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On The Table Now - Leviathan Crusader

These big green feet are the herald of yet another ?Knight Titan from Dreamforge. Serendipitously, Dreamforge posted an upgrade to this mini (and a 50% discount) that I have been waiting for just as I reached the step where I would need to install it. 

I placed my order and started on the other parts of the mini that I could paint while waiting for the new bits. 

For the most part, I a satisfied with these mini. They make for good proxies, are very poseable and reasonably priced. 

What It Means To Be A Space Marine

It looks like the Deathwatch RPG group is getting started again. I have wanted to write this article for a while and it will serve as a primer for players that are new to the Fantasy Flight system and 40k setting. It details all the ways that a Space Marine differs from a human in the fluff but most importantly in the RPG system. This information is spread all around the main book and it is difficult to keep in your head. The goal of this list is to try and keep it all in the same place.

Finished - Leviathan Mortis "Valar Morghulis"

This mini deserves an epic write up and better pictures. For now, I am pleased to say that it is finished. I am very very happy with how it came out. 

Finished - 6 Genestealers

These little buggers (pun intended) have set on my painting table for over a month. In that time, projects have been started, set aside, picked up, set aside again, forgotten, picked up, completed, clear-coated and put on the shelf. I don't have a reason why these minis sat untouched so long but they did. I often paint in groups of 3 or 4 minis. Granted 6 is a fairly large group and perhaps that is why they daunted me for so long. 

Regardless, they have languished too long on the sidetable of procrastination for far too long. I made it a point to finish them and everything else on my sidetable before moving on the next project.

I lied to myself, of course. 

I started the next Dreamforge proxy Knight Titan before completing these Genestealers. Regardles they are done now but I have not touched the other projects on my sidetable like my Lord of Change or finish the base for the Tau Barracuda. 

On The Table - Leviathan Mortis

I took a sick day today for a mental health and spent that time really plugged into this mini. I made a lot of progress and it is almost finished. 

I had a devil of a time getting the legs right. It was a lot of trial and error of fitting them in place and adjusting my work. I ended up gluing the legs in place so there is no motion. I should have pinned the legs to the base from the start. They do not rest flat on the ground or on the vehicle. I could not use my trick of applying super glue to a corner and letting it wick into the crack. I tried this and it just dried on the foot and base still not connecting. You can imagine my frustration. 

I was going to have the mini rotate at the waist, but the hydraulics that attach at the front of the pelvis to the torso are too fiddly to allow that kind of movement. I glued the hips to the spine and the spine to the torso. Then I had to fit the little hydraulic bits into the hips and torso. It was like rocketsurgery.

The only part not glued in are the hips because I am not sure how the posture of the mini is going to shake out. Initially, I thought that the mini would be standing upright more, but now it appears that it is more hunched than I anticipated.

I also left the shoulders and elbows free to move to position the arms. Unfortunately as I already said, there is wash in the cracks and that makes them more difficult to move.

Next time you see this bad baby, it will be tagged with "finished!"

On The Table - Leviathan Mortis

I made great strides on this mini this weekend. Most of that work went into the base. I debated on what army to make it and in the end settled on generic Chaos. I painted it like a rusty wreck with lot of Dark Flesh washed with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. I did a lot of drybrushing silver colors over it as well. I feel like I like how it turned out but it is very homogeneous. That would bug me more if it was not a piece of scenery on the base.

The Rhino turned out over very dark but that was intentional. I knew that the mini was going to turn out very dark. I didn't want the base to outshine the mini. I used the technique of dampening the colors on the Genestealers to good effect and I tried to put it to use here too. It is a thin line to tread by trying to make the base interesting but not too detailed and well painted that it looks better than the thing standing on it. 

Still on The Table - Leviathan Mortis

Holy cow, this mini is taking forever. I have probably spent over 20 hours on the assembly of the legs only. It would be difficult to make the assembly of this mini more complicated or the mini more poseable. That is not a criticism in any way as it is totally worth it. 

I made a custom base for the mini by sawing the front off of a hideously-painted Rhino that I got in a trade. I had bought Rhino parts off of eBay to avoid destroying a perfectly good Rhino, but after inspection and further thought, the Rhino was not in perfect condition and I lacked appropriate bits to make a convincing Rhino front. 

It was a delicate ballet of assembly of the base and assembly of the legs to get everything in accordance. I had to re-position the toes a little to make it look like the feet were resting on the hull or ground but other than that, the flexibility of the mini worked well. I wanted to position the mini on a giant piece of terrain and deciding on that was the longest part of this process. 

As it stand now. I have decided on and assembled the base, assembled the legs to the point of solidifying a position and screwed in the screws. The legs are set as far as I am concerned. I may as well glue them but can't at this point as I have assembled them too much. I even added some sand to the base around where the foot is to make it look like it is sunk into the ground. 

On The Table - Two Daemonettes

I dug through my bits box and found enough bits to make two more Daemonettes and I decided to paint them up as a side project. This will make for a unit of 10 Daemonettes not including my Herald. 

On The Table - Leviathan Mortis

After finishing my last big project of the Tau Barracuda, I decided to start on my next big project and that is my Knight Titan army. Currently, I have a legit GW Knight Titan from the first release (so it is missing the sexy extras like the fist and carapace-mounted weapons), a Leviathan Mortis and Leviathan Crusader from Dreamforge Games. 

Dreamforge makes Titans in two sizes. Basically they are Knight-sized and Warhound-size. I have one of each (Mortis and Crusader) in the Knight-titan size and one Crusader in the Warhound-size.I decided to start with the smaller Mortis for my first effort and HOLY COW this is a detailed mini. It is insanely poseable and complicated to assemble. I spent over an hour staring at the sprues unsure how to start. Each piece has a piece that needs to be assembled before it. 

Finished - Tau Barracuda

Finishing the Barracuda was a giant task. I had to relearn how to paint in the my Tau style all over. It had been way too long since I had painting an icy blue Tau of this size. I finished the Tetras and Remoras but they are not the same as painting something this big. Really the only practice that I had was the Sunshark and the Riptide and those were super long ago. I had to invent new ways of painting this scheme.

I sprayed the mini white then, rather than basecoating Fenrisian Grey, I used Celestra Gery insted. I then painted on the areas that I wants Fenrisian Grey. Next up was washing with Drakenhof Nightshade the touching up with Fenrisian Grey. That gave me the a good base to work from. After that it was just dialing in the amount of Celestra Grey that I wanted showing before a final highlight of pure white on the hard edges.

I used a broken line on the white highlights but tried to make it look like shiny glare rather than jagged metal, I also had to highlight rounded edges to create the illusion of reflection.

Finished - The Last Lictor

This is the final Lictor needed for my very small Tyranid army. The army started when I had 22 Space Hulk Genestealers to paint. Then I ran across the Apocalypse of "Vanguard Infestation." It was always my dream to field a Tyranid army that represents an early infestation. 

Genestealers range way ahead of the Hive Fleet and infect worlds through a crazy and counter-intuitive process. They emit a psychic signal that attracts a Hive Fleet. One of the first critters that land are the Lictor scouts. They act like landing beacons for the Spores. 

Now, that is my idea of an awesomly themed and fluffy army. It is in no way competitive but it 10 out of 10 fluffy. Until very recently, it was also not legal to field anything like this. With the advent of Unbound armies and this Apocalypse sheet, it becomes viable. 

I had finished two other Lictors including a Deathleaper. This triad forms part of the leadership of this army. My headcannon is the Deathleaper has a retinue of two Lictors and is the catalist that turns the Genestealer infestation in to an army. The Broodlord is the leader of the Genestealer brood as a proxy for the Patriarch. 

With the addition of my Deathwatch: Overkill game, this means I will be able to field a Genestealer Cult army as well. Given how long it has taken me to paint up the Tyranids and Space Marines from the Space Hulk game, it will be a long time before this dream is a reality. 

The dream would be to field a Deathwatch and PDF army against a Genestealer Cult army with a cool opponent. 

I don't know that I have done a TMM CV post about the Lictors. A quick search on my own blog reveals that I have. This Lictor has the same value of $54 as my other Lictor. 

Finished - Thousand Sons Sorcerer

I put the final touched on this mini. I was scared for a bit because it was not turning out very well when we started. The Sepia wash really helped and the new way of doing blue really pops. 

I am using Gulliman Blue over white or Runefang Steel with a little touch up to do my glowing bits. I had to make this change after they axed the old blue wash and I like the new way. It took forever to figure this out. 

I had asked on Bartertown about replacing Asurmen Blue and got the predictable smart ass reply of "there is a conversion chart." It bugs me when people assume that people don't Google something before they ask a question but then again so many people ask before they Google. I had not gotten much help from that (or really from any post that I make on BT) and none of my painting friends had any input either. It was through experimentation and fortuitous mistakes that I was able to come up with this new technique.