Deathwatch: Overkill Part II: Genestealer Cult!

I really had a pretty good time painting these. So much so, in fact, they may get turned into an army at a later date. 

Well, maybe. 

With a few limos, more bodies, and so on. Too bad the rules only exist for the specific numbers that you get in the box. Way to plan ahead, GW. 

And yet, you get the makings of what is at least an interesting bunch. You can tell GW has been refining their 3D sculpting technique; there are fewer weird extrusions and generally more complete bodies with these. So, I painted them as a slightly different strain from the Space Hulk grey-bodied variety. From possibility to the little details around the Patriarch's base, these are a definite step up. 

I still miss the old school slovenly one sitting on his throne, however. 

I'd like to think these two argue a lot, since the roughneck pit boss one has little in common with the upper-class magister type. I imagine he'll end up pushing his rival into the digestion pit first, then go off in search of a working shuttle. 

These guys turned out to be some of my faves from the bunch, bless their malformed little hearts. Blending their chitin and flesh together turned out to be a lot of fun, and the end result is pretty striking. Well for me, probably not for you, veteran mutant painter, but I mostly do robes and armor, so it was a neat departure for me. 

I imagine those hammers hurt. Too bad that on the open 40k battlefield they'd get shot to pieces before they managed to do anything, unless you could field them in squads of 10 or so and give them mining trucks to jump out of. Wargames Exclusive does have those neat resin vans, though. Hmmm.....

These guys turned out to be kind of a blast too, once everything started coming together. Still, though, when I go to these other fellows I began to wonder...

Where did all the women of Ghosar Quintus go? Were there breeding pits, or did they die in childbirth, or is there a whole other facet of this army we're not seeing? Did the purestrains just lay eggs, or what?

Also, it occurred to me while working on them that you could combine the factions from this, Space Hulk, and Assassinorum to make an interesting skirmish encounter, but that's a thing for another time. 

Deathwatch: Overkill Part I: Deathwatch!

At long last, the entirely of my Deathwatch set has been completed, and by "at long last", I mean I've had them done for about a month now, and just not bothered to photograph anything. Life gets in the way. You understand. 

As with the offerings from their last board game, the Deathwatch sprues don't disappoint, nor are they entirely without questionable decisions on GW's part. Not on these three, however. These fellows are great. It's nice to see Ortan Cassius with a face on, and now I can field him without having to go looking for that other model. 

They made sure to put in a lot of extra detail like the backpack shrines, reliquaries, and whatnot that add character to each individual model, which I'm in favor of. Adding personality to Marines is a good thing, and these could very well have been nice metal special character models 20 years ago. Anyone remember when they put out a zillion different officers and librarians? Ah the good old days. 

While I applaud adding variety and neat details, I didn't at all approve of a little psyber-birdie that hung precariously atop the already breakable antenna on the White Scar's bike. What dumbass thought that was a good idea? It'd never survive a year of use intact. 

And for the (rather phoned in) 40k rules, where's our Storm Shield for the biker? Ah well, I suppose that's just nitpicking. 

A Terminator with a heavy flamer AND a built-in meltagun? Now you're talking! Why don't they get these as an option in addition to the usual? Too useful? That shot cannon is a sexy bit of kit too. Does this mean we're getting a new Imperial Fists codex where they carry these instead of those wimpy heavy bolters?

Yes, I painted the servo skull. Yes, the psyber eagle is STILL sitting on my painting desk with a base coloring of reddish brown feathers, just waiting for detailing. He's not separate in-game, though, so he may continue waiting. 

You can tell these were the last of the bunch to be designed, and that they pretty much ran out of steam when they got to the Iron Hand, who is rather boringly reloading his gun. Why didn't they at least make a him a Techmarine with a servo arm, or better yet, a servo harness? And that Ultramarine is what, just a regular Sternguard? Jeez, guys, is it that hard to come up with something swanky for him too? Maybe he's a sniper or something? Ah well, at least that Space Wolf is interesting. 

Yes, I'm aware the line is based on books. No, I haven't read them yet. Maybe I'll get to them.... eventually. 

Assassin's Creed: 40k Ed Part 2: the Bad and the Ugly....

Honestly, I'll probably never have a Chaos army, as much as I like the pre-Heresy Death Guard and some of the models, like the Forgefiend, so this is pretty much as close as we're going to get to anything like Chaos, ever. Also, the fluff text talks about the boss as a sorcerer, so I decided to go Thousand Sons with these guys because I didn't see Khorne worshippers staying calm long enough to get any serious sorcery accomplished. With that detail out of the way, the entire adversary war band just sort of fell into place. 

That said, working on these was a treat, especially Zehket-Ka the Inscrutably (and some might say unnecessarily) Obtuse. Word to the wise: never ask this guy for directions to the can. As I was futzing with the parts to assemble him, I almost said "fuck it" and made a better Abaddon, but the lure of the Changer of Ways is strong. 

How is he supposed to go plundering space hulks and outlet malls with that wildly impractical helmet? Only Tzeentch knows. Maybe all the little eyeballs adorning his armor give him 360 degree sight, or he has magic rearview mirrors or something. 

I'm very satisfied with the way his blue crystal Chaos spike came out. I suppose it's a hellish torture to inflict on your followers to make their chiefs be perpetually climbing slightly uphill. I imagine they all have calf muscles like steam pistons. 

Instead of using the stock Chaos familiar from the box set (man, how boring is that little robed guy compared to the old models from the RT days?) I opted instead to use this rather sinister cat mascot from the Raging Heroes Toughest Girls of the Galaxy Kickstarter. He's covered in weird jewelry, and suitably Egyptian enough to be little Tzeentch fiend. 

A big thanks to the prolific Joel of Mordian 7th fame for the Thousand Sons bits that adorn Aknot, Akenet, and Aknehmet. While the catastrophe mentioned last post killed their sapphire paint jobs a bit, I think they held up rather well. They still need to some shoulder iconography, though. When I have time, I suppose. 

GW could have hit one out of the park by making this game more modular (like Space Hulk) and introducing more missions, and more of a weird mix, but they didn't. I guess they felt like they were floating a trial balloon, or that it wasn't worth the effort to begin with, or something, but despite that the art direction is very good and everything is generally very well-produced. The whole business is a bit confusing. Maybe they plan to expand with an Inquisition tack, or something? A series of games along the lines of a campaign might be a great way to revive, say, Necromunda. 

Or do they think that far? I wish we knew. Anyway, more models.

As cultists go, the Order of the Azure Shroud is your run of the mill bunch of fanatics who don't see sunlight very often, and just watch The Mummy and the first half of The Ten Commandments in their basements non-stop. I imagined climbing the hierarchy in the cult meant wearing more blue as you went on, and picking up more things like gold masks and shrouds. In more practical terms, this meant introducing variation so I didn't get bored. 

These guys turned out to be a treat, particularly the chief cultist with his flaming head. Tzeentch is pretty much the king of dubious boons. Hey! Your head's a plume of blue fire now! Here's a kickin' rad hat! Thanks for worshipping!

I feel I didn't do the crow guys proper justice. I wish I'd been able to find some kind of wide-brimmed hats to make them look more plague doctor-ish, but oh well. I did try to make the one on the far left look more chaos-y by giving him a glowy mutant eye under that mask. 

I wish they had conical cultist hoods like the Mordheim ones. These hooded guys are actually kinda boring. 

And, of course the gimps. Under those masks are three perfectly normal guys who thought this was a cosplay club, and now they just want to go home because there are no girls. 

Happy Friday, gang. 

Assassin's Creed: 40k ed., Part 1

So there's a new combi-pack of a score or so 40k miniatures that happens to include a simple-to-play side game. It costs too much, the art direction is excellent, and at the end of the day you get a bunch of decent minis, two of which can't get the life-saving cover saves they need to... save their lives. But that's okay, because you also get a really beautiful non-modular board you can use to play one mission. 

Anyway, the miniatures. 

I don't know why I like this banana hatted bag of hammers so much, I just do. Maybe it's that confusion of tubes that sits so improbably atop his neck, maybe it's that you can surround him with a bunch of Librarians and inflate his head-gun's assault value through the roof.

The problem with assassins is that once they appear, everyone wants to shoot them to the exclusion of all else, and rightly so. The further problem with the minis in this set is that the ones that really need to get cover saves are meticulously designed so as not to get said saves. "But", you say, "They get a 4+ invulnerable save!" 

Bollocks. 4+ never saves the common Guardsman, and it won't save these chaps either. 

I do like the way they give him a bit to leap off of, though, and it's such a good idea that I went against common sense and used this instead of mounting him straight to a base. 

I wish Vindicare had been aiming instead of skulking, but it's still decent, solid figure, and unlike the stupidity of the Eversor and Callidus' designs, didn't have any fiddly bits that connected at the wrist, or lower torso that separated at the ass. That little shrine in the ruin is a nice touch. 

This thing is a straight-up nightmare of a design. The contact point for the foot is insanely small. The long braid is separate from the head, the ass is inexplicably in two pieces, the boobs separate from the chest, the hands a separate at the wrists... it's as though they expected you to store it on the shelf, never transport it, and never even use it except occasionally as a conversation piece. In short, it's the most fragile, badly designed thing ever. To boot, they give you a high thin plinth to secure her to, apparently with equal parts luck and prayer. At least the neck isn't a separate microscopic piece as with the Necron ark driver, but I'm sure they fully tried to make it be. 

So, I took my smallest drill, and put in paper clips to reinforce what I could. Also, I mounted her to a spare resin base that would potentially give her a cover save if I chanced to move behind something shorter than, say, an Imperial Knight. If ever there was a reason to march into GW HQ and ask them what the shit they were thinking, it's this thing. Yes, it's probably their best female mini to date (in that it actually looks vaguely feminine) but good God is it ever built not to stay in one piece. One of the precariously small fiddly plastic cables leading from her neural shredder to her backpack even snapped as I was painting her. As you can see, we did not replace that unnecessary bit; they could've run power contacts along the lines of her suit as they did the other three models, but noooOOooo. 

Now the paint. You'll notice they look a bit splotchy. They didn't before I spray-finished them. Prior to that they were lovely, with meticulously applied directional highlights. 

The horror came when I set them to dry near an air purifier, which sucked every dust mote in the house past them into itself. The result was that they (as well as 3 Thousand Sons Chaos Marines)  dried, matte-clear, with a zillion dust particles stuck to them. 

I know. I was utterly devastated. 

First, I lightly brushed them with a dry brush. 

Nothing. 

Then a wet one. 

Still nothing.

Then I got out the lacquer thinner, sighed heavily, and wet a brush to dilute it further. 

The particles came away. 

The paint..... well, you can see what happened. Fine detail=ruined. They are good from afar, but far from good. My only consolation is that the CYA wasn't dissolved, causing them to fall to pieces. Nonetheless, we shan't be doing that again. 

Next time, the bad guys. 

Happy Wednesday, people. 

Fixing Centurions....

They're not a terrible idea, just not a great one. Really, their role is filled, and better, by other units in the codex. Make that codexes, because there are allies and Escalation and pretty much all bets are off.

But this is not a rules blog, it's a modeling blog, and the models are awful.

So, as I take pictures of the latest raft of models to join my Necrons and Ultramarines, I've been thinking about them, and have basically whittled down the choices to two:

Choice the Firste: they're giant powered suits, more akin to a landmate than an actual Astartes suit. This necessitates a new look for the model along the lines of the SM aesthetic, ie "building out" the existing Centurion model with in-proportion arms and legs. Basically, a custom that looks more like the actual artwork.

Choice the Seconde: they're Terminator armor fitted with heavy weapons (and support hydraulics for them) I don't mind this option, because Terminators have been a viable heavy weapon platform (albeit a fragile one) from the get-go.

Choice the Thirde: is, of course, to move on to another project such as... shit, I dunno, an Outrider for the X-wing miniatures game.

Any thoughts, folks?

What the crap is going on with Dreadnoughts these days?

By now, everybody's seen this ungainly monster. I'm still on the fence about whether I like it or not, since it's not exactly a new design:

Yeah, that's right. Instead of grabbing a movie design to repurpose (go see Terminator 5 to see where the Dreadknight came from), FW went back several generations to the old Epic scale game and up-sized that thing. Someone loved that ugly little thing so much, they went back and made it the de-facto "old dreadnought, instead of the one we all knew and loved from the early days. You all remember Chuck, don't you? from the 40k Compendium? 

There he is, the poor lil' roly-poly guy. Look at him. Gonna go stomp some Chaos Squats with those two twin-linked bolters of his. Who's the big man? Not you. Sorry, Chuck. 


We're supposed to believe that during the 40k timeline,  Lee Iacocca took over Mars and started cranking out the K-Car of mecha:

Go research K-car, kids. It's a real term. 


There's more than one entendre at work, here. 


Get it? 


Good. 


Personally, I'm glad GW didn't slink away to the movies again. It wrecks the consistency of their design quality--- ooooh right:

C'mon guys. A Glaug from Macross? What were you thinking back then? Even FASA learned that lesson the hard way with the Marauder. You're all over the place with rules, all over the place with design.

Sigh. 

That brings us back to Monstroso, there:

There are some things I like about this model. I feel that it's generally a step in the right direction, I really do. In fact, you can shut down all the current model production lines now, from Rhinos to Stormravens, and art direct everything around the curved, riveted lines of this model. For consistency. 

However, there is a another shade of consistency at work here.  

This design is consistent not with rest of the angular, slab-sided, reasonably well art-directed army. It is consistent with the brand new, hero-focused, special-characters-grant-special-rules bent of the current codexes. There is one message you can take away from this, and it is:

"We envy Warmachine."

Think about that. 

DALEKS ARE SUPERIOR!

Played Necrons vs Vulkan Marines today, and this was the highlight of the match. They took a round to devour his Thunderhammer Termie bodyguard, and ate Vulkan the round after this pic. 


Game ongoing. 2 combat squads, one Assault Squad, and one Dread left to go (that LR is immobilized and weaponless). Updates to follow. 


UPDATE


After swallowing Vulkan, the Daleks engaged a combat squad and proceeded to pummel them to death with their doom plungers. A full assault squad nearly deep struck in, but hit a building. The subsequent mishap roll resulted in them dropping in dangerous terrain across the board instead. Destroyers disposed of that Rhino in the foreground, and the Warrior squad behind them held firm against that Tac squad you can see on the left. 


To make a long story short, a round or so later my opponent conceded. As he was short on units, he was unable to effectively contest control enough objectives. Had we continued, he could've squeaked out a draw, but I think the death of his rock unit (and the delay of his assaulters) dismayed him a bit. I put on my teacher hat and pointed out some  things he did well (covering his Rhinos long enough to make it across the board, targeting/downing my Destroyers with his Rifleman dreads) and some things he did poorly (choosing to assault Warriors in a ruin with his Termies instead of sending them at some Destroyers in the open who were 7" from the LRR). 

Conversions: Lightning Farron

So Eric contacted me a while ago asking if I could convert up a character for him to use an  inquisitor for his armies. He's a fan of Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, a game I've played and somewhat enjoyed (despite its failings, gameplay-wise). For those not familiar with her, she looks something like this:

(image and character are copyright Square-Enix, used without permission)

I decided to start with a miniature that was close enough and greenstuff the extra clothing as needed. The base model was this Lara Croft knockoff from Freebooter Miniatures. For those of you unfamiliar with Freebooter and the work of Werner Klocke, surf on over and take a gander. They do some nice work, and I was pleased with the quality of the mini when it came in. I'm sure there's some irony in converting one video game character into another....

The originals sword is waaaaaaay too complex for someone like me to model out of green stuff at that scale. (on the other hand, give me 3D Studio Max and a rapid prototyper and we'll see) There are better sculpters out there than I who could've done a far better job, so I decided to go for the hard-modelling solution and create something that suggested the form and interlocking nature of the original without mirroring it. A Necromunda tri-barrelled shotgun fit the bill, combined with the machete that came with the original. The hand is pinned to the arm, but the sword is all glue, contact area, and faith. Hopefully it'll survive the journey and following rigors of the battlefield. 

A lot of sculptors from other lines neglect to give their character minis things like holsters and sheathes for the weapons they're swinging around, so I like to make sure they have somewhere to stow their gear. If you've played the game, you get used  to the sight of Lighting walking along with her holstered folding sword swinging against the back of her thighs as she walks. It must be terribly cumbersome to move around with it hanging like that, not to mention hard to keep your balance jumping around and such. Oh well, that's fantasy for you. 


Lastly, I've started experimenting with watermarks for my photos. I've seen my images pop up on forums and stuff, and while I don't mind you folks grabbing and posting them I would like people who see my work to know where it came from. So all you guys who've been reposting Tyracron and Titan pics, thanks for the extra publicity, but please, please tell people where to go to see more. Not that I'm a web-traffic whore (don't see any ads yet, do you?) but it's polite to source your stuff, you know? 

Commissions: Angels of Flame Wrap-Up.

A short post today, wrapping up the rest of the Angels of Flame commission work whilst I grind away at the Dark Eldar on my painting bench; and I do mean grind, as there's a fair amount of it involved in making the Craftworld French look more like their evil kin. As far as list-building goes, I keep advising my client to get himself some Rhinos/Razorbacks to safely taxi his troops around. We played a 1000-point battle last week, his SM vs my IG, and I virtually exterminated all of his units while only suffering damage to my Demolisher (immobilized) and Vendetta-mounted squad foolish enough to think they could take on 5 marines. In addition, I had two objectives held and one contested to his one and one. It was only his second game ever, and I tried to teach as much as I could, turn by turn. Hopefully my lessons on movement and target priority sunk in. 

As the LR kit he'd bought was a Chaos one, there were  lots of useful bits left over, such as the combi-flamer bit that made it onto this secondhand Landspeeder. It came to him with the sensor spine sheared off, so filed away the frayed parts of the nub and turned it into a sensor optic. 

The bikes also came to him secondhand, and were painted all kinds of garish in thick as hell paint; a bath in some Simple Green solved that problem, but I prefer to paint bikes largely unassembled. They're just too fiddly to properly detail otherwise. Luckily the riders were separate, having come as bits from his LR/bit box purchase. There are still LR hull sections in there that I want to turn into a Stormraven for him, but he's rather resistant to the idea. Hopefully the DE Razorwing conversion will warm him to the wonders of the shop. 

Being that this was the first Dev box I've ever worked on, I must say I think it's quite a good deal. With a few extra leg/torso bits, you get enough to make fully two squads of Devs, albeit with only one Signum pack for a sergeant. Thus, I had to improvise with a tank bit and an ammo hopper. Even so, there were tons of fiddly bits left over (including servo skulls). 

I shot them separately because we had to wait for extra robot pants to come in for assembly, so they were finished a while after their charges. While wish he'd stick to one army until it's built out, I am glad of the color palette switch that the Dark Eldar bring, and it's such a cool army that it's been a real pleasure to work on.  At the same time, working on these guys has been a valuable experience because it's exposing me to kits that I'd otherwise not had the chance to work on, if at all. Hopefully it'll continue to deliver. 


Till next time, Happy Thursday, people.