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Ha, that herald is going to look great, i can see it already.

 amazingturtles wrote:
Ha, that herald is going to look great, i can see it already.

Thanks! I hope so too. He's primed up and ready to paint now - next on the block.

First unit of Brims are finished! I took photos in a couple of different lighting environments because my current setup is shining a desk lamp through a hole cut in the top of a beer carton and I think it's washing out a lot of the colour. Really looking forward to that lightbox now











Not sure I'll get another chance to update this before I get into full holiday mode. Might slap some paint on the herald, but I'm still missing some Coelia Greenshade to finish him. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Excellent stuff.

I'm a believer! Dig the final colors here (whatever they are, man your lighting is messing with things!), that nice bit of texture on the cubes and the bases for contrast. It's interesting to see how far the relatively simple design has tightened down in a short time, as I scroll up and down your first page

Herald looks real solid, and those hexagons have real potential!

Thanks, guys!

I did feel silly sometimes posting pictures of what I 'was going' to do rather than what I had actually done, but I kind of like that now you can scroll through and see the idea develop.

No model updates today - but I wanted to record this somewhere to remind myself. Somebody on another forum mentioned that the horrors reminded him of the Daoloth from Ramsay Campbell's books - so of course I looked it up, and if that isn't the perfect idea for a large-scale LoC or soulgrinder, I don't know what is. I have no idea how I would model it, or even if it's possible, but man I'd love to try.



And some bonus fluff that I wrote to accompany the horrors - I'm going to try and post a little vignette like this to accompany each unit I finish.

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Our platoon was sent to clear out a mostly-abandoned Ork mining outpost on Corellian IV so we could repurpose it for Imperial use. The first sign that something was wrong was when our first two attempts to make landfall were impeded by our dropships exploding - both times, as soon as they were exactly 22.2 clicks from the outpost. 300 lives lost in the blink of an eye - and not an Ork in sight, let alone an anti-air platform. We tried to get a clearer look at the outpost after that, but all our arrays were bringing back a ton of interference. There appeared to be something - we couldn't tell what - hovering over the outpost. All we knew was that it was big.

We touched down about 30 clicks away and slogged it in on foot. The vets hitched a ride in the tanks - that turned out to be a mistake. We didn't see a soul on our way in, but just before the 22 click mark, all 12 Russes were vaporised. The armour seemed to flake away in an instant, but the interior must have been caught in the inertia. For a flashing moment I saw a look of pure pain on our commander's face, before he got turned inside out. All of us troopers were unharmed.

We crested the last ridge and made visual contact with the outpost - and the thing that had been screwing with our systems and our armour. It must have been 90 feet across, at least. A giant mirror. A diamond - or an octahedron, or a cube, depending what phase of its rotation it was in while you happened to glance at it. The air seemed crystal clear for the last 10 clicks between us, and it was filled with what I can only describe as song. Like a mix between whale sounds and steel chimes. With the sound came a cold touch on your brain - an alien tendril reaching out to your consciousness. More than one of us lost our lunch - or our bowels.

And then the diamond shattered - its bottom half dropping through the air, splitting into a thousand little pieces as they descended. They seemed to fall straight through the corrugated plasteel roofing of the outpost - as if they weren't there at all. But moments later, they had formed a ring around the perimeter. An endless wall of shimmering, iridescent silver.

The singing got louder. More than a few of us split ranks, screaming. We knew it wasn't long now until they were upon us.

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That's a nice bit of fluff! Very cool looking concept for a larger daemon, no idea how you would go about making it though. Chandeliers often come with interestingly shaped glass beads and whatnot that could be a good start?

That is excellent writing, haunting. Capturing the real unrealness of chaos is tricky, and i think you got it well here.

Look up acrylic stocks online. You should be able to find various rod, bar, cones, etc. in different sizes and colors and clarities if you search around a bit. Industrial prices tend to be cheap if you can do smaller batches, too. Like, dollars or even cents per pound of material. For they eye you could either make your own (look up some puppetry eye-painting and construction techniques, I'd say- maybe a little bit of resin eye-painting for the eyes they use in taxidermy) or see if you can find a nice toy eyeball you could use.

Very nice work! I really like your more abstract take on Chaos, instead of the GW's bodyhorror.
As I personally dislike the GW daemon aesthetic, your approach is something I might even want to tackle the daemons with!

Very inspiring work!

tzurk,

That has to be one of the most unique "counts as" armies I have seen. Simple but effective.

Cheers,

CB

Brilliant stuff - and I agree, very well written fluff. Warhammer needs more of this.


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Creativity, that is. Nuance. Ingenuity. The game got its start by figuring out "how can we represent a mad galaxy using the things we have? (Like fantasy figures)". I've felt that is the neatest part of the hobby, but it is being lost now that it is possible to create almost anything digitally. Demons made from beads? Bravo!

Absolutely love this idea. Never seen anything like it before. Personally, I hate the GW daemon's so its really nice to see someone coming up with a completely unique alternative.
As for the LoC concept art, I love everything about it besides the central eye, I just don't think it fits the theme of what you're going for. Maybe the centre should be a marble or some centralized core like that of a planet. You could even do something mirrored that reflects the chaos of the random, sporadic shapes around it. Or perhaps you could be even more subversive, the eye is naturally drawn to the centre expecting something that draws the model together to formulate an understanding of the whole model, what if you made the central feature something random like the Rubik's's cube to give the whole thing a sense of wrong'ness

Thank you guys for all the comments! I'm really over the moon with the positive reception my little dudes have gotten. I didn't expect it and it's really nice to come back to the thread and read your thoughts. It also motivates me to keep going - and I'm gonna need a whole lot of motivation when I get home to churn through all those Horrors...

@Anvildude, thankyou for the suggestions! I have found a few things online to keep my eye on. I have a feeling it will be a slow build and use a ton of different pieces, but I am excited that I at least have a start in my head now.

@Yazima, agreed 100% about the eye. I like the geometric shapes, but the whole point of this army was to get away from the random eyes/tentacles/mouths of Moorcockian Chaos. So the shapes will stay but they will be more abstract and less recognisably human.

The project is definitely front and center in my mind at the moment. It's my first day interstate with the family for Christmas, and I'm already farming ideas...mrs tzurk and I took tzurk jr to do a bit of Christmas shopping for the rellos and we stumbled across a few gems in the dollar store. A funky Christmas bauble and a tealight candle holder makes for a mean-looking monster with equal parts Cthun and Death Star vibes. I'm imagining it as some sort of stationary psychic weapon turret, maybe - or a 'broodmother' of sorts. In game terms, maybe a Daemon Prince or a Giant Chaos Spawn? I already have plans for the LoC and soulgrinder...or perhaps a Feculent Gnarlmaw for a Nurgle detachment.



My parents also have a bunch of these solar lights in the garden - apparently $10 from Kmart, which is the right price. I am thinking I will pick up a pack - I originally thought they would be nice in a unit as some big nasty or another but after looking again at the Daoloth art, I think I've found the perfect base for it...

This is really cool, and thanks for enlightening me to gwaahr's work as well - both amazing projects!

It was mentioned at some point in the Cubes of Tzeentch blog, but if you have time to check out some of the art from a Manga called Uzumaki, that may prove interesting. It focuses on spirals, but there are some truly funky images in that series.

Awesome work, and I'm excited to follow it.

Edit: Also that fluff is awesome - I'd be delighted to read more as you generate new models!

Wow tzurk this is really inventive, love how you have used the colours on the squares.

This latest model looks like its going to be awesome, I love when people take everyday items and turn them into something speculator.

Thanks guys!

Jpog, I've had a quick google of the Uzumaki manga - that is some terrifying stuff, but very inspiring.

Midget Gems, with a project like this it's hard to walk past any Christmas sale at the moment without buying every decoration I can get my hands on. I have high hopes for the Daoloth/LoC too, can't wait to get home and get started on it. The best part is they came in packs of 5 so I have a pretty good margin for error

The good thing about working with everyday items, though, is that I can still brainstorm even when I'm 1500km away from all my hobby kit.

I've been playing around with some alternate horror arrangements, and I keep flipping back and forth on them. They're interesting aesthetically, and do an at least halfway decent job of showing how the daemons might actually be rotating, but then I also think you lose some of the uniformity/sameness/Uncanny Valley-style repetition that adds a little ot the overall 'dread' of these things. They're also very 'euclidean', if that makes sense - it's clear that these are just made of scrabble tiles rather than an endlessly shifting mass of crystal/mirror/whatever. What do you guys think?







They'd obviously require a bit more work to gapfill the letters & pin the more precarious angles, but they might be worth it. Mixed in with some base horrors they might give a bit of variety - OR they might make the theme seem too silly/comical.

You can also see the two big death stars/great old ones in the background. Here's a pic of them with a horror and the LoC for scale.



I was also pleasantly surprised to find the bottom of the solar lights have this nice obelisk shape that could be useful for some terrain or part of a bigger daemon (Magnus the Red proxy?)



With Boxing Day sales on Christmas decorations a pretty big thing around here, I might have to pick up an extra suitcase to get them all home on the plane...

Ooh that star thingy is a great start for the LoC, awesome find!

Not sold on the death star balls though, it could look good with all the gold and glitter gone but they seem to stray a bit far from the geometric theme and look a little too organic at the moment.

Liking the rearranged tiles, filling in the letters looks like it is going to be tough but they will look great once done!

I'm glad you like the new horrors, Cain. The more I think about it the more they grow on me but I'm still not 100% sure. I think I will have to see how they look as a unit once they're all painted.

I see what you mean about the death stars, but I'm hoping that with a paintjob and after seeing the way they fit in with some other Nurgle models I'm planning I can change your mind!

In between eating and drinking I've had a bit of time today to play with some potential setups for my Christmas decos. Nothing concrete yet, but a few ideas floating around. The flattened rings that I used to make the 'tower' are my favourite piece - I need to think of more/different ways to use them...





I've also done a bit of a shopping list for once I get back home, and just for fun did a comparison on what it'd cost me to use GW models.

Including a couple primer cans and washes I still need to buy, the project should cost around $400 to build the models I want - which form a couple of different 2k lists that total to about 3.4k points.

Using GW models to do the same, I'd end up with about $2200 worth of models alone. Now some of this due to the stupid way they package some things - like having to buy the Burning Chariot kit just to get your hands on an Exalted Flamer - and I'd bet my house I end up at least a little over budget, but the contrast is pretty wild.

I'm also looking into either buying a games mat like this one:



or building my own modular 6x4 table. The mat is more expensive, but less time consuming and more easily transported. I do like the idea of building my own table, but I think I could also scratch that itch by building terrain for the mat. Hmmmmmmm...

Loving the concept, dry Chaosy... so much so that it reminds me of nightmares I had as a kid where there were geometric shapes that were much bigger to touch than they looked or vica versa. I think I’ll have to avoid viewing before going to bed!

A lot of fun ideas there! I agree that tower ring looks the neatest. who knew christmas ornaments could be so fun?

Somewhere around here i've got an old handmade spider ornament, it's, if i remember right, a glass prism-ish crystal with wire and bead legs. Pretty fun and creepy looking, and reminds me of this project a lot.

The tower and the time ball look the most interesting to me, especially if you made the time ball hollow, or containing more tiles.

Thanks guys! I'm back home now, and Christmas decos are away for a while - got a lot of troops to work through before I start worrying about the big flashy guys.

The hex rings seem to have shrunk since I left, so the flamer > exalted flamer > burning chariot progression that I'd hoped to set up will have to be rethought.

This is what I'm working on at the moment - I've textured up the original horrors (I thought about stripping them, but couldn't be bothered for 10 out of 90+ troops) to add to the horde, built 10 pinks and 10 brims in the newer, more adventurous style, started on my nurglings, and begun to scavenge together an artillery placement for a bit of terrain. My furies also arrived, so they got some texture ready to be based and painted. Sorry for the rushed photo, I should have some nicer ones as things get painted, but wanted to show off what's on the work bench.





We get the keys to the new house on the 16th, so I'm going to set myself the goal of getting all of the daemons (not the turret) assembled and painted by then. It's ambitious, but after seeing John Prin smash out 1000 pts of Eldar in a couple of weeks here on dakka (https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/768724.page) I'm motivated and ready to go. We'll see how long that motivation lasts....

I like both the concept for its ambition and the execution. The Daoloth/big nasty could be made of several parts on separate small stalks from the flying bases, as if it were floating as a group of elements and joining together for the attack only.

Thanks Swaelg! I like the idea of multiple stems/pieces for the Daoloth - I have been wondering about that as I start to throw together some drafts.

A bit of PIP tonight, I have started on the herald and the two primed nurgling bases. I need to pick up some supplies tomorrow - I need a new primer and some Coeliac Blue or whatever the GW turquoise wash is...

I had some fun on the bases with these ones as I waited for the washes to dry. None of the steps in building these dudes are particularly skill or labour-intensive, but man they take a lot of time. Took about 2 hours today in between packing/other jobs to drill out my horrors so they could be pinned to their bases.

The nurglings still need a few more washes - the Athonian Camoshade in particular doesn't seem to leave a lot of colour behind - and the herald is waiting for his turquoise wash. He's on a 40mm base at the moment because I thought it made sense for the boss to be on a bigger one than his cronies, but he may get put back on a 32mm to match the GW herald/for Kill Team reasons...









I forgot to get that lightbox for myself - whoops. Hopefully I get better at being Santa before tzurk jr gets old enough to hold a grudge. It'll have to wait til we move now.

The hoal for tomorrow is to get these big guys finished, as well as the 10 new brimstones. Wish me luck...

Ooooo that herald is looking nice

I wasn't quite a believer in the nurglings before (too tall IMO), but the grime is changing my mind. And I do suppose the current nurgs are piled pretty high, versus the older skulking hordes of things.

Wow those latest creations are the best by far! Great use of colours, particularly the swirly parts on the herald.

For a future large monster, perhaps you could have something swallowing up a guardsman of space marine? Just a head and arm reaching out from the the inside would be the essence of grimdark

Really like how the herald is going, each time it looks better and more menacing.

They also don't all need to be floating. Nurgly stuff in particular I could see as something akin to The Blob- a sheet of ooze or rolling pile of rust and decay leaving a trail of muck behind.

Thanks for all your comments guys! I feel you on the nurglings Salvage, I shortened their rods but I am still a little iffy on them too to be honest - though happy enough for now. They might get replaced later and upgraded into beasts of nurgle or plague drones.

I like the idea of a guardsman being swallowed, Cain - something that screams "I am from Warhammer 40,000". I remember there being a cowering Empire soldier from the Giant kit - if I can rustle one of them up and do a bit of converting, he might be a good model for showing the mental breakdown that comes with glimpsing the euclidean terrors.

Just a quick one tonight, some pics of the touched-up herald, the 10 brimstones I finished this afternoon, and some group shots of the little horde so far - followed by some fluff! Following the tradition of posting one piece per finished unit.


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Now, it's easy fightin' other orks. You find the biggest one, knock 'im on the 'ead, and the rest knows you is da boss now. Same fing with 'umies, only da one with the fanciest hat is usually da boss.

It ain't so easy when yer fightin' shiny 'eadache boxes. One minute yer shootin' at the biggest one yer can see, then next minute 'e's actually the size of a grot's toe and yer shootin' at thin air. Then the next fing yer know it's you what is tiny, and all yer boyz is massive, an' they're about to step on yer 'ead and squish yer to bits. Then yer back to normal size but yer boyz is actually drumsticks and they smell so damn good yer can 'ardly 'member yer 'spose to be fightin'. Then comes the screamin', like they's tryin' to drive an ice pick into yer skull. If yer lucky you'll see some pretty colours before your 'ead swells up an' explodes into squig eggs.

Nah, the best way to fight an 'eadache box is to chuck a stikk bomm at 'em and turn yer green ass round an' find a real fight somewhere else. Coz all yer gettin' from dem is a splittin' 'eadache and a perscription fer crazy pills from the Mad Dok.

An' he delivers those pills straight to yer brain - with his fist.


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tzurk jr slept in this morning (woohoo!) so the furies got painted, and the leftover pinks and nurglings have been primed. These guys were a pain in the butt to assemble - they have a circular engraving underneath that the rod fits neatly into, but I had to pick up a larger size as they tipped on the 1.6mm rods I had been using for the horrors. Took a while to cut and file the rod and then fit them to the base. I am really happy with how they turned out, though, I think they represent the dash-in-and-slice-up-and-dash-out nature of furies well. I originally had them tri-coloured with red and purple but didn't like the look, so painted back over and paired it down to teal/blue.


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They called 'em paper planes, and it made me laugh in the briefing when they told me that and showed me a picture. They looked at me a bit funny then, sorta sad like.

Didn't take long to figure out why they called 'em that. We were on patrol 'round the perimeter when we spotted a pack of 'em - floatin' up, maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty feet in the air. Not movin', just sittin' there - like they were waitin' for somethin'. They can't have been waitin' very long though, 'cause they weren't there a minute ago.

We tightbeamed the boys back at base, let 'em know there were hostiles outside the containment zone, then we stayed and watched 'em for a while. Maybe a minute went past - no movement, no nothin, 'cept for maybe a faint humming sound that might have been comin' from up there, or coulda just been in my head, 'cept for the other guys on patrol heard it too.

Then base got back to us and told us to engage. Course they did - ten patrolmen against a score of spooky alien death kites, what could go wrong.

Well, turns out plenty could go wrong. Seemed as soon as MacBenn even thought about aimin' his lasgun at 'em, they were on the move. And by the Emperor, are they fast. They shot down outta the sky and it was like a watercolour paintin' - just streaks of it fallin' from the clouds - blue, green, silver. They weren't as big as they seemed up in the sky - maybe seven feet long. But every inch of 'em was like a razor. MacBenn was cut into four pieces before he even fell over.

I'm not ashamed to say I legged it outta there. I got no doubt they coulda caught me if they tried, but they seemed to be happy enough to stay and slice the livin' hell outta the other boys. That's why they called 'em paper planes - on account of how they cut you to ribbons.

Really puts things in perspective, it does. Spendin' the rest of my life stuck on this rock minin' promethium for 12 hours straight ain't half as bad as gettin' turned into confetti by those damn silver triangles.

Wish they'd do somethin' about the food, though.




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