++++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 068++++ Helltalon WIP 3

 For the last few weeks I have been activated for natural disaster relief by the Massachusetts Army National Guard, hence the lack of posts. Here is one to hold you guys over for a few days until I SHOULD be released. There may be more snow coming unfortunately, so we will see what happens.

So I decided to change the Hellblade Interceptor I was working on into a Helltalon Fighter Bomber.  It was mostly a matter of the model turning out to be about 30% larger than the Forge World Hellblade fighter, but I also really want to try out the Helltalon's rules as they seem fun.

The weapons were pretty simple to figure out.  The Helltalon comes with a Twin-Linked Lascannon, 8 bombs, and your choice of either a Reaper Autocannon or Havoc Launcher.  As I usually rely on my aircraft to engage enemy vehicles I went with the Reaper Autocannon.  This was simple to do as I had some spare parts left over from a Chaos Defiler.  After looking the model over there was an obvious visual space for weapon mounts in front of the cockpit and above the engine intake.

I settled on how to configure the weapons mounts quickly but there was a snag with the lascannons; most lascannon bits are quite bulky, so fitting two of them stacked on top of each other didn't work with the majority of the bits I tried.  The lascannons from a Storm Raven were the corret size, but they have a "right-left" orientation which would have made it tough to mount them vertically the way I wanted.  The solution was quite easy as it turned out, deep within my bitz box I found a single ancient lacannon from the original 1980s Predator Tank kit.  It was the right size and looked adequately high tech, so I chopped it in half and used it to make the "techno bits" for the Lascannon and added some parts from a Stormtalon and the classic chaos upgrades kit. I thought they looked cooler mounted upside down.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 063++++ Putting paint on models

Today and tomorrow I've been trying to finish getting my Renegades and Heretics Army ready for the start of the local 40k league at the beginning of January.

The requirement is a two color minimum, so that's the goal. This is the first time I've posted pics of my whole army all lined up, as you can see there are quite a few heretics still to paint!

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 062++++ Malcador Heavy Tank WIP 2

It took me three and a half hours but the left side of the Malcador is very nearly done, lack of sponsons aside.

The road wheel axels were made by using some Oyimaru to mold a copy of that part of a chimera. It worked pretty well, though not all the rivets came out well.

I discovered the perfect tool for tiny rivets today: a regular ball point pen. It won't punch all the way through the thin plasticard as it has a rounded tip, which was the issue with my prior rivet making tools.

Now I'm off to the shop for our league night. I have so much painting to get done it's sad.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 058++++ Malcador Heavy Tank WIP 1

My local FLGS is planning a 'bring a tank' event in which every player has 250 points to take a single tank in a free for all battle royale. I haven't built any tanks for my renegades army yet, so I decided that I should best get started!

After looking through what supplies I had I found a really old Atlas Tank Recovery Vehicle kit I picked up about 5 years ago. This was never forgeworld's best kit, the boom arm for the winch was a poorly constructed piece and so I never decided to put it together. I only paid $10 for it though so I held onto it hoping to use it for something someday.



I decided to use it was the basis for a Malcador Heavy Tank by chopping the top into two separate pieces to make room for a turret.


The tracks were done rather quickly, it is moving along quite fast so far, though obviously I have a lot of additional detailing still left to do.











More to come on this later, the sides will be an interesting challenge.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 051++++ Imperial Armour 13 reflections and Arch-Heretic 1

So I have just gotten my hands on a digital copy of the Imperial Armour 13: Warmachines of the Lost and the Damned and it is awesome. I actually have a large renegade army which I have never posted pictures of before. It has the following roughly at the moment:
• 60 infantry with 6 autocannons and 6 plasmaguns.
• 2 platoon command squads
• 1 company command squad
• 2 special weapon squads
• 1 veteran squad
• 4 psykers
• 5 priests
• 8 ogryns and 3 hounds

I also have 140 cultists for my chaos space marine army as well.

And I made some test models of mutants but didn't actually go through with making a bunch of them yet as there were no rules.

I plan to make two separate forces. One will be led by a Primaris-Rogue Witch and have be made up of the renegade imperial guard troops. The other will be led by a master of the horde and be made up of the cultists.

With the horde army I will FINALLY be able to make an appropriate fluffy Word Bearers army with hordes of sacrificial cultists flung at the enemy with reckless abandon before my chaos space marines. Dark Apostles are awesome as allies to a L&TD army as they grant Ld 10 to units within 6". I'm excited as CSM cultists are a TERRIBLE unit, even as cheap as they are they are over costed for what they do. With the ability to potentially recycle my units when they die I can make a cool themed force, especially if I get the warlord traits where you score VPs for getting your own units killed.

The other detachment will be a more complete army on its own.

I had an original Lost And The Damned army back in 2002 which I converted for the eye of terror campaign. Model wise it was terrible but it was a ton of fun to play. It was also my fastest ever army in terms of how long it took me to make it, with the entire army converted and painted in just over two months!

Now for some pics, here is my Arch Demogogue for the horde force. He is my favorite character model to date, a Priest of the Ruinous Powers that I have named Kali'Ma.



The base for this model was a wizard from the Empire Celestial Hurricanum/Luminark of Hysh kit. The head is a Corpse Cart Driver and a skull from some beastmen Kit. The book is from the Empire Flagellants Kit and the chaos stars are mostly made by using a stamp mold I made.

The chest was greenstuffed and while they are hard to see in this picture he has realistic musculature.



The heart was a pure from scratch sculpt that I free handed from memory.



The base model is one of the most dynamically posed cloak wearing models I've ever worked on.

To date I've done about 5 fallen priests that I will use as Enforcers, more will be posted later.

As always let me know what you think of him.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 018++++ WIP Chaos Ogryns

Ok just a small update for now, I'd like to say that I've been busy for the last week but in truth I've just been playing a real lot of Shogun 2, Holy Crap is that an addictive strategy game!!!  Very challenging as well, though multiplayer play makes it WAY harder still as the comp is often dumb with its battle tactics.

That aside, here is a sneak peak at my upcoming chaos ogryns for my Lost and the Damned army.