The Blessed Lady Rises, On Wings Of Fire

Well, wings of skin and bone, but shush, the propaganda's important. I didn't update yesterday as there wasn't really anything to say and I spent the time playing Fortnite with my son. Today, however, not only did I finish the army leader, Katrina De'Arque, but I had a look for the army list, realised I'd lost it, and rewrote it so now I know what's left to add to the whole thing to complete it as a 2,000 point army.

But first!

She was an Inquisitor, once, and now she's much, much more...

She's been gifted wings, and hooves, and armour proof against all but the most powerful weapons

The whole army as it stands is something in the region of 1,500 points or so, but isn't quite legal as the assault squads need Chimeras to drive around in. And when you add those in you get to about 1,750 points, so to round it out I'm going to add a Leman Russ and a unit of "Big Mutants" - essentially close combat Ogryns, except one has a flamer. I might use Ogryns - if I can find any that are less than £35 a pop the old Forgeworld renegade ones would be perfect really. The current plastic Chaos Ogryn from the Kill Team: Blooded set would also be quite good for the purpose as well, and a hell of a lot cheaper to get hold of, too!

Next up on the painting block - not quite sure. Part of me wants to get stuck into my latest Imperial Guard force, the Paradisan LXIX Infantry (based on late 19th century Prussians), but I do have those Royalist Quar and a lot of other stuff to choose from in the pile of opportunity. So I'll have to have a rummage and see what strikes my fancy.

 EDIT:

After I finished this post I went and added the names to all the squad leaders in the army:

The Karaboudjani Imperial Guard regiments' command ranks are: Sub-Commander (lieutenants), Commander (captains), Over-Commander (majors), Senior Over-Commander (lieutenant colonels), High Commander (colonels). The XV Kataphraktoi commander is currently Over-Commander Räder, who was the CO of the regiment's White Battalion originally. He never bothered to give himself a field promotion after the deaths of the higher command staff, because he and the bulk of the rest of the force considers Katrina De'Arque to be, in essence, the regimental High Commander.

Anyway the only other named figure in the army is "Tank-Killer" Tomlan, a rocket launcher operator who was the first of my heavy weapons troopers to actually destroy a tank in a game - if the kill markings I painted on his shoulder armour are correct he has been responsible for destroying a Leman Russ, a Falcon, and no fewer than three Vypers. He may have other kills to his name, but those are the ones I recorded back in the day!

Painting Points: 
Today: 1
This Week: 3
2024: 159 (300!!)

A Slow Start

Despite only having the one figure left to paint for the Lost and the Damned force - that of the army's commander, the Blessed Lady - I haven't been able to do very much on her today. Blocked out some areas, picked out some details, applied some washes... but something about the mini is making me go slowly. Sometimes you get figures like that. Sometimes you get ones that seem to paint themselves, but this is not one!

It's slightly frustrating really because there isn't a lot to do - armour, skin, sword, flaming skulls... that's about it! But it's just a slog. Oh well. She'll be done soon and then I can move on to something else. Maybe those Royalist Quar, or that Casket of Souls that's been staring grimly at me for a while...

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE OF KHORNE!

I finished up the World Eater, which was a bit nerve wracking as I'd got him to a point that I was really pleased with... and then I had to slather various shades of red all over him. It looks great though, so very glad about that!

Before...

...and after!

Shakarr, once of the World Eaters, now a lone renegade who wanders and has found himself in the thrall of the Blessed Lady, leader of the Karaboudjani and her Astartes bodyguard. Ever since that fight on Skalathrax, Shakarr has walked the path of the Blood God, never quite losing himself but inexorably slipping ever closer to the endless rage that will eventually claim him. He retains enough sense of self to be useful beyond sheer uncompromising violence, and is as calm as a near-bezerker can ever be. His armour and axe are possessed, but his strength of will and single-minded focus on retaining himself despite the nails and the blood have stopped either or both of them destroying him thus far.

Right side view prior to the blood-splosion. You can see the squad marking on his pauldron here

Is that screaming face still alive? Who knows. It's 40K, make your own assumptions!

A demon! How unusual

Ghulga infests his armour, Ghorath is the axe. Note that the blood splatter has managed to find itself even on the rear of his boots

So that leaves me with just the Blessed Lady herself to do, before I need to think about procuring vehicles. The Astartes are each embedded in one of the assault squads, and I can't remember if they're in Imperial Guard Rhinos or Chimeras... I'll have to dig out the list I wrote.

The Triumverate, the Blessed Lady's bodyguard and advisors, as well as the combat stiffeners for the Kataphraktoi themselves

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 2
2024: 157 (299)

When Stealth Is No Longer A Requirement

Then you don't need your camouflage and can run about in shiny metallic turquoise powered armour with a minor daemonic entity living in it!

The armour really works - it looks a lot like the art which is good. The bolt pistol's eyes are looking forwards which is nice (who needs to aim when the gun can do it) and the green markings really pop against the blue of the plate. I haven't thought of a name for the demon infesting Alpharius' armour though (but I am tempted by Orcus).

So after finishing Alpharius up I made a start on blocking out the rest of the details of the World Eater:

Astartes from 8th Tactical Squad, unknown Company, unknown Chapter, Legiones Astartes World Eaters.

I need to touch up the brass edging and work out a nice contrasting colour for the loincloth. The end state is planned to be a nicely done World Eater (with a Bloodthirster in the armour!) absolutely covered in Blood For The Blood God and various other paints to have a nice build up of dried and wet blood...

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 1
2024: 156 (298)

I Am Alpharius

I slept on it and decided to repaint the second Word Bearer as an Alpha Legionnaire, called (what else) Alpharius. I haven't done very much today, just a little bit of work on the armour of the World Eater and trying out a fun new method for the Alpha Legionnaire. I painted all the red armour panels in Stormhost Silver and then washed it with a mix of Biel-Tan Green and Contrast Asurmen Blue to make a funky sort of metallic blue-green. I'm in two minds as to whether or not to paint some green scales on some parts of the armour, or just to do some Alpha Legion iconography on the blank right shoulder pad. After all, the Legion icon would go on the left, but... there's a daemonic head on that pad.

There's debate as to where the Alpha Legion stand in the 41st Millenium, but this Legionnaire certainly looks like a full on agent of the Ruinous Powers. On the other hand, this is the Alpha Legion, and everything they say is a lie of some kind... just what this particular Marine is doing in the retinue of the Blessed Lady, who can say. Perhaps not even the Marine themselves!

The Kataphraktoi March Again

Well, I ended up not going to Siege of Tarris for family reasons, but I did manage to use today to paint the last few human troopers for my Karaboudjani XV Kataphraktoi Lost and the Damned army:

Autocannon heavy weapon team - unlike the original Kataphraktoi heavy weapons, this has been camouflaged rather than remaining in a polished bare metal like the lasrifles

Chaos star markings on the shoulder armour of the gunner, but not on the number two

Specialists - vox-operator, meltagunner, sergeant, and sniper

Note the winged skull that survives on the water bottle of the meltagunner

Troopers - the one on the far left is a heavy bolter team number two, while the one next to him wears a classic Rogue Trader Imperial Army helmet in the original 1980s scheme for an Imperial Army Tactical Squad trooper

A variety of uniform elements unified by the leather webbing and reflec-coated armour

Then I went and put the remnants of the XV Kataphraktoi Regiment on parade:

Front to back: Regimental Command staff with Regimental Standard, Colonel in the centre front with plumed headgear; three assault "platoons"; five infantry "platoons". Note the missile launcher tube at rear right in its original bare metal

The survivors and replacements of the XV Regiment number a paltry 88, which is not even enough for a single infantry company at full strength (three platoons of 35 plus a command element that includes a mortar squad and anti-tank squad for a total of 122 personnel before any additional attached staff such as psykers) but they have nowhere else to go and nothing to lose

So now all that remains for this little force - apart from acquiring and painting the various armoured vehicles the list requires - is the "command and advisory" staff...

Geryon Chalcid, Word Bearer commander and life ward of the ex-Inquisitor (seen with wings directly behind Chalcid) whose personal army the XV have become, and two other Astartes who advise and provide stiffening to the renegades. Also some mysterious cloaked Marine in black armour...

I'm not convinced about the Word Bearer - my original idea was to paint him up in the original white and blue and then absolutely soak him in blood effects, but I think now I either make all three Word Bearers or I repaint the second Word Bearer as another, different, Legionnaire - I'm just not sure which one. Alpha Legion might be a good shout, or possibly a Night Lord? I shall ruminate on this while I paint the semi-demonic ex-Inquisitor and Cypher.

Painting Points:
Today: 12
This Week: 40
2024: 155 (297)

Blocking Out And A Repaint

When painting a bunch of figures at once - batch painting - one of the stranger bits is the blocking out of colours. At this stage you can sort of see where they're going, but there's still a lot of messy bits and there's no highlighting or washes or anything like that, so they tend to look a bit rubbish. You just have to trust the process, and remember that even the best miniature always looks unfinished until the base is done. I don't really know why that is, but it's true. So today has mostly been blocking bits out on the various Kataphraktoi I have left to do - camouflage colours, metals, leather, that sort of thing. I also picked on the half-finished standard bearer and finished him.

Some basic colours down ready for some finer detail and highlighting tomorrow

I'm particularly pleased with the way the standard bearer came out. I don't think he has any particular rules associated with him in the Lost and the Damned army list (I'll have to check) but a standard bearer's always been in the Kataphraktoi and I like the idea that this last remnant of the once-proud regiment still has their Regimental Standard to rally around and use as a point of pride and bittersweet memory of tradition.

Front view - this officer retains his dress uniform as a point of pride

I think it's very funny that the sculpted Imperial standard has an eight-pointed star on it already...

The standard top came from a Chaos Space Marine sprue I think

The gold in the centre of the purity seal is meant to be a Chaos star, but it's mostly just a squiggle

Also, over the last few days I've been mulling over my Palmyrene Spears Primaris army. I like some of the models, but I'm not really convinced I want to keep the army - and I know that selling an army that's not an actual recognised Chapter is much harder than selling one that is. So I picked a squad and one of the Dreadnoughts and redid their shoulder pauldrons to be Raven Guard instead. I just need to dig out the Raven Guard transfers I hope I have hiding somewhere:

The highlight of blue on the black pauldron is to differentiate it from the tactical flat black of the various icons

In natural light the blue is much less obvious - the wash of Nuln Oil that I applied helps blend it all together to look black

So, transfers permitting, I'll probably be selling this army soon - I could do with a bit of a cash injection. Keep your eyes out for that, I'll link it when I do.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 1
2024: 115 (257)

Getting Into The Groove

Well, I finished the last of the third close assault squad (they're a Fast Attack choice) and so I celebrated by going to the tray that holds the force and digging out the remaining minis that the army needs painted. It turned out that apart from the Astartes and the Inquisitor there weren't really that many left to do (apart from the as-yet-acquired vehicles):

Sort of an army shot, I suppose. You can see the demonically powered-up Inquisitor in the bottom left of the box, and the various Astartes on the bottom right - I think that World Eater might become another Word Bearer honestly, but we'll see. Also, who's that next to the lascannon team...

 

The undercoat brigade

And of that bunch the rocket launcher team was essentially nearly complete. So I got on with it and finished those as well, meaning I now just have to get through:

1x Standard Bearer
1x Officer
1x Vox-Operator
1x Sniper
1x Meltagunner
1x Autocannon team
5x Troopers

Which isn't a lot at all really. Anyway here's the ones I finished today:

Three troopers and the vox-op for the third close assault squad

 

I'm very pleased with the way the Slaaneshi symbol turned out.

The whole squad. Again note the presence of (converted) Blackstone Fortress renegades. The squad leader and flamer are both veterans of the original army!

Rocket launcher team. The gunner is, I think, another old hand from the original army, although his rocket launcher was originally bare metal. The loader uses a Middenheimer head and the arms from the plastic tank crew, I think.

Note the lack of pouches on the gunner - I have no idea why this is the case!

So a pretty productive day all told.

Painting Points:
Today: 6
This week: 18
2024: 114 (plus 142 from before I started counting for a total so far of 256!)

Wave Those Swords About

Posing multipart figures is great fun, but sometimes I look at what I did years ago and go "huh?"

See if you can spot which one of these four made me go "huh?" this time. Just some base colours done today as I've been busy with some spring autumn cleaning. I'm hoping to get them done tomorrow; it shouldn't take too long - a few bits of camo, some highlights, some chaos marks, that sort of thing. Once done that'll be all three close assault squads done and I can have a look at the rest of the force.

Close Assault The 40K Way

Today I finished off the last bits of the Kataphraktoi I'd been working on the last couple of days. I think there's probably not a great many figures left to do in the whole army, honestly, so I may have accidentally fallen into a Mini Project. There are vehicles to get, though, but then again that's not so different to a lot of my armies for 40K. Anyway, here's the pictures:

That's the squad leader (with power fist and pistol) and the vox-operator (with shotgun and chucking a grenade while his slightly awkward pose underlines how crude his bionic is).

And here's the whole squad! You'll see a fair few of the Blackstone Fortress renegades scattered throughout, as they really drive home the rag-tag nature of what was a very uniform and organised military force. The chap on the front left is actually a survivor of the original army, one of the original Combat Engineers who all had a particular Chaos Power they'd sworn themselves to. It's that squad, with its various camo bits, that provided the wider inspiration for the direction the army went in and where it ended up in terms of colours.

And here's the bulk of the second close assault squad - there's a third yet to come - which I finished today. Unlike the shotgunners I remembered to give them some Chaos insignia!

And the whole squad. There's quite a few Blackstone Fortress figures in here - including the squad leader, who I converted quite extensively - and I'm particularly proud of the way the vox-operator turned out. I also think that the mix of Catachan, Cadian, Warhammer Empire, Necromunda, Chaos Space Marine, and Blackstone Fortress Renegade parts actually blend quite well together. You really do get the feeling that these are veterans wearing a wide mix of gear, from their own original stuff to captured or even home-made equipment.

Sat on the painting desk now is the third close assault squad. Only four of them need to be painted, so who knows, I might get them done before next week.

Painting Points:
Today: 7
This Week: 12
2024: 108

Marching To Glory!

The path to glory is, of course, the road walked by Champions of Chaos - the way towards Daemonhood... or becoming a spawn. For the bulk of the followers of the Dark Gods, however, their service is that of pawns or disposable assets. Not that it matters, of course - what difference is that to the life of a Guard trooper or Imperial citizen? 

All of which is to say I picked up a few more figures from my Lost and the Damned army, and - yesterday and today - did some work on them. These figures will complete (sort of) two squads of assault infantry - one with pistols and close combat weapons, one with shotguns. Eventually each of these squads will be mounted (probably in a Rhino) and accompanied by a Traitor Space Marine. For now, though, they're very nearly done. I just need to finish the skin, do a bit of touching up, gloss varnish all the black armour, and base them. Shouldn't take long tomorrow, but I ran out of steam tonight.

Return To The Kataphraktoi

Today I didn't feel like doing any more work on the Necromunda minis I have on my painting table, or on the Tomb Kings Casket of Souls, or the Quar, or indeed anything else. But I did feel like painting something. So I rummaged in my drawers and came up with some of my Lost and the Damned army! This is an army built using the 3rd Edition Codex: Eye Of Terror list, and is based heavily on the remnants of my old Karaboudjani XV Kataphraktoi army that I'd played through all the years of 4th Edition with. This was a heavy infantry force where each basic infantry squad cost well over 100 points before adding in special or heavy weapons. They had Hardened Fighters (WS4), Sharpshooters (re-roll 1s to hit), Carapace Armour (4+ save) as well as Iron Discipline (able to rally under half strength within 12" of officers) and Hardened Veterans (allowing them to take Veteran squads).

The army was not particularly competitive, and lost far more games than it won, but it did look cool - they wore black fatigues and gloss black armour with polished silver weapons and brown leather webbing. Their Combat Engineer units (Veteran squads) wore various camouflage kit that they'd picked up from here and there to mark them out as both elite within the Regiment and also to give them a bit more protection in their very dangerous job of combat engineering.

Anyway, after years of gaming with them I ended up having to sell much of the army to make ends meet. I couldn't bear to part with all of them, however, so I kept enough to make a small Lost and the Damned force. They'd always been Traitor Guard, and I figured that after lots of attrition they'd moved from being this elite shock infantry force to a mix of veteran Kataphraktoi supplemented by pirates, renegades, deserters, and true believers in Chaos. They'd been lured to the side of Chaos in the first place by a heretic Inquisitor who'd sparked an uprising on their homeworld and in many of the deployed Karaboudjani regiments, and so I have a model to represent that Inquisitor in her Chaos-uplifted form - wings, hooves, that sort of thing - who acts as the commander of the Lost and the Damned force. She's supplemented by some Heretic Astartes (a Word Bearer and a couple of World Eaters) who act as stiffeners and bodyguards, but the bulk of the current XV Kataphraktoi are a far cry from their glory days as heavily armoured elite infantry...

...as these close assault troops demonstrate. Some of them have retained their originally issued shotguns, but the presence of a civilian break-action and an alien-looking slug thrower illustrate just as well as the motley collection of camouflages and uniform pieces do that they have supply and logistical issues, to put it mildly. They have managed to retain some pieces of their original armour plate and all wear leather webbing, but whether it's the original issue or newly made pieces is unclear.

These ones lack the yellow or red Chaos star warpaint that some bear on their armour, too, but mostly that was down to me forgetting that was an option until it was too late...!

They only took me a little while to do; I picked them up this afternoon and sort of bashed them out quite quickly which was nice. I didn't even really need to refer to any of the previously painted Kataphraktoi - I've painted so many over the years that I basically had muscle memory for it. I'll probably do a few more this week, I think.

Painting Points:
Today: 5
This Week: 5
2024: 101

All Quiet On The Painting Front

I've yet to pick up a paintbrush today, but I am about to. I'm going to work on the penitent engines which will go alongside my old 3rd-4th Edition Witch Hunters army. 

Anyway, I've been footling about on Bolter & Chainsword and I found a really fantastic painting log about some traitor Guard and cultists and it's made me want to drop everything and go back to my old Karaboudjani XV Kataphraktoi. They were a full fledged heavy infantry army in the days of 4th and have now been rebuilt as a Lost and the Damned army from the old Codex: Eye of Terror to reflect their status after a long time fighting and the collapse of their structure following the events of the 13th Black Crusade. 

But I think that should be a project for another day. And because a post shouldn't be a post without images, here's a photo of some Heresy Miniatures minis that I'm going to turn into a Corporate Security squad for... something. I just like the figures, ok? 

(Bonus points if you can spot the not-K9)