Chaos Knight – Armed To The Teeth

Just a quick one today as I battle to get to grips with the new WordPress editor. If it ain’t broke WordPress, do be a dear and don’t bloody fix it! Not to worry, I’m sure in time I’ll stop being a dinosaur and discover the joys of the new modern editor that lets me do everything I used to do, only in a much more complicated and round-about way…

Anyway, enough moaning let’s look at a bit of a miniature. I’ve moved onto the second arm of the chaos knight (the weird fleshy limb as opposed to the mechanical arm that I’ve shown previously). It was made by grafting together the upper part of a Great Unclean One’s arm with the lower part of a Maggoth, and then filling in the gaps with loads of greenstuff and milliput.

With this pretty much done I’m mostly looking at tidying up, painting a few of the smaller components and sticking everything together and with just under half the month still to go I’m optimistic. Then again nothing is finished until it’s finished, pride has been known to come before a fall and chickens should not be counted until they’re hatched, fully grown and preferably in the oven. Watch this space!

Iz Dat Da Dokk?

Let’s be honest, some miniatures are just a bit duff. Take the Bonesplitters Wardokk for instance (which used to be a Savage Orc shaman of some description). Let’s not beat about the bush, it’s past its best. In fact, it’s hard to say exactly when it’s best was…

For those unfamiliar the Wardokk is essentially an assistant shaman amongst the Bonesplitters. This faction of Orcs are lead by cabals of savage mystics, with a Wurrgog Prophet (the model for which, confusingly, used to be the special character Wurrzag, Da Great Green Prophet – something I still find takes a little getting used to). Each Wurrgog Prophet has a few acolytes around to assist in imposing his orders (however mad they may sound) on the recalcitrant boyz, to whip the clan up ready for battle and to perform the secret dances by which they channel the power of the greenskin god. One of these so-called Wardokks will go on to become the Wurrgog’s successor, to quote the army book, “should the Prophet fall in battle or accidentally blow himself up”.

At first I found myself wondering why GW continue to give the Wardokk miniature a place in the ranks of the Orc (or should I say Orruk) Warclans range. There’s no denying it’s letting the side down a little, when compared with some of the brilliant models that march alongside it. However after giving it some thought I came to realise that actually they made a smart move here. Keeping the Wardokk around adds another option to the range, and kitbashing your own version from the Bonesplitters set, plus a few odds and ends, is actually pretty straightforward and a lot of fun.

The key elements to capture were the skull mask (taken from the Ironjaws Brutes), the dancing pose and the bone-fetish rattle (made from bits and bobs in the savage orcs kit, rather than wire wool as the original appears to have been). The army book describes how the Wardokk will do whatever is required to get the boys in a fighting mood (surely not that hard) including, but not limited to, a quick punch in the face – something I thought the clenched fist on his free hand conveyed rather well. I might raise him up on something to make him stand out a little amongst any future boyz but otherwise I’m pretty pleased with him (although as ever I’m open to any and all feedback). In fact he was so straightforward to build that I’m now feeling tempted to make a couple more – the book does describe multiple Wardokks in each clan after all. Not sure when I’ll get around to painting him but he was great fun to make, and he’s certainly given me the itch to tackle some more green boys soon.

Get Sick Or Die Trying – Part 11

Did I not promise you more poxwalkers just a week ago? Am I not a corpse master of my word? Here’s the latest two shamblers to come lurching off the painting desk.

I experimented quite a lot with this one, mixing some of the agrellan earth texture paint in with flesh tones to cover some of the rougher joins. I actually finished him off about a week ago but I found myself really unhappy with the results. Although he was technically pretty much perfect the results were much too “clean” for my liking (by which I mean painted with precision, he still looked like a filthy rotten git). In the end I took him back to the painting desk and worked over him, he’s muckier now but I’m much happier with the end result.

His new pal here is converted from the poxwalker in the lab coat.

Unlike the previous lab coat wearing poxwalker I painted I didn’t use lots of blood splatter here, but instead tried to make the coat look stained and befouled by decomposition. By way of comparison here he is next to his gore covered colleague.

Of course without getting too graphic it’s clear that his guts have exploded quite violently at some point, which presumably means he wasn’t wearing the lab coat at the time. It builds a somewhat macabre image, in my mind at least, of him, already long dead, taking his coat from its hook and, in a reverse of his habits in life, putting it on before he shambled out of the lab for the final time.

The Irondogs – Part 8

A lone Goliath walks into Ironhouse and calls for the sanctuary of his House-brothers. Calling himself Kutter he tells a tale of his gang’s extermination in the badlands beyond the hive after they crossed paths with a colony of ash-crust miners. Although some of his claims, such as that the miners were sheltering weird three-armed mutants and that some of his gang-mates fell under a hypnotic spell and allowed themselves to be lead away into the ruins as docile as servo-grox, sound far-fetched the Irondogs know they can ill afford to turn away any help willingly offered. The strange warrior is soon inducted into their ranks and Korak turns his brooding gaze to the wastes beyond his walls and the threats that lurk therein.

I wasn’t entirely sure about Kutter at first, and he’s been through various iterations before reaching this point, but I have to say I’m rather pleased with him now. He’s ended up with a slightly different profile to the rest of the gang, hence my decision to make him an outsider, but I think he still works. As usual however I’m open to any feedback you have.

Hanging On For Dear Life – Part 1

If my gangs want to establish their notoriety in the Underhive they’d better not go embarrassing themselves by getting lost, falling into a crevasse or blundering aimlessly into the lairs of any savage beasts. What they need is someone who can guide them through the cramped tunnels and gloomy depths in exchange for a modest share of any loot, yet who lacks the guile to successfully sell them out to their rivals. We need a dome runner and this chap looks like the very man.

In the long run I’ll be creating a pool featuring all of the hangers on to be available to my gangs, plus some hive scum, bounty hunters, downtrodden civilians and whatever else I can come up with.

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 9

One more for the road! I’m going to be focussing my creative energies onto Necromunda for the next little while, barring one smaller project that I should get finished tonight, but whilst pondering all things Goliath I found myself kitbashing another space marine. Most likely he’ll end up serving as the veteran sergeant of one of the tactical squads.

As usual nothing is set in stone at this stage so if you’ve got any feedback I’m all ears.

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 8

So enthused am I by all things Space Marine following the successful completion of my first tactical squad that I decided to break into the bits box and assemble the rest of the assault marines. Last time we saw them (back in – gulp – November) two of the assault squad were done and looking for paint. By way of a quick reminder here they are;

And here we have the new additions, starting with this chap in his traditional assault marine corvus pattern helm.

Here’s another of his battle brothers.

Finally here’s the squads sergeant, a suitably bellicose and angry looking man ready to dish out the Emperor’s mercy with a damn big sword.

No promises on when these chaps will see paint, as I’m juggling quite a few other projects (as per usual) but having the whole squad ready to go may help give me a push.

The Emperor’s Angels – Part 6

Another of the Primaris-based Knights is finished.

Not entirely convinced by how well the highlighting on his shoulderpads has worked so I’ll probably give that a going over before the end of the month.

I was feeling a bit more confident and adventurous with this one so added some flourishes of personal heraldry. As far as possible I’d like to do this with all of them, to make each one stand out as a knight and a hero in his own right. That said when it comes to freehand I much prefer chaotic sigils to the more stylised Imperial iconography (which is one way of saying “I find Imperial freehand hard!”) and I’m not a big fan of transfers so how successful I turn out to be remains to be seen. I will of course be rummaging for any nicely decorated shoulder pads I can lay my hands on.

Two more to go before the end of the month!

Wild At Heart – Part 1

Whilst it may not always look it I’m still chipping away at Necromunda behind the scenes as my gangs gear up to take their stab at controlling the Underhive. For the moment I’ve been trying to keep other projects on the boil, with the result that I’ve not really finished much (read; anything) to show here but the release of House Van Saar at the weekend has given my creative energies another boost so expect to see something gang related soonish. Before that however I’m hoping to tackle a bunch of neglected models (more on that tomorrow) so to tide you over here’s a look at my, as yet unpainted, conversion of Gor Half-horn.

I love the idea of Gor Half-horn and, although he’s been rather eclipsed by the arrival of a shorter, timepiece wrecking, impressively bearded chap named Grendlsen, the impact of seeing a beastman back on the mean streets of the Imperium isn’t to be overlooked. That said although the model is extremely nice, it isn’t quite nice enough to rush out and buy – especially when funds are limited and there are lots of other Underhive associated treats demanding my attention. However a quick dig around in the bitsbox revealed enough components to build my own.

Working on him has reminded me how long I’ve left my previous attempts to tackle beastmen in 40k and got me thinking about converting some more, perhaps as Hive Scum or as part of my planned Chaos gang. In the meantime any feedback on Gor is much appreciated.

Infested! – Part 9

One of the things I wanted to explore with my contributions to the Nestorian Infestation was the way the airborne tyranid spores released by the genestealer cultists would corrupt all aspects of life on an Imperial world, and what better way to do that than with some tainted servo-skulls?

Where once these skulls served the Imperial authorities now they have become slaved entirely to the will of the cult, the inflated gas-bladders growing from them swollen with more spores, ready to corrupt yet more loyal citizens.