army, apart from AoBR minis. Therefore, I really hope you Dakkaites will give me some comments, advice and critique on what I do with these guys!

For some first pictures, here is the (almost) completely assembled squad "Torch":


With basic assembly, the first step is done. As a second step, I plan to greenstuff most of the shoulder/torso glue connections, because the gaps look horrible on the bare-chested Rangers and on most of the vest-wearing ones, too. The colour scheme will be basically green, maybe camouflage on some parts. Since there is no real "uniform" on Catachans, I plan on doing some pieces of cloth and equipment quite different.

I hope I will get most of the green-stuffing for this squad done in this week so I can start painting next week!

Hmmm, lots of burny stuff. Looking forwards to seeing it painted.

Thanks for your reply!

Here's a little update. The greenstuffing went quicker than I thought, though I'm a bit concerned if it will look acceptable. Well, there's still the possibility of scraping parts of when it has hardened, and paint will do a great deal later, too. I started to grow a real, REAL high respect for people who sculpt whole figures out of this stuff.

The whole squad again:


The sergeant. He's bare-chested and I tried to get rid of the gaps between arm parts and torso part. Not sure if the greenstuff will be smooth enough later, but it is probably better than before:


A flame trooper. Same procedure as with the sergeant. The whole squad received treatment more or less like this, some will probably look better than others.


And, well, I tried to estimate the necessary greenstuff more accurately this time. However, I failed miserably and had a big chunk of the stuff left. So, here is the feared and mighty Serpens Epoxyputtensis! (It even has a little tongue!) I'm actually thinking as using this snakerock as dangerous terrain in our next game.


Tomorrow, there will be some priming going on, I hope. Will be a bit dependent on the weather. I'm eager to leave all this gluing, cutting, scraping off mould lines, greenstuffing and so on behind and get some painting done.

Lol, I like the snake .

For filling gaps in figures green stuff is really not the best putty to use - you'd be much better off using milliput, which is white and hardens to a rock like substance that can be filed smooth. Filing greenstuff doesn't work too well in my experience, unless you are willing to commit the time to use wet and dry paper etc.

Dude the GSing looks more than adequate; go you.

I love the snake too

I'm going to admit when i saw that it was an imperial guard blog i immediately sighed...However, It's a Catachan one and those guys kick ass so im really looking forward to seeing this army progress.

First off i love the fact you have a lot of flamers, i really do!

I also like that you have smoothed over the joins on the arms with putty. I hate the fact that the join on them is so obvious unless you fill round it. You drilled your barrels too...i can tell this is going to be good!

I really like the whole chimera/boat thing. Could you perhaps convert a chimera slightly to make this more obvious?

An actual boat loaded with Catachans would look awesome. You may find a use for it, bearing in mind you have a river or water (duh, obviously)...although it would look sweet as a display piece too.

Cant wait too see some more progress!


Slappy

Thanks for your replies!
Unfortunately, weather was nasty the last few days and I didn't get to prime the Torch squad. I need to get outside for that, for I have no special painting room. Well, I guess tomorrow there will be some progress.

Slappywag: I already thought I could try and make it look like there are some algae or other aquatic flora hanging from treads and chassis. However, I'm not sure that will be easy to pull off and deliver the message. Well, first I have to finish that squad here. Your idea about a real boat is great, too! I'll start looking around for something in adequate size. Could simply be used as a terrain piece or objective marker, or even as a special vehicle. Like that thought!

Witzkatz wrote:Thanks for your replies!
Unfortunately, weather was nasty the last few days and I didn't get to prime the Torch squad. I need to get outside for that, for I have no special painting room. Well, I guess tomorrow there will be some progress.

Slappywag: I already thought I could try and make it look like there are some algae or other aquatic flora hanging from treads and chassis. However, I'm not sure that will be easy to pull off and deliver the message. Well, first I have to finish that squad here. Your idea about a real boat is great, too! I'll start looking around for something in adequate size. Could simply be used as a terrain piece or objective marker, or even as a special vehicle. Like that thought!

Be sure to give your Catachans 'Water wings' (I think thats what you yanks call them), lol!

I like your idea about aquatic flora, would be tough to do though. What about water marks on them? like on the bank of a big river you have water level marks etc. Just a thought.

Update!

The weather (and therefore the light) in my room is rather suboptimal at the moment, meaning painting is not that much fun. However, I got the squad primed yesterday and have started painting a first trooper to see if the colour scheme works.

This guy is still WIP - priming, basecoating and applying of washes have been done, he misses some highlighting though.





I apologize for the darkness of the pictures, but we have clouded sky since three days and my desklamp would give bad results due to artifical light colour.

This is supposed to be the "basic trooper": Green fatigues, red bandana, black boots, black rifle. Since I want my squad members to look a bit more individual, some will have camouflage pants or maybe a worn-out white shirt or some green camo stripes on the rifle. This is only the simplest variant to see how it looks.

I'm quite content with him at this stage. I'm not sure if I should paint the eyes and what colours I should use for highlighting.

Comments and critique would be greatly appreciated!

NALPAM FLAMERS NAM STYLE love a catachan army, so unformal and oldschool

Do some free hand tattoo's. You may say i cant or it's hard. I say you have to start somewhere. That's even if you think tats are cool! ha ha

Slappy

clean work all around solid but not much to it sadly. You need something extra to make the model pop..like say idk silver lasguns or something also if you can put in some eyes it will show the face nicely.

Thanks for your replies!

Tatoos are a really nice idea! I, personally, would never get one, but it fits right in there for Catachan grunts. I will try some, I promise!

@Empchild: I hope that some highlighting will bring out different details of the mini better. Together with the tatoos, that might be enough to make it "pop" more...I'm trying to keep the overall colours rather muted to keep with the stealthy jungle fighter theme. Silver lasguns would not work that well with that, I fear...I guess I'll try the face with some eyes.

Wellll....this is probably some kind of thread necromancy, but I heard this would be allright in P&M Blogs.

Unfortunately, university somehow managed to steal all the time I planned to dedicate to this project. However, there IS progress, although it's coming in real slow.

First, here are some pictures of more guardsmen:




The second guy from the right should alreday be known. The others are basically painted like him, with minor alterations. The sergeant sports camo pants - the stripes are quite subtle on the photo, you can see them better in real life. It's Knarloc Green pants with DA Green stripes and Thraka Wash. I kind of like this very light approach to camouflage, I think it suits these guys.

(You can't see it very well on the pics, sorry for the lighting, but the Sergeant has a laspistol just like those guys on the Catachan Battleforce box! Catachan Green with Chaos Black camo stripes. )

I plan to do the rest of the infantry basically like this, although I will change cloth or gear colours slightly from time to time, to make it look like those guys salvage or steal what they think could work better than standard gear. They're Catachans, not the Jantine Patricians, in the end.

The first guy and the flamer guy both received some eyes - they did not turn out THAT well, but the result is okay, I guess. I didn't dare to try this out on the Sergeant, basically because he's squinting anyway and you wouldn't see very much of the eyes.

The one thing I'm struggling with is how to highlight these guys. I think they could need highlights, though I'm not sure how to do it. The skin is basically Tallarn Flesh with Ogryn Flesh Wash - I'm pondering if a pure streak of Tallarn Flesh could already be bright enough in comparison to the washed Flesh to create a highlight effect on some areas?

Oh, and about the tatoo thing - I read in the IG codex that Catachans use tatoos frequently instead of normal rank badges. For 5 years in service, they give you a skull tatoo - for 10 years, you get a Dagger motive. I REALLY want to implement this on my Catachans, because every one of them is supposed to be a veteran. However, I tried to paint 2mm diameter skulls on paper - which is a more forgiving medium than a rounded plastic shoulder anyway - and it just looked like a blob. Has anyone some advice or cool tips on how I could give these boys some cool-looking skull motive tatoos on the shoulders without making them look...well..like someone dropped paint on their shoulders?


And last but not least: Since I'm on holidays right now, there will be more frequent updates. I promise.

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz

This blog almost makes me like Catachans. I'm adding it to my subscribe list.

For tats you might consider using transfers and some liquid Decal Set to 'melt' them to fit the figure's contour. The Space Wolf decal sheet used to have some small black skulls and some black daggers. Unfortunately you only got about six usable skulls and two usable daggers per sheet. I'm not sure what the current Space Wolf transfer sheet has on it.

For more watery looking Chimeras, consider a "slime line" showing where the water level usually rises when the Chimera is in the water. Lower than that line is muddy and wet. At that line is a bit of algae, leaves, and a wet look. Above that line is a dustier, dryer look. Also consider adding some ropes and maybe even small anchors. You might even leave the rear hatch open, add some armored cav style gun shields in lieu of the fixed lasguns, and put some firing steps and ammo crates in the interior.

Thanks for your reply!
Decals would probably have the best details for the tats; however, I'm not sure they would work very well on the round shoulders of the guardsmen. Had bad experiences with SM chapter badges and their round shoulder armour, the decals wouldn't stick to the surface, even with tiny cuts made into them. I might give it a try, though.

The Chimeras will definitely get some watery-looking treatment. I planned to airbrush them, though, and I'm still undecided about whether to buy a compressor or just work with canned air for this project...a compressor has such a huge price attached that I'm hesitant about starting the Chimeras at the moment.

However, there's progress on the infantry:



A normal trooper and a heavy flamer specialist. The trooper has camo pants and a different leather colour for his kit. The heavy flamer guy has received a first try at highlighting the skin with pure Tallarn Flesh. I think it definitely helps with the face, but I'm not sure if the arms get a bit too bright for tanned jungle fighters. His flamer body received some highlights, too - Camo Green over Catachan Green base colour, I think this works rather well. I'm not sure if and how I should highlight the Chaos Black lasguns, though...

Thoughts, Comments and Critique appreciated als always.


PS: Yay! 500th post!

A solid effort. Looking good so far

Nice job! Keep 'em coming!

Thanks for your kind comments!

A little update, I worked on this guy last evening...I had a trip to the tool store shortly before and got myself a bench vice, a manual drill and some 2mm drill bits. Together with the Neodymium magnets I bought a while ago, I was able to have a first try at magnetizing something - and it worked out very well, I think!




This trooper is, as the rest, not completely finished painting. He'll need some highlights and some clean-up on the back of his vest, where friction between Vox-Caster and vest tore some paint off.
As this is my very first attempt at magnetizing, I'm rather fond of how well this works and how easy this is to do, at least with big parts. I now plan to magnetize a whole lot of other stuff throughout my army.

On a related topic: Now that first squad is slowly progressing to completion, I'm thinking about how to do the bases. I think the bases should be jungle-like, I have some static swamp grass lying around that...well, maybe I'll just show you a picture.

These boyz are what I would call my best models up to now by the way However, I'm sure I could improve the basing a bit, as 100% swamp grass may look a bit boring.

Comments and critique please!

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz

simple clean yet highly effective good stuff

I like Witzkatz, Witzkatz like fire! Seriously though, nice work!

Sooo...rather spontaneously, I'm going on vacation in a few hours, probably for about a week, so there'll be no painting progress. However, I'll have access to the Interwebz from there...so I thought I might show you another project I'm working on and hope to get some comments and advice about that one.

I present you my Dreadnought of the Iron Knights chapter!




Now, this is very much WIP, just like the Catachans. There are only basecoats applied on the dreadnought (apart from some of the cables which received washes). I plan to change the base colour of the tanks on the multimelta to Shining Gold, too. The idea is to make the multimelta parts and the ammo belt on the storm bolter look like brass, which can by done rather easily by applying badab black and leviathan purple washes on the Shining Gold basecoat in my experience.
However, I'm not sure how to progress with the rest, so....

What are your thoughts about the colour choices? (Boltgun Metal and Chaos Black are the colours of the Iron Knights, so they should be the basis for this thing.) Should I do some metal parts black, some black parts metal? Biggest question: How to highlight this thing? I think some badab black washes for the metal are in order...after that, maybe highlights in mithril silver for the metal areas and codex grey or even skull white highlights for the black areas?

Oh, and I need something to write on those two little banners. Preferably a short name on the middle one and something mariney for the banner on his left leg. Any ideas?

Comments and critique appreciated as always!

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz

Soo....has been a long time, but here's an update for my Catachan Rangers! Since nobody answered about my dreadnought, I will no longer bother you with that guy.

I can proudly announce that all models of the first veteran squad are painted! They lack proper bases, though. That will be one of the next steps.






Sorry, the pictures might have gotten a little bit too bright. It's hard, either they are too dark or too bright...maybe weather conditions wlil improve picture quality in the next days.

Furthermore, I finally started building my first vehicle for real! The Chimera for the flamer squad is on its way. I'm planning on buying a beginner's airbrush set this afternoon so I can start giving it a nice camo scheme ASAP.

Some pictures for that one, still very WIP:


As you can see in the picture below, the heavy flamer is magnetized. Since this APC will be mainly used as a mechanized assault unit, I sincerely doubt I will use the hull heavy bolter sometimes, but I like keeping my options.



Unfortunately, the upper hull part is quite warped. I hope gluing it together with lower hull and track parts will straighten this out. Will cause some internal stress in the material, but I think the glue should be able to handle it.



Allright! The next steps will include some advance on the Chimera, basing my flamer squad and maybe starting my Company Command Squad. I'm not really sure about their loadout, though, so I might give another vetsquad a try first.
Building a vehicle is a nice distraction from painting dozens of little infantry guys, so...well, got a Valkyrie kit lying around here. If airbrushing the first Chimera is fun I might start building that flyer first.

Basing the veterans: I got some ideas for the bases, not sure if this could work...I basically plan to use some medium-sized gravel (?) to create some height differences on the "terrain" they are standing on, painting these "rocks" in a muddy brown and then covering everything with jungle swamp grass. I'm hoping this will look good, but I'm unexperienced with stuff like this, so C&C are greatly appreciated - for the rest of the project, too, of course!

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz

Some progress on the Chimera. I realize putting together the probably most used APC in the 40k game next to Rhinos isn't that exciting for experienced hobbyists, but since this is my first GW tank, I will make blog entries about it anyway.

I put together the hull heavy bolter, drilled out the muzzle with a 2mm drill bit and magnetized the whole thing. Hull options are now fully switchable, very happy about how easy magnetizing went at this point!
The turret received the communications array. I will use this thing on every Chimera for fluff reasons: Being a forwared recon unit, every vehicle should be able to operate alone for a while if necessary, and having a high-powered comm system might be helpful to keep in touch with sector command. Apart from that, it looks cool.


The warped hull part was a problem when putting together the main parts, but as you can see, with a bit force all parts could be placed where they belong.


The parts refused to fit perfectly, though. This one glueline at the front of the Chimera looks especially bad - thinking about filling up the gaps with Greenstuff. But this might be a bit over the top, considering there will be at least three layers of paint about those parts...


In a few minutes I will start working on the bases for the first vet squad, trying to get the jungle look. Might be able to put up a second update today.

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz

Your stuff looks very clean and neatly painted , I think you are ready to get more into highlighting and blending to really make these models pop . This is in no way a negative post towards your skills since your stuff looks good , I just think if you went with a few more shades of highlight and than washed it back down to blend it together you would have a really great outcome .

Next short update, probably the last for today...I started working on the bases for the veteran squad!

Some pictures first - sorry for the bad light, its really cloudy here today.




Now, to explain what I have planned!

The pure swamp grass I used on the Orks shown a bit up the thread seemed too boring for me for basing. I thought about ways to make the ground look not so flat - not mountainous terrain, but at least a hint at hill-like terrain or rocky-grassy areas around waterways in the jungle.

These rocks I glued on the bases will now be painted in a dark, earthy colour, resembling wet mud. As a next step, I plan to use dark swamp grass all over the base - on top of the rocks, too. With a bit of luck, this should look like the terrain isn't that flat and what shows of the rocks should look like muddy jungle soil with rocks underneath.

I was thinking a bit along the lines of this:


It will, of course, not look as cool as THAT jungle, but maybe I get a bit closer to that than with pure, flat grass ground.
Maybe I'll get the grass done tomorrow!

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz


Postscriptum: Thanks for your answer, slann!
I think I know what you mean about highlights...I used them very rarely on these Catachans. All the rifles and flamers got some edge highlighting, as well as some equipment pouches, because in that case it was rather clear what to do. However, on the rather round surfaces of the muscles and the cloth of these guys, I wasn't really sure how to highlight to make it look good. I tried highlighting the skin up with pure Tallarn Flesh on the guy with the heavy flamer and was not completely sure if it looked better than before.

When the next bunch of Catachans gets started, I will definitely try to implement a little more highlighting, especially in the faces and on the skin.

I would try a wash of Devlan mud or Ogryn Flesh to give some depth to the muscles/skin tones.

For the rest of the equipment they are jungle fighters so some mud and dirt working up form the bottom would add some nice detail too.

The dread and others look really sharp, your painting is very precise.

@calypso2ts: Thanks for your comment! The skin of the soldiers is already heavily washed with Ogryn Flesh. I didn't want to make the shadows too deep, in fear of making them look too boxy/bulky with those huge muscles. The dread has gotten some further painting, too, if you or someone else is interested, I could make some pictures of its nigh-finished state.

Small update:

Started working on the guy looking out of the turret. The trick is...


...his arms are going to be magnetized, so I can exchange the heavy stubber arms + gun and the "waving to a halt" arms at whim. Since I really like the stubbers, but usually dont have the points for them, I like to keep that option available.

With the right arm, the gap where only the magnets hold the parts together is nicely obscured. With the gunner arms attached it will probably look not so good, but I guess that's what you get for magnetizing Imperial Guard infantry.


Next update will probably be around the weekend, got a busy week. Still need an Airbrush.

C&C always appreciated!

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz

Great progress! i like the magnet work.

Hello Dakka!

Small update. Progress is a bit slow at the moment, but I really plan to finally get this airbrush next week so I can paint the first tank.


The first Chimera has now semi-magnetized options for a pintle-mounted heavy stubber or a normal tank commander with binoculars! I also glued the smokelaunchers on.



Barrel needs to be drilled out.



Haaalt!




On a second note, the first squad is finally based and therefore totally complete. The bases worked not 100% out as I hoped, but I guess they are good enough for this.



Not sure what to do next...Marbo? The CCS? Another vet squad? Concentrate on the Chimera...?

Well, anyway, there'll be some updates next week.

C&C always appreciated!

Thanks for reading,
Witzkatz