Keeper of Secrets - Avatar of Shaah Complete

Well, this was one fast project. I started work on Saturday; picking up where I'd left off in the build 2 years ago, and started painting on Thursday morning. 24 hours later and I'm done!

To be fair, the speed of the paint process was mostly due to the nature of the model. I also maximised the amount of work I did with the airbrush, so I spent about 2 hours on that part of the paint. After that, it was just a matter of sorting out the details. Oh, and fair warning, this post contains moderate resin boobies!

For those who aren't familiar with the model, this is the Avatar of Shaah by Raging Heroes. It's about 8 inches tall to the top of the sword and is all resin. I've written a review of the kit lower down, if you're interested.

My favourite part of the paint is the glowing eyes. They didn't take a lot of work, and I'm really happy with the final result. I basically just airbrushed them with dark angels green, then Vallejo escorpina green. After that, I washed around the area with a little Biel-Tan Green and then just highlighted the central eyes with a ever lightening mix of moot green and white.

Considering the time spent on paint, I'm really happy with how she came out. It's also nice to take something out of the cupboard of shame and get it finished for once. I'm planning to pick up a Lord Discordant tomorrow, and I never thought in a million years that I'd actually finish this model before then.

Anyway, that about rounds it out for the Avatar itself. Due to some difficulties with this kit, I've also written about the process of building it (which is basically just a massive page long complaint), but if you're just here for cool pictures, you can skip that bit.

Kit Review

I'm happy with the look of the final model now that it's done, but honestly it was a horrible experience to build. Resin can be hard to work with, and I've gone through plenty of resin models in my time, but in a number of ways Raging Heroes really dropped the ball on this one.

A gap in the claw you can fit your thumb in...

For one, the kit was rather shiny and coated in a very noticeable quantity of release agent which was resistant to cleaning and took a lot of work just to prep. The fitting for the individual parts was also quite poor, and even with the best will, there were a number of gaps that you could easily fit a thumb nail in all over the model.

I expect to spend some time with greenstuff filling gaps, but the position of the seams was just plain terrible, and the kit honestly feels poorly designed. Often seam lines between parts seemed to be arbitrarily cut straight through crucial rounded areas that were next to impossible to fill cleanly.

Looking at a mock up of the model before paint or greenstuff, if you enlarge the picture, you'll see that there are seams running though every inch or so of the claw on the right. The front side is the better fitting one, and let me tell you it took quite a bit of time to fix all of that.

The worst seam on the whole thing? the butt. For some reason, they decided to cut the legs at the hip to the groin (which you can also see in this picture). That would've worked well if the avatar had clothes, but with a bare demon ass to contend with, it basically left a large horrible seam right across the body that was really unnecessarily hard to fill and work with. Why they didn't follow the line of the chains, I'll never know.

Detail pickup is ok, but far from ideal as well. It just feels slightly blunted and lacking in the crispness that you see in other manufacturers (eg: Anvil, Forgeworld, Prodos, Black Sun, Wargame Exclusive, Nocturna, even Finecast). Overall, if you like the model, I'd still get one, but just know that it'll be a ton of work, and honestly don't even go there unless you're an experienced model-maker.

I don't like slamming a manufacturer, but I've got other Raging Heroes models from the kickstarter, and it'll probably be a few years till I can face working on any of them either. It's a shame, but that's the reason I shelved this project in the first place, and it's a real problem. Does it look nice now? yeah, but I had a ton of work just getting it together in the first place, and it's mostly down to poor design choices.

Squaduary 2019 - Fiends of Slaanesh Finished!

Well, it's been a while since my last post. I won't lie, it's mostly due to a combination of laziness, Christmas, and then more laziness.

Despite the slow progress on the blog, and hobby stuff in general, I couldn't not enter Squaduary this year. I've finished both times on the other years the event has run, so I couldn't break my perfect winning streak!

With that in mind, I've painted a unit of 3 Fiends of Slaanesh. These are the new plastic models from the Wrath and Rapture set that came out recently. I can't really comment on the rest of the set though, as I bought these on eBay for just over £20, which I think is a pretty good deal really. They're  a really nice kit; with some excellent detail, and a lot of little features to be appreciated. In particular, I really like the sort of cute sea-horse side view of the heads. Something about it just works well when combined with the rest of the model. I also like the classic backwards legs and other twisted physical parodies on these models that echo the originals nicely.

Anyway, paint wise, I used the airbrush for the skin and then just enjoyed the painting process really. I don't paint that many daemons, so it was a nice change of pace from the normal stuff (ie burly armoured dudes!)

Well, that about wraps it up for another year!

Daemonette Squad Finished (Juan Diaz Metal Sculpts)

Another unit finally finished. I've been working on these for some time. I've got more units to get through too as I stocked up on 2 another 20 when they went back into production for a limited run. These are all the ones that I collected earlier, and I had gradually painted 6 of them to finished about a year ago. I finished the last 4 recently.

I really like these metal sculpts. I actually do like the plastic ones as well, but I particularly like the fine details these ones have; in particular I actually like how they scale with other models in the chaos range. They look small and delicate next to your marines, which seems fitting somehow.

They look great as a unit too, and I know that I'll get a lot of use out of them now that they're finished. They don't cost that many points, so are the kind of unit you can afford to take in a lot of lists. Obviously, their survivability isn't that good, but I tend to play a mostly shooting oriented force with my Emperor's Children, and they're more likely to be used for counter-assault than anything else.

I'm posting again tomorrow, but It'll be something different. I finished my piece for Dreadtober, so I figure I better put that on the blog. After that, more Chaos!

Slaanesh Female Raptors - Finished

I finally finished my all-female Chaos Raptor squad. I think it has been about a year since I last worked on my Chaos, but I'm back in the saddle again and trying to finish off some of those units that were nearly there.

I'll forgive you if you can't remember my last post about these models. They are made by Prodos Games for a game called Space Crusaders. I picked them up as a random purchase at Salute 2 years ago and it's nice to get them out of the cupboard of shame at last!

Style wise, they're a bit excessive and buxom; so basically perfect for Slaanesh. Sure, they won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I really like how they look. They're really well cast too; easy to build, clean and have great detail. In particular, their faces were a real highlight to me. They weren't hard to paint and I think they look awesome and very expressive.

On the other side of things, all of that gold filigree and baroque detail was rather time consuming to work on! It also took a while to paint the bases and thing that were more detailed than usual. I actually built the bases myself using some tyranid egg sacs that I got from my brother. I have no idea what sprue they are from though, or if they're even still in the kits.

I've also been working on more of my Chaos, and I'll be posting another unit I recently finished tomorrow, so check back soon! I've actually managed to get a post together for every day this week, so look forward to it!

Slaanesh Female Raptor Squad

Keeping the Chaos posts going, I'm sharing this rather buxom unit today. I picked these up just over a year ago at Salute 2016 from a lesser known manufacturer; Prodos Games. If you've heard the name before, it is probably in relation to their highly successful AvP table-top game. These models are part of a game called "Space Crusaders" that they released a little while ago, and a unit of 5 of them is a reasonable £20. A pretty decent price for such well-sculpted resin miniatures.

I'll probably do a full review in the future when I get more of them painted up, and a chance to take some more interesting pictures. That said, one of the things that I really like about them is the variety of poses. They're nice and dynamic.

I had originally planned to paint them up differently from my Emperor's Children as a separate force of Daemons, but why have two smaller forces when you could have one massive one with tons of options? Tough decision.

I've really enjoyed painting them so far too. The little skulls and bone details are great, and I've been using the same style on their skin as  I did with my Daemonettes which has worked out well. The details on their faces are also really cool, and I've been very impressed with how their expressions have come to life as I've worked on them. I've said it before, but when you're painting female faces, it's really important to keep the highlight fairly smooth and not too harsh, otherwise they look all craggy (which works great on rugged marines, but looks terrible on women). Just something to keep in mind if you're thinking about picking up a box of them.

So much gold filigree to paint....

Style wise, they might not be everyone's cup of tea, as lets be honest, that armour ain't covering much, or protecting from much either! I like them though, as part of the fun of Slaanesh is always keeping it bodacious and ostentatious!

I've finished 2 of them so far, with another two most of the way there. I'd love to get the squad done, so wish me luck on the last leg of the journey.

More Chaos again tomorrow, keeping the conversions coming...

 

Female Chaos Space Marines!

With everyone sitting around waiting for 8th Edition, I thought it was the perfect time to have a look through some of my old conversions from a time long before I had this blog. I'm planning to bring you a tantalizing glimpse of something Chaotic every day this week; with the hope that by the time that the new edition is out, people might be inspired to actually build something!

Now that the intro is done, today I have these finely crafted morsels for you. These conversions date back about 5 years, and use plastic Daemonettes combined with Chaos Space Marine parts and plenty of Milliput (they're so old, I didn't have access to green stuff back then!).

Who says a girl can't wear pink on the battlefield?

I hand sculpted all of the robe bits. Let's just say it was traumatic and leave it there.

I also sculpted a second breast onto every single one. It sounds like a small thing, but I'm sure most of my readers will be aware that symmetry is very important there!

To be honest, these minis had been a bit forgotten recently, but now that I have them out, I think they actually look pretty great. I think it's high time they saw the battlefield once more.

I particularly like the champion with the powerfist. It's strange to think that she was actually the first model I built and painted for my Emperor's Children. They did become more conventional over time as the conversions were so extreme in the beginning that I just couldn't keep making them, as it was literally killing me.

Background wise I kind of envisaged them as Daemonically possessed marines who had been changed by the warp over thousands of years.

Anyway, leave a comment below with what you think, and check back tomorrow to smell what the Rock is cookin'... Or something...

Converted Emperor's Children Chaos Marine

A little while ago I had this idea of doing some chaos marines with a difference; topless. It just seemed really outrageous and in keeping with the Slaanesh obsession with physical form as well as reckless pursuit of sensation. I just finished the first one; built from some standard bits and some spares from Warhammer Quest Silver Tower that I got on eBay (I can't remember the name of the unit - acolytes or cultists or something - they were about the right size and buff in a mutant kind of way, so perfect for the job). Anyway, I'm happy with him.

I also finished a Daemonette over the weekend too.

A closer look at the man himself. I had a lot of fun with this conversion and I think he's nice and thematic. He also puts those Blood Angels and their golden abs in place with his demonic core.

The back still looks quite armoured, which is cool.

Some pictures of my latest Daemonette.

Errmmm ... It just happened...

Slaanesh Daemon Prince WIP

As a side to the masses of battle reports I'm trying to write up, I thought it would be a good moment to share a work in progress Daemon Prince I started some months ago for my Emperor's Children.

You might wonder where this post is coming from given all of the Genestealer Cult stuff I've been working on. Well, I have to admit that I recently ordered 2 units of old metal Daemonettes. I couldn't resist, given that they're made-to order for one week only. I already have a unit of 10 that I painted some time ago (4 still outstanding so not finished) and I always wanted enough to do a proper contingent of Slaanesh Daemons. It was those thoughts that made me remember the half-finished Daemon in the cupboard. The Horror!

Conversion wise, I did an adjustment to the arm positions to give him a more intimidating pose. Other than that I used a mask from a Talos Pain Engine and combined it with a nest of tentacles/hair made from greenstuff. I also added a few details to the base to make it look more hell-ish, but as I haven't painted them yet, they don't really stand out.

I guess I can add him to the ever growing pile of "cool stuff I haven't finished yet". Here's hoping Santa puts some inspiration/hobby drive in my Christmas stocking again this year!

Slaanesh Daemonettes

Not too long ago I decided that my Emperor's Children could use a contingent of Slaanesh Daemons to back them up. Luckily, I managed to get hold of some of the old metal Daemonettes on eBay for a reasonable price (about £20 for 10). For those who don't know, they sometimes go for several times that sum and I'm sure that right now there will be a "buy it now" listing for 10 asking a good £100.

I actually quite like the plastic ones too, but I have used them a lot in the past and in various conversions, so I wanted some different ones just to differentiate them aesthetically. On the table-top I was thinking I might take Daemonology and try to summon them as it could be a good laugh. Either that or I might do a small allied detachment added on to the main force. Only time will tell with that one, but I'm sure it'll be fun.

I really wish that Games Workshop would make a chaos supplement people actually want to see. People play chaos in 2 ways - a mixed Black Legion type list with all the gods represented, or as fluff armies that only have units of one of the gods (e.g. Nurgle only, or Slaanesh only). Why they haven't made a supplement for these types I don't know. They did do Khorne Daemonkin, but then never made any for the other gods. I quite like the idea of a proper Thousand Sons/Tzeentch  force, but at the moment it isn't happening. Obviously I'd like to see a proper Slaanesh codex the most. I'm not asking for it to be super-competitive, but a few bonuses and formations that rewarded you for taking a themed force would be nice.

Now I just have to go and paint the other 4... what "6" is the official number for Slaanesh, what do you mean it isn't a legally field-able unit!

Prodos Games Sirins

This model has been in the works for some time and I finally finished her off this weekend. It wasn't that the scheme was overly complicated; more that I was procrastinating about how to finish off some of the colours - the sword in particular. She is from Prodos Games' Space Crusade and one miniature from a unit known as Sirins. I'll stop there because I know nothing about the game itself, although interestingly the box set is available in two versions; with one being over 18 only!

The models themselves are highly detailed, multi part resin pieces. Prodos are perhaps better known for their AvP game (Alien Vs Preadator), but being a fan of all things Slaanesh I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get my hands on some of these buxom demons when I saw them for sale at Salute in London.

The model is built stock with no conversion work. The base is built from some Tyranid Egg-Sac thingies that you get in some of their kits (luckily my brother had handily left huge unattended piles of them at my house).

Photo wise, she was really resistant to my camera. The white skin tone was reflecting all the light and as I don't really have much of a photo set-up it was a real pain. In the end I managed to get a few decent shots though.

If this miniature interests you they also make some on foot with suspiciously bolter-like weapons, bikes, and some terminator/obliterator things too.