Squaddie September: Megavolt Cultists

EDIT: Better photos added!

The first of a few posts for Azazel's Squaddie/Scenic September Hobby Challenge. It's taken me way too long to get this stuff photographed and ready to post, but now it begins.

First off, no, that isn't a typo in the title. When I was a kid back in the early 90s, one of my favourite cartoons was Darkwing Duck, and as soon as I saw the name "Negavolt Cultists", I knew I was going to have to do them up as a tribute to his longest-lasting and most persistent nemesis, Megavolt.

I tried as best I could to go with a similar colour scheme, with a drab yellow for most of the clothes, greenish-blue for the gloves and leg wrappings (Megavolt's boots), red for most of the backpack unit and wire insulation, and brass for the electrical contacts and exposed bits of wiring.

Bangles Approved

Unfortunately, nearly all of this seems to have been washed out by my camera not being able to handle them against a white background. I may have to re-shoot with my black backdrop, but I can't deal with it right now. Dealt with! But I did get this one "action shot" on the black background before I shut down my photo setup.

Megavolt Cultists attempt to hunt down Beastmen within the corridors of the Blackstone Fortress, but are outflanked and ambushed in turn.

Also, on a totally different note, this was supposed to be part of my last post, on my Death Guard army. I made up some "souvenir" copies of my Army List for the event, but it turned out that almost no one wanted them. One guy wouldn't even pick it up. All that, despite the fact that it was just done with coffee grounds and used tea bags and they actually smelled quite nice.

It amused me to wait a moment after handing these across and then say "And here's a copy you can actually read" and give them a non-aged sheet in a much more reasonable font.

That's it for now. I'm going to take a look through the other shots I took and see how many of them really want the black background as well. Hopefully at least some of them will be decent as they are, and I can get them up relatively quickly. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Death Guard Army Showcase

I'm submitting this one for Azazel's Awesome August Hobby Challenge. Not because every single one of the Models seems awesome to me or anything like that (tho quite a few of them would probably qualify on their own), but because I painted almost all of it in a week. I had finished the Angel of Disease for Jewel of July, and one of the Predators, plus the underlayers for the rust on the other Vehicles, were done then too, and one Squad of Plague Marines just needed touch up and re-basing, since I did them in like 2002. All the remaining work on the Vehicles was done in that week, tho, and the other 22 Infantry Models were primer at the start of it. Anyhow, on with the show!

90s metal Plague Marines with newer arms, the Serpents of the Light. I had a couple of the old backpacks, and got someone to help me cast up a few more to fill out the Squad.

This is the Squad from 2002, the Unyielding Kings of Agony. Those are Tactical Marines, a few random bits, and a whole lot of putty. I am still damned happy with how they came out.

The new guys, Cleansed in Pestilence. Even with no easy customizability, there is a ton of variety in the sculpts, and they were a whole lot of fun to work on. There are only six right now because it's OFCC tradition that every team who didn't win puts a Model in the Bucket of Death, and there was one that I have a dupe of.

The Doom of Artifice. I fucking love this Predator sculpt (altho not dealing with hybrid kits), and particularly for Nurgle, it just feels right. Hopefully at some point I'll get around to doing a couple more back and forth bouts of stippling on green and rust colours to really get the transitions right.

The Unholy Blasphemies. These are cool Models, very fun to paint, altho I kept finding more bits partway through that I hadn't realized were actually something else and needed to be re-done. I tried to mess with them a bit to get a little variety, but they're only available as an ETB kit, so there's not a whole lot to be done. A proper kit for them with some options would be great.

The Lord of All Plagues and Fever. Converted from a Dark Vengeance Chaos Lord.

I forgot, I meant to do more work on the pattern on his cloak. Well, that's what happens when you're finishing an Army in a week.

Last, but not least, my BlightKing Terminators, Blessed Are the Sick. These guys were a hell of a lot of fun to make and paint. I'll try to do another post on each of them individually at some point.

The names mostly come from Morbid Angel songs, except for the Unyielding Kings of Agony (Slayer), and the Serpents of the Light (Deicide). As mentioned, due to rushing, there's a lot more I want to get to, particularly some obnoxiously bright highlights on the green, and without those, I had to tweak the colour balance really carefully to get them even this visible. Need to clear my desk off properly again so I can get in to the light box and change out the backdrop for a darker one, but that's not happening anytime soon.

This really shows how feast and famine my productivity can be. I got whatever it was done between January and March, then nothing from then 'til mid July, and then another 36 completions in less than a month. Unfortunately, the two purchases I made since then added another 46 unpainted Models plus Terrain, so I'm even further in the red despite that. Hopefully some of those will make it as part of next month's Scenic & Squaddie September Hobby Challenge. I have a bunch of other stuff well along, too, and have been keeping my momentum up fairly well, so hopefully there will be more soon, probably a mix of stuff for various smaller-scale GW Games, since I'm way more into those than full-on 40K these days. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Jewel of July: The Angel of Disease

A Jewel that needs some serious cleaning and disinfecting this time, not so shiny as last year's.

While he may not be as objectively impressive as my KoS, I'm just as happy with him, because I've had this Conversion in mind since I first saw the Nightbringer C'tan, back in '02. I wasn't able to find suitable wings for almost a decade, tho, when the WHFB Cockatrice was released. The switch to Finecast also helped immensely with the project, both in reducing the difficulty of trimming down the bits and in greatly reducing the weight, letting me support him on a surprisingly thin bit of brass rod.

It took even longer for me to get hold of the necessary parts. I think I had him assembled and primed by sometime in 2014 or so, and I know I had the paintjob done to a usable state by the time Daemon Summoning was a big thing in 7th Ed. But it wasn't until this past weekend that I finally knuckled down and finished him up. All the work on the Gellerpox Infected really helped, since one of the reasons he'd fallen by the wayside was that I was having trouble getting the skin the way I wanted it, particularly on the wings. It's still not perfect, but it's close enough.

The staff was originally intended to be the Black Mace, but that's no longer an option for Daemon Princes, so now it's just a rod of office or something, and he counts as having two sets of Malefic Talons. Now, my Relic of choice for a Death Guard Daemon Prince is the Suppurating Plate. Since he's really not modeled suitably for that, I call him the Host of the Withering Contagion, which is completely different fluff-wise, but identical rules-wise!

I just got my light box set up again last night. I decided to go with the white background again for a while, but I might have to go back and re-shoot these on the black background, since they got kinda washed out, and then the base is so dark that it's hard to make out much. Speaking of the base, I also just realized that I forgot to clean up the rim, and I meant to do a teeny bit of black drybrushing on the entrance wound on that one skull.

I'm pretty pleased with my greenstuff work covering up the joins between the body and wings. It was crap while I was trying to actually blend them smoothly together, but once I decided to just extend the robe to cover the gaps there, it went pretty smoothly. I think the little bits are supposed to be scales, but I decided to do them as little buds of new feathers growing in, with the flesh all reddened and irritated around the areas where they're either coming in or falling out. The dead dude on the base has orange trousers because that's my standard 40K civilian clothing colour. I should probably also do a little more work on what's left of his shoulders, but it may or may not happen.

I'm sort of getting back into the swing of painting again, helped by the shock of "Holy shit it's August already OFCC is in like 2 weeks and I still have most of my Army to paint". Hopefully that will help me build some momentum, and I'll be able to sustain it better now that we're all settled in here. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Rot and Rust in Progress

So, yeah, moving sucks. Gradually getting back in the groove here, but the hobby area ended up not working out as planned, and the best place for a backup hobby spot is still in flux for a while to come as well. Similarly, I don't have my light box set up again yet, so the pics are kind of crap, but I wanted to get something up, try to get back in the habit of another hobby aspect. And I have been making some progress, just not actually completing anything. Most recently, a bunch of Nurgle stuff, most of it for the Ordo Fanaticus Club Challenge this summer.

I've got a couple of trios going here, with the Blight Haulers so they can cover more area and also get the +1 BS, and the Predators so they can get off a Killshot. Well, hopefully at least, on both counts. It's entirely possible for either group to lose a member before I get a chance to shoot. Also, the threes grouped like this bring to mind the Mark of Nurgle, so they feel reasonably fluffy as well.

I'm almost done with the modeling on these BlightKing Terminators. And no, that's not a typo. They're a mix of parts from the BlightLord Terminators, the Putrid Blightkings from AoS, and some regular Chaos Terminator/Terminator Lord parts. Still need some more putty work, but not much, magnets on two more Combi-Plasmas, and some fiddling with the base on the Champion with Flail of Corruption.

This last one isn't actually part of my planned OFCC Army, but since I was stippling browns and oranges all over Vehicles anyhow, it was easy enough to add this guy to the line-up. It's a Scuttlebug Transport, from Miniature Scenery, just about perfect to use as a Rhino. Their Chaos-ish stuff isn't that great, because they can't really get the fine detail for spikes and such from MDF, but it still looked cool enough, and was cheap enough, that I decided to grab one anyhow. I also got a couple of their Terrain kits (I think I posted at least one of them. It was a couple of years ago.), and I'm really happy with those.

Here's hoping my next post both comes sooner and has more finished stuff, but regardless, until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

DreadToberFest!

Just a quick shot of what I got painted this month. I'll do more photos, probably on the weekend, but wanted to get a "proof of life" photo up on the last day. I started with 8 built or mostly built Walkers, and ended up getting 4 of them painted, plus another that I hadn't included in my original group, which nicely hits the goal I had set for myself. They all still have more work I'd like to do at some point (particularly the Nurgle Helbrutes), but are absolutely good enough to put on the table.

DreadTober: Into the Home Stretch

Pretty solid work lately. This is actually where I was at the weekend, I've just been lazy about getting it posted. The Alpha Legion Contemptor is done for now. Still needs some more work on the base, but that's easier to do when I have a bunch of them, so it's waiting until I have a couple of Squads done as well. I also want to get some insignia on there, but my hands haven't been steady enough lately.  The main metal layers are done on the SphinxFiend and the DG Helbrutes. I've since started blocking in the blue and green respectively. I'll let the pics take it from here:

That's it for now. Back to trying to not blob Caledor Sky all over that gold. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

DreadTober Update

Not very visually impressive, but in addition to the obvious basecoat on the Contemptor, I've done a bunch of work adding magnets to the two Fiends, and drilling tons of little pockmarks on the DG Helbrutes for corrosion pitting.

The regular Fiend just needs some work done on a base, and then it's ready to prime. The SphinxFiend needs something to help keep the left arm gun from rotating so freely, and I need to figure out what I want to do with the head. Nurgle Helbrutes are ready to re-prime, and the Contemptor needs a green wash, and then I'm going to start picking out details on it.

DreadTober III: Leftovers Edition

Having just finished a couple of builds, I realized I didn't have any projects ready to go from scratch for DreadTober. So I decided to dedicate this one to finishing off some of my WiP Dreads/Helbrutes, some of which have been sitting around since early 6th Ed. Probably not going to get to all of them but I'm going to be finishing up at least some of the following (left to right, front to back):

• Two Converted Helbrutes for my Death Guard
• A Furiouso and an IronClad for my Crimson Thunder
• A Forgefiend for my generic/Dark Mechanicum forces
• Another Forgefiend for the Thousand Sons
• A Redemptor and a Contemptor Mortis for my Alpha Legion

Looking forward to getting some more stuff table-ready, and also to seeing what all y'all come up with. Y'all have a good one, y'hear!