Catch-up-alanche! Daemons

(Yes, I frankensteined the phrase together). As I have been fairly lax in updating this, its time to speed through what I've been up to. So expect a few of these ! First up, pink butts.

Started on a 30k Daemons army! Gotta love some of those models and if 40k comes back to a good place it will serve me well. 

Necromunda Chaos Cult Disciple / Venator

Posted without context, just painted and liked him :)

Happy Friday!

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.

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; Sons of Sek TAAAAANKS, some scenery, and some non GW beauties

Tanks have been the focus over the last few weeks. Love em! In an effort to get as many of the core Sons of Sek guys painted I wanted to get these finished and working away. 

Soon I'll put together a picture spread to showcase what these guys should look like. Aggressive!

I'm trying a new paint scheme with my Chimera and Wyvern chassis' that took a lot of work. And in the end I'm not sure whether I'm convinced it was worth it. Wyvern first.

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: 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.

Astra Militarum themes; Correct vs Fun

I really do need to adjust my tactics. I sit back, a lot. This is classically what Guard excel at. This is how their fluff reads. Sit behind fortifications and blow the enemy away with hammerblows of overwhelming fire-power. 

It’s a tactic that in game works well against a lot of armies such as Nids, Tau, Necrons, Chaos, Ork Kan and horde armies. The problem is everyone else.

I know the amount of Marine players I will be going up against. All with access to a lot of Deep Strike. This means this happens a lot.

Sons of Sek 1 Year and 7 months in; group shots

We Serve the Anarch whose voice drowns out all others! Early Group shots first.

  

Then this is a healthy 2400-odd point painted selection of the Sons so far.

Getting the Commander finished does definitely help unify them all, moody shots will be soon too.

For now, as I've not said it often enough, bring on the extra stuff to complete.

Thanks for reading!

Dark Mechanicus; getting a force going

(Of course my new army is corrupted in some way!) How would you theme them? Would you buy a chockload of Chaos parts, perhaps a Hellbrute or a Maulerfiend and start making the ‘shockroaches’? Would you mix pieces with the Necrons, with the Skaven? Green stuff the entire bunch so that they all are unique? Would you attempt to give them a unique feel that no one else had tried?

Especially when this lands on my desk as a present from my eldest brother.

Bloody hell Nick that’s generous! Now to make it fit. This thing has to be charging, it cannot be static.

Ogryn Flagellants and the Spawn-o-Raptor

Everything in my house is being hacked and sawed to pieces at the moment. Loving the Razor saw (please ignore that last comment FBI scanner), but it doesn't bode well for my childhood.

In other news, Ebay has been its eternally-damned self to me, I won a still on sprue  box of Chaos spawn for £13 (RRP £25) and then lost a fully painted Forge world Imperial Guard Praetor Assault launcher for £46 (RRP £115) , I bid £45 and stopped! Woah woe woe.

Sons of Sek; Platoon 2

The shove that I needed to get cracking and paint these guys was a Facebook challenge with some gamers I know. These games have 10 man Marine Squads, I had 25 shiny converted guys that all needed a long process of painting. 21 steps, yay me.

So with the only time available to paint being between 10-12 when the family is asleep, this was a lot of late nights and an entire series of Better Call Saul, a few TED talks, some QI and a failed attempt at Community (nope, not for me).

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!

Being a cliché, and 'Find the Cyclops'

Well I have been busy.

So apart from this Renegade Hellhammer beastie (more on him later) in the last month, I've got my house sold and looked at 18 separate houses to then buy afterwards (only 2 had a dedicated study, but hey ho) I've enjoyed a lovely holiday with friends, was best man at an awesome German wedding for my good man Den, had a birthday, and finally had an enormous game of Apocalypse, all with a pregnant wife and little spare time at all.

So I apologise for the delay, Den let me know the delay was unacceptable. Sorry Den.

Budgets and budget aids! (The Gamers curse)

So very many temptations this week as my Company bonus looms. There's a Mechanicum tank of spindly death (finally a decent Chaos proxy for a Destroyer Tank hunter), the beautiful new Horus Heresy rulebook, some new Mechanicum thralls that seem to be everywhere, and various Chinese counterfeiters adverts that are trying to convince me of the benefits of using their services.

Gaunt the Chaos Commissar and Platoon Number 1 finished

Just had to share this first, my father went to visit the Royal Armouries Collection at the Tower of London and took a few snaps of a particularly epic Warhammer (subject-matter-tie-in wahey!) with a six shot revolver built in to the hammer face. I think it looks suitably esoteric enough to suit an Inquisitor as his weapon of choice, cheers Dad!

So smash someone in the face and then blow their head off? Or answer that age-old question 'Why did you bring a mace to a gun fight?'

Get yer gun on! Son's Of Sek Heavy Weapons teams

Bring on the tripods and the heavy weapons. These were the first batch of painted Sons that I tried to keep closer to the descriptions as given in the Gaunt books, whereby the black body armour they used had a glossy finish.

Previously I'd tried drybrushing over a black base, with highlights. 

However I didn't like the finish that it gave, though admittedly they looked decent on the battlefield. So this was recommended to me after seeing the glossy black sheen-shields upon the front of the Mechanicum Thallax shock troops (Drool)