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hello and thanks for stopping by. this P&M blog will be dedicated to my new, night lords-themed chaos space marine army. as part of a painting contest over at the independent characters blog, I've committed myself to building an 1850 point army, painting at least one unit each month, with the whole army being completed by late november 2013. it'll be a tall order, since I'm a slooowwwww painter, but nothing like a deadline to motivate :p

anyway, due to some paints I'm waiting for being on indefinite back order, I don't have anything painted to show you. fear not, however, for I have not been idle! I present to you, deffie the defiler, prepped and ready for painting:





beyond throwing some greenstuff onto the spikey plates on the claws to fill in that horrendous gap, this guy's ready to go. I magnetized the hull so it easily swivels and can be removed for transport. I also magnetized all the weapon options, though I'm only building the reaper auto cannon, the TL heavy flamer and the havoc launcher. the box doesn't come with bits for the TL lascannon and I don't see myself using the power scourge (and it's really ugly anyway). the kit went together pretty well, but the mold lines... oh, the mold lines. lots of scraping and filing to get to this point :(

while I wait for my paints to arrive, I'm prepping a chaos marine to use as a test model for my paint scheme. hope to have some painted models to show off in the near future.

hi guys,

finally got some test models completed:



details can be found in this post in the P&M forum: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/507368.page#5281143

going to start painting the defiler tomorrow night and should have him finished before the end of the month.

I dig them. I love the lightning bolt details on the armor. Did you use any paint additives to get that fantastically thin and vibrant line?

Raatcharch wrote:
I dig them. I love the lightning bolt details on the armor. Did you use any paint additives to get that fantastically thin and vibrant line?

I did the lightning in two stages. the first stage used a mix of ice blue, water and glaze medium; about 1 part paint, 6-10 parts water and 1 part medium. the exact ratio doesn't matter too much as you can just apply more layers to darken up the line if the mix is too thin. I painted in the outline for the lightning using this mix and a size 0 brush, going over each line a few times until I got enough color.

the second stage was done with skull white mixed with a bit of retarder; about 2 parts paint to 1 part retarder. I used a fine detail brush for that and just put a line of white down the center of each ice blue outline. it ended up being a bit easier then I thought it would be. the hardest part was deciding how much lightning to do and where to put it

Looks great, can't wait to see this develop!

quick update this morning:



work on deffie proceeds, but much more slowly then I'd hoped. I ended up wasting a few hours masking off the legs so I could airbrush a metallic color onto them, but I'm not happy with the finish. so, I'm going to have to go back over it with a brush anyway. boo. I also spent a lot of time base coating all the brass areas with brown paint. might turn out to be another waste of time as I'm going to use vallejo liquid metals for that now rather than regular metallics. we shall see.

on the plus side, I've gotten some of the detailing done (horns, cables, lightning). next steps are to finish off all the non-brass metal areas, wash them and start edge highlighting. hopefully I can avoid making a mess with the liquid gold later I was hoping to have deffie done before the end of this month, but since I'm still waiting for my order of VLM (which is on back order) I don't know how realistic that is.

in the top, left of the photo you can see paint chipping tests I've been doing on some plastic spoons. I'm not really happy with any of the color combinations I've tried out so far. I'll have to come up with something, though, because chaos just isn't that neat and tidy.

Well that paintjob is mighty sexy. Will your army be Raptor heavy I wonder? I'll be watching with interest, it's always nice to see the progress of a beautiful army from it's foundations!

yup, plenty of raptors. my chaos lord, which I'll probably paint up next after deffie, will be running with a pack of 15 raptors. may not play well on the table, but they'll look damn fine :p

decisions, decisions... I got in touch with my paint vendor this morning and the liquid gold paints I've ordered are still on back order and *might* arrive by the end of next week. or they might not arrive until later. as I was hoping to have deffie complete before the end of the month, I now have to decide if I should wait for the VLM paints or not. if I don't wait, I'll just use something similar to the gold recipe I used for the test marines I posted earlier.

thoughts?

Wait for them, they are the sex when it comes to metallics. You just have to use a dry brush (not drybrush) and they clean in turps/alcohol not water.

Just paint some more stuffs blue, its looks great

Blue's not as dark as I like on Night Lords, but how can you argue with such wonderful painting? Will definitely be watching this unfold.

small update today.

I've got my defiler and my chaos lord painted up as far as I can go until I get my VLM golds in the mail. only thing left after that will be an oil wash and maybe a bit of weathering (still undecided on how best to do scratches on dark armor).

while I wait, I've started work on the aspiring champions for my two CSM units. I had picked up the DV chosen models off ebay a few months back, so I thought I might try those out as champions since they're so ornate. since they're all snap-fit, they're a bit difficult to use if they don't already have the gear you want. I plan to ran my champs with either a lightning claw or power sword, so that ruled out the maul and axe guy (already used axe guy's arm for my lord, anyway). that left me with twin LC guy, PF guy and two bolter guys. I went with PF guy and a bolter guy:





turns out I never got part of the fist for PF guy anyway, so I hacked off his arm and used a warp talon LC arm. as a bonus, I can also use one of my fancy shoulder pads on him since it's not sculpted on. the bolter guy has a sheathed power sword, so I figure that's close enough for wysiwyg. I'm not totally sold on him, though, because I won't be able to use a fancy shoulder pad on him without doing some serious hacking to remove the sculpted shoulder pad first. I could just apply a night lords chapter decal to the other shoulder pad instead or maybe I just don't bother with it at all. my lord doesn't have the fancy shoulder pad either, but he does have giant bat wings (jump pack).

do you think bolter guy works or should I put together a champ out of the CSM box instead?

Lovely neat paintwork on those Night Lords, they look really good.

Agree, loving the lightening bolts!

quick update. my VLM golds are *finally* in the mail, so I should get them late next week. that will let me finish the defiler and my chaos lord, which are sitting in pieces underneath some plastic wrap right now. in the meantime, I've put together four aspiring champions:



two for my CSM squads using the DV chosen models with some minor conversions and two for my raptor squads. raptor melee weapons are magnetized, as well as the claw arm on one of the CSM champs. I didn't bother to magnetize the bolter arms because I just don't ever see myself taking plasma pistols or combi-weapons on these guys. for the raptor squad, I technically only need one champ with the list I'm building (one 15-man raptor squad), but I figured I'd do two just for flexibility in the future. one has a choice between power sword and chain sword and the other has a choice between lightning claw and chainsword.

I also ran out to the hardware store this morning and picked up some VCT tile. it's about 1/4" thick, but very easy to break pieces off. I'm planning to use small chunks of it as broken concrete slabs on my bases to give them an urban rubble feel.

at long last, deffie is complete! here's a couple (poorly lit) shots; more in the gallery:





this took way, waaayyy longer than it should have. I spent a few weeks waiting for my vallejo liquid metals to arrive, made some mistakes that I had to go back and fix and then distracted myself with a few other things (other models, starcraft II, etc). I think it came out ok overall. there's an absurd amount of detail on the model. I'm happy with the color scheme and the VLM really pops. I'm not very happy with the metals on the legs, though. that was one of the things that I messed up and had to go back and fix, but even after the fix they're still a bit meh. note for posterity: do not apply washes to large, flat surfaces. the usual badab black over boltgun metal routine does *not* work well for that... as a result, the highlights don't really stand out well. if I were to do it again, I think I would have used VMA black metal as the base color for the larger metal areas. no need for a wash and highlights would be cake. ah, hindsight.

speaking of hindsight, assembly deffie before painting was a big mistake. painting those damn legs was a pain in the a$$. would have been a lot easier if I'd painted them first and then glued them on. I seem to make this mistake with the first iteration of every model I build... did it with my land speeder, did it with my first batch of space marines, ... next time I'm building something new and I reach for the glue before the paint, I need to just punch myself in the face :p

anyway, I'm excited to have deffie finished because his parts have been taking up a big chunk of my desk. I've also managed to finish up my chaos lord/sorcerer, so pics of him will be forthcoming. up next on the desk is finishing up the aspiring champs. they're about 2/3 of the way done at the moment, so hopefully in a week or so if I can find the time.

Nice work Varl!

cheers monkeyh

as promised, here's my chaos lord/sorcerer:

lord mode with wings (counts-as jump pack) and axe of blind fury:



sorcerer mode with force sword:



and all the magnetized bits together:



more photos of each mode from different angles in the gallery.

this was my first real kitbash and, finceast issues aside, it was fun. I love the wings, though it's far from a unique idea, and the power axe from the DV chosen models fits well. I'm still questioning whether I should have also magnetized the head as this one seems a bit too sorcerer-ish to me. I can always snap it off later if I have a change of heart, I guess. the joys of super glue.

this model was also my first real experience with finecast. sadly, it's just as crappy as everyone says it is. sooo much of the detail is mangled due to bubbles and casting defects. every single rivet has an air bubble in it. bubbles on several of the sharp corners of the armor, bubbles in the bolt pistol, missing chain links, missing detail on the book cover, miscast bits on the helmet, ... ugh. there's only so much that greenstuff can fix. the quality of this model just sucked :(

I really hope that it's just an issue with this particular model/cast and that my experience isn't representative of finecast in general. I've got a finecast termie librarian sitting on my desk that I'm almost afraid to open and the third army I plan to get into, dark eldar, is almost all finecast these days. if I have to deal with this kind of quality on troop models, I will be sad, sad, sad :( I don't really get it, either. the DV models are plastic and have amazing, crisp detail. way better than this sorcerer has, and with none of the casting issues and barely a mold line to boot. why bother with resin at all? oh well...

as mentioned, next up on the table is finishing up my four aspiring champs. after that, it'll be a tossup between a terminator librarian for my salamanders or starting on a squad of chaos marines.

These look great and the colour scheme with the lightnings is fantastic. Your thoughts on finecast seem to mirror my own and that of a lot of the online community. My first (and only so far) finecast model was Lemartes, guardian of the lost and, whilst most of it was nice and crisp in details, a ton of the details were warped or had air bubbles... I think that if you are having problems wtih your finecast models you can simply call up customer support and ask for a new one as the product you recieved was faulty or damaged? I was forced to do so with my model as the arms were bubbled and split right down the seam and there was too many air bubbles on them to warrant trying to save wth liquid greenstuff.

yeah, I've read that GW is actually quite good about providing replacement models. the only catch for me is that I either have to drive to the nearest GW store, which is an hour away, or wait a week or so for the replacement to be mailed. le sigh. I'm sure I'll be testing the theory in the future, though. I won't settle for another model in the same condition as this one was.

quick update this morning. finished my aspiring champion models a couple days ago but didn't have time to take photos. color is slightly off (the reds are much darker in real life) as I used my iphone for these, but they're pretty close.

CSM Aspiring Champions:


Raptor Aspiring Champions:


next on the list will be to complete the first 10-man CSM squad. hope to have that done by mid april.

WOW! This is a really inspiring blog! Your raptors are simply stunning!! Grats

thanks the new raptor/warp talon models are really impressive. great sculpts, quality casting, crazy amounts of crisp detail and very little cleanup required. they just make you want to paint them well :p

nice work!

The Night Lords look amazing and are one my fave traitor legions.

If only there was a Night Lords character that made raptors Troops (and if only warp talons had grenades).

@rohansoldier: thanks for the kind words. and yes, I really wish there was an HQ choice that unlocked raptors as troops. none of the named HQs make for a good fluffy choice, so I'll be rolling my own jump pack chaos lord instead.

at long last, here's the first completed CSM squad:



these guys were actually finished last week, but I didn't get around to taking pics until today. took a bit longer than it should have because I got distracted by some other shiny stuff. pretty happy with how they came out, though the resin special weapons packs I picked up from GW are complete crap. the casting quality is fairly horrible, as is the detail. compare the two plasmaguns in this squad and you can see what I mean. the resin meltas are even worse. live and learn... I think I'll be getting my extra special weapons and combi bits from anvil industry rather than GW in the future.

inspired by an idea I picked up from a forum post on how to make squads easily identifiable, I put two skulls on the base of every model in this unit. this will make it easy to quickly distinguish members of this squad from other nearby CSM squads. especially helpful if they all get stuck into the same melee. the next squad I'll be doing will have a single skull on the base, third squad will have no skulls, etc.

one of the shiny distractions I mentioned earlier was an ADL:



I wanted to be able to use it with both of my armies, so I chose generic imperial guard colors. simple enough to prep for painting, but I had a couple false starts with the color scheme so it took longer than I'd expected. I originally had all the banding painted up in metallics, but it just looked too busy so I went back over it with green. also tried adding a pigment wash to one of the wall sections, but wasn't happy with the result and ended up washing it off. I may try adding some dry pigment later on, but I'm calling it done for now so I can move on to other things

that's going to be it for my night lords for a while. since I'm getting in regular games with my salamanders now, I'm going to be focusing on fleshing out that army to a solid 1500pts before I get back to my night lords. keep an eye on my salamanders plog; stormtalon's up next on my painting table

These guys look fantastic. Where were the shoulder pads from? I know I've seen them, but so many other manufacturers out there now. Finished reading the books last year before my ban on black library. Might have to ignore the ban if a new story arc presents itself.

I have always liked seeing other peoples CSM projects. These night lords are awesome!

Consider me subscribed.

the shoulder pads are from puppetswar: http://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=147. the casting is top notch, though the very tips of the wings are prone to snapping off if not carefully handled when removing the sprue. they work great for night lords and save me the pain of having to deal with decals, too boot :p. the only trouble I've had with them is that the wing tips are so tall that they collide with the backpack with some arm poses. nothing a bit of trimming and careful arm positioning can't manage, though.

Great job Varl! A great counterpart to your Salamanders.

Your Nightlords are excellent, the lightning is amazing you make it look so easy