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I vote for white ash armor, very volcanic, maybe some grey hues also.

I found these that are quite nice



neil101 on dakka done some nice Chaos Dwarfs

I like the idea of cooling magma on the armor. Perhaps done like a lot of people do the Eldar avatar? With the joints of the armor showing off the fires within?

My other vote would be glassy obsidian, making it look like their armor has been carved from stone.

 Paradigm wrote:
My vote goes to the red/black/bronze scheme. Those colours really do work together, and have very nice contrast. Not a fan of the green, to be honest (I've always seen dwarves as having very earthy brown-red-black tones rather than natural green that I associate with Elves).

Good points, but Chaos/Abyssal Dwarves would be using far from a natural green. I'm leaning towards different units using both, and having the gold/brass/bronze be the thing that ties them all together. Hopefully I'll get some photos up later today.


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 GiraffeX wrote:
I found these that are quite nice

Those turned out really well, I have to say. Not really the look I'm wanting to go for, though. I'm slogging through a lot of silver/iron with this Gondor force (pics soonish), and the CDs are going to be a "reward" of sorts, so I'm wanting to use a scheme that will be fun to paint as well as look good. The armour plates on the Lesser Obsidian Golems will have a bit of that look, though. I'm working on them now.

 Archer wrote:
I like the idea of cooling magma on the armor. Perhaps done like a lot of people do the Eldar avatar? With the joints of the armor showing off the fires within?
My other vote would be glassy obsidian, making it look like their armor has been carved from stone.

I'm wanting to avoid overdoing the usual colour tropes with my fantasy armies - one reason I like the ones that GiraffeX just showed. But CDs may end up one of the closest to the "standard" schemes at this rate. (Nurgle & Khorne's daemons and warriors will also look fairly "typical" - as will eventual tribal/dirty races like Beastmen, Orcs and Skaven.

I considered doing the magma glow thing with the Obsidian Golems, but in the end I went with a "magic glow" instead. I spent a good couple of hours googling the best ways to paint Obsidian, and it's a tricky one - and not an easy one at this scale given how dark the stuff is, the shine, and the shading colours. (Seems to be purple or blue as the common choices - both colours I want to avoid in this army.) Painting them in two halves, so the lower halves are about 30% done so far.

As seen awhile ago, one of the things I’ve dug out of the pits of half-finished hell was a Dark Angels Dreadnought – old-school heavy metal style, dating back from 2nd Edition 40k. Back in the day when the dreads were all-metal, the only way to get hold of the different weapon options was to buy the different chapter dreads. So some things have definitely changed far for the better since then.



Anyway, as noted previously, the paint on the arms dates these arms back to 1997 (when I added the nWo logo) and then 1998 (when I went over it with the red of the Wolfpac). The original painting of this model would have been when 40k 3rd edition was released and the uber-combination of dual assault cannons on Dreadnoughts became a thing of the past. When I restarted painting this guy, I blinged out the model a little more with plastic bits from more modern Dark Angels plastic kits.



Back in the day there were no “left-handed” Assault Cannons and dreads were 100% metal models, so I cut up a right handed one (in metal) and a Missile Launcher left arm (probably the original one from the DE Dread kit) to make the above. With the Contemptor Mortis pattern Dreadnought being a thing that exists these days, I added a magnetised cyclone missile launcher battery to the top of the model with optional DA-Icon Bling for normal games. I’ve never been a fan of ginormous banner poles on things, so that’s something I didn’t bother with at all. Both arms are already magnetised, and so I may paint up and magnetise a normal Power Fist arm for an option at some point in the future.



I’ve costed the thing out with dual AC for very friendly local games, based on the costs for the various other arm weapons. Since the Rifleman Dread is also a thing these days, it’s not as offensive as it might have been a few years ago. But really, the main thing here is rule of cool since for the time being it’s mostly going to see action from the inside of my display cabinet till I get some more armies costed up and built. Not to mention finishing these Dark Angels.



Note the kill-markings from 2nd edition on the Assault Cannon arms – looks like each one racked up a Dread back in the day. I didn’t bother keeping track of infantry, and Tanks weren’t as ubiquitous in 40k as they are today.



As can often be the case, I think the model looks far better in hand than these pics show. C’est la vie, I guess. Small details always show up like huge pimples and dimples when something is blown up this much.



The experiment with salt weathering didn’t work out at all. However, the weathering powders on the feet and lower legs of the model did turn out quite nicely. Trying for a mid-ground between the pristine factory-fresh paintjobs that so many vehicles and walkers have the the more realistic and weathered painting that looks so good.

Well, that’s it for today. This guy was finished a month or more ago, but with midwinter here, decent days to take photos have been so few and far between the photos had to wait.

Excellent looking Dreadnought there Azazel
Loving the White Tree of Gondor freehand on Faramir's cloak

PS> Holy **** that's a shooty dreadnought lol.

I think it looks brilliant, you have totally nailed it. One of my best gaming memories was getting this new style metal dread when they first came out, and it is the desire to paint a Dreadnought model that has seen me get back into 40k.

The rust/weathering on the bottom of your dreadnought is great, and the purity seals and main body really pop, brother!

(I see wrestling references, truly the NWO is for life).

Looks excellent

That Dreadnought looks fantastic. I love dreadnoughts and that is a fine example. I love the twin assault cannons it looks really brutal.

Love the weathering (its a skill I would really love to get better at) an the missile launcher and little angel to go on top depending on the configuration is great.

Keep the great work coming.

Dreadnought looks sweet mate

Dakka dakka dakka, that's one snooty Dread! Very nicely done!

I assume you'd just field him as a AC/ML dreadnought in a game.

Nice dreadnaught. I bet it weighs a ton, though!

Thanks guys - It was certainly a good feeling to get the poor neglected bastard finished and painted up properly. No longer a place of shame across several miniatures boxes, but a place of pride in the cabinet.

@ angelofvengeance - thanks - I'll be doing similar freehand trees of Gondor on my Palace Guard (who will double as unit leaders in KoW) and others such as Forlong the Fat of Lossarnach. In-game for friendlies at home, I've costed him out as a dual-AC dread, based on the points costs for a rilfleman and the difference for the AC. I can also use him with the FW Contemptor Mortis rules as well, now that I've added the optional cyclone.

Damn straight, Traxas. Back from when wrestling was good (ok, well good chunks of it, anyway). I may add a few other old-school references to some of the other vehicles as crew graffiti.

@ Archer - I agree mate, and it's embarrassing to say that this is the first dreadnought that I've ever properly and fully finished in over 20 years. Well, I had some original RT Dreads painted, but they got stripped and partially repainted, so I can't claim much for those these days. I've got a 90% finished Mentor Legion dating from the start of 3rd ed to finish, and a FW Iron Warirors Dread that needs to be repaired and finished (Cat helped it base jump from a shelf awhile back)

Now I need to do some more. I ordered a pile of Dread bodies and parts from Forgeworld when I made my very first order with them years ago now, not to mention a few Contemptors in the last couple of years. The weathering is something I'm still working on myself, so I'm glad this guy ended up looking this good.

Grim, Carlos, Paradigm - I appreciate the kind words.

@ Waaazag - you're not wrong. It really is a good example of what used to be called 'eavy Metal. He's got enough weight to put a good sized dent in the bonnet of your car, or give you a nice concussion or skull fracture. Which is exactly what you want in your toy soldiers...? I guess?

Personally, I'm waiting on a Dark Angels Legion Contemptor kit. I'm hoping they will look amazing. If not, I'll go with the Relic contemptor and bling it up with some Dark Angel gubbinz. Probably have it as a Deathwing.

Downside to metal dreadnoughts is their frailty. Number of times I had to re-glue stuff was so annoying.

Yeah, I'm hoping that this guy will be pretty sturdy. Arms are magnetised, so they're not a worry - and the torso joint is nice and solid. The sarcophagus/chest/power plant has survived more than a decade withiut coming apart (and not always being treated the best in that time) so I'm confident it'll be ok.

I think the DA Legion Contemptor will look amazing. My biggest quandry there will be on whether to paint it in Legion Black or Chapter Green/Deathwing Bone. Even if I see it only as a "40k" model rather than "30k", would I see the Chapter repainting it or leaving it it's original colours in honour of the hero entombed inside? hmmm.....

So here’s some more stuff I’ve had kicking around for the last decade and a half. Produced in a kind of foam resin (compressed polystyrene?) by Epicast - one of the contemporaries of Armorcast and non-GW Forge World USA back in the days of licenced Titans and Epic 40k stuff – before the founding of the GW-owned Forge World we now know. Anyway, as regular readers would know by now, I used to buy a lot of resin terrain back in the day, including a lot of stuff by Grendel – now known as Scotia Grendel. Amonst those purchases were three buildings, made in the 40k Ork style of the day – basically Adobe buildings. So I bought them, used them a few times and so forth, and then put them away. Since moving and setting up The War Room, my desert mat has gotten some use again, and I’ve found myself using these buildings again. They never got painted and never even made my painting radar since I never liked them all that much, and planned to Orkify them with various gubbins and all that sort of thing. Since I’ve actually used them recently, I took a good look at them and decided that they don’t need Orkifying after all, since I’d also like to be able to use them in Fantasy, Historical and Modern games as desert buildings, and if I glued scrap metal crap and spikes all over them I’d be literally painting them into a 40k-only corner.


I nicked this picture from a Google Search that found it on TMP, since I forgot to take an unpainted pic of my own ones.
The main problem if I’m being honest is that I never really liked them much at all. They’re rough as guts, and it wouldn’t be hard at all to build better ones out of form core – which is what you can pretty clearly see these ones were made from originally.



While I was painting them, I noticed some odd things about them. The L-shaped building has a 2nd-floor door that opens to nothing, and the little courtyard to it’s left has to entrance. Looking closer, I figured out that the original building had some supports and a balcony that led to that courtyard, and you can even see where the wall was roughly patched up, as well as the pole-hole. I also cut out one of the excessive buttresses from the middle of the main doors. At first I was going to rebuild all of those balconies, which caused a lapse of interest in the project for a week or so before I simply made myself just get the fething things finished. I can make my own, better quality adobe buildings later on if I want balconies and other fancy sundries like that.



I added the second door way that you can see above by cutting a hole out of the foam building and gluing in some icy pole (popsicle) sticks. It’s at least as good as the malformed castings that the model came with. And now figures have a way to get up there!


This building in the above pic also has clearly had a balcony removed from the original – both with a door and visible holes where the support posts used to be. So clearly, these three models were someone’s own personal scenery that ended up being cast and sold. Which is where the gap in the wall was plugged, and possibly the over-used buttresses were added.

In order to make these things look reasonable, they had a few layers of drybrushing, and then I broke out the airbrush to darken the lower parts of the building, along with the space between the buttresses. I also added some unsubtle weather streaking down the windows and from the roofing on the buildings using Tamiya Weathering Master kits – you know, the ones that look like eyeshadow make-up compacts. Also added grime to the doorway areas using the same stuff, some Kromlech weathering powder and some smearing with my fingers.


This building comes without a base for some reason, but I added some grass tufts in a couple of different colours to the bases of the other two buildings. I have to say that the work I did on these was a success from my point of view. While they’re not outstanding, I think they actually came up well and now look pretty good, and the airbrushing, weathering products and grass tufts manage to make them look like they have a bit of detail on them. Any further details can come from leaving game-appropriate resin detail pieces around them – toolboxes, jerrycans, oil drums, hesco barriers – or wooden crates, wicker gabions and wooden barrels.

Nice.

I made some very similar ones back in the day from instructions in White Dwarf - foam card construction, liberally smeared with filler. Worked really well.

I wonder what happened to them

 Azazelx wrote:
Yeah, I'm hoping that this guy will be pretty sturdy. Arms are magnetised, so they're not a worry - and the torso joint is nice and solid. The sarcophagus/chest/power plant has survived more than a decade withiut coming apart (and not always being treated the best in that time) so I'm confident it'll be ok.

I think the DA Legion Contemptor will look amazing. My biggest quandry there will be on whether to paint it in Legion Black or Chapter Green/Deathwing Bone. Even if I see it only as a "40k" model rather than "30k", would I see the Chapter repainting it or leaving it it's original colours in honour of the hero entombed inside? hmmm.....

I think they'd repaint it in current chapter heraldry. Probably the bone white of the Deathwing.If you're a space marine old enough to remember the schism on Caliban, chances are you're inducted to the Inner Circle of the chapter pretty much immediately. I wonder if there's any Fallen Dreadnoughts? Have a similar scenario to the Helbrute mission in the Dark Vengeance campaign. Try and deactivate the Fallen Dreadnought

@Slinky - yeppo. I wouldn't be surprised if that's how these ones got built initially to be quite honest (before they were cast and sold). I might make some more myself at some stage - but not until after I've finished painting all the premade terrain I have - and my Zavod table.


@Angel of Vengeance - Hm, that sounds quite reasonable, actually - in terms of repainting it as a Deathwing Dread. That's another of my started but never-finished projects, actually - A small force of Fallen made up of RT-era metals (and I guess nowadays - FW marines) painted in Pre-Heresy DA colours/heraldry as one of my 600-pt forces (now 1000-pt forces) or ally with IG to represent a small force of Fallen who have stayed together for mutual protection and survival - able to ally with IG who (thematically) wouldn't know the difference between Fallen and "proper" Dark Angels. I might have to resurrect that concept when I get further into my bite-sized 40k armies...

 Azazelx wrote:

@Angel of Vengeance - Hm, that sounds quite reasonable, actually - in terms of repainting it as a Deathwing Dread. That's another of my started but never-finished projects, actually - A small force of Fallen made up of RT-era metals (and I guess nowadays - FW marines) painted in Pre-Heresy DA colours/heraldry as one of my 600-pt forces (now 1000-pt forces) or ally with IG to represent a small force of Fallen who have stayed together for mutual protection and survival - able to ally with IG who (thematically) wouldn't know the difference between Fallen and "proper" Dark Angels. I might have to resurrect that concept when I get further into my bite-sized 40k armies...

In the Dataslate for Cypher, you can ally with pretty much ANY of the other Imperial factions with exception to the Dark Angels or their Successor Chapters. Also, Cypher himself is INCREDIBLY badass now. Think Grammaton Cleric from Equilibrium in Power Armour and you have Cypher.

As for the Contemptor Dreadnought, thinking about it now, if he was in stasis when the schism happened he could still be assigned to one of the other companies and be painted green instead. He wouldn't have any knowledge of the Fallen if that was the case.

I guess we'll find out a lot of the specifics when the DA are finally featured in one of the FW HH books - which will also be when their chapter-specific Contemptor is released.

Houses look cool. Almost makes me want to take a stab at something similar.

 GrimDork wrote:
Houses look cool. Almost makes me want to take a stab at something similar.

They are remarkably easy, go for it

Ahh but where to put them? All I've got is green grass and urban concrete boards. Guess I could do a 2x2 deadzone dessert outpost.

That sounds like a good plan. Some changes in terrain will keep your Deadzone games from becoming boring, you can use it as the outskirts of a town for Infinity, and of course you can use it in both Fantasy and 40k skirmish games.

Sweet terrain.

Thanks mate. Something for Da Boyz to share with others


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Just a small update today. Last shown way back in June 2013, I ended up finishing these two some months ago. So I’m taking this opportunity to follow-up and show them off – something I haven’t been too good at with my various WIP figures to date. The Lady of the pair turned out not to be a Brettonian, but an Italian.. erm, Tilean. Lucrezzia Belladonna to be exact – sculpted by Chris Fitzpatrick’s for the WFB Dogs of War range, circa 5th Edition – so 1996+


Lucrezzia is basically a display piece, as she was painted for my wife. While I’m sure I could (and would) do something a bit more interesting with the model today, I’ve learned enough about repainting my old models to know when to go in with gusto for a repaint and when to leave well enough alone. I might just keep an eye out on eBay for a second one instead. She might have a small role as a Wizard or even a mounted Vampiress in a KoW force, she’ll mostly be inhabiting the shelf.

The Ranger definitely qualifies as Oldhammer, either late 2nd edition or early 3rd WHFB. I wasn't sure of his origin or name but Dave Kay found him over in Stuff of Legends as Farendil, Elf Ranger. Even back in the day I would never picked him for an elf, especially with that nose and his great ham fists. I certainly remember seeing him in one of my early White Dwarves, circa issue 101-ish, and his paint scheme reflects that – a homage to my memory of the original picture back in my formative years.


I like to add the rear view. You so rarely see the sculpting or any images of the back of the figures we paint, and half of the sculpting and paint is there, after all.


Some of the Oldhammer and modern miniatures crowd alike seem to have their heads disappear up their arses a little bit, with the endless “it was all so much better back then” or “that looks so bad – like a 1990s figure” – and while the mid-90’s really did throw up some dogs in many ranges, and sub-par figures replacing older, better sculpts or figures that have been replaced more recently with better models – figures like Lucrezzia prove that lovely, characterful sculpts have been a feature of all eras.

If anyone out there happens to have a spare of Lucrezzia that they’re willing to part with for a reasonable amount, please feel free to contact me. I promise she’ll be well treated and painted.

That Lucrezzia makes me long for my old Dogs of War army, pikes and pavises were always my favourite. I think it is a fine job, what do you think you would do different with a "new" one?

Ebay wise the cheapest seems to be £25 over here, but then again most Dogs of War minis have been sought after for some time, good luck in your quest. My pick would be the DOW Mercenary General or Borgio The Besieger, both great sculpts.

Yeah, those were really some classic models. A real shame they got culled. Same deal with many of the ..was it Storm of Chaos? Dwarven Slayers with chain-flail things?

I may have the Merc General somewhere with my few DoW models that I picked up just as cool stuff for painting, back in the day. Is it this guy?


As for another Lucrezzia, I'd like to do the Horse's Caparison a little fancier, and more strongly themed, with more freehand. Something inspired by this, most likely:


I also like this one, but it can go on almost any figure, so I might do something like this with a Brettonian Socreress down the line: