Hellhounds!

A little something for an army I will probably never play with. The pictures are awful, as always...

These I did before the Ultramarines Rhino, and now I would do a few things differently on the weathering... I might come back to those at some point...

The imperial guard riding the second Hellhound is a very old model from the first IG infantry box issued by GW. Old stuff, but quite good for cutting and converting. The minis are made of a soft plastic that is a joy to cut. And I love the helmets...

But actually, what I have always wanted to convert for IG is something like this old Rogue Trader pic. Someday...

First Hellhound:








Second Hellhound

Space Marines!

While picking my 40k armies, I always seem to land on Vanilla Space Marines. Either with actual space marines, or as count as: GW's favored army, easy to play for eternal beginners like me, and full of modeling potential.

Recently, however, this has turned into a taste for old school Space Marines. I took some old things from under the bed, and bought others from Forgeworld's great old school infantry accessories, and I am putting together an army. Ultramarines, of course, the one and only.

A few examples, quick and dirty. A base of Bleached Bone, three coats of Asurmen Blue wash, then drybrush: Ultramarine Blue, then the same with increasing amounts of white. After that, metallic details for example with Mithril silver and Badab Black wash. Etc etc. Simple and quick, and the new GW washes are just too good to miss.








And an old Rhino! Great model, a bit too little now compared to the new one, but still great fun to paint. Same technics here: base Bleached Bone, then several washes of Asurmen Blue, then drybrush. Then weathering: weathering powder, dirtstreaks made with washes, metallic chips, etc.

Small is beautiful

A quick post to put up two more "GUardsmen". Old GW (Citadel) "Space Dwarves" plastic minis, extensively remodelled to get more varied poses. Oldies, but definitively goodies. I am a squat fan, by the way...

Beauty, the Beast, and friends...

Intensive blogging days... More old school IG for the IG army. Mostly old GW imperial guard from the 1980s. Great stuff, with lots of character. The ogryn impersonnates a Heavy Weapon team of two guardsmen. I picked the idea from somewhere, just cannot remember at the moment where from... Ah, anyway. There you go. Pictures are dark and blurry, sorry. I need better light...

















And the army's big boss, Colonel Nathaniael Shatz.



This is one superb miniature. I hope I did it justice. The sculpt is just perfect.

More to come.

Where the wild things are...

In between painting ancient Greeks, I have been busy gathering an old school IG army as well. The idea was to pick everything vaguely sci-fish that is lying in my flat AND is not a Space Marines, and make an army of it for Warhammer 40k. That means quite a lot of old school IG, some tanks, and ... that:



I am the proud owner of a few of these old beastmen. I think they are old Grenadier or Ral Parha, and I bought them about 15 years ago. The series is now re-issued by a British company called Em4 miniatures. I do not know how they do that, but the sure thing is that I bought a lot of those. These are superb miniatures, with good detail and no flash. They remind me of Bob Olley's sculpting style. If it is indeed his handywork, then this is the very best he has done. I have often had difficulties with Olley's style, but this is just great.

Those guys will be added to the IG army as riflemen. The idea is to get an abhuman-human army, with ratlings, beastmen, ogryns and the like. Here is one more painted example, and a few waiting for paint.

Some more random pictures of the army...

All the army on the shelf

The boss and the big robots on the shelf


The Scouts/flying bots. Big gun behind is the heavy bolter.

Big robot/dreadnought number 1. Flames need to be reworked at some point. Too much black and yellow, it seems strange. The first idea was to go for a sort of sickly green flame effect, Alien mystery gun style. In the future, maybe.

Big bot number 2 and...

... his little friend. Comment from my daughter: he must be a baby, since he has diapers. Quite so.





One of the land speeders. Extraordinary little things in game terms. Multi-melta is ace, heavy flamer useful more often than not, all that in a skimmer. I had a pinch of bad consicence because my ... constructions are slightly smaller than GW's stock models. To compensate, I tried to be generous with my opponents' lines of sight.

One of the rhinos, the one with the open hatch. This was a treat to do. works visually very well, better than what the picture gives away.

And squad 2, the red heads. Red technic was very straightforward: the ubiquitous Charred Brown, then Charred + Terracotta, then Terracotta. Done. For this like for the bone heads, I did scratches and bumps by leaving the darker color show in some places. Then you go on the edges of this darker zone with pure white or a lighter version of your highlight color. Gives the "trompe l'oeil" effect you want.

On these big pictures, you see just how quick the army was done... Everything but 4 models from the bone head squad was painted in this feverish friday afternoon and night before the tournament. I might come back to this army and, for instance, re-work the metallic areas. Sometimes...

Next time, a bit of fluff, and we will be departing for new shores.

And now, pictures of the army itself. I did not find the time to take a pic of the whole army arrayed on a nice table, but that will be for my next game at the club. Pics are a bit big and not so good, apologises for that.

First things first, the Boss, Mr Flying Brain.


As I said before, a nice cheap toy and some wires.

Tactical squad 1: robots!













Heavy and special weapons


Normal grunts

The same in situ


The ride of the squad. I changed the design for the Rhinos and Predators. The initial, cupola kind of design, was too big. Also, the shop was out of vents the size I wanted. So I fell back on another sort of plumbing hardware...



Painting is very straightforward. Army Painter's skeleton bone sprayed on the thing. Gives a nice, even coat. Then a wash of Vallejo Smokey Ink in the recess and in places where dust, grease and such would collect. Then drybrush GW Bleached bone, then white. It is important to put your drybrush strokes in the direction the vehicle is going to go. It gives and impression of movement, like if the strokes had been caused by flying. Then you take various colors, white, yelloew, amber, terracota, black. Lots of water, and you put a dot or a line on the surface. With a dry brush, you immediately pull this color, also in the direction of the vehicle's movement. That breaks the basic color, makes it more lively, and puts these movements strokes you want. Difficult to explain, but it is a basic model scales technic.

Ok, more later, I need to work.