This weeks round up...

I have had a great week doing what I love, modelling and painting and experimenting.

First up, and update to my True Scale Marines. These have been a long time in their making, the first being done close to 10 years ago. Since then I have experimented with colours, construction and different models. Even a Terminator as you can see in the first picture.

The Aspiring champion has a massive sword...I know way to big, I think I will try to replicate the design, in plasticard and replace,as seeing it here in a photo,it looks even more disproportionate.

I have never been a fan of painted guns, but I'm pleased with the white distressed look these guys have. I needed to step away from the all metallic,as the armour is accented with metallics, so it made sense, I think.

You may have noticed the checkers and shoulder markings, along with the sergeants helm here. I have tried to take inspiration from the old Rogue Trader books and artwork. These guys are after all wearing pieced together armour and ancient relics. You can also see the scale comparison here with an Imperial Guard.

A little dark, but the second heavy bolter's paint scheme is a bit clearer.

I love the de-nurglefied helm in the middle, adds a little bit of focus to the figure and a feel of other sourced technology.

Battle damaged and worn is the feel of the armour.

During the experiments I have found the terminator loose shoulders to far superior to the cast on the arm one for re-positioning and final look.

A little more work done on the Khorne sacrificial unit, the Devoveo, mainly washes and oils.

Group shot,as you can see I have moved away from the natural flesh colour, to exaggerate the feel of the sacrificed.

More Marauders in their undercoat, this unit is focussed on close combat. Lead by the dual wielding plasma pistol sergeant. He is made from the new Khone AoS Troops, a few easy snips and swaps, the remainder of the squad sports the rest of the helmets from the Khorne box.

I know not the best statistically, I think he looks great. If I was a power player I would have gone Tau...

My mid-week challenge I set myself was to paint a squad from undercoat to battle ready in a day.

Closer shot, not bad for about 6 hours total. (just the bases to wash and tidy up)

Update on the True Scale Land Raider Proteus. Two tone first layers done. Undercoat, rust, then primer and topcoat. Now the weathering really begins.

Finally, an experiment in skin tones. Not finished yet but I am happy with the progress so far. 

A little clearer to see in this picture, the purple lowlights and yellowing highlights. After the base colours are in,I will begin the weathering and oil washes, this will bring the colour backdown to more healthy colour... well thats the plan.

And three become one...

A follow up post on the True Scale Proteus Land Raider.

Filled some of the gaps, and have reshaped the front side panels. Looking ok so far. The old kits are so much more flimsy and flexible than the new ones. As you might see the front has a bit of a kink in it, butI think I can cover this with battle damage and gubbins.

 Not very clear, but i have repurposed the interior engine plate for the back, this monster would need a massive engine, right? And I can't believe most of the time its on the inside!!!

Leaving the outer door off this side, will add some broken hinges on this side.

Rouge Trader door on this side, it fits almost perfectly:)

You can also see the tools tray i have used to fill a broken hatch, agin cant believe this is normally hidden.

There also appears to be a bit of a twist in the over all model, not sure how to fix this bar completely restarting... tips welcome.

Some more filling and filing and it will be ready for some paint.





Oh and a scale shot for DaveB:)

Krombies are coming...

UsThis is one of my favourite units in the new Heretics and Renegades army list, they are great in large numbers and cheap as chips. They maybe poor stat wise, but wow 40 of them will give any unit a bad day.

Oh the other reason I love them, is the fact a regular opponent of mine is a Tau player who has a lot of Kroot. So this had to be done :)

Still a work in progress, but the skin tone is about right, again simple highlighted base coat, with an oil filter, this time I varied the filter a little to get the variance in the squad, and throughout the figure, blue browns and greens. Again anti-dry brushing was used to reveal the hifghlights.

Using oil filters and thinned paints allows the shades to show through, this can be seen on the quills.

Fo a simple head swap I'm very please with the outcome, and it fits with the no vanilla models in m army.

Oh ant you might be able to see the Dark Eldar helms I've added to the trophies, that's another dig at one of my regular opponents :) I love winding them up, lol.

In it for the Money...

Last year I posted a few picture if my Mauraders in their raw kit bashed forms, yesterday I revisited a squad of them, I have three. and started to give them some love and paint :)

The idea for them was to be very distinct from the rest of the army, they are after all hired guns, and not strictly part of the army. So they have a contrasting colour scheme. The actual colours came about organically, but the initial choice of orange was deliberate, as the Alphas have a turquoise theme.

Group Shot

These are obviously still very much WIP, but there are aspects of them that are near completion and that I'm very pleased with.

Squad Leader

Here is the squad leader, he like the rest of the marauder elites, is a meat slab job, of a runaway marine scout, they are bigger than the ordinary squads members. He's stollen some of his armour obviously :)

I am liking the weathering on the chainsword, the danger stripes were a challenge, but I think they are passable.

Snipers

The scouts of the squad. At the last minuet I decided to camo the cloaks, never attempted camo before, but I think it has turned out ok.

Brutes

These two are my brutes, two combat heavies for the squad. A common opponent for me is Tau, so this is just a little jibe at them, there are more, but that's for another post. Poor photo, but it just about shows the weathering, again this is oil washes, anti dry brushing. Then going back to apply worn areas.

 The rest of the squad, catch an base, mordheim and empire kit bashes. I silenced the barrels on the rifles, makes the look a bit more special forces. After the success with the camo cloaks I wanted to incorporate it in the ret of the squad.

Sacrificed and damaged

It's been a while, I have still been working away on my Alpha legion project. I need to take stock and have a look at where I am I the updates, but first I have a few of the latest pieces that I have been working on. I know ther are more but I'm not sure which ones I have posted before, I'll take a look later and follow up with some more WIPs.

As everyone and their wife seems to have been doing an Age of Sigmar conversion post, I thought im light as well be no different :) these are still very much WIPs but they are coming along nicely, I really like the effects on the armour, the turquoise is developing nicely.

/// Fluff Warning ///

These are to be my Devoveo, the sacrificed and the cursed.
They have made the greatest sacrifice and have devoted themselves to Khorne, there will be other devotions in the near future, but one squad a t a time. These few follow the teachings of Omegaron, and let their souls be used by the ruinous powers, casting aside their humanity for the chance to save the souls of others.

/// End of fluff ///


I have also been working on expanding my mechanised decision, but in he spirit of the army so far, they are reclaimed, battle damaged and not in the best of conditions.

There are a number of techniques used on the these models, salt weathering, dry brushing, oil filters and washes, and chalk powders. They are still WIPs and still have a way to go yet, but I'm please with the results so far.

 First up is my ebay rescue land raider, i cant remember the colour scheme, but it needed a dettol bath.

(helpful hint, dont wash the dettol off, until you have scrubbed all the paint away, it jsut turns into a gooey mess)

Close up of the weathering.

I will do a propper description of the techniques used, but in brief, paint the rust on the areas you want it to be revealed in.
Cover those areas in salt.
Spray undercoat colour.
Add more salt.
Spray top colour.
Wait until this is all dry and brush off with a tooth brush.
Continue weathering with oils and powders.

My count as Chimera, Im not overly keen on the GW model, but this one from Puppets War, is much better in my opinion.

 Last but certainly not least is my battle scarred battle tank.


More work on these is needed to be sure, but soon they will be finished.

These are my first attempts at vehicles, never even owned vehicles before, but I'm loving these dirty hulks, definitely more of them in the future.

Tempus Fugit...oops

Well apparently it has been nearly two weeks since my last update...oops
In my defence it has been my long week at work an I have been ill, well actually I found out I'm lactose intolerant... weird at my age I know. Any how...

So not much painting has been done, but I have been working on reducing the plastic mountain... though most of it seems to have appeared on my work bench...

I was having a tidy up in preparation for some painting, when I stumbled across a box I was not familiar with... it was full of sprues, all different kinds, old Mordheim Skaven, Eldar Guardians, Imperial Guard and Spacemarine Scouts. Well I was too excited to go any further with the tidy, and proceeded with kit bashing my way through a few figures.

But Before I go on to show you those, I ha a dilemma, my original army was a proxy Inquisitor list, which allowed me a great wealth of improvisation and imagination to run with.

The arrival of the new codexes have left me adrift, not sure where to go with my army. To help explain the problem I need to outline what I wanted to do with it in the first place. I wanted to create an Alpha Legion detachment that, like the fluff, uses the indigenous populations and other guns for hire to fight for it.

So I wanted to include monsters and villains from around the outer sectors, some evidence of trade with other races also, like Tau an Dark Eldar. For this I went to the Imperial Armour books, I always wanted to include Lught Huron, I liked his blatant disregard for the lesser troops in his armies, and the rolling meat walls that could be fielded. The Renegade Marauder Squads epitomising all that I wanted from the army, but this older army list was really lacking any of the punch the new codexes could offer, and while I like the fluff, I want a competitive army too. As I have already posted here, I also like the Xaphan Disciples from the Renegades an Heretics Army lists. But these are two different factions, Chaos Space Marines and Loyal Space Marines, so how was I gonna get these list to gel...

Then I read the Tyrants Army list once more, and in the section 'Why collect this army...' it says you can swap the loyal marines for their chaos equivalent, depicting the army later in the campaign when they are more desperate and turning to chaos... Eureka!!! now I can use the lists I like. So now the army is a Tyrants (Chaos) Legion, with Chaos Space Marines and Renegades & Heretics allies, full of flavour and colour.

I think people will call it a blob army, but I dont care, 320 infantry ish with about 40 marines, plus heroes... up gotta lot of painting to do :)

So what have I been doing...

 Well its my first attempt at a truscale Rhino, think it is a bit too wide and not quite tall enough, nut not bad for a mangled old Rhino that someone had been at with a lighter... Multi Melta damage obviously :) Quite pleased with the

 
These were started a long time ago, the fist two about 5 years ago, the uneercoated one and the really long barreled rifle. The rest are resent, they are to represent the leaders and snipers in the Marauder Squads, with the lack of actual sniper scouts, these are the next best thing :)

 

Chaplain Executioner.

I cannot take all the credit for this kit bash, I first saw the idea over at Eternal Hunt, the idea is genius, an i just ha to make it bigger, as you can see, I have spread the torso an lengthened the legs, adding plates to the soles of the feet also.
Chest needs something I think, maybe an A...

 More Disciples of Xaphan, love the possibilities these guys open up, again a WW1 trencher feel to them, but standard issue IG helmets this time.
I must say I was surprised how well the IG parts and the Mutant Chronicle parts came together, love the Champion came together. The squat theme for the 2nd person in the 2 Man Heavy Weapon Team continues, an goes even further in the next unit.

 Yup, a whole squad of Squat disciples!!!
And of course a Ratling to make up the 2nd man in the Heavy Weapons team :)

Really do like the way the old plastic squats gel with the new IG arms, and the fact the squats have such large heads, the Grey Knight Terminator head seams just about right in proportion.

WIP Questions

Although most of this post has been WIP, this next piece is very much WIP and needs 'something' to make it pop, dunno what just something.

The size is right, as can be seen here, well ish. The womble marines head is not stuck on in the final position... honest.

I want to add a tabard between the legs, and the back needs filling,  and the psychic hood adding, but it is just so... 90's static.

Think the straighter arm in the last pic helps a bit with that.

Zombtober...

I kinda failed on the Zombtober challenge, but here is my one and only (so far) zombie Kroot, waiting on crypt creeper parts for the rest of the 40 i need to build... wait a min forgot to add those in the infantry total... oh crap 360...

Stealer Body

Zombie Arms
Kroot Head
Necron 'Bits'

I will probably ad some ark Eldar Racks to the back too, he is supposed to be a leader type... not that zombies have leaders. :)

Not sure on the 'Dancing' pose though.

Old Games, and old friends... lol

While sorting through I started to collect the old games together and was pleasantly surprised by the numbers of Barbarians and Blood Bowl Teams I have.

With the state of our gaming circle at the moment, you know grown up time tables and working shifts... we rarely get two consecutive weekends to play, so we thought, well I did, that running a couple of league games might be a good idea, as some of us a free at different times, and this lends it self better to regular games than traditional table top role play.

1 Elf Blood Bowl Team
1 Human Blood Bowl Team
(With a box of large creatures out of shot, with loas of trolls... don't ask)
Enough Barbarians for 2 Mordheim Teams
Dark Elves for another Mordheim Team
Loads of dogs and wolves, with more out of shot and of course 2 Ogres, the one laying down needs some reviving, he lost a foot and a hand in a move at some point, but we have the technology t rebuild him, along with the rest of his Witch Hunting crew.

   This guy is the start of my Shadow Warrior Mordheim Team, read about them when looking up the living rule book for Mordheim, and like the idea of them, so now I need to build the team... More painting yay :)

Well that was a bit of an epic post, but now I'm back up to date :)