Warp Lightning Cannon

Cannon Engineer

 What's this? Two posts in one week? Yeah, well the cannon was a great model to put together and paint. It went together extremely easy with a few options and some colorful crew too. I had to paint it in four sets. The first set being the crew as you can see here with the Engineer. The other sets were the base, very simple nothing much as the vehicle pretty much covers all of it. You can see the base, prepainted below the three crewmen. The other two pieces were the cannon itself and the vehicle frame.

The Crew

The reason for the crewman to be painted separately is obvious. It would be almost impossible to paint them when glued onto the frame. The other two were done apart to paint them easier although I primed them black. I painted the cannon a boltgun metal for a base while the frame was done with a 1-1 mix of Calthan brown and Astronomicon Grey.

Cannon, left side

Cannon, right side

Afterwards I used boltgun for most of the metal on the vehicle with some chainmail in other parts. If you see a lighter silver then that would be the chainmail paint. On the cannon you will see some bronze-like parts, the ones on each side of the warpstone. Those were based boltgun as I mentioned before, but then I used a couple layers of Gryphonne Sepia wash. I let the first layer dry before the second. I spent several minutes rotating the cannon by hand to get an even coat. I did use a gold on the symbols along the side of the barrel

Cannon, rear

The frame, after painting all the metal, was given a good wash of Devlan Mud. Some did puddle around the spikes. Again I tried to rotate the vehicle so the wash didn't pool, especially on the wheels. After it had dried, I used the sepia wash on select beams and planks in order to get some variation. I then gave the all the wood a light drybrush of Codex grey to bring out the wood. I also lightly drybrushed the metal with chainmail. When I finally decided to stop with the painting, I glued the crew and cannon on. Remember that with the plastic cement, it will not work on painted surfaces. You have to scrape the paint off in order for it work. In my case, I used superglue! It also doesn't work as well, but it is strong enough for what I needed it to do. I also added grass to the base before gluing the cannon onto it.

The cannon needed to be pinned for it to attach to the base. The pins are in the bottom of the large wheels. The pins are in the shape of an 'L'. The vertical part goes up through the base into holes I placed there, with the horizontal part of the pin glued underneath the base. I hope you can picture that. If I didn't do that, the cannon would fall off of the base through regular usage.

The last picture I have here shows the crew placement. Not following the instructions, I purposely placed the cannon facing to the back. So actually I have it point to the rear. I just liked it better that way. On second thought I should have re-arranged the crew. Putting the Engineer in the front, the driver behind and to the side of him, with the rat with the wrench on the back platform. Oh well, at least you can see Engineers scope. I used blue as it stands out. It is the only blue in my entire army. It came out pretty good, using Mordian Blue, Midnight Blue, Lightning Blue, and white, mixing appropriately.

Next up will be more Grey Knights, then I have the Vermin Lord and more skaven in line behind them.

Thanks!

Doom Flayers

The latest addition to the army are a couple of Doom-Flayers. I now have more weapon teams than I have units they can attend to. This just means I have more choices! The weapon teams can be quite expensive. Some are basically the cost of another core unit. Try them out before you settle on them. They really are hit or miss, pun intended with regards to warpfire throwers, plague mortars, and ratling guns. These guys can make for a decent flanking unit and can give light cavalry a headache with their 3+ armor save. They were really easy to paint up. I kept to my simple pallet. I did add some other bronzes and such to the metal to get some variation.

Doom Flayers

Look close!

 I had to pin the two halves together through the center frame, else they would just flop over while drying due to the weight. If you look at them from the front, you can see a shiny piece of metal paperclip horizontally in the center. I should have blackened it before gluing it in, but I just got excited about gluing them together. I'm sure you know how that goes. The pics were taken with my phone mostly, so not that great.

 What's next? Well, I have the new Warp Lightning Cannon almost done. I really like this model. Lots of simple detail and also easy to paint and assemble. Which brings me to the old metal one.... I hate that model. About as much as I hate putting together the drop pods! Also, the skaven pushing it are on bases unlike the actual machine, which adds some difficulty to simply basing it. Either way, I will give it away to who wants it. It's still in the box with the front wheels glued on. Just drop me a line. I'm just gonna get another of the plastic ones!

Red Driver

Yellow Driver

Oh yeah, you can see a shot of my ancient Doomwheel in the back. That is from... 1999 or 2000, so don't judge me by how that looks. I was younger then!

War Machines

Skaven Slaves

 I believe there was a request a few posts ago for some slaves. I added another thirty slaves over the past few days to make a unit of 55. That is a mess of squeak! Armed with spears, in horde formation, set to receive a charge, they could possibly create some damage. I don't count on that, but that is a possible 40 attacks.  I have also included my unit of slave slingers. Useful? That depends, it is another horde formation of 25. They can put out some shots, but won't hit very often. I have also included some pics of the guys in the units as well as the rat swarms. I do miss the option to give them poisoned attacks. The movement trays will be completed soon too, so please don't jump on me about that.

Slaves! To the front!

Slingers

Slave Musician, the last to die

Member of the Slaves

Rat swarms

Thanks!

Grey Knights

I have finished my latest squad of Grey Knights. Not really a complete squad, but a unit of jump pack troops and some additional footsloggers. Already I have 35 regular Grey Knight troops with 9 terminators including Stern. I plan to add another 5-8  guys soon enough. Some of them are the metal ones. I will be adding in at least another hammer and at least one with a warding staff on a Justicar.

The basics of how these guys are painted are fairly simple. I did do something different than previously. I used a spray gun for the initial coats. A black undercoat with the Army Painter, then a spray of boltgun metal to get the basic shading down. I didn't aim for the crevices. Then a coat of chainmail spraying down from the top to about 3/4 of the way down. This left a graduation from the bottom recesses to the top. Also, the colors came out very smooth.... 

Here is the first guy, a Justicar using the kneeling legs from a regular space marine bit. As you can see I have him on a stick to make things easier to paint. I usually put no more than 4 minis to a stick, depending on what they are, such as skaven. On items that require more detail, then no more than three per stick. I will consolidate when I can. It's the laziness in me. I tried to make each one unique as I already have quiet a few sets of twins from the metal ones. 

 Here is the first of the Interceptors, 3 halberds, one hammer, one sword, and the Justicar with the falchions. They basically use three colors, black, white, red, silver, and gold. Very simple to  paint and quite quick, then you get to the detail.

To make them unique, I gave each guy a different shoulder pad and/or name. It's getting more and more difficult as there are only so many ways to paint a shoulder pad. I am also running out of names, but I do have a book of names used by writers. The designs are simple, a stripe, or a half, or other splitting of colors. I hope to make a collage of the other shoulder pads to show how many variations I have come up with.

Here are my new footsloggers. I made two with psilencers just to add to the armory. You can also see a Justicar with a hammer and another guy with falchions. The hammers are bleh, due to you can only pose them in one way. The falchions will be appearing on other models in the near future as they are easy to add, look good, and can fit onto any marine.



Here is a better view of the shoulder pads. I have a huge amount of decals and will cannibalize them for swords (dark angels) or skulls to be used on these guys. Many of them are from the Sisters of Battle decal set



Thanks again!

Scythes of the Emperor

First off, I must point you to this site. This is from where I garnered my inspiration:
The Scythes.com There is a crapload of great models and history here, my stuff is decent, his stuff is awesome.
Anyway, a quick background of my Scythes. They are survivors of the battles that took place on Miral. I have made the army mostly out of scouts with some veterans as Sternguard thrown in. Since most of the Scythes fell, the Chapter must replenish itself quickly. Per Codex doctrine, members of the Scythes must rise through the ranks beginning as lowly Scouts. This is why the army is predominately Scouts.

As with most of my projects, I build for character not victory. This doesn't mean I like to lose! The army is very quick, and geared towards anti-infantry. With all the flamers in the army, I can catch a player off guard very quickly. I did my best to make each guy unique, either through head swaps, different accoutrement, or other manipulations that you will see in the future.

Here are the first of my Scouts...

Speeder Scout Squad

The Speeder itself was hand built. As at the time of my creating the army, GW had not yet released theirs yet. I am always willing to use pre-made models, but sometimes you just have to make your own. I can go into that later if I get enough requests. I did document it incase I had to make more.

The veteran sergeant is equipped with a handmade combi-flamer and a really old terminator power fist, Rogue-Trader era I presume. I got the powerfist from my friend Mike.

As for the symbols. I modified a decal sheet from Bell of Lost Souls.

Speeder Scout Squad Vet Sgt

Some News.....

Finally, right? Good news and bad news. First the bad, we put down my good friend Penny today. We will miss him. Thanks friend! More bad news, no pics of Grey Knights, but the good news is I have pics of my Scythes of the Emperor coming soon, very soon....

Where Have I Been?

Sorry, it has been so long. I will have something up in a few days, more like a week. Bear with me. It has been a tough few weeks, school, trip to Sarasota for a Skills USA competition (my guys didn't place), and now find out our cat has cancer and about three months to live.

As the british poster says, 'Keep Calm and Carry On'

Drats, rats!

I have a new unit addition to my Skaven, a unit of giant rats. I am not your regular gamer. I am more of a traditionalist and a fluff player. I don't go for all the killer combos. I just don't see the sport in that or the gamesmanship. My opinion, so don't go off on me about it. Nobody I see uses giant rats, and since I have had many of these guys for over 10 years; I decided they needed a reboot. I have also included some shots of the pack leaders as well. 

Here is a shot of some of the old guys with their original paint scheme. I never knew they were too green until my wife told me. I painted up a total of twenty-three rats, nine of them are the ancient ones.

Here are some of the finished guys with their new pack leaders on the right. There are three generations of pack leaders in my army. The really old ones are dated from 1986. Two are from the new box set, and the rest are from the rat ogre box sets.

With eleven pack leaders, I will have extra guys left over with nothing to lead... I guess I need to find something else just to give them a purpose and an excuse for me having painted them all up!

As a finish, I am trying some new things with my 'leaders'. The last two shots on the right are upgraded pack leaders. You can see that their skirts have a band across the bottom. I am getting into the practice of up-painting any leader-type character in my army. Let me know what you think, good or bad.

Thanks!

Gnomes!

Yep, these are gnomes. They are from a Ral Partha set, 1986. They put out blisters showing a character's advancement in experience. I went ahead and painted up all three simultaneously just to speed up painting. I wanted to use purple this time and tried some extra stylings with the cloak. Eh, they came out ok, but as you can see, when you zoom in the details aren't that great. Let me know what you think.

The colors I used are Liche Purple with a Warlock Purple for slight highlights. I tend to keep my highlights subtle. I don't go for the extreme edging as you may see in some minis. I want to keep them realistic, given that gnomes are aren't real, outside of a garden. Anyway, I also used Bestial Brown and Scorched Brown for the cloak, pants, boots, packs, etc. 

The off white that was used is Valejo Game Color Bone White. It is much easier to work with than the GW one, smoother and better coverage. I used Vermin Brown for the shade. The white was shaded with Astronomican Grey and another Vallejo color, Ivory for the white. Again, the Vallejo went on nice and smooth, no chalkiness that the GW Skull White can produce.

The minis, as most Ral Parthas did, came with a small footprint of a base. I could have cut the figures off and pinned them down, but that would take some extra work that could just ruin the figure if I wasn't too careful. Instead, I just glued them down on to a regular base and added some greenstuff to the level of the base. After that I simply carved some cobble-like grooves into the putty. It came out pretty good. I then put on a layer of Adeptus Battlegrey and drybrushed, Astronomican Grey, then Deneb Stone. Th base was finally given a slight wash of Devlan Mud.

GW vortex grenade, google it!

The Orb was a bit difficult and can be hard to make out. My wife suggested something similar to the Vortex Grenade look. That 'look' is akin to galaxy with a lightning field flowing through it. It's something I can do, but at that size, it's a tad bit tough. As for the other details, such as the cloaks, I just out down a think line of silver or black, and carefully dragged the brush down the middle with black or silver.

If you notice, as you look a the mini, he gets more and more elaborate. He gets more rings on his finger, his helmet gets bigger, and fancier and his wand gets larger too. Keep your mind out of the gutter!

Thanks!

Battle Report

I have a quick Battle Report that took place at Coliseum of Comics this past Saturday the 26th. There were 6 entrants; Bretonnians, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts, Two Skaven, and Ogres. They were 2000pt armies. Unfortunately the only photos I took were of Tim Wrights Dwarf army. Besides my army and Tim's all others were mostly black or white primed. A few models sprinkled throughout, but not many. Anyway, the quick and dirty reports.
My army was a hodgepodge of 2 spear armed clanrat units (24 and 40 models), Stomrvermin (30 strong), slaves with spears (27), 7 Gutter Runners, Doomwheel, Hellpit Abomination, two Warpfire weapons teams, and for characters I had a Greyseer, level 2 Engineer, and two Chieftains.

Battle One: Several units randomly started the battle off the table but could arrive whenever we wanted, even turn one. The table was split diagonally. Against Vampire Counts with only three units. A five model unit of Wraiths, a 60+ unit of Ghouls with regen and poison, and a large unit of Grave Guard with great weapons. There were three characters, a level two necro, a level two vampire (general), and a Wight as the Battle Standard Bearer. The Hellpit died to the grave guard, the large unit of skaven killed the grave guard, the slaves died to the wraiths who died to the smaller clanrats through attrition. The Stormvermin tried to avoid the huge block of Ghouls but eventually succumbed after two turns of fighting. I lost the victory points battle in a Minor Loss.
Highlights/Lowlights: My Engineer got off two Scorch spells onto the Ghouls killing about 30 total but not enough. M Greyseer tried to remove the lined Wraiths with Cracks Call and got three of them before being zapped by the Doomwheel and strength 2 shots.... very disappointed with that. I was able to take out the Necromancer who was hiding behind the Ghouls when a warpfire shot overshot the ghouls. The Mob was just too big to take out.

Battle Two: The Maw, Attacker had to split his army onto the two short table ends, while the Defender must setup within the middle 24" of the table. The winner was determined by Table Quarters. Fighting against Dwarfs with three units of gunners, two guns, a cannon, two large blocks of Slayers, and a General on an Anvil. They were split with gunners on one end with a gun. The other side had the slayers, the cannon, the other gun, and the Anvil. My setup was  heavy to the gun side hoping to engage within the first or second turn. Only the large block of Skaven and Doomwheel facing the Slayer side. I was able to squeak out a Minor win.

Highlights/Lowlight: The first turn of shooting was very effective for the dwarfs, almost wiping out the smaller Clanrat unit. The Abomination ate up two units of Gunners and made about 10 regen rolls out of 14 from one turn of shooting! Large unit of skaven got flanked by Dwarfs sneaking through a forest who lost 8 guys to dangerous terrain, zero to me! A cannon shot landed right in front of the Greyseer and the remaining 5 skaven before it misfired allowing him to live and eek out the minor victory and challenge the table quarter.

Battle Three: The battle was fought over a central 'Well of the Gods' that offered up goodies to the armies. You get bonus points of you do not partake of the well. Both players failed that. The opponent had Ogres with three units again. Two huge units of Ogres with a small three man of Ogres with greatweapons. All characters were in one unit of Ogres with some banner that increases miscasts on doubles.
I hoped to have my Doomwheel take out the small unit and sweep around while I whittle down the other units.
Highlights/Lowlights: My big block of Skaven got ripped apart in one round after the big block of Ogres w/ characters reformed and moved 21" to move right in front of my when I was on their right flank! My Doomwheel almost got destroyed by the small unit of ogres until my turn it conjured up three strength 10 shots at the Ogres and took them out! One weapon team malfunctioned and ran right at my Engineer to kill him! My Greyseer was able to Curse the other Ogre unit and take them out making a five man clanrat squad. My Hellpit alomost took out the monster unit of Ogres w/ characters on a flank charge but was unable to run them down, rolling 5". I lost to victory points, badly!

Overall, I took Best Painted. Tim and his Dwarfs was Best Sportsman, while Thor won Overall Champ with his Vampire Counts. It was fun and I learned much. Since I only play once every 3-4 months, I was happy with how I did.

Been Busy

Sorry there have been no updates. I have been busy studying for tests. The results of the studying are positive as I passed the Comptia Network+ Certification exam. I will be updating more pics of skaven in the next few days. As well there is a fantasy tournament this weekend at Coliseum of Comics that I plan to attend. I will grab some pics from there as well. Wish me luck!

Luna Wolves

Bolter n Chainsword keeps asking about my Luna Wolves. I painted these up a few years ago for a contest held by Coliseum of Comics in Kissimmee. I was fortunate to come out the winner. They are based upon the cover from the Horus Heresy novel, False Gods. I only painted up the five guys.. I posted them originally on Bolter n Chainsword and received several requests on how they were painted. The basic, quick 'n dirty way is this: based in white, given a very thin wash of matte medium/codex grey/water, highlighted with a thinned white, then black or red where needed. The hardest part was getting the decals. These are from the Bell of Lost Souls site, and worked out quite nicely. I will provide links to all three above listed sites at the bottom of this post.

The 5-man squad

Luna Wolf Sgt

Wolf with a Space Wolf head

The shoulders done with plastic tubing

You can see the Chaos breastplate

Final Guy

Bolter and Chainsword
Coliseum of Comics
Bell of Lost Souls, Decals
Black Library - Horus Heresy: False Gods

Skaven Painting Tutorial

Right, I said I would do a tutorial on how I painted up the little rodents. I now present to you the skaven tutorial.

First off, I primed all of the little guys in black. As they are going to end up being rather dirty, dingy, and for the most part dark, black is the way to go. I sprayed them with Army Painter Black. This stuff is great. Very good coverage and comes out with some strength. I highly recommend it. I used to use Testors to prime them with, but Army Painter is extremely good.

Here I have given a rough covering of Calthan Brown to the fur areas.I paint in layers to the model, skin first, then the next layer up, armor or clothing, then the next, and finally what ever may be on top of those layers. It is much easier to paint interior items when you don't have to worry about getting paint on the layer above it. If you follow the steps properly, you can avoid having to reach the paint brush in to tight spaces having to avoid dabbing any already painted edges.




Anyway, the next layer I had was the skin, the actual flesh. I had this meet up with the fur I put on previously. This will join when the wash comes down. I used Tallarn Flesh for the skin color. I have also painted the spear shaft with a Bestial Brown

Here I have already put on the yellow, red, and the metal. I used Iyanden Yellow, Mechrite Red, and Boltgun Metal. The model right now could be used in a regiment. For me it is only half done. It hasn't taken long to get to this stage; as I have only used 5 colors not counting the priming or the base.


I have just give this skaven a wash with Devlan Mud. This will tie many of the colors together. You can see this on the hand where the fur and the flesh meet. As an added bonus, the wash will creep into crevices and folds as it dries to give a shade to those locations.



Again, you could field him as he stands now, but to get a good effect with your models, you really want to have three layers to each color. The whole base, shade, highlight theme. Since I already have the base down and the shade as well, I need the highlight. I simply went back with the original color for each location and painted along raised edges or areas that will catch the light better. You can see the hand is looking much nicer now, more subtle and somewhat realistic for a ratman.


Finally, after the paint has dried, I sealed him with a gloss coat first for strength and resistance to chipping, followed by a dull coat. Both of these were sprayed on using Testors sprays. The dull coat for Testors is one of the best out there. I will say, the sprays will basically re-wet the paint underneath it which will again create a fusion of areas, tying them in again. It's rather nice to get that effect. It can also be a pain if you had just gotten it perfect and the spray ruins it. I plan ahead and expect it now. That is one of the reasons the Heavy Metal team at GW doesn't spray them.

So that is it. What was that 7 colors, fur, skin, armor, hood, skirt(?), shaft, and the wash. All GW colors and most of them Foundation paints, mainly for their coverage ability. They can go over black, or any other color, with one coat. Thanks, comments are welcome!