Eldar - Striking Scorpions in progress

It's been reasonably temperate of late which has meant it's not a sauna up in the hobby loft and I've been taking advantage - managed to get a little more work done laying in the base colors for the Striking Scorpions! I have to say it's been really fun to work on small units like this as opposed to my usual 20-or-30-at-a-time batch painting madness - especially since, although the models are all from the same unit, they're all much more unique sculpt-wise than the bog-standard imperial guardsman.

I'm going with more of a traditional color scheme with the scorpions, though much like the fire dragons they're getting the lighter colored bodysuit and darker armor plates look, all in shades of green this time. Started off with a Biel-Tan green wash over white primer, then I picked out the various armor plates in Snot Green, followed by a further green wash over just the armor plates. I also started adding in the yellow stripes on the various armor bits, the facemasks and the Exarch's power claw.

I'm thinking that gold-plated weapons for these guys should set off against the green pretty well, though I'm open to suggestions. These models also have a lot more going on than the fire dragons as far as extra kit goes, there are quite a few pouches, grenades and suchlike on each model so there will be room to add in some other spot colors here and there. So far, so good!

Eldar - Fire Dragons painted

Had a quiet evening for a change and pressed on with the Fire Dragons. The final results are interesting, but definitely have a significantly different 'feel' compared to my usual methods. Not saying I dislike how they turned out, it's just that the use of so many washes (instead of drybrushing) ends up with rather different results than what I'm used to. I think the 'washes over white' works quite for the Eldar sculpts, but may not necessarily translate over to the guard models.

Regardless, they definitely are bright and colorful! Pretty pleased with the yellow and orangeish/red combo, they're definitely more yellow than the 'standard' scheme as presented in the codex. I went with the purple tassels and helmet crest similar to what IDICBeer did on his Fire Dragons, and on a lark added in a further blue spot color for the various power tubing.

The yellow is definitely prevalent on the rear of the models, and I'm quite happy with that! It was fun to bang out a quick small unit like this, always nice to be able to dabble with some other paint schemes when you get tired of the same old, same old!

Eldar - A bit of spelunking in the Closet of Doom!

I was doing some reorganization in the Closet of Doom earlier this weekend, idly cursing GW under my breath for the upcoming Eldar release. I lucked out with the Tau release, as I wasn't particularly interested in the updated miniatures range but the Wraithknight and the plastic Wraithguard really got my attention. After working on the Prometheus, how can I resist building an Eldar Knight? In order to try and justify it to myself I dug up the box of Eldar I'd last dabbled with back in 2009.

I was actually surprised how much there was! In fact there's an FOC-viable army in the box (though it's anybody's guess whether it's a game-viable), consisting of a Farseer with a little Seer Council, an Autarch, a unit of Guardians, a trio of Aspect warrior squads, a couple Wave Serpents and a Wraithlord! A perfect core of a standalone army, and definitely a viable allied contingent for my guard. And even better, they were bought back before the finecast shenanigans, so a goodly amount of them are metal!

 

I thought it could be fun to work on a couple small aspect warriors as a change of pace, and to try out some new techniques. Since both the striking scorpions and fire dragons were primered white, I started off with a biel-tan green wash and a casandora yellow wash respectively, then figured I'd finish one unit off before working on the other. Fire dragons won the coin toss!

Thought I'd try a slightly different paint scheme than as is shown in the codex, with the plan being yellow helmet and bodysuit with reddish-orange armor plates. I started by giving the unit another dose of the wash to bring the yellow down another tone, then picked out the various armor plates in hot orange.

Once that was done I gave the orange sections a light all-over hit of carroburg crimson, let it dry then went back and hit up the creases again with another dose. Starting to come together!

After the was dried, the next stage was to go in and start picking out the weapons and equipment in black. Next up will be the gold details, then the helmet and spot colors. I think I'm going to follow IDICBeer's simply excellent example and go with purple for the tassels and crests, I really liked how his turned out!

At this point in the painting process it got too hot to be up in the hobby loft, so I was forced to abandon my post. However, it's supposed to be reasonably cool this upcoming week so I'm hoping to get these guys finished later this week!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Prometheus Forge Knight (more or less) painted!

The temperatures have started to soar here in sunny Colorado and my painting loft has started heating up significantly - I've been getting a little bit of painting done in the mornings before heading off to work while it's nice and cool however!

 

The rather excellent Prometheus from Blight Wheel Miniatures is now (more or less) complete! All of the painting is done at this point, and I gave it a hit of sealant prior to the waterslide transfer stage. Once those are on I'm scheming on how I want to weather it, I definitely want to add some chipping around the lower leg guards, and perhaps on the knuckles of the power fist.

 

I pulled out the older Knight Errant and snapped a scale shot, the Prometheus is just a tad bigger but essentially identically scaled, which I like. I thoroughly enjoyed building and painting this kit, and will be adding another one or two more once they replenish their stock!

 

I also figured what the heck - may as well drag out the Leviathan Crusader from Dreamforge for another scale shot! Still just applying the base red to it, but I'm well pleased with how it's turning out so far!

With the advent of the recent Eldar Wraithknight, I'm really interested to see whether we'll see some equivalent scaled Imperial Knights coming our way from GW. Seems as though Forge World is starting to release more and more kits for the Ad-Mech recently (to my wallet's chagrin) so it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility I figure...

Ave Omnissiah!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Prometheus Forge Knight painting in progress

Managed to get a little more paint on the Blight Wheel Miniatures knight over the last few days. I had a bit of an accident with it and fumbled the beast which resulted in a fair bit of damage. Luckily it was all reasonably clean breaks and I was able to put it back together and touch up the parts where the paint was screwed up. You can hardly tell I'm a clumsy oaf unless you specifically know what to look for!

 

Still quite a way to go, but more or less all of the major colors are blocked in and the shading has begun (need to decide on a color for the power fist and shoulder sections though, thinking white to match the other knights I've done). Still pondering how I'm going to work in the heraldry I've done on previous Knights, there aren't as many nice flat open spaces for that as there has been on the other versions. Still, overall I think this model has way more visual interest and detail!

A couple people asked about the scale of the mantis tank, so I snapped a quick pic for comparison. It's big!

Imperial Guard - A bit more detail work on the Leviathan

I'll admit I have a penchant for starting up projects that usually prove to be a bit beyond my hobby capabilities. Still, I figure that's how one grows as a hobbyist, gotta push the boundaries! A while back I kicked off a project to build a Leviathan Command Carrier for my guard, and after putting in a fair bit of work, I really felt it went all Top Gear on me: "Ambitious, but rubbish". It went into a box in the Closet of Doom while I worked on other things, but it's been eyeballing me recently so I pulled it off the shelf and busted out the plasticard and bits boxes.

 

When I left off the main structure had been glued up and rather ham-fistedly gap filled. It looked okay from a distance, but was pretty rough around the edges. That being the case, I cut up some thin plasticard to cover up some of the worst of the joins, and started adding in a bit more detail greebles here and there.

 

It's getting a little better now, the addition of some lights, doors and cabling gives the sides and track sections a bit more visual interest, and the bars along the upper front sections will end up holding banners to break up the large flat sections there. I'm concerned about the painting process at this point. The tanks of the 7th are predominantly black with red highlight panels, but I'm thinking that may not look good at this scale. I suppose I could try a reversal of the scheme and go predominantly red with black trim? Or maybe just finish the build, primer it all black and try to sell the darn thing - let someone else worry about how to paint it! Hah!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Dabbling in Dark Mechanicus

Well it's been a crazy week, lots of long hours at work (though still getting laid off, figure that out), and spending a good deal of time getting some tunes recorded with the band hasn't left a great deal of hobby time. However, since I had the red paint out for the Prometheus I figured I'd get some colors blocked in on another ad-mech model that has been lurking on the shelf for years.

This is a "Mantis Tank", another awesome model from Blight Wheel Miniatures (same folks who made the Knight), which I'm thinking is probably a bit more suited to the Dark Mechanicus sect festering in the midst of my loyalist Ad-Mech. After all, I have an Urtzi Malevolus model in the army, so I'm more or less destined to have some creepy-crawlies!

Not entirely sure what/how I'm going to run it on the table-top. My recent thought has been to try and build the army such that it can be used as a Necron/CSM counts-as army in which case, this will likely be run as a counts-as Defiler. It's certainly big enough - the base that it's on is one of the large flying bases!

Definitely a creepy model, and I'm definitely looking forward to doing some more work on it. I got a wild hair to work on the guard Leviathan Command Carrier again as well, so there will be some pics of that coming up soon too!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Prometheus Knight Titan size comparison

A couple people have asked for a size comparison shot of the Prometheus so I snapped a quick pic before heading out for the day's festivities (It being Star Wars day I'm off to try out the new X-Wing game by FFG). May the 4th be with you!

From base to the top of the carapace, the Prometheus stands just shy of 7", and is 8" to the top of the exhaust stacks. It's slightly larger than the older Knights BigDaddy has done, but still well within the same scale. It's also a bit more heavily armored which gives it quite a bit more mass. They tower over the basic troopers, but aren't nearly as massive as the Dreamforge Leviathan (which I'll be using as a counts-as Warhound, I think).

In other news, this marks my 350th post. Crazy!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Blight Wheel Prometheus Knight Titan build

Today has been my first real day off since the Christmas holiday, and I thought I'd get some build time in! A couple days ago a package arrived from Blight Wheel Miniatures bearing their new Prometheus Knight Titan, and I spent some time getting everything trimmed, cleaned up and washed off.

I've been a long time fan of BigDaddy's work, and own several of his previous iterations of Knight Titans, and I have to say that they just keep getting better. This new kit has tons of great detail and is an incredibly crisp and detailed cast.

 

I started off by gluing up a few CDs to make a base, and built up the legs and torso. The kit allows for a great range of motion and posability, which I really appreciated. The kit also comes with a great looking power fist and thermic cannon, which I magnetized to allow for easier storage and potential swapping of weapon options in the future.

  

The whole kit went together like a dream, and it really has a sense of weight and purpose. Definitely looking forward to getting stuck in painting it!