BattleTech Gothic Prey Pyre Pirate Band

 I keep meaning to post more of the BT stuff I'm doing these days on here, but usually forget about it. This time I had enough pics that reddit's likely to glitch if I try to load them all there, so it reminded me that I could share them here, too. 

 

 

 It's been a while since I did anything in this style, and it came out a bit sloppier than I was hoping for, but the overall effect at tabletop distances works pretty well. I'm thinking of trying to use them for an Aces run (I need to get that box posted here, too), or possibly writing up a custom Aces campaign with them as the OpFor. 

 

I know the models (and, indeed, the whole project) were kinda controversial, but I really enjoyed painting them. I just wish we'd gotten a Black Knight in this style. 

I will, once again, try to get around to posting here again more. Until whenever that may be, y'all have a good one now, y'hear! 

The Black 3.0 Marauder

 

Howdy, y'all! I know it's been a while. I've mostly been posting my stuff in the BT subreddit, and neglecting the Blogosphere, but I wanted to share this here as well, and now seems like a good time, since it's right before Halloween. It's hard to tell because of the Black 3.0, but the left half of the torso was warped, so after I filled the gap, the front is significantly wider than that of a usual 3rd ed starter Marauder. Other than that, I didn't mess with the model. Figured I'd keep it closer to the descriptions by people who were actually sober at the time, y'know. I did do 5 lighter dots on the cockpit to try to give the impression of the 5 eyes tho.

There are actually three different blacks used on this model: the Black 3.0 for the main coat, Black Templar on the weapons and some of the joints, and Abaddon Black on the edges of the base (other than the front, of course. That's in the main colour of the Mech, like I usually do).

I wasn't sure how well it was going to turn out, because my Black 3.0 is pretty old, and had kinda separated out a bit. But I was apparently able to shake it up enough, because I'm really happy with the final result. 

Hopefully it won't be as long until I get around to posting here again. I've got a ton of BT stuff I've done over the past while that I'll try to get posted. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

DreadTober AU Redux Finale

Presenting the God of Wind, the preferred Mech of Star Captain Enni Bekker, commander of the 43rd Striker Trinary, 50th Striker Cluster, Ghost Bear Alpha Galaxy. She was inspired to name the Mech after a song she heard a Rasalhagian bondsman singing while preparing for her Clawing Ritual after successfully trialling for the Trinary command following the death of Star Captain Milton Snuka in a skirmish with Kuritan troops in 3062.

Never speak to me or my son again. 

Barring, perhaps, a couple of terrain pieces, this is the biggest thing I've ever painted. This pic doesn't really do justice to how it looms over that Knight.

It's hard to get good photos because it's so big. I don't have great room lights, and only indirect outdoor light, and it's taller than my light box, or how high my swing arm lamp will reliably stay. 

I didn't get the snow flock done, or any of the insignia I was thinking of doing, and I'm not entirely comfortable with how well it's attached to the base, but the model itself is basically finished! Still, in the end, I'm really happy with how it came out. All the tiny dots were an absolute pain in the neck, but I think the final effect is worth it.

One more parting shot. Note that even when I do use a ruler, I still can't get the damn lines straight ;) Not sure what I'll have up next, but there will be something. Until then, y'all have a good one now, y'hear! 

Edit: Got the snow flock done. It looks heavier than it will be once the glue dries, but the overall effect will be similar still.

DreadTober AU Redux: The Penultimate Chapter

Everything is at that stage where it's all kind of a mess, and I get worried that I won't be able to pull it out. Or at least, not in time. Still got a bunch of fiddly work on the camo and some more detail on the base to do, and I'd like to try to freehand some insignia on there. Progress is still happening, but I always fret at this stage. Hopefully it'll be done by the end of the month. Until then, y'all have a good one now, y'hear! 

DreadTober AU Redux Week Three

I've got the first colour of the camo scheme blocked in. Needs some touch up in places where the various subassemblies come together, but the basic effect is there. Next up is the neutral grey striping in between these. I don't have a pic of the base in its current state because it's out on the porch with the primer drying, but it'll be quick to paint once I can bring it in.

I also finished up my Alpha Strike box, which had been dividing my attention and painting time, so I'll be able to get more done on this in the remainder of the month. I did the Clan Star in more or less the same Ghost Bear scheme I'm shooting for here, and the Inner Sphere Lances as the 2nd Legion of Vega, because I recently read Heir to the Dragon.

Next week, I should be pretty close to done. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

DreadTober AU Redux Week Two

How is it Friday again already? I got a COVID booster on Sunday, and it's been kicking my ass most of this week, so I didn't get as much done as I hoped, but I did get the broken heat sink vanes trimmed down and re-primed, and the sidewalk added to the base along with some spackle to smooth out the cork on that and the fallen wall. Needs a little sanding, and drilling holes for the pins to mount the Vulture itself, and then I'll be able to prime the base. Hopefully from there, things will move along more smoothly. It feels good to have gotten moving on this, even if only a little.

I also did get all the dust properly washed off, which was more work than it sounds like. Anyway, this was basically my "finish building" week, and I'll be diving into the painting proper next time. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

DreadTober AU Redux

Doing a nonstandard entry in a couple of regards here. I'm on a total BattleTech kick right now, and I want to try to clean up, fix, and finish the 28mm scale Vulture that I tried to do back in 2019, but couldn't finish because my health was sliding downward for reasons that would remain obscure until earlier this year. Now that I'm recovering from all that, I want to see if I can get this done, too. 

As you can see, the intervening years have not been super kind to the thing. There's a ton of dust, some of it adhering pretty tenaciously, and the heat sinks on the back of the left arm got broken at some point. I need to decide if I can fix those, or if I'm just going to trim them off and have the backs of the elbows be plain. Then I've changed my mind a little about how I want to do the base, so there's some more work there also. Well, here's hoping I can pull it off, and until next time, y'all have a good one now, y'hear! 

The State of the Westrider

Tl;dr: not good, but getting better.

I've been thinking that I needed to make this post a bunch of times over the past six months or so, but never when I was in a position to actually write and post it. In a couple of my last posts, I mentioned being pretty sick with what I thought was just some sort of stomach bug. Turns out it was something nastier. Fortunately, it first triggered a really bad psoriasis outbreak (for "I ended up in the ER" and "one of the dermatologists said it was the worst case he'd ever personally seen" values of "really bad"), which meant that I was already in Harborview hospital when my large intestine started falling apart. It was actually on the day I was going to be discharged, and if it had hit even an hour or so later, or I had gone to a lesser hospital, I absolutely would have died, but fortunately, I was still there, in the only level 1 trauma center in the region, and they were able to rush me into surgery before too much shit flooded my body cavity.

So, yeah. I now just have a semicolon instead of a full colon, and I've been dealing with an ileostomy, recovering from the surgeries (they had my whole abdomen wide open, and I've been doing a lot of PT exercises to get my abs to heal back together properly), and learning to manage my psoriasis since then, which has all kept me pretty tied up, and even tho I have been painting a bit, blogging about it has been far from my mind until I realized it was Dreadtober again.

The future outlook is the good part: Even tho they couldn't figure out what caused the collapse (despite an extensive list of things they were able to rule out), they're pretty sure it had been building up and causing lower level problems for years, which means that I may well have cleared up the root cause of much of my declining health over the past decade or so, and once I get my guts reconnected (The endoscopy department didn't have an opening until January to check out that everything is fully healed up inside, so the reconnection surgery needs to wait until then), I should be on the way to getting back into life in a way that seemed impossible a year ago.

P. S. I couldn't figure out how to work it in smoothly, but I want to talk a little more about psoriasis. I had always seen and heard of it as a joke condition, little more than annoying and unpleasant in appearance, but it can actually be an incredibly nasty condition. In bad cases, it's extremely painful, in a very similar way to first or even second degree burns. Another similarity with burns is that both mess with the body's ability to regulate its temperature. I've been feeling cold in a way that I never have before in my life, in addition to still overheating all the time, and being as sensitive to, say, hot water, as I was when I was a little kid. It's also absolutely exhausting: you don't realize how much energy you spend on growing skin until it's cranked up to 10 times the usual rate. Furthermore, shedding that skin so quickly leads to major fluid loss, as the skin cells die so quickly that their cellular fluid can't be reabsorbed before they go. Between the dehydration and the thermoregulation issues, severe cases can actually be lethal if left untreated, and even without the intestinal issues, I could well have died from that, too, if I hadn't been convinced to go to the ER soon enough. Finally, it's an autoimmune disorder, so the treatments for it are all immunosuppressant to some degree, which adds a whole other pile of extra worries about opportunistic infections. 

I'm not sure how much I'm going to be on here in the medium term, but I do want to take this Dreadtober to finish up the 28mm scale Vulture OmniMech I started a few years back. After that, I might disappear again for a bit, but I'm hoping to be back on here regularly by next spring or so, once I'm solidly into the recovery from the (hopefully) final round of surgeries. 

Anyhow. Hopefully I'll be back in a few days with my Dreadtober starter post, and until then, y'all have a good one now, y'hear! 

Gods in the Underhive (Slaanesh)

Of the four greater Chaos Powers, Slaanesh is unique in not getting even a single suggestion for how to incorporate her worship into the fluff or modelling of a corrupted House gang. I would guess that if they had, it would probably involve Eschers modeled and/or painted to look like they're wearing even less than usual. Let's see if we can't come up with something more interesting than that.

- Goliath: I see a few possibilities here. As with the Eschers, the amount of exposed skin on display could easily suggest something sexual. But I feel like it would be more interesting to explore something like a gang focused on self-perfection to an unreasonable degree, a la the Emperor's Children or the Flawless Host. The amount of stimms they have to use also leaves an opening for falling into the use of less functional drugs as well.

- Van Saar are possibly the most compelling to me here. Imagine a gang suffering nerve damage, all their senses failing them, becoming more and more desperate to be able to feel anything, anything at all, at any cost. Easy pickings for the Dark Prince!

- A Cawdor Word-Keeper could easily fall to the temptation of the inhuman charisma the followers of Slaanesh are noted for. With such oratory and personal magnetism, just imagine how well he could spread the good word of the Redemption. And surely one so righteous would be able to resist the corruption that comes with that power...

- Orlocks, being kinda generic in many ways, don't present a whole lot of specific handles here. The similarly generic sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll combo does feel like it fits pretty well, tho, and could make for a fun project.

- For the Delaque, I think once again their connection with the Silent Ones might be a cool angle. Perhaps one of them becomes fascinated with the different range of sensory inputs that humans have, and pushes those it's connected with to explore them to the utmost. 

- Escher: Again, I think chems are a fun way to go here. This is one of the few that suggests a specific gang build to me, not only focusing on the use of stimms themselves, but also taking chem darts all over the place and getting their enemies all fucked up on Obscura and Kalma. 

- Corpse-Grinder Cults could easily be Slaaneshi as well. In this case, it would perhaps be less about "meat make strong", and more about the sensual allure of eating something with actual flavour. As with Nurgle, there's also some scope here for cool modeling projects with themed masks.

As a side note, I'm only planning one more of these. This is an area where Khorne really suffers from the problem of all war gods in wargames, where turning to him generally involves just doing exactly the same thing that literally everyone else in the game is doing anyway (i.e. violence), just more so, and he becomes basically the generic default option. The standard CGC are already more interesting than anything else I can think of for a House gang.

Anyway, until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

Gods in the Underhive (Nurgle)

I'm supposed to stay awake for a few more hours after falling and concussing myself due to fever-induced vertigo, so it feels like a good time to write about Nurgle.

The Book of Ruin offers a few suggestions about narratives for Chaos-corrupted House gangs, but it feels to me like they went for the low-hanging fruit. In the case of Nurgle, their suggestion was regarding Cawdor, since they basically spend their lives picking thru filth heaps anyway. But consider:

- A Goliath gang who have shifted their definition of strength from what they can overcome to what they can endure. Every time they take pride in shrugging off some damage or pain, Nurgle's hold on their souls tightens just a little further. There's probably also some potential to draw from the line in Hammer to Fall, "Build your muscles as your body decays", but that just popped into my head, so I haven't thought further along that line yet. 

-  A Van Saar gang, their immune systems shredded by the radiation from their faulty tech, discover that, somehow, the diseases they are left wide open to no longer affect them, even tho they have clearly not been cured by any means.

- Orlocks are kinda Cawdor-lite in this specific regard. Not a whole lot I can think of that's really cool here, just that they probably cracked open something while mining that they really should have left alone.

- House Delaque was created by a plague of dream sickness, which puts them pretty squarely in Nurgle's wheelhouse from the word go. But even beyond that, there are some interesting possibilities. The things they do for the Silent Ones frequently take them to the deep, dark places of Necromunda, where all manner of foulness lurks. Further, the Silent Ones might well be careless about something that was harmless to the original Delaque species, but is highly infectious for humans.

- House Escher bring to mind a subtler taint, reminiscent of the Dan Abnett short story Pestilence. Spreading Nurgle's plagues thru tainted chem deliveries, perhaps even focusing on medical supplies for extra irony.

- Corpse-Grinder Cults: What, you think Khorne is the only one who benefits from a Hive being filled with piles of rotting flesh? The focus here becomes less cannibalism, and more just about gratuitously leaving rotting meat all over the place for decay to take its course. Altho not leaving the cannibalism angle out entirely; perhaps only consuming the dead once they have sufficiently "ripened". The angle for Escher works here, too, spreading the diseases thru the food supply rather than chems. Also some cool potential modelling opportunities using Blightking parts, and perhaps an insectoid aspect to the masks rather than the standard hornéd beast look. 

Well, hopefully none of y'all catch anything like this shit I've got, and until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

Modern Art in the 41st Millennium

This piece, which has been variously reported as being titled "My Triumph", "Don't Worry, I've Got it Entirely Under Control", and "Agh! Run! Run!", Was first exhibited in 879.M41 in Necromunda's Hive Secundus.

The piece is by Magos Biologis Hermiatus and an unknown Corporaptor hominis assistant, and is considered an example of both installation art and performance art. It is a mixed media work, comprised predominantly of misappropriated Archeotech, xenobiological samples, and hubris.

Altho difficult to confirm, it is believed that the piece, or at least what remains of it, is still on display in what's left of Hive Secundus.

***

There we go! Only took me four years to get around to doing the second one. I have to admit, I was extremely nervous when I started taking the clippers to the clear plastic part, but it ended up working out pretty much perfectly. The various differences between the two also mean that the fact that I ran out of the old purple ink that I used inside the tank on the first one and had to substitute Army Painter Purple Tone didn't matter as much as I was worried about, either.

Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

Princesses of the Dawn (Part 1)

Due to various health issues (not least, getting covid twice in the past year and a half), I haven't really been able to do much tabletop gaming in quite some time. But I recently reconnected with an old gaming buddy thru Twitter, and he's going to be able to roll up here some time in the new year and I have enough space, energy, and terrain for us to get a few Necromunda games in, so I've started working on a gang to use in a 2 person mini campaign.

I have a bunch of old metal Escher models sitting around that I've used as Chaos Cultists for years, so I'm rebasing them, repainting them in a more coherent scheme, and doing a few conversions to bring them more up to date with what are non-terrible options in House of Blades. In the case of my Leader here, she doesn't actually have an option for the maul this model was originally armed with, and mauls are pretty terrible in Newcromunda anyway. The Shock Whip is much cooler. 

(I've gotta be honest: I've kinda had a crush on this sculpt since I first saw the Escher model range like 25 years ago. Still think she's absolutely gorgeous, and wish I could manage a better paint job to do the model justice, but essential tremor and exhaustion put some hard limits on my capacity for detail work. The maul is technically illegal here, but unlike the first model, it's much harder to remove, and contributes more to the badass vibe, so I'm just going to ignore it rules-wise and have her just armed with the pistol.)

One of the conversions that's not strictly necessary, but I find it really hard to justify paying 15 credits for an Autogun when I can get a Lasgun for 5.

Hard to go wrong with a Plasma Gun, and this is another sculpt I've always been a huge fan of.

I decided to keep this one cheap, but she looks badass enough that I kinda feel like I should have given her a Plasma Pistol and made her a Matriarch or Death Maiden instead of just a Ganger. Hopefully I'll get lucky and be able to promote her at some point. Gonna try to get a better pic of her fur cape at some point, too. Really happy with how that came out.

I primed a bunch more bases today, got two more gangers who are almost done except for still being on 90s Goblin Green, and then I'll pick out another half-dozen or so to fill out the roster and give me some options for expansion. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

Marta the Second

My skill set doesn't often lend itself to fan art, but on rare occasions, I'll find something I can work with to get close enough. I was idly browsing thru bitz stores on eBay a while back when I realized that Voidmaster Nitsch had a cool uniform that could work as the basis for Marta Dyas from Gideon the Ninth. I really want to do a model of Gideon herself at some point, but I don't have a good base model in mind.

It's not perfect, by any means. There was too much gun-related gear that was going to be too hard to clear off (cleaning up her left arm after removing the shotgun was enough of a pain), so I guess those are like canisters and a pouch of necromancy materials that she's carrying around for Captain Deuteros or something.

I really do love the detail on the Rogue Trader models, even if it is an absolute pain in the neck to paint. I can see a bunch of spots that want touch up, but I just can't deal with it any time soon.

Can't really see much from this angle, but I still liked it as an action shot. The impression I got from the book was actually that the Cohort uniforms were mostly white with red trim, but when I did the actual Elucidian Starstruders, I did white for the uniforms there, so I wanted to change it up this time. 

I'm not usually a fan of this base, but it seemed way too on brand for the Nine Houses not to go with it here. The Second isn't as "all bones all the time" as the Ninth, but they all do that shit to some extent. 

Not sure what I'm going to flit to next, but when I do, I'll be back to share it here, whatever it ends up being. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

Things that Go Bump in the Underhive

In addition to the Dreadtober stuff, I've done a handful of random creepy/spooky models this month. Figured Halloween was a good time to share them here.

This first one was done also for the 35 Years of 40K thing. It's my take on a Grabber-Slasher, a little-known Tyranid beastie that basically only appeared in Advanced Space Crusade. There was a model for it, that was later reclassified as a Squig and moved to the Ork range, but it was frankly kinda crap, so I started over from the statline and description of how they operated in ASC, which gave me the impression of a Gaunt-type Lictor counterpart. A few GSC bits and a spare Hormagaunt body later, and I had this guy here ready to leap out of the shadows to grab and slash away!

This mutant was inspired by a pic I saw on twitter of a Tiefling with horns growing from her eyes. I got the Escher expansion kit for the Wyld Runners and Phelynx, but I don't really care for the Death Maidens, so I had some parts lying around waiting for some horns from a Chaos Spawn to turn her into something possibly even more horrible. 

Then we've got this zombie Slenderman motherfucker. I got a bit overexcited and hasty while building him, so there are some pretty sketchy joins, but they're mostly concealed by the camera angle. I'm still happy that I got him to come out as close to the image in my head as I did.

Last, but not least, we've got this snaky backbent monstrosity. Again inspired by something from Twitter, this time a video of a girl bending over backwards and scuttling around a store like this, scaring the hell out of other shoppers. From left to right, the snakes are a Ridley's Cave Racer, a Green Mamba, a Cottonmouth, and a Redbelly snake. On our world, only the middle two are venomous, but I wouldn't rely on that if I ran into this in a dark hallway. 

It needs another angle more than the others do to really show what's going on here. The random tentacles off the waist are because of reading some D&D sourcebook about Aberrations, where for some reason, two tentacles growing from the hips was one of the most common mutations resulting from dealing with Aberrations, regardless of what sort.

Anyway, have a spooky evening, and until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear! 

It Dreads Nought, for All Dread It

Last, but absolutely not least, we have this monstrosity, an updated take on the Mk IX Dominator class Chaos Dreadnought from Space Crusade's Mission: Dreadnought expansion.

I really wasn't sure how well it was going to come together for quite a while, but now that it's done, I'm incredibly happy with the result, especially the eyes.

Wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to do the plasma coils. I had a few ideas, but ended up just going with the classic blue. Really grooving on the biomechanical aspect here, similarly to my Maulerfiends. Unsurprising, really, since it uses so many Fiend parts.

Not much to see back here, but I figured I'd include the angle for completeness's sake. Also, speaking of the parts, I'm kind of curious if anyone can name all seven models I used bits from.

Not sure what all the spent brass on the base is from, but it's too small to be from that thing. I like the Conversion Beamer as one of the secondary guns as another old school nod. I do wish I could find my static grass, tho. I've always liked how it goes with this base.

And just to round things out, here's a shot of all three of them together. I look forward to seeing how everyone else's projects end up. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!