Daemon centaur slaanesh bot!

A couple of posts back I showed a picture of a pile of plastic parts from everything deamon engine, mainly soulgrinder and maulerfiend parts, hinting at a plan for some new conversion or other.

In truth I had a half baked idea for some sort of soulgrinder for my slaanesh daemons. I was going to mash the two kits together some how, but other than that, I didn't really know where I was going with it.

Then yesterday, I had a flash of inspiration. A good while back I was chatting with one of my mates about how to make a slaaneshi soul grinder, as the stock kit doesn't really fit the theme, no matter how purple you paint it. We decided, inspired by fiends of slaanesh, some so sort of equine monstrosity might just be the way forward.

The slaanesh army in question at the time never got the horsey idea though, and the idea went forgotten about. Until I remembered it yesterday. I looked at the parts again, and before I could forget threw down a very quick sketch on the old tablet.

 

OK, it was not the greatest, I mean, to start with, horses ain't got that many legs. Bare in mind the parts are drawn from memory at work in a hurry. I think it's the start of something though.

So after the idea was in place, I ran home like I'd won a golden ticket to start work on my creation. 

An hour or so cutting, gluing and researching horses and we have this thing on the bench.

This is only the start, obviously, but hopefully you get an impression of where I'm going with it. The main thing I was going for, was a sense of speed in the pose. Hopefully, it looks at least a little bit like a horsey run. 

Hopefully I'll be back before long with more progress. Wish me luck!

Gonders

5 Reasons the latest daemonettes rule the previous versions

As published over the last week, I've been working on a daemon army full of slaanesh's finest. The last slaanesh force I put together was years ago, when the older metal daemonette models were available. You know the ones, females, with far to much chest. You'll know them because they're oddly popular. If you look on eBay at them, you'll see just how popular.

For some reason, or more likely  for 6 reasons, they go for lots money. But now, there's a new plastic box set, and my lord, they don't have bare chest. They go for about shelf price. Why is this the case? Thing is, the new sculpts are so much better. If you don't believe me yet, here's 5 reasons to buy the current box.

1) Plastic. Since GW have started releasing most of their kits in plastic now, you don't have to deal with as many hard to build joins, they're easy to convert, and unless you using GW's plastic glue, none of it needs pinning. This is especially true of daemonettes, who have spindley little joints on the arms. The metal versions were nothing short of a nightmare to glue claws too. There's nothing sexy about a daemonette with no limbs.

2) variety. The old ones were all the same looking, and suffered from the syndrome that lots of gamers dislike, of the cloned unit. C'mon guys' its not the 90's any more.

3) weirdness. The art work, as I've already mentioned, is where the servants of slaanesh really get brought to life. Blanche has poured all his weirdness into it, and there's not a mammorry it sight. Now' Gw have bought the models more in line with the art. Baldness, backward jointed legs, mohawks' and heads that look like your nan on a mid 20's body!

4) cost. Units of the old daemonettes can only come from eBay, or are otherwise second hand. The fact that by my fourth point, people still haven't got over miniatures with boobs means the second hand market knows how to charge for them. Units of 6 for 30 quid? I'll stick with gw's 10 for 16 thanks.

5) Slaanesh models with no boobs. If you remember as far back as the nineties, gw each metal team went through what became known as 'the red period' in that everything that they painted had bright blood red as a spot colour. Unnoticed by some, the design team appeared to go through 'the naked chest period' some years later. Every slaaneshi model ended up with far to much exposed flesh. Now the averaged under sexed gw fanboy loved this phenomena. Looking at the latest releases however, shows gw have actually seen sence and covered up their daemons, so to speak.  

I think i've made my point. So i urge people to go out and bag some of the latest daemonettes when planning your next chaos army, and see how they'll change you opinion.

Gonders

A slaaneshi beginning.

It has become apparent I have a bee in my bonnet enough to blog again this week. I don't know how long it'll last(I never do), but I know why it is.

Firstly, I have something to and heblog about. There's yet another 40k army buzzing around my head, waiting to get out.

Secondly, and less importantly, I have new technology to use. I've got myself a nexus 7 tablet so I'm playing with that.

So a new army. I've often thought about building a slaaneshi daemon army before. I know I need a new 40k army, so now seamed a good time to start it. And it is only a start. I had a half painted khornate daemon prince kicking about in my bits box, so I dragged him out and slaaneshed him up a bit. A new weapon(made from a dark eldar raider's tiller), and a daemonette esque claw seamed to fit the bill.

He's about 90% finished in this picture. 

One thing i do want to do with this army is show how slaanesh isn't just the god of daemonic eye candy, as the world appears to think. Slaanesh is a pretty screwed up god. The best way to explain it is to look at John Blanche's work on slaanesh stuff. Its all really weird Combinations of people, animals fish and general craziness. i want to get that across in the army really.

I also have this pile of plastic, which(hopefully) will become something in the next few weeks, when the army needs some proper support.

So thats all, for now. I can't promise how often updates will be. If you've followed this you may have noticed i'm still getting the hang of posting via a tablet. Maybe next time the blog wil all be at the same time!

Retribution of Scyrah

So, um, been awhile. I pretty much let the blog fall by the way side for a few months. In fact, half a year. Its not something I intended to do, but real life, as ever managed to get in the way. Houses to decorate, kittens to feed, work to do, it all certainly adds up. Once you lose the momentum, blogging becomes a hard thing for me to get back into. However, i'm back, at least for the minute, to show all about what i've been working on.

During my months off the internet, I painted a retribution army for warmachine...

This is the first model i painted for the army, Adeptis Rahn. As soon as I saw Rahn's play style, I knew he was for me. I thought i'd struggle to recreate the studio colour scheme, so i tried something a little darker.

 Thats all.

Dark Angels Command Squad and Devastators.

The Tournament at MAWS is approching fast, and I've got to get my Dark angels finished by then. Its on sunday. Ah. 

Well, to be honest, I shouldn't be to bad. I've got a good chunk of them finished now. I have a dreadnought and a Librarian to finish this week and I'm golden. I don't have any full painting days between now and then, however, so I've just got evenings to work with.

I've hammered out the last two squads this week. Firstly, my command squad, with my lynchpin/bullet magnet model, the standard bearer hoisting the standard of devastation. One thing I will say about buying second hand stuff, is that you get a random collection of models. The empire banner top wasn't a conversion of mine, it came to me like that. I quite liked it though, so he stayed. Also, I'm loving the 2nd Ed apothecary! 

Next up, bringing some support to the field, the devastators. Pictures are somewhat rushed to be honest, but I have a good reason for that too, which I will explain in a minute... 

The squad is in 2 combat squads, for obvious reasons given the weapons they're carrying. I can honestly say after painting this lot, I have got the hang of painting the Dark Angels chapter symbol on shoulder pads.

So, as I mentioned, I rushed these photos a little. The reason being that I just found out the scythe and teacup in liverpool is hosting a Warmachine and Hordes hardcore qualifier in april. This is probably old news to the Warmahordes community, but I've not been keeping up with them recently. I've very tempted to enter but that gives me a hard deadline. To get 50 points of warmachine painted and practised with in 8 weeks? Holy moly, the clock is a tickin'...

Gonders

Pre-heresy Emperor's Children Land Speeder.

Well, you aren't going to see this one coming.  First off, its worth mentioning where I stand on heresy era armies and the whole '30k' side of the hobby which has reared it's head in the last few years. In a nut shell, I dislike whats happened with it.

As I grew up with toy soldiers, the heresy was a time swathed in myth and legend. From a purely background perspective, gamers in the 90's knew that the Emperor created the Legions, the Primarchs, and that after he fought Horus, he was stuck in the golden throne. That was pretty much anyone in the 41st millennium knew too. Going off what was written then, the history from 10,000 years ago was a mystery.

And that, was cool. I like mystery. I like not knowing.

Then, around the 2001 mark, in white dwarf, a series of articles appeared, the Index Astartes. These scribblings detailed the space marine chapters, including touching on the pre heresy side of things, and explained a little more about the primarchs. This provided quite the inspiration for starting some of these chapters and uncovered a little bit of the mystery we all loved.

A few years of this, and the black library releases a book called 'Horus Rising', and two more luna wolves novels, 'Galaxy in flames' and 'False gods'. These were cool books but set up the ruination of the heresy story for me. 

Hourus Heresy mania had begun.

Fast forward a good few years, and forgeworld release the unthinkable. An actual official model of an actual Primarch. The beings no-one knew anything about, suddenly have a face, and suddenly, there's no mystery left in Horus' story. We know every detail about every fight, down to the last punch thrown and bolter shell fired, and if we can stretch our wallets like never before, can fight these battles from pre history on our table tops.

All of which, I do not like.

Despite this, just like the Dark gods themselves and mighty Horus, Games Workshop's Influence has broken my mind. This last week, I've felt the pull of building my own preheresy army. I don't know why.

Maybe I'm just joining what I can't beat. Maybe since painting my Dark Angels, I've got my power armoured addiction on. I can't explain it.

But how to scratch the itch without missing a mortgage payment? Well, when I bought a whole bunch of dark angel's second hand a few months ago, the young merchant was kind enough to throw a second edition metal Ravenwing land speeder in the bundle. Not having any use for it, it has languished at the bottom of a box, waiting to wedge the heresy era door open for me.   

So this week, it has received an experimental paint job. Despite me hating myself, I'm quite happy with this little gem.

Ok, its just stuck into a lump of resin at the moment.

I don't know if I enjoyed painting it because it was a throw back to 2nd edition, or if it was the 30k bug driving my on. Only time will tell. 

I figured Emperor's children would work well with the Ravenwing wings on there. Ok, the sword has broken off the angel on the front, but there's little I can do about it. Hopefully its just a test model. With any luck, I might not even have to do the rest of an army!

Even managed a cheeky freehand chapter symbol on his shoulder plate there.

If I end my bank account on the forgeworld website, I'll be sure to let you know. 

Gonders

In progress. What, no blog?!

Alright, alright, I missed one! If you've been following this here blog of mine, you'll know I've been trying my hardest to blog every other day this year. A week or so ago, I mentioned in a post that I doubted I could keep it up at that rate. And what do you know, yesterday I should've posted and didn't.

Why? Well simply put, I haven't had anything to show. Partly because I haven't had the time to paint a lot, partly because I've decided to finish my Dark Angels batch painting them.

I have a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've got to make sure my dark angels are painted up to 1600 points. That's why my painting desk currently has this on it.

As you can see, I have been painting away, but this is as far as I've managed. When I was talking about blogging every other day, I said I'd been inspired to do it by another guy at our club, Dwez, who does just that. However, I realised the differences in our blogs. Where mine is meant to be solely about painting, Dwez's is more general 40k. I think that with this, I'm putting to much pressure on myself, which in turn is probably lowering my painting standard. I dont want to be rushing things through just to get something on the web. So I'm not going to promise to blog every other day, but I can only try my best. I'll be back with finished dark angels ASAP!

Gonders

One Ugly Forgefiend conversion. Again.

Whay hey, my Maulerfiend arrived in the post! This means a few things. Firstly, it means I could finish building my Forgefiend from the other week, as I can now give him the right guns. It also means, I have the start of my next deamon engine for the army which I'll probably be able to begin to build this time next week.

As you can see, This guy is now ready for a bit of colour. I dropped the 'Mechatendrils bursting out of the stomach' idea. This is mainly because as I glued the guns on, he appeared to be less in pain and more like he is bringing his autocannons be bear on the foe. I don't think it would've looked quite right with tendrils flying everywhere and his head looking not really bothered and more happy to be aiming at the other guy!  

You can see I did some work on the base too, including used DAS modelling clay to fill in under the angled slab of paving. 

Originally, I'd planned to use some spare power cables I have left over from the warhound titan to feed his guns, but I tried it and they simply looked to large. I bent and pinned some brass rod instead, and added some greenstuff ties for a little bit of detail. 

All that was left was to add a little plastic card spacer between the cannons(detailed with a skull, this is 40k after all) and here we have it. Ready for painting next week!

Gonders

Dark Angels progressing. 1600 points incoming

So to break up the chaos that's been coming out of my blog for the last week, I thought I'd post a picture of how my Dark angels are getting along. It's been since 500 points that I posted a full army shot so thought it's be nice to show how I'm getting on.

It has been announced recently that our club, the lost boys, is to attend the second leg of an inter club tournament held between 4 local clubs in the northwest of England. Its my turn to step up, so I'm most likely going to be taking the Dark angels along to the event held at MAWS(Manchester area wargames society, I believe).

So i need a painted 1600 point list to take with me. so far, its shaping up to look a little something like this:

As you can see, I have about 16 marines and a dreadnought to finish. Also, I've had to pull out the emergency librarian for space hulk, hopefully to save my arse from the tournament scene here.

I'd best not delay anyhow, I have marines to paint and a tournament to practise for!

Gonders

Tanks, The Man, The Myth, The Legend.

So my last post featured what appeared to be some sort of stolen dreadknight conversion, right? Well I've beening working away on him, and I can now say my general is ready to hit the table:

So now you've seen the finished product, it's time for an explanation of what is going on with this guy. Well, it all started years ago, in an issue of white dwarf I can no longer remember. In this issue was an article about a gamer who had his very own 'special character', more or less, a Chaos Warlord by the name of 'Steppenwolf'. The guy had made loads of different versions of his general, from power armoured, through to jet bike mounted, for almost every game system. He managed to use the same head(he looked like a mongol warlord if I remember correctly, he had a rough rider's head on every version) to make him look the part each time. Having seen this, I had to run with the same idea.

About this time, codex eye of terror was released, and thus began my love of all things lost and damned. I started an army, but I wanted a leader for my rabble that wasn't a high and mighty chaos space marine. Give me half an hour with the clippers and glue, and out rolls 'Tanks' for the first time...

This, now very old model, was my first shot at my very own character. Pretty poorly painted, but it's years old. This guy holds a special place in my gaming career. But what use was this puny human when I'd had to take a marine to lead the army? Well, the story goes, that a junior officer from the Thraxis PDF(a world, that would later gain a rich history), gained a habit of hitting hardcore combat stimms for an edition or two. Hence the tanks of stimms on his back, and the guy's name. So me and the drug fueled loonatic with a marine's profile became best of friends and crusaded across GW southport for a good few years.  Unfortunatly, his first army of followers has since been lost in the warp, but in time, he rose again...

The second edition of tanks had got an upgrade. Having taken a few skulls, he gained a trophy rack. a much bigger blade, as fits a warlord, and bulkier shoulder plates and armour. now he was beginning to look the part. By now, he had built up quite the array of enemies within our gaming group, including a certain inquisitor who still hunts him to this day.

However, after a catastrophic day on the apocalypse field, Tanks found himself beaten in combat and banished by the chaos god, khorne, until he could prove himself worthy in a world where everyone came on a square base...  

Where he resided for a long time. After reaping quite the tally, the gods granted his return to the thraxis system, where upon his return, his followers had raised a mighty army, known as 'The Black Masks' with which to crush the Imperial world of Gath shedammah.

And so, bearing two mighty deamon weapons, tanks has forged an unholy alliance with the Warpsmiths of the Dark Mechanicus. They have gifted him with a nigh unstoppable 'Anarchy' pattern Combat Walker of their own devising, and once more 'Tanks' Prepares to step foot on to the battlefield... 

 

Until next time! 

Gonders

A Chaos General with a Twist.

So it's just a little one today. Since I'm waiting for parts from the postman to finish my deamon engine from the the last blog, I thought I'd crack out the old brushes on this guy.

Remember how I mentioned I was going to gel my new chaos army with my old traitor lot? Well this is the guy who's going to be running the whole show. He goes by the name of 'Tanks', but there will be more on that in another post soon. 

I've had this thing sat on my desk for over a year now, and to be honest, I never thought it'd get painted. But now with the start of this new dark mechanicus inspired army, it seemed the perfect chance to get him on the table. 

It's largely built from a Grey Knight's Nemesis Dreadknight, with Defiler armour plating and a series of chaotic upgrades, including weapons from a Deamon Prince(which it will count as in game) kit, and small gauge brass chain. 

As you can see, he is still work in progress, but I think he suits his new granite colour scheme well. I've kept it similar to my titans, so hopefully the whole horde will look the part when there are countless deamon engines and infantry flooding the table!

Gonders

One Ugly Forgefiend Conversion.

A couple of a days ago, in true forgeworld style(Except mine wont be that good), I left my blog with a 'sneak peak' of my next project. It was a picture of some sort of chaosy armoured prow, remember?

Well here the sucker is in full view. I plan on adding another wing to my apocalypse army. It's going to be a new army in its own right as well, and it's going to be themed around a chaos cult in the employ of some half insane Warpsmith character. I want the army to have lots of Deamon engines of my own devising. I am actually a huge fan of the big new chaos models, the mauler fiend, forgefiend and heldrake, but i notice at the minute every tom, dick and harry have them on the table. I want my army to stand out from the crowd, and be especially mental. Trust me, I have a lot of idea for more where this came from.   

I had the idea to make this guy a few weeks ago, he is going to be a counts as forgefiend. There's quite a few parts involved, from leman russ turrets to the head of an Ogre Kingdoms Stonehorn. 

He's also one of the first models I've given plasticard modelling ad proper good go at. I've never riveted anything before. It's as boring as you can imagine. I am quite pleased with how it turned out though, especially the shield.

Obviously, he's still work in progess on the building front. The base is pretty much thrown together. It needs filling in around the edges with milliput, so more details, re-enforcing steel rods through the concrete slab, for example.

 The back still needs work too, the chassis looks a bit empty. His left arm is going to get 2 hades autocannons, when my forgefiend kit arrives later this week. There is talk of having to mechatendrills bursting from his belly. I'll see what I can do with those when the kit arrives.

Hope you enjoy the madness! 

Gonders