Finished - Iron Warrior Havocs

I got these old old metal Chaos space Marine minis in some trade or another and they sat in my bits box for ages. Perhaps years. I have another of these types of Las Cannon Marines and was not really a fan of it. The Auto Cannon is a straight up ugly mini. If it were not so hard to convert them up, I would trade it. I really love the Heavy Bolter Marine. It looks totally Grimdarkand 40k. There are hooks and chains and a BFG that looks like it was carved out of single giant block of steel. 

Finished - Warsmith and Yarrick

 The Ork Wrecker sits on my painting table just looking at me mockingly. I knows that I maybe bit off more than I could chew in converting and painting and it laughs an evil laugh. So I am taking a break to clear some more minis out of the backlog. 

I traded for both of these guys on Bartertown in different trades. The Warsmith was rehabbed from a Sons of Horus color scheme of sea-green and gold that was atrocious. I painted him in my traditional Iron Warrior color scheme of chainmail, yellow and gold. I was tempted to convert him up a bit as I have an old metal Warsmith from ages ago that I converted to have a servo harness and that mini would be a great stand in for a Warsmith. In the end, I saw that any wargear that I might put on a Warsmith did not necessarily need to me modeled or could be placed on a separate base. 

I think he turned out ok. There was not much room for creativity in his paint job. I showed some spunk in painting the whole left shoulder guard yellow and letting the recessed areas be black stripes. Other than that and the ax (not visible in this photo), there was no opportunity to paint the yellow and black stripes on this mini. I did do a head swap for a horned helmet from the WFB range. I would give this guy a 7 of 10 for my skill. I think he would get a 7 on CMoN. For some reason newer minis tend to get rated higher as does conversion work and metal-colored minis. I don't know why that it but the trolls tend to rate shiny thing higher on there. 

Yarrick was bare metal when I traded for him. I don't even play IG/AM but I love this mini. I am experienced enough at painting his core colors to tackle this mini. I wish I had painted the claw different colors. I did not read his background until after I started painting him. As the claw came from an Ork Warboss, I would have liked to have it a little more beaten up. I could see him wanting it guilded to cover up the Xeno taint, and that's just what I will tell anyone that asks. 

I think this is a decent mini. There are a lot of him out there floating around and I do not think mine stands out from the middle of the pack. I think it is a 5 of 10 for me and maybe a 6 on CMoN. I rate him so low because I really cheated by painting large swaths of the metal the same color when a more detailed approach would have been braver. 

Finished - Termies, Quad Gun and Hellbrute

Finished - 3 Obliterators

I finished three Obliterators and you can too! They turned out pretty well. I was working from some busted and incomplete old minis that I got in a trade so reconstructing the arms was difficult. there are a few plastic bits that had to be thrown in to fill all the little slots. 

Most noticeable is the swap of bare heads for Terminator heads. One of the minis that I got was missing a head and had an old metal CSM Terminator head in place. I could have made a stink about this but I actually liked the effect. 

On the table now - 3 good, 3 bad

Things have been quiet of late here on TMM Blog. That is because I have been in a fury of painting since the new year. I have quite a back log of minis to post as Finished as well as the Yearbook post. It has never taken me this long to get that yearbook post out. I would feel bad about that if I was not churning out some of my best looking minis ever. 

I am putting the finishing touches on Mordrak right now and will move on to 3 Obliterators for the Iron Warriors and three Space Wolf special characters. 

Finished - Two bad guys and one good guy

Lots of lightning claws in this post. 

I started on the DV Chaos marines. They are more difficult to paint than I thought they would be. There is a lit os detail and some of it is very shallow. They are also hard to paint and then assemble as the lines between parts often run through detail areas. It is not quite as hard to explain as it was to paint, but was close. 

I also banged out a fairly dynamically-posed Space Wolf Blood Claw Wolfguard. I most often see those claws used to pose the model as of he is turning around to engage another enemy, but I wanted this lusty Blood Claw to look like he is throwing himself at his prey. 

Wishlisting The Right Way

I made a wish list on the GW site for what I think it will take to update some of my armies into 6th. Now we have this Embargo on and I can't buy any of this stuff for 6 months or a year (or Emperor forbid longer). I might sneak one or two under the radar but for the most part, these are tiny metal dreams.

The big change is 6th is flyers. If you do not have one, then you are going to get reamed and hard. I signed up for a flyer for every army that I am preparing to build. Gotta have the Ork Bomma. It is just such a cool model with great rules. I am planning to start Orks at some point. I've collected 3 Blackreach Ork boxes, some bikes, some special characters but still have giant holes to fill. I will have an Ork army and it will have a wicked Bomma in it.

While we are shaking the wishing tree, I wanted not one but two of the gleaming metal peaches of the Storm Tallon gunships. In 5th they were ok but in 6th they are indispensable. Great as a flyer killer and great to harass troops and tanks alike. Also, it is a great model and I don't care what its detractors say. It is cute and deadly and it will RULE THE SKIES!

After Richard stomped the crap out of me with his Veteran Trooper-packed Vendettas, I have lusted after them. I was holding my own with him while they were in reserve but as soon as they came on, in one turn her claimed two objectives and blew up one of my tanks. Valkyries and their Forge World sisters the Vendettas are brutal and, for right now at least, they are a steak at their points cost. I am sure that will change but I have always wanted a small detachment of air cav. Now, with allies, I do not have to start an IG army to have that.

My Necron force is still hanging out in the dark days of 3rd Edition. I have only painted two new models (The Catacomb Command Barge and the Ghost Ark). They are seriously hurting without flyer cover and so I need (not want but frelling NEED) one of their flyers. Night Scythe or Doom Scythe, I do not care. Mostly because I can easily magnetize them or at least i hope I can.

I also put a few vehicles on the wish list for armies that I have not precisely started yet. I have a very small sisters force and have not really decided on my paint scheme. You can only get Immolators and Exorcists from GW Direct these days. Eventual I'll need a ride for my girls to cruse around in and pick up shoot dudes. And the Exorcist is a great model. I need to get the metal versions before they come out with Finecast upgrades that are twice the price and half as good.

Most of the things on the wist least are new shiny things and not very fluffy or just filling gaps in my model collection and army. Just to show you that I am not a giant flaming hypocrit, There is some useless and fluffy stuff on the list too.

I want one of each of the Daemons Troops to go with my ten man Cult Troop CSM squads. Surely there is or will be an Apoclypse formation about having that, but regardless I want my Khorne Beserkers to have some Bloodletter friends. Also, this will challenge me to branch out with my painting.

To bolster my Iron Warriors, I just need some Basilisks. Those giant artillery piece have been a part of the Sons of Perturbo since the dark days. I can't wait to paint them up in metal and caution stripes with some Traitor Guard crawling over them.

Taht's all I have time to blog about for now. No time to finish the links or add pictures so this is going to be a vanilla post with no flash. I'll go to bed with visions of tiny metal angles dancing in my head for now and plot my spending spree.

On the table - Grey Knights and hatches

First time at the bench in ages and it is slow going. 

On the table now - Combi Weapons

Decided to bang out some combi-weapons for the IW vehicles. Turns out it was pretty easy. Sunk a couple of mangets into the one side of the weapon and mounted it securely. Then, I magnetized the bit that is to attach. Used a couple of Loyalist meltaguns with the triggers pulled off. They look ok now, but they'll look great when painted. 

Finished - IW Rhino #2 and arms

Just put the last swipes of paint on the second and last IW Rhino. It is still missing the smoke stack bit but I can glue that on later. I just realized that I did not do any weathering on the smoke stacks so I'll have to do that now. The second one still needs to be clear coated and there are a few bits that I need to paint up like a Havoc Launcher and some extra blank hatches. 

I also finished two magnetized arms for the IW Terminator. I do not have many of them and so being able to swap out arms is crucial at this time. I plan on having 10 or more in the end and at that point, I'll skip the magnets and just have dedicated minis for each weapon. 

Up next are the 3 GK in power armor and a drop pod. 

On the Table - Same Old

Since I finished the first IW Rhino and Typhus, my painting has been slowing down. I've had the other Rhino on my table for a while now. The time stamps say it has been a week since I've done any real work on the Rhino. 

Today, I did the washing, touch ups and highlighting. It is closing in on finished. I am losing my mind with the yellow on the top hatch and getting the doors sufficiently black. I am still waiting on a bit to finish the smoke stacks, but that can come later. 

How to use Liquid Tallent and WTF GW Blog

Two posts in one today!

Agrax Earthshade (formerly Devlan Mud, aka Liquid Talent) is not the final step in painting. It is a shading step and the model still needs to be painted after that. The to the left picture demonstrates this.

One of these is painted.

I have a basic pattern of how I paint. I give a base layer, shade, touchup then highlight. You see how there are two steps after the shading/washing step. That's the painting part. Slopping on a basecoat then dipping a mini really takes no talent, skill, time or energy. It is not painting. It is cheating.

Now, I don't have a real problem with this. Dipping minis is just like dipping tobacco. Dip if you want to, but don't expect me to like it or condone it. I won't acknowledge a dipped army ad "fully painted" because it is not painted. It is better than a grey or black army but not much.

The bottom Rhino was just washed with Dev Mud and nothing else. The one above has been touched up (intentionally sloppily), then highlighted and perhaps some lite drybrushing and it is a world of difference and took very little work and time.

On the table now - Chaos IW Rhino number two

A long way to go.

FINISHED - Iron Warrior Rhino

At long last, that flippin Rhino is done!

"Pleased to meet you. Hoped you guessed my name."

I finished this a few days ago, but waited to try to get some good pictures for this write up and to post it on Cool Mini or Not.

When we last saw this Rhino, it was still missing its hatch and doors. I had not even begun to weather it either. After the failure with the Charadon Granite, I gave up on doing any sort of dynamic weathering on the silver parts. I settled instead on giving it a light drybrush of Runefang Steel (formerly Mithril Silver) and stippling Ironbreaker (formerly Chainmail) on the areas that got too much was on them. All of the shading on this model was done with Agrax Earthshade (formerly Dev Mud) by painting it in the areas I wanted it. You just can't dip a large model like this. I thought I was going to have to use some Nuln Oil (formerly Badab Black) but turns out that the Agrax Earthshade did the job pretty well.

Yellows

The yellow areas on the front started as Averland Sunset (formerly Iyanden Darksun). After being washed, I brightened them up just on the hard edges with Yriel Yellow (formerly Golden Yellow). This left some dirty spots on them but still made the edges bright enough to match up with the rest of the model.

Almost finished - IW Rhino

Rhino is coming along. Pretty much done except for the doors and the top hatch. The doors are almost finished. I decided to mix in some more black in them and it is looking nice. The only complaint about this kit is that the FW doors do not fit the FW openings on the extra armor. the door is a little smaller. It would be better if it were larger. It is easier to make the door smaller at this sage than to make the opening smaller. I could fill the gap with green stuff, but decided to skip it.

One of the doors was warped and I thought that I could just glue it in and have that fix it. Unfortunately, I glued my fingers to it and peeled off quite a bit of paint both off the door and the hull. This was easily fixed by adding more weathering. Hard to tell anything happened.

You'll notice that I swapped the smoke stacks for some bits from the Manufactorum terrain set. I did this because when I got these Rhinos, they were used and the stacks were damaged and gummed up with paint. I sawed all of them off and replaced them. I like the different look but it is also functional. when I flip the vehicle over when/if it gets blown up, the larger stacks hold the FW spikes off the table so they do not get broken.

On the table now - Weathering the Rhino

I ain't happy. Nope. Not one bit. I tried to do some chipping and weathering by painting Charadon Granite on the metal parts and it turned out awful. I have since painted over the CG parts with Chainmail. I've decided that a very light drybrush of Mithril Silver over the whole model and MS strategically painted in places. I have to make sure to not do all the hard edges because that will make it look shiny and not chipped. 

The key to making hard edge highlighting look like weathering is to make it random. I am ok at this but I still tend to do it in a broken but predictable pattern. This is very obvious on my scratch titan. You'll see when/if I post pictures of it.

On the table now - Damned Rhino

I feel like I have been working on this damned thing for an eternity. That is the biggest hurdle for me and painting vehicles. They take so much time. This is a pretty simple color scheme and yet it is still taking forever.
 

I am starting weathering now. Chipping the black and gold is easy but weathering the silver is proving difficult. I am going to try some chips of Charadon Granite and see how that works. After that, I need to glue on the smoke stacks and FW spikes and it is done. In my down time of waiting for stuff to dry, I painted up some pretty awesome combi-bolter hatches. You'll have to wait to see them until it is finished though. Patience.

On the table now - IW Rhino and EC Champ

Everybody scream to feel good!

Finished the BA Rhino and am plowing on with the IW Rhino. It is slow going because I really did not plan out the color scheme before I started. I had completely forgotten to incorporate the black from the IW shoulder pads into the design of the Rhino. I went a little crazy especially on the front with the black but that will help me out in the weathering stage. Since I am not planning to wash the whole model, it is going to be hard to show dents and dings in the metal when it is the same color. I can try black chips but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. 

Also not planned for was the magnets. My Chaos Rhinos are just going to be Rhinos. No need to convert them to Predators and thus no need to magnetize the back hatch or the doors. I need to magnetize the gun hatches on the front to swap out combi-bolters. I really need to sink some magnets in right now for smoke launchers.

The Emperor's Children Champion is coming along really well. He should be finished by the end of today. I am really liking this new plan of working on a vehicle and a infantry model at the same time. It is preventing me from getting too frustrated with the vehicles. 

On the table now - IW Rhinos and EC Champion

 

Back to work on the CSMs. I've these Rhinos and the accompanying Forge World extra armor bits on my table for at least a year. They are always there looking at me. Judging. I even got the Iron Warrior front bits and doors. I started from a black primer and undercoated the whole Rhino with Boltgun Metal before attaching the armor. After gluing on the armor, I gave it a pretty heavy drybrush (bordering on an overbrush) of Chainmail paying special attention to the armor bits that were still black. I'll go over the whole model with a drybrush of Chainmail using a bigger brush. That should sufficiently brighten the model. After that, I'll paint on the gold with Shining Gold. I do not know how I am going to handle the washing. I may dilute some Dev Mud and use a friend's spray gun to wash the whole thing. Regardless, I'll need to paint on Badab Black into the places where I want deeper shadows. 

Painting large models is much different than paining infantry. You have to be extra careful on how you shade and highlight them. Also, they require a fair amount of weathering or they just look funny. No tank in service looks fresh and clean. they are always scuffed and beaten up a bit. Luckily that is pretty easy to do with most colors. When your whole tank is metal, that makes it hard. If I just do Mithril it won't show up. I'll have to look over on Cool Mini or Not for ideas.

On The Table Now - Something Old, Something New

Lots of things On the Table just now and not many of the finished.

I just finished 3 Assassins that had been sitting around for ages. I'll write them up in a separate epic post later.

Also sitting on the table, are the old Warsmith. I am still having a hard time getting my head around how I want to do his servo harness. I have his backpack down. I trimmed the little antenna on top and replaced it with, what I feel is, a fitting Chaos icon. You'll see it later when it is finished but it is the skull with the half mechanical side. I am going to use servo arms in some form, but I am having problems hanging my hat on any one configuration.Ultimately, it does not matter as it is just going to represent a daemon weapon, but I still want to get it just right and that is causing me to fret.

The painted terminator that is missing an arm is waiting to be magnetized so he can cary a heavy flamer or a autocannon. Since I am only going to have a few termies, I want to be able to swap the weapons out without having to buy, paint and store extra dudes. I have the bits. I am just waiting for the muse to strike and to be in the mood to paint IW terminators.

I was crazy for magnetizing stuff years ago thinking it would save me money. Turns out, I pretty much used everything in one configuration and the magnets were pointless. All they did was to add time to my set up as I had to dig for the right arm and fit it to the right guy 30 times before I could play. It suited me at the time but no longer.

There is also the less tangible hindrance it gives to the emotional bond between me and my TMM. you lose the personality that a TMM has when ou can just rip his arm off and make him what you want. He stops being the avatar of a Space Marine and starts being a representation of the rules. I like it when I am forced to remove a dead guy and it is a tough choice between two models. Not because of differences in wargear but because I like them both and "people."

/tangent

Tucked under the shelf is a rhino that I need to bang out at some point. It too has been sitting on the table for too damned long.

Also on the bench for what seems like forever, is that headless assault marine. He has been in progress for a year and on the bench for 6 months or so. I should have just banged him out when I was doing the Grey Knights (more on them next), but didn't. I don't know why he is so often overlooked. I need to buckle down and get him done. I have some Sargents in the process of stripping (that might make a good article down the road) so he will likely get done with them.

Cheah, and pigs might fly out of my butt.

Grey Knights. I promised your GK next and, darn it, I deliver. I started Grey Knights 3 or 4 years ago back when they were Daemonhunters just for a lark and to challenge my painting skills. I painted up 8 termies or so, a dozen power armored GK and lots of special weapons. Even though it was about 30 models, when I count my Blood Angel vehicles, it ended up being about 2,000 points.

With the advent of the new codex, there came new models and this time they are plastic! The new plastic kit comes with loads of options and just like with the Warsmith, with too many options I go into total brainlock. I magnetized the backpacks so they can be a Strike or Intercept Squad by changing one bit. The next choices is what to equip them with. I want to try the new option taht I don't have like the nemesis daemon hammer, nemesis warding staff and the psylincer. Magnets may be involved.

Off in the wings is a Dark Angel Captain that I picked up for cheep and painted red. It's just an interesting side project.

Front and center are some old school Iron Warriors that I got for cheep off of Bartertown for cheep. It was $20 for 12 of them or so. There are some classic models in there. I am particularly excited about the Las Cannon guy. These guy will get a write up when they are finished (which should be soon).