Epic Titans

Another random project I have going on, I won a warlord for "cheap" on eBay, and that began my slow descent into addiction.

Two warhounds followed, obviously, so then I needed another 6! I also bought a reaver and a second warlord (which hasn't arrived yet). 

These three were painted to test the scheme. I've always loved the Legio Gryphonicus colour scheme on the Lucius pattern Titans. 

The scheme is actually relatively quick and easy to do, involving a lot of glazes and washes. 

They also make me want to get a 28mm scale warlord . . .

I'm not sure what the eventual plan for these is, they may be sold to fund renovations on my house, including a new man cave to remove toys and paints from the reach of tiny hands. If anyone's interested drop me an email, or comment, I would ofcourse finish them all before sale.

Also if anyone has FW epic reaver Titans hidden away Id like a few more ;)

*also I'm sure you noticed the missing shin armour on the warlord, it was sold to me with two left shins!? In waiting for the second to arrive so I can do a quick cast of the shin armour*

Thanks for looking 

Finished (sculpting) Mhara gal

So here's the finished product, except for some gs tubes coming  out of his sides. I've been waiting for a tentacle maker to arrive in the post. 

I found some soul grinder components in my bitz box a added them to the fist, this I think suits the rules a lot better and continues the corruption theme nicely. 

The back is fairly unadorned, I just had a lack of ideas as to how to dress it up, so a random growth was all that was added. 

Dead marine and the plasma cannon arm were the last pieces to be completed quite happy with how "dead" the dead marine looks. 

This guy is now quite large, transport will be a problem for sure, but I'm really happy with he turned out, I just hope that he's worth the points cost and performs on the table at Inferno 2.

Thanks for looking. 

Mhara gal WIP 3

Here is the almost finished Mhara gal!

As you can see I tried to incorporate a goat skull into the plasma cannon, not sure how successfully considering it is 100% sculpted. 

I was at a loss as to what I should add to the shoulder, then I realized a trophy/sacrifice would be appropriate. And considering the size of the dread, a whole space marine fits there! 

The spike was added first, then I drilled a hole through the marines torso and threaded it one, the limbs had to be cut and reposed to achieve a more realistic "drape". 

Next post will be some better pics of the dread in the photo booth. 

Thanks for looking. 

Mhara gal, Arktun the anointed WIP

Just a quick one today, talking to Rictus about what I should do with my contemptor from the Battle at Calth set, and he suggested a Mhara gal. 

Considering the plan is had up til then was terrain, I immediately grabbed the gs and the bitz box. This is the first gs session wit minimal thought and rouge thumbs ruining my work.

One thing I wanted to carry over was the animal skull and teeth from the gal vorbak, as I found them to be some of the freshest and creepiest details on the gal vorbak kit. 

More WIP shots soon. Thanks for looking. 

Mhara gal WIP 2

Some more progress has been made on the sculpting of my BaC contemptor conversion. 

One of the most important changes I think is the addition of the FW contemptor feet, they really are vastly superior to the plastics. 

The shins were filled with putty off cuts glued in side then a plug of gs was stuck in to provide the foot something to push against and not waste too much putty. 

Another breakthrough was learning how to sculpt ruptured armour. I can't recommend clay shaper sculpting tools enough. They really are a maxing and allow for a much better control when manipulating the gs because it won't stick to the tools. 

I'm at a loss at the moment as to what direction the plasma cannon arm will take. 

Thanks for stopping in and looking. 

Next cab off the rank: Angron

Hello everyone, welcome to my series of Primarch posts.

I've had a collection of Primarchs building up in the background for quite a while, but they've been on the back burner as I finished units for gaming as a priority and uni got in the way.

Since I finished Horus however I've been making steady progress on the backlog and Angron is the second Primarch to be finished.


The model is from my recollection the oldest primarch in circulation, and the sculpt and basing style certainly shows its age. There has been a steady increase in the size and complexity of the bases in the character series, not entirely for the better. I would prefer FW to offer a gaming choice that comes without the over the top display bases for a more reasonable price, but that may just be me.

To that end I've actually decided not to paint the display bases for the rest (most) of the primarchs, providing me with fodder for conversions and objectives, as well as saving alot of room in the display case as well.

I have also decided to paint the remaining primarchs to a good TT standard to get them ready for some gaming. There was talk of a Primarch death match series at some of the tournaments in Brisbane which I think would be really interesting.

As you can see from the photos, I have experimented with a darker background for the pics this time, oddly it seems to make the images of the models lighter, and I actually had to dim the lights so the images didn't look too washed out.

Which background do you prefer? What do you think of AngryRon, is he showing his age, or holding up well?

Cheers

Aaron

Horus the Warmaster

Hi everyone, back from the dead again.

So recently I have moved house and as any gamer or modeler who's goes through this ordeal knows it involves packing and unpacking that most sacred space, the hobby table.

This can be painful, there's a lot of stuff, some of it get broken and things get lost, and it can take a while to get setup again.

Once you do though, it's like a blank slate, none of those half finished projects sitting there staring at you accusingly, no bits of offcuts and chucks of sprue lying around. It can be invigorating to tackle something new.

So with the constant heckling of Rictus I managed to finish the first of my Primarch miniatures, and I started with the big cheese himself, Horus.

This is the first miniature I have painted in a long time that didn't require the use of an airbrush, every step was done using standard brushes, and man am I rusty, it took along time to get back into the swing of blending highlighting and not weathering.

The cloak was shaded with purple inks, to give it a depth, but not be so dark as to be all black, I found that when I tried to use straight black to shade the cloak lost a lot of its regal appearance.

I hope the pictures are a lot better, as I finally invested in a photo booth setup, I bought a Foldio 2, which is a really nice product, easy to use and set up, though not exactly cheap.

I hope to do some experimentation with photo backgrounds, and might reshoot some of my old minis that I've done to test them out.

I also have 4 more Primarchs to paint (and another I just ordered) so expect some more painting progress in the not too distant future.

Like everyone else involved in HH I have bought a couple of sets of Battle for Calth and will be using them to start my third legion force, so watch that for developments when I finally get them in my hands.

Thanks for sticking around and reading this wall of text if you have, and thanks for stopping by, I hope to increase the tempo and consistency of posts to the blog, but we've all heard me say that before.

Cheers

Sheep

More Sons of Horus Reinforcements

Just a quick one today, I've had 3 Terminators sitting in my miniatures case half painted for ages, probably going on 18 months!

Consequently they were incredibly quick to finish off, only taking me one day of intermittent painting.

These take my current termis to 8 + a Praetor, lucky i have a Spartan to take them up the guts in.

Hopefully I will have something else to put up soon, maybe some more infinity, but the response to those was a bit muted so I don't think I'll spend too many posts on them and stick to HH and 40k.

Either way, the next few week will be quiet as the Uni year ramps up to exams, and I move house, which will obviously involve the packing of the studio (desk) and downtime before its set up again I'll need to buy a new compressor for my Airbrush too, as the industrial one I have now is inappropriate for the new apartment.

Anyone have any recommendations for a quiet compressor you can use inside?

Hopefully when I return the quality of photos will improve dramatically, I bought a Foldio2 collapsible studio on a whim, and having seen some reviews I'm confident even I can't screw it up, just need to make/buy a back ground for it.

Cheers for stopping by.

Word Bearers Boss-man

Every army needs a general, and Word bearers armies apparently need 2 compulsory HQ's, so here's the first of mine, the "obviously a bad guy, I don't know how we fooled the Ultramarines at all" Diabolgist.

 Long time followers of the blog might recognize him as the WIP World Eaters Praetor from awhile ago, just modified somewhat.

Apart from some minor alterations, the majority of the model stayed the same, I replaced the purity seals with the more WB parchments, added some skulls to the jetpack, which were supposed to be from his victims at Istvaan.

Oh and added horns, stops him wearing a helmet, but really drives home the fact he is an evil bastard, and the source of all the daemons I plan on painting for this force.

 The book has a subtle hint as to what god the planned Daemons will be from.

The broken symbol he's standing on is a cast I made of an old Buldog buckle company key chain, I think it makes a nice broken symbol of Calth, and is symbolic of the betrayal of the WB's in that theatre.

Initially I had tried to paint the legion numerals of the Salamanders, Ravenguard, and Iron hands, on the skulls, but they were just too long and detailed to fit onto such a small space convincingly.

Leading from the front . . . gets you killed now days in 40k/30k.

This final photo has been included because I think the colour is slightly more representative of the actual tone of the armour.

Thanks for looking.

Word Bearers Legion Symbol

Hey guys, just a quick one on the legion symbol I have had to free hand on all the miniatures I've finished so far.

Initially I tried to do the above symbol, but found it too time consuming, especially for tactical marines, and assault marines that will just die in droves.

I did one on Barry the test model, just to try it out, abut couldn't fit the daemon face into such a small space convincingly (its really distressing to spent so long free handing something, only to add battle damage to it as well).

Originally found on From the warp, I make no claim to this awesomeness

Then I found the above Image on From the warp, a now sadly inactive blog, and it saved my bacon.

Much easier to paint, and according to the FW books, still canon and current to the campaign on Calth and beyond, all the bases covered I can carry this on to all the rest of the units, and save the more complicated symbols for tanks, dreadnoughts etc that warrant a bit extra attention.

Cheers for checking in.

Bearers of the Word, Muster

Welcome one and all to another post that starts off with an apology for failing at updating, sorry about that . . . 

Inspiration for my scheme

As usual though, after a long hiatus I have pics of finished minis to make up for it.

 Its been along time since I painted anything for the Horus Heresy that wasn't for my Sons, the last thing I painted was that test world eater, who coincidently has been repainted to make it into this squad, he was the test again, and just turned out well enough to not need another re-re-paint.

Quite happy with how the metallic red has come out, it is a Vallejo model air colour, "Signal Red", there are several layers of GW washes to bring it down to a more muted colour though.

The eyes on these are yellow, not green as in the inspiration picture, not for some paint theory reason, but because I don't actually own any green paints! Surprised the hell out of me actually.

The only things I can't get to work are the inscribed geometric symbols in their armour, I  have actually repainted armour panels that I just felt it wasn't working on, like the chest of the guy with pelvic parchments.

I'll have another couple of posts on these guys coming up, and have a few more at the base coat stage. Funnily enough, while base coating my airbrush carked it, so these are the first models I have painted, entirely with brush, in a very long time.

It is also actually a really hard scheme to photo graph well, so I apologise for the quality of the pictures, I really need to set up a proper light box one of these days.

Thanks for looking, and hopefully I'll have something else for you all shortly.

Tyranid reinforcements and 85k views!!

4 posts in a month! what is this sorcery! Just a quick one today though.

Following on from the kill team post, the original idea was a phalanx of Zoanthropes, 4 at 200 points would be a pain, but during play testing they sucked, so the DE rolled in from the bench.

I have another couple of units waiting in the wings for paint, namely 2 tyranocytes and a toxicrene that I'm undecided on if I'll turn into a tyranid knight . . .

Also, I'm so excited for Ad mech, and resisting the urge to order a metric shit ton of new models, though I'll be the hipster douche sitting at the bar at tournaments "I did Ad mech before they were cool". . .

Then there's those damn assassin models . . .sah sexy.

Thankyou all for the support and for continually stopping by, I'm sure about 70,000 views are from bots but even so I'm amazed so many of you are following my work. Its a great feeling knowing people care enough about what you do as a hobby to stop by and look, and comment.

Heres to another 85,000. . .

Razors edge

So that didn't take long now did it . . .

This is my favourite shot of the razorwing

There's something about painting one model and just having the scheme "click", it reaffirms your joy of the hobby. This is the first model I have painted for ALONG time that hasn't had a tournament or list derived goal as the end state.It makes me think these INQ28 guys are onto something, might have to try my hand at a few conversions just because.

The statues on the base are a bit cliched for DE, but I love them

Its not shown very well in the photos (unless you zoom right in) but some of the spray went a bit speckly, I can only assume this is due to too much pressure, paint that was too thick, or the needle of my airbrush is bent, or a combination of all the above.

But as far as the Table top goal of the army is concerned I'm super happy with how the scheme has translated to the model that inspired me to pick up DE in the first place.

As with the venom, the glass on the canopy is a place holder until I can get some masking fluid and come up with a canopy scheme that compliments the tones of the body. I'm undecided on engine OSL as well.

I don't know why. but spraying the stand for the base makes the model look less like a toy to me.

There's another post in the chamber on tyranids coming up, but I doubt I'll get to paint anything in the next month or 2 as uni ramps up for exams, but procrastination may get the better of me.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

New WIP

So it didn't take long for the DE bug to bite.

One of the most impressive models at the time of release, and of the DE, and GW range at the time was the Razorwing. It, and the scourges pretty much sold me on the entire miniatures range.

I got a bit carried away today when I was digging through some boxes and found an old Razorwing, it was dusty and coated in paint already, but 20 mins of TLC and I got it to the point I could prime and base coat it again.

Some of the surfaces are a bit rough, but I still love where this is going. the second picture is more representative of the colour too.

Stay tuned for more soon.

Thanks for looking.

Not so Dark Eldar

Hello all, back from another patented long break between posts, but I come bearing pics!

Dark Eldar Killteam (200 points)

Recently its been apparent that there is a trend for new codex's to increase the amount of miniatures you need to paint for a complete army, leading to alot of burn out among the player base locally. we all still love GW models, and fluff and play the game regularly, but its just so hard to finish a new army!

More "after the jump"..... what a stupid turn of phrase.

Sons of Horus Reinforcements

G'day everyone, sorry for the lack of updates, but I am updating now, so get off my back Matt.

As seems to be my MO, a tournament provided the impetus to get the latest batch of models completed for this army.

I required 1850 points (40k) to play, and only had 1000 points painted at the time, and being generous, and organised as I am, I only gave myself 21 days to paint the remaining points. . . .

But I did it!

So presented here are the finished pics, because in the made rush I didn't take any WIP pics worth posting (also tried a new background/new way of photgrapghing the minis, I'm not sold on it though, I think the sun was causing too many shadows)

First up we have a repaint of the drop pods from my Khorne angels force. I didn't even re prime them, just sprayed them in SoH green mix and went from there.

These were used by one of my Dreadnoughts and the veterans squad.

Speaking of veterans

I used the breacher marines to represent DA veterans with combat shields, not the most cost effective choice, but they were fun, and never failed to blow up something big. If I were to paint them again, I would cut the 6mm tape I used to the hazard stripes in half, they just look slightly too big for infantry.

Next we have the second completed tactical squad, the lascannon is singly overpriced and ineffective in my hands, I think it took 2 hull points off the entire tournament.

Finally, one of my favourite tanks in all of 40k, and a staple of every SM list I have ever run.

Vindicator!

S10 pie plates just scare the pants off of the enemy, and I'm not scared to call in danger close fire missions either.

The list for anyone who was interested was:

HQ:

Azreal *(Ravenwing and Deathwing as troops)

= 215

ELITES:

Dreadnought – 100 -          Multimelta -0 -          Powerfist - 0 -          Venerable  - 15 Drop pod – 35 = 150 Dreadnought – 100 -          2x Autocannons - 20 -          Venerable  - 15 = 135

Veterans x7 – 126 -          Combat shields x7 -35 -          Meltagun – 10 -          Combi-melta x3 – 30 -          Power weapon – 15 Drop pod – 35 = 246

TROOPS:

*Deathwing terminators x5 – 220 -          Chainfist – 5 -          Assault cannon – 20 = 245	Dedicated transport – Landraider - 250 -          Deathwing upgrade – 30 -          Hunterkiller Missile – 10 -          Multimelta – 10 =300
Tactical Squad #1 x9 - 126 -          Vet Sgt – 5 -          Power sword – 15 -          Plasmagun – 15 -          Missile Launcher + Flakk – 25 Rhino – 35 -          Hunterkiller Missile – 10 =229	Tactical Squad #2 x10 – 140 -          Vet Sgt – 5 -          Power sword – 15 -          Plasmagun – 15 -          Lascannon – 25 = 195 “Strange, is it not, that so many I wish beside me stand against me, while at my back are only the flawed and damaged. I am a master of broken monsters."

HEAVY SUPPORT:                                                                                                         -Horus Lupercal

Vindicator – 125

-          Seige shield - 10

= 135

Thanks for looking, hope to have something more to post soon.