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! 

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 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.

Squaduary

Following on from the idea of Dreadtober, ThousandEyes over at Stepping Between Games has introduced the Squaduary event. Same basic idea as Dreadtober: Build and paint something in a month. The difference is that this one is about Squads of Infantry and such instead of Dreads and other big 'uns.

Before the Legions supplement came out, I had been planning on running my Alpha Legion as Raven Guard Counts-As with the Talon Strike Force. To that end, I'd pulled together a bunch of bits for some heavily armed and trained and boosted Culties to represent Scouts. Despite the awesomeness of the Alpha Legion Rules in the supplement, I kind of feel like I still want to do this, just for the lulz. So here I've got a mix of SM Scout, Tempestus Scion, Catachan, Flagellant, and Chaos Marauder parts, ready to mix and match for some sneaky evilness.

Hopefully I'll have build pics up sometime early next week, and until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Dakka Dakka-Back: GW Provides House-Rules for a Great Kitbash

I've seen a few variants on this conversion/concept over the years, and always thought it was cool. So I was very happy to see that GW is starting to put out even unofficial Rules for stuff like this. Seeing them getting back into supporting functionalist kitbashing and converting, rather than just building stuff out of the box, or at most some purely aesthetic mods, is really great to see again.

I know I won't be able to use it in Tournaments, but since I have a set of StormRaven sponsons, sitting around, I'm totally going to be building them up some way that I can magnetize them on the side of one of my Razorbacks so I can run this in casual Games.

As might be expected, it's pretty badly overpriced for something on a Rhino chassis, but it's still cool just to have semi-official support for stuff like this. Check out the Datasheet here.

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!

Fire in the Sky, Nowhere to Run

I got my StormHawk built up, and even tho it was still unpainted, took it over to a buddy's place for a Game. We wanted to give the DftS Rules a solid go, so I also brought along a Wing of two StormTalons, and he had the Dark Eldar Formation.

I've seen people talking about the Dogfight Rules as just a d3 Rolloff, but I think Rock/Paper/Scissors is the better comparison. I won both Dogfights handily, despite the RazorWings outclassing my StormHawk in the relevant stats, because there are differences in the options that influence which you'll go for. They're very minor, so it's more about figuring out how deeply your Opponent is thinking about it than any kind of decision-making that actually makes sense from an aerial combat point of view, but they are there. I wish they'd gone a bit more in depth, even tho that sort of analysis is actually something I'm pretty good at. But it's not just random.

The Attack Patterns certainly do buff all of the Flyers in their area of competency, but that doesn't change the fact that they've all been nerfed pretty hard outside of their area of competency. Fighters got off easiest, but they're fairly rare (and even more so in terms of what actually gets used), and the most common Flyers are all Attack Flyers, that lost the ability to have Skyfire, meaning that almost all Factions now have substantially worse access to it, and some have none at all. Further, a lot of the Flyers that were seen were kind of borderline in their inclusion, and are now likely to show up a lot less.

Honestly, as far as I can tell, this only really buffs one strategy: Massive Alpha Strike+Flyers. For pretty much everyone else, the better option is usually to not take Flyers at all. If you're up against an Alpha Strike Army without Flyers, do the Reserves thing. Up against an Army with Flyers, but not a big Alpha Strike, just start everything on the table, so you don't care about the Reserves Manipulation. If you do run into an Alpha Strike+Flyers list, hope you brought a VSG.

OK, that got longer than I'd planned. Gonna keep this next part quick. Or at least try to :P

The StormHawk, for all the failings of the Supplement it appears in, is a pretty great kit, and a good Flyer on the table.

It's clearly related to the StormTalon, but it's also its own thing, significantly more of a difference than, say, a Razorback and a Predator. Some cool changes on the bottom, too, to show its lack of Hover capability and greater thrust:

I've got it set up so I can swap in every possible option. Didn't even need magnets. All the joins are in places where it's ridiculously easy to stick a tiny bit of blu-tac in there, and it's completely unnoticeable. They actually nearly all pressure-fit, even without the blu-tac.

That said, if you do want to bust out the magnets, I'd wager you could set this up so that everything but the cockpit could come off and swap for other parts to make it also work as a StormTalon. Those wings and engines are all one block that would easily swap out for the engine pods on the Talon. You'd need magnets in the sides for those, in the weapons pods, and in the nose for front gun/Assault Cannon turret. The Engine/Wing/Assault Cannon parts are all different for the two builds, so you don't have to worry about getting those to switch. A couple more magnetization points if you care about the view from the bottom, and maybe one more for the Halo Launcher/Sensors, but I probably wouldn't bother with those. The sticker, really, is the cockpit. That's chunked right in the middle there, and I don't see anything even approaching an easy way to make it swappable.

Great kit, tho, I'm definitely going to be picking up another so I can run the Formation with two of them and two Talons. I'll probably try to magnetize that one, and toss some pics up here. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Crimson Thunder StormTalon and IronClad

Death from the Skies has got me motivated to finally get around to adding on the Nephilim wings I got to my StormTalons. They're kind of halfassed right now, because I was hoping to use them in a Game today, but had to bail on that because debilitating headache. Oh, well, it meant that once I went back to bed for another 5 hours, I could take pics.

This dude is kind of pushing the limits of my cheapo lightbox. The other one looks basically the same, so I just took a pic of the one. I'm kind of tempted to try to break off the Missile Pods and remount them under the engines. I've seen some converted that way, and I really like the look, but I'm not sure I like it enough to justify the effort to do it retroactively.

I also got my IronClad, well, not done, but good enough to put on the table.

The mold lines on that Seismic Hammer are just hideous. I thought I'd got them, but apparently not.

 Shout-out to William Shakespeare for his Complete Works helping to bump the backdrop up a couple of inches so I could get more light in there. In the first couple of shots, the legs were completely invisible.

Trying a new technique on my black. I drybrushed the whole thing with Leadbelcher, more heavily from the top, and then ran several coats of Nuln Oil over it. A few of the bits need another coat or two, and it got a bit funky on the top where it was able to pool, but for the most part, I'm really happy with it. I believe I first saw the technique from Rob, but I've modified it a bit here, simplified it a little.

Gonna finish it off for today with some more shots of the basing. This is the first Model I've taken to (more or less) completion with my newer, more complex basing. I sorta feel like it still needs a little something else, but it's definitely a step up from my previous standard.

I think part of the issue here is that I ended up putting his feet in places that blocked some of the more interesting bits. I'm definitely liking the varied heights, tho.

Y'all have a good one now, y'hear!

Changing Sides

Still trying to work up the motivation to really get into fixing the Kytan. But I wanted to take some pics because I just got enough room cleared off to set up my new Light Box. It's a cheapo plastic one held together with velcro, theoretically collapsible, but looking at the creases in the plastic, I'm really not sure how many setups and takedowns it'll last, so I'm just leaving it up for now. As I've seen a couple of people note with others, the fact that there are only LEDs on the top creates kind of harsh lighting. I tried to use my swing-arm lamp to mitigate that, but I think I need to move it closer. I still like the results better than what I was getting just on the table tho.

I made a Land Speeder Storm, and took all the dudes who are normally hanging off the side and made them into a Scout Squad, filling them out with a conversion based on an old metal Heavy Bolter scout who was missing his weapon.

That's the dude who's normally loading his Bolter on the back seat. I swapped him up to Gunner on the Speeder because I wanted to use the normal Gunner on a base, where his cool kneeling pose would be more noticeable.

The Squad as a whole, and a rear shot of the Sarge, showing off his Combi-Grav. The one dude got some walls on his base because I needed something to justify his super-crouched pose. I chose to keep them on 25mm Bases both since GW hasn't actually switched Scouts over, last I checked, and because it magnifies the size difference between them and the full Marines in Power Armour.

A few more shots of my favorite one, converted from the Speeder's Gunner. Didn't come out great because I moved in closer to get a better position for a single Model, but didn't have anything there to brace my hands on.

And these guys were sitting around, so I tossed them in as well. Gue'vesa Kroot Counts-As for my Tau Army, converted from some Catachans I got for a song and Kroot Rifles I picked up at a bitz swap. I'm not really a huge fan of the Fire Warrior and Kroot Models, so I'm doing Human Auxiliaries for those Roles instead. Got some Cadians converted up to count as Fire Warriors too, but they're already primed, so they won't photograph well until I get them painted.

Hopefully either progress on the Kytan or something painted next time. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Laid Low by Nurgle, but Russ Protects

At the end of January, I got hit by an absolutely vicious head cold. Like, messing with my inner ear so I couldn't even stand up, debilitating headaches, barely managed to leave my apartment for over two weeks vicious. As well as the obvious effects, that time resulted in me ending up way more out of shape than I even usually am, and it's been hard getting through even the stuff I absolutely need to, and gaming and blogging kind of fell by the wayside for a while. I'm finally starting to get myself back in some sort of condition and doing things again, lots of modeling, a few Games, but not really any painting yet.

Built a ton of Wulfen, mixing them with basic SW parts to stretch the kit and make them more distinctive, and converted a BaC Contemptor into a SW version, and right now I'm working on a Sicaran and a bunch of heavily converted Rapier Weapons Platforms.

EDIT: Photobucket screwed up somehow and killed all my linked images. Trying to figure out what's going on with that.

The Cyclone Launcher is painted on the Contemptor because it's a magnetized one from the WG Termies. I'm still working on the base, want to get something on there to make it look like he just ripped apart a Chaos Dread.


Hopefully more to come soon. Y'all have a good one now, y'hear!

DreadTober: Just Under the Wire

It's still October here, so that counts, right? ;)

They all need massive amounts of touchup, more highlights on the red and gold, and snow on their bases, but that's not happening tonight. I didn't get all four to this point, even, but the one I ditched was the least impressive of them. I also didn't get around to doing the Leadbelcher at all, because I was looking at some of my other SW and realizing how little it stands out from the grey, and decided to focus on the stuff with more impact.

Somehow, despite taking twice as many shots of Bjorn as of the others, his pics came out worst. IDEK. I did find out that one of the issues I'd been having is that my camera has two different sets of modes, and it was in one from the other set that doesn't play well with macro mode. That seems to have helped with the other Dreads, but not with Bjorn for some reason. Maybe my hands were just shakier on his shots because I was more worried about getting good pics. Anyhow, here's the shinies:

I was torn on how to paint the Nid on the base. Leviathan makes the most sense, but Kraken is what the two local players who use official schemes have. I'm really happy with how the ice/glow effects came out on the Helfrost Cannon and TrueClaw. Unfortunately, I noticed while painting him that I screwed up the assembly on TrueClaw. The thumb-claw is in the wrong spot, which makes it look all wonky. Need to try to figure out how I can cut that apart without wrecking it.

Kvedulf IronHand is a homebrew Special Character of mine. No special Rules, but I'm in the process of building Models for him at all stages of his career, from young Fenrisian Warrior to Venerable Dread, as seen here. Again, really happy with the effect I got on the Axe.

Ulli SharpEyes doesn't really have much fancy detail on the sides, so I just did a front-on shot for him. I really like Mortis Dreads for SW, gives them some good Anti-Air without needing Flyers of their own.

And finally, a group shot:

I'm gonna keep working on these guys and hopefully get a completely finished post up sometime in November. For now, tho, I think they're actually sitting pretty nice here. Y'all have a good one, I'm gonna go watch some Scooby Doo and then crash :)