Heresy-Era Thousand Sons - Spartan lumbers towards completion, and some more build time

Took a little time and laid in some hull markings on the Spartan yesterday evening, the legion symbol and some decorative text on the upper hatch, and continuing the theme from the Vanquishers, an eldritch rune on the side doors.

 

At this point I think it's ready for weathering - time to break out the sponges!

  

Along with the rotor cannons and other spireguard-y bits in the box from Victoria Lamb a few weeks back was another fun piece of kit that can be used to turn a Taurox into a 4x4. I had no idea how tiny the taurox was, for some reason I had this vision that it was battlewagon-sized. Not even remotely, it turns out! I do think it'll be a fun little Centaur counts-as for the Geno Five-Two army I'm in the process of collecting bits for...

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Assault Captain Besenmut build complete!

Before calling it a night yesterday I pulled out Captain Besenmut, added some bits to the victim model to Wolf him up a bit and then took a whack at the greenstuff effects. If I was a smart man, I would have ordered up some armorcast battlefield effects and just used those, but noooooo. Had to do it the hard way!

  

I'll be the first to admit I'm no expert GS sculptor but I'm reasonably happy with how these turned out. I can't get better unless I practice, after all! Basically just did a GIS for "sculpted muzzle flash" and tried to reproduce the basic look. Added an exit splash through the rear of the jump pack and the gore spurt from the eye socket by using a pair of tweezers to sort of 'pluck' at a little blob of GS until it started looking right, then left it to cure overnight. Now all I need is a day warm enough to primer - not happening any time soon it seems, as it's predicted to be in the single digits for most of the next week!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spartan painting in progress

I hadn't been feeling the painting mojo recently (hence the flurry of building) but managed to get back in the saddle over the last couple days! With the Las Vegas Open rapidly approaching I needed to come up with a list and finish off whatever unpainted models I may need to do. Figured I'd start with a big one and attacked the Spartan!

 

Started off with Vallejo Dark Flesh and just went to town getting the base red on it. ...And my hands and the desk.

 

Next up was successive drybrushes of Red Gore and Blood Red, followed by an all-over wash of Carroburg Crimson, at which point I called it a session and let it completely dry overnight.

 

This morning I blocked in all of the metal parts in Gunmetal, and tidied things up a bit.

 

I blocked in the areas that would be bone-colored in Leather Brown, then gave the tracks a Strong Tone wash and the weapons and engines a Dark Tone wash. Had to let it sit for an hour or so for the washes to dry at this point. Lunchtime and chores await!

 

Once things were squared away and lunch was consumed, it was time to block in the bone color. Many thin coats were required to get any semblance of smooth coverage, the paint just wasn't behaving today. Think it's time to get a new bottle.

 

The lascannon coils got the Ice Blue/Guilliman Blue treatment, and then came the interminable rivet-painting session. It does add a needed bit of gold to the scheme, though! Next up will be laying on the hull markings - the side doors are going to get some runic script similar to what I'd done on the Vanquishers, and I'm trying to decide if I should do a bone-colored nova on the red front top hatch, or a red nova on the bone colored armor band just in front of the heavy bolters. Thoughts?

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Assault Captain Besenmut build in progress

While I've done some painting over the holiday (pics to follow soon), I did get a wild hair to recreate a model from my previous version of the Thousand Sons, Assault Captain Besenmut:

  

Still got a bit of greenstuff work to do - going to do some muzzle flare and shattering armour at either end of the shots. The previous version just had one wire holding the models together so it was a little wobbly - Decided to go with two shots on this model to double up on the connection points.

  

Naturally the downed marine will end up being a Space Wolf, still need to find some bits to wolf him up a bit. Overall I'm pretty happy with the posing thus far!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spireguard Shadowsword build complete!

Couple little packages in the mail when I got home from work today, the missing leg piece for the Reaver (pics of that to come), and the targeters for the Shadowsword. As I didn't have much hobby time this evening, I settled on clipping out and gluing on those rather than dive into the major construction project that the Reaver will undoubtedly be!

Building out the targeters took all of ten minutes, not super exciting but good to get a little bit of hobby time in. They could stand to be just a little bigger perhaps, but overall I'm quite happy with how they turned out!

They're predicting another 50F day tomorrow which is on the bottom end of what I consider viable primering temperature, fingers crossed as they're saying it's going to be a winter wonderland for the week following Christmas - hope to get the builds from the last few posts primered so I'll have some stuff to paint over the holiday break while it's chilly!

Heresy Era Mechanicum - All about that base...

Sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist.

With the holidays upon us the work year draws to a close and I actually am getting a few much-needed days off starting Wednesday. Much needed after getting emergency panic texts at 4am two days in a row, that's for certain - Ugh. On the up side, after work today while picking up some last minute gifts I did manage to find a wooden disc suitable to make a base for the Reaver, score!

Dug up an old crashed Aquila Lander from the depths of the Closet of Doom and started fiddling around with potential arrangements, definitely want to get a walking pose out of it - Still awaiting the missing thigh piece before I can really nail down the final leg positioning, but it's on the way and I hope to have it in hand by the end of the week (holiday shipping mayhem permitting). Been slowly getting all the parts cleaned up in preparation for assembly, and scheming on how best to allow for weapon swaps on the beast, hence the big ol' magnets! I'm finding that my earlier statement of it being surprisingly lightweight may have been a bit premature. Got the main carapace assembled and let's just say I don't think even those magnets are going to be sufficient...

More pics to follow soon!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spartan build complete, and a Veletaris Storm Section to boot!

Ended up getting called in to work at an ungodly hour this morning, so while awaiting some server restarts I polished off the build on the Spartan!

I'd left off last night with the application of THE CLAMPS. Another inherited piece of kit from Dave, I'd always intended to pick up a set of my own but never got around to it. They made holding the inner hull and the track assemblies together for gluing a snap! As mentioned earlier the upper deck of the hull needed a quick bath in hot water but was wrestled into shape with minimal cursing.

Turns out at that point I was closer to the finish line than I'd anticipated! All that remained was to attach the engine/exhaust stacks and build out the quad lascannon sponsons (magnetized for easy transport and storage).

Overall I'm quite pleased with how the build turned out. I'd heard tons of horror stories about the construction, and to be fair many of the parts were quite warped due to somewhat improper storage techniques. However, with the application of some boiling water courtesy of the ol' electric kettle (and a bowl of ice water to quickly re-set the resin), everything fit together surprisingly well!

After futzing around with the Spartan, I wanted to build something a little quick and easy - I'd gotten a package from Victoria Lamb earlier in the week, so I put together the Veletaris storm squad with rotor cannons I'd been gathering bits for! Pretty happy with how they turned out. Since I had a couple leftover sergeants from earlier lasrifle sections (finished before we found out they come in 20-man squads), all I had to worry abut were the 9 basic models. To differentiate them from the vanilla lasrifle sections a bit they all got backpacks to help bulk them out a bit (besides, they need somewhere to carry extra ammo)!

Now it's supposed to be almost 60F today (after yesterday's threatened snowfall) so I'm hoping to be able to get these primered - quite looking forward to painting them!