Tzeentch Renegades - Color! Glorious color!

I have to say that I was getting reaaaaaally bored painting Iron Hands. I quite like their fluff, and they dovetail nicely with my love for the Ad-Mech, but the color scheme is a bit of a drag. That said, I think I may have overcorrected a bit:

Hah! I've had a small allied chaos force lurking on the shelves for over a year now, figured it was time to give them a little attention. First up is a squad of chaos marines dedicated to my favorite of the Big Four, Tzeentch. Squad of nine of course, which denies me a heavy weapon but between the sacred number and the Icon of Flame, Tzeentch will certainly grant them his favor!

 

While I was at it I worked on the sorcerer, though I'm not at all happy with the state of his face at the moment. That's going to be getting a re-do post haste.

Finally, a quick (and frankly terrible) shot of the painted army so far. Still in the wings are a unit of Thousand Sons (of course), some screamer riders, a FW Helltalon, and some allied Tzeentch daemons. I'll likely give the two marine squads Rhinos, but I think that'll be the extent of it - This will not(!) turn into another 3000+ point army, darn it! ...It's the Heresy Thousand Sons army I'm scheming on that will!

I'm planning to do a couple little 500-1000 point allied forces s for the guard this year, including finishing up the last few Eldar that I'd kept from the previous project, some "Deff Korps uv Kriek" orks and perhaps an Inquisitor's warband or two. Not to mention the aforementioned heresy era Thousand Sons! With the rumors of new guard on the horizon as well, looks like 2014 is going to be a fun year for hobbying!

Tzeentch Renegades - Helbrute painted

I had a little painting time last night and since going to Adepticon next April is on the table, I got to thinking about what I'd want to take out there for my first entry into a tournament since 3nd edition. While I have a fairly good-sized guard army already painted I don't really relish the thought of trying to travel with them. Time for a stunt army! Painting up the cultist squads a while back has had me thinking about resurrecting the Tzeentch Renegades so I set to on the Helbrute from the dark vengeance set.

 

I thoroughly enjoy painting this color scheme - it's basically the Red Corsairs scheme done with blue and yellow rather than red and black. The halved/quartered/alternating at random pattern helps keep the models interesting throughout the painting process - each model is a little different from the next, so even batch painting 30-40 of them isn't as tedious as it usually can be...

 

The skin was worked over in the tone that the pink horrors and screamers will be painted, to help tie the army together. I'm not 100% happy with it however, I think it needs a wash to help blend it together, but I fear a purple wash will darken it far too much. Any suggestion would be appreciated!

I'm still working out how exactly the army will be built, though I have plans to build another unit of screamer-riders (as proxy Bikers or Raptors, not sure which) now that they've come out with plastic Screamers, and a Hell Talon as a proxy Heldrake (just not a fan of the Heldrake model). However it ends up, it's going to be colorful, that's for sure!

Tzeentch Renegades - Cultist squads painted

Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend (for us Yanks, at least)! Over the past weekend Dark Vengeance was released and I managed to get a hold of a couple limited edition sets - Ostensibly for the mini rulebook, but lets be honest the models included look amazing as well, and are well worth the purchase.

I thought it was clever on the part of GW to include what appear to be a couple starter armies each capable of acting as an allied force for most of the various armies out there, so even if you don't happen to play Dark Angels or Chaos, there's a little something for everyone (except the bugs)! I will say I feel that the units provided don't lend themselves quite as well to buying multiple copies of the box set as the Assault on Black Reach set did - doubling up really adds far too many HQ and Elites choices in my opinion. Nevertheless, the models are staggeringly beautiful. I'm planning on painting up the Dark Angels to ally with the guard from time to time, but to be frank I was much more interested in the Chaos stuff, which has already got me thinking about starting a new Tzeentch Renegades force. That said, I knocked out the cultists over the long weekend:

First up is the hand-to-hand unit - let me start by saying that these are, hands down, the best cultists GW has made to date, and they were an absolute joy to build and paint. I especially like the fact that various models are obviously fallen members of the assorted strata of Imperial life - there are tech priests, and ministorum, adeptus terra and miners and what have you. Excellent stuff! As they are intended to be Tzeentchian cultists, I went with a semi-randomized pattern of blue, yellow and dirty white. If I paint up the second set I'm thinking I'll be using them for our 40k:RPG games and will paint them up more closely adhering to the colors of the adeptus to which they appear to belong, but for now I'm quite pleased with how these turned out!

The second squad of cultists are armed with ranged weapons such as autoguns and a heavy stubber and again there are some simply beautiful sculpts - I really enjoyed painting them! The leader of this unit is by far my favorite - the liberated Commissar's coat and the grotesque makes him just ooze with character!

Next up on the painting table is the first unit of Skitarii for my Ad Mech army, but the remaining Chaos units from the Dark Vengeance set aren't too far behind!

Hobby Retrospective - Tzeentch Renegades, Part 3

Time for another weekend hobby retrospective! Up today are the fast attack choices from the Tzeentch Renegade army.

The wings that come with the Possessed models made for excellent proxy jump packs for the unit of Raptors. I tried to carry through the secondary blue-and-pink-horror theme for the various mutations and daemon models, which tied the whole force together nicely.

For the Bikers I immediately knew I wanted to do riders on Disks of Tzeentch, but the old school disks that I had were really too small. Instead I went with the models riding Screamers (as at the time they weren't used in 40k). As above, the daemonic creatures got the pink and blue treatment, which stands out nicely from the blue and yellow of the marines.

My interest in flyers carried through into this army as well - the Forge World Hellblade model is just fantastic in my opinion. Of course all this looking back on old projects has gotten me thinking about working up a small-ish Heresy-era Thousand Sons army... Argh!

Hobby Retrospective - Tzeentch Renegades, Part 2

Seasons greetings everyone! With the holidays approaching I didn't have much time for the hobby, however I have a week's vacation coming and I'm hoping to get a bit of brush time and perhaps a game or two in.

 

Today however I thought I'd continue the weekend hobby retrospective and take a look at the HQ and Elites choices from the Tzeentch Renegades army. Obviously one has to start with Ahzek Ahriman - I absolutely love this sculpt, it is in my opinion one of the all time greats.

 

I was enamored of the new Terminator-clad Sorcerer and Chaos Terminator sculpts when they were released, and the models also performed well on the tabletop. Suffice it to say Terminators with the Mark of Tzeentch's enhanced invulnerable save are remarkably resilient!

 

Rounding out the lords and heroes, a further Chaos Sorcerer would accompany the army's unit of Possessed. This kit was the biggest pleasant surprise for me out of the new range. The options for customization provided on the Possessed sprues are seemingly endless!

Have a great holiday season!

Hobby Retrospective - Tzeentch Renegades, Part 1

Rooting around in my picture folders I found some decent pictures of the last Tzeentch-themed Chaos Marine army I'd done, and thought I'd share 'em. When the 'new' CSM codex came out I thought I'd do an army, and as is usually the case it got out of hand rather quickly. Today I'll focus on the Troops choices:

I really liked the Red Corsairs scheme presented in the codex, the semi-random application of red and black gave the models both a sense of cohesion and individuality. Changing the colors to Tzeentch's blue and yellow worked rather well but I found painting the scheme exhausting, as the heraldry on each marine needed to be as different as possible.

One can't do a Tzeentch themed army without including at least one unit of Thousand Sons, of course - I absolutely love these models. I have been resisting the desire to do a Pre-Heresy army of the Sons, the most recent Horus Heresy novels haven't helped in that regard! This army was also the first time I ever used resin cast bases, and I was surprised at how much character they added to the models.

Rounding out the Troops choices was a unit of Lesser Daemons. I was somewhat disappointed to find that the Daemonic choices in the CSM book was organized the way it was, but I settled on a motley unit of Horrors and Flamers to represent them. I have to say I fancy the design on these Horrors as being far superior to the new plastics. The new sculpts are simply nowhere near as dynamic or chaotic. Of course these older models were a pain in the fundament to assemble!

Alas, the whole army was sold long ago - It's interesting to go back and take a critical look at past efforts, noting things that I'd do differently today. Of course pondering that sort of thing does tend to set off that little itch to do another army -"Go on, just a small one would okay." Must... Resist...