Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Heavy support assembly

Haven't had a great deal of hobby time over the last week, Real Life(tm) has taken more than its fair share! Nevertheless, I've slowly been soldiering on behind the scenes on the Thousand Sons and figured I'd share some build pics.

First up is a whirlwind scorpius, I absolutely love the homage to the original missile launcher from good ol' RTB-01. In fact, I plan on including a heavy support squad armed with missile launchers to match!

I'm also pretty jazzed with the deimos predator executioner. Love my guard executioner and figure it's a no-brainer to have one crewed by marines!

I actually liked it enough that I'm going to have a pair of 'em! This one is built as a command tank for what I eventually plan to make a three strong squadron. The deimos kit was actually surprisingly easy to build, I have to say it was probably the most trouble-free design from FW that I've built in quite some time.

While I was about it, I also banged together a couple lascannons for the Spireguard, using some leftover bits from the Iron Hand sicarans, and the carriages from Curious Constructs which I think work a treat!

The majority of the army is still on hold while I await the bases - my indecision has meant that while I have all the bits to make the models, I have nothing to actually put them on so I've been in a holding pattern, argh. This coming week brings the release of the Imperial Knight kit, so expect to see some towering monstrosities here this weekend!

Orks - Deff Korps uv Krieg Shoota Boyz painted

It had been incredibly cold and snowy for the last few weeks and during that time while I'd built all sorts of stuff, it was far to cold to primer any thing and my hobby output sort of ground to a halt. However, a beautiful Colorado day appeared and I undertook a frenzy of primering. So that means it's time for da boyz!

Taking a cue from Colonel Scipio's excellent DKoK, I went with a predominantly brown leather look, with a bit of grey on the helmets to tie them in to the grey armor plating that will be on the various vehicles.

Two ten-man squads will go in the pair of half-trakks, and careen around the battlefield blasting away with their shootas until they inevitably get their ride blown out from under them and bewildered orks are tossed in all directions.

That's the troops choices sorted out - Jobs a good 'un!

 

While I was about it, i also put a brush to the warboss model, which is just chock full of character. I went with a red sandstone sort of look for the bases, which sets off reasonably well against the blue-grey of the models, but I found my usual reddish-brown base rims just looked poor. Black rims it is!

In other news:

Son of a..!

I'm in for a half dozen of these, and that's no lie.

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Prospero Spireguard test minis

As the wait for the orks drags on (now a week beyond the original delivery window), I spent a little time fiddling around making some Prospero Spireguard to accompany the Thousand Sons in their defense of Tizca. In the book A Thousand Sons, they are described as wearing crimson greatcoats, heavy boots and silver shakoes lined with fur cut from the wings of the snow-shrikes, an indigenous bird used by the Avenians as weapons. Officers were noted to wear crimson jackets decorated with brass buttons and gold frogging. They were also outfitted with silver helmets, curved sabres and laspistols.

I had a bit of a rummage around in the Closet of Doom and pulled out some various bits and bobs and before I knew it I had a command squad built and painted. After spending so much time batch painting, doing these five guys took almost no time at all! I'm not happy with the GW head mixed in with the Perry Miniatures heads, as he ends up looking bulbous or the other all look a bit pin-headed. For the 'real' build they'll all get Perry heads, so they all match up scale-wise.

I'm still trying to find a good set of bases that I want to use for the Thousand Sons and by extension the Spireguard. In the meantime they just got the basic mud and grass - worst case scenario, they'll match my 40k guard and can be used as an allied contingent of some variety there!

Put together a couple basic troopers wearing shakos as well, then ran out of bits. Doh! These are all just proof of concept miniatures however, and based on how they turned out I ordered a mess of bits from Maxmini (torsos), Victoria Lamb (arms), Blight Wheel (legs) and Perry Miniatures (heads). The packages are starting to trickle in, so there will be plenty more to come!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Malcador painting in progress

While waiting for the package of Orky goodness to arrive (shipping from poland takes ages), I have been dabbling with the next heresy-era project where I'm going back to my first 30k love, the Thousand Sons! The plan is to do a primary detachment of Sons, and an allied Imperial Army detachment where I'm going to be kitbashing up some Prosperine Spireguard. ...And while waiting for the packages of bits for them to show up, I dove in on what will be the centerpiece of the Spireguard force, a Malcador Assault Tank!

Just laying on the base colors thus far, still a long way to go. Going with the usual recipe of red, bone and gold - really enjoyed being able to play with some colors after doing the Iron Hands! I went for the Malcador mostly because I've never tried my hand at one before, and to be honest in 40k the tank is somewhat lacklustre. However, in the 30k era, the munitorum and mechanicus were up to the task of keeping it maintained, which means that it is a Fast superheavy. 12" a turn, and can fire everything as though it was stationary (at different targets, to boot). What's not to like?

Having had a chance to work on this one, I'm definitely interested in pickup up a Valdor at some point in the future! I've banged out a couple test models for the Spireguard as well, pics to follow soon!

Orks - Deff Korps uv Krieg Half-Trakks built

The ork army continues apace - while we're been suffering through some surprisingly heavy snowfall, I've spent the time building a pair of transports for the shoota boyz squads.

I wanted to keep the quasi Germanic feel with the Trukks, and picked up a couple resin kits from Forge World and ended up combining them, making what proved to be my least cost effective dollars-to-points-value models of all time! Quite pleased with how they look, though!

Of course, the two models would have ended up exactly the same if I followed the directions in their entirety, so I tried to deviate from the norm a bit on both of them with some varying decorative bits.

Some extra armor plates and a tow chain on the back breaks up the look a bit. I'll definitely need to paint various armor plates in different colors when the time comes as well.

Overall I quite like 'em! The halftracks tie in well with the Battlewagon, hopefully giving the whole force a cohesive (yet ramshackle) look! ...Now if it would only warm up enough to primer 'em!