Changing Sides

Still trying to work up the motivation to really get into fixing the Kytan. But I wanted to take some pics because I just got enough room cleared off to set up my new Light Box. It's a cheapo plastic one held together with velcro, theoretically collapsible, but looking at the creases in the plastic, I'm really not sure how many setups and takedowns it'll last, so I'm just leaving it up for now. As I've seen a couple of people note with others, the fact that there are only LEDs on the top creates kind of harsh lighting. I tried to use my swing-arm lamp to mitigate that, but I think I need to move it closer. I still like the results better than what I was getting just on the table tho.

I made a Land Speeder Storm, and took all the dudes who are normally hanging off the side and made them into a Scout Squad, filling them out with a conversion based on an old metal Heavy Bolter scout who was missing his weapon.

That's the dude who's normally loading his Bolter on the back seat. I swapped him up to Gunner on the Speeder because I wanted to use the normal Gunner on a base, where his cool kneeling pose would be more noticeable.

The Squad as a whole, and a rear shot of the Sarge, showing off his Combi-Grav. The one dude got some walls on his base because I needed something to justify his super-crouched pose. I chose to keep them on 25mm Bases both since GW hasn't actually switched Scouts over, last I checked, and because it magnifies the size difference between them and the full Marines in Power Armour.

A few more shots of my favorite one, converted from the Speeder's Gunner. Didn't come out great because I moved in closer to get a better position for a single Model, but didn't have anything there to brace my hands on.

And these guys were sitting around, so I tossed them in as well. Gue'vesa Kroot Counts-As for my Tau Army, converted from some Catachans I got for a song and Kroot Rifles I picked up at a bitz swap. I'm not really a huge fan of the Fire Warrior and Kroot Models, so I'm doing Human Auxiliaries for those Roles instead. Got some Cadians converted up to count as Fire Warriors too, but they're already primed, so they won't photograph well until I get them painted.

Hopefully either progress on the Kytan or something painted next time. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Kytan Rising and other WiP

Some recent posts by Rob and Thor have inspired me to start kicking my basing up a notch or two, and the biggest beneficiary has been the Kytan Daemon Engine that I got a little while back. That said, it's also been slowing down building the thing considerably, because I couldn't just build it flat and then put it on the base later. Also, this is another place where I get sort of frustrated by FW. There are so many parts to the legs on this thing, and having to use super glue instead of plastic cement means that I have way less working time, so I'm having to do them in stages, checking the remaining bits with blu-tac as I do each one, to make sure that they'll actually both meet up at the hips when I'm done.

You can also see an Ironclad, some old Chaos Hounds that I'm rebasing to use as Flesh Hounds, and my attempt at getting something decent out of the awful Champion pose from the Wulfen boxed set. The Ironclad and Kytan have had cork used to build up some areas of the base, and then all of them had extra variation added by pouring/spreading on various consistencies of fine sand/Mod Podge (thanks for introducing me to that stuff btw, Thor!) slurry, since I hate working with spackling paste, which is the other cheap and easily available option I know of. Then I added coarser sand to parts, trying to break up the different areas of slurry, and once they're painted, they'll get either snow or grass powder and static grass added to break it up further. I'm also going to try to do a little stream across the middle of the Kytan's base.