Tag: Chaos Space Marines

Mind blowingly unproductive! yes! that’s me!

Yes, it’s true. I haven’t picked up a paint brush in a few weeks now… That pesky thing called ‘real life’ keeps getting in the way. Inbetween remodelling my bathroom, birthdays, financial/work related stress, consistent travelling to the future-in-laws and then a double whammy of being told that my home is now worth only 50% of what I paid for it, painting has been far from my mind. Actually, not strictly true. I just finished ‘Age of Darkness’ in the Horus Heresy series, and wasted no time in starting the Blood Angels omnibus. I’ve actually wanted to be painting, but just could not be arsed to do it. Oh, and then there was that other small distraction that I have had lately – playing Space Marine on the Xbox. How frakkin’ good is that game? i’m addicted!! I was getting a little bored of just dealing with greenskins and got a total nerd boner when frakkin Chaos marines turned up, even some Blight Drones! So, I guess in a sorta roundabout way, I have been keeping my hand in the hobby… sorta…

Although I haven’t been committing brush to miniature, I have been constructing. I based up a bunch of my Flames of War chaps on some sweet scenic bases that Gale Force 9 recently put out. I also assembled my Wolf Priest for my fledgling Space Wolves force and I also picked up the Finecast Emperors Champion, which I felt needed a little extra ‘something’.

I lucked out again, as it seems that this mini had no issues in the quality control area, so assembly was a snap (and thankfully nothing snapped). I decided to put him on a scenic base, rather than a standard one and add sand. I dug around in my bits drawer and found a MicroArt Studios base which I thought would do the trick nicely. I pinned him to the base, putting a little hint of an angle in there to hopefully give the image of movement. He is stepping forward and I wanted it to look as though he was going to step over the piece of ruin on the base.

Given the medieval feel of the Black Templars, and especially this miniature, I felt that he was missing something. I find it hard to believe that this guy would just march out into a battlefield without some other form of protection other than his battle plate. So, I gave him a shield. This was from the Scibor range of 40K friendly accoutrements. It’s big, and it fits the image perfectly, so, I cut off his hand and repositioned it, then added the shield. I made a green stuff handle as well, to make it look like he’s actually holding it:

I know it’s not a game legal piece of kit, but for decorate purposes I think it looks bad ass. I’m hoping to make a start on him this weekend, but we’ll see…

Ta ta(s) for now!

Golden Demon – the Beginning…

Huh, kinda sounds like the name of a kick ass Kung Fu movie in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon etc. Nice.

In the wake of me being a little bit excited that Games Day/Golden Demon is back in Chicago this year, I decided to actually participate in Golden Demon this time around. I didn’t want to spread myself too thin and try and enter a bunch of stuff, so I picked 2 things I thought would be fun to have a go at. First is a 40K Nurgle chaos lord and second is going to be a Forge World venerable dready in Salamander livery. I’m a little nervous about entering, as I have seen what I’ll be going up against in past years, and I guess I’m a little underappreciating of my work sometimes. But, what the hell, even if I get an honorable mention, it’ll be worth it.

A week or two back, I saw a great article listed under the Int’l House of Paincakes ‘Weekly Top X’ which had a link to Brian’s blog ‘Roll With It’ and a rather splendid article on how to ‘Nurglize’ yo’ stuff. It gave such a simple way of making your plastic CSM mini’s look pock-marked and corroded. It helped sway my decision about doing another chaos lord, particularly a Nurgle one. Hopefully I’ll be able to do Brian some justice when applying this method. We’ll see!

Assembly has already started on the lord. Here we see the bare bones (pun intended), before going at him with a hot pin or two, and any GS-ing I will be applying:

I had the Typhus head kicking around in a bitz box, as well as the rather’detailed’ torso. I ordered the shoulder pads especially for the project from Ebay. I wanted to keep him relatively modest, no cloaks, rows of trophy racks etc, as I feel it will give me more to play with when it comes to GS-ing and painting.

The dready is still in bits right now, but he has been cleaned up and washed, ready for assembly. I’ll post up more as and when I get more done.

C+C most welcome.

cheers!

Ding dong merrily on high! on Terra the shells are ringing!

Indeed it is fast approaching that time where the big fat dude in a red suit empties his sack down your chimney. Oh, and also Santa should be putting in an appearance too. I’m hoping that he’ll be bringing me the Forge World stuff I asked for, else I’ll set the Inquisition on his ass for use of witch power and xenos technologies.

This may be the last post I do for a week or so, as the preparations for the holidays are sucking up all my spare time, and then the day after xmas I will be hauling the family down to America’s Wang (apparently the affectionate name for Florida…) for a mini vay-cay and also to take my son to Disney…

So, first up for this one:

Land Raider Loadouts.

I have been having a spirited (but very friendly) discussion with my compadre back in the UK via email about Land Raiders and the positioning of sponson loadouts. It started initially by me telling him about some sweet armor plate upgrades that I purchased from Scibor’s Monstrous (which you can see here ). I wasn’t too sure where they were meant to go, but they do seem to fit quite nicely on the front quarters of the Land Raider, just forward of the sponson mounting.

Cries of ‘Heresy’ soon were abounding when I told him that my gun loadouts are positioned on the doors nearer the rear of the vehicle. When he was asking me where I had put mine, it made me wonder if I had cocked up when I was building the kit. Nope, the instructions show that, as do the images and diagrams in the Codex. Now i’m aware that just because the pictures show this, doesn’t mean you have to have them there, and I see plenty of pictures on teh interwebs with them on the forward quarter doors. In my honest opinion I think that they look freakin’ ugly and front end heavy with them like that.

His point, which was well made, was that surely troops embarking/disembarking would get shot to shit as they would be getting  out of  the vehicle right in front of the loadouts, and that having the armament on the forward quarter doors offers a little in the way of protection and cover for troops embarking the vehicle in the heat of battle. My counter to this was that as I use my LR primarily as a vehicle to get my assault terminators around, and couldn’t see marines in tactical dreadnaught armour trying to squeeze their asses out of those side doors when they have a bloody great assault ramp to charge down. I see those doors for getting into (before entering the combat zone), more than out of, but that could be me being pedantic.

A number of ‘real life’ examples where brought to the table by my buddy, who is a total treadhead at heart,and the points he made really did make sense.  I guess I am sacrificing practicality over vanity. I also mentioned that real world physics mean little in 40K (I can see Dethtron rolling his eyes right now) and to try and rationalize some of the things in the 40K universe would probably give us a nosebleed.

So what are your thoughts, dear readers? Front quarter loadouts or rear quarter? does it even matter? I’d be intrigued to hear what you’ve got to say.

Black Templar Marshal

Amongst other things I have been tinkering with, I mentioned in my last post that I was going to convert a mini into a Templar Marshal, and showed you a sketch that I drew up. Well, I’ve been working on this chap, and here he is, ready for a little green-stuffing here and there, then some paint!

I still have to mess with the base as well, but I wanted to show you the fruits of my labors so far. I’m thinking i’d like to add a chain around his left fist and wrapping it around the shaft of the weapon, like the other Templars do. I’m a little apprehensive about modelling chain, but i’ll give it a go! It’s been a lot of fun seeing this chap develop from a sketch into reality. I think he seems to have a slightly haughty air about him, which is befitting of the chapter. I may well convert some more and have them as his command squad, we’ll see what happens with that.

So thats it for now. I may try and get another post in, but if I don’t, I’ll see you all in a week or two, so have a safe and happy holiday and make sure that you eat and drink lots!

TTFN

Paul

WIP – Chaos Space Marine Nurgle Rhino

 

In between all my other projects I have been working on my friends Rhino. He had the basic shell assembled and he gave me assorted bits to use on there. So, I think I am almost at the ready line to start painting. There are a few flash lines I need to trim, but other than that, I think it’s pretty much there. I still want to add a spike to the top of the Death Korps guys helmet, to keep in with that WW2 feel that the Plague Marines have. The colors will be the usual greens and browns, with exposed and rusted metal, and some glazes of yellow and brown for that truly virulent look.