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.

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!

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: Fiends!

Mostly been working on the two ForgeFiends this week. Haven't got as much done as I would have liked, but I did get some of the tricky stuff that I was worried about out of the way, so I'm pretty happy with the results.

The Plasma Head still needs some greenstuff work around the bottom, but the rest is ready to prime

The base is going to be done with Martian Ironearth/crust

This guy still needs some basing work, as the weird way the original owner did the rear legs means it won't sit flat

Gonna bust out the cork and get a bit of a slope going for it to stand on

That's it for now. 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.

StormTalon to StormHawk Magnetization

Since Michael recently reviewed both the StormTalon and the StormHawk, this seemed like a good time to put up some pics of my latest Flyer, which I've built so that it can used as either a StormTalon or a StormHawk, with the aid of surprisingly few magnets.

That's all the bits laid out individually. The only magnets are in the chin-mounted TL Assault Cannon, and the Sensor/Weapons Pods that go on the stubby little mounts just above that. Everything else pressure-fit once I primed it, tho I reinforce the StormHawk Wings with a little Blu-Tac, because they're a little shaky.

I didn't bother popping them off for this, but the SkyHammer fronts on the Weapons Pods are also swappable, also pressure-fit. They can swap to the Typhoon Launcher perfectly, or the Heavy Bolters/Lascannon, but they'll look a little odd if anyone compares too closely with the official build for the Pods.

 A couple of pics in StormHawk mode. Ideally, I would have taken pics at basically any point other than when it was just primed, but the basics still show up alright, I think.

And StormTalon mode. I used Nephilim wings on my other two Talons, so had to follow suit here. I put these ones on a little differently, tho, since I was doing it as part of the initial build instead of a retrofit, and they ended up at rather more of an angle. Not sure if I'm going to leave it like that and come up with some fluff about them being variable-angle, or just go back and fix it so it's like the other too.

There are a few bits that just stay as StormHawk mode, because they would have been a pain to do, and don't really make a huge difference in the overall appearance. The Halo Launcher itself wouldn't have been so bad, but getting the StormTalon's Sensors magged on there would have been a nightmare, and getting the Cockpit swappable would mean magnetizing the entire hull, which I really didn't care enough to do. Neither of those things represent options that are even a possibility for the StormTalon to take, and I figure it's pretty obvious which it's supposed to be based on the number of guns and the location of the Assault Cannon.

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