Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Heavy Support Squad Painted

Managed to get in a little hobby time over the past week, and put some paint on the heavy support squad I built a little while back!

I'm holding out for FW to make shoulder pads with the Thousand Sons symbol, which means at the moment they look a little dark overall - the bone color will brighten them up a bit.

Originally the missile launchers were all boltgun metal and gold, but at the last minute I went with bone white instead. As a little decoration I added a little curlicue as though the barrel is an hieroglyphic eye.

The models all have a little bit of a blue spot color on the eyes as well as the hoses on the backpacks. I'm thinking that perhaps a little bit of static grass on the bases might provide a bit more splash to them, thoughts?

Imperial Guard - Mordian 7th Regiment Superheavy Tanks

While I've been pulling out models to photograph in order to get some stuff up on the auction block, it came to light that I never actually took any painted shots of the two superheavy tanks I'd finished up for Feast of Blades late last year. Since I had the camera out, it seemed only fair to rectify that situation!

  

First up is the Macharius Omega. I've always loved plasma weapons, gets hot rules and all. What better way to celebrate that than with a huge honkin' plasma blastgun!

  

 

And no imperial guard army is complete of course without including a Baneblade! This is, I believe, the seventh baneblade I've built over the years (and the eighth I've owned). Fair to say that I love this tank, and the plastic kit is a joy to assemble!

I'm still awaiting full discovery on how dire the upcoming pillaging of my finances is going to be, and sadly it's not inconceivable that the entire Mordian 7th army might have to go on the block to help offset the costs. That's going to be a last resort however - other armies I've done have come and gone (with startling frequency I'll admit) but the thought of having to put the 7th up really does not appeal. That said, the first salvo of miscellaneous sales have gone live, and there's a second wave of more esoteric findings from the depths of the Closet of Doom to come...

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spireguard Painted

Real Life(tm) continues to rampage though my free time, which has meant that over the last week I've barely put brush to miniature. However, I was able to polish off the Spireguard:

Overall I'm quite pleased with them! A friend of mine has suggested that I ought to paint the hieroglyphs to represent debris from recently-destroyed Tizcan architecture, which sounds good but I fear may make the bases too busy. For now I'm going to leave these models as-is, and perhaps try out a test base to see how it looks.

Unfortunately I've been levied with a huuuuuge financial burden that come out of left field, so expect to see large chunks of my miniature collection going up on the auction block soon to help offset the bills. Not what I thought I'd be doing this week, but needs must...

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spireguard painting in progress

Just a quick hit today - I decided to take a little break from working on the knights and took advantage of a relatively warm day to primer the Spireguard and set to painting!

Fairly straightforward, though updated slightly from the test models paint scheme. The greatcoats are red with a bone-colored interior, and the trooper's trousers, gloves and epaulets are done in a blue-white. A dab of gold here and there, and all that remains are some final fine detail and the bases!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Knight Paladins painting continues

A bit more forward motion on the knights!

Finished the trim on the second paladin and starting sketching in some livery ideas in pencil. The upper right shoulders will have a quartered yellow and white/red striped pattern, which will add a little spot color to the blue and yellow armor plates.

Was able to get the second paladin assembled as well. At this point it's all detail work and basing, but the heavy lifting is done!

I'd snapped a couple pics early on in the build process and apparently never posted them. Here's a shot of the GW knight as compared with the 28mm Dreamforge Leviathan Crusader. The Crusader is significantly larger, and pretty much cements my intention of running it as a proxy Warhound (which means I need to build a second arm weapon).

They're quite comparable to my BigDaddy/Blight Wheel knights, perhaps a little smaller but not appreciably so! Overall I have to say I'm in love with the GW kit, and I'm sincerely hoping that they (or more likely Forge World) end up doing some of the other variants. The codex does mention the Lancer and Castellan which gives me hope! Forge World has confirmed that the Knights will be included in their upcoming Heresy books, which I'm rather happy about. Pretty much assures that they're going to be doing upgrades/potential full kits!

...Man I'm gonna be broke!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Knight Paladin(s) panting in progress

Well it should not come as no surprise that I ended up picking up a couple of the new Knights! I started with a pair of Paladins, to get a feel for how the kits go together before I tried any serious conversion. While the kit allows for quite a bit of pose options with the upper torso, arms and head, the legs are more or less required to be built in the standard pose (unlike the Wraithknight which just requires a little peg removal to 'unlock' the legs). The ankles are essentially cast at an angle, so will require a bit of engineering to reposition.

I followed the suggestion to leave the armour plates off in order to allow easy painting of the under-structure, which does definitely speed things up. Super fast metal basecoat/wash/drybrush and it's 90% done!

I decided to go with the colors of House Krast (see minor rant below), as I thought the blue and yellow would set off nicely against the red and white of the Adeptus Mechanicus I planned to ally them to in my Heresy armies. 

The plan is to paint one up as a squire and one as a knight, and the third as-yet-unbuilt one as a senechal. The squire will be predominantly blue, the knight in alternating halves, and the senechal will be in a quartered pattern.

After getting the silver edging on one set of armor plates, I tacked them together to see how it looked - I quite like it! I still need to add in the various striping and iconography, which will add in a little spot color and flair.

...And now the minor rant. I was pleased to find the copy of the Knight Companion book I'd ordered when I stopped home for lunch today, and I was eager to read up on the expanded fluff on house Krast. Flipped to the relevant page and surprise! Their livery is now apparently red and white. What the?! The fluff all ties in well with the little tidbits that were previously alluded to in the old Epic materials, but there is absolutely no mention (that I can see) about the old paint scheme. They are mentioned as having sworn fealty to the Mechanicum during the Heresy, so I'm going to be justifying it as the blue and yellow being their original scheme prior to their re-dedication (when they would presumably change their colors to the new red and white). Problem solved!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spireguard units and heavy support squad built

Been a crazy week and not a lot of downtime to get some blogging in - My thoroughly ridiculous band is taking a breather from doing a ton of recording and we have the first live gig in almost six months coming up tomorrow, so we've all been practicing like madmen! That's not to say there's been no hobby activity though - A little while back the Egyptian-themed bases I'd ordered arrived, which meant I could finally begin the build process on the Thousand Sons!

I was really jazzed to finally assemble the first couple squads of Spireguard, and I have to say I'm thoroughly chuffed with how they've turned out. Can't wait to get some paint on 'em! Still need to build a platoon command squad, and I'm still vacillating on what the HQ choice will be. I figure I'm probably better served waiting until the new guard codex arrives, but I'm assuming that the basic infantry squad won't be changing too drastically.

While I was about it I pressed on and built the heavy support squad for the army - went with missile launchers partially due to the fact that the multiple munitions grant a fair bit of tactical flexibility in anti-horde, anti-vehicle and (at a pinch) anti-aircraft capability, but also as I like the idea of them hanging around near the Scorpius which sports the same general look.

In the meantime I've started working on a pair of Knights, with a third one in an early build process. Pics to come!

Orks - Deff Korps uv Krieg Halftrakks and Meganobz Painted

Due to Colorado's schizophrenic weather in the winter, we generally sees the temperature yo-yo between bitterly cold, and surprisingly warm. A couple days ago it was 60F and today it was 8F when I woke up. Gotta love it! During a 'warm snap' I managed to get some some more Orks finished and sealed:

First up is the unit of Meganobz. These were interesting to paint - there's almost too much detail on them, and I struggled to get some color into them. My plan to have the armored plates in the army painted grey sort of let me down on these guys, I think these models could really benefit from a more striking color scheme. If I do more Bad Moons in the future, I will definitely be getting another unit of these models!

I took several of your fine readers suggestions and tried to push the difference between the two halftrakks a bit further. I added on some various plates and detail bits, and I think it breaks up their outlines enough to keep them visually separate but thematically similar.

They got the same basic paint scheme as the earlier battlewagon, and will carry the two shoota boyz mobs into battle. Very near the end of this little boutique project, just the Blitza-bommer to go! Since it's dumped a couple inches of snow on us since these were completed, and a big box full of Eqyptian-themed bases arrived recently, expect to see a mess of Thousand Sons build pics to follow soon...