40k Exodite Eldar - Initial Wraithguard models built!

Some kits came in today that allowed me to get cracking on the first three test models for the Wraithguard units I have planned. I knew I wanted to build something that had similar design cues to the Wraithlord from earlier, which meant figuring out how meld similar Eldar bits onto the Kurnoth Hunter bodies. After a bit of dry fitting and trimming it all came together surprisingly well!

Started off by trimming down the "collar" from the Wraithguard kit, as I knew I wanted to continue the use of the Eldar heads mated onto the Sylvan bodies akin to the Wraithlord. Similarly, the neck was trimmed down a bit to accept the collar.

The D-Cannon was carefully trimmed away from the arm, leaving the hand and hose intact. I pulled a likely-looking candidate arm from the Hunters kit and trimmed out the sword.

I found a reasonably straight left arm to match up with the D-Cannon's other fist and then did a bunch of dryfitting until I was reasonably sure all the pieces would go together (with the addition of a little greenstuff here and there of course).

All the dry-fitting and pondering over the various bits paid off, and the initial test model ended up pretty much matching the vision I had in my head, and fit together surprisingly well - Better than I had expected, for sure!

After getting my eye in on the first model, the next two virtually flew together! I do have a bit of a conundrum however - The Kurnoth Hunter models come three to a box, while the Wraithguard are squads of five. That naturally means that I am more or less obligated to make fifteen of them, right? Considering doing five each of D-Cannon, D-Scythe, and twin Wraithblade-armed models...

Heresy Era Sons of Horus - Rhino chassis "Off the factory floor"

Just a quick hit this morning - Realized I hadn't posted up the recent in-progress shots of the Sons of Horus Rhino-based vehicles I've been working on. Sadly it's been really cold of late (what with it being winter and all) so I haven't had a change to get anything spray sealed for fear of mucking it up due to temperature. Nonetheless I have gotten the trio of Rhinos to the point where they're ready to receive waterslides and weathering!

A quick pic of the three variant turrets, allowing the tanks to be used as a trio of regular Rhinos with a pintle-mounted Multimeltas, Whirlwinds, and/or a Damocles command tank (or a mix thereof). Really rather happy with how they're coming along so far, and am looking forward to adding some legion symbols and some muck and scrapes to give 'em a bit more personality. So far, so good!

40k Exodite Eldar - Rise of the Bark Eldar...

A terrible pun, I know. Couldn't wait to get some paint on the models and try and see whether my hands could do what my brain was picturing!

One should always use a big centerpiece model as a tester, right? Actually started with the Branchlord for a reason, it had the widest range of textures and colors in my head that I needed to get down onto the miniature. I knew that the wood, bark and wraithbone would all be very neutral colors, so the addition of the yellow on the hives and red/orange on the leaves warmed it up somewhat. From a color theory perspective that meant it ought to get some purple/violets and blue/green tones as complimentary colors, so the beetles got the purple while the waystones and other creepy crawlies get the green.

The base got a slightly different brown shade from the rest of the wood, and then a fair bit of static grass and leaf litter was added to bring the colors up a bit and give the model a bit more 'pop'. All in all I'm pretty pleased with the scheme and I'm looking forward to applying the colors to the other models!

As part of the planning process I broke out the trusty painting chart and have been trying out various units to make a ~2000pt force. Still have 100 points or so to play with so there's some wiggle room as inspirations strikes. Put in an order for the kits to make up the next few models - A Spiritseer, a Warlock Conclave and a trio of counts-as Vypers. Much more to come!

40k Exodite Eldar - Wait, what?

You ever have one of those ideas that just won't quite let go of ya? Ever since the Sylvaneth line dropped, I have always thought that the Treelord model would make for a great Exodite-themed Avatar of Khaine. I mean, just look at it!

Er, yeah - That may be one that I bought and built over the weekend. I've been mulling over how to do an Exodite army for years and thanks to a wonderful Christmas gift I was able to pick one up. Of course, that got me in the store and suddenly a couple more boxes sort of accidentally got purchased.

This included a kitbashed counts-as Wraithlord comprised of the standard kit, the Drycha Hamadreth kit, and a fair bit of greenstuff. This got me thinking about the general aesthetic I wanted to go with and I'm going to veer away slightly from the usual Lizardman and Dark Elf bits and use more of the High/Wood Elf and Sylvan kits. Wood and bugs instead of stone and dinosaurs - Maybe a little unconventional, but it seemed like it could be a fun way to go!

As the plan is to build a force that is a direct counts-as craftworld force, I knew I needed some guardians. I'd done the Black Ark Corsairs method with their lizardskin cloaks a little while back for the dark eldar army and didn't want to just repeat that, so after a little consideration settled on the Shadow Warriors kit as a basis for what I'm calling "Glade Guardians" (oh so poncy, just like the pointy eared gits tend to get). Haven't built up a heavy weapons platform for them quite yet as i think it ought to be mounted on the back of a beetle or spider of some variety. Gotta find the right critters!

As far as it goes, they went together pretty easily. One of the gotchas is that both the Eldar legs and the Shadow Warrior torsos have sockets, but a little ball of greenstuff and they fit together nicely. Any unsightly joins are covered by the equipment belt off the guardian sprue, and with the addition of some bugs and critters here and there they read as guardians but with a naturalistic bent which I think fits the force pretty well!

Still penciling together lists and pondering further kitbash combos to represent other units, but I do know I am going to keep it to a tidy little 1500 point force. Each unit is going to be comprised of two or three kits, so things will have a tendency to get pricey real quick if I just go whole hog on the project. Still, these have been a black to build so far and I'm looking forward to building more crazy Bark Eldar. Hah!

Inq28 - Eisenhorn and friends!

Late last year I rolled the dice on ordering some models from an Etsy shop called Artel W. Miniatures that caught my fancy. Generally speaking I wasn't expecting too much being the first time ordering from a tiny caster in the Russian federation so I was prepared to be disappointed. Turns out in the end I was not!

First off, the miniatures did take nearly six weeks to arrive which is on the long side for these sorts of products, but not completely out of the ordinary, and to be fair there was the Christmas and New Years in there. Once the package arrived I was eager to get stuck in but was greeted by a rather cool surprise inside the shipping envelope - the box was wrapped in parchment, bound in twine and sealed with a rather cool wax seal. I have to say I was rather charmed by that little extra detail!

Rather eagerly I set to building the models - They came with plastic bases but thought they deserved some more interesting resin bases. The models that caught my eye initially were totally-not Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, the psychic blank Alizebeth Bequin, Chastener Godwyn Fischig and the Daemonhost Cherubael. Holy moly are the models fiddly, but really dig how they came together!

(Edit: They've subsequently released several other models, including one called "The Distaff", leading me to believe that what I took to be Bequin when I originally ordered her is in fact Patience Kys.)

(Edit to the edit: Apparently they've updated some of the models names on the shop since I placed the order back in November. It's apparently supposed to be Elena Derosa from DOW2, but personally I think she'll make a perfect Patience Kys anyway.)

The second batch of models that I couldn't pass up included Inquisitor Covenant, Commissar Ciaphas Cain (Hero of the Imperium), and his loyal dogsbody Jurgen - Interestingly, also a Pariah like Bequin (albeit far more fragrant).

(Edit: As Jarvalex points out in the comments below, what I had taken to be Covenant is in fact a pre-Thracian-Disaster Inquisitor Ravenor, which makes sense!)

Since I placed the order they've released several other new models that I plan on ordering. While the shipping was long, the sculpts are beautiful and I look forward to painting them up!

Heresy Era Sons of Horus - Anvilus Dreadclaw painted!

Just a quick hit this evening - Finally got a chance to upload a fair few pics of some work done over the last week or two, starting off with a Dreadclaw for the Sons of Horus!

I ended up picking up a trio of them ostensibly for the Sons of Horus, but upon further reflection two of them are going to be held in reserve for some future project. As I'd done a whole drop army with the previous Thousand Sons I didn't want to just repeat that. However, it'll be useful to have one in the SoH force to ferry in a dreadnought or cheeky unit of terminators!

Pretty straightforward scheme, gave the ground spikes and undercarriage a little weathering, but the model is so 'busy' that there's not really much of a place where I thought any waterslide transfers would look good. So, calling it done for now!

Necromunda - Deadbolt's Derelict Corridors build begins

With the holidays behind me, I'm finally able to get back on the hobby horse and start putting together some of the goodies that arrived for Christmas! Figured I'd lead off the new year with another terrain project - Some MDF wall sections designed to work with the floor tiles in the new Necromunda set from Death Ray Designs!

Over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, they had a heck of a sale on their terrain kits, with the Deadbolt Derelict sets going for almost 30% off, so I snapped up a couple sets. Due to the volume of orders however they didn't arrive at my place until after Christmas. Nevertheless I eagerly unwrapped them and started punching out approximately one zillion little MDF chunks.

Lesson learned from my previous foray into MDF work, use the proper glue! Previously I'd gone with superglue (not knowing any better) which was very brittle and didn't stick well. Following some recommendations online I picked up a couple bottles of Titebond II wood glue, and have to say that my experience with it during this project has been a revelation. Highly recommended!

Really impressed with how the kit is designed to fit together. It's a mix of cross-lap and tab-and-slot joins which all fit together beautifully with the barest minimum of sanding/trimming. While they do all press fit together, some glue is definitely needed to hold everything in place - they will not simply hold together under their own power.

  

One of the more mind-numbing portions of the build is all the little detailing work - each short wall section requires a 9-piece detail on either side. They fit together well once I got a handle on the build order, but boy does it get tedious...

...Especially when you have to repeat it 20 times!

  

The central columns were a comparative breeze to assemble, just 8 wall sections, a base and a top. Easy peasy! Which is good...

...Because there's 24 of them to do! You'll note the slots in the sides, which are designed to allow the wall sections to hook in place in a rather clever way so inadvertent bumping of the table won't toss wall sections around like dominoes.

  

In addition to the short wall sections there are also a further 24 two-wide wall sections with various detailing - some with just two-sets of X-shaped details like on the short sections...

  

Some have vents in one panel, which should look neat with various slime oozing out of them as part of the painting process.

...And some have little hatches built in. Thank the Maker that the doors are just single-piece additions. Of course, there's still approximately half a zillion little X-shaped detail panels to install. Eurgh.

 

Before I went completely mad installing all the details I wanted to see how the walls looked on the boards and overall I am well pleased. Interestingly, the kit is technically short a couple columns to completely populate the boards, but a spare short wall section fills the gap well enough. I'm not sure it that's a conscious design decision on their part, or if I may have gotten a mis-pack - it does seem as though I had a bunch of leftover walls and not enough columns, perhaps there was a sheet swap somewhere along the way? In any case I am really jazzed about the kit for use in both Necromunda as well as Zone Mortalis on the Heresy front. Good stuff!


...Now if only it would warm up enough that I could get some primer on 'em!