Heresy Era World Eaters - Adepticon Force 90% done!

Now that the bases have arrived I'm in the home stretch with the World Eaters force for Adepticon - All that remains is a trio of Contemptors of which I'm awaiting delivery! Had some time yesterday to break out the photo tent, brace yourselves for a tidal wave of pics!

Kharn and Khargos Bloodspitter

Command Squad

Skane's Destroyer Squad

Tactical Squad

Assault Squad #1

Assault Squad #2

Dreeadclaw Drop Pods

Heavy Support Squad

Rhino

Sicaran Arcus

Proteus  Land Raid

The all-important painting chart!

Starting to get a  little anxious about the contemptors arriving (they're from a garage casster in the UK, so it's understood that they're being done in his spare time), so I'm scheming on someme alternate plans just in case they don't arrive in time for the con. Fingers crossed!

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!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Drop Pods complete!

Or more accurately, I'm done with them! When all is said and done I am really rather happy with them, but not keen to do more drop pods anytime soon. The upcoming Sons of Horus will emphatically not be a drop force!

Once the bone and gold were laid in they definitely started to feel a bit more Thousand Sons-y. Some hieroglyphs and the nova legion symbol helps drive it home!

Of course, nearly all that legion goodness will be obscured when they're actually in play. On the other hand, a couple more spot colors do give them a bit more visual interest.

Leaving the two sections separate for painting really paid off in the final stages. Getting the hazard stripes and control pylons done would have been a nightmare otherwise!

Ended up taking a crack at making a little stencil to help with the hazard stripes, which worked fairly well, though even with the lower section loose it was still challenging to get the stencil in place. Blu-tack to the rescue!

At this point I'm closing in on the last of the models earmarked for NOVA later on this year - All that remains are a trio of Javelin Land Speeders and the Storm Eagle. Then more test games, discover my army list is rubbish, and then some frantic painting to get some unplanned new stuff finished!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Drop Pods continue...

Pressing onward with the drop pods, and they're coming along nicely so far! I had laid in some initial color patterns on the Storm Eagle earlier, and tried to fill in similar areas on the pods.

Just blocking in the various areas, starting with a graveyard earth as a basecoat for the areas that will end up bone colored. I'm a little worried about the wash step that I use when it comes to the big flat areas like the fins, so extra care will  need to be taken. On the up side, a multitude of sins can be fixed with judicious weathering, which the pods will be getting.

The black on the bottoms of the doors will get some gold or white hieroglyphics, while the white nova legion symbol will adorn one or more of the red doors (depending on how many I can scrape together in the appropriate size). Once the bone and black are done, they'll get some detailing picked out in gold, after which attention will be given to the interiors. So far so good!

I will say that painting them has been more fun than building them was, but that's not saying too much.

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Drop Pods painting begins...

I couldn't quite bring myself to apply an exclamation point to this post's title, as drop pods are just not all that exciting. Nevertheless, they form an integral part of the Orbital Assault rite of war that the Khamasiin is based on, so gotta get cracking on 'em!

Having built them in sub assemblies really helped on the painting front so far - definitely makes getting to all the nooks and crannies a piece of cake. Just the red and basic gunmetal laid in so far, but that gets us almost halfway to the finish line already!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Drop Pods built!

In concert with the Storm Eagle, the rest of the Khamasiin's infantry will be dropping into battle via jump pack or drop pod. That means I needed to build some drop pods - three of 'em in fact! Now while it's not the most difficult model to assemble, good lord is it tedious. Almost every piece is repeated five times and building three of 'em at once meant fifteen repetitions at a time. The horror... the horror...

That said, with some perseverance (and not a little bit of swearing), the three pods have rolled off the assembly line!

To facilitate painting, the models were built in three sub assemblies. The bottom 'starfish' was built first, then the stabilizer fins and engine were assembled using the starfish as a placement guide but leaving the fins unglued at the bottom. The fit is tight enough that they stay clipped on quite well, but will be glued in place once they're painted up. The center console was left separate as well, I'm not a big fan of the restraint harnesses (a little too busy for the interior) so they're being left out for now.

While the top and bottom sections are removable, it's also a truism that they really only fit well in the position they were built. Rotating them to an alternate position works to an extent but in certain cases they don't line up well. To avoid that I marked a single fin and made a matching mark on the starfish (single, double and triple hash marks respectively) so I know which top goes with which bottom and in what orientation. A little pre-planning goes a long way to prevent future problems!

Another quick tip that I found helpful when building the bottom section - The ramps sometimes stick or are prevented from closing easily by the design of the center section. I find that if you shave down the hard corner on the hinge connections, the doors open and close much smoother.

All in all not the most exciting bit of construction for the force, but feels good to get them out of the way! At this point there's enough assembled to start doing some test games, and a fair bit more to add to the painting queue!

Heresy Era World Eaters - Drop Pods painted

The folks over at Dark Future Games are running a weekly painting challenge that I thought I'd get in on - the idea is to paint up one Kill Point a week, which should hopefully keep me on task for the Heresy Era World Eaters I'm working on. My entry for this week is a pair of Drop Pods:

 

I'd originally build these a while back based on OST's awesome pseudo-Dreadclaw that he built early last year. Originally planned for use with my Heresy-Era Thousand Sons, the theme of the army didn't really support them so they just languished on a shelf in the Closet of Doom. But no longer! Bunch of frothing lunatics that the World Eaters are, they need a quick way to get to grips with their opponents and what better way than a pair of Drop Pods?

 

I'm trying out some weathering techniques on this army, which is something I've never done before - the intent on these was to show that the paint was peeled back and blackened from their descent, coupled with the idea that the claws would drive into the ground and lever the pod upright, revealing the marines that have disembarked from underneath (hence why the weathering on the 'legs' isn't all the way up to the level it is on the main fuselage). Tried a bit of the 'heat bluing' techniques that Ron over at FTW hasdescribed, though with varying levels of success. I think it'll work great on weapon barrels and small areas like that, but on the big flat planes of the Drop Pods it was a bit of a hash. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with how they turned out.

With them done, I'm really running out of things to paint! All the white boxes are in various stages of "waiting for packages to arrive" so there's nothing to build, and I can't afford to buy any of the grey boxes at the moment. That said, next week's entry in the painting challenge will be a pair of Chaplains (likely not available in the upcoming Chaos Codex, but part of the Tempus Fugitives Age of the Emperor lists) that I've built and primered. Should be fun!

Out with the old, in with the new?

Unfortunately the Thousand Sons didn't sell as a complete army, which isn't totally surprising - it's tough to drop the cash for an entire army all at once. That said, I've broken the army up into individual units and some small lots (that logically fit together in their own battlefoam trays).

Link to Auctions

On other Heresy-era fronts, I worked on a couple test bits for the World Eater Terminators - the torsos are still winging their way from Russia, but the legs and arms will be coming from the loyalist Assault Terminator kit. I'm going to be utilizing only the legs with the full greave (as opposed to the ones with the separate knee pad), and adding some rivets that I picked up from the Tichy Train Group to the left legs. I picked up an assortment of different sizes - These are .050" diameter, and seem to be just about the right scale for infantry models.

I'm also planning to have the Terminators armed with big Chain Axes which will be counts-as Lightning Claws (it looks like could force a failed to-wound re-roll!). The regular troopers will have the singe axehead style, while the sergeant will get the double bladed version to help him stand out in the unit.

Another set of models originally built for the Thousand Sons has been re-purposed for the World Eaters, in the form of the Dreadclaw-inspired Drop Pods. I cleaned them up and gave them a re-primer and started blocking in the colors on the first of two:

Unlike the previous Land Raiders (on which I had some fairly patchy results), I'm going to re-basecoat anything that is going to be blue with black first rather than painting the blue directly onto the white. The Drop Pods are also going to have a fair bit of weathering done to them, going to try out some of the heat scorching ideas I've gleaned from around the blogosphere. Should be fun!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Motor Pool Painting In Progress

As I'd just painted a mess of guard infantry I thought it was time to work on some vehicles. There are a number of Thousand Sons transports and whatnot that have been languishing in various states of disarray, so I settled in to get all of them brought up to the same level of painting.

First up is the group shot. Quite a few vehicles being batch painted at once, but the heavy lifting (the reds) is done, so now it's just a matter of doing all the detail work. Still need to add the Bone and White, but after that they'll be nearly complete!

A pair of Dreadclaw-styled drop pods for the infantry, based on the excellent tutorial by Old School Terminator over at Dark Future Games. The build on these is super simple, and ends up being a rather passable adaptation of the FW variant. ...And half the cost!

I also built two more Rhino chassis using the excellent add-on kit from Machinator over at Blood and Skulls Industry. Unlike the previous Rhino, I wanted to allow for some armament swaps, so I left the top hatches separate, and added some magnetized havok missile launchers (allowed in the TF Age of the Emperor codex I'm using).

 

I wanted to add a Whirlwind to the force (as the upcoming event is set early in the heresy and will pit the still-all-loyalist Marines against a myriad of foes), and went with an old-school approach based on an old White Dwarf set of instructions to build a Whirlwind Launcher out of some plasticard and a pair of 40mm bases. Some decorations and a missile launch in progress, and it turned out pretty decent!

 

The second Rhino will likely serve as a transport, but I included another ringed top hatch for use in the future (or as a turret ring for the previously built Predator, for those times I don't wish to include side sponsons).

All in all, a fair bit of forward progress. Once these are done, all that remains are a further 20 infantry, a pair of Contemptor Dreadnoughts and Magnus the Red himself!

Heresy-Era Thousand Sons - Dreadclaw Drop Pod Conversion, Part 1

I know that I want to include at least one Drop Pod in the Heresy-Era Thousand Sons army I'm slowly building, with the intent that it would carry Azhek Ahriman and his Red Sorcerer Coven into combat. Ideally I wanted to go with a Dreadclaw, but the one available from Forge World is a bit too Chaos-y for my purposes. That said, Old School Terminator over at Dark Future Games converted his own version using the standard plastic Drop Pod model and it works a treat!

I essentially followed his instructions and the whole model went together as though it was designed to be built this way. In fact, it was actually EASIER to build it like this than the 'real' way to do it! I was a bit premature in priming it, in retrospect I should have added a bit more decoration than I did. No fear though, a couple extra bits and another quick hit of primer and we'll be in business!