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Having lost the previous thread to the ravages of time (I can't be bothered to search for it) this is the new thread for my WIPs and finished models for my Sons of Tyr DIY for Codex: Space Marines.

First up is some experimentation in battle damage and weathering.

Hawk Cadre, Seventh War-Company
































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Razorback Hammer
















Strike Cruiser Herald of Thunder, Thunderhawks Dawn Hunter, Wind Stalker



Any comments or feedback welcome!

Great marines! The sergeant is really cool. Good weathering and battle damage too. Sponging? Is the chapter badge a transfer or freehand? Went through your other threads too. Your Sons of Tyr are really cool. Especially the chapter master. I like the theme too.

Cheers man. Yes, I used sponge weathering for the first time for the battle damage, and the Chapter emblem is a transfer - in keeping with their background it's actually the symbol of the Anishinabek First Nation (Native Americans).

Thanks for the feedback!

Beautiful minis. My favorite is the melta one, it's so dynamic. He really looks he's sprinting to put that melta to good use!

The razorback looks excellent too and I greatly enjoy small touches like the kill-count adds so much more character to the miniatures.

How did you do the mud weathering? I want to eventually create some Space Marines that are dragging their feet through a jungle planet, so mud is a must!

Didn't spot it at first but now that I saw it the undrilled barrels bug me to no end...
Did you make the transfers yourself?

 Igandris wrote:
Didn't spot it at first but now that I saw it the undrilled barrels bug me to no end...
Did you make the transfers yourself?

Yeah, tell me about it. I am trying to find a drill, just been kept busy by thesis writing at the moment. I've never drilled weapons before but plan to start doing so very soon.

I did make them myself - as mentioned the image is not mine, it belongs to the Anishinaabek First Nation, whose mythology inspired me to make this Chapter in the first place. I might get around to posting up their Index Astartes if there's interest. I just cleaned up the image a little and scaled it down to transfer-size in Gimp, then used laser transfer paper to print it out on. The paper I use is actually hugely more durable than the GW/FW stuff - I rate it much higher. I also use the imagery of the valknut (Odinic emblem) as the Razorback shows.

The weathering is great on those models! Love the color scheme as well, and the poses.

Some WIP stuff for Hawk Cadre:

Awesome job man. They look great.

Brilliant dynamic gritty marines cool

Very nice painting work, I like the battle damage.

Only complaint is the mould lines on the earlier minis - I was going to grouse about the barrels, but I see you have yourself a drill and have put it to good use with this new batch. They look good, nice mix of GW/FW components.

Do you have fluff written up for your chapter? They seem pretty interesting.

Dirty, gritty, chipped and muddy, this is everything a SM taskforce should be. Great work!

I love the look of your marines, the colour scheme is great, I also love the chapters badge!

Lovely stuff so far, looking forward to more. As has been stated your gritty, muddy, worn, in use look compliments the excellent posing and the painting is top notch.

Thanks so much! Means a great deal.

A Kvlt Ghost - there's the final draft of an Index Astartes on my laptop I'll be finishing after my thesis is written, there is an old IA for the Sons on the Bolter and Chainsword but it's outdated and not really how I want to represent the Chapter any more. Bang on about the gun barrels and mould lines. The former will be fixed as soon as I have a drill; the latter I only seem to notice after painting the basecoat and washing! :@

Small update - finished the multi-melta toting battle brother for Condor Cadre, Hawk Cadre's sister tactical squad, so here's some pics of him, the whole unit and a firing line.

Whilst the rest of the Seventh War-Company is lost in the Warp en route to its next warzone, reinforcements from Madrigal have arrived:



These are the Mantic Hailstorm Cannons with modified barrels. Perfect Thunderfire models in my opinion. I kitbashed the Techmarines, Volund and Jahanu, from leftover bits and some Kromlech additions. I'll take better photos of both once they're finished.

For anyone wondering, the Thunderfires are a bit wobbly-looking because they aren't glued together, not even to their bases. This is for ease of painting []

A close-up of Volund and Jahanu:



Thoughts welcome!

Time for an update. I am slightly saddened at the lack of overall direction I've had in this plog, which has served as more of a dumping ground for stuff I'm working on rather than a methodical, frequently updated journey through the construction of my War-Company. Perhaps part of it's been to do with how I wanted to change the direction of the Seventh War-Company following the release of the Codex in September. I had previously played the Seventh as a static gunline supported by drop pod assault, which was a little anachronistic given that in the overall scheme of the Chapter (whose Index Astartes I am yet to update) the Seventh is supposed to fulfil the role of a linebreaker Company. Other companies, which I want to get to build at some point, include the Second War-Company which specialises in siege warfare, and the recently-decimated Fourth, who specialise in ship-to-ship boarding actions and void warfare, under the aegis of the Fourth's captain, the Master of the Fleet.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Seventh's captain, Ludvos Arkhan, holds the title of Master of the Vanguard, and the company he has inherited has earned the unfortunate nickname of the Ill-Starred. This is a fluff-representation of the fact that my early games with the Seventh - under the old C:SW - invariably resulted in slaughters or pyrrhic victories. Whether for better or worse, Arkhan has come into captaincy of the Seventh at a time when it is sorely depleted, morale is low, and the Chapter's marshals regard assignment to the Seventh as something of a death sentence. Having recently completed a tour of duty in the Deathwatch, Arkhan would make an ideal candidate for restoring the battered and dishonoured Seventh to an effective and fearsome fighting unit.

To this end the Seventh needs to be represented on the tabletop by rules that support its status as a rapid-strike unit, and I decided on a combination of White Scars and Space Wolves rules. The majority of the force can either deploy in drop pods (White Scar Sternguard/Space Wolves Grey Hunters) or on bikes (White Scars) with support units from either codex to suit. It's a powerful combination, but it also has a greater feeling of unity than Ultramarines and Space Wolves, or Ultramarines and White Scars, as I was originally considering.

So, here come the pics of a large segment of the Seventh's warhost, the as-yet-unnamed strike force I will be taking to a tournament at the end of the month, plus an Ironclad who's found his way in there. Unfinished and still a work in progress...













Very early stage work-in-progress on Arkhan himself:







Thanks for looking. Comments, feedback and advice all welcome [] I'm planning on posting some more pics soon of my converted Thunderfires once some armour casing I ordered from the fine forgeworld of eBay has arrived...

Wow, I'm definately looking forward to seeing more of those bikes, that painted up in the chapter scheme you're using will look awesome!
I'm liking that Dreadnaughts pose too, changes up the walking box look that they usually have!
Nice work!

Really looking forward to seeing how all those bikes look!!

Are all your marines truescale? If so how do you do it?

Thanks very much guys!

Regarding the truescaling, it's simply a matter of about 1mm of GS at the waist joint and a 2mm plasticard spacer at the top of the thigh (between the hard and soft armour). You may find it more aesthetically pleasing to only add 1mm however.

The weekend beckons...and so does the Wrath of the Titans, a 1750pt tourney taking place this Sunday in grim, rainy, dark (grimdark?) London, to which I will be taking the Seventh War-Company's battered survivors in a quest for redemption, vengeance, and murdering dead anyone who takes Terminators or monstrous creatures. So too begins my epic quest to assemble, undercoat and paint three colours onto an entire 1750pt Sons of Tyr force...in less than 48 hours.

Well, most of it's already assembled and basecoated. And one squad's even finished. Still, I have almost 750pts left to basecoat *at least*, so the next 24-36 hours are gonna be interesting. Good thing it's the weekend coming up eh?

Tonight's work has been quite fruitful: I give you the Stormhawk pattern gunship Storm Ghost, and the Shaman Lodge's representatives in the Seventh War-Company: brother-shamans Damas Tirekes and Torrek Myrdred. The Stormhawk was a right pain in the whatsit to magnetise - both wings are detachable, the underslung turret-mounted assault cannon is similarly magnetised (incidentally granting it full range of motion) and the hurricane bolters are also magnetised. I like it much better with the hurricanes so I'll have to find a way to shoehorn it into my lists []

Damas Tirekes

I wanted Damas to have the look of a powerful warrior, someone whose psychic talents have complemented his talents in the art of physical combat. Should I ever run a Rune Priest with Biomancy, it'll be Damas. His runic axe is there primarily to kill Riptides in close assault and because it looks cool. Spent too much time smashing Chaos Marines with the power axe in THQ's Space Marine not to model somebody with a big choppa. Damas, as the younger of the two shamans, embodies the energetic, temperamental aspects of the magicks studied by the Shaman Lodge - he is the centre of the storm around which the battle rages, and fights his battles as an avatar of the wrath and fury of the storm itself.











Torrek Myrdred

Myrdred, by contrast to Damas, is the much older of the two shamans, although this has not slaked his zest for combat. He relies more on the powers he has learned to harness through the Lodge as weapons in and of themselves, unlike his younger companion, who uses them to bolster his own prowess in combat; Myrdred believes that the Warp-borne powers he wields are more than a match for any weapon, and will rarely use the shamanic staff he possesses unless challenged by an enemy of powerful stature indeed. (Yes I know I haven't put on the staff yet). I wanted to model Myrdred reaching out and force-choking someone on his bike - I imagined he would be the more proactive of the two in his use of powers, and possibly the more creative and inventive - he could as easily be lifting a foe from their feet as he could be scattering a foe's thoughts and lowering their guard, creating a weakness for his battle-brothers to strike a killing blow.

If anyone's played Myth: The Fallen Lords, I pictured Myrdred as the kind of caster who draws his pleasure from trapping and immobilising an enemy just like Alric does to Balor at the very end of the game - rendering the most powerful of foes helpless whilst his brothers rush in like a pack of wolves to tear him apart.











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Storm Ghost

Haven't got much left to do on Storm Ghost apart from the detail work, and some work on the tops of the engines to cover up the magnets. I have included a couple of decorative armour plates on the flanks of the gunship which I don't think are visible, I'll try to get some better pics of them when it's painted. Next step for the Stormhawk gunship is the base - not sure what to do with it yet...









Comments and thoughts would be more than welcome!

They are looking great!
I'm loving the dynamic poses on those two biker shamans and can definitely imagine Torrek choking an enemy while rushing through with the rest of the bikers in your force right behind him. Awesome!

Good luck for the tournament and even more so for the mammoth task of painting that much in so little time, hopefully you manage it, I want to see it!

Haha cheers dude - I didn't quite manage a full paintjob, but 3 colours minimum was achieved!

This last weekend I was fortunate enough to take first place at a tournament in North London, the Wrath of the Titans at Titans Wargaming Club. I had a great run of three victories with my Sons of Tyr, against Daemons, Eldar and Dark Eldar. Lots of cinematic moments in the games and some great opponents. I was lucky to mainly meet very sporting types in my three games and the tournament itself was really well run. I strongly recommend it if anyone in London is thinking of trying out tournaments - from what I understand Wrath of the Titans runs twice yearly and I'll definitely be going to the next one.



I took the Seventh War-Company in its mounted linebreaker configuration, backed up with drop pod and artillery support from the Company's veteran units and two members of the Shaman Lodge. The MVP awards went to my two Thunderfires, who racked up 60+ kills by the end of the day and decisively won me the last game against a Dark Eldar list with 40+ Hellions. Honourable mentions went to the Stormraven, who performed much better than netlisters will have you believe, the Grey Hunters (who brought a Bloodthirster down to two wounds in close combat with their knives) and finally Arkhan himself, who (thanks to the Khan's warlord trait) won me an extra 2VP in the last game by decapitating the enemy Warlord in a challenge at the height of the battle. The Sons of Tyr went on to secure Warlord Titan Aurum for the Imperium:



I really enjoyed the tournament and hope anyone reading this who also attended had a great time - it was really well run and I felt quite humbled to walk away with a trophy (let alone first place), it was not something I'd envisaged at all. There were some beautiful armies on display too - Best Army went to a very deserving Deathwing force which had its own converted Lion El'Jonson model - check it out here if you're interested: http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?303951-Champions-of-El-Johnson-The-Deathwing/page18

Arkhan

I like the colors and weathering, my only criticism here would be that I see quite a few mold lines, admittedly I am not the best at clearing them up either, there are just some really "glaring" ones here.

Yes, the early models do have quite a few I didn't notice until it was too late. Noted and logged Hopefully the biker units will prove better.

Haven't posted here in ages, thought I'd post some pics of what I've been up to over the last couple months...












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Wow! I've been waiting to see these, and they look awesome! Good Job!
I love the colour scheme, and it looks great on the Outrider Bikes!

Excellently painted and each Marine is modelled like an absolute king.

Do you extend the top portion of your marines legs?

Thanks very much guys

Medium, I have tried truescaling the infantry Marines with plasticard spacers at the top of the thigh - it works OK on some of them and less well on others. I'll be trying it again after finishing this bike force. Plenty of tutorials around the internet (particularly the Bolter and Chainsword) if you're interested in attempting it yourself.

It's something i'd considered in the past, but I haven't the patience

Yours look great. I agree with you on the point that it looks better on certain leg types. I think the newer space marine legs are usually OK without modification, it's really just the squatting legs. Regardless your stuff looks top notch and your conversions are seamless. That biker captain with the interchangable head is amazing. That helmet is my all time favourite.