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After working on Maelstrom's Edge for about 4 and a quarter years, designing the fluff and writing hundreds of thousands of words of stories set in our new universe, it was amazing to finally get the box set in the post and see the models we'd spent so long creating. I'd had a few of them earlier, but most of these were as new to me as to our backers!

As well as a writer I've always been a gamer and hobbyist. I have a big space wolf/space marine army, as well as tau and IG in various states of assembly. Making stories and customising the models to fit that were always the most enjoyable thing for me - I spent a lot of time kitbashing Necromunda gangers out of pretty much every different sprue I could find. My sculpting and painting isn't as good, but I have a lot of fun creating custom poses from multipart plastics.

So, with all of the sprues in hand, I set out to see what I could make from my Epirian and Karist sprues. My photography isn't the best, but hopefully people get the idea!



First up, the Epirian robots. I'd had a play with the Contractor sprue before, but this was my first opportunity to play around with the Hunter, Scarecrow and Drone sprues, which are so much fun to kitbash. First off, a Hunter, armed with Maglock Chaingun, Supressor Dual Machine Gun and Strike Missiles. I put the Chaingun on the other arm to get an aiming pose, and used green stuff to fill in the gaps between the arms and shoulders to enable a wider stance. The Strike missiles are easy to pose if you slice the bottom mount off and then rotate the missile itself.



The Scarecrow is even more customisable. I made some steps from plasticard so that the multi-jointed legs could climb up it, and cut off the elbow joint from the Clingfire Sprayer so that I could put the Railrifle on the left arm. I'm quite happy with how easy it was to make such a dynamic pose suited to the Scarecrow's behaviour as a lone bot patrolling, taking out intruders from a distance.



This is my first Spider drone. The main ability of the four-legged ground drone is the way they hug the terrain, their bot protocols giving them a choice of three different bonuses based on utliising the cover of the buildings and rubble around them. I wanted to bring this across in my squad, so I've tried to create a pose where the spider is crawling up a piece of building (made from heavy plasticard with a bunch of bits from the terrain sprue), keeping its profile low to avoid enemy fire. There's not actually any conversion done to the spider other than twisting and bending each leg so that the foot is flat on whichever surface it touches - I did this after I'd made the terrain.



Lastly there's my first attempt at a Mature Angel. These are just as much fun to model as they are to write about. Apart from the core of their torso, most of the alien body of the Angel is made up of morphing flowing void gel, which means they can adapt their limbs to suit the situation, creating claws, legs, tentacles or limbs as suits them. This was a relatively simple hack to display that, twisting the clawed forelimbs and then using the two additional claws plus some green stuff to give them two additional legs, giving them a nice crab-like feel.



I'm using a bone-coloured scheme for my Karists - the Tempest above being the first I finished, which I think should complement the deep purples and blacks of the Angels really nicely. I'm not sure about the metallic gun, I feel that could be made more interesting, suggestions welcome!

More to come in future as I explore the possibilities of the other sprues and start painting in earnest, but just wanted to show what is sitting on my desk inbetween writing sessions!

Excellent stuff. I particularly like the spider drone and Angel - very creative.

Love the crawling bot and the Scarecrow. I might steal your six legged Angel idea, too. From the fluff, most Karist weaponry is made from nano forges, right? So, a metallic silver/black is something I would associate more with the industrial look of the Epirians, and would choose a more organic or plastic color for the Karist guns. Something like a lavender or pale blue would be my choice, but if you want to paint in the cybel glow then perhaps a yellower or greenish color would be better.

Edit: autocorrect keeps adding apostrophes where they don't belong.

Nice work! Particularly like the scarecrow... Such a fun model

Thanks everybody, I've really enjoyed tinkering with these guys. Bob, you're right, the Karist weaponry is nanoforged.Doesn't necessarily rule it out being metallic, but I think a different colour will work better and contrast with the Epirians nicely. Will have a play around with it next time I get my paints out.

 darrkespur wrote:




I'm using a bone-coloured scheme for my Karists - the Tempest above being the first I finished, which I think should complement the deep purples and blacks of the Angels really nicely. I'm not sure about the metallic gun, I feel that could be made more interesting, suggestions welcome!

More to come in future as I explore the possibilities of the other sprues and start painting in earnest, but just wanted to show what is sitting on my desk inbetween writing sessions!

Could I please bother you for some more shots of the Karist as you paint them and try different combinations on the metal bits and accents?

I've been considering painting my Karist in bone but I'm not sold on the idea yet

 bocatt wrote:

Could I please bother you for some more shots of the Karist as you paint them and try different combinations on the metal bits and accents?

I've been considering painting my Karist in bone but I'm not sold on the idea yet

I'll definitely keep posting pictures - might take a little while before I'm all done with the painting of the Karists though, I still have a lot to assemble!

Update on my Spider Drone squad - now done all four Spiders plus their apprentice handler. It's really easy to repose the Spider legs. I still need to fill in some of the joins before I start painting.



Tried to use a few more pieces of the terrain sprue for these - the L-shaped corner pieces in particular are very handy. Not as happy with the one on the right as the terrain is a bit messy but I love the pose of the left hand one. I trimmed the Handler's gun arm and added some scrap plastic in the join to give more of an aiming stance - I find with HIPS this approach works better than green stuff - once it's dried I'll trim the excess in the armpit.

Very cool, you really put some action into that unit

Yeah, the base detailing is a little chunkier than I prefer on gaming minis, but the re-posing on the spiders is great.

I wasn't a fan of the static factory spider drone positions, I love what you did with them though. Very nice.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I wasn't a fan of the static factory spider drone positions, I love what you did with them though. Very nice.

Thanks! It really is super easy to repose them, for most of the legs I didn't even cut them off, just pushed them until the knee/thigh joint starts to bend and then adjust the leg pose to fit the base. A couple of them snapped off whilst doing so, but a bit of polystyrene cement in the join and a sliver of plastic in the gap means it sets really well.

I'm not much of a competitive gamer so I tend to model my bases with a fair amount of scenery, I think it looks cooler in my display case that way. Although I do plan to play a fair bit with my Maelstrom's Edge armies, I'm not trying to model for advantage!

Another day, another conversion. Did this in between writing the start of a story for one of our new factions



Wanted to get a classic Screamer Killer feel to this one. Very easy to double up the arms with a bit of trimming of the shoulder blades. Also brought the legs right in - reminds me a bit of some of the aliens in XCOM like this. Lots of smoothed-out green stuff filling in the gaps. I think it looks suitably scary!

Yeah, using the extra arms is just too tempting, isn't it?

Loving all the angel conversions that are going around... pressure is on to make my own!

 bocatt wrote:

 darrkespur wrote:




I'm using a bone-coloured scheme for my Karists - the Tempest above being the first I finished, which I think should complement the deep purples and blacks of the Angels really nicely. I'm not sure about the metallic gun, I feel that could be made more interesting, suggestions welcome!

More to come in future as I explore the possibilities of the other sprues and start painting in earnest, but just wanted to show what is sitting on my desk inbetween writing sessions!

How about not using metallic silver? Try a light gray with a black wash over it, then lighter gray edging/highlights. I've pretty much stopped using metallics for my "guns" in 28mm, but I'm not NEARLY good enough to do non-metallic metallic that the top painters use.

PS. I really like the bone color on this guy!

Love the "Screamer Killer" angel.

FortheEmperor! wrote:

 bocatt wrote:

 darrkespur wrote:


[img] How about not using metallic silver? Try a light gray with a black wash over it, then lighter gray edging/highlights. I've pretty much stopped using metallics for my "guns" in 28mm, but I'm not NEARLY good enough to do non-metallic metallic that the top painters use.

PS. I really like the bone color on this guy!

Da Boss wrote:Love the "Screamer Killer" angel.

Thanks both! Yeah, I like the idea of the flatter matte grey rather than silver, I think that would improve the feel a lot and contrast nicely with my Epirians.

I'm away for work this week so no hobby progress until next week, but I started using liquid green stuff to tidy up my limb repositioning. Another week or so of building stuff and then I think I'm ready to start painting...