The End-Boss, Nightbringer!

This blog recently shot past 50 followers, so to start off, a heartfelt thanks to all of you for reading my rambling posts and ogling my models. I hope you've found my works as inspiring as I have all of yours, and look forward to providing much more to come. As a reward, here's  a boss monster encounter for you:

I always found the Nightbringer model rather plain and underwhelming, and the Deciever model more so (which is why I have yet to purchase one), so when I found this fellow for a scant $12.00 on eBay, I snapped him up and set to work making him something to fear. He struck me as being the sort of fellow you'd encounter at the end of the game, all powerful attacks and high HP/MP totals, and a tall ghost with a simple scythe didn't quite cut it. 

The Dark Angels' iconography is full of all this lovely imagery of the Angel of  Death as well, so I thought to make him  this alien monster that combined that with Necron elements. I replaced the dinky little scythe with some bent metal bits to suggest the form without being one, and deepened/lengthened the shroud with green stuff. The halo and single golden wing owe themselves to Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 (proceed to groan and slap your forehead if you must, but I thought he was a great villain...), whose final form at the end of the game was itself full of fantastic angelic imagery. Tau bits with their pseudo-egyptian designs are incredibly similar to the Necron look (you can tell how deep the well of inspiration runs in GW by that, I guess) and so work for Necron models quite well.

I also gave him a pair of  living metal "wings", with the idea that they weren't attached, but sort of floated around with him in an unearthly way. Those rather large bits are from an old Bayblon 5 ship model I picked up as part of an airship project that never materialized (more on that later). Though the model looks rather top heavy, it's actually quite well balanced. One tends to forget that this thing is basically one big metal stick, and properly anchored is  a very solid model. I used, as I do a lot these days, a nice thick bit of coat hanger, deeply drilled into the base; the same gauge I used for the floating "wing". I didn't want him to be too bright and gaudy, and so stuck with black highlighted with Dark Angels green to further tie him into their imagery. 

So there you have it, the Angel of Death, one of the first C'tan reawakened. Just in time, in fact,  to see the rise of my new Void Dragon Tyracrons. A friend of mine and I were discussing the Tyranid fluff, and how they're being drawn to Earth by the Astronomican. What a rude surprise for them when they draw near and the Void Dragon pops out, hungry for living energy after his long, long imprisonment. He'll probably eat his way back through the swarm like fire following a fuse.

Now, as I'm waiting for some monstrous creature and Necron bits to come in, I thought I'd burn through some more plastic card and build some tanks:

That's two Hydras and a Chimera command vehicle, waiting for detail bits. The Hydras are modular but the Chimera is not (I suppose he could be...) and the Chim needs to be built up a little more so as to include the fire ports for the passengers. I seem to be out of stowage bags and duffels, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do beyond storage boxes; some comm relays and a lot of riveting probably. Barring any superheavies (don't really ever play any Apocalypse battles, to be honest) these should flesh out my Imperial Guard motor pool for some time.