Assembling a little bird + some painting progress
With the newly released Grey Knights I couldn't resist ordering a few of them to build another small army.
My plan is to have in time 7 or 8 different race armies of at minimum 1500 points, to be able to play with friends and all enjoy as much variety as possible, but as I'm the only one that buys them...
It is also quite nice to paint different models and in different colors, I noticed some time ago that both of my armies were too dark and greenish in general.
Right now I have this armies:
- Space Marine Dark Angels: Endless army, one day I should count the points, but I can play just with a Deathwing sub-army if I want.
- Orks: Another big one. I have almost all models I want (as with the Space Marines) but also is a huge green swarm with lots of orks and heavy stuff (2 dreadnoughs and the like).
- Genestealer Cult: All my old and new Space Hulk Genestealers, the old and new hybrids, patriarch, mages, a Carnifex (big badass and awesome miniature) and one tank small conversion I will show once painted (someday...). Very specialiced and probably not suitable for all battles, but I wanted my genestealer horde to become a true cult :)
- Dark Eldar: Kabalite warriors squad, 3 reavers and one mandrakes squad. right now the smallest army, whenever the 2nd wave of DE miniatures is launched I'll probably expand it.
- Grey Knights: One normal squad, one terminator armour squad, a brother captain and the Stormraven I'm currently building.
Also they have as allies two inquisitors and two assassins (models I bought a while ago and couldn't use with the Dark Angels due to Codex restrictions!).
I also bought a Chaos Space Marines battleforce, Terminator lord and Soul Grinder.
So the total is 6 armies so far. Most of them unpainted so not worth taking pictures.
In the future I will probably add an Eldar battleforce and some Necrons (which rumors say will be revamped soon), and that will probably be all. Increasing ranks but remaining races like the Tau or Imperial guard do not engage me enough and have just one or two nice-looking miniatures for me to collect and paint.
Having said all that, I can focus on the initial idea of this post, divided in two parts. First, my progress assembling a "little bird":
I've also learned to not glue everything before painting, so the pilot and cabin aren't glued to allow me to paint everything in detail.
The Stormraven is huge and heavy (and I haven't finished yet), with an amazing level of detail. I'm looking forward to paint it and try metal highlights (it's going to be for the Grey Knights). An expensive (at least for GW range, compared with Forge World items is even cheap XD) but awesome model.
And the second part of the post is that having enough time to paint seems to be a difficult task for me. Anything below 1 hour is not enough, and usually when I have at least that much spare time is after midnight and my pulse is not perfect due to starting to feel tired.
So in painting I advance slowly, quite slowly. But I do advance something.
I finally finished painting the remaining details of Azrael, my Dark Angels army commander. He had a few details still unpainted (weapon, head and banner pole/angel figure at the top), so I finally did them:
I also have started to paint the ork Stompa, not only because it will look great, but also because has 6 fragments unglued waiting for being painted, so now it is both unusable in games (at least without blue-tac) and taking a lot of space in the shelves.
Those are two finished fragments, the back gretching with a drill, and the head with the Ork Kaptain giving orders.
I am currently painting the main body to glue this pieces and then glue each remaining fragment as I finish with them.
Genestealer Hybrids Conversion (WIP)
In the old times of Warhammer 40.000 and Space Hulk, before the Tyranids became a race, Genestealers had not only the normal 4-arms monsters, but also semi-human Genestealer Hybrids. They even were available to play in the old Space Hulk rules, but Games Workshop phased them out and made Genestealers the baseline close-combat troop for Tyranid swarms.
I have some old miniatures (some yet unpainted), and I wanted to build a Genestealer Cult mini-army, but getting more hybrids like this is almost impossible today:
So, after one day looking at some Warhammer Fantasy Ghouls painted with pink tones, the heads reminded me of the hybrids, and I decided to do some modding experiments. This was the shopping list:
- Tyranid Genestealers. I had spare pieces from old Genestealer models so I still was able to build full Genestealers squads after rampaging arms, but will depend on your desired amount of claw-arms hybrids.
- Vampire Counts Crypt Ghouls. Initially I just wanted the heads, but after checking the models, I decided to go for a "weak hybrid" conversion also using Ghoul torsos and arms (either unarmed or changing the bones/knives for pistols). The torsos needed removal of hair and some spikes (or softening them).
- Catachan Jungle Fighters. I wanted the hybrids to have uncovered violet arms and some torsos (to remark that they are no longer human), so instead of other Imperial Guard miniatures I chose this.
Some afternoons assembling, cutting and joining pieces, and this is the unpainted result:
This is one of the new "weak hybrid" models I mentioned before:
The worst part was the necks. Catachan torsos had no neck because is the head the one containig it, but Ghoul heads are concave instead of convex, so I did one elaborate but guaranteed approach: Cut the ghoul necks from the torsos and adapt them to the Catachan ones.
It needs some cutting and careful glueing, and I found better to rotate horizontally 180º the neck (so that the back part becomes the front one) because it rises the head (as opposite as lowering it in the ghoul models).
The title says WIP (Work In Progress) because I've just started painting the squad. I'm not yet finished with any model but I painted all the flesh part of one hybrid to check how it looks:
You can't simulate the "hunchback" old hybrids mostly because of the bigger head and complexion, but I'm satisfied with the results of the experiment. I definetly prefer this to just simple Imperial Guards with another colors...
It will take me some time to paint every model, but I also have another modding project related with Genestealers which I'll show in the future (when I can at least start painting it and show a before-after).
Tags: Miniatures Warhammer 40000
Three Special Terminator Space Marine Conversions
Before continuing with the Warhammer 40.000 scanned images posts, I want to show three terminator space marine conversions I've built this days.
Partly because they were part of a birthday present, and partly because I just want to display it and confirm that most conversions do not need much skill but imagination and a few spare pieces...
So, here we go with the three miniatures, still unpainted though.
First, a Deathwing aphotecary, of which there are rules but no physical miniatures available:
Second, a cyclone missile launcher terminator, pretty much the standard one, except that I added the laser-sight left arm as in the old lead miniature. It is actually a land speeder anthenna with a cut, on a power sword terminator arm.
And finally, a twin thunder hammers terminator, possibly not legal on any game session, but awesome as a miniature :D
As usual, now I need time to paint them, but now I can deploy an army only of deathwing terminator units!
PS: For the aphotecary I found some pictures around the web and mixed ideas, and similar for the twin thunder hammer. Sorry for not keeping links to original conversion's authors.
Tags: Miniatures Warhammer 40000
Painting small Warhammer 40.000 scenery
Finally I'm being able to grab some time to paint, as I like to mix assembly/modding session with painting sessions.
My friend Lobo666 is helping me with the dozens of scenery props I have (including some huge building ruins), so I'm switching between painting Space Marines, giving the base coat to the Stompa, and painting scenery too.
Until now, this are the finished pieces we've done in two or three small painting sessions:
Rusty defense barricade – front view
Rusty defense barricade – rear view
Small defense barricade – front view
Small defense barricade – rear view (with a nice blood splat that Lobo666 did)
Radiactive materials barrel (missing some decoration, probably a number or something similar). Originally was an old camera film tube :)
Barrels and fuel tank
Objective marker
I'm almost finished with another miniature but I prefer to only take photos of finished elements.
After so many years not doing it is not easy going back to painting!
modded Warhammer 40.000 Venerable Dreadnought
From the last order of Warhammer 40.000 miniatures I finally had a Venerable Dreadnought (now that hey are available in plastic and thus cheaper and easier to customize), so when my girlfriend got stomach sick it looked like the perfect night for some miniature assembling while taking care of her.
Having already two normal dreadnoughs (with the bad luck of both with the same multi-melta + combat fist combo), I wanted this third dreadnought to be really different, but the standard is to have a close combat left arm and a long range right arm.
As the kit comes with three choices of heavy weapons (plasma cannon, twin-linked lascannons and assaut cannon), I decided to risk destroying the left arm and modding it to have the twin-linked lascannon to have a real badass venerable monster :D
Here are the results of the (unpainted) miniature:
Basically it was done cutting the original combat fist, leaving only the "shoulder"), and cutting from the lascannons a square to make it fit exactly in the shoulder. For the bottom hole that was under the big cable I used one of the optinal "ammo" packs (with some cutting to make it fit), and finally I did some cuts too in the shoulder armor reinforcement to make it fit with the cannon.
It is not perfect and the arm has a few millimeters more of separation from the body than the right arm, but at least I did not screw it up and once painted it won't be noticeable at all :)
Tags: Miniatures Warhammer 40000
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