If you have ever followed one of
my OWAC entries in the past you will know I always try and go out on a bang,
well this entry is no different. I’m going to waffle a lot this month and show
pictures of unpainted things so if you are not interested in any of that feel
free to scroll down to the bright pictures at the bottom of this post.
You may have seen a small clue I
left to this month’s entry back in my introduction post, and if you did, well
done. This month is my biggest…
WILDCARD!
WAFFLE COMMENCE:
Back when I started planning this
challenge it was always in my mind that I wanted to paint one of the original
Armorcast Tyranid bio-tanks, so I went a searching around facebook groups to
see if I could track one down and as you will see, ended up with more than I
expected.
I managed to track down one of the
original Malefactors, however the previous owner had converted it to a
different pose. While I didn’t necessarily dislike the pose I wanted it to be
as close to original as possible. So I started by stripping off the paint to unveil
the previous work:
You can see that what they did was
cut the arm and flip one of the pieces upside down to give it a different angle.
They also cut both arms at the base again to change the angles:
So next I cut along the lines that
were originally cut and removed as much of the glue as possible, this revealed
that a bit of detail had been stripped away during the conversion:
I pinned the pieces back into
their original poses and set about sculpting back the missing detail:
And when undercoated I think I
managed to return it to the original pose fairly well don’t you think? Oh yea,
also he came with a completely standard brother:
And two friends:
Spot the Termagant included for scale...
So yea, the purchase I made
actually included one of each of the bio-tanks, and two of the Malefactors. A
little more than I was planning to take on in the OWAC but I don’t like to turn
down a challenge!
First up the two you have already
seen, two Malefactors:
For those of you that are not in
the know, these are the Tyranid troop transports, essentially bio-rhinos so
having two of them is actually pretty useful in a list. They are also pretty
cheap points-wise. They are not that much faster than the units they transport
until they get to “fast” speed but they are nicely armoured so should help to
deposit your gribblies into combat relatively unscathed.
Painting for these was done much
in the same way as the rest of the army, with the same scheme only not quite as
detailed. This is partially due to time restrictions (i.e. I would have never
got them all done in time), and the relatively low level of detail on the
actual sculpts. Never-the-less I think they look pretty striking and certainly
fit in with the rest of the force.
The final missing piece when
putting these together was the base. I knew I wanted to tie them into the rest
of the army with more than just the colour scheme but no one made a base big
enough. So 21st century technology to the rescue, and one trip to
thingiverse later I had the 3d plans for regular sized oval bases and some
quick edits and they were scaled to the right dimensions. Even so however they
were so big they wouldn’t fit on my printing bed in one go so I had to split
them in half, print two and then stick them together. I also made use of the
extra space on the base to include some bigger foliage, again the 3d printer to
the rescue and I printed some palm tree looking trunks. Again I think they look
pretty decent and bring some nice verticality to an otherwise quite squat
looking army.
Next up we have the Exocrine,
basically a Rhino with a gun for a horn:
As expected, this is similar to a Basilisk
only a little stronger. Same range and strength but an extra D6 damage and
armour penetration and double the save modifier. Basically, it is a tank
killer.
Same scheme and basing style as
before, I guess the only new element would be the green to bone transition on
the gun. Not sure if it fully works but could be worse I guess.
Something you may have noticed is
the slime trail behind each of these models. I built up the base with hot glue
to give the look of furrows being driven into the ground and then filled them with
red ink and gloss varnish.
Finally, we have the Haruspex:
This chap is a bit of everything,
a couple of different medium range weapons, one for troops another for tanks
and a close combat weapon for chomping anything silly enough to get close.
I guess the main stand out point
of this model is that I tried to carry over the NMM effect onto the claws that
I have in other parts of the army. Not sure it works as well on such a big
model but it certainly is striking so I don’t hate it.
So wrapping up, my points for this
month are as follows:
|
UNIT
|
EXTRAS
|
#
|
TOTAL
|
|
Malefactor (80)
|
|
2
|
160
|
|
Exocrine (165)
|
|
1
|
165
|
|
Haruspex (250)
|
|
1
|
250
|
|
TOTAL
|
575
|
And that is it, challenge over
(for me at least). When I started I wasn’t sure I would be able to get
everything done, and as it turned out I actually managed to add a few additions.
Everything looks really cohesive, which I am very proud about and I can’t wait
to show you all the full shots next month. But until then I hope you have
enjoyed seeing me paint this very red force this year and have enjoyed everyone
else’s entries just as much as I have.