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.