Salt Weathering gone wrong

Eeesh, this doesn't look good...

My little 'Bug' Arvus Lighter conversion got a little bit wrecked today...

Arvus Lighter Conversion

I call it the 'Bug'.
That might be because its a 'bugabout' to get from A-Z, could be the mandible-like cabin,  could be because its small and flits around the place, but for whatever reason, when I look at this thing I think 'Bug'

 

So while having a look at ways to expand my Mortalis set I realised that I liked the idea of a landing bay and the associated debris and things that would come with it (and will look to get the Forgeworld one). Central to any landing bay however is something landed! Here is my Mechanicum Shuttle, come Arvus Lighter, that I'm halfway completed.

State of the Desk, Adsecularis and early Sons of Horus teardown

Last month I managed to get 25 of these guys converted from a combination of the Mechanicus Vanguard and a selection of Chaos Cultists that I had. 

State of the Desk; Snow Testing and Characters

So my first focus this week has been making my Mechanicum a bit more durable in their basing as I left my Imperial guard in the car for a week, and the vibrations shook loose a lot of snow. So I have a to get tougher with the snow product I use. Cue testing.

I wanted something that would retain the finish of the snow, but lock it better in place. I tried out Woodland Scenics Water Effects, but as you can’t really dilute the product without diluting the effect, it was a fairly wasted endeavour. I will be using it for footprints however and maybe on some tank hulls as this stuff looks fun.

Used liberally it did give the snow an icy look. Hmmm, not good for this scenario at least.

Converted 30k Ursarax

Ursarax! They've just released the models for these! Yay!
These guys are a great variation of the Thallax, and liked the idea of these close combat beasties being very Dark and Spindly (Remember Dan Abnetts Shockroaches?)

I found a starting point in the 41st Millennia in these Ruststalkers and so set about doing some minor modifications. I wanted to give these guys a similar aesthetic to that of the Thallax but didn't want to lose the original awesome look of the Ruststalkers, nor did I want to dilute the feeling of the Dark Mechanicus.

State of the desk; More Dark Mechanicus

This has been a dark winter. Long and filled with the ichor of corruption...

In an attempt to stop turning up to games with half or quarter painted miniatures I started to put more effort into getting the Dark Mechanicus completed. What that means is that I need to get cracking and get the correct bits completed in bulk.
Batches helps. In order of intent.

Dark Mechanicus Adsecularis/Dark Skitarii

Options for Dark Mechanicus are limited when it comes to easy 'out of the box' troops. This should hopefully cover some of the missing bodies from the army. Here follows a whistle stop run through of the guys that I've put together.

I mixed 2 packs of Chaos Cultists with the standard Vanguard box, as I wanted a very Mechanicus feel, and not veer too far from the standard elements that you would expect to see in the army. 

State of the desk; Mortalis, Dark Mech, Stormtroopers, Apocalypse

So the desk this week has had a nice tidy after a busy couple of days,

First things first, Mortalis. This was a real “I'm not sure what to paint next. Let’s paint that”, moment. There have been some ridiculously nice colour schemes for Mortalis. See here for the eventual aim (landing bay).

I went the route that suited me best. I wanted dirty, rusted and oiled, but with some semblance of unity. Black and silver looks great as the internal corridors of a ship, but with a little extra work I hoped I could add some more character to it so that it could be other things as well, a bunker complex, the bridge of a ship rather than the bowels, laboratory etc.

I also didn't want to take forever, I have 7 more of these sections to do.

State of the Desk: mostly Dark Mechanicus

New toys! Dark Mechanicum 3 full squads completed.

As I’m used to Guard this was a nice change of pace to get 600 odd points painted relatively quickly.

State of the Desk: Dark Mechanicus

Desk in Progress. Update on the random stuff going on...

Here I have some easy Scyllax Guardian Automata that I’ve knocked together with a good friend Den’s cast-offs from the new Mechanicus Kataphron sprues, these can also be used as Servitors/ Servo-Automata as needed.

Magnetise your Knight Titan

I was so looking forwards to having a brand new toybox when I learned how easy magnets were. I imagined every tank having a host of swappable bits that would give my armies a new lease of life..

In truth; 

pfffffttttssplaaateeek....

Magnets. They are useful. They are also pain in the arse to use constantly. 

General observation? YOU WILL NOT USE THEM AS MUCH AS YOU THINK YOU WILL.
I realised that I barely used any of the magnetised troops that I went to the effort of creating. Most of the people I've given alternative loadouts I instead simply use their stock load out, or stick them with blu-tac.

I take it all back! Ogryn Charonite Shminterpretations.

Yeah...I'm going to pass on these guys I think.

Only the guy on the right looks even slightly like a Marine-murdering Ogryn Servitor, the others look a little too slow and lumbering to have any chance of catching a Space Marine.

They're supposed to be charging, Charging!

Also, the giant scissors don't look as good as the spinny-murderfists. Pretty much everything else from upcoming Heresy Weekender though looks amazing. Bring on the Solar Auxillia Command squads.

Forgeworld Ogryn Charonites; interpretations

So this latest image from Forgeworld I'm going to say is an Horus Heresy Ogryn Charonite. 

So for anyone that doesn't know, the Horus Heresy; Conquest book basically has Marine-murdering Ogryn Servitors as an available Elites choice for the Solar Auxillia. 

They looked awesome, and as I needed a project for my fantasy Ogres that was multi-purpose (i.e. could be both an Ogryn for Astra Militarum, a Ogryn with dags for Traitor Guard, or a Charonite for Solar Auxilia) I started to convert some. Obviously they would be traitors, whether Guard, Mechanicus, or actually traitor so would be fairly gribbly.

And then this dropped into my inbox. Look at the scale of it! The studded steampunk armour format that is very much Solar Auxillia!

And that Fist. Mmmm.

Catch up and reset for the hobby clock

I've not painted in so long that my Superglue went hard.

No really. See through in the tube.

Is that the date already!? Right, catch up and get going.

Catch up is needed indeed. Therefore this will be a rather scatter-shot approach to blogging then over the next year. With less time to do anything with a tiny devourer (e.g. baby), plus the new house its getting harder to arrange time to focus on a little painting. And I also have this little demon called Warlords of Draenor to worry about as competition for my limited free time.

Eeek, busy!

New Mechanicum Tank variant; The Krios Venator

This was in a Forgeworld email that popped into my inbox, and hasn't been massively publicised by them as yet I don't believe, considering its not actually viewable in the 'New stuff' section.

Link for the page is available here http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/News/Krios-Venator.html 

This has a slightly lessened Mechanicum feel by comparison to the last tank; The standard Krios looks nicely steampunk, you can imagine a barrel of black light piercing tank hulls from miles away, whereas the Venator is clearly a more Demolisher/Typhon barrel feel.