Post Heresy Thousand Sons - Rubric Marines painted

Not quite Heresy-related, but Thousand Sons nonetheless! I'd put together a unit of Rubric Marines using the russian kit ages ago and after getting the blue on 'em they've more or less just sat on the painting shelves gathering dust. Figured I'd pull 'em out and finish 'em up as a capstone on all the red-and-gold Thousand Sons I've done over the last several months!

I went with a shiny neon green in the eye sockets, and to represent their inferno bolts as a nice contrast color against the cooler blue tones. Their helmet crests got the standard yellow striping, which was carried through onto the flames on the Sorcerer's robes as well.

The rear shot shows off the rather cool chaos backpacks that come with the kit - they're a bit TOO chaos-y for use with their Heresy-era brethren, but I wanted to at least use 'em on one unit! I'm intrigued to see whether FW will put rules for them in the book, I would imagine not as the Rubric occurred well towards the end of the Heresy/beginning of the Scouring. But if they do, I'll be prepared!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Sorcerers and plasma support squad painted

Was going through and organizing the photo albums on my 40k repository site and I realized that I hadn't posted pics from the Sorcerers and plasma squad yet - so hey, free post! The first sorcerer on deck is Khalophis, captain of the 5th fellowship and member of the Pyrae cult. I didn't want to go with red flames as I felt they'd just blend into the reds of the armour, so in keeping with my 'keep the color count down' theory green warpfire it is!

I'm not particularly happy with how the gold works against the white loincloth, it's something that's been bugging me about the scheme on all of the character models I've done thus far - thinking I'm going to make them red instead, which should 'pop' against the white a little better. I want to try some OSL, but I'm just terrified of mucking it up. With all the washes and whatnot, any over-spatter will be essentially impossible to correct. That and I'm not entirely sure which shade(s) of green and in what order/intensity I need to be using (though I have a good working understanding of where to apply it and where not to apply it). More research is required!

 

Next up is Phael Toron, captain of the 7th fellowship and member of the Raptora cult - He gets to stomp around in the one leftover suit of Terminator armour I had from the 9-man squad, and I tried to tart him up a bit with the force axe and the beaky helm (as a nod to his cult affiliation). It was after the fact that I realized he's in the exact same pose as the sergeant in the terminator squad. Doh! I'm thinking I'm going to have to figure out a way to bodge together a transparent telekinetic shield effect attached to his outstretched hand. Even more research required!

Last but not least is plasma support squad Jafari. I realized a ten man squad would be over 300 points, which is a bit much for a unit in power armour that has a tendency to be just as dangerous to itself as it does the enemy. This marks the completion of all of the Thousand Sons infantry in the army!

Still a metric boatload of Spireguard infantry to go, though - not out of the woods yet! I went through and rearranged the guard units to match up with the current rumours and photos from the FW events. Looks like the "lasrifle sections" are a base 20-man squad (which seems reasonable what with that new transport mentioned to carry 20 men), so once the bits showed up in the mail I started building, only to realize that somewhere along the way I miscalculated and I was three sets of legs and a whole mess of heads short. Orders from Secret Weapon and Perry Miniatures are winging their way to me as we speak though! The army and weapons arrived from Anvil Industries, so I'm hoping to be able to spend a little time building the Adsecularis units over the weekend (though their heads have yet to arrive)...

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Feast of Blades is go!

For the last couple years I've had the pleasure of attending Feast of Blades in Denver (one of the many benefits of living in beautiful Colorado) - two years ago I went down as a spectator and got in a pick up game with the illustrious Miniature Tim, and last year my buddy Dave and I went down to participate in the massive multi-day apocalypse game. This year however they're doing a Heresy tournament, so how could I resist taking the Thousand Sons into battle?

The event is set at 1750 points, so after a fair bit of back and forth list-building I've come up with the above. As the Prospero book keeps getting pushed back (recent scuttlebutt suggests that it's likely going to be book 6 or 7 at this point), I'm essentially stuck building a list using the 'generic' Age of Darkness lists. So in order to drive home the fact that the Thousand Sons are the masters of sorcery, what better way to lead off than with a trio of sorcerers! A couple blocks of tac marines backed up with a unit of terminators, plus some Javelin land speeders, a couple Predator Executioners and a Scorpius and I managed to hit 1750 on the nose!

Pulled the models out and snapped a family pic of the army. 1750 doesn't go too far! I'm under no illusions that the army will do well, or be even remotely competitive, but with all the sorcerer's shenanigans, it should at least be entertaining. I figure at least one of them is going to be sucked into the warp every game!

I plan on taking a bunch of pictures while I'm at the event, win or lose it's going to be a fun time - If you are planning on attending Feast of Blades stop by and say hello!

Heresy Era Mechanicum - Adsecularis build begins

The mechanicum lists that FW has put out thus far are rather interesting, for Troops I find they're either terrifying mechanical death machines or nearly defenseless rabble. I've done a fair few of the former, so now it's time for the latter! Now, I love the tech thrall models FW have done, but I find their poses all a bit too same-y for my tastes when it comes down to having huge swathes of them on the table. I thought I'd try my hand at building some of my own from various bits instead!

The tech-thralls come in units of up to 20, so I figured 40 of 'em would be the way to go. Interestingly I don't have to worry about them taking up a bunch of the army's points - the cost for all 40 is a whopping 130 points! The legs and torsos are from Blight Wheel miniatures, from their sino-russian range.

  

For arms and weapons, I'm going with some cybernetics and laslocks from Anvil Industries. I haven't used their bits before, but I've read lots of good feedback from folks who have. Quite looking forward to giving 'em a try! For a little extra detail I ordered up some of Anvil's small power plants as well. Not sure how the scale will work out, but if not for these, I'm sure I'll find a use for 'em!

I'm planning on using the "Lens Screen" heads from Ramshackle games, as I really like how they'll stylistically tie in the Adsecularis to the Thallax's heads!

I couldn't resist picking up some of their "Iron Brothers" heads as well, Not sure that I'll use 'em for the mechanicum, they may make for some interesting headswaps for some Prosperine Spireguard Stormtroopers! Sadly all these bits are coming from the other side of the planet, so I've got a bit of a wait ahead before I can see how they all work together...

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - More HQ for the Sons!

Real Life(tm) has been taking up most of my time of late, so I've narrowed my sights down to doing some character models, where I can sneak in a half hour here and there and still feel like I accomplished something. To that end, Captain Sokhem Vithara has been getting all the brushtime I've had over the last week!

 

Rather pleased with how he turned out. It was suggested that the plastic plasma pistol ought to be swapped out with a heresy variant, which really helped change the look. As far as painting him went, the silver on the helmet and chain got a blue wash and a silver highlight rather than the usual boltgun metal/black wash/boltgun metal, which I think helps set it apart from the weapon, but also subtly complements the blue of the powersword/cables/plasma pistol. I'd tried a couple colors for the sash, but ended up settling on the white as all the other colors just looked too jarring - when in doubt, I find its best to try and stick with three main colors on a model!

As a reward for painting some stuff recently I indulged in some build time - The current iteration of the list I'm taking to Feast of Blades next month includes a trio of sorcerers (in lieu of a proper Ksons list from FW, I figure it'd at least be fluffy to run a lot of psykers) and as I only had two, a third was in order! I had a leftover Praetor in artificer armour that acted as the basis for the model - The original loincloth was cut away and replaced with one from the russian set, and the arms were replaced with some basic MkIII's (going to save the archaeotech pistol for something else). The khopesh-style staff is from Kromlech, while the helmet and shoulder pads are also from the russian kits. To help sell that he's a sorcerer I rooted around in the Closet of Doom for some Empire Flagellants and nicked a flame from one of their torches to represent some warpfire. Bolt pistol mag-locked to the thigh plate and job's a good 'un! I'm rather happy with how this one turned out, and can't wait to get some paint on him - In fact I HAVE to get some paint on him in order to use him at the tourney coming up on the 12th! Eep!

Giveaway results! ...And some old Ad-Mech goodness.

I wanted to say thank you all once again for all the kind words and encouragement over the years, and the outpouring of comments and congratulations on the 500th post was truly humbling. You folks are awesome, and I'm truly glad that my inane scribblings have provided entertainment and inspiration! I went through the list of commenters and fed them into the randomization cogitator to determine who gets the Rogue Trader rule book and the winner is...

Craig Bowles!

Drop me an email at moonlight (at) cold-moon.com with your address and I'll pop the book in the mail to ya!

In other news, I finally finished up some models I've been sort of dilly-dallying over for quite a while. A whole mess of old models in fact, forming the basis of the Magos Covenant for the ever-growing Taghmata Omnissiah force.

The majority of them are from the old Skullz promotional set, plus a couple old metal tech-priests that had been lurking on the shelves for ages. At this point there's actually a viable painted army taking shape, with HQ and Troops models completed - still quite a lot to do though! I recently ordered up a mess of bits from various companies (Anvil, MaxMini, Blight Wheel and more) to come up with a couple large units of Tech-Thrall Adsecularis - the basic cannon-fodder rabble that gladly give their lives for the glory of the Omnissiah. Forge World has also been showing off a bunch of new Mechanicus models that have my wallet cringing in fear... Might be an expensive 4th quarter!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Plasma Support Squad and Terminator Sorcerer

Not a lot of hobby time overall this weekend but I did manage to sneak in an hour's worth of build time and put together the plasma-armed support squad for the Thousand Sons. Pretty straightforward, was thinking about doing a full 10-man squad but the unit gets ridiculously expensive at that point. Figure 5 is just about right!

I've also been poring over the army lists to see what I can come up with for the Feast of Blades event coming up next month. Seeing as the actual special rules for the Thousand Sons aren't going to be available for quite some time, I'm thinking that there's one thing that really makes them stand out, and that's the use of Sorcerers. Considering running a trio of 'em for the tournament, two in power armour attached to the tac squads, and one in terminator armour to accompany squad Phosis into battle.

Enter Malagor Auramagma! I had a few leftover terminator bits from the earlier squad build, and kitted him out with a curved axe-head that hadn't been included in the unit build previously, as well as one of the bird-style helmets to help him stand out. Quite looking forward to painting him soon (assuming Real Life(tm) lets up a bit)!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Summoned Daemons

I've been dabbling with various psychic loadouts for the Thousand Sons, and one that sort of appeals is Malefic Daemonology - if they're gonna be portrayed as traitors and heretics, may as well go full bore! My hope is that when the Prospero book is released they'll come out with tutelary models but in the meantime it's just good old fashioned daemons of Tzeentch The Primordial Creator - The Primaris power grants either a 10-strong unit of Pink Horrors or 3 Flamers, and as I am really not a fan of the new plastic Horrors (and haven't had much luck finding the old metal ones for a non-exorbitant price), a trio of Flamers it is! ...Not a hardship, I love the new plastic Flamer models! The Incursion power summons 3 Screamers, which I had on hand from the stalled Tzeentch Renegades 40k army. Easy peasy!

I've had a box of the new Flamers and Screamers lurking in the Closet of Doom for ages, so after a quick delve and build session, I set to painting 'em up! Started off with a basecoat of Vallejo Shadow Grey.

Once that was on, I tried my hand at a blend to blue in one direction and to white in the other, so the whole model ended up with a cool-toned blue-to-white transition. ...And a lot of paint on my fingers!

Next was blocking in the details which helps to clean up a lot of the slop from the blending stage. Base of golden yellow over white for the flames, and bone white over leather brown for the teeth and spikes.

After that it was time to work on the two units separately - the flames on the Flamers got a drybrush of hot orange, followed by red gore on the very tips. The teeth were done up in the leather brown and bonewhite as they were on the Screamers, and I tried to pick out the eyes in white as well - I'm not entirely happy with it though. Might go with a violet or possibly yellow (though that might just end up looking like more flames).

Quite happy with the screamers - the fade worked rather well, and the yellow eyes ended up suitably creepy! Beyond these critters it looks like there's a need to build a herald for the Sacrifice power, thinking I may use the Blue Scribes model that I have for that - alternately I might opt pick up the Changeling model, I've always wanted to paint one! Finally the Possession power requires there to be a Lord of Change in the mix - I have an old metal one from waaaaaaay back in the day that I'm considering repainting, but I'm hearing rumours that we may be seeing a new plastic model which would be fantastic. Alternately I'm thinking that a plastic daemon prince kitted out as though the sorcerer suffered a particularly bad case of the Flesh Change could work too!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Thanatar painting complete

Managed to sneak in an hour or painting last night and snapped some pics this evening after I got home. Thanatar ready for deployment!

  

Not a whole lot of change from the previous post, got the shading on the gold and blue, managed to get the sealant on in a break in the surprisingly rainy weather, then applied the gloss coat to the faceplate. I'm thinking that it needs a little battle damage/weathering, now that I'm looking at it. I do like the 'fresh off the factory floor' look though - the tech priests would endeavor to keep their charges in peak condition, after all!

Pulled out all the Castellax and Thallax for a little Legio Cybernetica family portrait - quite pleased with how they all tie together!

Adeptus Mechanicus - Thanatar Painting begins!

The drummer in my ridiculous band's wife just had their second child, so my usual sunday afternoon schedule of drinking beer and making a racket band practice has been curtailed for the next several months. That means a few more hours of painting time a week instead! Since I had all the reds and golds out from working on the Thousand Sons, I decided I'd make a start of the Thanatar:

Had to pull out the Castellax to ensure I matched up with the existing scheme, which worked out pretty well - the Thanatar is essentially just an overgrown Castellax. Trying to carry through the "shiny black faceplates" as I've done on the Castellax and Thallax, as well. Still plenty of work remaining but the heavy lifting is done at this point!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Seeker and Veteran Squads painted

Had a quiet day on Saturday so in between doing a mess of laundry and whatnot I managed to get a fair bit of painting in!

I really like how the Veterans turned out - all the extra scrollwork and detail on the armour, plus the vaned helmets and loincloths really help sell that this is a veteran unit. I went with bone-colored helmets for these guys, and ended up liking it so much that I pulled all the other sergeants from the squads and painted their helmets in bone as well.

The Seeker squad is pretty straightforward - they're not full-blown veterans, but are the sharpshooters of the legion (what with them being BS5), so they got the fancy shoulder pads to help them stand out. All the weapon housings ended up getting done in bone on the vets and seekers, and think I'll go back and paint all of the various bolters and bolt pistols in the old squads to match (they're currently just done up in shaded metal).

  

While I was sorting through the bits to see what was left, I ran across the new commissar model I'd picked up - a simple headswap and I think we have a passable Captain Sokhem Vithara to lead the Spireguard! Getting antsy to see the new Conquest book, there's a lot of stuff I'd like to do with both the Spireguard and the Geno Five-Two, but I have to refrain from building too much until I can see how the unit compositions differ from the current-era guard!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Veteran and Seeker Squads painting begins

As I'd mentioned in the previous post, I'm nearing the finish line on the Thousand Sons but that's not to say I'm shelving 'em just yet! Over the last couple mornings before work the Veterans and the Seekers have gotten their reds done, and are now ready for the detailing process:

That got me thinking - I hadn't updated the painting chart for the KSons recently, and was quite happy to see that I was able to turn a large swath of it green! The intent was to stick with an army that fit the Age of Darkness FOC, so 3 HQ, 1 Lord of War, 4 Elites, 2-6 Troops, 3 Fast Attack, and 3 Heavy Support. I'm leaving a couple slots open assuming that FW will release models when the Prospero book finally drops, Magnus and Ahriman of course, and I'm crossing my fingers for some Sekhmet Terminators and Disc Riders. We'll see! The Spireguard are being built along the same lines - as an Allied force they only get 1 each of HQ, Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support, and 2 Troops. Hopefully by the end of the year Conquest will have been released and I can really dig into finishing up the Imperial Army section of the force (as well as dive into the Geno Five-Two).

In other news, Feast of Blades is rapidly approaching (10th-12th of October), and they're doing a Heresy tournament which I plan on attending. The event runs on Sunday and is set at 1750 points, so I banged together a quick list based primarily on what's painted already. The only outstanding models I'll need to finish are a pair of Deimos-pattern Rhinos (winging their way to me from FW even as we speak) and the erstwhile sergeant from the Veteran squad to act as the squad leader when I break the usual 20-man blob into two 10-man tac squads. Got about a month to finish up two Rhinos and a sergeant, as well as finish up the weathering on the other tanks - should be doable!

Fully plan on getting annihilated in the tourney as I'll basically be running a vanilla heresy army - will be tough to stand up to legions who have had their fancy rules and units released, but it should be a blast nonetheless!

Post #500 Giveaway and a look to the future!

This marks the 500th post to the blog, which calls for a bit of a celebration! As many of you know, I've been playing 40k since its inception back in the late 80s and most of my hobby mojo is based on the old fluff (the core of the Mordian 7th is drawn from the old red-cover 40k Compendium) and game systems such as Adeptus Titanicus and the original Epic Space Marine (where my love for heresy-era gaming took root). In an effort to share my love of old school 40k gaming, I'm giving away one of my soft-cover 1st Ed Rogue Trader Rulebooks to mark the occasion:

Pretty simple, if you're a follower of my blog and leave a comment below, your name will be entered into the drawing which will take place on September 15th. Couldn't be easier!

Figured it was a good time to look at what's on the horizon hobby-wise as well. I have to admit that my interest in 40k has been on the wane for quite some time, and I've been giving serious consideration to selling off the current iteration of the Mordian 7th either as one big apocalypse army set, or in smaller lots (possibly keeping a few units for sentimental reasons). It's been sitting unused in the Closet of Doom for well over a year, and I have no real plan to play them any time soon. I've long said that 'the building and the painting is more fun than the having', and besides if I get rid of 'em, that gives me an excuse to re-create them once again in the future, right?

Now that's not to say that I'm looking to get out of the hobby entirely, by any means! My interest in Heresy-era gaming has never been stronger, and I have been up to my ears in the Thousand Sons for months. Sadly, I'm reaching the finish line with them, and they're going to be shelved for a bit while we await the release of the Prospero book. I've more or less built all of the 'generic' units I can for the army, and I want to hold off on the rest until there's actual rules and models (cannot WAIT to see what FW does for Magnus the Red)!

So that means I have a few other projects in line to keep me occupied. As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm planning on a Geno Five-Two Chiliad army with some Alpha Legion allies, and since I have to wait for Conquest to arrive later this year to do the guard portion, I got started on a test unit of Alpha Legion over the past long weekend!

Didn't really take many in progress pics on these, but they started off with a Jade Green basecoat, followed by 3-4 passes with a Guilliman Blue glaze. This is the first time I'd tried a controlled multi-application of a glaze/wash to tint a color overall rather than just using them for a one-shot shade, and while it was very time consuming (had to wait an hour between coats to let the glaze dry) I quite like the end result!

 

But that's not all! I always have a force of Ad-Mech lurking in one form or another on the shelves, and with the most recent book Extermination, there is finally a rather flexible set of army rules and a bunch of cool models, such as the Thanatar that I picked up at Gencon and assembled over the holiday weekend as well.

 

Taking a cue from Eye of Error, I went with the 'unfolded petals' on the plasma mortar, and spent an inordinate amount of time hot-water bending the ammo feeds to get the mauler bolt cannons into a bit more of a dynamic pose. Quite looking forward to getting some paint on this beast!

 

...And speaking of painting a beast, over the past weekend I managed to get the Castigator painted up to the point where I could get a coat of sealant on it in preparation for waterslide transfers and weathering! Tried out a green on the power sword initially but found it looked a little off-balance so I went with an alternate blue such that it both ties together with, and stands apart from, the main blue of the armour plates. So, between the work to finish off the Castigator, a couple remaining Thousand Sons units, some planned Alpha Legion units, and a mess of Ad Mech there's plenty to keep me occupied for the foreseeable future, no doubt about that!

When all is said and done however, I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you readers out there. Your comments, suggestions and encouragement over the years has been instrumental in getting me to this point, and I am always humbled by all your kind words. Cheers everyone, and here's to another 500 posts in the future!

Be sure to leave a comment (and be a follower of the blog) to be entered for a chance to win the Rogue Trader rulebook!