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.

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!

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!

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!

OFCC Aftermath

Last weekend, I went down to Portland for the Ordo Fanaticus Club Challenge. It's a team event, superficially similar to the ATC/ETC, but with a major difference: The goal when making matchups with the other team isn't to set them up so you'll win more, but to set them up so that everyone has the best chance of getting a fun and interesting game. It's pretty much always a great time, and is the one 40K event that I never miss, even in years when I'm not really otherwise playing 40K, or I'm too broke to go anywhere else, or whatever. 11 years in a row now, I've made it happen.

N went above and beyond, getting us this awesome banner and some cool 3D printed tokens to give to our Opponents

I've tried a couple of times in the past, but this was the first year I've ever managed to pull together a themed team. I went down this time as the captain of the Infil-Traitors, with each of us running one of the four Traitor Legions dedicated to one specific God of Chaos. We had R with a World Eaters force, L representing the Thousand Sons (including both Ahriman and Magnus), N with his Death Guard (including both Mortarion and Typhus), and then me, mostly following the theme in general, but running only a Patrol of actual Emperor's Children alongside a much larger contingent of Daemons of Slaanesh and a Renegade Knight.

Anyhow, that's mostly just the lead-in to the pictures. The three big projects I've been working on were for this event, and two of them (my army and a Sector Mechanicus table) were sufficiently finished to use.

My army as a whole. This was my big impetus for getting the Keeper of Secrets finished, as you can see.

A better picture of her. All of these can be clicked for larger versions. They were posted by the TO; I was way too frazzled to get pics myself.

My Renegade Knight. I included it in the project for two reasons. First, I wanted to reduce my model count, since I'd had issues with my back the year before, and it was giving me trouble during the months running up to the event. Secondly, and more importantly, I had the idea for the conversion, and really wanted to make it happen.

You can sort of see part of my Noise Marine Dread at the bottom of that pic, and it's visible, along with my Daemon Princess and Chaos Lord on Steed of Slaanesh, in the first one, but I can't find the better shots of them that I thought were in the album. I'll have to do dedicated photo shoots for those now that I actually have some room available to set my light box up again.

Here's my Sector Mechanicus table. The railings on the walkways and platforms were unfortunately another area where I didn't manage to get everything I wanted done, but it still worked well. This was apparently taken during round three, since that's me sitting there, and my opponent for that game (who was a great dude, with an awesome Custodes Army) standing there, but I don't remember the pic being taken at all.

Pulling over a pic of his army, because it was too awesome not to share

Honestly, I'm still really not recovered from it. My sleep schedule is a mess right now, and I'm trying to edge back into getting some modeling/painting done. I'll hopefully get around to taking more pics of my various conversions for the Army at some point soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!