++++INLOADING DATAFILE 103++++ Zone Moratlis table part 1

A project I've wanted to take on for a while now is to build  Zone Mortalis table.  I looked into a number of different options for how best to go about it, in the end I stumbled upon a particularly awesome set of products over at www.hirstarts.com.  They sell molds of modular terrain components you then cast copies of and use like legos to build your own terrain.

A week later and my 11 molds arrived.  The rubber is really high quality, good tensile strength and very durable.  It also came with some great tips on maintenance and storage which will be quite helpful for newbies.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 102++++ More BFG ORKS

I've been chugging along on my scratchbuilt Ork Fleet over the last week and I've made quite a lot of progress. The Kill Kroozer and Basha Light Kroozer from last week have now been joined by a Terror Ship (Horrible name, I call it a Karrier), 5 Slaughter escorts, 4 Onslaught escorts, and 5 Brute Rams.

These conversions are really fun and they move pretty fast, almost makes me want to play orks in 40k. Anyways onto the pictures (there's a bunch...)

The Karrier

++++Inloading Data file 101++++ BFG Ork Scratchbuilds

Recently I've gotten some of the local guys interested in Battlefleet Gothic so I've been working on completing my two scratchbuild fleets. I loved this game when I was in college and I still had a sizeable Imperial Fleet, but a few years back for fun I started working on a Tyranid Hive Fleet made from spare parts and with an originally sculpted Hiveship. As one of the local guys is an Ork player I promised to build an Ork Fleet from scratch. It's been a fun challenge so far, here are the first two completed ships.

 Ork Kill Kroozer

Ork Basha Light Kroozer

I've also made over a dozen escorts, I'll post pictures of them soon. Unfortunately I've run out of Ork bits (I don't play them myself) so I'll need to ask around to see if anyone has some they don't need. I'm about halfway finished with another Kroozer, this one is turning out to be huge though so I'll probably make it a Battleship. 

More to come on these guys and my hive fleet soon. 

++++ INLOADING DATAFILE 100 ++++ Batch 3's finished & Deimos Predator Conversion

100 40k Posts WOOHOO!!!

This is a cool milestone to hit, though its taken me a while given my long period of very intermmitent posts.  Anyways thanks to everyone who reads this blog, My goal is to reach 200 posts before this time next year, ambitious I know but as long as I keep making new stuff to post about its doable.

Normally most other bloggers add some large expansive retrospective monologue about how much their blog means to them and reviewing works they've done over time.  Rather than do that I'll just say that this blog has been a cool way to show off my work and that its nice to see how my skills have improved over the last few years.  I could also talk about my feelings towards GW's products as well as other games, but the summary is GW's games really aren't very fun to play for me anymore and haven't been for a number of years.  The game's become a series of fixed outcomes where half the time there's really no point in playing out the match, you can just look at your opponent's army and know exactly what will happen before either player even sets up.  By contrast X-wing is a great game which very much relies on and rewards in the moment decision making and player skill is the single most important factor in who will win.

So to compare in my opinion the outcome of a 40k games vs a X-wing game are determined by:

                          40k         X-wing
List Building:   70%           30%
Luck:                10%           20%
Skill:                 20%           50%

Again that's just my opinion based on my own experiences.  I love 40k's lore and 30k is a lot more fun, but playing matches of 40k nearly always tends to be a big let down.  The game could improve with time, and seems to be right now, but in my view the core rule set of of the game needs some dramatic changes as it has a lot of anachronisms left over from 3rd edition which no longer deliver the experience they were created to deliver.

Oh and oddly if I really wanted to boost my viewership I should just post articles and conversions of X-wing stuff.  My most viewed 40k conversion posts have about 300-500 views a piece, and every x-wing post has between 1,800 and 3,500 views.  Does anyone have any advice on how to draw more eyes from the 40k community?

Ok enough of that, onto the actual post!

Truescale Batch #3

As I mentioned before I decided to make a number of MkIV armor legionaries in this batch for variety's sake and for the challenge of it.  I'm very pleased with how this batch came out, all of the poses work and I've refined the anatomy quite a bit.  I have come to the conclusion over time that the arms are about 15% too thick, and this has been causing some issues when posing the models.  Now that my molds are officially worn out I'll revise the masters a bit and decrease the arm thickness for future batches.

Here are the individual models.

MkIII Helmed Sergeant #2


While fielding a 20 man Legion Tactical Squad is awesome there is the issue of needing 2 compulsary Troop choices, that and a 20 man squad can be quite unwieldy in smaller matches.  So I made this guy who can either count as a sergeant or as a standard model depending on how I decide to run them in a match.



His pose screams "Casual Badass"

++++ INLOADING DATAFILE 099 ++++ I played a game! Batch 3 progress too.

It's been about a year since my last 40k game, but this past Saturday was my first league match for the local shop's escalation league. Apparently the shop has 20 players enrolled for the league, and there's another league for beginners as well. For any kind of event that is a great draw, and for a league it's awesome.

My first match was vs Chris, who I've played with on and off for the last 15 years or so. He's playing Orks and I'm fielding 30k Word Bearers. The first week games are 500 points and we were all told to include at least 1 HQ and 2 Troops units. Small points values do tend to advantage certain armies and disadvantage others, I'm honestly not sure if Orks are advantaged or disadvantaged at this small of a points level, but 30k lists have a rough time.  Particularly Word Bearer's due to the need to always take a Chaplain or Diabolist IN ADDITION to your Compulsary HQ choice.  Chris allowed me to ignore that rule for our match, which was kind of him.

I fielded:

• Chaplain: Combi Plasma, Refractor Field, Artificer Armor
• Legion Tactical Squad: 20 models, Veteran Sergeant had a Power Weapon and Artificer Armor.
• Legion Support Squad: 5 Models with Volkite Chargers
• 
  

He Fielded:

• Weirdboy
• 20 Slugga Boyz, Power Klaw Nob
• 20 Shoota Boyz, Combi-Rokkit Nob
• 5 Tank Bustas with a Trukk

We played on a 4' x 4' table an didn't bother to place objectives, overall the match lasted between 30-45 minutes.

++++ INLOADING DATEFILE 098 ++++ Lots of Truescale Progress

The next batch of Truescales is finished and ready to be primed.  My local shop has a 40k escalation league starting up this coming weekend, so I've been working hard to get enough finished to be able to run my Word Bearers as an army on their own rather than just an ally to my Warp Cult/Renegades army.

The league starts at 500 points so I figure one Legion Tactical Squad, a Chaplain, and a Legion Support Squad with flamers would fill that out pretty nicely.

Batch 2 PICS

Flamer Support Squad

++++ INLOADING DATAFILE 097 ++++ Word Bearer's Painting WIP 1.0

The first 10 models are primed and the base layer of Mephiston Red is on for all of them.  Here's the one marine I've finished painting the red on, the second layer is Evil Suns Scarlet and the edging is Fire Dragon Orange.

Sorry some of the pictures are blurry, I was having a really hard time getting my camera to focus correctly for some reason.

The new paint scheme GW created for these guys in the Betrayal at Calth box looks really amazing.  I'm debating making the elbows black, metallic, or making them the same color as the rest of the armor.  GW's scheme has them red like the rest of the armor, but I"m not sure if I like that as it doesn't provide much variation in the color scheme.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to tackle this?

+++++INLOADING DATAFILE 096++++ The first batch of Truescales are ready to paint!

After nearly 6 months in storage I finally unpacked my 40k/30k stuff after moving into my new place with my girlfriend.  After working on a few other models, which I'll post about soon, I finally finished all the details on the first 10 Word Bearer's that are now ready for batch painting.  I've already started painting them, I'll upload some pictures once I'm past the super boring base color steps.

Here's what they looked like pre priming.

Missile Launcher Havoc Test Model

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 095++++ Chaos Contemptor WIP 2

++++VOX TRANSMISSION RECIEVED++++

..............STANDBY

..............DECRYPTING

++++WARNING SCRAPCODE DETECTED++++

..............EVALUATING RESPONSE

++++DATA CORRUPTED++++

..............COMMENCING DATA PURGE491!)aw(I8++++

................cRIT#){ak}ERRO!390sd

................

++++BINDING RITUALS COMPLETED++++

++++ALL PRAISE THE OCTED++++

Now that I'm back from another training course with the National Guard I've found a bit of time to finish converting my Word Bearer's Chaos Contemptor Dreadnought.

Check him out in all his majesty!

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 092++++ Massive Truescale Word Bearers Update pt1

So I've been meaning to upload these pictures for months.  I've been doing a LOT of work on the truescales over the last few months, I"m now up to about 10 which are finished and 8 which are works in progress.  I just played in an Apoc game yesterday where I had two squads as a part of my 3000 point host, it was quite awesome to see.  Apoc sadly is built to rob any chances of climatic moments, when my warlord and the Dark Angels player's warlord were moving to duel a necron player came in an killed my warlord before it could happen despite our asking that he not, huzzah for trolling...

Anyways these are some old pictures of a bunch of the minis as works in progress.  I wanted to show what they look like mid stage so you guys can see my process.  I'll take more pictures of the finished pieces this week and make another much larger part of the post.  So much to update.

Dark Apostle Mik'esh Ng'ath

This model was inspired initially pose wise by the superb chaplain model from the Betrayal at Calth boxed set.  The cape is from a chosen model and the purity seals are from the regular dark apostle model.  Its amazing how you can take parts from such static models and use them to convey movement and emotion in a piece.  The backpack is a merger between the Sorceror's backpack and the Dark Apostle backpack.  The mace was a place holder, just wait till you see the finished piece.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 091++++ Word Bearers Aspiring Champion

So after a summer of AoS inspired despair turned me away from GW stuff for a while, I've finally completed the grieving process for Warhammer: Fantasy Battles and so I've started working on some projects again.

At the moment I'm in the second week of phase 1 of the Captain's Career Course at Fort Lee, VA, and I brought down supplies to work on some true scale Word Bearers. I'm now up to 11, with 1 Aspiring Champion and a replacement Dark Apostle (who looks amazing).

The problem is that none of the computers I have access to here will let me post on Blogger, and uploading photos via the iPhone app almost never works. But here is a sample, my first Aspiring Champion: Vorgash Nn'uhl.




It's remarkable to me how fast I can produce a single true scale marine now that I've refined my methods and have the press molds for making the armor components. I finished him over the course of two days while working on a batch of 5.

The cloak of the chaos lord from the dark vengeance starter set works very well if you trim it down and helps add movement and dynamism to his commanding pose. The impurity seals add to this effect and were left over from the dark apostle, who will be in the next post.




Here is a comparison shot next to a regular space marine model. These true scales really convey the shear mass of a space marine, I couldn't be happier with the way they are coming.

Oh and you can't see it in this photo, but he is armed with a power first and combi-melta which is chained to his backpack, the bolt pistol is there for epicness purposes.

I'll post more pictures when I have access to a non-government computer.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 090++++ Castellax Battle-Automata Maniples WIP 1.0

So a lot of things have been going on over the last few weeks, hence the slow rate of posts.  I've been playing a lot of X-wing, there was the regional championship tournament for New England (I came in 46th) as well as at least 5 other tournaments I've attended in the last month, so that took up most of my hobby time.  I also spent some time painting my Chaos Renegades, batch painting 200+ infantry is a chore but its progressing.

Work has picked up nicely of late as well, which helps relieve financial stresses, and I have my annual training exercise starting tomorrow for the Army National Guard that I've had to prepare for.  On top of all of that yesterday I received my acceptance letter for Grad School, which is extremely exciting.  I actually had a hard time sleeping last night as my mind was alight, so I decided to finish assembling the Castellax Battle-Automata kits I picked up a few months ago.

Here are the 5 normal Castellax I've built.  There are a lot of minor touch ups to fix casting errors and to mark them out as Dark Mechanicum engines, but they are pretty much done otherwise.  This is a very interesting kit to work with, and very challenging as well to pose well.  You can do great dynamic poses, but it takes a lot of work to do.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 089++++ Void Shield Generator completed

Apologies for the lack of posts of late, I've been busy outside of the world of hobbies and one of my friends got me back into even online as well, so not much has been done in the last week or so.

But I did finish the void shield generators I was commissioned to build for a local player.  I primered it to allow the details to be visible.  I decided to add the drop pod doors to the build as I thought they would look cool, hopefully when he paints it they will have a cool energy glow effect but as he didn't pay me to paint it who knows.  Otherwise the build is just an expanded version of what was seen last post.  Much of the components come from molds I made of details from the Triaros Armored Conveyor kit from Forge World.

This was a fun project and probably only took me about 6 hours of work to have done.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 088++++ Void Shield Generator WIP 1.0

Just a quick update today as I'm at drill this weekend. This week I mostly worked on a commission to build a void shield generator. Many of the components come from a Triaros Armored Conveyor, the rest are from a drop pod, some random plumbing pipes, and a massage ball.

These pictures are from the early layout phase of the project, it's almost finished now I'll upload more pictures on Monday when I have it completed.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 087++++ Samech Pattern Rapier Laser Destroyer WIP 1.0

 Sometimes its can take several tries to successfully realise a conversion or scratch build project from the mental image in your head to an actual good looking miniature on a table.  This was one such project. 

For reference here is the amazingly crappy version of a rapier I had worked on a few months ago from my Chaos Renegades army.  It was terrible and I couldn't bring myself to use it.

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future there are only giant killer vacuum clearners!

And now here is attempt number 2.

Samech Pattern Mk II Rapier Laser Destroyer

Samech is a fallen forgeworld, anyone who has played Deathwatch will likely recall it vaguely.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 086++++ Adeptus Mechanicus Land Raider WIP 1.0

I've been busy of late, and playing too many computer games as well, hence the dearth of posts.  But I have been working on some projects, most notably this.

In the first Horus Heresy book there are not many options available to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but one of them is an Adeptus Mechanicus Land Raider.  A quick glance will show that this is not the heavy assault transport we are all used to, but more a heavily armored exploratory vehicle for traversing hostile environments.  Its stock armament is only a pair of Lascannons and a single Heavy Bolter, and it lacks the Assault Vehicle rule so it does not have the iconic front assault ramp.  To make up for this you are getting it at a great discount at 195 points.

It also has a crazy amount of options, so you can customize it to your heart's content.

I decided to go with a relatively inexpensive but very potent anti personnel build with a Volkite Culverine and a pair of Quad Heavy Bolters.  I also plan to take an Exploratory Augury Web, Flare Shield, and an Auxiliary drive.

As you can see this is a pretty comprehensive rebuild of the basic Land Raider Chassis.  I picked up an old Land Raider a friend and I had tried to convert a while back and removed the front ramp and turret well.  Instead of having the standard offset front sponson I centered it, which means that the vehicle is driven by sensors (no driver's vision port).  I added the sensor pod from the Land Raider Helios to represent the augery web and rebuilt the front using a piece from a Land Raider Achilles.  Then a bunch of plasticard went into creating a new front sponson well, I wanted to use a layered armor plate approach to make it look like the standard Land Raider chassis had been reinforced considerably.

The Volkites and most of the other bits come from a Triaros Armored Conveyor.  I built the front sponson from some defiler and land raider parts, and the 4 gun volkite array just looks cool, its a great feeling when an idea starts to fit together right.  The tracks also were copied from the Triaros, I need to do more work to fix the gaps and casting errors in them but it was worth the effort to visually tie into other Admech vehicles more.

The side hatch was made from the Triaros.  The instant mold material is great for doing quick one off molds for cool parts like this hatch, I cast up at least a dozen for future use as well.  The side sponson is complex; first I started by casting copies of the Hunter turret well (an awesome bit as it can go on top of any vehicle).  Then I sawed off part of the waist to a Khorne Lord of Skulls (Very cool bit, I found a bunch online cheap.) to create a smaller turret well.  Then I took a rhino hatch, shaved the antennae off and inserted it.  After that I used the ball turret part from the volkites I chopped up to make the front sponson and used part of a Forgefiend's plasma cannon to attach it to the sponson.  This all attaches to the Quad Heavy Bolters which were made from recasts of the twin linked Mauler Bolt Cannon from the Triaros.

More work still needs to be done on the sponsons but the basic concept works.

The engine parts are again directly copied from the Trairos, I circled the particular parts below.  It was surprisingly easy to make the molds as the tracks come in separate pieces.

  I haven't completely decided yet what to do for the sides of the engines, this is just a test fit so far.  

 

From above you can see how the roof has been redesigned to accomodate the sensor turret, more detail work remains to be done.  The exposed machine parts on the back are something I am debating over.  They look cool, but it would require the rest of the roof to be redesigned further.  I'll let it sit for a bit and see what jumps out to me to help join all the parts together.

For the rear I'm debating on whether or not to try and use the big gears from the Triaros.  Alternatively I'll have a number of large exhausts coming off the sides.  I'm leaning more towards the exhausts, again this is just a test fit at the moment.

So that is where this project stands as of this afternoon.  Its coming out as well as I'd hoped, its actually the first time I've built a Land Raider in at least 8 years and its fun working with the kit again.

Coming up soon I'll take a break from my Admech posts to show off an Ork Dread mob I built to sell.  My goal is to build up some interest so that when I put the stuff up on ebay it actually gets a good price.

As always let me know if you have any recommendations on ways I can make this tank look better.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 085++++ Sicarian Infiltrator/Ruststalker WIP 1.0

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, I've been busy cleaning out my apartment to make room for more stuff and with several new computer games.  I'd recommend Dungeon of the Endless to anyone who has a spare day and enjoys falling into rabbit holes.

That said I have had some recent hobby progress, notably my conversions of Sicarian Infiltrators to make them look more like IG-88 from Star Wars.  My original idea was to use Imperial Guard Mortar Shells for the basis of the head, this was a terrible idea as they are way too small for it.  Sometimes you need to actually have the models in hand to realize that an idea sucks.

But in the process of getting the mortar rounds out of my bitz box an ancient special weapons sprue from Necromunda fell out of the box (literally) before me and I had the perfect bit.  Its the macehead to the power maul from the Redemptionists gang.  After trimming down some spikes to make them into eye lenses and lopping off the handle it was ready to get mounted.

See the resemblance? 

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 084++++ Skitarii Vanguard WIP 1.5

So I finally had the chance to crack open my two boxes of Sicarian Infiltrators and man is there a lot bits wise in this kit! The first thing which I decided to use it for was to upgrade my earlier Skitarii Hypaspists. I didn't wind up quite liking how that first attempt came out, so here is try number two which I mentioned yesterday.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 81++++ Dark Skitarii Rangers WIP 1.0

Sorry for the derth of posts, I've been otherwise engaged of late.  That said I for one am very excited for the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex which should be coming out soon, as well as the Skitarii book coming just before it.  I'm interested to see whether this will be the first book which truly works to unify a GW and Forgeworld range as has been suggested by some to be the new model for the upcoming 30k plastic range.

After I bought my first White Dwarf in a few years (I had a subscription for over 10 years ago.) I was quite impressed by the rules for the Vanguard and Ranger units.  Both are well costed, neither is brokenly good or bad, and they each have workable weapons with different mechanics between the units.  The Vanguard's rad weapons are very neat, while they differ substantially from Rad weapons in 30k I prefer this version.  The 30k rad weapon effect only matters AFTER a multiwound model has failed to save a wound it has been dealt by a rad weapon, which is situational in the extreme.  The new "double wound" effect is cool, and it works well with the weapon's low str of 3 and high rate of fire.

Skitarii Rangers actually strike me as being the more conventional of the two units, as they are essentially just equipped with Kraken Bolters.  A while ago I converted a bunch of Skitarii for my Dark Mechanicum army but at the time there were no rules for them and I used them as Adsecularis Tech Thralls.  Right after reading the new rules I started reconverting them into Skitarii rangers, all it took was swapping the lasgun barrels on their guns for more Sniper esk ones and adding some scopes.

Galvanic Rifles group 1

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 080++++ Scyllax Guardian-Automata Conversion

I'm sure that everyone has seen the new Scyllax Battle-Automata from Forgeworld, they are nifty new models and have some neat rules.  I like this unit as there have always been battle constructs in the lore that are mostly made up of lots of Mechadendrites but up till now there has never been a decent representation of such units in game.  So I decided to have a go at converting one for my Dark Mechanicum army.

Forge World's version

 My Version