Mantic Typhus Zombies, Part 1

At the last Adepticon, I noticed a deal at the Mantic booth. They were selling a box of 30 Zombies from their Kings of War game and 3 boxes of 10 Marines from Warpath in a bundle. This was an obvious kit to create cultist zombies for the Chaos Space Marine codex that had just been released. So I went for it...

Pics of new starter set. OMG, the Hellbrute!

I'll just start off with the link:

http://imgur.com/a/eZEVT#A3PsA

The Chaos stuff looks awesome, as do the Dark Angels. And cultists!!! Click to enlarge. Click the above link for all of them. I guess it's time to paint up my Deathwing.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

re: CSM Rumor Dump

Image wired and rendered by Dickie of ZBrush Central.

Not that BoLS needs any more visits, but this is the easy way to see all current CSM codex rumors:

CSM Rumour Roundup 

I, for one, am stunned. In my opinion, they are doing this the right way. The sheer number of variables should keep CSM armies from becoming cookie cutter. Yes, eventually the WAAC netlisters will start posting their loophole lists and shady team ups, but I still think that there will be some serious variety.

The problem for me is my love of cult armies, especially noise marines and berzerkers. I'm going to have to create 4 armies!

WIP: Emperors Children Sonic Dread...color blocked

Not even remotely related to this post.

Not much time to post this evening. It's already 1:00am and I have a bunch of work to do for a 9:30am meeting. But I wanted to show the progress I've made on my little 3 year project, my Sonic Dread.
[read more...]

Rumors, Nids, and Nerdrage

I should be really excited.

No, really, I should be ecstatic.Yesterday 2nd wave of Nids. Today, CSM and other rumors.

I REALLY should be happy...and not whiny. But they REALLY deviated from the codex art for the Tervigon and Tyrannofex.

They look more like modified hierophants than the walking tanks in the codex:

Bummer. But I will probably end up buying at least 4 kits. Sigh.

Independence Day + Other Fun Events

For all my friends in the U.S., Happy Independence Day!

So it's been almost a month since I last posted. I took a bit of a break from painting to work on my army lists and to get through some non-40k activities (believe it or not, I do have a life outside 40k). With my wife and kids (and dog!) going to the summer place for 6 weeks, I thought I would actually prepare this year to finish my 3 armies - Nids, BAs, and CSMs.

The Nids are about 95% finished, and the CSMs are not a high priority...at least until the next codex. But those Blood Angels - or, rather, Angels Sanguine - wow, there are a LOT of them staring at me on my workbench. I'm actually debating changing these guys to regular Blood Angels because of the sheer numbers. Let's see:

Sanguinor
Dante
Lemartes
Astorath
Mephiston
JP Chaplain
Termie Libby
10 Tac Squad
10 Tac Squad
10 Tac Squad
5 Assault Squad
5 Assault Squad
5 Assault Squad
10 Death Company
5 Scouts
5 Sanguinary Guard
DC Dread
Furioso Dread
Libby Dread
Dread
5 Termies
5 SS/TH Termies
5 LC Termies
Baal Pred
Stormraven
5 Rhinos
Land Raider
2 Drop Pods

Yikes. So to help me finish these, I just took delivery of the following:

It's the Paasche Talon with all three size needles. It's very comparable to the Iwata HP-CS, but for 10 dollars less, you get a ton more accessories. I will be doing a review of this as soon as the compressor shows up.

On another note, has anyone played the new Warpath Rules yet?

The thing about the Angels Sanguine...

From the Lexicanum:

The Angels Sanguine are known never to remove their masks in the presence of anyone outside their Chapter. Even amongst their battle-brothers, their faces are usually hooded.

So this poses some challenges when fielding a few marines. I have always hated bare-headed models...it just seems really, really dumb. I understand why, but it's still silly to me. So when I realized that I needed to field a sergeant in my tactical squad, I knew I had to modify the AoBR sergeant a bit to make it work in a fluffy way.

This is the sergeant from the Black Reach box:

I only have CSM heads in my bitz box since I've never collected regular space marines before, but I found sort a neat looking one that didn't have spikes or horns. In fact, it looks a bit like a chaplain helmet, but not quite as skull-like.

I dremeled out the head and neck and voila (sorry, this was taken late last night on a cell phone):

Each time I do these little, forgiving projects, my confidence builds, and I want to do more. I still need to figure out the whole mycetic spore thing.

Primer for the Blood God

It has begum! (click to enlarge)

Having almost finished my noise marines, I thought I'd prime the Khorne Berzerkers. although some of them have fairly goofy poses, they are very characterful. On the left is a Khorne Lord I've had forever. I may run him as Kharne. I wish GW would update the CSM Codex (haha).

Oh. Em. Gee.

This is a nightmare. So much detail in very deep crevices. Ugh. And it looks so unwieldy. But oh well.

After several days, I'm about 10% done. It'll speed up, though. I want to give a shout out to P3's Armor Wash. Sort of a more subtle Badab Black. I need to find 10 more bottles.

How far do you go?

I learned a bit too late that a typical fleshborer on a typical termagant is basically impossible to paint completely if one assembles the entire model first. This, of course, is often true of many 40k models, but the box always shows the model being assembled first.

So now I'm at the stage in my army creation where vehicles and heavy support must be addressed. In my Nid army, it was simple since the MCs are essentially big versions of the scoring units. But rhinos, predators, dreads and defilers? What a collections of inaccessible areas and fiddly parts! So with the defiler that I'm putting together now, I've stopped at a fairly logical point for priming:

The legs are not glued to the chassis. Any further assembly would seriously impede the application of primer and paint.

Do any of you actually prime/paint after completely building something like this?

Trading

Well, I did my first trade this week via DakkaDakka. I felt a bit of anxiety because there is absolutely no safety net if the deal goes south, not even the tiny bit of protection that Ebay provides. It's a complete leap of faith, and the audience is so relatively tiny that you cannot just deal with people who have reputable trading histories.

Anyway, to make a long story short, it went off without a hitch except for one little thing. I traded a Baneblade for a Defiler and a box of Chaos Terminators. What I didn't realize was that they were both circa 3rd edition, meaning that the Termies were metal ( noticeably smaller than the plastic Termies) and on small bases. It was completely my fault for not researching it a bit more and rereading the post, so that was the only hitch.

Consequently, I may be giving away a brand new box of terminators shortly. Stay tuned.

Finishing up the Hive Fleet

I've been distracted a bit by the immediacy of Warmachine: painted up 5 figs and I'm ready to play.

But I've been staring at my 'nids, and they are crying out for completion. So I figure if I formalize it for everyone to see, I can be motivated to finish it posthaste.


Gargoyles
You know what I hate about gaunts and gargoyles? Painting fleshborers. Their fingers are so intertwined in the gun symbiote that it becomes almost impossible to paint with contrasting colors. Had I thought about it before starting, I would have just painted them the body color...either Red Gore or Bleached Bone. But no, I had to make them black. So my 10 gargoyles are ready except for those guns and a dip...but it's going to be a total paint.

Hormagunts
I have about 24 of them unassembled.

Genestealers
One of the first units I painted was a group of genestealers. Not knowing anything about anything, I did 11 of them with normal heads and rending claws, and one with feeder tendrils and scything talons. I have another dozen in the box, and I've procured a few more tendril heads, so I'll do 11 with feeders/scythes and 1 to match the original guys. The Cthulu looking stealers can double as Ymargls.

Hive Tyrant / Swarmlord
I got a great deal on one of these via Ebay, and I was considering magnetizing the arms, but I seriously think it will actually be cheaper for me in time, materials and effort to buy another tyrant. The boneswords for the swarmlord will be purchased HERE at Paulson Games.

Tyrant Guard
Two are assembled, primed, and ready to paint.

Zoanthropes
I have 4 on the bench, primed and pinned, but the little back fins are a colossal pain to attach. If anyone knows of a way other than greenstuff, I'm all ears.

Termagants
I have about 36 of these to paint, with 10 of them almost completed except for the gun symbiote. See the gargoyle text above to see what the hold up is.

Doom of Malantai
I was going to convert a Zooey for this, but I think I'm just going to buy the Alien Brain @ Troll Forged.

Warriors
Three left, unassembled. One may become an alpha.

Wow, I never realized how much is left...but it IS a finite amount. I still have Tervigons to model and paint, but I'm not worrying about that right now.

So after this, I have a full 2000+ points of CSMs and the AoBR set. If anyone wants to suggest a marine and chaos marine chapter, I'd love to see comments. I'm going to do the orks fairly traditionally, so I'm going to have to research them.

In other news, there's still time to enter the giveaway. I don't know if I should be pushing this more aggressively, but you have a huge opportunity here since there are so few entrants. And international folks should not hesitate to enter...I'm a big boy, and I can afford the shipping.  :) Good luck!

Progress, slow and steady.

With the advantages of learning from my mistakes while painting my Nids, I proceeded to gingerly dip my toe into both Orks and Chaos Space Marines.

Orks
When I got back into 40k last year, I really tried to avoid Orks. I thought they were too comical and brought down the gravity that the game deserved, after reading through the fluff and some Black Library novels, I've had a change of heart.

This AoBR boy is undergoing a skin test. That is not striaght green on the skin. It's Sunburst Yellow followed by a heavy wash of Thrakka Green. It's a little bright, so I may go over it again with Devlan Mud. The AoBR models are surprisingly detailed, and I look forward to painting more of them.




Noise Marine (WIP)

I'm doing my Noise Marines as Patchouli-smelling ne'er do wells, so the tie dye scheme seems to work. Obviously, I still need to trim with black, and the other shoulder pad is black and gold a la Black Legion.

Post-Adepticon

Well, Adepticon has come and gone. I took about 300 pictures and took a few painting classes that were quite informative. And thanks to the great people I met there.

I also took advantage of the complete nonexistence of sales tax and bought just about everything I needed to finish my Nids, and I got a complete set of waches plus some other neat stuff.

Click for a bigger pic. This is my workspace as of 5 minutes prior to this post.The funny thin is that my actual "work" desk is directly to the left of this desk.

On it, you can see the assembly line, and it works well for the most part. Those 4 little objective markers in front of the Trygon are from Ramshackle Games, and they are little carnivorous plants.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! No, I mean it this time!

Wall of Bones

I was at Games Plus on Valentine's Day (I'm not THAT much of a geek...the wife and I went for sushi earlier), and I happened to pick up two pairs of these:

Can't see the catalog picture well? Here:

2 pairs of bone walls with my AoBR converted Chaos Dreadnought for scale. Armorcast used to do a ton of stuff for Games Workshop, and these terrain pieces maintain the same sort of aesthetic as the GW stuff...kind of chunky.

They are beige resin with remarkably little flashing to cut away. Nevertheless, I wore a breathing mask when I did the tiny bit of filing. A quick bath in a mild detergent to clean the release agent, I was ready to paint.

It's still below freezing here, so I started with a heavily watered down gesso that was mixed with cheap black acrylic to make a dark grey primer. After drying, I dry brushed with even cheaper white acrylic. Then a heavy coat of Badab Black wash. After that mess dried, I dry brushed again with Bleached Bone followed by a light wash of Devlan Mud. Total elapseed time including drying: 2 hrs. The little details like the purple intestine took no time at all.

Dreadnought Conversion, Pt.2

The terminator parts worked well. Still needs more paint, wash, and sealing:

Wow, is this a difficult model to paint. I'm actually really impressed by the level of detail in this model. There are support cables and hydraulic systems in places that could not possibly be seen once the model is assembled. that's pretty cool for a model that comes with a starter kit.

Just to reiterate, the standard is the staff from a Chaos lord sorcerer, as is the helmet, cowling, and apron. The shoulder spikes are from a Chaos rhino kit. The tyranid skull is from a genestealer box (I think...it's an actual skull, not a conversion from a head...I'm not sure where it came from, actually).

 Since black is such a pain to paint well, I considered other factions than Black Legion, but I'm bound by my own closed-mindedness...they just don't look as evil as black.

Hopefully, I will be done soon. I'm falling behind schedule.

Dreadnought Conversion, Pt.1

I finally worked up the courage to start my Chaos dreadnought conversion. This is my first real conversion/kitbash.

I started with this AoBR dread. By the way, the reason I decided to do this conversion at all was simply that I hate the GW version. Believe me, I am no glutton for punishment, but this seemed doable. So I snagged this dreadnought off of ebay for 12 bucks. It's actually quite a detailed model. Below the dread, you will notice the head and cowl of a chaos sorcerer. These are left over from a Chaos terminator lord that is also a work in progress.

I added the cowl to the front with some grey stuff...it isn't the smoothest, but it will work. I also sanded off the name flag on the left shin plate. I also chopped and pinned the sorcerer's staff to create a standard...it looks pretty cool. At this point, I basecoated in Chaos Black to see what this would look like.

 So there was the matter of the purity seal on the right arm. I sanded it off, but   parchment ribbons drape over the canisters, neccesitating one trip to the bitz box for a genestealer skull. did some painting before continuing. I used Mechrite Red foundation paint on the skirt...those foundation paints are awesome, by the way.

Next steps: I need to figure out how to paint black correctly, since this is a Black Legion scheme.I also need to make the other arm a bit more Chaos. Also, the spikes you see in this pic will be placed on the shoulders, and the feet need to be addressed. Fun!