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Power Metal – Bellerophon’s Biel-Tan Blog - Autarchs, Aspects and Serpents - 21st Mar 24  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut





Australia

Wowwee! Bellerophon your Biel-Tan force has become truly massive in every sense of the word! I really enjoyed reading through your building and painting process for your Phantom and Revenant titans. really nice paint jobs on both. And now a Vampire Hunter! How did you manage to track one down? The freehand is very nicely done and the cockpit looks great. I think you'd feel a great sense of satisfaction going back to and redoing your old cockpits now 😉

Also, how have you been getting on with your Horus Heresy collection you mentioned a while back?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/12/23 22:30:04


 
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Surrey, BC - Canada

Exalted Bellerophon.

Cheers,

CB

   
Made in gb
Mad Gyrocopter Pilot





Northumberland

Amazing work Bellerophon! Your Vampire Hunter is fantastic and I love those alternative aspect colours. Your next updates sound exciting and good luck with getting them painted up!

One and a half feet in the hobby


My Painting Log of various minis:
# Olthannon's Oscillating Orchard of Opportunity #

 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought






Stunning work on the vampire hunter, it’s amazing all round! Love the thorns and runes, they add lots of interest

Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Thanks everybody for your comments, as always I really appreciate them. This Vampire Hunter is a model that I'm particularly proud of!

 zahnib wrote:
Wowwee! Bellerophon your Biel-Tan force has become truly massive in every sense of the word! I really enjoyed reading through your building and painting process for your Phantom and Revenant titans. really nice paint jobs on both. And now a Vampire Hunter! How did you manage to track one down? The freehand is very nicely done and the cockpit looks great. I think you'd feel a great sense of satisfaction going back to and redoing your old cockpits now 😉

Thanks very much - I'd been after a Vampire for ages, and after a lot of diligent searching, I eventually I got lucky on ebay. And yes, I'm sure I would feel satisfaction re-doing the old cockpits, I think it could improve the models quite considerably, but it'll still be a fair old project to get them all done. I might make a point of re-doing a few old ones every time I do some new ones or something like that. That way it's not so much a separate project in its own right. Actually I'd like to start with my Crimson Hunter squadron, I thnik those are the ones I'm most dissatisfied with, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm currently planning to do the updated version in the same pale brown/'sand' sort of tone as they are currently, but updated to the airbrushed gradients and matte finish like I used on the Vampire.

 zahnib wrote:
Also, how have you been getting on with your Horus Heresy collection you mentioned a while back?

Unfortunately not very far. I can be a very hobby-indecisive person. I got as far as assembling a squad or two, and then realised that I couldn't make my mind up on a legion. Most of them have things that I like, but also a number of things that I find offputting, and I just couldn't nail one down. At the point I bought the Age of Darkness box I thought I'd settled on the Imperial Fists, but then I started painting Lamenters for 40k and wondered whether I really wanted to be doing two separate armies of yellow marines. I've been enjoying the Lamenters, but it's been a fairly intense paintjob. I've been using the method of painting and shading them in pink, then glazing with yellow ink. I may still pick the project back up as Fists (perhaps if used a more 'standard' yellow paintjob to differentiate) but I'm still undecided, and really I think I'd like to step away from yellow. And I've got other things to paint that don't require me to make such decisions!

Perhaps for amusement's sake, a fine example would be Emperor's Children. Their crsuade era purple/gold/white are one of my favourite legion paintjobs and I would love to paint them - but since most of the marines I have are beakies, regardless of the amount of retcon I can't really see an army of beakies without viewing it as a late heresy army - at the earliest. And I've never been much of a Chaos fan, or of spiky, mutated, daemon-infused marines, of which EC are one of the poster children. I feel like a mid-late heresy EC collection in glorious purple without a hint of corruption just isn't right. And yet, despite my usual preference for non-corrupted marines, I hate the non-corrupted Fulgrim sculpt while loving the new Fulgrim transfigured sculpt. A state of affairs which I find rather comical. Most of the other legions don't spin quite so confusing a tale, but certainly there's enough ups and downs that there isn't a clear winner for my paintbrush.

---

As to the next updates here - I was gifted more Dire Avengers and Howling Banshees for Christmas, and I've got some of the new Striking Scorpions on the way. Many more aspect warriors are in the near future of this blog, as it should be.

   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Hey everyone, more progress - another batch of models completed!



Here we have:
  • A winged Autarch. Despite nominally being mix-and-match between the two Autarch bodies, I kept the wings on this one because I feel like the pose on this body just doesn't look right with the warp jump generator or the footslogger backpack flag. I've also used the power sword that comes with the kit, but rotated from the standard assembly so that he's brandishing in more of an "I'm going to use this" way rather than presenting it heroically to the sky, and used the reaper launcher from the other Autarch kit. Expecting that I might end up with quite a few Autarchs and not wanting all of them to end up with the same three helmets repeated several times, I elected to use one of the Shining Spear Exarch helmets. I know Autarchs don't get Exarch gear, but I'm not treating this as an Exarch helmet as such, just a cool helmet that fits the model nicely. And I think the Shining Spear Exarch helmets don't scream "Exarch!" quite so much as some of the other aspects' do. Like my other reaper launcher Autarch I ended up painting the armour black. It wasn't really intended, but my army seems to be developing some sort of canon that Autarchs who were once Dark Reapers just can't escape from black armour. And of course sticking with my army's canon that Autarchs get yellow ochre faceplates.

  • A warp jump generator Autarch. This one I went with the deatspinner just because I didn't have an Autarch armed with one yet. Though that's quite a lot of Warp Spider flavour already, so I tried to give her some variety in the other equipment - the Exarch's chainsword from the new Scorpions kit (again, I'm not viewing this as 'Exarch gear', it's just a fancy chainsword in a pose that works), and I converted a helmet. It's one of the banshee masks from the banshee kit, and the crest from the Dire Avenger kit that you're supposed to use with the bare Exarch head. I melded the two together with milliput to make it into a helmet, and I think it's worked out pretty nicely - even if my milliput work isn't as smooth as I would have liked.

    Also shown in the photographs is my current Autarch council. It's taken a lot longer for this one to get off the ground compared with my Seer Council and it still has a long way to go to match the Seers' numbers, but I think it's starting to look quite impressive. Who needs Primaris Lieutenants, right?

  • Another ten Dire Avengers. I said previously that I felt for a Swordwind the size of mine, the number of Dire Avengers, which ought to be its core troops, was somewhat lacking. So this is part of the attempt to remedy the situation. Some of my earlier squads were 5-strong MSU with half an eye on the game when my collection was much smaller, but nowadays I'm fully embracing my hobby love for full strength squads. I built these with the Exarch wielding the glaive and pistol, just because that was a combination that I didn't have on any of my existing squads. I've also been thinking quite a bit about aspect colour schemes. I like to make each squad unique, while also preferably not straying too far from the particular Aspect's signature colours. I was looking back at my last set of full army photos and I realised I liked that I could pick out the Dire Avengers by finding the blob of blue in the middle of the army. However, having painted several different shades of blue across my squads, for this one I elected to go a little further afield and do them in a dark bluish purple (or purplish blue?). (I recognise that I used a fair bit of purple on the last big batch of models too - but I think I've got it out of my system now. I feel like I might be about to enter a pink phase on the next batch...) I used a more straight blue in the helmet crests and some of the ribbons. The shuriken weapons get the Biel-Tan green 'rail' down the middle as per the rest of my models, it's a real unifying element to the army. I also realised that I've been painting all of the little Eldar God shrine/statue things that come with the new Aspect kits, but I hadn't been doing them with my old squads of Avengers. So while I was doing this squad I decided to do the two that came on their sprues, and also do two more from my bits box to try to catch up a bit on the little Asuryans.

  • My first ten of the new Striking Scorpions. Again, it's full strength squads all the way! For these I selected a pretty classic scorpion scheme of a fairly rich, darker green and bright yellow helmets. I deliberately did the green with different paints than I use for my regular Biel-Tan greens, although it's probably not at all obvious. For this first squad I decided to do the Biting Blade Exarch. I was tempted by the Chainsabres because I already have the Biting Blade and Scorpion's Claw represented in my metals, and no Chainsabres because they weren't an option in the previous kit - but my fondness for the Biting Blade and the fact that it's a considerably different pose to the previous metal one won out for this first squad. Chainsabres on the next squad, probably. I definitely enjoy these new models on the whole, although I found that mixing and matching the shuriken pistol and chainsword arms between the five bodies had a relatively limited number of results that really work as poses, which is a shame - I've got a lot more of them to build! I was so convinced that these would end up in 5-model boxes at the same price point as the Banshees and Reapers that I bought a copy of the Kill Team Salvation box to net my first squad, and then bought 30 more on sprue on ebay under the mistaken apprehension that it was the cheapest I would ever get them. My mistake, once I saw that GW released them separately in boxes of 10. Although I don't feel too bad. I didn't go over the GW RRP for the box-of-10 on any of them.

  • Two more Wave Serpents. Another unit where I thought the numbers were lacking for a Swordwind the size of mine. I only had three. Only three Wave Serpents to transport all of those Aspect Warriors! So here's two more to take the total to five. They get my standard tank scheme, and they're also the first grav tanks to receive the new cockpit window technique that I premiered with the Vampire. I'm really pleased with how it's looking, and I think it's a firm upgrade on my old style. Alongside these new ones, I decided to take a tentative step towards updating my old models by redoing the cockpits on the old Wave Serpents. My three previous Serpents all got their cockpit windows updated, a good clean, and then a new blast of Ultra Matte varnish. They were old enough that I'd originally painted them when I was using the Army Painter rattlecan varnish, and it was never as matte as I wanted it to be. I'm really pleased with the upgrade, although I'm still daunted at the scale of updating everything else - between the other Grav Tanks, Vypers and Flyers I think I've got over twenty cockpits to revisit, and I'm also planning on painting some new tanks soon, so that adds even more to the cockpit production line. The photo with all five Serpents is interesting, you can really see the difference in the colour scheme from when I started (all done with brush, and the thorns were nowhere near as neat), compared to now with the airbrush gradients and much smoother freehand. I also just picked and glued in turret gun options for these. The way I magnetised the old ones is a bit frustrating keeping the guns on the tanks and pointing at the same level. I figured I've got three magnetised, I'll just pick some guns and glue them on for these new ones. Another example where the size of the collection means that I have fewer game-related worries these days and can just concentrate on making new models look cool.










  • What next?
    You didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyway. I'm still operating on this principle of "there's not enough of Unit X for a Swordwind this size". Namely, Shining Spears, of which I only have one squad at the moment. Which I feel is a poor situation given I'm Biel-Tan and they're aspect warriors. So I'm building another full-size squad of Shining Spears to bring it up to a slightly more respectable two squads. I also only have one Night Spinner in the army at the moment, and only two Fire Prisms. I've got two kits on sprue (which I bought before 10th ed when they became as rare as hen's teeth). I would definitely like to add more Prisms, but at the moment I'm thinking I'll build these two as Night Spinners, just for the painting convenience of painting two sets of Doomweavers at the same time. I've also recently got my hands on an unbuilt Firestorm turret, which I'm over the moon about, those have been scarce for a long time. I'm sure they were discontinued long before I started on this project. I have a Falcon on sprue, which I think will donate its chassis so that I can add a Firestorm to the collection.

    I'd like to expand the Autarch council and Seer council with some bikers as well - I only have two Skyrunner seers and none for Autarchs. For the Autarchs it's because I don't want to buy the old kit - so I have another box of Shining Spears and I'm planning on doing some kitbashing. My only real hesitation at this point is that they might be a bit restricted to "a Shining Spear, but with a different helmet and a Biel-Tan Autarch paintjob", which to be fair would probably be suitably cool. I just feel as though I should kitbash it a bit more heavily than that! I've also got excess Shroud Runners, and I'd like to kitbash a farseer onto the back seat - and maybe do the same for a ranged firepower Autarch. I like the idea of having some characters riding shotgun. But all of these are at the general pondering and brainstorming stage rather than actually doing it.

    Those are the next things on the agenda, although of course I've still got plenty of aspects (especially Striking Scorpions!) to do. I've got half an eye on doing another set of full army photos soon. I feel that the recent additions (especially the Vampire) mean I could take some full army photos and have them be noticeably larger than the last set. Perhaps after the next batch of models - and once I've finished upgrading all the cockpit window paintjobs!.

       
    Made in us
    Trigger-Happy Baal Predator Pilot





    Wisconsin

    Excellent work on those models. The green really pops.

       
    Made in us
    Walking Dead Wraithlord






    That's a heck of an Eldar infusion. Great looking stuff. The Autarchs are very cool.
       
    Made in us
    The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





    Upstate, New York

    Lovely work on everyone. Epic collections of Eldar you have, painted beautifully.

       
     
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