Scythes Transports

This one can be the boring post. Transports are rarely exciting. They fight through the fire to deliver their cargo. And much like a male spider after it delivers its cargo, they tend to die or get ignored.

Even still, I tried to make them look good! 

There are only two Rhinos currently. If or when I enlarge the company, there will definitely be more vehicles. I just have to remember most of the heavy tanks have been lost so I will avoid the Land Raiders and Predators. 

Should the Company Commander decide to ride, his wheels are suitably ready and unique in its adornment. The Grim Reaper is from a US Navy insignia I found on the internet. Using Photoshop, I resized it a bit and reversed the colors where all the black was clear and yellow was black. It is able to stand out nicely as a command Rhino.

                      

                  

I must say the Drop Pod kit looks great when finished, but it is a pain to put together! Why couldn't GW just put some pins in for the vanes to slide into? The entire process was extremely frustrating. Almost like they rushed it or a non-modeler built it on the computer. In order to get it to look good, you also have to pre-paint much of it before the final build. That's where I tried to do the electric look for the sensor dome or machine spirit. The Drop Pod is quite easy to paint up. Dry-brushing goes a long way with this item.

The last transport is for my Ironclad Dreadnought. I should have placed a picture of the two Drop Pods next to each other so you could get an idea of the size difference. The Dread Pod is fat with only three doors. A Dread base can just fit inside the Pod. Mine will not completely fit due to the Hunter Killer missiles on top. You will see him in another post soon. The Forge World Pod was much easier to build and is more stable than the plastic one. 

Update!

You can see the Dread Pod is about twice the size. You may also see in the back my latest WIP

Superheavies Complete

I have finally completed the three Superheavies for the Bolter and Chainsword ETL IV. This should be a big lift for the Astra Militarum subgroup. These three were over 1500pts in total.

Much like working on twenty guys at a time, working on three vehicles of this size at the same time was getting to be more of a chore; quite unlike the usually joy of finishing a single squad. As each step of the process was increased three-fold for every vehicle. Doing the oil wash meant having there was no down time between application and blending. It was almost too much to keep track of. I did have to go back and get some spots that I missed along the way, like the purity seals on the rear of the tanks. Beyond that, it all went fairly well.

                               

 

The Stormblade pattern superheavy carries the Plasma Blastgun. As this was the lighter in color of the three, the weathering really showed up very well. Except for the fitting of the gun, there were zero problems. I used a long brass pin to help keep the gun in place. Even still it didn't sit flat enough. It's not something that would be noticed during gaming.

                                

 


The Shadowswords came out nice too. Contrary to the above photos, they are the same colors. I'm still learning the camera.

                                 

 


I had to paint part of a 'three' onto the side to avoid it getting lost by the ladder. It was something I realized after I did the other side first. I just thought the numbers looked better near the back of the tank.

The weathering for all three was pretty much the same as the Macharius, Punishers, and the Sentinels. I did use the Van Dyke Brown oil paint for the pin washes. One thing I did that worked really well was, I pre-highlighted all the raised parts with a lighter color. All the rivets were painted a lighter grey. All the raised parts got some level of a highlight across all of the tanks. This really helped those parts stand out and help with the depth of the paints.

Only one thing gave me an issue. I tried to use the Mig Productions Rain Streaking effects. It comes in a bottle just like the Rust Streaking and Grime Streaking effects. It even has the same directions. I planned to use it as a way to fade the upper layers. The process is normally to put down a spot, wait a little while, then blend it with a brush and thinner to spread it around. Simple and very effective. Well, the Rain Streaks may have too much pigment in it. Placing a dot on many of the panels across the top of the tank 31, I then proceeded to blend it around with a damp brush. Problem was, it was leaving a ring where the dot was placed. It was drying too quick and making it look like a cheetah! I had to soak a Q-tip in thinner and practically scrub the Rain Effects off. The stains are still there, but when another layer was added and blended, they began to disappear.

To get it to work, I used two brushes together, one with thinner, one with the Rain effects. I placed a spot of thinner down, then the Rain Effects on top of that. I then blended it in immediately. This worked to make the paint look faded as a light translucent layer of a white was laid on top.

Fuel Leak

Battle Damage

After completing the painting, they all got a coat of Gloss spray and then Dull coat from Testors. I used graphite for metal marks on the rust and tracks. The following sprays caused them to disappear. I just went back over them with Leadbelcher.  So don't use graphite if you are going to seal your tank.

WIP: Superheavies

A small post this week, a teaser.

I am still working on the three Superheavies. The weathering is coming along great. I would say I am half way through the weathering process currently. The powders will be going on shortly and the lenses will be done last.

Why so long?

My wife an I live in a wood frame house. In Florida, it is termite mating season. After a rain during the day, the termites tend to take flight in the night. The tiny bastards are attracted by light. We have been turning some of the non-essential lights off in order to not attract the damn bugs! As soon as the season is over, I will be back to working at night and getting more done

Scythes' Space Marines

The Scouts may be the most numerous of members of my Scythes of the Emperor, but the graduated Space Marines are the backbones. Going with the theme that either they are rookies or veterans, my Scythes have two squads of Sternguard Veterans and one squad of regular Marines.

This is the regular squad. They tend to ride in a rhino transport. Why a multi-melta? Cheaper than a lascannon and still good at putting a wound on a Tyranid monster. Usually don't have to worry too much about range. The bugs tend to help you out there just fine. The Sergeant has a power pick for a weapon. I claim it as an axe ahead of time. The pick was a nasty anti-armor weapon back in medieval times. So, it fits just fine with the armor piercing of a power axe.

You can also see redeemed Lamenters amongst the unit. As the Scythes were assigned to oversee the Penance of the Lamenters following the Badab War; the Lamenters suffered heavily during the Kraken invasion. With the overall decimation of the Scythes Chapter, any surviving Lamenters amongst the Scythes number deemed vindicated were incorporated into the existing Chapter. I am sure the Inquisition will have questions regarding this action. Yet, it can be easier to ask forgiveness than permission considering the situation the Scythes current face. At the least, his gene seed may not be saved if it ever comes to it.

The first of two Sternguard squads is displayed above. The squad is made up of a mix of metal and plastic Marines. This squad has combi-meltas and a heavy flamer from a Terminator. The Veteran Sergeant is equipped with Lightning Claws. Usually deployed via drop pod into the middle of the enemy to draw them away from the front lines and to just cause as much damage as possible. There are only nine guys in the squad as a character sometimes deploys with them. They are great for chewing up Tyranid Warriors. The unit has successfully been used to alpha strike a Hive Tyrant leading to a complete disorganization of a Tyranid assault.

The last Space Marine unit is the heavy weapon Sternguard. I will combat squad this unit with the heavy weapons staying behind leaving the Veteran Sergeant and comrades to provide forward cover. It's also not too difficult to simply leave them all combined and shoot Kraken rounds too. It's difficult to see, but there are also a couple of comb-plasmas in here as well. I know it is not a standard use of the unit, but again, I play more for fluff.

Many of the plastic figures are modified to have service studs on their shoulder pads. The pads were made with Testors putty filled across the entire face then left to dry overnight then sanded smooth. With a pen, I chose several locations for the studs to go and lightly drilled into the putty with a pin vise. The studs themselves are tiny silica beads. You tend to get them with items shipped in boxes. I left a dollop of super glue on piece of paper, using a toothpick, I put a touch of the glue into the drilled hole. The silica bead was then carefully pressed into the hole. 

Some of the battle damage was a result of the pin vise drilling and the putty chipping off on the shoulder pads. Other was created by simply hitting the model with a file. Since the figures were primed in white and then yellow over the top, the file tends to show the white primer and the grey of the plastic underneath. This looks best on the black armor locations.

Each of the figures are individual with alternating color schemes and decal usage. Normally I make my Marines uniform per squad. Each one using the same numeration and symbols. Since many of the Veteran Scythes survived the Hivefleet attack, the disciplined rules are a bit more lax.

Now being colorblind, I never knew the lining I did on the yellow was red. I originally thought I grabbed the brown micron pen. It wasn't until the Necronomicon Tournament that I was told, 'I like how you used the red for the lining.' Aww, crap! Even still I can't tell it's red.

Scythes' Scout Speeder Storm

Back in 2008, the Space Marines 5th edition codex came out. It was filled with new pictures and new units that were not yet released. One of those units was the Scout transport, the Land Speeder Storm. A concept I attach to Agis Neugebauer way back when. He originally came up with the idea of using a standard Speeder to carry space marines into combat with them hanging onto the sides. His inspiration came from the movie Blackhawk Down. Alas, he no longer has the pictures on the site of his original creation. From what I remember, GW had asked a few of their dedicated gamers to submit ideas for new units. That was his submission with rules and a painted up model to boot.

Back from the digression, GW at one time had a habit releasing units with no models to support them. That was the case with the Storm. I was in the process of beginning my Scythes in early 2009. I was needing a full army for the 2009 Necronomicon Gaming tournament that was held every June down here in Orlando, since kaput. My Scouts had no transports and Game Workshop had not yet released the Storm. So I had to build my own. Mind you, this article is pretty useless now as GW released the Storm in May of 2009...

The process I followed utilized three Speeders to create the two Storms, as they had three engines each. Not very cost effective money-wise, but needs must.

                          

  

I had no help with the build. The only thing going for me was a pre-release image of the CAD design of the Speeder and whatever was in the 5th edition codex. Otherwise, I was winging the production.

                          

 

I even had to create my own Scout crewmen. They way I envisioned it, there would be one pilot and no gunner. I figure he's a space marine and he can control the gun himself much like the pilot of an Apache gunship. The other seat would be taken up by the Sergeant when the squad was embarked, getting his info and data from the onboard systems.

                         

 

The most difficult part was the bay in between the cockpit and the engines. I had to concoct a way to get them to join and make it sturdy enough that it wouldn't just fold in on itself. To do this, extra sprue was cut to act as the support beams. Diamond pattern sheet styrene was put down for the bottom of the crew bay. A blank sheet of styrene was placed as the bottom of the bay to give it thickness.

                          

 

You can get an idea of what extra bits were put to use. Lots of extra Leman Russ parts everywhere. Anything extra from the third Speeder was also put to work. The extra fins were used a rudder else it looked a bit off and unbalanced.

                           

 

To give the bottom of definition, I just cut squares of styrene out and glued them randomly to the bottom. Much like the appearance of the standard speeder. You can also see I went for a Heavy Flamer and Assault Cannon approach for weapons.

                           

 


The completed and painted Storms. In general they came out much like the actual models. A tad bit longer though. I even used a smoke launcher for the Cerberus Launcher.

In game, the Storm is fun to use. It's far from durable, but with the ability to charge from the vehicle, my Assault Scouts put it to good use. The flamer doesn't require a roll to hit, making it a nice easy weapon to use. The assault cannon does, but with 4 shots, it's got a good chance to connect. The model may not be the best, but I love the uses.

Needless to say, when I brought them to the Necronimocon tourney, the real Storm was released, upstaging my creations to no end. Nobody knew that mine were throw-togethers. I don't remember much from that weekend except I went 2-3, but I had a good time. Not too bad for a Scout heavy army.

WIP: Super Heavies Pt 3

I was able to get the first layer of paint onto the tanks. Sticking with the same paint combination as the Punishers and Sentinels, these will also be in greys.

I taped off any areas that will be getting any glue afterwards, such as the track wheels track guard locations, the cannons, the turrets/turret bases, and where the large fuel drums connect to the back of the tanks. The reason these were left off were to make painting easier. This is especially true with the tracks and the fuel drums. Also by removing the turrets, it makes the tape laying much simpler. The tracks will all be painted on the sprue and added afterwards. 

All the tanks and various unglued pieces were given a primer of black. The extra bits like the turrets and ladders were put down onto painters tape and sprayed from there. The track guards and fuel drums were held in place with clips or by hand.

The Shadowswords were given a base of Mechanicus Standard Grey. The Stormblade was based in Administratum Grey. In proper order the tanks should be left to sit for 24 hours or so to let the paint settle. I let them sit for about 14 hours before I proceeded to add the tape for the next step. Sorry, I'm just impatient and eager to jump to the next step, sometimes this gets me into trouble.... Anyway, no issues this time.

The colors were then reversed for the tanks. The Shadowswords getting the lighter grey lines and the Stormblade getting the darker lines. The idea is to use the tape to get a hard line for the camo with the rest of the spray trailing off to get the soft fade. I only airbrushed to one side of the tape to get the effect. To me, the design makes them look to be underwater.

Now comes the touch ups, decals, the base painting, the tracks, the gloss seal, and the weathering. It may be due to them not sitting, but if you look closely at the cannons in the top right, you can see on one of them where the base and primer peeled off with the tape.

It seems I still I have art least a couple of more days to go as these guys are huge and have lots of rivets and such to get attention.

WIP: Three Super Heavies pt. 2

Super Heavies pt. 2

The tanks have pretty much been built. The spots that need to be masked off to prevent paint have been taped off. The reasoning for this, should be well known. Plastic and super glue do not connect well to a painted surface. They tend to eat at the paint and generally make for a much weaker bond. 

Anyway, I digress, while looking the tanks over, I could see a few locations where the resin just did not have a great fit. It left a gap due to a bad fit or from the resin just splintering due shipping or whatever. There were several that needed filling just from the resin fit, or lack of. The overall build of a Baneblade tank leaves large gaps on the sides where the armor plates meet. Those spaces are just too big. They will just swallow washes and look huge! I had to do something about them before I put down a primer.

Looking to fill in the gaps, I had many options, greenstuff was available, but it just seemed to be too time consuming, but would fill any and all. I am always looking for shortcuts, and I saw sitting in one of my drawers, packages of styrene. Hmm, I had three sizes to choose from, two rods of 1.2mm and .8mm and flat strips of 1mm. You will need superglue to fill any resin to resin gaps, but plastic to plastic gaps are easily filled with standard plastic cement, Tamiya liquid cement please. This could be much easier than greenstuff in general and a stronger bond to boot when plastic is involved!

                           

You can easily rearrange these steps to whatever you need, cutting first is always a good practice, with the gluing last, just in case. So here is the process I used.

Simply lay the plastic rod down into place. In this case, it's just behind a sponson. One of those regular Baneblade gaps.

Next, I added glue to begin the bonding. You will have some time to work the the plastic before it really sets. This instance, the glue gives the fitting some bite so the styrene isn't sticking to you finger or wanting to just fly out, etc.

Tamp the styrene down or maneuver it into place to get a good fit. I used my sculpting tool with a rounded end. With the styrene rod softened due to the glue, you have some ability to force it into tight spaces or even shape it slightly. You are also able to bend the rod for curves. 

The leftover piece was then carefully cut away either with a sharp knife or sprue cutters. Be mindful that the unglued piece will have a tendency to 'fly' away the shorter it gets.

                                      

Other examples of the process are shown below

                          

Your mileage may vary depending on what gaps you need filled. With the different pieces of styrene, you can fill differing gaps or try for varied effects. Here the flat strips are used to fill in along the sides, and a rod on the front where the resin top meets the plastic front. In addition, they can be used for other decorations or designs. You may have seen the strips used for rifle straps. 

If you do a quick search for fillers you may also come across super glue with baking soda

Scale Model Guide also has a couple of links

Link 1

Link 2

I'm hoping to get at least a primer of black down on these three tomorrow, maybe even the first grey.