Helbrute

Finally, a return to posting! I must apologise for the month delay between my last post and this one. During that time I lost internet as I changed providers, went on a small holiday and then returned to a dead laptop. Fun times. The upside of all this is that I found much more time to for painting. Almost everything is ready for varnishing and then a small amount of grass flock to finish them off. There's just a bit too much drabness on the models right now.

 Prior to all this drama I ordered the dark vengeance Helbrute, chosen and chaos lord online from a bits reseller. I purchased these models on a bit of whim since they looked absolutely fantastic and they were a complete blast to paint. First up is the Helbrute. The skin parts of the model are painted scorched brown and the highlighted with a scorched brown/rakkarth flesh mix. I then washed this with agrax earthshade.

 The wounds on his back were painted a mix scorched brown, rakkarth flesh and wild rider red to create a nice sickly muscle tone. over this I applied a very heavy amount of tamiya clear red varnish which flowed out quite nicely to create a bleeding effect. Just be careful with this paint, it smells VERY noxious.
I also dabbed this paint onto his fist using blister foam to create a natural splatter effect. Just rememeber to practice restraint. you want gore without over the top gruesomeness.

The hazard stripes were painted using tamiya hobby masking tape applied very carefully. This stuff is useful for ensuring even spaces in your hazard stripes, but it's a serious pain in the ass to apply. Don't even think about using it on a curved surface. The stripes were painted by basing with steel legion drab and then 3 coats of Iyanden dark sun. I didn't perform any highlights because I dislike the way it looks.

Well that's all for today. The next update will be much MUCH sooner.

Comments are always welcome.

Stalker Pattern Bolter Conversion

So a shorter post today. I'm going to be conducting a short series on the conversions I've been performing on my units to give them that Spec Ops look. First up is how i've been creating the designated marksman's rifle, AKA the stalker pattern bolter. If you've ever played the Relic space marine game you'll know that the chaos version of the stalker is referred to as the daemon eye bolter. I'm being purely semantic at this point.

So there's a few things you're going to need to make this work. Most obviously is a bolter. I prefer the chaos model, theres more character to it.

The other things you're going to need is a scope from the normal tactical squad box and a guardsman's rifle.

Alternately, and this is preferable (although requires a harder to find part) a spare sniper rifle from the space marine scout sprue will supply all our required parts.

Now before we start any sawing it's critically important that we drill the holes for the barrel of our gun and the flash holes on the muzzle. you could do this stop later with the completed conversion, but its harder than doing it now.

Once the holes are drilled carefully saw the silencer off the sniper rifle. If you do this with care and preserve the small attachment detail on the other side you will need to shave it down slightly to have it fit on the bolters barrel neatly. If you don't have access to the sniper rifle then evergreen plasticard produces tubes in 1/8" sizing that is close in scale.

The next step is the scope. the tactical marine sprues scope is smaller in size than the one on the sniper rifle but is easier to attatch. Since i want that bigger look ive careffuly sawn off the scope from the sniper sprue and then using a very sharp X-Acto blade removed any additional plastic and attatched the scope to the top of the bolter.

As a final addition i have attatched the but of the rifle/lasgun to the bolter to help balance it out. If you decide to do this i would highly recommend atttatching it upside down as pictured below so that it fits on your marines properly.

Telion will be jealous

Here is the finished model. Please forgive the poor lighting, it's a little late right now. You should be able to clearly see however how the two pieces have been used together.

Fire Team Bravo

So i was feeling a little burnt out after having painted up fire team alpha and the Warsmith (finished pictures coming soon) so i took a bit of a break from the army for a week or so. I want to do this project on my time frame, not someone else's. Fortunately, the muse returned, and I jumped back into the second half of the chaos squad with far more intensity than the first.

This squad took less time to complete than the first, having completed a proof of concept of each SWAT archetype. In that regards, the only "new" model here is the squads second in command/comms guy. I decided for game purposes it wasn't viable to have two models that looked like sergeants so I created a new role to delineate them as models.

So without further ado i present the second half of my first Chaos Space Marine Squad.

Fire Team Bravo

Designated Marksman. I wasn't sure what this model was going to be initially, i just knew i wanted him griping a pistol in that classic two handed pose. From here, the large bulky  stalker pattern bolter seemed like the best fit with the rest of the model.

I'm not 100% happy with how this model turned out, but the bolter is better than my first attempt at it. It might be hard to see, but i've used a sniper scouts scope for this rifle which i think really helps differentiate this from other scoped bolters.

Demolitions Expert. I've used a head from the new Warp Talons/Raptors sprue that a friend kindly donated. I like the look of the head, it's slightly MkIV if i'm not mistaken. The meltagun is a spare imperial version i had lying around, so the addition of a spiked chain helps chaos-ify it. I think the gun requires more spikes however... The model also has a melta bomb and various other grenades and explosives on his person.

Second in Command/Comms. I'm really happy with how this models turned out. Essentially I've cut a cadian comms pack into a chaos backpack. Like a heretical version of the forgeworld model. Binoculars on his right calf and a strap slung drum barrel bolter round him out. the strap was taken from the slaneeshi icon in the chaos squad box.






Another angle of the Comms Officer. The shovel on the backpack is from an imperial guard heavy weapons team. In Graham mcNeil's "Iron Warriors Omnibus" the Warsmith Honsou discuss siege craft with a fellow iron warriors and mentions their trenching tools. I thought this was a great piece of character for the legion and have been adding them to models throughout the army.

 Hells Yeah! I love this guy. He's going to need a tiny bit more work to fill gaps and such, but overall he is a big win for me. Inspiration came from my old world of warcraft days and one of the most attractive armour sets of vanilla wow.
http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=209/battlegear-of-might#screenshots:id=320988
That's right, Battlegear of Might. I collected this set on my warrior purely for the aesthetics and I'm glad i was able to capture the feel here.

The Gorget was made from an orc boyz jaw plate that i cut to fit. i also sharpened the "teeth" to make them more uniformal and less haphazardly orcish.
The tassets are a pair of kroot shoulder plates layered ontop of one another and the chest piece comes from the chaos vehicle sprue (love that sprue)

The siege shield had its imperial eagle scrapped off and replaced with a bit from the chaos vehicle sprue.

Suppression Fire. Nothing special here honestly. theres a shovel on his backpack and some other bits and pieces, but i honestly prefer the first heavy bolter marine that i put together. Bandoleers are bad ass and i'm feeling the lack of one here. I'll remember that for next time






So that's an HQ and one troop choice down. What's next? Obviously some paint is in order. Hopefully I'll be able to smash that out oveer the coming weekend. and after that? A Rhino seems in order.

Damage Control

Last time in the blog i posted unpainted pictures of my Chaos lord. I've spent the last couple of days doing very little besides playing Halo 4 and painting him, along the way however I came to a realisation. I did not like his converted shoulder pad. It looked amatuerish and out of place.

It's like the skull has a weird hair cut

I spent a little bit of time agonising over how i would repair the damage done, most of my options involving having to physically saw the shoulder off. Fortunately however i was able to pry most of the green stuff and the skull off the shoulder leaving a relatively undamaged shoulder pad underneath. a little bit of knife work and i was able to clear off the unwanted iconography as well.

Looks better already. Sometimes you've got to know when things aren't going well and take action. This was done mostly with a hobby knife, I think my thumb lost some skin at some point along the way.

this photo also shows the additional spikes from the chaos tank sprue that i used for his trophy rack. I felt the Tyranid Warrior's head was somewhat out of place so made suitable replacements. keeping the spikes angled correctly while the glue dried was probably the hardest part of the whole conversion.

Almost there. I need to buy some Hawk Turquise or what ever it is called now to tarnish the gold parts of the model. I tried washing them with warplock bronze (tin bits) but it didn't give the desirable patina effect i was hoping for. I'm not entirely sure about the Eyes either. I was hoping for something angrier and more menacing. perhaps a brighter colour would help?

A Warsmith Rises

Every Chaos Warband needs a leader. Some charismatic Individual who rose up and took power, through treachery, cunning, and sheer force of will. Looking at the chaos codex we have more choices then ever before.

The Daemon Prince is a pretty powerful contender but has a pretty massive price point before you start adding the near obligatory upgrades.

A Sorcerer is a good choice, but doesn't feel especially Iron Warriors-ish.

The Dark Apostle is good value, but would suit a Word Bearers army better i believe.

The Warpsmith is another new addition to the codex and is the traitor counterpart to the loyalist master of the forge. The new resin model has polarised some people, but personally i like the doctor octopus claws. what I'm not a fan of is using a stock HQ in an army of such heavily converted troops.

and finally the Chaos Lord. 65 pts buys you 3 fearless wounds with stats that matter in close combat. throw on a suit of terminator armour for 40 points and you gain an invulnerable save, a power weapon, and a combi bolter. this is a great deal in my opinion an the direction i've decided to go in. for an additional five points you can replace the power weapon for a lightning claw. this removes the drawback of not having a pistol on your terminator lord. And besides, claws are cool. 

Warsmith Brutallus. after a whole day of sawing, scraping and scrounging through my bits box, this is the finished product. The vast majority of this model comes from the chaos terminator lord plastic kit, the rest of it came from the chaos vehicle sprue (which is actually pretty amazing) and a storm bolter kindly donated from the venerable dreadnought kit. Finally i managed to sneak a terminator assault cannon into the mix.

Obviously the mace isn't finished since the chaos dozer blade only has five spikes.

The great thing about this model is the versatility it offers me. That ornamental mace could actually be The Black Mace if i so choose. He could even be a counts as Abaddon the Despoiler.

I'm incredibly happy with the look of the mace (especially once it's finished) I took inspiration in its design from "Storm Herald" a crafted mace from World of Warcraft, which was all kinds of fun when i played my warrior during the Burning Crusade, And the mace used in the 3rd LOTR movie by the Witch King of Angmar.

I'm not thrilled with the skull and horns on this side of the model. my green stuff foo is still developing unfortunately. also notice the skulls on the armour plate on his wrist.

Finally, the base was thrown together quite quickly, but i think it has a bit of character to it. between the ultramarine banner and the first company helmet there's a little bit of story going on, without making the base feel crowded