Heresy Era Thousand Sons - (Counts-as) Skyhunter Jetbikes in progress

Did a little kitbashing over the weekend - One of my favorite aspects of the Tzeenchian lore are the (admittedly somewhat downplayed in recent editions) Disc Riders, and I loved the mention of the single-man anti-grav chariots the Thousand Sons rode around on Prospero - thought it was a nice bit of foreshadowing. I've done some disc riders for an old Tzeentch Renegades force back in the day, and thought it could be fun to try and put something together to represent them for the Heresy-era Thousand Sons as well! Still very much a work in progress but thought I'd show what's been done so far...

The basic idea came from the description in A Thousand Sons which described the skimmer as an open-backed chariot-looking sort of conveyance, so the basis of the conversion is a high-elf chariot from the fantasy range which I felt carried a little bit of the Egyptian look. I clipped off the axles for the wheels and trimmed and re-positioned the yokes(?) as sort of anti-grav vanes on the sides.

The Skyhunter Jetbikes that I'm intending these to stand in for are each armed with a Heavy Bolter, and while I'd originally thought I'd just have the marine rider carrying the weapon, some test fitting proved that the heavy weapon is slung too low to fire over the frame of the chariot. In order to help the skimmer more closely resemble the jetbike it's intended to proxy, I instead went with the centerline-underslung weapon instead, trimming down a few leftover Heavy Bolters from the Betrayal at Calth set.

Still more work to be done on the underside, I started off with half a wheel to act as a mounting point for the flying stand which will be painted as the repulsor generator. I still need to find some decent looking thrusters and other gribblies to add to tart up the undersides a bit, but so far so good!

Haven't built out the actual riders for them yet, but set a couple baseline tac marines in place to get a sense of scale. Overall I'm pretty happy with how they're turning out!

40k Genestealer Cult - Cult Limo painting in progress

Just a quick hit this morning - Squeezed in a little brush time this week and laid in the base colors on the Cult Limo that I'd ordered up from Wargame Exclusive Miniatures.

Went with the purple carapace color to match the 'stealers, and besides what better color to paint the cult's Pimpmobile than purple and gold, after all?

Not entirely happy with how the windows are coming along, I'm thinking I'm going to go a different route and try an orange-ish/false horizon look to try an emulate a polarized/mirrored window effect that will match the orange jumpsuits on the cultists, sort of like the pic below:

I think that'll set off against the purple better when all is said and done!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Prospero Spireguard Rotor Cannon support squad

While the Spireguard was initially intended to be a predominantly "Armoured Company" type force (to contrast against the heavily infantry-based Thousand Sons from the previous incarnation of the army), from a gameplay standpoint having only the bare minimum of two troops choices is less than ideal. I'm hesitant to go hog-wild and build a whole bunch of new models however, as I'll inevitably make the wrong assumptions and build a mess of models that won't be viable with the upcoming lists from Inferno (the next Heresy book from FW).

However, I did have a squad of Spireguard armed with Rotor Cannons built with the very basic starter paint job on 'em, and with the weather being so nice I figured I'd finish 'em off over the weekend!

Pretty straightforward to knock them out, and gives the army another Troops choice to hold objectives. While the Rotor Cannons aren't particularly high strength or low AP, nine of 'em certainly drop a lot of dice when fired - sometimes quantity has a quality all its own after all! Now it's just a matter of starting to fiddle with army lists. I have to come up with a 1000, 2000 and 2500 point list for the upcoming event - looks like there's just shy of 3000 points built and painted (granted, 615 points of that is the Stormhammer) so there may need to be some further models built and painted to make up the numbers. I have had a hankering to add a trio of Sentinels to the force...

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Prospero Spireguard state of the army

Got some interesting news recently, turns out there's a Horus Heresy narrative event coming up at the end of the month surprisingly nearby - The downside is that in the time between now and then it's highly doubtful that the bases I've been waiting on will arrive and still allow me time to finish the Thousand Sons. As I'd sold off the Geno Five-Two and the Alpha Legion is basically a shelved project, that means it's time to bring the Spireguard out of deep storage and see what there actually is.

The plan was that the Spireguard would be a heavy assault/armored company sort of list, I think we can say mission accomplished! The recent rumors suggest that the Spireguard list in the upcoming Forge World book will use the Solar Auxilia list, which honestly I'm happy about as the tank options in the SA list are better suited to my vision for the force. That does mean that I needed to whip up a couple extra infantry models to make the units list-legal, to the tune of a vox- and vexilla-bearer for each 20-man squad.

Luckily it's been very agreeable weather of late, so I broke out the ol' box of bits and knocked together the four requisite models. Did a read-through of the old painting posts I'd done to re-familiarize myself with the paint scheme and set to work!

Painting up four models turned out to be a snap, and with the exception of the Stormhammer, and the transfers and weathering on the KV-2's, the army is surprisingly complete! That gives me three weeks to paint approximately 7,000 rivets and finish off all the tanks to the same level. Should be rather doable, and it's been fun to get back into the swing of the Thousand Sons scheme!

Giveaway Results! ...And an Eeeeeevil post!

I realized that today's post is the 666th post I've made, which of course calls for...

In a similar vein, early next week a few friends are going to go see Iron Maiden, which is always a fun time - granted, we don't rock out at shows like we used to, but I'll still stand in the back and throw up the horns. Heh.
Now, the Million View Giveaway results! I just want to say thank you all once again for all the kind words and encouragement over the years, it is 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...

Dave Weston!

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 actual modeling news the cult limo arrived from Wargame Exclusive and I'm rather pleased with the model, looking forward to getting some paint on it. Been pretty busy this week with work and the band so not much hobby time, but this weekend is looking pretty open, hoping to get some good brush time in!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Tactical Squads built

With the trio of tanks more or less painted I thought I'd treat myself to a little build time! I'll be attending the NOVA Open later in the year and I plan on fielding the Thousand Sons so I suppose I ought to get cracking on building the force. Over the last few weeks have been patiently de-sprueing and organizing three boxes worth of Betrayal of Calth marines, and the time spent up front meant the models just flew together!

The mainstay of my Thousand Sons tactical squads is Sergeant Hesyre, sporting as ever his ever-so-slightly Flesh Change-y power fist. For the purposes of the lists for NOVA (rather small point value games) he's only at the head of a very basic 10-man squad this time around, though they will get a Deimos Rhino to ferry 'em around. Depending on how things pan out I may put together enough marines to pad out the squad to 20 and include a vox and vexilla.

Backing up Hesyre is a second 10-man squad led by Sergeant Jafari, also sporting the first signs of mutation as well. I'm trying for an evolution to the theme of the force, with the first iteration being Crusade era, the second take on 'em being set during the Burning of Prospero, while this force is intended to be a Siege of Terra/The Scouring-era force prior to the Rubric on their new homeworld of Sortiarius. The fact that I recently got a chance to read Talon of Horus means that I do have a bit of an itch to include Iskandar Khayon and his bodyguards Mekhari and Djedhor in the army somehow...

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Prospero Spireguard Khalophis Victrix-2 Tanks Painting Continues

Got a little more brush time in this weekend than is usual, and managed to get the trio of tanks up to the "off the assembly line" stage, prior to the addition of waterslide transfers and weathering. Despite the fact that three days ago we got 19" of snow, this afternoon it was almost 60F and I was able to get the initial sealant pass on 'em. Gotta love springtime in the Rockies!

As has been pointed out, technically speaking the "Ragnarok" tank is a post-heresy designation, from the War World of Krieg during the 500-year war from 433-949.M40. That said, it's also a long standing trope that technology in the 41st Millennium is more often rediscovered from ancient archives rather than newly designed, so it's not a great stretch to assume that some STC Construct tank matching the silhouette of the modern Ragnarok existed during the Heresy. Since the Ragnarok is obviously just a 40k-ed up Soviet KV-2 from the 1940's, I figured I'd give them a nod and call these "Khalophis Vixtrix-2" tanks to give 'em a little Thousand Sons-y feel as well.