Salamanders Fire Drakes Ready

The full squad of Salamanders Fire Drakes has been assembled and is ready for painting!

What I spent a lot of time on here was the basing. All of the bases have a large amount of "junk" on the surface. The thinking here is to emulate a war torn battlefield. Perhaps even Isstvan? 

The models themselves were straight forward to assemble. As previously discussed, I also made a conversion for the heavy flamer fire drake that I was glad to have done. Even though I had to order a few extra parts to make all of this work out. Time to get these marines primed and ready for painting now. 

Building Breacher Squad Marines, and What To Do With Part 52

I recently bought the Breacher Squad boxed set, including the marines and the upgrade frame. I really like the look of these squads, even though they are probably more suited to the close confines of Zone Mortalis, I still feel that they have a good role to play in regular Horus Heresy games. The invulnerable save gives them and edge to stay on objectives and also to advance under otherwise horrendous fire. 

For this particular squad, I am aiming to build them up as Iron Hands. The first miniature, and squad sergeant is pictured below. 

Here I have done a simple head swap from the Praetor character to make him look a lot more like an Iron Hands character. The shoulder pad is also a Forge World resin upgrade. And yes: I know it should probably be on the other side, but the shield made it too bulky to fit, so too bad. He is armed with a power fist which is (presumably temporarily switched off) gripping a melta bomb ready to be attached to some enemy armour. 

The Breacher marines themselves are very easy to work with and I am impressed by their quality. They come with a lot of left over pieces as well. But the parts labelled 52 puzzled me a lot at first, as shown in the second image.

These parts are not mentioned in the slightest in the instruction booklet. It took me a little while to puzzle this one out. They are arm guards, or bracers. Effectively these can be used on other armour marks to make them more convincingly look like Breacher Squad members. I think I might use them anyway as conversion pieces on other armour marks to help pick out squad sergeants or marines who otherwise have artificer armour or similar. They are not much use with the marines supplied in the box since they already have these parts moulded on to them naturally. Hence I think this is mostly for Mark 4, 5, or 6 to take advantage of in my opinion. Puzzle solved!

Salamanders Fire Drake Conversion

One of the only options that a Salamanders Fire Drake terminator can take is to replace their shield with a (forge crafted) heavy flamer. There are no resin parts for this, so a conversion is the only way forward at this point in time. 

Sitting in my bits box collection was a heavy flamer from the older chaos space marines range. I decided that I would use this for several reasons. This first is that it looks more ornamental than a regular flamer and that communicates "forge crafted" more readily than other alternatives. Secondly, what if this were a traitor Salamanders anyway (shudder!)? And thirdly, there's also the rule of cool. So I went with it.

The primary issue here is that the part needs to be shaved with some precision to make it flush with the shoulder and billowing drake skin comes down from the shoulder. This is straight forward if you can get hold of a good looking bit of resin to clip. Here I have used Right Arm Part B (hope that makes sense for anyone wanting to follow this pathway). I clipped off the hand and shield attachment, of course. Essentially getting rid of the elbow as well in order that the plastic heavy flamer could then be pinned into position.

My strong recommendation here is to do lots of dry fits and judgments by eye by holding the bits up against each other and seeing where to slice. I went slowly and took off less than was needed at each slice, slowly progressing toward a natural joint. Largely because putting back on bits that had too much chopped off it a severe problem! In terms of conversions, this is a reasonable one to execute, but it did require precision and patience. 

The base meanwhile is supposed to be lots of accumulated battlefield debris. Maybe from the drop site that they fought in. I like the outcome here, but haven't yet painted it. I have the rest of the squad to build first!

Thousand Sons Terminator Praetor Conversion

Tackling my first miniature of the Thousand Sons today and I opted to do things the hard way. I really should have started with something more routine! Too late!

This is a Praetor (or perhaps Centurion). I was originally going to make this a simple kit bash and go for a pair of lightning claws. But no. I had to do things differently! Instead, we have a chain fist (tartaros style) accompanied by a combi-disintegrator (from the regular marine range), legs from the chaos space marine range and the core resin from the Thousand Sons range. The shoulders are from the newer cataphractii range and have slotted over the tartaros arms quite nicely to be honest!

Perhaps the hardest point of the miniature was attaching the resin torso to the plastic legs. They really don't want to fit together thanks to the upper outer thigh armour on the legs. Hence, I have torso at a bit of an angle to the legs and pinned on the inside. This works since it looks like the marine is looking down the combi-disintegrator to take a shot, or is otherwise presenting less of a target area to other incoming shots. 

I like this guy overall, he had a certain dynamism about him that the Thousand Sons terminators often lack (for good reason) and can easily imagine him being a sorcerer as well. I like the disintegrator option here for fun and think it might have flexibility. Of course, a force weapon should almost have been the default option, but the chain fist is interesting for different reasons. This is an up close and person praetor who wants to take on your dreadnoughts and isn't afraid to conjure up some psychic might to help along the way. 

Painted Emperor's Children Praetor Tartaros Terminator

Regal purple mixes with exquisite threat in the pose for this Emperor's Children praetor in tartaros terminator armour!

The miniature itself was very easy to put together, and the painting almost did it itself. The purple follows my standard recipe. However, it is almost drowned out by the gold that adorns the praetor himself. Obviously this is a guy who wants to not only own the battlefield, but looks like a mythological figure while doing so. There's also some gemstones and robes around the character which to me feels like Ancient Greece vibes in some ways. And the Laer style sword hints at the early signs of falling to chaos here without actually having sworn feality (potentially). I've picked this out in the same green tones that I've used for the gemstone (which I'm interpreting here as something a bid Eldar in nature). 

Although gaudy and regal, it somehow still works and comes together to still present a threat and a perfection of martial skill ready to take on the enemies of the Imperium. Or of Fulgrim at least. 

Emperor's Children Phoenix Terminator

The first Phoenix Terminator fully painted!

I think it probably could do with one or two more highlights, but overall it is more than tabletop high enough quality standard. The purples follow my usual Emperors Children approach with base, layer, contract and highlights all in the citadel range. The base has the technical paint applied that results in cracking - I've applied a layer of watered down PVA glue to keep everything in place. The golds were difficult to achieve, but think I got there in the end. The decals round out the tabard nicely as I wanted them in white rather than the otherwise black colour shown in the usual schemes. 

I really like the pose of this one as well, caught in mid-swing against an opponent! Highly dynamic and evocative!

Building Ferrus Manus

One of my latest projects was Ferrus Manus; Primarch of the 10th Legion: the Iron Hands. Made by Forge World a considerable time ago, this is a primarch that has a number of the hallmarks of previous primarch builds in the sense of:

(a) instructions that are no longer available;

(b) when you find the instructions, they only help a little bit, and some parts amount to "put it all together!".

I have used two pins here. The first is in the rock on Ferrus Manus' left (forward) foot -- or rather the rock that it is attached to. I have pinned the rock horizontally to the other rocks after a lot of slicing away of excess resin to make it fit. It was quite fiddly, and I still might apply some green stuff before painting. The other pin, unsurprisingly, is in the haft of the hammer and into his hands to provide stability. The hammer joint is much to flimsy otherwise in my opinion. 

Other pain points included the back pack wherein I was not quite sure what slotted where and how it would hang on his back, but I got there eventually with a lot of dry fitting. And those pturges. Exceptionally fiddlesome and tough to know where and how to slot a number of them (under the shoulder pads, and some on the waist as well. 

There is also a rock that I have left off at the front so that I can model or at least make the diorama between Fulgrim and Ferrus (their bases literally join by intent to make a duel pose and diroama possible). 

All in all, slightly better to assemble than Fulgrim, perhaps on par with Angron, but not really near the modern primarch models that Forge World have released. 

Perfection

One of the issues with the older Forge World models is that the instructions for building them come in one of two flavours:

(a) Step 1: assemble everything.

(b) The instructions are online at this (now no longer existent) web address. 

I feel Angron was a case in point for case (a). Fulgrim is a case of (b), although also partially (a) as well. There are, however, some repositories for the instructions. Only because some very kind hobbyists had the foresight to download the relevant pdfs and make them subsequently available. 

Regardless, here is the perfection of Fulgrim in all his assembled might. 

There are hard parts here, to be clear. I have to pin Fulgrim's narrow triangular standing point where his foot meets the ground into the main part of the resin base to provide stability. The fiddly little bits at the bottom of the leather straps in the shape of the legion symbol were a royal pain. The other hard part was the cape. I had to pin that to the main body as well due to a poor fitting that no quantity of heating or re-shaping would cure. Otherwise, this model was actually okay after a lot of dry fitting. Well, okay, there were serious issues that I suspect a beginner would not appreciate in the slightest. Now that it is done, I am more relieved than anything!

Building Phoenix Terminators

In part frustrating, but overall okay. 

Building Phoenix Terminators from Forge World has been a pleasure when I'm now able to look at the final product and see the sheer detail that has been included in the sculpts. It is very impressive. However the assembly process itself was a bit fraught. 

The main issue is the two handed spears. Despite dry fitting many times over, getting these style of spears into the exact position is a pain. The issue is that the bond locations (shoulders and wrists) lack nubs or any kind of obvious joint to help with placement. [Aside: for the uninitiated, there are d6 like marks on the arms and spears to help you get the right parts at least (i.e., ".." on the wrists aligns with ".." on the rest of the body - 2 dots, just like the d6 result of a 2). 

In the end, my approach was to pin one of the shoulders into the approximately correct location. I then glued the spear on to this arm, and then proceeded to attach the other arm into what I trusted was more or less the correct spot. It worked out - just about. My pose on the right hand terminator above looks like a mid-strike movement which I am happy with. The head angle certainly helps communicate this fluidity. 

Conversely, the terminators that are wielding the spears one handed were much, much more straight forward and easy to assemble. They certainly look good in the end, much to my relief!

Emperor's Children Praetor

A recent acquisition that I bought is the relatively (I use the word under advice) new praetor for the Emperor's Children. This character is in near regal Tartaros terminator armour which is simply exquisite in ornamentation and detail - very nice from Forge World to say the least. 

The armaments are also interesting to note. The combi volkite is often overlooked in terms of combi-weapons available to terminators. This is, perhaps, understandable as melta and plasma are often more highly desired and prized. However, I think the key advantage here is that a combi-volkite can fire both components all the time. There is no "one use only" rule for either. You get the best of both worlds, all of the time. 

The sword meanwhile is similarly ornate. But here I find it interesting as you can start to see a very, very subtle creep towards Slaanesh with a hint of a nod toward that power's symbol on the hilt of the blade. I like this detail. Not quite corrupted, but perhaps on their way long the path. Could still be loyal, but yet there might be early signs.  

In terms of putting the model together, this one was very straight forward and in the relatively easy category. There's only one place where each of the parts are going to go and only one way to glue them into place. Hardly any dry fitting required in the slightest. I like this very much. I think it would also be easy to convert if you wanted different armaments for the character making it a flexible and very cool kit overall. A fine additional to a collection. 

Painted Lorgar Conversion

The full conversion of Lorgar, now painted!

The full conversion has the spirit hosts scattered around the base of Lorgar and seemingly being summoned from the pure willpower. These ghostly apparitions have been painted in a gradient from hex wraith green through to more blue and green contrast paints down to a blue and black mixture. This gives them a very striking and peculiar appearance which hints at a daemonic origin, rather than merely something from the graveyard. 

The greens are reflected in the candle light as well as the runes engraved on the stonework for Lorgar. This has been achieved by inking white into the grooves followed by the hex wraith green to give it the appearance of glowing out of the stonework as the spirits orbit around Lorgar.

As for the Primarch himself, I have chosen to go with a slightly alternate paint scheme. The usual paint scheme is in the grey slate colours. But here I have gone for red contrast paint suggestive of way later in the Heresy. It is accented by the original slate grey as well as selected gold-yellow panels on the knees and elsewhere to provide a visual contrast.

Naturally, his head is painted in gold! This has been followed up by careful application of Colchisian runes onto his shaved skull as is fitting for his lore. On the rear of his cape, I have applied some more runes that I had spare from a decal sheet. 

Very pleased with this! I think my long term goal is to now try to collect most of the Primarchs and get them painted. But this will be a very long term goal indeed due to costs (unless any of you want to Buy Me A Coffee -- see link to the right / below!).

 

 

Primarch Conversions - Lorgar

When Morathi was released for Age of Sigmar, there was a notable up-tick in the community of hobbyists using the lower half of the snake and combining it with the resin Fulgrim to make the ascended Primarch. I've seen a small number of other conversions over the years such as Corax wielding a heavy bolt gun and lacking his pinions (cf., First Edition and the sands of Istvaan). But I've not seen too many people have a kit bash of Lorgar. 

So here's my interpretation.

Lorgar's left hand can be rotated and re-positioned in a reasonably lossless manner to have him look like he is either gesturing, or holding something. This is exactly what I've done with the resin here and I have positioned the palm face up (frankly the cape is much more hassle than going this if I'm honest - I had to pin the cape). 

In his open left hand, I have added some Age of Sigmar night haunt spirit hosts. There's some green stuff added to give the spirit a smooth tail end, but otherwise the conversion is actually rather straight forward. 

The idea here is that Lorgar is not merely his early crusade self, but more mid to late Heresy era. Perhaps even a more ascended form where he has let rip with his psychic powers (cf., First Edition, and his ascended form). Here we see him either summoning some daemonic forms, or being surrounded by a daemonic tutelary. He has long been in alignment and allied with the darker powers and is regularly summoning and binding them to his will.

In Third Edition, he gets to directly summon Daemons which is a nice touch (more Word Bearer reviews eventually - promise). Hence I think this sort of interpretation still works very nicely! This represents my first Primarch conversion and I actually quite like it. 

Iron Father Conversion

By a good margin, this is the most audacious, and slightly ridiculous conversion that I have attempted in a long while! But somehow, it has come together to create something very unique and fitting with the vision that I wanted, whilst having something of an over-the-top aura suited to a slightly older school warhammer vibe. 

There are two major parts to this Iron Father conversion. The first is the left arm to give the Iron Father a Paragon Weapon in the form of a chaos warrior spear. This comes from the old school mounted chaos warriors set. Here, I have used a chaos space marine left arm and pierced it with a pin right through. The pin goes a good way into both ends of the paragon weapon or spear and gives it a long length. It looks suitably deadly, but hopefully the praetor will ditch the graviton pistol and hold it in two hands when wielding it. 

The second item to tackle was a servo arm. But I didn't really want a "usual" arm for this. I wanted something to suggest that this Iron Father has plundered technologies that he probably should have. Maybe he opened those vaults once Ferrus Manus had gone. Regardless, I've used necron parts for the servo arm. Although it is clearly sourced from a ranged weapon, the front flange of the weapon is odd looking enough that it can be interpreted as a grabber of some kind which suits the arm configuration. This also gives the suggestion of plundering those long forbidden vaults as well, with a slight nod toward the Dornian Heresy storyline as well. Illegal technology indeed!

The overall miniature is certainly the craziest that I've done in a long while. And it gave me a giggle on an otherwise dull and vexing day to pull this off. Hope you like it and feel inspired!

Unboxing: Iron Hands Praetor

I picked up the new Iron Hands praetor recently as I wanted to use it as the basis for a conversion for an Iron Father. A bit ambitious maybe, but I have a radical plan! Regardless of that plan, here are the parts fresh out of the clam pack

In essence, the praetor is a simple construction composed of legs and body supplied distinctly (which I approve of!) a choice of heads (one will be used elsewhere), and the cape with three tendrils coming off the backpack area. 

The hard parts of assembling this miniature are undoubtedly the the tendrils! It is best to put down the one that attaches to the notch in the cape first, and then layer the one that slots into it next. Wisdom in hindsight is a specialty of mine it appears, so I hope readers gain something from my mistakes! I will have to use a hair dryer to help correct this later I feel. 

World Eaters Loyalist Overseer Painted

Hi readers, I have completed painting the loyalist World Eaters Overseer model which I converted a few weeks ago to be holding a nemesis bolt gun. Of course, the one handed pose isn't perfect for the kick back, but I'm supposing the power armour servos will help him out with this. Either than, or he is just pointing it to indicate what direction to fire in for the las rifle section. 

The painting scheme follows the standard pattern for my World Eaters with whites and blues in the right locations followed by a lot of fun with a sponge applied black and grey, and then red contrast paint followed by blood for the blood god to add to the goriness. Hopefully the splatter comes from a distance here, but it really does add to the vibe regardless. 

I now have to decide how to paint up the las rifle section. Whites and blues are appealing here, it has to be said, over and above the paint schemes presented in the rule books and online. Not sure, but comments welcome. 

Endryd Haar Painted in World Eaters Colours

Today, I finished up painting Endryd Haar of the Blackshields. But not quite as he became later on in the Horus Heresy. To be candid, I'm not a massive fan of the all black colour scheme of the Fangs of the Emperor Blackshields. So I wanted something different!

This is Endryd Haar in his original World Eaters colours - white armour and blue shoulder pads and back pack. Naturally, the most fun part of my method of painting the World Eaters is the chipping, weathering, damage, and splatter. I deliberately tried to not go over the top with the splatter since less is generally more when using this approach. And here it has worked rather nicely. I've done my usual two-step approach. This involved flicking red contrast paint at selected angles on to the otherwise finished miniatures, and then picking out come appropriate locations for the blood god technical paint to be applied. There's even a kill-count decal applied to the terawatt power fist here just to round things off. 

Of course, this kind of half obliterates the plan to have a distinct Blackshields force. That's fine. The new plan is to use my World Eaters detachment AS the Blackshields. The head canon here is that they're far too busy being angry at their former legion to re-paint their armour. Obviously. Hence, this is very early stage Blackshields, and probably with the Panoply of Old Oath. Somehow, I think I can make this work. Regardless, if I'm not using this miniature for Blackshields, he is obviously a character for the World Eaters either in a squad, or as a Praetor himself. He'll fit right in!

Assembled Endryd Haar

Endryd Haar is a miniature that I have wanted to get my hands on for a long time, and now that time has come! He was out of stock at Warhammer / Forge World for quite some time, but I finally got my order. The model is relatively easy to put together, although the whole balancing on one foot thing is never quite as good as you first think it is going to be. I glued the dynamic foot to the base as best as I could to provide extra stability. 

The tabard at the front required a bit of work to get fitting correctly into the lower abdomen correctly and this is a paint point that I'd recommend less experienced modellers to pay closer attention to before gluing into place - do a few dry fits first! The rest is easy by comparison. 

My plan here is to paint Endryd up in his original World Eaters colours. The intent is to have him as either a World Eater leader of some kind, or to use him alongside my other World Eaters in a Blackshields force - perhaps as they just found out the extent of the betrayal. I would then give the army access to the World Eaters armoury through Panoply of Old, and add in another Oath that I've not yet decided upon (thoughts welcome!). 

Overseer Conversion Fully Constructed

Hey readers, the Overseer conversion has now been completed - including the nemesis bolt gun! And it is massive!

But to be honest, I regret nothing! The barrel if it were to be slung across the marine's chest would actually be absolutely fine and appropriate for a sniper. With this pose however, the marine really looks dynamic and a little bit like he just doesn't care how he snipes his targets. 

This is good, because I'm thinking this is either going to be Alpha Legion or World Eaters. I'm tilting toward the latter right now. 

The miniature itself was easy to construct, but as I thought, the back banner is a little fiddly to get sitting right on the backpack itself. The join it just a little too thin for my tastes, but I can live with it. I need to also tidy up the scepter a little bit, but its basically done at this point. 

Unboxing: Overseer

I bought the Overseer loyalist model on pre-order when it was available to fulfill a critical part of my miniatures aims for the year: a unit of Auxilia lead by a marine. Here are the bits directly out of the box!

Clearly there's going to be some clean up required on the bits with all the flash and so forth needing to be removed. The banner on the back of the back pack in particular looks to have almost a stake that goes directly into the backpack. I don't like the look of the thin joint, but it should work.

My plan here though is to replace the plasma pistol with the nemesis bolt gun that I converted earlier in the week. Given that Auxilia are mainly ranged shots (or at least mine will be), it makes more sense for the Overseer to have a long range weapons as well, rather than a short ranged plasma shot. More on this in the near future!

Warsmith - Built

An assembled Iron Warriors Warsmith!

Assorted thoughts.

This character is a beast. The sheer level of detail in the parts is incredibly high. This said, there are several points that I think others should keep in mind when assembling him. 

Firstly, the tabard at the front is hard to get to sit flush with the legs and waist. This is, in part, due to where the sprue attached to the resin. It needs a bit of shaping, but you can get there. 

The major problem I had was making the mistake of gluing the pistol hand in place before adding on the ammo belt. Don't be me. Do it the other way. Add on the ammo belt first. Secondly, I actually glued the ammo feed in slightly the wrong place. It is supposed, I think, to be fed in through the gap in the weapon before the trigger. Instead, I have glued it to the side where there seemed to be an ideal slot that dry fitted the joint. It wasn't a joint though. Rookie mistake by me after so many years. Oh well. I think it can easily be got away with. The other thing I tried to do was to bend one of the tendrils to touch the graviton part of the weapon. Seemed like the thing to do, in the absence of a construction guide. But looking at how others have done this, I now realise it is meant to be free floating. I also glued the pointy ended tendril to the side of the weapon where the ammo feed should have gone. I regret nothing because it will make the model much less prone to breakage. A win, even if it looks a bit odd upon close inspection. 

Everything else is pretty standard. The only other thing I can think of would be to attached the claw at the top before gluing the shoulder pad / hammer arm into place. Didn't matter in the end for me, but it might be a tight fit for others. 

I wish this came with assembly suggestions or instructions, but I made it work.