Gone Rogue

Hey folks! This week I did quite a bit of painting, and since they were all of a theme, I thought I'd post them together. I think I mentioned that I have a load of OOP marines sitting around in a box, and I started turning a lot of them into Blood Angels. Since a lot of them have paint on them already and they're not really worth stripping, I decided to paint them quite quickly and to a basic standard rather than spend hours trying to make a slightly 'blobular' marine look good!

So this week I decided to make a bit of progress on these, and managed to paint ten as Blood Angels and five as Black Templars. I chose Black Templars for the extra five since I already had a marine painted up by someone else as a Black Templar. This model was on a slightly larger base, and is a modern style marine, one of the other marines was a slightly blobular modern marine with two bolt pistols (again, not my modelling work), so I just went for a quick Black Templars job. Remember, the idea behind doing all these is really just to do something with all these old models, and probably use them in Apocalypse games. 

I also painted up the metal Death Company models, which, were actually unpainted when I got them, so I did a slightly better job with those than I did with all the other plastic marines. Death Company are quite fun to paint, I discovered! The mainly black armour with red and gold details is a bit like Black Legion, but without all the fiddly armour trim!

The final model was a very old Rogue Trader model. This fellow had been sittingin my bitz box for ages, until I saw him today and decided he would work within my Blood Angels force. I didn't know what the model was meant to be, but luckily, the very helpful Campbell McLaughlin found an image online that shows it is meant to be 'Brother Matthews', a marine with a power sword. Thanks, Campbell!

 

I gave him a plasma pistol and painted him up as a Blood Angel Captain. Martin said he looked a bit like Santa Claus, so this fellow is now named 'Santus'.

Here's everything together:

 The Blood Angel Tactical Squad with Santus:

The Death Company Squad:

and the Black Templars Crusader Squad:

Thanks for reading!

The Primarch Reborn

Well, you all know who this is! The Primarch of the Ultramarines, Roboute Guilliman. No conversions here, although I did remove a few bits that were too fragile or kept breaking. I really had to up my painting game here, because there's no way you can paint Guilliman badly and not regret it!

The fact that I finished him and he looks pretty good gives me confidence to finish a few other centrepiece models I have laying around, so thanks Robby!

Divine Exorcists Librarian Araqiel

Hey all! I hope you enjoyed my array of images of my Dark Angels army last week! Boy, were there a lot! Not quite as many this week, but then there are only two models! Hehe.

The first model is Librarian Araqiel of the Divine Exorcists. You may recall that my homegrown chapter is led exclusively by librarians, and so it behoves me to make a few librarians. I like most of the librarian miniatures that have been released by GW over the years - I think it's the ornate armour, robes and the fact that they're often in poses that are a little different from most other miniatures, often striding across the battlefield or casting a power, rather than hacking and slashing or shooting.

This mini is a conversion of the Dark Angels librarian from the Dark Vengeance boxset. I already have an unconverted version in my Dark Angels army, so, when I acquired another version, I decided to convert so that (a) it was different and (b) it didn't have too much DA iconography on it, and I think it worked out well! Araqiel has a different right hand, and complete left arm, with a force sword from the Grey Knights kit. The power plant is diferent too.

The second model is an Ork Nob. I didn't really expect to be painting Ork infantry right now, but it was sitting there, primed and ready, and I thought.. why not? I'm making a very small Ork force (at least initially) - most like a kill team, with a big converted trukk to ride on. The colour scheme will be lots of metal and rust and so on, so the only bright colour will be their skin and a little purple, as you can see here.

Finally, I'd like to a little showcase of another of Martin's amazing creations. Well... three creations, actually. Martin loves heldrakes so much he decided to make three of them. One is standing on the ground, one on some rocks, and the third flying. These models are just... EPIC! I love the amazing conversions that Martin comes up with! Martin has been working on these for a while and is very proud to finally be able to share them with the world. I hope you like them!

Complete Dark Angels Army

A big one today! I have declared my Dark Angels army complete! Well, okay, everyone knows that any army is only complete until you decide to add something to it, but I have built and painted every Dark Angels model in my house and don't plan to buy any more, so this is as done as an army can be, I think! It looks pretty nice as it is, so why change it!

My final addition was an 8-person tactical squad with a power fist and melta gun, mostly made from Dark Vengance models. Most of these models have been featured on the blog, so you can scan through for closeups of all the squads, but I've tried to get some decent closeups of parts of the army in this post so that you can see the variety. My photography has improved a bit, and I'm pleased with the closeups.

Enjoy the images!

 

Chaos Hell Blade fighter craft

Today's model is another that fits into the category of 'things I have stared at in catalogues but never bought'... the Chaos Hell Blade.

I finally went for one and am glad I did. I decided to paint it up in Black Legion colours, with some cheeky flames up the wings. This ties the model in with the rest of my army, that features some actual flames and flashes of red and yellow. The canopy involves some custom work, since the one I bought didn't come with the glass for the canopy. Therefore I cut up some transparent plasticard and glued it to the resin canopy frame. It's not perfect, but fairly good. I'm happy with it.

Back with a Bang! Another alternative Bloodthirster

Sorry for being away for so long. I had a lot of life issues, been working on other projects, then I couldn't get the pics off my camera... sigh... what a palaver!

But I'm back now! I thought I'd best mark my return to the blog with something exciting, so today's post features a fabulous alternative Bloodthirster, who I have decided will be my Angron. The model is another Creature Caster Sculpt, dubbed the King of War.

I've painted the model in a slightly more orangey red than most of my other Bloodthirsters, to make Angron stand out on the battlefield, and also to a certain extent because it's boring to keep painting the same colours! I really enjoy painting skin on these models. You can really get the brush flowing across the model. What's less fun is highlighting metal, and there is a lot of that to do on this model! It took several sittings to get all the bronze highlighted. 

The pose of this model is fantastic. The axe smashing into the ground, the right arm coming up in a threatening manner, the look on his face... they all conspire to make a dynamic figure. It's easy to put together too! If you're like me, you tend to fret about buying such large models because you worry about putting them together and how much pinning needs to be done. However, this model is pretty easy. The model has handy tabs for the axe to go into the base, and the arms and legs go on very easily and are designed to slot together and only really need glue (I recommend epoxy resin) to hold them on, although pinning the legs is will provide a bit more strength. Where you will need to pin is for the wings, but, amazingly, the model has little divots marked where you need to drill, so there's no guesswork involved! It all went together very easily. 

The model has all the classic hallmarks of a Bloodthirster, such as an axe, flail, leathery wings and horns jutting out of its joints. You don't need to convert this model to convince people it's a Bloodthirster. The base is one of the best I've seen for a stock base - it's covered in rocks and skulls. I added a couple of Ork and bloodletter skulls to add a little bit more to ground it in the 40k universe, and overally it makes the perfect Bloodthirster (more so than many of the other Bloodthirsters I have reviewed).

I also believe this model is a representation of Angron. It's worth bearing in mind, of course, that Creature Caster can't make it look too much like Angron, or they'll run into copyright issues, so they've just added enough to make it seem like it should be him - such as the tentacles/tubes coming out of his head. They are one of the most iconic features of Angron's visage, and I think they are what convinced me it is Angron. The model does come with an alternative, tentacle-less head, which might be best if you prefer it as a standard Bloodthirster. My friend, Martin, pointed out that Angron should have a sword, so that is a negative point. Nothing stopping him using an axe from time to time though! He is a daemon primarch, after all!

And with that, I draw my review to a close. It's a great model that will dominate the tabletop, and is now much more easily available thanks to Creature Caster's better international shipping.  See you next week!

I'm still here!

Sorry for not updating recently! I had a very busy and stressful period and now I have a problem getting pictures off my camera! I will post soon, I promise!

Here are a couple of work in progress pictures: