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!