On The Table - Deathwatch Techmarine And Others

While I am waiting for my next commission to get here in the mail, I am putting some work in on these three Deathwatch Marines. From right to left there is my take on a Iron Hands Techmarine, the second of my Storm Shield and Shotgun Marine and an Iron Hands with a Heavy Thunder Hammer.

I am cannibalizing the Deathwatch: Overkill box and converting each mini. I knew that I wanted a Techmarine to in my army and it was a little upsetting to see that Techmarines have no place in the Deathwatch.They feature so heavily in the RPG and to not have them at all in the table top game seems to be an oversight and missed opportunity. Until they fix this 30 years for now when we get another Deathwatch Codex, I plan to use this guy a just a Marine with a very fancy Power Fist and I'll use a Servo-arm to represent this. I know that I have the Servo-arm from the Iron Father mini saved somewhere, but no idea where it got to.

I love shield walls. Maybe it was seeing 300 when I was younger, but the images of a phalanx thrill me. I had the idea of three Marines standing in a shield wall with weapons pointing out. It is a silly dream but it is my dream. On the table top, these guys would make a good addition to an assault-based Kill Team. The Bolters are Assault weapons so no good for mowing down enemies and then charging. The Shotguns are a compromise as they are Assault weapons.

I don't know how I feel about Heavy Thunder Hammers but I like the minis. I never would have considered giving a HTH Marine a Storm Shield until after I saw it in the FAQ. After that, I just wanted the option to. I learned a trick from magnetizing the Thunderwolf Calvary of putting the magnet int he palm of the hand so the shield fits on top of it seamlessly. The only downside is that you need to get the magnet in place before assembly.

Finished - 6 Tomb Blades

Finally, all 6 of them are done except for the weapons. The side mounts for the weapons are magnetized as well as the slot on the back for the support system. There is also a magnet in the base that hold it to the stand. It is just easier to mount them that way and no chance of it breaking. 

I painted them in my Rusty Necron scheme with the rust parts being brown, stipple red, stipple orange, wash Agrax Earthshade then touch up red and orange. I do the chips with Carcharodon Granite followed by Chainmail then washed Agrax. I touch up the chipped areas with Mythril Silver. the clearly inorganic components are painted Boltgun or Chainmail then washed black. I do a broken edge highlight of Mythril Silver. There are some aread that I wash blue to give contrast with the orange. 

Retail for the kit is $41 which is a little crazy considering you only get 3 minis. Paint is worth about $60 for the set of 6. Magnatizing them adds about $5 onto each model bringing their replacement value to $172.

Finished - Palanquin of Nurgel

I have wanted to build modular versions of the Daemonic Mounts for a while and the easiest to do was the Palanquin of Nurgle. Now, a Palanquin is supposed to be a covered box supported with sticks and born aloft but the backs and sweat of the unfortunate. I skipped the sticks and the box, but this is what I have. I took inspiration from Epidimius and had a surface help up by a host of Nurglings. 

I kept it simple by making a disc that was slightly bigger than a 40 mm base and made a guard for it out of plasticard. I put a stand on it to later secure to the base. I used a mix of old metal Nurglings and newer plastic ones. If I had been thinking, then I would have used 7 of them, Nurgle's favored number. 

I did incorporate the "three" symbol into the top of the palanquin, as you can see from above.

On the table - Six Tomb Blades

I am starting the Obligatory Tomb Blades choice so I can be like the cool kids and field a Decurion Detachment. I didn't even notice it in the Codex until Charles pointed it out to me. Then I saw all the drama on the internet. I am not going to link to it because it is everywhere. I don't know why people are so upset about a 4+ Reanimation Protocol roll when they had that in the 3rd Edition Codex and many of them had better armor too. There are plenty of synergistic wargear and choices that make it a little abusive. If I was designing the Necron codex, I would make the Decurion Detachment able to re-roll WBB rolls and leave the things that give a bonus to very few available options. 

Back to Tomb Blades, you have to take at least 1 unit of them to get the benefits of the detachment. This seems more like GW trying to sell more of a crummy kit as it does not make any sense. Many of the new formations do not make much sense. They just seem random and the Codex provides no explanation or fluff for any of it. 

I started with one Tomb Blade as a test mini and that is going pretty well. I decided to magnetize the weapons on the back mounts and just shoehorn the Particle weapon into place. I also am going to magnetize the optional support system. I am not going to magnetize the Shield Vanes that give the better Armor Save as there is no good way to do that. I am going to douche out and glue them in place but just have to note when they are actually taken as wargear.

I broke them down to three main sub-assemblies and some accessories. There is the hull, the shield and the driver. Once those are done, most of the mini is finished. 

Finished - Nurgle Rhino

The first of the Cult Rhinos are done. My buddy, Greg at Cranky Old Gamer, sculpted the spine on the top hatch for me. I like my vehicles clean and simple. Some people go a little crazy with the green stuff when they do Nurgle conversions so much so that on trade boards anything described as "Nurgle" should be assumed to be irredeemably covered in crappy green stuff with holes poked in it at the very least. I could have don more sculpting of corroded metal, bent armor plates and tentacles but vehicles take long enough to paint and again I like them clean and simple. 

I started paint the Death Guard Marines and Typhus back when I was a lot less experienced (2011/2012) and their colors reflect that. I think that I wanted to do was a corroded, corrupted and plague-ridden version of the Death Guard pre-Heresy colors but painting white is hard enough and painting corroded white seemed impossible. It is still out of my reach even now to do it as well as it exists in my head. The colors that I settled for are closer to the older pictures of Death Guard rather than the more modern presentation. 

Finished - Ork Wrecker Epic Post

I started this project almost a year ago. After a flurry of initial activity, I encountered difficulty in converting this 1:32 scale Army truck into a sufficiently Orky Speed Freak Wrecker. I started cutting up bits of plasticard into interesting shapes and gluing them on. I quickly found that this did not really make things look Orks and rather just kinda made it look like I had glued a bunch of crap onto the model. It was a mess. It like the more I did, the worse it looked. I initially tried to fix it by adding more armor plates, bits and gubbins but that really made it worse. Getting frustrated by converting it to an Orky Trukk, I set that project aside and tried to focus on other aspects of the conversion.

I wanted to magnetize the crap out of this vehicle to the point that as it became damaged, parts would come off of it. I wanted all the doors to work and the top of the cab to come off. I wanted the windshield to fold up and down. As the assembly went forward, I had to stop assembling the cab and paint the interior. The doors were held in by the top of the dashboard. To assemble it further, I would need to have the inside painted. Before I could finish painting the interior, I needed to get the driver and gunner assembled.

Finished - Thousand Sons Helbrute Epic Post

 As part of the Cult Troops project, I am trying to complete groups of unit sin each of the styles of the 4 Chaos Gods. I have already completed a Dreadnought/Helbrute dedicated to Khorne and began to turn my thoughts to the other powers. Nurgle, was fairly obvious as it needed to be a mas of boils and puss much like the Daemon Prince of Nurgle. Knowing this was beyond my skills to sculpt, I sent a Helbrute kit off to a buddy of mine that is better with green stuff. 

That is two down. I have no idea what I am going to do for the Slaanesh Helbrute but I did have a tickle of what to do for a Thousand Sons/Tzeentch Helbrute. I wanted to borrow from the fluff of the Thousand Sons in that, thanks to the Rubric of Ahriman, many of the Thousand Sons Legionaries are spirits trapped in their armor. That is pretty close to what a Dreadnought is already. 

Assembly and Conversions

I had a metal Chaos Dreadnought that I had gotten in a trade on Bartertown that, if I did not use it for this, would probably never get used ever. I had some left over and extra bits from the Helbrute kit that I decided to incorporate them into this kit. 

Yes, I paid good money for the real Helbrute kit rather than Dark Vengeance one. Why? The bits man. The extra weapons and decorative bits could be spread across several kits. They are incredibly detailed. To sculpt them would be out of my league and to buy the bits individually would be too expensive. I really got all my money worth out of this kit. 

Finished - Rune Priest

I am finishing some Space Wolf character models while I am finishing my last commission for this year. I have to take a break from all the detail on the Infinity minis. They are maddening and sometimes you just want to paint something brown. 

I think I paid near retail for this mini because it is metal. I can buy a Finecast mini for almost $20 but I am disappointed in that material. It is not made to last and I'll take a mini in metal any day to a resin one.

I painted him in a pretty standard pattern for my Space Wolves. The only thing I really went to town on was the face. I did a flesh wash over Dwarf Flesh and then touched it up. The eyes were painted Bleached Bone, then washed Leviathan Purple and touched up again. Usually I stop there, but on this mini, I took out Elf Flesh and my finest detail brush and put the faintest highlights on his skin. 

I am getting better at skin. I am light-years ahead of how I used to paint flesh and this makes me excited of where I can go from here. 

He is magged out! I put magnets in his wrists so I can swap out his close-combat weapon for a forse ax/sword/staff. That's not a really a big deal but I am only painting one of these guys so I want all the options. I could also use him as a Wolf Lord in Power Armor in a pinch. 

As long as I was sinking magnets into this mini, I decided to magnetize his back as well. It is highly unlikely that I will ever give my Rune Priest a jump pack, but I want that option.

The mini is hard to get and probably worth $30 on its own due to its rarity in metal. The paint job is pretty good but it is not in a Codex color. The magnets also add to the value. To me it is worth about $25 but to someone else it would hard to tell. I would estimate the value for me to replace this mini at $60.

Blood Angles Assault Marines

I took my close combat boys out of their foam form some touch ups. I magnetized the backpacks so I can give them a ride at -35 points thanks to my BA codex. The down side is that the backpacks are damaging the shoulder pads and vica versa. I touched up the respective parts an then gave all the problem areas a coat of Microscale Micro Flat. That is the old school was back when wargamers had to hang on the coat tails the model train kids. 

Now they have to sit out for a few days to make sure they are super-dry. If I did not, then the sticky sides of the problem areas would peal each other apart. So they are riding the bench.

Every one of these models has loads of character. Each one has a unique pose and detailed wargear. I even went so far as to customize their grenades by hacking apart frag and krak grenades and making custom sets. They all have Assault Marine shoulderpads from GW. I have one guy with two axes as CCW with no Bolt Pistol. Just to even things out, I have a guy toting a pair of pistols and no CCW. There is a guy kneeling as if he just landed a low blow and is caught frozen in his backswing. 

But looking back, these are some broken old models. The primer on the older ones is way thick. the paint is sloppy. On more than half, the clear coat is so think, it makes them look like balloon marines. The heavy primer also ruined the grass by making it look like green glass spikes. 

I learned a lot from those broken old boys. How far we have come.  

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. 

PuppetsWar.com Review

The crew over at BoLS have been chatting up PuppetsWar.com quite a bit lately. First it was the Necron jetbikes and the Vindicator stand in. More recently they talked the Ork plane and the Dreadnought Autocannon arms. Now, I don't know if this is more embedded sponsorship like the dull and droll Man Boy Genius and his inane Spikey Bits plugs that masquerade as content, but they are decent reviews of decent-looking products. That's right, aside from that little tear on MBG for his crappy articles and even crappier conversions, there is no hate in this post. We're gonna keep it positive. I am going to give a brief overview of some of the interesting bits and models available over at PuppetsWar.com.

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.

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. 

Battlefoam and storing your bits in a sneaky way

Cut with friggen Lasers! Pew pew!

Grr Battlefoam! Why are you so awesome?!?!?!

I've had a $100 credit at Battlefoam for over a year to finally get some foam transport for my awesomely painted Tiny Metal Men. I have the credit and kind of know what I want. The problem is getting the foam to hold all the bits and pieces for my vehicles.

Let me back up.

My Rhinos have crazy magnets in them. Each turret, the HK missile, smoke launchers and dozer blade are all magnetized. With the addition of a couple magnets in the corners of the rear hatch, I change it between a Rhino and a Pred/Razorback. That means that I not only have the Rhino model but all these bits floating around. Fitting all those bits into the foam is problematic.