Diabolical December: Ogroid Thaumaturge

Another finished Model thanks to Azazel's Hobby Challenges! I've been procrastinating on this guy for literally years because of all those damn tattoos/scars/whatever. Finally forced myself to go through and get them all, a little at a time, in perhaps a dozen sessions over a week or so. He still wants a shitload of touch-up and some more detailing, but I can't deal with him any more, I need him to just be done. So I have commanded. So let it be.

I was trying to do a flame effect in pink coming out of the eyes of the skull. It's harder, because in normal fire colours, our eyes can accept a certain amount of simplification and still recognize it as something we're familiar with, but with different colours, we can't lean on that pattern recognition as much.

I was trying for a bit of a glow effect on the tats. There are a couple of layers of pink in there, but it doesn't come out well here. My camera seems to treat thin layers as being more translucent than they are to the eye.

Kinda washed out, unfortunately. Downsides of a cheap lightbox.

This one is probably about the closest to how the colours look in person

I kinda wanted to show off the eye on his Championship Belt. I'm also pretty happy with the work on his claw and hooves.

Holiday stuff, and the way I tend to work on multiple projects means I tend to get things done in bursts, so there's more almost done. I've got a couple of the characters from Rogue Trader ready, and I'm hoping to get one more in under the line. Might be able to finish the Gaunt Summoner and his Familiars, too, but not as likely. I also need to get around to doing individual shots of the Chose Axes still, and I've got pics of some of the little gribblies from Rogue Trader that I need to process. Hopefully I'll manage some more posts without quite such a long gap this time. In case I don't get around to it, tho, y'all have a happy New Year's, y'hear!

Beneath the Mirrored City

In long-forgotten tunnels and catacombs and basements, connected by gaps in crumbling, time-eaten walls, the search for the secrets of Shadespire goes on, just as it does in the streets and ruined buildings above. And so too do the battles between those who wish to keep those secrets from all others...

I'll put up individual pics of my take on The Chosen Axes sometime in the next few days. Right now, they're packed up for tomorrow's Sparkle Party Death Match. I must admit to being a bit nervous about this one, since I won the last one, but this time I'm bringing a couple of Bands that I'm still getting the hang of and I'm not entirely confident in my decks for, rather than Magore's Fiends, who I know inside and out. I don't feel like I need to win this one, I just don't want to completely embarrass myself with an 0-3 finish or something. I'll let y'all know how it went soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Dreadtober Complete!

I think this might be a record for me. Not the completion, but actually posting my results before the end of the month! Anyhow, let's take a look at the actual Dreadnought first:

Oops, just noticed there were some more areas down underneath, like the pistons, that I forgot to go back and black out again. I'll get to it eventually, and it's not particularly noticeable in use.

The blue-green is Thousand Sons blue, with a rough highlight of Ahriman blue, and then a very heavy, splotchy wash/glaze with Army Painter green tone. It's a pretty cool effect in person, there's a subtle sort of camo pattern vibe, and from different angles and in different light, it looks more blue or more green. I went back over everything (at least theoretically) that wasn't an armour plate in black, and then gave all those areas a very light drybrushing with Stegadon Scale, just enough to make the detail visible, but not so much that the highlights themselves were visible. I use no metallic paints on my Sigma Chapter, doing everything that would normally be metallic in black like this instead. They're all about covert ops and such (Raven Guard Chapter Tactics), and don't want any gleam to give their positions away, so any metal surfaces are painted over or blued.

The lights are Nihilakh Oxide over white, a trick I picked up from Warboss Kurgan, and the rockets are light blue to indicate that they're anti-air (Anti-tank get white tips, anti-infantry get red). Simple drybrush up through the blues for the glow on the Plasma containment coils and a few more details picked out, and it's done!

I moved the Icarus Launcher over to the side because I like that look, sort of reminiscent of a lot of BattleTech stuff. Just a big wad of greenstuff filling in the gap. The launcher is magnetized, since the option to leave it off happened shortly after I'd finished the build here, and will almost never actually be used, since it kind of sucks.

The only other magnetized point is the waist. The legs are fixed in position, but the elbows and shoulders can rotate, and hold their positions well just through friction. I haven't painted the bits up yet, but I have the parts for the other weapon options as well, and those can also swap in just as pressure-fits.

A better look at the base, and another I did in the same style. You can see how the various spots of washes I dribbled over them have been mostly covered up by the successive layers of drybrushing, but still show through enough* to add some more variety to what would otherwise just be flat pavement.

The Armiger Helverin was done in my House Devine scheme, to add some support to my Renegade Knight from the summer. The whole thing was given a very heavy drybrush of Leadbelcher over the black primer, and then the major areas filled in with Balthasar Gold (highlighted with Gehenna's Gold), Xereus Purple, and Skullcrusher Brass.

The head and what's usually a hatch up top got done in Rakarth Flesh, which I half-assedly tried to blend into the mechanical parts around them, like the ceramite and whatnot is gradually morphing into daemonic flesh. Again, as with the full-sized Knight, I did an eye in the little window on the hatch. I left the Mechanicum/Mechanicus symbol on there because I figure that the Dark Mechanicum Techno-Magi who maintain these things consider themselves to be the true Mechanicum still, while it is the Adeptus Mechanicus who have lost their way.

No magnets whatsoever on the one, but it's still poseable, and completely swappable if a reasonably priced option for different arms becomes available. The waist joint gets some poster stick to hold it together, but the arms, carapace gun, and head are all just pressure fit, and hold perfectly.

I like to try to mess with bases that are this big, do something so they're not just a flat expanse, so this one got a chunk of insulation foam cut at an odd angle and trimmed to fit before I added on my usual basing stuff. I maybe should have made it a bit craggier, but it still fits well enough with the basing on its larger sibling.

I've got some stuff for Azazel's Unit-ed October to finish up this evening and take pics of, hoping to have those up sometime in the next couple of days. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

*That word combination is a pretty effective demonstration of how fucked up the English language is.

Good Enough

I've hit the limit of my sculpting skill/patience/willingness to keep working on these guys. Next clear day, they're getting some primer. I didn't get them to where I wanted, to what I saw in my head, but I'm far, far happier with them than I was with the stock Models.

Dreadtober stuff is ticking along nicely, but not enough to be worth another pic, between what I posted last and the finish line. Also got a few things coming up on completion for Azazel's Unit-ed October challenge, from Silver Tower and the gribblies from Rogue Trader. Y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Dreadtober: Mid-Month(ish) Update

I've been chugging along reasonably well on these two. The Armiger just wants a few more details picked out and then the base finished. The Redemptor needs that, plus a whole bunch of touch-up on all the parts that need to be black, but got some of the spillover from the blue.

A better look at a different base that I'm doing the same way as the Redemptor. They look like crap right now, but once there are a couple more layers of grey drybrushed on, the spots of colour leave just enough left to add some interest and visual texture, like there's litter and spills and all the other stuff that ends up on pavement.

I'm hoping to finish up some more Silver Tower stuff tonight, since my brother's coming by in the morning to play. So I should have something from that done to show soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Entering the Nightvault

I got a chance to play with the new Warhammer Underworlds edition the other day. Def gonna be picking that up as soon as I can manage it.

I didn't think to take a pic until our last game, when I was playing Magore's Fiends, instead of the one when I was playing the Thorns

Each of the three of us got a chance to play as the Nighthaunt Warband, the Thorns of the Briar Queen, and we were all very pleased with how they worked, even just using a deck that consisted of their Faction-specific cards and a few very generic ones to round it out. Varclav's ability to spend an Activation to Push all the Chainrasps 2 hexes each is amazingly powerful, the ability to move through anything is cool, and they have a bunch of cards that are both flavourful and strong. On the flipside, getting them Inspired can be difficult, and will generally result in a couple of them getting taken out, and the number of Models can be very difficult to manage, especially if someone manages to take Varclav out.

Model-wise, they're fantastic sculpts, but even more fragile than the Sepulchral Guard. Be very careful handling and working with them, and there are a number of bits I'm almost certainly going to have to reinforce with brass rod/wire.

The Sacrosanct Chamber Warband, Stormsire's Cursebreakers, we were less impressed by. I didn't bother playing them after watching the other two each spend a match fighting more against their own deck than the other Warbands. We do think there's some potential there, but they're definitely a Band that's going to need some experimentation and careful Deck-building to get to work. Just tossing all their Faction-locked cards into a deck with a few generically useful fillers is not a workable option here.

They also fall down a bit compared to the Thorns Model-wise. They're still cool Models, definitely better than Steelheart's Champions, and far better than the first Stormcast we saw, but when they're set next to the Thorns, the latter unquestionably steal the show.

The Rules updates didn't all come into play, but those that did were mostly very good. The clarifications about how a Charge Token restricts further Activitions is my fave. Lethal Hexes are a cool addition, adding a nice middle ground between the extremes of open and blocked hexes. Not only do they open the possibilities for being able to take certain paths, but have them hurt, but there is also definite potential in Pushing your Opponent's Models into them for a bit of extra damage.

Spells, we were less impressed by. The ones that require two successes, even if they're Channel (the more common of the two, the lightning bolts), are pretty hard to cast, with even a level two Caster having less than a 50/50 of succeeding. Some of them are certainly potentially very powerful, but they're very unreliable. There are bonuses available, but from what I've seen so far, they're currently very limited. We'll see as the rest of the Warbands for the second season come out whether or not there's enough support to make magic a viable strategy.

We also had the new Terrain pieces around to mark Blocked and Lethal Hexes. They work well for Blocked Hexes, but less so for Lethal ones, since few of them allow a Model to be easily placed in the same Hex. I like all the sculpts, myself, but the throne with all the imagery of Nagash was kind of divisive among the group. Also, while I don't really care much one way or another about coloured plastic in general, the specific shade of teal they chose for these is pretty questionably. But really, they are intended to be painted, so that shouldn't be an issue for the most part.

Overall, it all seemed really cool, and a good start to this wave of expansion on the foundation laid by Shadespire. I'm glad someone brought it by, and I'm very much looking forward to picking it up myself at some point here. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Neglected Model September

As with so many of my plans, my goal of breaking this down into multiple posts over the course of the week got derailed. In this case, when my camera's batteries died on the very first Model of the lot, and then that snowballed into all the other things that tend to derail my intended posting schedule. Anyhow, it was quite a productive month thanks to this challenge, and I'm really happy with the results, so I've kept all the pics at full resolution, just cropping and adjusting the colour levels. This means that this is going to be absolutely huge, so I'm putting most of it behind a cut. Let's start with Spiteclaw's Swarm:

Dreadtober Pledge

Quick and simple. Priming at this time of year sucks, so instead of building and painting a single Dread from the start, I'm going to paint up two that I've already built and primed. Or, well, one Dread and one Armiger, but the Redemptor Dread and the Armiger are fairly close in size. Anyhow:

The Redemptor is for my (mostly) Primaris Theta Chapter force, same as the Contemptor I did last year. The Armiger is going to be done up to accompany The Vindication of the Devine. And it's not stuck like that. I've made it somewhat flexible, so there's movement in the shoulder and elbow joints, and I can swap the weapons out if I find a cost-efficient way to get extras. I just put it like that because it seemed like the best pose for priming it. Eventually, I hope to get a second Armiger done up like that as well, so I can field a proper Super Heavy Detachment.

And yes, I'm going to brush the cat hair off the Redemptor before I start painting :3 Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Oh, FFS

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoZxpK4lUbl/

I mean, don't get me wrong, it looks fantastic, and I'm looking forward to the release, it's just that once again, I have the worst timing ever.

Azazel's Neglected Model September Wrap-up Post

Basically just a proof of completion with just a few minutes left in September. I'm going to go back and do better individual shots of all these in the next couple of days,  but I wanted to get something up to mark the end of the month.

As is usually the case, all of these could use a little more touch-up, or a couple more details picked out, or another layer of highlights somewhere, but they've hit my personal point of "Fuck it, they're good enough." I feel I should note that all of these were at least started, and some of them (particularly the Skaven) were quite far along, and just needed some final touches. Even so, 16 Models completed in a month (and not just slammed out to three colour minimum, even if it was a pretty decent 3-colour minimum for all those Daemonettes in August) is very good for how my productivity has been trending these last few years. My original plan was to stagger the finishes throughout the month and give them each their own post, but instead, I ended up bouncing around between the various groups, and getting them all done right at the end of the month.

Coming up next, I've got a couple of possibilities for DreadTober, and most of what's left of the Silver Tower box will qualify for the Unit-ed October Challenge, as well as (hopefully) a significant chunk of the Rogue Trader box. It's not likely, but it's also not impossible that I might manage to squeeze in a little something for Orktober as well. I'll hopefully have some preview posts up for those soon as well. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Alternate Fiend of Slaanesh and Flesh Hound Models from FFG

Fiends of Slaanesh are a really cool design and concept, but with only a single sculpt available, in resin, at US$25 each, they're kind of awkward to fit into an Army, and they look sort of wimpy next to their counterparts that have been updated to plastic kits, like the Beasts of Nurgle and Bloodcrushers. Flesh Hounds are in somewhat better shape, with 5 sculpts in the box, and a couple of plastic ones teased along with Korghos Khul and Magore's Fiends, but are still US$10 each on their own, in resin only.

A while ago, I stumbled across the Uthuk Y'llan for FFG's Runewars Miniatures Game, and was struck by the potential in some of their options for use as Chaos Daemons, particularly the ones I'm discussing here. It's not entirely surprising, as the Uthuk Y'llan make use of a great many summoned daemons (tho they call them other things), and almost certainly took inspiration from some of the same places GW did.

First up, we have the Spined Threshers, which feel pretty much perfect as an update for the Fiends of Slaanesh. Not as much of an improvement as I might like in terms of variety and price, since the two available sculpts are designed to be built one way, and the plastic used is very hard, but they are still an improvement in those regards, and their size and presence are vastly better.

Apparently in the Runewars fluff, they're made from multiple summoned daemons bound together into a single form, which is why they have multiple mouths all over the place. One mouth remains for each daemon that was bound into a given Thresher, I guess so they can individually feed or something. IDK, I haven't actually paid much attention to Runewars except for the Models.

Now, as I've mentioned, and as shown in the pic at the top of this post, they are much bigger than the current Fiends. But they are about the same size as the current Beasts of Nurgle, which were formerly close to the Fiends in size. So I feel like they'll make a pretty good alternate. I plan on knocking half an inch off any measurements where the larger base would benefit me, and since they have no shooting attacks, the greater height and profile are pure disadvantage. They can actually just barely squeeze onto 40mm bases, but it looked stupid, so I put them on 60s.

Flesh Hounds, as I said at the start, are in better shape, but can really suffer from lack of variety, especially when running multiple packs at once. I like to use a ton of them in minimum-sized packs, so I've made a practice of getting as many possible varieties as I can, to help keep them sorted out. The Flesh Rippers summoned by the Uthuk Y'llan seemed about perfect to form up another pack, since they have an aesthetic that's entirely compatible with Khornate stuff, but are distinctly different from any of the specific GW designs. They also cost about 60% of what the GW ones do.

Unfortunately, there are again only two sculpts, but they actually mix up fairly nicely when not ranked up, and it should be less noticeable when they're one of 8 Packs on the table. The other disadvantage is that they come attached to the rectangular bases you see here, but those are much softer plastic than the Models themselves, and so relatively easy to cut away. In terms of size, they match up quite nicely with GW Flesh Hounds.

Thinking about it just now, they'd probably also make good alternatives for Drukhari Khymerae as well. I'm looking forward to getting both lots of these painted up, but since (as usual) I have far too many projects going on, who knows when I'll get to them. When I do, I will put pics up here.

I have a couple more of the Heroes from Silver Tower ready to go, and several of the monsters very close to completion, so hopefully I'll get them wrapped up and photographed soon, and then I'll do another post of those to wrap up Neglected Model September. I'm also working on building and priming the stuff from the Rogue Trader boxed set and the Heresy Girls Kickstarter, so those are going to be my major goals for October. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Neglected Model September: Mistweaver Saih

For Azazel's Neglected Model September Hobby Challenge, I'm working on finishing up my Silver Tower boxed set, which I halfway painted within a couple of days of getting it, and then never put brush to it since. First one finished is the Mistweaver Saih:

I decided to go for a very restricted palette here, using only light greys, off-whites, and the brightest silver I have. I wanted to really double down on the idea that she can just fade into the mist, and be effectively invisible in there.

I also decided to go with a more covering garment, so she's got those little blades or trinkets or whatever they are dangling from her sleeves rather than being extreme piercings.

You're going to notice some variation in the bases as we go through these. My original plan was to do them all like this, maybe paint in some tiles and cracks, but basically do something just painted, that would look like it could be flooring in the Silver Tower. The square bases tied in to that, being flagstone-shaped. Then GW brought out rules for a bunch of them to be used in AoS and/or 40K Armies that I have. So many of those got re-based on round bases, and have sand and turf and such. I still really don't know if I'm going to unify them all or not, and if I do, which way I'm likely to go with it.

Most of the other Heroes and the Pink and Blue Horrors are coming along pretty nicely, so I'll hopefully have them ready to photograph in a few days, and post shortly after that. I've also got another post in the works, about some third party Models I found for Fiends of Slaanesh and Flesh Hounds. One or the other of those should be up fairly soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Moar Slaaneshi Conversions

In addition to my Keeper of Secrets and Noise Marine Dread, there were three other Conversions that were the driving force behind making the Slaanesh Army I took to OFCC. Everything else in the Army was basically just there to let me use these five Models, and/or fill up Points.

First up is this Chaos Lord on Steed of Slaanesh. I'd been wanting to use that Steed Model for a 40K Chaos Lord ever since it was released back something like 15 years ago, and finally got around to it:

I wish I'd had some more time for it. The Steed in particular could have been substantially improved by a wash and then bringing some of it back up to Rakarth Flesh, and there was more detail I didn't get around to picking out in gold. The only thing that really bugs me, tho, is that I didn't get the edge of the base finished off, which was a common "theme" with this Army.

He got massively overkilled in most Games, because the Model ended up looking much more impressive than his statline actually justified (He's essentially a Chaos Lord with Jump Pack, Power Sword, and a couple of minor stat buffs), so people would line up an attack on him suitable for taking out someone like Abaddon, and then splat him with the first third of it.

Next up is another that I wanted to do since I first saw the base Model. The amount of conversion required here was actually very minimal, basically just scraping off some detail, and replacing the feet and one hand.

Really, most of what went into changing her from the Yncarne to a Daemon Princess was just tweaking the colour scheme, and even then, a lot of the colours are in the official colour scheme for the Yncarne, just used differently. Again, really could have used one more round of wash and highlight, and some gem effect paint on the spirit stones, but I'm still really happy with how she came out.

One of my teammates, who has an Ynnari Army himself, just about lost it when I unveiled her, totally pissed that I'd turned an Aeldari Avatar into basically its exact opposite. Which, honestly, was pretty much the kind of reaction I was hoping for. Chaos should disturb people.

Finally, we have The Vindication of The Devine. (No, that's not a typo. House Devine was the first Knight House to fall to Chaos.) Blending together some rough concepts from the old Hellscourge Daemon Knight from Epic (which had a Castigator Cannon, but was so lacking in detail that it was impossible to tell what that actually was, and was also terrifyingly fast and maneuverable for a War Engine of its size), Forge World's Cerastus Knight Castigator, which established the Castigator Cannon as some sort of dual Gatling gun arrangement, the options available to Renegade Knights, and the general theme that Slaaneshi stuff is faster and more maneuverable and more capable of acrobatic feats than a similar Unit that didn't have the blessing of the Dark Prince would be.

Even with a ton of 1/16" brass rod running through all that, it ended up sagging a bit from its intended pose. The original version had the knees bent in a little tighter, like it was in the process of springing off of that crag and suddenly reversing direction. The left foot was originally up higher as well, which helped the sense of motion, and kept the detail I added to the bottom visible, but it didn't hold. These pics were a total pain to take, because the thing barely fits in my light box at all. I took a bunch more, trying to get better shots of things like the head, but these were the only ones that came out even halfway decent.

 Again with the gloss causing problems for my camera. I added an eye where there's usually a little viewport or something (I'm not really sure what that's supposed to be) in the hatch above what was the pilot's compartment, before it got turned into a Daemon Engine. Similarly, I left off all the grab rails and ladders and such, since no one needs to be able to climb up there and get inside anymore.

 I added some plasticard and putty and a bit from the Chaos Hatch Sprue to fill in the foot, but it ended up sagging down to the point where it wasn't visible, so it ended up unpainted because of the time crunch.

A shot focusing on the base. I get way too into it sometimes when I'm working on these big Models. There's just so much room to go wild with, and the larger bases look so flat and featureless if you don't do something to break them up.

Currently, I'm working on finishing up a bunch of things from the Silver Tower set for Azazel's Neglected Model September Hobby Challenge. I should have enough to do a decent post sometime in the next few days, but it might take longer before I get around to actually taking pics and processing them and stuff. How ever long it ends up being, until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!