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Dude! beautiful brush work on the bone claw! amazingly good looking stuff! it actually appears to have some 'weight' to it which works so well with the pose of the Grot, welding flesh to flesh without thought of bodily capabilities, only thinking to exist for the pleasure of rending flesh from bone to the symphonic cacophony of snapping bones, spilling blood and last breaths!

.... yep, looks good!

Played two great games this weekend, one against IG and one against CSM. I thought the IG game was going to be really rough because it was a plasma vet/chimera/vendetta build. But what I didn't expect was for my Dark Lances to suddenly start working the way they are described in the background . Turn 1 I exploded two chimera. Turn 2 I exploded two more. Which completely stalled the IG advance since the last Chimera had immobilized itself with a failed difficult terrain test. The Grotesques also got to rampage through the IG lines and made it all the way over to my opponent's side of the table to smash the Company Commander in close combat! I did eventually end up losing that game, not getting the 4+ I needed to kill his last 3 guardsmen on an objective. But if I'm going to lose a game, then having it so close that it all comes down to a final die roll is my favorite way to do so! As I footnote, Vendettas with Heavy Bolters are a holy terror against Dark Eldar. Venoms, Raiders and Razorwings seem to wreck themselves when a Vendetta drifts into their general vicinity .

Game two against CSM. No Grotesques this time since I realized it was some time since I had last brought my Hellions out. I manged to get some pics during the game. I particularly like the third and fourth picture showing the two armies mixing it up because of the contrast between the red and blue miniatures. This game was a reverse of the first with my Dark Lances doing next to nothing, I didn't manage to even immobilize a single one of my opponent's vehicles all game. But my splinter weapons balanced that out since I was wounding well above 50%. Most notably one Squad of 9 Warriors caused 14 wounds out of 16 shots, killing 6 Chaos Marines. The game ended in a hard fought tie with neither of us having any troops left to claim objectives. I got first blood, he got line-breaker and we both killed each others Warlords.

Deployment, I've got the Razorwing, a Ravager and a squad of Hellions in reserve, There's another squad of Dark Lance Trueborn off the picture in some woods to the right.


From my opponent's side of the table. This was a really a non-competitive narrative game hence the eclectic mix of units on both sides.


Mixing it up, that squad of marines in front of the Rhino is about to get destroyed by unusually lethal splinter fire.


A bit closer, giving more of a in-game feel! I tried some completely different terrain this time with the idea that it was an Exodite world. We agreed that the stands of trees were "solid" in that if you couldn't physically fit the models in you couldn't move them through. I used up most of the loose trees in the store!

Those look and sound like fantastic games Jon. So nice to see your army in the field.

I LOVE the battle shots. I know I've said this before but your models are amazing, but they look even cooler when on a good battlefield against another painted army.

 Mechanicum Jon wrote:
I LOVE the way this claw is turning out ! It took me a couple tries to get the right bone color, the first attempts were too light, but I think it the right shade now. Ditto for the flesh as I want the claw colors to stand out from my usual flesh tones.

Thats amazing, i thought it was drawn over the top of the image it looked so good keep up the good work

Young Logan

Utterly incredible blog. Outstanding brush work and some great tutorials too. Thanks for this.

This paint job has certainly come a long way since the last progress shot! I kept thinking about putting up some more progress pictures each time I painted some part. I ended up deciding not to post so many progress pics because I wasn't sure people would find the incremental progress interesting. But I guess I've proved that when you put a lot of un-photo-worthy incremental progress together you can end up with a nicely painted miniature ! I'll be taking a break from painting Grotesques for a while to work on some other stuff (not exactly sure what yet but I'm leaning towards some more classic Warriors). Anyway, building six hulking bio-engineered monstrosities is an accomplishment any Haemonculus would be proud of!

Truly awe inspiring, looking forward to any further developments!

He looks like a nightmare fuelled fiddler crab (google it)

Great army Jon, you can be proud of everything in this log, and know that you inspire everyone that reads it.

That came out amazingly well. I wasn't sure about the nid bits when you did the build, but I must admit you were right on that and carried it off with great skill.

Looking forward to your next project (as always).

Looks amazing. Good job.

What next?

Awesome. Just plain incredible

There are some amazing conversions in here, and everything is so nicely painted...Love the ROger-Tyranid-Grotesque! I may have to steal some of these ideas....I have about 2/3 the models as you do in my Dark Eldar army, and its all black primer right now....so intimidating! I don't even know where to start!

How long did that guy take to paint? Astonishing work bud

This might have been asked before, but I just found the thread; How are you doing the weathering/paint chipping on the armour?

@John: The claws and the scarring came out really well. Methinks you now need to convert a Raider fit for carrier that squad.

@Stoffer: For detailed instructions on how to do the weathering, please refer to the 4th post post from the top of page 3, way back at the beginning.

Enjoy.

Here's what's next! I've found that I really like running squads of nine Warriors in a Raider with a Haemonculus. So I need more Warriors.

But why not just paint some of the new sculpts? Mainly because I find it quite satisfying to see what a "modern" paint job can do to spruce up models that are looking a bit dated. I did some minor conversions and kept the optional spikes off to give these models a "sleeker" appearance to fit in with the newer sculpts.



I'm quite happy with this helmet conversion. I did it by carving out a small groove in the back of the helmet and gluing a row of spikes in.



Thanks for complements on the Fiddler-Crab Grotesque!

@Stoffer: Dark_Gear's got it for me ! There are also some step by step photos of models being painted with this method scattered throughout this thread.

@kitch102: I didn't keep count of how long it took . Anyway I seldom paint at full speed since for me the whole painting experience definitely involves a good podcast or audiobook.

@Fango: I'd start with a basic Warrior to try out your scheme. Also, don't worry about the quality on the first guy. I've learned not to stress myself out trying to paint a new color scheme on the first model of a new army. Just get the colors on and if they look alright then spend more time on the second guy. If the colors don't work then just try again without worrying too much about the quality of the paint job until you get the scheme right.

My favourite! Old warriors, Jon style!

I'm still taken aback by these particularly as they were near the top of my most hated list until the first one you posted, since then I've kind fallen in love with them. I could certainly imagine building a DE squad in the future now which I would never have considered before.

Hopefully I'll do them a similar justice one day. Pillars and needles right?!

Can't wait to see the end result, you make even those horrible models look good

Looking back I realise I really don't like these models, but I'm interested to see how you turn them around and AWESOME-OFY

Progress to date on these. They paint up surprisingly quickly. Somehow the fact that the detail on these isn't as crisp as on the new sculpts actually makes them easier to paint . Like I said in an earlier post, painting these models has really make me like them a lot more. Sounds like some you you feel the same ! I think one reason for me is that I started to see the seeds of what makes the new models so awesome in these older sculpts, such as the segmented armor plates.

looking good so far mate

It's good - give me greater hope for my own horde of classic warriors (only need another 60-70 now )

Warriors all highlighted up! I thought it would be interesting to show these before the rusting powders go on to show what a difference the rust makes.



Baby got back (couldn't resist )!

Wow they look so cool. iv only just joined this site but have a Dark Eldar army too but mine is in purple. i will post pics when i can[

Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Bacchanalian Brumalia, Robotic Robanuka, Happy Hogswatch, Happy Hearth's Warming Eve, and Happy Holidays!

Here's a few progress shots of the bases for the five most recent Warriors and the claw Grotesque. As a recap for anyone who's just joined this thread, the bases are made by rolling out discs of Milliput putty, breaking them up with pliers once they're dry and then fixing the pieces onto bases using more putty. It's a technique I learned from Brushthralls and is pretty straightforward. The most time consuming part is actually mixing up the putty, so I usually do that while watching an episode of something (this time it happened to be the Double Fine Adventure Documentary).

I got about eight discs out of two boxes of Milliput. The different colors are just because these are the colors of Milliput I happened to have lying around.


Looking at stack of them makes me want to eat some green tea macaroons.


The five Warrior bases + the larger 40mm Grotesque base.


@nicola108: Welcome to Dakka!

That's pretty cool Jon. A appreciate the WIP shots.

And Merry Christmas! (etc., etc.)

So, here's a quick tutorial on how I paint my bases.

1. Basecoat Vallejo Hull Red (or any reddish brown)


2. Heavy drybrush Adeptus Battlegrey (or any dark grey)


3. Light drybrush Astronomican Grey (or any light grey)


4. Several layers of Leviathan Purple + Thraka Green mixed wash


5. Very very light drybrush of Vallejo Green Sky followed by very very very light drybrush of Astronomican Grey. Flock with clumps of Woodland Scenics Medium Green Foliage (F52). Matte Varnish to finish.


@Gitsplitta: Cheers, Gits !

Thanks for the tutorial. Seems simple enough I may have to give it a shot.

Side note: What did you think about the Double Fine Adventure documentary?