One very important part of sharing your hobby projects online is learning how to take good pictures of them — and indeed, many, many articles have been published on the subject. As for my own pictures, I am usually reasonably pleased with them — they may not be perfect, but they usually show a pretty “truthful” version of my models ;)

However, there are more ways of showcasing models than just posting “regular” photos: We have all seen excellent pictures where hobbyists have tried to use various filters and effects in order to add another dimension to their work — granted, there are also those cases where Photoshop becomes a quick fix to camouflaging shoddy paintjobs. But those are usually in the minority. I, for one, am often awestruck by the quality of retouched photos online, and I think they are an interesting additional option to breathe life into your creations — unfortunately, my own attempts in this respect haven’t been all that successful so far: While I am reasonably handy with Photoshop, I have somehow never managed to end up with the kind of retouched image that actually looks awesome and brings my models to life.

This changed however, when, at the recommendation of my fellow hobbyist Talarion, I checked out Autodesk’s Pixlr last weekend: Pixlr is a very streamlined and easy to use piece of software that helps you add effects, borders and various filters to your photos. And while the amount of functions is pretty limited, the software is great fun to mess around with and, what’s even more important, it’s exceptionally great at what it does!

So, being a pretty huge Web 2.0 villain myself, I couldn’t help experimenting with some of my hobby photos. It has been great fun so far, and today I’d like to share some of the results with you:

Kill!Maim!Burn!

Well, this one was to be expected, wasn’t it? It won’t surprise you that messing around with some army photos of my World Eaters was one of the first things I did, and I used some flames and a couple of additional effects to create a pretty archetypal, Khornate image.

And once I had started on the World Eaters, it goes without saying that I also had to give one of my favourite models another spin as well:

Engine of Destruction

And why limit myself to Khorne? Giving some of my Nurglite models another layer of grime and neglect turned out to be great fun as well:

Nurgle’s Children

The next stage of my experiments was to actually try and bring out a new quality in certain models and images. One of the first pictures I chose for this was a standoff between one of my Helbrutes/Dreadnoughts, Marax the Fallen, and a downed Space Marine (built as a special objective marker to accompany Marax).

Heroic Last Stand

The original photo of the scene was nothing to write home about, but it certainly seems rather dramatic now, don’t you think?…

The same goes for this scene of a charging Huntmaster Isgarad:

Isgarad attacks

The original photo was pretty terrible, but with the help of some filters, it became a rather more interesting battlefield impression.

Next up, another Helbrute: Khorlen the Lost:

Lost Soul

I liked the result so much that I had another go at this model, focusing on its wonderfully creepy face and thereby creating a  more portrait-like image:

And I must scream

This is maybe one of my favourite pictures, because it really embodies the horror about being interred into a corrupted sarcophagus. This picture also led to further explore the portrait approach, trying to explore the essence of specific characters (or creatures):

Instrument of Wrath

Scarred Hunter

And of course, I did not only deal with my World Eaters, but also tried to create some images showing my various INQ28 characters plying their shadowy trade. First among them, of course, was Inquisitor Antrecht:

Inquisitor Anrecht in the field

The picture showing him and his retinue against the background of a homemade terrain piece was nice enough before, but now it really clicks with me, for some reason.

Some of you may remember the model for Inquisitor Zuul I converted and painted for the 2013 Inqvitational. The old boy remains one of my favourite pieces of work, and so he warranted his own, touched up picture:

Servant of the Emperor

And while I did not participate in the Inqvitational myself, I really love the picture of Zuul being apprehended by some of his more puritan colleagues that Marco Skoll took on the day of the game, so I messed around with that as well:

Game’s up

Like I said, the original photo was kindly provided by Marco Skoll.

And I’ll never tire of showing off my model for Legion, of course:

We are many, we are one

The original photo, taken by Fulgrim, was already a favourite of mine, but I think this touched up version really does an even better job of capturing this unspeakable horror stalking the depths of the Arrke.
In stark contrast to Legion’s creepiness, I also made a more lighthearted piece: It was really fun to make a photo of my Blood Bowl Team, the Orkheim Ultraz, look like the boyz were actually part of a vintage TV broadcast:

Orkheim Ultraz on TV

And, last but definitely not least, this rather moody shot of an Imperial monument:

Know fear

In this case, the original picture was actually pretty terrible, but I simply love the touched up version!

All in all, this was really a great way to discover new aspects about some of my models and bring out a new visual narrative in some pieces. Call me crazy, but working on these pictures and coming up with titles for them really made me think about several of my projects in slightly different ways. And, if nothing else, messing around with the software was just a lot of fun ;)

So, in case you want to try something similar, I would recommend you check out Pixlr yourself. And, of course, I would like to hear any feedback you might have!

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Alright, everyone: There’s quite a bit going on at the moment, so let me give you a rundown of my current projects. Most of these are chaotic in nature — in more than one sense, I suppose ;) Anyway, here goes:

1. The Call of Chaos

In a rather uncharacteristic move, I have decided to join the VIIth Call of Chaos over at The Bolter & Chainsword, vowing to paint four new units for my World Eaters before January 15th. I am using this occasion to force myself to finally get a couple of things that I really want to see finished painted, but make no mistake: I am such a huge hobby butterfly that participating in a vow like this is quite a challenge for me. There’s a very real danger of failing this thing, so if you have any fingers left, keep them crossed for me, okay?

Anyway, which models are part of my Call of Chaos vow, you ask? Well, let me walk you through them. The first two should already be known to you:

First up, I am finally going to complete the Forgefiend I built and undercoated what feels like ages ago:

Since then, the poor thing has remained completely untouched, and it’s definitely time to change that!

The next model is a character I am really looking forward to seeing finished:

“The Doomwall”, my World Eaters Terminator Lord in Mk 1-ish armour. I am still extremely happy with this conversion, and I hope I’ll be able to make the model look even cooler when painted!

But I am not limiting myself to models you already know for this challenge: I will also paint two model’s you haven’t seen yet:

First up is a Chaos Dreadnought/Helbrute that I recently converted, using the AOBR Dreadnought as a base. I wanted another Dread because I’ve built so many different interchangeable weapon arms for my existing Dreadnoughts that it only felt logical to have another model that could make use of them. Plus I really enjoy converting Dreadnoughts for some reason. Anyway, here’s the model:

It actually took me quite a while to wrap up this conversion, because the AOBR Dread is a rather limiting base model to use. I also couldn’t get too crazy with the pose, because the model needed to be flexible enough to be able to use all (or at least most) of the extra weapon arms I had built. I kept messing around with various parts, but the model just refused to come together — as it turned out, what I needed in order to finally make this Dread happen was an idea about him as a character: I needed to figure out what kind of guy he was.

In the end, I decided that he is a former Breacher Sergeant whose calling is still reflected in some elements of his ironform — the Mk. 3-ish helmet, the shield on his left arm recalling a stylised boarding shield and the melta, for example. And that was the spark of inspiration that made the whole thing happen.

One thing I am pretty happy with is the brutal looking siege claw on his left arm: The standard powerfist was just looking so boring, so I just tried adding some spiky bitz from the wheels of the WFB Chaos Chariot — and I think the result really works!

The final part of my Call of Chaos vow will be an old acquaintance, in a way. Take a look:

It should be pretty obvious who this is supposed to be, right? ;) As it happens, the model was actually built for the latest Painting/Converting contest over at Throne of Skulls: The theme of the contest was to take one of the Khornate characters from among the 40k and WFB universes and build a better/updated/reimagined version of them — and what better character to choose for that than dear old Kharn the Betrayer?

Since this is going to be a piece for the contest, above all else, I took the liberty of truescaling Kharn a bit, and I think he wears it well ;)

Oh, the head was, once again, very kindly provided by my fellow hobbyist Belphoebe, by the way. Thanks a lot, mate!

So, like I said, I’ll be trying to get these painted until January 15th. I am slightly scared. Wish me luck, boys and girls! ;)

2. The art of chaos

And while we’re still on the matter of The Bolter & Chainsword, I am supremely happy to announce that I am one of the winners of a recent challenge by fellow hobbyist Greyall. If you don’t know his thread, you should check it out right away: Greyall does incredibly detailed and intricate drawings of (Chaos) Space Marine characters in black and white, and he held a little conversion challenge where all the board members could enter one of their converted models, and Greyall would draw a number of them. I entered my conversion for Lord Captain Lorimar…

…and guess what: I am one of the chosen few. I am so happy! Especially since the competition was absolutely amazing. Definitely make sure to head over there and check out those models! Anyway, I can hardly wait to see Lorimar rendered in Greyall’s trademark style — this will be SO awesome!

3. Creeping Rot

Like I said, I am a hobby butterfly of the first order, so I couldn’t resist opening yet another can of worms…literally: You’ll probably have seen GW’s recently released Putrid Blightkings. Well, one look at the models was enough to decide that I needed a box of these, and I finally picked them up late last week.

So far, I’ve only spent a bit of time with the models due to having been super buys last week, but allow me to share some initial observations:

• the level of detail in this kit has to be seen to be believed! Seriously, those guys are every bit as spectacular as they looked in WD Weekly
• the amount of bitz you get is equally impressive: Even after building five complete models, you should have lots and lots of leftovers for the rest of your Nurglite conversion needs: The amount of heads, rusty weapons and armour plates alone is staggering!
• the kit is pretty flexible, and you’ll be getting quite a few very different looking models out of this one — however, the kit is not as flexible as many “classic” multi part plastic kits (most of the (Chaos) Space Marine range comes to mind), due to the way the models are put together. This is not a problem per se, but it does mean you’ll need to plan ahead in order to convert these guys…
• …speaking of which: (Chaos) Terminator parts will work great on these, from a size perspective.

This last point is pretty important, I think, because many people planning to use these models in 40k seem to be unsure as to their actual size: I’ve seen speculations that the Blightkings are Ogre/Ogryn-sized, and I’ve snapped a quick comparison shot for you:

As you can see, these guys are definitely NOT Ogryn-sized. In fact, they are slightly smaller than Terminators. In my opinion, that makes them useful as stand-ins for Chaos Terminators (probably what I am going to do), true scale Death Guard Marines or something of the sort.

In fact, I have made a few – very early – attempts at “40k-i-fying” the Blightkings:

Nothing huge so far, just messing around with a few 40k parts and seeing what works. A more involved conversion was trying to add a breastplate to the one Blightking in the set that normally HAS to be assembled with a bare belly:

That did take quite a bit of cutting (and the model still needs some serious gap-filling).

But those are just a few brief initial impressions — I guess you may expect a more in-depth writeup about the ins and outs of this kit at some point in the near future ;)

4. Pretty pictures

To wind up this post, let me share one more thing with you: Since messing around with pictures of my models and some image editing software turned out to be so much fun (see my last post), I gave it another try and tackled some more involved photomontages.

First up, a picture of the Hellrazor in action:

I used both Pixlr and Photoshop to create this image, and while there may be a lot of stuff that can be improved, I am still reasonably happy with the outcome.

I also found this very interesting post over at Tyler Mengel’s blog and decided I needed to try something similar. So here’s a composite picture of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt having some fun on the plains of a conquered Hive World:

Once again, both Pixlr and Photoshop were used in the creation of the image. I also found out that Pixlr is great for quickly obscuring rough areas noticeable seams between different parts of a composite picture.

Granted, I still have much to learn, but I definitely like where this is going!

Anyway, so much for my current chaotic projects. I’d love to hear any feedback you might have in the comments section! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

There I was last week, talking about my ambitious goals for this year’s Call of Chaos — and already, I have been distracted. But worry not: I am still reasonably optimistic about my ability to go through with my vow, and there’s also the fact that the new Putrid Blightkings are the kind of kit you just have to start working on right away — and I would like to show you the results of that work today:

The basic idea with these guys seems to have been to collect all the best elements and details from every cool Nurgle model and piece of artwork so far and mash them into one box of plastic crack, thereby creating a bit of a “Best Of” collection. It works surprisingly well, though, finally giving us a way to emulate the hulking, pustulent characters that have only ever appeared in the artwork so far.

When it comes to actually reviewing the kit itself, Eric Wier of Between the Bolter And Me has put together a very concise and informative piece that I can only recommend. So with the hard work of reviewing the kit already out of the way, I am free to get my hands dirty and dive right in! Before we do that, though, I’d like to add a few observations of my own (in some cases reiterating what I said in my last post):

First up, I already commented on the size of these guys, and if anything, this aspect seems to have become even more relevant since my last post: It looks like many people were planning to use the Blightkings either as Plague Ogres and/or chaos spawn, yet the scale comparison below shows that they are not all that well suited to either function:

Many people seem to be disappointed about this. And, indeed, if you are looking for a way of converting Plague Ogryns, I’d suggest looking elsewhere: It would be far easier to just get a box of Ogres or Ogryns, the mutants from the WFB Warshrine of Chaos or a couple of Blood Island Rat Ogres and convert them accordingly. Some of the weapons and armour plates from the Blightking kit might come in handy for that kind of conversion, but I don’t really see a readily apparent way of making the heads, bodies and most of the arms fit Ogryn scale — unless you’re going for vestigial and/or atrophied limbs, that is…

But in my opinion, the glass is really half full rather than half empty: We really have enough possible conversion fodder of Ogryn/chaos spawn size readily available, as it stands! The Blightkings, however, are interesting in that they provide models that would work well as alternate Plague Terminators or, and this may just be the most interesting option, true scale Plague Marines — and without much need for making them bigger or bulkier. In fact, that’s the route I’ll be taking for my own Blightkings for now.

As people are beginning to work with the new kits, the first conversions are beginning to roll in: The spectacularly talented Jeff Vader has been working on some truly excellent Blightking conversions of his own that have been a huge inspiration for me. PDH has built some equally awesome Blightkings as an addition to his Realms of Chaos Nurgle warband (which, by the way, gets a feature in this month’s Blanchitsu, if the teaser on the GW website is to be believed) — I hope Peter will be showing his models to the general public soon. And I imagine other talented artists, such as JRN, migsula and the Spiky Rats, won’t be too far behind — I think we can look forward to a world of rot ;)

So, allow me to add my own pound of (maggotty) flesh: Let me walk you through my first couple of (mostly) finished Blightking conversions.

It shouldn’t surprise you that my basic approach was to bring the models into the 40k universe. I am not 100% sure what the function of these will be (or whether or not they’ll ever see the gaming table), but for now, simply exploring the kit and trying to bring it into my favourite grimdark universe is very much its own reward. So, without further ado, some pictures:

Here’s my first Blightking model. You already know an earlier incarnation of this guy:

This may still be my favourite of the bunch, although that doesn’t have anything to do with my conversion, but rather with the fact that the champion model is pretty much pitch perfect right out of the box. I chose a helmeted head (easily the coolest head in the kit) over the Plaguebearer face, because I liked the ominous look created by the helmet. Apart from that, the model was mostly assembled according to the instructions that came with the kit. To be honest, I did struggle a bit when it came to making this guy look more like a 40k model, but in the end, I think I came up with a pretty good idea: I added a cracked CSM breastplate to the model, making it look like the armour had burst under some hideous internal pressure. I am really happy with the result, because it adds a 40k element, leaves the hideously wonderful belly completely visible and, if anything, makes the model even more gross!

I also gave this guy a slightly modified backpack from the Dark Vengeance Chosen. I think the slightly twisted look is a great match for the overall Blightking aesthetic, plus the champ now has a bolter:

Several people have suggested using more futuristic weapons — but in the end, I just couldn’t go through with it. There’s just something about the sword and axe combo that I really like, and I just couldn’t bring myself to cut them apart…

The second model started out similar to one of Jeff Vader’s conversions, although I tried to take it into a slightly different direction. Take a look:

The base for this conversion was one of the (almost) fully armoured Blightkings, which made it much easier to turn this guy into a 40k model: The right arm was replaced with a Chaos Terminator arm (which also provided the gun). The left arm is from the Blightkings kit (although I used a bone from the WFB Crypt Ghouls to add a crossguard to the sword).

After quite a bit of deliberation, I chose a WFB chaos warrior head for the model: Not only is this one of my favourite heads, but it also fits Nurgle rather nicely, I think. Several people pointed out that the head was a bit of a missed opportunity, because a more Marine-like head would have helped making the model more futuristic. While I did want to keep the head, I also agreed with their point to some degree, so I added an array of tubes and pipes to the helmet, with some of them feeding into a custom backpack that I spliced together for the model:

It goes without saying that the backpack does have an ominous tank on top — par for the course with Death Guard models, really ;)

I also added some more detail to root the model more firmly in the 40k universe: some grenades and gear as well as a washer screw (painstakingly shaved off an Ork boy weapon). All in all, while the model still retains quite a medieval look and feel, I think it’s definitely futuristic enough to work in the context of 40k!

And finally, my third model so far, and possibly the most involved conversion of the three:

Once again, Jeff Vader provided the inspiration here (I shudder at my derivativeness… ;) ): I wanted to build a Blightking conversion wielding a heavy weapon — but I did want it to look markedly different from Jeff’s approach, rather going for the classic pose of a heavy bolter being held in front of the body. Now let me tell you: The Blightking kit does not exactly lend itself spectacularly well to shenanigans like that, and getting the arms and pose to work out turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. I persevered, however, and after much cutting and gluing, I ended up with this:

The model ist still missing quite a few details, but I think it already gives you a good idea of what the finished model will look like. The arms holding the heavy bolter were painstakingly spliced together, using bitz from no less than four different sources (a WFB Chaos Knights right arm, Space Marine Sternguard heavy bolter, Space Marine Terminator left upper arm and, finally, the actual Blightking’s shield arm. All in all, I am really extremely happy that I went through with this idea, even though it was a lot of work! And even though I only realised it after the fact, the model could even be seen as a small tribute to this illustration by Adrian Smith.

I also think that the clunky heavy bolter backpack does a nice job of bulking out the model. I have begun converting it into a more Nurglite form, with yet more tanks welded on beneath the main body of the pack:

This is certainly the most WIP of the three models at this point, so there’ll be more details to come. But, again, I am really happy with this guy.

All in all, I’d like to quote an excellent point made by Eric in his review of the Blightking kit:

Games Workshop’s new approach  with the Blightkings provides some freedom to the consumer, while also letting the sculptors truly explore and convey their own creative vision.  And while some may argue that it makes conversions more difficult because you cannot simply swap an arm or body, I think it just encourages people to step out of their comfort zone and attempt more elaborate conversions, ones that are more than simply kitbashes.

This is so true! It took me quite a while to get started with these models, because the specific way the models were constructed seemed a bit intimidating. I was also forced to come up with at least a rough idea beforehand, instead of just seeing where the conversion took me. But in the end, this more involved and conscious way of working was a lot of fun, and I am really happy with the models I have managed to produce so far:

You can probably guess my verdict: These guys are excellent, and quite a lot of fun to work with. That said, they demand more work and more planning ahead if you want to make the most of them than, say, a Space Marine kit. They are a very interesting resource for true scale (Chaos) Space Marines. And they’ll give you a huge pile of Nurgle-y bitz (and then some) that you can use on your Death Guard or Chaos Daemons. Oh, and just a word of warning, perhaps: Once you’ve hit your stride, working with them gets quite addictive ;)

As for my own models, so far I’ve managed to come up with three characters that I am thoroughly pleased with. I am not sure whether these will be used as counts as Terminators in a small Death Guard detachment, as villains for INQ28, a Killteam or if I am just going to build an paint them for the heck of it, but when has that ever stopped me from kitbashing and converting, right?

It goes without saying that I would love to hear any feedback you might have in the comments section! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Due to all the Nurgly fun, I totally forgot that I actually have some new painted models to share with you — can you believe that? These have been finished for a while now, and if you are frequenting one of my various threads on the forums, you may already have seen them. But still, let’s take a closer look:

The models in question are the elite soldiers for my Traitor Guard detachment, Urash’s Marauders, that I started working on alll the way back in April, when the Tempestus Scions were released. I used a combination of bitz from that kit, the Vraksian Renegade Militia and a couple of other sources…

I am actually really happy with the way these guys have turned out! So allow me to walk you through the different members of the squad and take a closer look.

Here’s the first painted model:

As you can see, this is basically a Tempestus Scion with some tastefully applied spiky bitz ;) This was my first actual test model for an elite traitor Stormtrooper, and I think it works: The horned helmet may not be to everyone’s taste, but I think the guy really looks like a tough as nails elite trooper in the archenemy forces.

As for the colour scheme, I knew I wanted to use the same general colours as in the rest of my Traitor Guard detachment: Mainly dark grey, crimson and brass (with silver and brown for the medals and leather parts, respectively). All of my traitors are wearing dark grey fatigues in one form or another, so I repeated that here. In order to show that these guys are the cream of the crop, however, and far more heavily armoured than the rank and file troops, I chose to expand the use of red, painting all the armour plates with it. The result is a colour scheme that still looks like it belongs to my Traitor Guard but provides some contrast for these guys.

Next up, a Plasma Gunner:

The model only uses a right arm from the Tempestus Scion kit. The rest of the bitz came from the Vraksian Renegade militia, the Chaos Marauders and Space Marine Scouts, respectively. Oh, and I used a Skaven speartip in order to create a suitably nasty looking sword. My plan is for the models in the squad to use different combinations of bitz from the same four or five kits, with certain elements (such as the paintjob, the use of scion shoulder pads etc.) creating a feeeling of cohesion, even if the models themselves are looking slightly different.

So, not much to say about the guy with the plasma gun, except for the fact that I LOVE painting blue plasma coils and will go out of my way to give as many of those as possible to my models, even if I am not even a huge fan of plasma weapons in games. Oh well…

Now here’s where it gets more interesting: The next model is the squad’s voxcaster guy:

The model basically started out as an attempt to salvage a Vraksian torso (minus the head) that I had left from a different conversion. When messing around with a couple of bitz, I realised that the model would make a reasonably cool radio operator, so that became his role. What I really love about the model is the way it seems to clutch the speaker unit close to its cowled head: You can easily imagine this guy screaming into that mouthpiece at the top of his lungs — or whispering menacingly:

“Can you hear the voices too?”

But then, maybe he’s just making prank calls to the enemy headquarters, demanding to one Commissar I.P.Freely?! ;)

One last detail I really like about the model is how its entire head has basically been painted in the same base colour. The contrast between his mask and skin was created by careful application of different washes:

And finally, the model I am the most happy with (and easily one of the best models I have painted in quite a while): The squad leader:

As I’ve said before, the conversion itself was an attempt at channeling the excellence of PDH’s traitor soldiers (because those are just about the best Traitor Guard conversions in existence, along with Dave Taylor’s Blood Pact). I think I was reasonably successful in my endeavour, and I am really happy with the conversion! Those who remember the model’s unpainted incarnation, however, may notice that I’ve made some last minute changes to the model:

The chaos warrior sword the model wielded in its earlier incarnation was replaced with a nasty, curved Goblin sword for example: I think a vicious, slightly primitive weapon is just a far better fit for a traitor officer. I also added a bundle of Imperial dog tags on the officer’s belt, which makes for a nice bit of visual storytelling, if you ask me.

Oh, and I also added a slightly shaved down chaos warrior helmet to the belt. A beautiful little touch I picked up from one of PDH’s wonderful models — the idea was just too good, so I had to nab it:

This model was actually the first member of the squad I painted. And I really only started on the rest of the models because I was so happy with him: In a way, he perfectly embodies what I think Traitor Guard should look like, and if I were to completely re-do Urash’s Marauders today, I suppose he would become my template for the entire project.

At four models, the squad isn’t all that big at the moment, but I am confident that will change soon: Another “Chaos Scion” has already been built and is ready for painting. And I will definitely have to add a suitably imposing icon bearer to the squad. For now, though, I’ll happily consider these first four guys a successful forage into the world of elite traitors ;)

I’d love to hear any feedback you might have in the comments section! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Actually the first army to be overhauled in 2014, the Tyranids have received a second wave of releases. Because nothing says Christmas quite as succinctly as a boatload of vicious, slimy alien dinosaurs, right? ;) So let us take a look at this latest bunch of kits and talk about the ups, the downs, the ins and the outs — and, as always, let’s also consider the conversion options.

One thing that seems noticeable right off the bat is how each of the three new kits serves as a multi-kit, allowing for two distinct kinds of assembly, thereby multiplying the different types of creatures you can get out of this release. It might be argued that Tyranids lend themselves to this treatment particularly well, but in any case, this is really a nice bit of synergy! But are the kits themselves any good? Let’s find out?
Toxicrene/Maleceptor

First up, another big creature: The first kit in line will produce two kinds of hulking beasts, and the first of those is the Toxicrene, obviously the oversized lovechild of a Lictor and a Carnifex. Now even after having taken some time to grow familar with the creature, it still feels slightly awkward to me for some reason — I think it has something to do with the combination of the massive body and those many thin tentacles?

Speaking of which, the Toxicrene unfortunately shares one of my main points of criticism with the Haruspex kit: Once again, the tentacles on both sides of the model seem strangely symmetrical.

Now while this may have something to do with visual balance, you still have to ask yourselves: What are the odds…?

One of my other gripes has been addressed, though: The creature’s head isn’t yet another tired rehash of the Carnifex look, but rather a tentacled abomination closer to the Lictor or Yrmgarl Genestealer:

It’s an interesting concept, to be sure, although I cannot help feeling that the Cthulhu effect loses some of its effectiveness at this size.

I really like the foreclaw resting on the downed Terminator, though:

All in all, I am not quite sure what to make of this creature: It somehow seems like the designers were cycling through a collection of the various Tyranid design elements and at random and came up with a rather peculiar combination, then said “Oh, what the heck?” and sent the result off to be produced. There are some cool touches to the model, but it does seem strange and ungainly, and I may just have to call it one of the less successful big Tyranid creatures.

But there’s also the option of assembling the model as a Maleceptor:

I like this guy quite a bit better than the Toxicrene for some reason — maybe it’s due to the fact that I really have a thing for eyeless heads on Tyranid models?!

Anyway, once again, the model seems like a recombination of existing visual elements — and actual Tyranid creatures: The Maleceptor resembles nothing so much as a missing link between a Carnifex and Zoanthrope, if you ask me, and it seems like that is a pretty apt description of its battlefield role as well.

Like I said, the head is really my favourite part of the model, because it’s so sinister and Gigeresque:

The bits of Tyranid brain matter are also a pretty nice touch, of course. Then there’s the fact that the model does have a rather striking silhouette if seen from the side.

But some of the awkwardness remains, to be honest: The Maleceptor may look quite a bit better than the Toxicrene, but once again, the whole kit has the slight feel of a randomly generated creature with some odd elements sticking out at awkward angles. A big creature like this should possibly be the high point of a release — but that’s not the case here, at least not for me…

Sporocyst/Tyrannocite

Okay, this is where it gets more interesting! First things first: Both the Tyrannocite and Sporocyst variants of the kit are proof that an alien creature can be truly disgusting and disturbing even without any kind of head or face — kudos for that, GW!

As for the actual variants of the kit, let’s start with the Tyrannocite: This thing is basically a Space Marine drop pod by way of the Hive Mind’s hyper-evolution, and it perfectly embodies that look:

I think it only really takes one look at this thing to instinctively understand that this is a drop pod, and that’s quite an achievement on the sculptors’ part! The thing is also brilliantly hideous, with tentacles and chitinous armour in all the right (or should that be: wonderfully wrong) places. And of course there’s that hideous lamprey mouth on top:

The option to assemble the outer “limbs” of the Tyrannocyte in various poses is a nice bonus as well:

I am usually not at all excited in transport vehicles since, let’s face it, they tend to be some of the more boring kits (Rhino, anyone?). But the Tyrannocyte easily wins the award for the most exciting transport vehicle in quite a while! I really like this thing!

As with the other kits in this release, there’s also a second variant of the kit that will give you the Sporocyst and Mucolid Spore:

The Sporocyst mostly looks like a Tyrannocyte that has become a little more familiar with its surroundings. Most that was cool and disgusting about the Tyrannocyte remains, so this thing is looking pretty cool as well! I really like those “questing” tentacles at the bottom!

The really interesting part is the Mucolid Spore, though:

First of all, the creature looks as though its lower body was made from the same parts that also form the lower parts of the Tyrannocyte — that is some nifty sprue engineering right there! But the spore itself is also very cool, with its hideous, fleshy head and lazily dangling tendrils:

By all means, this should have been a pretty dull part of the release, but it ends up as one of the best parts for me! Certainly more interesting than the Toxicrene/Maleceptor, at least! And I also think that this kit will give you quite a bit of bang for the buck when it comes to the conversion options — but we’ll be getting to that…

Zoanthropes/Venomthropes

Yet another multi-kit, and one that gives us two reasonably different squads to boot. First up, the Zoanthropes:

I’ll have to admit right up front that I haven’t been a huge fan of the last two incarnations of the Zoanthrope. Call me crazy, but I somehow preferred the old 2nd edition version that was basically an upgrade for a Tyranid warrior. The modern version with its huge cranium and atrophied, vestigial body seemed like a nice idea, but the sculpt itself just wasn’t quite there — especially in the case of the more recent version, where the creature’s tail was balancing awkwardly on some Tyranid growth emerging from the floor (compare Adam Wier’s very insightful look at the various Zoanthrope models)

However, with this third and latest iteration of the concept, GW have finally managed to sell me on the design: Not only have they strengthened the neck portion to make it more believable…

…but the whole creature looks more balanced now. And I particularly like the added option for building a Neurothrope, both because it perfectly channels the look of the Doom of Malan’tai and because the resulting model looks like one creepy, hideous beast in his own right:

Just look at that disgusting extra spine. Ewwww:

I also think that the Neurothrope provides perfect villain material — I mean he/it just looks like an evil alien pupeteer, right?

All in all, the redesign/upgrade of the Zoanthropes in plastic form is quite successful. Good job!

As has been the case with the Hive Guad/Tyrant Guard, however, there’s a price to pay: You get some and you lose some, as we can see when we proceed to the kit’s other variant, the Venomthrope:

Now, to be fair, that creature was always a bit of an acquired taste. Here’s the original version:

Kind of like a Lictor who watched too much tentacle hentai, if you ask me (ugh, there you go, Google, another tag to add to my blog…).

Erm, anyway, the one thing the new Venomthropes have over the old model is that they look a bit more balanced in their composition:

But at the same time, there’s just an inherent goofiness to the model that’s just hard to ignore. Sure, many Tyranid creatures straddle a very fine line between the disturbing and the downright silly (some more successfully than others), but the Venomthrope just seems off to me. And the fact that the faces just seem somewhat…dorky doesn’t help of course:

You know what: I think the original concept for the creature was pretty flawed, and maybe it shouldn’t have received a plastic upgrade in the first place but rather been quietly pushed in front of a bus while no one was looking. I, for one, would have preferred a plastic Lictor to these strange creatures…

All in all, the kit seems like a bit of a mixed bag: If you’re going for the Zoanthropes, it’s great. The Venomthropes, not so much. But no one’s forcing you to build them, I guess…

Bonus Content: The Spawn of Cryptus

Okay, this guy is actually only available as part of the (probably already sold out) Shield of Baal boxed kit, but while we are talking about new Tyranid models anyway, we might as well throw him in, right?

Now you certainly don’t have to be a brain surgeon to realise that the model is a slightly dolled-up Space Hulk Broodlord — that much is blantantly obvious. And since the Broodlord was absolutely fantastic, the Spawn of Cryptus also has quite a lot going for it.

Here’s the thing, though: I actually think the changes to the model aren’t necessarily for the better. Take a look at the Space Hulk Broodlord:

In many ways, this is the quintessential Tyranid/Genestealer model: Sure, the Giger influence is plain to see, but the design goes beyond that and created an original piece. I have read in WD back in the day that this Broodlord was expressly designed as a kind of “end boss” for Space Hulk — and that’s precisely what he looks like: A vicious end boss, lurking at the heart of the derelict spacecraft.

The Spawn of Cryptus makes some minor changes to the formula, and it feels to me like they actually detract from the original vision: the smaller pair of arms was wonderful on the Space Hulk version, but on the Spawn of Cryptus, its posing gives the creature an “Ohhh, what have we here?” kind of look that’s really hard to unsee once you’ve noticed it. I also think the tech-y base with the pile of skulls was a much better way of basing the creature than some lame organic growth — even though it may have been more clichéd, of course.

All in all, the Spawn of Cryptus is still an amazing model and an excellent leader for the Tyranid detachment in Shield of Baal — but it does feel like a slightly inferior retread of an even better piece. In any case, however, it’s much better than the Blood Angels Captain that comes with the kit — that is one messy fusion of far superior Space Hulk models if ever there was one…

Conversion options

What I said in my last Tyranid review also holds true here: The anatomy of the Tyranids is very firmly defined by a set of design guidelines, which is very much a part of their appeal. But at the same time, those guidelines also make all the bitz very recognisably Tyranid. In spite of this, there may be some use for these new toys, even if you don’t have an actual Tyranid army:

• I think the Mucolid Spore would make for an absolutely excellent alien creature that doesn’t neccessarily have to be Tyranid in nature: My instinctive reaction to the model was “Enslaver!”, for instance. In any case, such a creature would be a very interesting addition to every INQ28 (and even INQ54) collection, if you ask me.
• By the same token, the rest of the Tyrannocyte/Sporocyst kit looks like it would be an interesting source for conversion material when it comes to building alien terrain and Gigeresque organic architecture — and maybe, just maybe, there’d be a use for some of these parts on Slaaneshi Daemon Princes and Greater Daemons as well?
• Like I said earlier, the Neurothrope would work very well as the monster pulling the strings of a Xenos/Genestealer Cult — granted, it’s not a Genestealer Patriarch, but it does look like the hideous pupeteer behind an alien infestation and, as such, would make an excellent “boss monster” for INQ28 or Necromunda.
• And while we’re talking of Genestealer cults, the Spawn of Cryptus would be just as great as the monster at the heart of a cult as the Space Hulk Broodlord, of course…
• And finally, an idea that may seem a bit out there: The Maleceptor’s body could maybe be used as the base for a huge daemon beast/Maulerfiend, with quite a bit of work?! There’s something peculiar and almost statuesque in its profile that might warrant further exploration, if you’re feeling adventurous… ;)

Like the first 2014 Tyrandid wave, I’ll call this a fairly solid – if mostly unsurprising – release. The big creature is a bit of a disappointment, and the Venomthropes are, frankly, pretty terrible. On the other hand, we get what may be one of the most interesting transport vehicles in the entirety of 40k as well as a very viable and interesting redesign of the Zoanthrope. If seen together with the first wave release, this actually becomes quite a competent package of new kits — still no Genestealer Cult, though, what a crying shame…

But seriously, I am not a Tyranid fan, so that may explain my relative lack of enthusiams. On the whole, though, I think Tyranid players were treated pretty fairly in 2014. And some of the kits are even legitmately interesting beyond their army of origin.

But what do you think? Do you like the new kits or do you find them disappointing? Or do you have any additional conversion ideas to share? I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section?

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

What a funny coincidence: I’ve just finished working on a rather involved conversion to represent everyone’s favourite teamkiller, Khârn the Betrayer, and now there are suddenly rumours floating around about some kind of release surrounding the character as part of GW’s Advent Calendar — what’s up with that?

So while the holiday season rapdily approaches, why not take a closer look at everyone’s favourite man in red, right? Allow me to walk you through a ridiculously wordy post about Khârn the Betrayer, ladies and gentlemen (don’t worry, there’ll be pictures somewhere down the line ;) ):

The Character

When it comes down to fluff, Khârn is a rather interesting case: Back when the character was introduced (along with the release of the 2nd edition Chaos Codex), there wasn’t much to go on beyond his background in the book — and even that painted a picture of a somewhat…imbalanced individual.

Beyond that, there was only William King’s seminal short story “The Wrath of Khârn”, which was published both in Inferno! and WD back in the day. But it quickly became obvious that Khârn’s basic approach of being ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME didn’t exactly turn him into a narrative goldmine: He was frankly a bit of a one trick pony when it came to his character, even though some swear that Khârn harboured some hidden qualities.

The HH series has made Khârn quite a bit more interesting, because it has managed to add more facets to his character: During battle, he loses his mind with the best of them, being entirely at the control of his Butcher’s Nails implants. But what makes Khârn interesting is that he seems like a reasonable and calm person off the battlefield, even serving as a voice of reason to his Primarch in the role of equerry. What’s more, by the time the Heresy rolls around, some very visible cracks have begun to show in the XII legion’s foundations, both in regards to Angron’s continuing mental and physical  degradation and the growing toll of the Nails on his legionaries.

WARNING: Spoilers for Betrayer follow!

In Betrayer, Khârn seems very aware of both problems, yet he remains loyal to his Primarch and is one of the cornerstones of the legion’s nobility and brotherhood — easily the most important thing to him, it seems, both when it comes to his dealings with his brethren and his blood brother, Argel Tal of the Word Bearers. It’s especially striking, then, how the death of the latter seemingly sends Khârn on the first steps of his development into the utterly bloodthirsty and psychotic character we know from the 40k universe: There’s a battle scene at the tail end of Betrayer that shows a different Khârn to the one we have encountered before — an utterly indifferent killing machine. And for now, we can only guess at the implications of Angron’s “ascension”, both for the legion in general and Khârn in particular — we do know what he has become 10,000 years later, though…

End Spoilers

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see what the writers at GW and BL have in store for Khârn — but I, for one, hope that it’ll be more along the lines of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s rather nuanced treament of the character, and less like the one-note soundbites we have grown accustomed to from Khârn’s 40k background.

The Art

It’s really impossible to discuss any part of the 30k/40k lore without considering the accompanying artwork — the art is arguably just as important for the setting as the models and the baclground narration, especially since it often provides the designers with the actual inspiration for the design of new models or the redesign of existing characters.

So let’s take a look at some of the artwork depicting Khârn the Betrayer over the years — interestingly enough, the artwork for the character has a track record that can seem just as spotty as his narrative background.

But let’s cut to the chase: One of the first pieces of artwork I ever saw – and still one of the best images depicting Khârn, if you ask me – is this piece, created by Kev Walker:

This illustration really has it all! It was used to accompany William King’s aforementioned “The Wrath of Khârn” in WD, and I still love it just as much as I did back when I first saw it — the one element that does seem slightly distracting is the collection of piercings on Khârn’s left bicep — such a slightly kinky touch would somehow seem more fitting on a follower of Slaanesh. But then, the accompanying story nicely toys with that scenario, so maybe that was the whole point?

When it comes to classic Khârn, one really need not look any further than Jes Goodwin’s own concept sketches for the character:

I think one can safely suspect that this is the oldest piece of art depicting Khârn, and it is also the one that is the most faithful to the actual miniature — for very obvious reasons… It also remains one of the best drawings of Khârn, along with the one by Kev Walker, in my opinion, but then that’s Jes Goodwin for you…

Interestingly enough, some of the other artwork depiciting Khârn doesn’t fare quite as well: For instance, Adrian Smith is easily one of my favourite artists when it comes to depicting (Chaos) Space Marines, but his treatment of Khârn is not up to his usual standard, if you ask me:

Sure, there’s a lot to like about the piece, but the entire left arm and the axe just fall apart completely when you look at them too closely — the perspective of that part is just sooo wonkey, don’t you think? And for some strange reason, Khârn suddenly seems to have both arms uncovered in this piece.

What’s more, most of the even more recent pieces really don’t capture the essence of the character for me, be it because it looks like Khârn is wearing an armoured bodysuit…

…or because they make him look like a clueless idiot when fighting against loyalists:

At least the art from Khârn’s latest codex entry is pretty competent, if a little uninspired:

Do yourself a favour and don’t look at the pictured of his wargear that are part of his Dataslate, though: While the art itself works well enough, the added explanations for his wargear’s various features read like the worst kind of fan fiction imaginable…

And what of Heresy era Khârn? Interestingly enough, once again, the oldest piece of artwork may just be the best:

Wayne England’s iconic piece of art from the original HH trading card game may no longer be an accurate representation of the recent fluff (the legion colours have ended up noticeably different in the interim, for one), but it’s still one of those classic images I hold dear  — but then, I’ve always had a thing for Wayne England’s chaos artwork, so that may have something to do with it as well.

At the same time, the updated depiction of heresy era Khârn in the Black Library publications is also pretty cool:

There’s just something menacing and implacable about the above piece that I really like! It also seems like this was either designed to more or less accurately depict FW’s Khârn model or even serve as a design template for it? But we’ll be getting to the models in a second…

Before we talk about Khârn in miniature form, allow me to bring up two pieces of fanmade artwork that I really like.

First up, heresy era Khârn, as rendered in Greyall’s trademark style:

Khârn the Bloody by Greyall

As per Greyall’s usual standard, the piece is incredibly detailed and ornate — you just have to love that axe design, don’t you?

The other illustration I would like to show you is this fantastic piece by slaine69, showing Khârn at Amartura:

Khârn at Armatura by slaine69

This probably couldn’t be any more different in style and direction from Greyall’s piece, but I love it just as much: slaine69 is an insanely talented artist, and what I like about this – slightly unconventional – depiction of Khârn is how it manages to humanise him as a character and bring his berserk tendencies to the fore at the same moment — excellent stuff!

The models

So we have looked at the art — but what about the actual models? Do they do the character justice? And what about the hobbyists’ take on Khârn? Let’s find out!

As far as official releases are concerned, there have been two models for Khârn so far:

The first one is Jes Goodwin’s original 40k version of the character:

Khârn the Betrayer by Jes Goodwin

The model is still available from GW today, and in my opinion, it’s not only a true classic, but it also still holds up beautifully. The model was released along with Abbadon, Ahriman and Fabius Bile, back when the 2nd edition Codex Chaos hit, and he has arguably managed to age pretty gracefully. I realise that the model has been getting some flak over the years for its rather static pose, but come on, people: This guy has so many elements that became iconic and seminal for the whole look of the World Eaters: The baroque and pitted power armour, the bunny-eared helmet (that is almost impossible to replace or approximate by mere kitbashing or converting), the chains — and, of course, the bare arm, which may be a more common sight in (Chaos) Marine armies today, but was something quite original back then.

I remember first seeing Khârn among a collection of models and thinking: “I wonder what this guy’s story is!” — the model just has a way of drawing you in! As it happens, Jes Goodwin is possibly responsible for the two most iconic World Eaters models: Khârn is one of them, and the other one is the iconic 1991 metal World Eater — and if I have one complaint, it’s that the best World Eaters models were released over twenty years ago, with precious little having happened in the interim (Forgeworld notwithstanding). Anyway, what can I say: I am still a huge fan of this guy!

There’s also the much more recent FW model for heresy era Khârn by Edgar Skomorowski:

Khârn the Bloody, by Edgar Skomorowski

The model seems to have been designed with the main criticism against the Jes Goodwin version firmly in mind, because this guy is *very* dynamic — almost overly so, in fact, but we’ll be getting to that. The armour design is really cool, adding a gladiatorial flair to Khârn’s wargear that is a great fit for his legion’s background. The crested centurion helmet is also a great touch — although I would argue that the original helmet’s faceplate seems slightly more balanced.

In spite of all the good aspects, I am not a huge fan of the model, to be honest: The running pose seems slightly oddly balanced to me, making it look like Khârn is almost falling forward — this has always been a problem with running models, however, and maybe it was actually an intentional choice, in order to illustrate his uncontrolled rage? I also think the choice to extend the unarmoured/partially armoured look to his other arm as well somewhat lessens the visual punch of this element. And I really hate the model’s bare head: It may be a cool enough face, certainly, but it’s not Khârn’s face:

Such things always come down to personal choice, of course, but it is stated outright in the background that Khârn’s face is actually unscarred. The integration of the Butcher’s Nails also seems a bit random — but in any case, the head is an optional bit, so it’s not like you have to use it. All in all, I think it’s a nice, if slightly underwhelming, model.

It goes without saying that many, many hobbyists have come up with their own versions of the character, kitbashing or converting their own model to represent Khârn. Some of these improve on the existing models quite a bit, so I would like to share with you my favourites — and the interpretations I have drawn inspiration from for my own conversion. I’ll be limiting myself to those models who represent a substantial change to the stock models, by the way, although it has to be said that merely reposing the existing models can lead to rather stunning results as well. Anyway, here goes!

Let’s start with different versions of (Pre) Heresy Khârn:

Pre Heresy Khârn by Sebastien Lavigne

This – Golden Demon winning – version of 30k Khârn by Sebastien Lavigne remains one of my favourite versions of the character: I just love the dynamism of the model, as well as the added legion standard! The model becomes even more impressive when you consider the fact that, back in 2008, the Horus Heresy wasn’t the massively detailed and codified setting it is today. In spite of that Sebastien still managed to create a tiny slice of the setting without much to work from, and the result still manages to hold up today. Marvelous!

There’s also the ever-inspirational Mr. Poom, who is responsible for the other two heresy era Khârns I would like to share with you:

This piece was clearly inspired by Wayne England’s art shown further in this post, and I simply love how closely the model represents the illustration (and how it dares to deviate from it in all the right places). I am aware that Mr. Poom is no longer all that fond of the model, but it does remain one of my favourites.

His more recent version of the character uses the Forgeworld version as a base:

Khârn the Bloody by Mr. Poom

The horsehair crest brings the model more in line with the character’s depiction in Betrayer, which is a nice touch. And Mr. Poom’s paintjob is as gorgeous as ever — I still prefer his earlier version of the character, to be perfectly honest, but out of all the FW Khârns, this one is probably my favourite!

So what about the 40k versions of the character?

Khârn the Betrayer by kitbasher

Wow, this Khârn conversion by kitbasher may just be the perfect Khârn model! It’s also a rare case of a model actually improving on the artwork it has been based on: The model clearly takes lots of inspiration from the Adrian Smith illustration further up in this post, but it works out all the kinks of the piece, creating something better in the process — perfect!

Then there’s this Khârn by Lil’Loser Studio:

Khârn the Betrayer by Lil’Loser Studios

The model uses parts from both official Khârn models, combining them to great effect and creating an excellent model!

AMaximus, who, it has to be said, is one of my main inspirations for World Eaters conversions and kitbashes, chose a similar approach, coming up with this awesome Khârn:

Khârn the Betrayer by AMaximus

I can hardly wait for him to slap some paint on this model!

I also really like this very clean and seamless conversion by mf_Greg:

Khârn the Betrayer by mf_Greg

The excellent paintjob helps, of course ;)

The Vanus Temple is responsible for two stunning versions of the character: First up, his earlier conversion, based on a WFB champion of Khorne:

Khârn the Betrayer by the Vanus Temple

This one became popular enough that multiple models have been produced as commission pieces, if I recall correctly.

Khârn the Betrayer by the Vanus Temple

A more recent version by the same artist uses the FW Khârn model and creates an equally stunning piece:

Khârn the Betrayer by the Vanus Temple

And finally, some guys who really know how to go for shock and awe tactics:

An unbelievably huge (and spiky) Khârn by Rumplemaster:

Khârn the Betrayer by Rumplemaster

And two equally huge models by Machinator…

Khârn the Betrayer by Machinator

…and Reanimator, respectively:

Khârn the Betrayer by Reanimator

I’ve taken quite a bit of inspiration from these last two for my own, updated Khârn the Betrayer, as you’ll be seeing in a minute.

And there’s this utterly unbelievable, mostly sculpted from scratch, Khârn by Master of the Forge:

Khârn the Betrayer by Master of the Forge

I could never imagine creating a model like this, which just makes it even more impressive — the greatest true scale Khârn in existence? Very likely…

All of these last models are massive — as befits the Blood God’s most exalted champion. But there’s one last piece that approaches the issue from a wholly different angle. Just check out this model by WilhelMiniatures:

Khârn by Wilhelminiatures

Khârn by WilhelMiniatures

Wow, just…wow!

My own approach

All of these illustrations and models were floating around my head, when the theme for the 15th Painting/Converting contest over at ThroneofSkulls.com was announced: Build a better character, that is: improve on one of the Khornate characters from either 40k or WFB. It was clear to me that I wanted to build an updated Khârn, and I tried to incorporate as many awesome ideas from my various sources of inspiration as I could. It took me some time to hammer out a build, but this was what I ended up with:

My main goal was to make Khârn bigger. Plus I wanted to try and use mostly plastic parts, since it’s the material I am most comfortable with. Both led to the decision of basing the model on the legs from my beloved plastic Terminator Lord kit, combined with the upper body from a WFB Skullcrusher. Beyond that, I tried to incorporate as many visual elements of the original Jes Goodwin model as I could.

I have learned from the great Ron Saikowski that the important part in trying to make a model resemble a piece of art (or an earlier version of the miniature) is to try and get some of the key parts right: Those will make the model look believable, and close enough to its source that you can afford a little leeway with the smaller details.

On my own model, the parts I definitely wanted to keep were the bare left arm, the huge axe, the chains and the general design of the armour and helmet. Some of the detail was easy enough to recreate with plastic bitz: The big air outlet on Khârn’s chest was originally a part of an IG voxcaster, but it now looks reasonably close to the original. The chains were reasonably easy to approximate by using some of the spiked chains from the Skullcrusher kit. And in a bit of a happy coincidence, one of the axes from the FW Cataphractii Terminators looked reasonably similar to Jes Goodwin’s original design for Gorechild, while also fitting the slightly bigger scale of my model.

Other details were a bit harder to get right: I spent quite some time looking for a suitable bare arm, finally settling on an arm from the WFB Warhshrine of Chaos priest. Getting the arm into a working position did take some time, however, and even then, it ended up ever so slightly anatomically dubious — I’ll have to live with that, I suppose.

I also realised that there was no getting around using the original head and backpack: The backpack with its skulls was just too iconic (interestingly enough, the backpack I did end up using wasn’t the one from Khârn, though, but a virtually identical one from an old 90s metal Chaos Lord). And the helmet turned out to be the element that really sold the model as Khârn, instead of just some true scale berzerker — fortunately enough, fellow hobbyist Belphoebe was kind enough to provide me with a leftover Khârn head — thanks, mate!

I do realise that there are some deviations from the original model, and I did take some shortcuts during the truescaling process — but I hope the paintjob manages to pull everything together into a cohesive whole. So, without much further ado, here’s my painted model for Khârn the Betrayer:

Of course I also tried to come up with a suitably impressive base for the model, in order to support the model’s size and pose:

Granted, the pose is just as static as the one on Jes Goodwin’s original model — but, like I said: I am a fan! ;) Plus I think that Khârn lends himself really well to the whole “bellowing at the sky in rage” thing…

Oh, and here’s a scale comparison picture, by the way, showing the new model next to my orginal, stock Khârn from way back when:

All in all, in spite of a hundred small things that could probably be better, I have to say that I am really rather happy with my new version of the character — I think Jes Goodwin’s version is still really awesome, so making Khârn bigger and more intimidating was really the best possible route, if you ask me.

I won’t lie to you: I hope my version holds up to some of the excellent conversions I’ve shown you in today’s post — and I can only say thank you to all the hobbyists whose work on Khârn has inspired me to tackle my own conversion! Thanks for letting me …borrow a few ideas from your excellent models, chaps!

So, whatever may be in store for our favourite, red-armoured lunatic this Christmas, I hope you’ve found this post inspiring! And I would love to hear any feedback you might have in the comments section!

So go convert some World Eaters now, and always remember: Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows!
As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Right, before Christmas is finally upon us next week, let’s fit in one last review for this year, shall we?

Linked together with the Tyranid release by way of the Shield of Baal:Deathstorm boxed set, we get another round of Blood Angels models before the year is out. Now the Blood Angels are one of the chapters that have already seen a rather substantial (and very good) dedicated release at an earlier point, providing us, among other things, with rather gorgeous kits for the Death Company and Sanguinary Guard, respectively, plus a very versatile Dreadnought kit. The new release, therefore, serves to nicely round out the Blood Angels’ catalogue — but does it stack up to the quality of the earlier release? Let’s find out! And let us also look at all the delightful conversion options — for the last time this year! ;)

The first thing that quickly becomes obvious with this release is that the various new kits make pretty heavy use of existing resources, such as the Tactical Marine kit, the Sternguard and even the Space Hulk BA Terminators, recombining and changing around elements from either to create some new toys for our Blood Angels. This “recycling” of existing assets is neither difficult to spot, nor – I would argue – such a big secret to begin with. And it doesn’t have to be a bad thing either. But while GW have been content to release slightly touched up single characters so far, this is one of the first time this happens on such a scale — with both good and bad consequences, but we’ll be getting to that in a minute. Let’s take a closer look at each of the kits in turn:

Blood Angels Sanguinary Priest

Alright, this is an interesting piece, both because it’s the most original (as in “freshly sculpted”) part of this release and because it’s also the first time that we get a plastic version of the Blood Angels’ very own brand of priests/apothecaries. So what do we have here?

The model clearly takes some cues from the vintage Brother Corbulo, with certain elements (such as the face and the skull chalice) clearly resembling that character. At the same time, the design of the armour clearly calls back to the Sanguinary Guard (and, by extension, to the vintage models for Commander Dante and Captain Tycho). The addition of flowing robes (an element mostly seen on Dark Angels models so far) provides a nice and individual touch to the model, and the many trinkets dangling from his armour serve as a great reminder of his status.

One thing I really love about the model is the highly ostentatious chain sword — such a beautiful, yet menacing weapon! And though it’s hard to make out in the official pictures, the face is also a bit more interesting than your standard, unhelmeted Blood Angels head (more on those later…).

A look at the sprue reveals that it should really be easy enough to swap in all kinds of Marine parts for smaller or bigger conversions. And using the arms, the backpack or the head on different models should also be really easy:

Space Marines seem to make for pretty good clamshell characters, since the way their armour goes together makes the resulting model stay pretty versatile, in spite of being single pose.

All in all, this guy is basically one of the high points of the release for me — and definitely the most interesting of the new kits from a converter’s perspective! Very nice!

Blood Angels Librarian in Terminator armour

This model clearly takes some cues from the Librarian that came with Space Hulk (the double headed psy-axe is a dead giveaway), although I like the new model’s dynamic pose better than the really statuesque Space Hulk Librarian. The model also seems to resemble GW’s older metal/Finecast Terminator Librarian — to the point that it was initially pretty hard to decide whether this was a new model or a kitbash when the first, fuzzy pictures of this release emerged.

And again, this is an excellent character, continuing the trend of strong clamshell plastic characters for the Space Marines! It should also be reasonably easy to convert this guy with an influx of external bitz, and for all the same reasons I mentioned above:

I only have two minor gripes with the model: One, the position of the head seems ever so slightly strange, even though it makes sense in context. But the way the model goes together means that the head is basically locked at that precise angle, unless you invest more time and create a more involved conversion.

By the same token, I realise that this guy is part of the Blood Angels release, but wouldn’t a generic Librarian have made more sense? Sure, the two or three BA icons should be easy enough to get rid of, but this makes it all the more strange that GW didn’t just release this guy as a vanilla model — he would have been quite a bit more useful that way…

All in all, it’s a pretty strong model, though.

Blood Angels Tactical Squad

Okay, here’s where the “recycling” process I mentioned above hits full swing, because the Blood Angels Tactical Squad is basically a mashup of the recent “vanilla” tactical kit, the Sternguard kit and some Death Company and Sanguinary Guard bitz thrown in for flavour. It’s easy enough to spot a multitude of familiar bitz, so this is really pretty obvious.

Among the new parts are a few pretty nice head variants, by the look of it. I really like the helmet of the Marine on the right, for example:

Interestingly enough, the “BA-ification” really falls flat on some of the parts. For instance, the rebreather head was possibly one of the coolest bitz from the tactical kit, but looks pretty silly with an added BA hairdo added on top:

In fact, can I just say that I am really not a big fan of the one Blood Angels hairstyle we get? Seriously, I see what they were going for, but that kind of hairstyle just ends up looking pretty daft when combined with a Marine’s somewhat exaggerated features — and it’s the only type of hair we get for our Blood Angels, for crying out loud. Instead of making them look like classical statures, they just seem like pampered children with that stupid hair — but maybe that’s just me.

Beyond such nitpicking, however, I think this is a rock-solid kit. Does it bring something new to the table? No, because it’s mostly a mashup of pre-existing assets. But that is actually its strong suit: It gives Blood Angels players an updated troop box with all the recent weapon options and some nice bitz thrown in for flavour and decoration. Certainly a nonessential purchase if you already have 3,000 points of Marines knocking about, but a very useful resource for starting a new army!

So, great for (new) BA players, everyone else may pass.

Blood Angels Assault Terminators

As with the “vanilla” Assault Terminators, these guys come in two flavours and can be armed with either twin lightning claws or thunder hammers and storm shields. Let’s look at both variants in turn:

I am a huge fan of Lightning Claws, but the LC Termies get the short end of the stick, if you ask me: Maybe I’ve just never realised this before, but loyalist lightning claws seem to have a way of jutting out of their gauntlets at a slightly strange angle, taking away some of the dynamism. This is especially obvious on the more dynamically posed models:

Just look at the model on the left: It looks like the claws should really be curved inwards, in order to better underline the model’s composition, but there they are, straight and clunky — has this been as noticeable on the generic assault Terminators as well, I wonder?

The Terminators with thunder hammer fare far better, at least in my opinion:

There’s just something wonderfully massive and threatening about Terminators armed with the old hammer/shield combo. Plus I really like the champion, with his added armour plates and robe:

Both variants profit from beautifully detailed armour and lots and lots of BA trinkets that really make them look like the chapter’s elite first company. It’s also very obvious that huge parts of this kit have been heavily inspired by (and reused from) the Space Hulk Terminators — just look at the small armour plates on the thunder hammer sergeant, for example. But that in itself is really a good thing, because it allows players to field Terminators that are visually on par with the truly excellent Space Hulk models without having to pay over-inflated ebay prices for the original models.

There is one substantial problem however: You pay for this opportunity by way of a serious reduction in modeling flexibility! A look at the sprue reveals that the bodies are constructed pretty much like those of snap-fit Terminators: Each Terminator’s legs and torso are one piece, with the chestplate and head also fused together. The arms and shoulder pads are separate parts — but the fact remains that these Terminators are a huge step back from the versatility we know!

Granted, if you like to build your models by the book, this shouldn’t even be such a big problem to begin with, but if you’re an avid converter and kitbasher, like me, this seems somewhat worrying, because we end up with a multi part kit that is severely less flexible than some of the kits we know and love. If this is only limited to one kit, it becomes a bit of a non-issue, since you are free to get the regular, more flexible Terminators. But one has to wonder what ramifications this may have for future releases…

Bonus Content: First Captain Karlaen

During my release of the Tyranid second wave, I threw in a look at the Spawn of Cryptus, seeing how Shield of Baal: Deathstorm was basically released back to back with the new kits. So let’s do the same for the Blood Angels character from the same kit, Captain Karlaen.

At first glance, what we have here is a massive Blood Angels Captain wearing suitably ornate Terminator armour, purposefully striding forward — so far so good, right?

The problem is that Karlaen suffers from exactly the same problem as the Spawn af Cryptus, although it’s even more pronounced here:
Where the Spawn of Cryptus was a more or less straightforward “remix” of the Space Hulk Broodlord (with most of the strengths of the original model being kept intact),  Karlaen tries something a little more adventurous in that the model seemingly attempts to incorporate elements from two different sources. Just compare the picture above with this…

…and this:

It looks like the model for Karlaen is a hybrid between these two Space Hulk models — and the bad news is: It’s decidedly less interesting and imposing than either of them. Now this wouldn’t be much of a problem if Karlaen were any old Termie, but he is supposed to be the Blood Angels’ first captain — their most accomplished warrior and commander,  second only to Lord Commander Dante — and he ends up looking like an okay-ish kitbash made from two superior Space Hulk models. And again with the stupid hair — sorry GW, not nearly good enough!

Conversion options:

It goes without saying that this release has really been tailored towards Blood Angels players first and foremost, with the amount of BA iconograpgy present really making conversions and kitbashes  beyond Blood Angels and their successor chapters slightly more complicated. That said, I still have a few simple ideas for conversions using the new kits.

• The most obvious point is that many bitz from this release should make very nice additions to BA players’ bitzbox, allowing them to introduce even more flavour and ornamentation into their armies — and that’s always a good thing!
• By the same token, some of the bitz should be equally useful in other Space Marine armies — I am especially thinking of stuff like heads, armour plates or cool weapons. Come to think of it, some of those swords should look pretty cool on INQ28 characters as well.
• It should be easy enough to convert the Terminator Librarian to represent a Librarian from a different chapter — just shave off some of the iconography and you’re there. But then again, that’s why the model should have come in vanilla flavour in the first place ;)
• The ostentatiousness of BA armour makes these kits a really good source for bitz when it comes to something as eccentric as, say, kitbashing a Legio Custodes army: So far, I’ve made ample use of BA bitz for that project, and I imagine some of the new bitz will come in handy as well, sooner or later.
• Finally, the Sanguinary Priest has to be the most interesting part of this release when it comes to conversions: He could be used as a great base for a suitably impressive BA character — or even for a plastic Mephisto conversion? And I think he would make a pretty awesome Inquisitor with a bit of work — in fact, I’ve recently purchased the model in pursuit of exactly such a conversion, so watch this space… ;)

All in all, this is certainly a solid  release, even if it’s mostly useful for BA players. Where most of the other releases this year tried to bring something new to the table, this release wave for the Blood Angels mainly focuses on refining and rounding out the existing catalogue — which is an equally viable approach, I might add! But the models are looking great and the amount of bitz we can get out of the new kits should be a pretty big help to those with BA and BA successor armies.

The general direction of the release does outline one thing that does have possible ramifications for the future that are both good and a little worrying:

In the age of digital sculpting, it is obviously possible to re-use assets and, what’s more, to recombine them with other kits in order to quickly generate custom kits for different chapters — and that is certainly a great option, because it opens up the possibility for all kinds of conversions and customisations: We are already pretty close to having dedicated troop boxes for most of the first founding legions, but this becomes even more interesting when you think about Traitor Legions, Eldar Craftworlds or what have you.

On the other hand, a possible pitfall of such a way of design seems to be the threat of kits that are far less flexible: The clamshell characters are an example of this, albeit not an egregious one — it’s still fairly easy to use them for kitbashing and converting. At the same time, however, the multi part Space Marine kits have always been among the most flexible and versatile kits produced by GW, and seeing a Terminator kit that gets rid of a substantial chunk of flexibility like that does seem a little worrying — at least to a passionate kitbasher like me…

It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here, to say the least!

So, what’s your take on the new models? And do you have any conversion ideas of your own to share? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Alright, everyone, it is that time of year again! So on the last day of 2014, let us commence a look back at the year and talk about this year’s Eternal Hunt Awards! And what better way to start than to talk about 2014’s outstanding archievements by fellow hobbyists, right?

Hobby blog of the year

Interestingly enough, choosing winners for this category really becomes harder and harder as we go along, mostly because most of last year’s winners just keep on producing outstanding content (yes, Jeff Vader, I am looking at you — among others ;) ). That said, in the interest of keeping things fresh. I’ve limited my choice to blogs that have not yet been among the winners. So, with that out of the way, whose blog was the most awesome this year? Let’s find out!

1st place: Le blog dé Kouzes

Confession time: My French has become horribly rusty over the last few years, which is really a shame. But every once in a while, something makes me want to brush up on the language, and this year’s winner is very much a reason to learn French:

The four Kouzes provide a relentless stream of quality content, ranging from extremely helpful tutorials to absolutely breathtaking army projects. And every once in a while, they’ll run competitions that invariably draw the most talented hobbyists from the French speaking hobby community (and well beyond).

Meanwhile, their own projects really remain the star of the show here: Be it Morbäck’s absolutely stunning Plaguebones (or his equally wonderful Gretchin Army), Théo’agonie’s unbelievably creepy Dark Eldar or what have you: These guys are so insanely talented that I always feel the need to read through their every post — albeit at a glacially slow pace, more often than not ;)

So whether or not you know any French, make sure to head over to this fantastic blog as soon as possible — if all else fails, there’s always Google Translate, you know ;)

2nd place: thenickeninja’s blog

There are many things to love about the blog of swedish hobbyist thenickeninja, but let me just point out two of them: His absolutely amazing work for Blood Bowl – just check out his gorgeous Voodorcs – and his stunning underhive terrain — the latter one may just be the best tabletop terrain in existence, period.

Looking at these terrain projects always leaves me equal parts inspired and dejected at the fact that I’ll never be able to come up with something nearly as ingenious as this.

So definitely check out thenickeninja’s blog at your earliest convenience — I promise you’ll hunger for Necromunda and INQ28 afterwards, and that’s always a good thing!

3rd place: Between the Bolter and Me

Another confession: I am as guilty as anyone at regularly falling victim to the “pretty picture syndrome”, scrolling past carefully written paragraphs of excellent text in order to get at the delicious pictures of models. This is a terrible habit, to be sure, and it is therefore all the more astounding that this year’s third place has managed to capture me with a combination of things to look at and things to read through. time and time again:

The Brothers Wier maintain an excellent balance between showcasing cool conversions and kitbashes, providing helpful tutorials and taking detailed and insightful looks at new releases as well as certain developments in this hobby of ours. Their articles never disappoint and manage to be rewarding — with or without any pictures. A very well put together blog, and another hearty recommendation — make sure to check out Between the Bolter And Me!

Best models of the year

The level of quality when it comes to hobbyists’ creations is really quite off the charts by now — it’s almost unbelievable how many quality projects, logs, blogs and galleries can be found online! But even in this Golden Age of creativity, there are some that rise above the crowd. So let me present you some of the best pieces of 2014:

Red Corsairs by Kari Hernesniemi

Red Corsairs by Kari Hernesniemi

Kari and Okki, the Spiky Rat Pack, are common household names whenever I talk about my favourite blogs and hobbyists — and for a good reason, because their creations just tend to blow me away. This year, Kari does it yet again with some wonderful, true scale Red Corsairs that are a perfect embodiment of what Chaos Space Marines should be.

Truth be told, the Red Corsairs have often felt a little gimmicky to me – a strange mésalliance of traitors lacking the flair of the “true” Traitor Legions. Well, no longer, because Kari’s wonderful models are Blanchian and pirate-y and utterly badass at the same time, showing a chapter that has managed to become as corrupted in a mere century when others needed ten millennia for the same feat. Those models are just perfect — amazing job!

Check out Kari’s post about his Red Corsairs here.

Red Corsair by Kari Hernesniemi

Inquisitor De Lorme by Steifer

Inquisitor De Lorme by Steifer

A simply wonderful piece, marrying Blanchian design sensibilities with a dash of the Venetian Carnival: De Lorme is just pitch perfect in execution, a character that is equal parts majestic and ostentatious on the one hand, and sinister and more than a little deranged on the other. The whole achievement becomes even more stunning when you consider that Steifer sculpted huge parts of the model from scratch — all in all, this may just be my favourite Inquisitor this year!

Read more about Inquisitor De Lorme on Steifer’s blog here: The model is further enriched by seeing all the thought and care that went into its creation!

Inquisitor De Lorme by Steifer

Death Cult Assassin by MonkeyBallistic

Death Cult Assassin by MomkeyBallistic

The sheer elegance and perfection of this model leaves me almost speechless — suffice to say that this may just be the definite Death Cultist model, period. Based on a Witch Elf, this model is a perfectly realised interpretation of the archetype created by such characters as Severina and Sevora Devout (of INQ54 fame) — yet it even manages to improve upon those models: absolutely marvelous work!

Check out MonkeyBallistic’s blog here.
Mounted Champion of Nurgle by PDH

Nurglite Campion by PDH

Hugely talented hobbyist and all around great guy PDH absolutely delivers once again with a Champion of Nurgle on his daemonic steed, perfectly nailing down the diseased, festering look we would expect of a chosen of the grandfather — while totally blowing the official Magghot Lords out of the water at the same time! Seriously, GW should just have cast this model and be done with it, if you ask me!

Peter’s paintjob on this piece is also truly something to behold — especially the way he managed to capture the look and texture of a slug on the daemonic steed’s body. Is it any wonder this bad boy made it into a recent issue of Warhammer:Visions?

What finally elevates this amazing piece to legendary status is that the template for it was created by employing the highly arcane and eclectic random tables in the old Realm of Chaos books. Thumbs up, Peter: job’s a good ‘un ;)

Check out PDH’s excellent RoC log here.

Nurglite Campion by PDH

Nurglite Maulerfiend by Morbäck

Nurglite Maulerfiend by Morbäck

Ah, there I was just mouthing off about not being all too fond of the new magghot models, and along comes Morbäck and shuts me right up with his absolutely stellar magghot-based Maulerfiend conversion: an excellent creation that is being copied in Nurglite armies around the globe as we speak ;)

I have already stated my love for Morbäck’s Plaguebones earlier in this article, and I am all too happy to reiterate this point: This army is definitely and unmistakably Nurglite at first glance, yet quite unlike every other Nurgle army out there. And it really has it all: The brilliant kitbashes as well as the flawless (and especially disgusting) paintjobs. Morbäck’s Maulerfiend really serves as an avatar of the whole army project in a nutshell, and so it definitely belongs on this list!

Check out Morbäck’s excellent Plaguebones here.

Honorary mention: skrundle87 and John Stiening

This list just wouldn’t be complete without a shoutout to skrundle87’s and John Stiening’s excellent Imperial Knight models. While both models couldn’t be any more different from one another, they were truly invaluable to me when I converted my own Imperial Knight earlier this year:

Skrundle’s Daemon Knight provided me with so many excellent ideas to …erm borrow, and it stands as one of the best chaotic Knight conversions I have seen so far.

Daemon Knight by skrundle87

And John’s absolutely stunning Knight interiors provided the kick in the behind I needed to step up my game and create a cockpit for my own Knight instead of just glueing that carapace shut. The rest of the model is absolutely fabulous as well, of course!

Imperial Knight by John Stiening

So a huge thank you to both of you guys! I can only recommend visiting skrundle’s and John’s respective blogs and be amazed!

But wait, there’s more!

There’s so much more to tell you, but precious little time left tonight. So let’s take some time off, celebrating the advent of the new year, and I’ll be seeing you soon with the next installment of the 2014 Eternal Hunt Awards, talking about my favourite armies and hobbyists of 2014. Until then, party on!

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

A happy new year to you, dear readers, and welcome back to the 2014 Eternal Hunt Awards! Today’s instalment will once again deal with the achievements of fellow hobbyists, both because there was just so much cool stuff to show off and because I was just too lazy to write it all down in one go last time ;)

Army/warband of the year

Single models are all well and good, but it’s the creation of entire armies or warbands that gobbles up so many of our hobby hours — and by the same token, seeing an excellently realised army, a gorgeous Killteam or an awesome Inquisitorial retinue can probably inspire us like few things can. So which creations were the best in 2014? Allow me to share my findings with you:

1st place: Navigatorial Household by weirdingway

Navigator household by weirdingway

Even though all entries in this category are breathtaking works of art in their own right, there is little discussion about which army stood a head above the crowd this year: weirdingway’s Navigatorial household explores a woefully underdeveloped part of the 40k background in the most stunning way imaginable, taking cues from David Lynch’s version of Dune and producing a collection of models that is equal parts eclectic, wholly original and balls to the wall amazing. It also perfectly embodies what Warhammer 40k is about: the grimdarkness, the eclecticism, the madness and the opulence, all rolled into one fantastic project!

It’s hard to pick favourites from a collection this inspired, yet I instantly remember weirdingway’s model for the head of his navigatorial household — and quite a head it is, if you’ll excuse the pun:

Novator bei weirdingway

By all accounts, this idea shouldn’t work: It should come across as goofy and ridiculous — but while it may even be both of these things, weirdingway’s work transforms the concept into a fantastic model that looks like it has stepped right out of the 41st millennium. Amazing!

But standout pieces like this are not the only thing that make weirdingway’s project so great. In fact, the lowly retainers and footmen of the Navigators are just as stunning:

Navigator Household by weirdingway

Navigator Household by weirdingway

Each of them is a perfect little island of 40k: They are elegant and ostentatious, yet also frayed around the edges and quite unhinged. Is it any wonder that these guys have inspired me to build my own Navigator warband right away?

There were many amazing projects in 2014, but weirdingway just takes the cake! A veritable triumph!

Check out weirdingway’s spectacular ongoing WIP thread here.

2nd place: Mr. Poom’s Heresy era World Eaters

Heresy era World Eaters by Mr. Poom

Well, you didn’t think we’d get through this without at least one World Eaters army, did you? ;) In all fairness, I did choose one of the most spectacular specimens for you, and certainly the best Heresy era World Eaters in existence: Mr. Poom’s version of the World Eaters’ 8th company.

Many feel drawn to the XII legion in its Heresy era incarnation, yet there are quite a few pitfalls along the way: The legion’s trademark colours of white and blue are hard to do well, and so most hobbyists end up covering their World Eaters in so much gore and battle damage that it almost overwhelms the senses (and certainly overpowers the miniatures in question). Mr. Poom’s army, by contrast, maintains a perfect balance between lush painting and gritty weathering — all while being full of excellent kitbashes and conversions that are completely organic and seamless.

Just take a look at this picture featuring  some of our favourite protagonist’s from Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s excellent book Betrayer, such as a wonderful, converted Khargos Bloodspitter, the ill-fated Librarian Esca, and of course: Eight Captain Kharn himself:

Heresy era World Eaters by Mr. Poom

All in all, this is a marvelous army — and it’s also the best reason for never starting a Heresy era World Eaters force, because Mr. Poom has basically accomplished perfection in this field. Little point in trying to one-up that ;)

Check out Mr. Poom’s ongoing army log here or his wonderful Flickr gallery.

Pre Heresy World Eaters by Mr. Poom

3rd place: McGibs’ Bloody Beasties of Khorne

Chaos Bull by McGibs

I have only discovered this army fairly recently, but it shot straight to the top echelon of my favourite Khornate armies: McGibs has created a collection of unbelievably original and inspired kitbashes and provides wonderfully lush and visceral paintjobs to match. Case in point: That Chaos Bull above is very possibly the best Khornate Maulerfiend I have seen so far (I want one!). Or we could talk about what may just be the best conversion of GW’s fairly recent plastic Ogryns in existence, his Obliterators:

Chaos Obliterators by McGibs

Do you need any more reasons to check out this army and instantly fall in love with it? How about the fact that some of the models were inspired by creatures from Diablo and the original Doom? The videogame nerd in me rejoices!

But seriously, this is an amazing collection, and a very original one at that! Do yourself a favour and check out McGibs’ highly inspirational army log here!

Hobbyist of the year

Gorgeous armies and warbands are not the most important thing in our hobby: The hobbyists are. They are keeping the hobby alive. They are forming a community that manages to inspire and captivate. Sure, they also produce a lot of noise about pricing shenanigans and torunament level play — but it’s easy enough to tune that out, whenever it gest overwhelming ;)

Meanwhile, there are those who deserve a moment of recognition for their contribution to the hobby in general and my personal hobby life in particular. So here’s to them:

1st place: DexterKong

Who could I put in first place but my good buddy Dexter? We’ve been shooting e-mails back and forth all year, discussing Khornate conversion projects or even fleshing out our own sector of imperial space for INQ28. Throwing ideas at Dexter and getting them back in a much improved form is never dull, plus the guy can also draw up some mean character illustrations! And that’s not even talking about his usually stellar contributions to the various painting and converting contests at Throneofskulls.com. So cheers, buddy! You really deserve this small award! And let’s keep doing this, alright?

Unfortunately, Dexter has been a little lax with his blogging for a while — so your best chance to actually catch a glimpse of this reclusive guy would probably be the Contest section over at Throneofskulls.com, where he regularly works his magic ;)

2nd place: Flint13

Ah yes, everyone’s favourite riot grrrl ;) Flint’s contributions are certainly one reason why The Bolter & Chainsword is such an egaging and fun forum right now: Be it her staggering output of steadily improving, excellent models, her equally impressive background vignettes, her unwavering motivation and good cheer or her role in starting a rather active and rewarding thread of World Eaters aficionados, Flint is very much the heart and soul of the place right now, at least for me. She also called me warlord once, and that has to count for something, right? So yeah, congrats Flint! Here’s to another frantic year, eh?

Like I said, Flint is *VERY* active over at The Bolter & Chainsword, and all of her stuff is usually very interesting and also quite amusing. I recommend checking out her ongoing WIP thread to get started ;)

3rd place: Legatho

Another very well deserved award, not only because Legatho managed to rebound from a hobby tragedy that I do not think I could have survived (read the full story here), but because he also stayed (relatively) cheerful and productive through the whole ordeal and went right back to producing some wicked kitbashes and conversions. Plus I was genuinely moved when he painted a model I had converted as a small tribute to my World Eaters. Cheers, for that, mon ami ;)

Check out Legatho’s WIP thread over at the Ammobunker and don’t forget to pay your respects to the excellent models that were lost in the deluge — it still hurts to actually think about that…

Honorary mention: Jeff Tibbetts

Those of you who already know Jeff may think of him as “the guy with the amazing Imperial Knight log”. And those who do not yet know Jeff, should check out his blog or his ongoing thread on The Bolter & Chainsword as soon as possible, because Jeff’s work on his Imperial Knight is truly something to behold: His work shows an attention to detail and a dedication that we should all strive to emulate — if only to fail miserably. Speaking of which, I will certainly try to adapt some of Jeff’s excellent recipes when finally painting my own Knight. Will I be as perfectionis about it as Jeff? Heck no, I’ll be cutting all kinds of corners, like I always do. But even then, I’ll only be able to get it just so because Jeff blazed the trail!

Thanks to all these excellent people for their army projects, their blogs and plogs — and their being an inspiration to people like me, who sometimes just need a pretty picture to look at and a kick in the butt to finally rekindle their motivation. Cheers, guys! You rock!

So the hobbyists definitely pulled their weight in 2014 — but what about the industry? What were the best releases and the biggest disappointments? Which developments were great or not so great? Let’s find out in the third part of the 2014 Eternal Hunt Awards — coming your way soon ;)

Until then, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

A short announcement for those of you who may be waiting for the next installment of the Eternal Hunt Awards: I am currently hard at work painting a rather tall order of World Eaters (tall for me, at least) as part of my Call of Chaos vow, and time’s running short — so please sit tight for another few days, while I sort this out first: I promise I’ll at least have lots of neat new stuff to show you afterwards ;)

And fortunately enough, other people are picking up the slack: You may already have heard this elsewhere, but migsula (formerly of Legion of Plastic), Mikko Luoma and Kari Hernesniemi (formerly of the Spiky Rat Pack) have teamed up in a new endeavour and have started a blog that will probably knock your socks of, seeing how those three are some of the most talented people in the hobby. So head over there and subscribe right away — I am convinced that good things are coming our way ;)

– IRON SLEET –

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Sorry for taking a while with the next update — completing my painting vow for The Bolter & Chainsword has left me pretty drained — if happy, because I managed to finish all of the models I had pledged (more on them soon). That said, I have certainly kept you waiting long enough, as evidenced by the dip in daily visits over the last few days ;) So here goes:

As we’ve seen, the hobbyists definitely put out some amazing stuff, but what about GW? How doe the 2014 releases stack up? Was it a good year? What were the highlights and the disappointments? Let’s find out!

I. Best release of 2014:

I think we can all agree that GW has managed to maintain quite the relentless barrage of new releases all through 2014, and most of it was of astonishing quality as well. But to me, there were some kits that stood out, models that really wowed me and turned me into a small boy again, as I wondered at them. And there were models that turned out to be absolutely invaluable for conversions and kitbashes. So, what are my favourites of 2014?

1st place: Imperial Knight

Last year, GW brought over the design of the good old Epic 40,000 warmachines into 40k proper, introducing the Lord of Skulls — and people were divided, to say the least: Maybe the original design of the Khornate daemon engines in Epic was too goofy to begin with, maybe there were too many skulls — whatever the reason, many thought the Lord of Skulls was a ridiculous kit. I have gone on record as being a fan of the model, but overall reception of the “Skulldozer” was mixed, at best.

But one year later, it seems like the Lord of Skulls was merely GW’s tracer bullet, and the Imperial Knight was the heartshot to follow, if you’ll excuse the somewhat militaristic, albeit very fitting, simile:

Where the Lord of Skulls was maybe too reliant on personal taste, the Imperial Knight has managed to win fans all across the board: Even people without a 40k army or without any lover for games at the Apocalypse scale felt they had to get one of these bad boys — and many hobbyists actually completed several of them. Unbelievable, right?

In this case, the model really justifies the hype, though: It’s a wonderfully designed piece, giving us a giant Mecha with all the right touches to tie it into the 40k universe. It also actually manages to look like a knight, although you could never mistake it for anything other than a machine of (pre) Imperial manufacture. And it is a terrifically well planned kit that is a joy to assemble and convert! I was really scared of the model, when I started work on my own Knight, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well it all went together.

All of those qualities certainly speak in the Knight’s favour, but its biggest achievement may be the way it manages to straddle the fine line between modern design sensibilities and nostalgia for the Rogue Trader and Adeptus Titanicus days: Where the Lord of Skulls may have tried the same thing with mixed success, the Imperial Knight really nails it: It recreates the look of Knight Titans, not as they actually looked twenty years ago, but as you wish they would have looked. It’s basically your idealised memories of 80s GW artwork given form, and that is a towering achievemt indeed!

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the original plastic Imperial Knight kit still surpasses the later Forgeworld variants. I know I may be in the absolute minority with this opinion, but there you have it. In closing, I think the Imperial Knight is a perfectly balanced, excellently designed piece, and it is easily my favourite release to come out of 2014.

Read my original review of the Imperial Knight here.

2nd place: Almost the entire End Times release for Warhammer Fantasy Battles

Well, this may seem like a gigantic cop-out on my part, but the longer I thought about it, the more obvious it became that the entire release was worthy of this award (and the Imperial Knight only came out on top due to personal sympathy and the fact that I think the scale of the model really did pave the way for some of the End Times kits in the first place).

So yeah, I think I don’t need to explain to you how the various End Times kits have generated all kinds of excitement and buzz — and rightly so! Some of the finest plastic kits released by GW so far have appeared under this label, and it’s a testament to the quality of their design that 40k players feel just as drawn towards these kits as the WFB folks.

Even in a release as consistently great as this one, however, there have to be some favourites:

Nagash, obviously, for not only kicking off the slew of awesome kits, but for also thoroughly revitalising one of the most evil characters in the entire WFB lore with a spectacular new model that still calls back to its earlier incarnation in many ways! Read my original thoughts here.

The Glottkin, for truly being a model for the ages: An excellent, almost painterly and utterly apocalyptic work of art that is truly Mark Harrison’s masterpiece! Read my original review here.

And of course, last but definitely not least…

The Putrid Blightkings, for being just about the best “Nurgle all stars” showcase imaginable: So many people have already had so much fun with this kit (including yours truly), and the importance of this kit for all things Nurgle really cannot be overstated!

What’s even better, the first pictures of the coming Skaven release show that the quality just keeps coming with the End Times stuff — marvelous work, GW!

3rd place: Tempestus Scions

It certainly says something about the quality of the 2014 releases that my third place almost looks a bit pedestrian next to the End Times kits listed above. Even so, the Tempestus Scions provided 40k players and INQ28 aficionados with a fantastic toolbox that can fulfill all kinds of functions beyond merely working as the Astra Militarum elite: The amount of options and versatility in this kit is truly staggering, and the models themselve strike a perfect balance between armed to the teeth spec-ops soldiers and baroque and grimdark individuals. The Tempestus Scions may lack the flashiness of some of the other kits on this list, but their sheer usefulness and versatility could mean that they have the potential to outshine far more spectacular kits in the long run. I, for one, have already had tons of fun with the kit and would basically consider it a compulsory pickup for almost every 40k and INQ28 player — it really is that simple.

Read my original thoughts about the kit here and take a look at my experiments here.

II. Worst release/biggest disappointment

When it comes to release, it’s a testament to the quality of 2014’s releases that there were almost no bad or truly horrible models: Event the kits I don’t feel particularly fond of either come with a second assembly variant to soften the blow, or they are well designed models in their own right that just don’t tickle my particular fancy. In fact, in can only remember a single instance last year where I was truly disappointed in a release: GW’s Realm of Battles: Sector Imperialis game board:

I was really excited when I heard GW were going to release a cityfight themed Realm of Battles board, but the eventual result left me entirely cold: It just seems like an overdesigned, overpriced piece of terrain that is not nearly versatile or flexible enough. I appreciate the fact that it has been designed to fit together seamlessly with all those very beautiful cityfight ruins. But seriously, hobbyists have had a long time to come up with their own cityfight and underhive tables, and with people like thenickeninja in this world, this stuff just doesn’t cut it. Sorry, GW, but you either have to step up your game with this terrain stuff or stick to what you know…

So almost all of the kits were great. But does this mean everything was peaches and cream? Unfortunately, no: I do have some gripes with GW’s releases over the last year, and here are the things that I found most disappointing:

• new naming conventions: This probably flew below the radar for all native English speakers in our hobby, but maybe some of those whose native language isn’t English can sympathise with me here: As of the spring of 2014, all of GW’s publications use the English names – and only the English names – for any given unit type or character in all of their game systems. “So what?”, you might say, “most of those names are in English anyway.” Well, yes and no. Unfortunately, this creates Codices and publications with lots and lots of gibberish, where plain text is suddenly and rather violently broken apart by seemingly wanton insertion of English terms, even when a perfectly serviceable and well established translation for these terms exists in-universe. What’s more, those armies that have yet to receive their updated books retain their translated names, so a text about, say, the different factions of the elves in WFB happily mixes English and translated names. For the record: I love English. I am also, I believe, reasonably fluent in it. But GW had a pretty solid track record when it came to translating their books into other languages, and I think it’s really sad that a decision like this basically destroys all the good work they have done so far in this respect. Sure, using universal naming conventions may be an excellent idea from a marketing and retail standpoint. But it renders all the non-English versions much less enjoyable to read (if not downright unreadable), and that’s the reason why I am now buying all my rulebooks in English. Which is a pretty good solution, but I’ll still always be playing the game in German, so it does create a rather iffy situation.
• Where are my Sisters, dammit? I feel like a broken record here, because I believe I’ve said the same thing in 2012 and 2013 as well — but please, please, can we get some decent, upated Sisters of Battle, GW? That would be sweet! Thank you very much!

III. Still on the fence about…

• all those rules in 40k: I get it, I get it: You want to give hobbyists more options, which is great. You also want to make more money, which may not be great but is quite alright with me. But seriously, folks, this is getting out of hand: The constant barrage of dataslates, formations and DLC has created an environment where it’s almost impossible to understand all that is going on. To wit, they even had to patch their own game (because that’s what 7th edition is: a patch) in order for it to accept all the new supplementary content. I have heard people say that all of this is not a big problem, because hobbyists get to choose the way they want to play, and that is certainly an excellent point. But here’s the catch: I have this problem where an overabundance of options will paralyse me rather than empower my decision making. So in the end, I end up taking no choice at all. In terms of 40k, this means that the sheer difficulty of keeping up with the rules and current state of play has basically led to me abandoning the gaming angle altogether — at least for now.
• Instant awesome? Just add Forgeworld! Now this may sound a bit cantankerous, but hear me out: With the Horus Heresy releases having become such a smash hit, Forgeworld stuff has become far more widespread, where it used to be a rare but exquisite seasoning on top of an army, so to speak. And that’s okay, of course: More power to them, because they are performing some outstanding work. But it sometimes seems to me like the growing prevalence of Forgeworld materials can hurt both hobbyists’ creativity as well as the FW design team itself: All of their stuff used to be pretty much perfect all the time, but now that they need to crank out huge amounts of stuff at a higher rate, the amount of lacklustre kits has definitely grown. And on the hobbyist side, for every 1000heathens, Mr. Poom or, Flint13, there seems to be at least one guy (or girl) who’s content enough to just throw together a cookie cutter army made from expensive Forgeworld crack. So my issue doesn’t lie with Forgeworld, but rather with those hobbyists who think the way to make your army awesome is to just throw resin at it — really, people, show a bit more dedication ;)

IV. Also pretty cool

• Warhammer: Visions: I do realise of course that I may be fairly alone with this assessment, but bear with me: Visions gets so much flak for basically being a coffee table book of miniatures to browse through. But therein lies its strength! There are lots and lots of ideas hidden in those pages! There’s a – usually excellent – army of the month feature. There’s Blanchitsu, for crying out loud! Some of my earlier gripes with Visions remain, and I realise that it may have an uncertain future. But when all is said and done, I might pick up the odd WD Weekly every now and then, mainly out of habit –but Warhammer:Visions is the GW puclication I am actually looking forward to each month!

All in all, 2014 has been a terrific year when it comes to model releases, and at the very least a very busy one for GW’s game systems. It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here, and not all seems like it will make us happy (seriously, have you seen those 9th edition WFB rumours — what the heck?). For me, however, it has always been about the models and the lore, first and foremost, and if the first pictures of 2015s releases are any indication, we need not worry on that account.

So what were your highlights and low points when it comes to 2014s releases? And do you agree or disagree with my own assessment? I would love to hear from you in the comments section!

In any case, I will see you soon with the fourth and last installment of the 2014 Eternal Hunt Awards: a look back at my personal hobby year. Until then, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

One last look backwards, at 2014, and then we’re off to a productive new year — at least that’s what I hope! But as our last installment in 2014’s Eternal Hunt Awards, allow me to walk you through my personal hobby year and present both the models as well as the events that were especially noteworthy for me:

I. My hobby projects

2014 was a pretty busy year, but I still tried to stay as productive as I could. I managed to paint about 40 models (which is only very slightly less than my 2013 result). Not a breathtaking amount of work, certainly, but then I am still happy enough with the stuff I actually did manage to paint. What gives me pause, however, is the fact that I doubtlessly kitbashed and converted many, many more models than I actually painted — I’ll have to keep working on that ratio, I guess…

But what do those 40 models mean if seen in the context of my various bigger and smaller projects? Allow me to elaborate:

1. Khorne’s Eternal Hunt

My World Eaters army certainly remains my most important project, and 2014 was very much a World Eaters year for me! The absolute majority of my newly completed models ended up in the 4th assault company.

All these new additions certainly call for some new army pictures in the near future! However, I suppose it’ll be quite some time before the weather allows me to set it all up outside and take some dapper new photos. Until then, I have this picture (taken this last December for the “We Are Legion!” contest over at Le blog dé Kouzes) showing a pretty big part of the army to tide you over:

It’s not the entire army (it’s missing the twenty odd “old” berzerkers from before my hobby hiatus during the 2000s, for instance, and a couple of other models), but it’s a fairly accurate depiction of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt in its current incarnation.

And here are some 2014 additions to my World Eaters that I am especially happy with:

World Eaters Gladiatorii squad

This project started as a spontaneous kitbash and then grew into something bigger when I decided to convert a gladiatorial Khornate champion along with his coterie of grimdark gladiators. Though these would probably be counted as bog standard Khorne Berzerkers when used in a game, building a squad of distinctly gladiatorial World Eaters has been a great way to explore that particular part of the legion’s background — plus it was lots of fun to come up with different types of gladiators that call back to actual historical sources while also seeming believable in the 41st millennium.

If you’re interested, check out the full story of the gladiatorii here, here and here.

Lord Valkar, the Scarred One

This was a model that I had wanted to complete for a long time, and as has been the case so often, the ongoing Painting and Converting Contest over at Throne of Skulls provided the perfect excuse to finally get my act together! I am really happy with both the resulting model and the fact that I now own one of the truly effective Khornate unit choices: A Chaos Lord on juggernaut — what could be more Khornate than that, right?

Check out Lord Valkar in more detail here.

Thamier-pattern Obliterator

This is a model I am especially happy with for several reasons: It marks the first Obliterator in my army, for one, because it took me so freaking long to finally settle on an interpretation of this unit type I was happy with. I was insanely fortunate enough to procure some wonderful, custom sculpted parts from fellow hobbyist thamier (whose “Balefire Legion” you should definitely check out ASAP) for this project, and the result is a model I am really proud of. And maybe the best thing is that I still have enough parts for a second Obliterator. Yay!

Find out what went into building this guy here.

Brother Khorlen the Lost

Finishing this model was one of the rare instances where I actually managed to surprise myself: I had just seen the newly released multipart Helbrute (which I really liked a lot), but instead of buying it right away (my usual reflex), I rather painted the Dark Vengeance Helbrute I still had lying around ever since the boxed set was released. And boy am I happy about that decision in hindsight! The model was pretty challenging to paint, make no mistake, but finally managing to finish what may be my favourite Dark Vengeance model really felt good — and I am actually rather happy with the result, too!

Find out more about this one instance where I actually showed some discipline here.

And, of course, my re-imagined Kharn the Betrayer: This model was, once again, built for a contest over at Throne of Skulls, but at the same time, it also kicked off a sizeable painting project of mine that saw me paint more than 500 points for my World Eaters over the Christmas holiday — we’ll be talking about those models in more detail really soon, I promise you.

Learn more about Kharn the Betrayer and my interpretation of him here.

Chaos Knight Titan

Last and very definitely not least: My Chaos Knight conversion. Though this model yet remains unpainted, it is probably the one 2014 hobby project I am most happy with: Working at such a scale was a first for me, and I was really intimidated by the project, to be honest — so much so, in fact, that it took me several months to actually get started on the model.

In the end, however, I am more than happy with the result so far: The Imperial Knight is a wonderful kit in its own right, and I think that I have managed to make sure this conversion will be a suitable centre point for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt! I even built a full interior for the model — something I wouldn’t really have considered beforehand.

I hope that finally getting this big guy painted will turn into a successful hobby project of mine in 2015 — I am still working up the courage for it, to be honest…

Until then, why not check out my posts on the creation of my Chaos Knight Titan here and here?

2. The world of INQ28

The wonderful world of Inquisitor and the battle for the Emperor’s soul continues to be a fascinating subject and an endless source of inspiration to me. Even so, I am painfully aware that I have only managed to paint a measly four models for INQ28 in 2014:

And while I am really rather happy with each of them – and do in fact think that they make for a wonderfully eclectic little group in the above picture – I really want to make sure to produce more finished pieces for INQ28 this year!

In fact, I have kitbashed lots and lots of characters I am really happy with so far, such as my first real true scale Marine, Brother Janus Auriga…

…among many others, so it looks like I have my work cut out for me — let’s see if I can manage to get this show on the road again!

3. Legio Custodes

Alas, my beloved Custodians received even less attention from me than my INQ28 models. However, I did at least manage to build some models that I am really happy with for this project: A rather convincing (if I do say so myself) version of Chief Custodian Constantin Valdor and a really badass looking Custodian in Pre-Heresy style Astartes battle plate:

As with my INQ28 collection, I will endeavour to get more of these guys finished in 2015. After all, it’s only a matter of time until Forgeworld’s own Custodes are released, making my kitbashes entirely obsolete — at least in the eye of the public ;)

Find out more about my kitbashed Custodes here.

4. Urash’s Marauders

And finally, my Traitor Guard. To be honest, it took me a while to get back to this project, but I did so with an addition that has thoroughly revitalised my interest in this army: After long deliberation and multiple test builds, I have finally come up with the beginnings of a squad of elite traitors, shown above, mostly based on GW’s excellent Tempestus Scions. And though it has taken me quite a while to get these guys finished, I am now really happy with them, especially with the unit champion:

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it really does bear repeating: This guy takes much inspiration from PDH’s excellent renegade troopers, and is also the first time that I have come (reasonably) close to reproducing the excellence of those models. In fact, the guy above may just be the Traitor Guard model I am most happy with to date, so expect to see more additions to Urash’s Marauders sooner rather than later.

Until then, read more about the squad here.

II. My favourite hobby moments

So much for my own hobby projects, but what else was cool? Once again, there were several moments in 2014 that really served as “milestones of awesome”, so to speak,  making my hobby year truly special:

First among those moments – and by a long shot – was being featured in Warhammer:Visions — in Blanchitsu, no less!

Seriously, this really took the cake! It also had me running around with a huge grin for at least a couple of days. And it is an achievement that I am pretty sure I won’t be able to reproduce anytime soon, which really makes it even more awesome. Being featured in this column along with extremely talented guys like PDH and Mikko Luoma was the icing on the cake, of course.

I have talked at length about Legion, the model that finally made the pages of Warhammer:Visions, and I promise I won’t put you through it all again — unless you want to, of course, in which case you can find the whole story here.

The various interactions with other hobbyists online were almost as good as my stint in Visions: The friendly and constructive way people in our hobby can interact via the power of the interwebz is one thing that never ceases to astound me, the other is the unending generosity of so many of my fellow hobbyists. Therefore, it’s really hard to pick that one favourite moment from among all the pleasant interactions I have had in 2014. Rather, it’s a collection of warm and fuzzy memories: being sent amazing bitz drops and unique models by PDH, Drone21c and Steifer, sharing friendly banter and thoughts about the hobby with Flint13, Augustus b’Raass and others over at The Bolter & Chainsword, trying my best to produce cool models for the contests at Throne of Skulls and getting my ass kicked time and time again by DexterKong, hammering out the backstory for a whole Imperial sector in cooperation with that same DexterKong, having hobbyists build models that share my name as a shout out (and trying to repay that particular kindness),…the list goes on and on.

Let me maybe show you one small thing to illustrate my point: Here’s a map showing you all the people I’ve done bitz swaps with so far. Without any money involved, I might add — just for the sake of helping each other out:

I think this is ample proof of the amount of generosity present in our hobby! Thank you all, guys and girls! You rock!

I was also really blown away when I received a very special gift for my birthday last year:

my colleague Annie converted and painted a wonderful fan troll for my Blood Bowl team, the “Orkheim Ultraz”, which really left me speechless. I know you are not supposed to feed the troll, but I really want to ;) Thanks again, Annie — you’re awesome! :)

Read the whole story here.

And one last thing that I am really happy with: As I’ve mentioned above, I really managed to get my act together over the holidays, painting a pretty chunk of new World Eaters models for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt. This all happened as part of The Bolter & Chainsword’s 2014 Call of Chaos event, which not only gave me a deadline to meet, but also provided lots and lots of motivation via the friendly competition among board members. I’ll be showing off the completed models in more detail very soon — I hope you like red and bronze! ;)

III. Blogging

Providing a constant stream of content for this blog remained a fun – albeit challenging – endeavour during 2014: I managed 63 posts and attracted 170,000 views from 138 countries — numbers that may not be all that spectacular in the larger order of things but still feel pretty unreal to me, seeing how this is just my small, uninteresting corner of the internet ;) I also managed to reach the mark of 300,000 views overall, which I think is pretty cool!

For those of you interested in this kind of stuff, here’s a link to the annual report WordPress has kindly provided.

All in all, it has been a busy year. A productive year. A fun year. Yet also a year full of unpainted plastic — but what else is new? Thank you all for joining me on this ride. This concludes our little retrospective, and we’ll be strictly focusing on new stuff from now on: Here’s to 2015!

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Welcome to the third part of this mini-series, in which I walk you through the latest additions to my World Eaters army. Today I have another new model to show you — and this time it’s a pretty big addition. So, what is this about?

I already mentioned that I wanted to use the Call of Chaos event in order to force myself to finally finish some models that I had kept on the backburner. And one of those models was a Forgefiend for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt. When I went through my cupboard of shame in order to determine which models to include in my vow, it was with a rather guilty feeling that I realised I bought, built and undercoated this model almost two years ago, then let it sit in its box unattended for a long time — what better way to finally revisit the poor dear than to make it a part of my vow for the event, right?

Just to remind you, here’s what the undercoated model looked like:

I realise that the fiend models get quite a bad rap from many hobbyists – they are not referred to as “Dinobots” for nothing – but I think the model is a rather good fit for a World Eaters army! As you can see, I didn’t even perform any heavy surgery on the model, seeing how it was already looking like a bigger juggernaut of Khorne straight out of the box, electing instead to only make some small additions here and there: A couple of decorative skulls were added to the Forgefiend’s shoulders, a suitable collar of Khorne was put around the beast’s neck, and a Stonehorn tail lend a bit more visual balance to the rather stubby hind section.

When it came to painting the model, I jumped in at the deep end, choosing to paint the body and hind legs first. This is what it looked like after most of this step had been finished:

And then everything just …stopped. It just wasn’t happening, for some reason. It was hair-pullingly frustrating, but I just couldn’t go on. So the model stayed that way while I painted first my custom Kharn the Betrayer, then the Doomwall and finally my new Dreadnought. In the end, with the model less than half-finished and less than a week left until the deadline for the Call of Chaos event, I was basically resigned to giving up on my vow.

But then the strangest thing happened: Looking at all the fantastic stuff completed by other participants, I felt the spark of motivation returning: Be it Chaeron’s unbelievable amount of completed models or Augustus b’Raass’ utterly stunning Khornate daemon engine, I just felt I had to give it my all to complete this vow, and so I returned to the painting table — cheers for the help, guys!

The task remained a problematic one, however: I really didn’t like painting the Forgefiend, and I swear it was hating me right back: In true daemon engine fashion, it kept fighting me every step of the way. But since this was so very fitting after all, I decided to actually incorporate the model’s struggle against being painted into the daemon engine’s name:

So here, then, is the daemon engine Gorespite — I like it when a model’s character becomes apparent even during its construction and painting:

Even though painting this model was such a hassle, I am really rather happy with the result: This was a veritable battle of attrition, and finally having managed to complete this piece gives me a feeling of achievement! There are also some areas that I am really rather proud of — especially the glowing areas in the Forgefiend’s torso and the eyes, for instance.

What made this even better was that the completion of this model also marked the completion of my entire Call of Chaos vow, consisting of:

• 1 custom Kharn the Betrayer
• 1 Chaos Lord in Terminator armour with Thunder Hammer and Lightning Claw (Brother Garron the Doomwall)
• 1 Chaos Dreadnought/Helbrute with Multimelta and Power Fist (Brother Damokk the Breacher)
• 1 Forgefiend with twin Hades Autocannons (Gorespite)

With this post, you’ve seen all these models. Here they are again, in a picture showing my entire Call of Chaos vow:

That’s a sweet additional 500 points or so for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt! Yay! :)

This was the first time I ever participated in an event like this, which makes me all the happier to actually have finished my vow! I can also safely say that events like these are a perfect way of putting a certain amount of constructive pressure on yourself for finally getting stuff finished — if not for the event, I might have let that Forgefiend sit in its box for another year or two, after all…

Speaking of which, not only did I whip up yet another photo montage to celebrate the occasion, but I also created a piece of background to accompany the model. Enjoy:

“Engine of Spite”

The freight elevator ground home with a deafening metallic clank, and the blast doors opened to near full darkness. The lumen strips on the high ceiling had been dimmed down so much that the corridor ahead was only barely visible to the human eye. This did not slow down the two figures now stepping from the elevator, however, since neither of them would have qualified as human any longer.

One of them was stooped and rake thin, clothed in the cowled robes of a Forge Adept. The other was massive in the way only those of the legion could be, but its huge frame was more impressive still, clad in a bulky suit of warplate and a harness from which four multijointed servo limbs emerged. The figures continued down the corridor in silence, the metallic pounding of their footsteps the only sound. This deep in the belly of the ship, not even the slow, regular heartbeat of the Great Forge was audible any longer.

“Has everything been prepared?”, the giant asked?
“Yes, lord. The bindings are in place. Every result so far has been within the expected parameters,” came the adept’s reply in a blurt of binary cant.
“How long until planetfall?”
“One hour, lord.”
“That will suffice. Leave me now.”
The adept’s remaining organic eye showed the apprehension he felt, but he knew better than to voice his concern. The spindly figure bowed stiffly and turned around, advancing back the way it had come.

Huntmaster Deracin turned to the blast door now. He drew himself up to his full height and pressed the activator rune. The door slid open, and Deracin entered the room beyond.

The room was vast, but even its dimensions did not offer an explanation for the kind of darkness that had gathered towards the far wall. Deracin could hear the sound now, wet and low, like a huge beast drawing breath.
Deracin stapped into the light and brought the haft of his two-handed war axe down onto the deck with a clank.
“Awaken, servant!”, he called.
The breathing turned louder and became something else. A snarl. A growl. Something more dangerous. Tendrils of warpfrost stretched towards Deracin on every surface.
He could see it now, wrapped in murky shadows, its bulky form a strange amalgamation of beast and machine, straining in vein against the rune inscribed chains. Its blunt snout turned towards him, lips peeled back from wet fangs. The daemon engine’s blue eyes were glowing like ice. Deracin grinned:“Oh, aye, you hate me with every fibre of your being, do you not, creature? With every beat of your furnace heart?”

The growling grew in volume, as if in affirmation of Deracin’s words. And the daemon engine’s straining against its bindings grew more fierce. A mind impulse was enough to move the arms emerging from Deracin’s servo-harness in front of him in protection, bringing into view a melta and the diamond teeth of a massive chainaxe. Deracin nodded as he noticed the creature flinch ever so slightly.

“Good, stand down. I made you, and I can unmake you just the same. And what’s more, this is not a time for anatgonism, creature: After all, I have come to offer you a gift…” Deracin paused, noticing how the growl had turned into a low purr. Then he continued:
“Not your freedom, of course, but something you will appreciate nonetheless.“ Deracin grinned. “I will give you somewhere to vent your anger.”

It was 45 minutes to planetfall.

Let me know what you think! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Oh boy, the mythical and elusive Harlequins are here, and in plastic, no less! So while the rest of the world is already salivating over the new servants of Khorne (we will be getting there, don’t you worry ;) ), let us take a look at the recent Harlequin release and at all the wonderful conversion options it brings. Follow me into the ring, if you please:

My first contact with the Harlequins happened during the glorious days of 2nd edition, when I saw a couple of Harlequin models in the colour section of the 40k rulebook. I instantly fell in love with one of the models (that, incidentally, resembled the modern design for the Shadowseer rather closely). Alas, my sympathy for the model never amounted to much, as my FLGS back then simply didn’t stock the models, and ordering something in those wild and medieval days always felt like a bit of an adventure. And after those early-to-mid-90s models, the Harlequins just seemed to fall by the wayside, until GW decided to give them a new lease of life a couple of years ago, in the form of some uniformly excellent metal/Finecast models sculpted by the one and only Jes Goodwin.

This new release, then, mainly attempts two things: Translating Jes Goodwin’s beautiful designs into plastic versions, and rounding out the Harlequins’ catalogue into something that can support an entire supplemental Codex. So let us take a look at all the parts of the release in turn and gauge the success of the endeavour, shall we?

Harlequin Shadowseer

The Shadowseer has always been my favourite Harlequin model, all the way back to those models from the early 90s. And the great thing is that the design has only become cooler over the years: Jes Goodwin’s Shadowseer from a few years back is one of my favourite Eldar models of all time — and may just be one of my favourite 40k models altogether. There’s just something about the cowled, faceless look of the model that speaks to me (maybe the fact that the design recalls the brilliantly designed villain from Vidocq has something to do with it…).

Good thing, then, that the new plastic Shadowseer turns out to be an almost perfect, step by step recreation of the earlier metal/Finecast model in plastic. Here’s the earlier version again, for comparison:

The main differences between the two versions are a different leg pose and a new pistol (which serves as a great little shout out to an incidental piece of artwork from the 3rd edition rulebook, if I am not mistaken). If anything, the slightly more acrobatic leg pose does a good job of bringing the Shadowseer in line with his fellow Harlequins, while he also retains his mysterious aura.

It seems like all the detail from the earlier version has managed to make the cut, including the characteristic staff and the facemask dangling from the Shadowseer’s hip — I’ve always liked the idea, that the Shadowseer actually wears his stylised face on his belt, while his facemask remains a mirrored visor.

A look at the sprue reveals that it might be interesting to figure out ways to convert the model and tweak some of the details, as is always the case with GW’s clamshell characters:

But when all is said and done, the truth of the matter is that the Shadowseer was pretty much perfect in design to begin with, and you know what they say: If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it! If anything, the fact that this character is now available in plastic makes it more likely for me to finally pick him up. Very nice!

Harlequin Death Jester

Okay, this is where things get slightly more interesting, because while the Death Jester is also very similar in design to its earlier incarnation, the pose is markedly different this time around. Here’s the old version, for the sake of comparison:

And you know what? I hate to be that guy, but I actually like the “classic” version better (funny feeling to apply the word classic to a fairly recent model, but there you have it): The very composed, even somewhat static pose works great for the sinister, reaper-like aspect of the character, while the one extended leg does hint at a little playfulness after all — as I’ve said before, whatever they pay Jes Goodwin, it cannot ever be enough!

The new model doesn’t share this amount of subtlty, unfortunately, with the Death Jester crouching on a piece of fallen Eldar masonry in best Dark Knight pose. There’s also the fact that I like the full skull facemask better than the half-mask version of the plastic model. And let’s not forget that the classic version is actually a fair bit cheaper as well!

What we get out of the new version, of course, is flexibility: A look at the sprue reveals that it should be fairly easy to replace the Death Jester’s legs, creating something closer to the original pose, if one wanted:

And the new Death Jester is certainly a beautiful model in his own right, with all the abundance of detail we have come to expect from GW’s plastic characters:

Although that piece of Eldar architecture on the base just seems a bit much, doesn’t it? It almost threatens to overwhelm the model atop it…

All in all, it’s an expertly made and beautifully detailed model, no question about that. In my opinion, however, the new Death Jester loses out against his earlier incarnation. It’s a cool model, but it’s also good that the classic version is still available!

Harlequin Solitaire

Oh boy, here’s the Harlequin character we’ve been waiting for for the last twenty odd years. At last! The Solitaire is here! And he’s…well, a bit underwhelming, if you ask me.

Let’s start with the good stuff: The model is amazingly dynamic, which is definitely a plus. I also like the casual way the model interacts with its base – a forté of the new Harlequin models, and the Solitaire is certainly no slouch in this department.

But this guy is supposed to represent Slaanesh, right?…

Maybe it’s just me, but he just doesn’t seem threatening enough. Sure, it’s only a stylised representation of She-Who-Thirsts, but such a big deal is made about the dark and sinister and, well, solitary nature of the Solitaire in the background that the actual model just seems slightly bland. I do like the tron-like embellishments on his coat, though…

All in all, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the Solitaire seems much more interesting as conversion fodder than in his actual function — but we’ll be getting to that. Suffice to say for now that a look at the sprue reveals that the model should be deliciously easy to convert into something else:

Maybe there was really no way to win this: Everybody has been waiting for years and years, so whatever model gets released cannot possibly keep up with the hype. And yet, I somehow expected more — is that weird?

Harlequin Troupe

Okay, this is basically the bread and butter of the release, and the one part GW needed to get right: They’ll be selling more of these than of any of the other Harlequin kits, I suppose, so the kit had better be good, right?

And it is. As is the case with the Shadowseer and Death Jester, the new plastic Harlequins mostly seem like a recreation of  Jes Goodwin’s earlier metal/Finecast models, and that was definitely the right way to go!

What’s more, this approach works exceptionally well for the most part, creating a bunch of very dynamic models that have all the strengths of the earlier versions, with a couple of really nifty details added on top: I really love the idea of having more facemasks than you actually need, for instance.

But I won’t beat around the bush here: Unfortunately, the one model to take a tremendous hit is the troupe master. The Trinity-pose of his earlier incarnation may not have been all that realistic, but it was still pretty fantastic. In my opinion, they should just have recreated that pose step for step, because it was pretty much perfect:

But maybe it was to special for a multipart plastic kit? Whatever happened, the new pose just seems like we’ve caught the troupe master during an awkward moment between jumps:

The legs may not even be the worst part of the pose, come to think of it: It’s the way he’s stretching out his arms. The older troupe master looked like a magnificent bastard fully in control of the situation — the epitome of a sinister clown. The new guy seems to be yelling “Look Ma! No hands!” at the top of his lungs.

Now don’t get me wrong: This should be easy enough to fix with a bit of cutting and reposing, and one slipup like this doesn’t devalue an entire kit. But it’s still unfortunate that the most iconic and characterful model in the old kit was the one thing they messed up in the new version.

Beyond this unfortunate fact, it’s a fantastic kit, make no mistake. I imagine it’ll be lots and lots of fun to play around with, both for Eldar players and conversion nuts (like me).

All in all, it’s a great kit, marred by one unfortunate design decision. But we’re all men (and women) of the world here, eh? We’ll make do ;)

Harlequin Skyweavers

Giving the Harlequins some fast and dynamic attack vehicles and means of transports seems like a bit of a no-brainer — and here we go! Personally, I would have wished for a return of the old Harlequin jetbikes, with the entire front canopy being made up of a giant, grinning face. Those things were rad! But alas, you cannot win them all.

What we get instead is still very cool: An elongated jetbike with a design squarely between a Craftworld Eldar jetbike and a Dark Eldar Reaver jetbike — with some distinct Harlequin touches added on top.

.And that’s what I really like about these: The way they seem so much like a missing link between Craftworld and Dark Eldar jetbikes — although I cannot shake the feeling that this kit seems like a bit of a “Screw you!” to all the hobbyists who have been waiting for new craftworld jetbikes for years on end…

All in all, however, it’s a cool kit, and they come in sets of two — what’s not to like, right?

Harlequin Starweaver/Voidweaver

And finally, a bigger jetbike variant that does the shooting or transport the dangerous clowns into combat! Yay! I think it’s no coincidence that the Starweaver and Voidweaver resemble the Dark Eldar Venom really closely — once again, this does a good job of matching existing (Dark) Eldar designs. I imagine it also shortened design time on this kit by a fair bit, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Starweaver mostly seems to echo the Venom’s role as a quick transport and light attack vehicle:

Yet there’s also the option of assembling the kit as a Voidweaver, a far more shooty version of this particular vehicle type, by the look of it:

Both are pretty similar from a design standpoint. For me, the most interesting part of this particular kit is the fact that – exactly as has been the case with the Venom kit – the crew are some of the finest and most interesting conversion bitz in the entire catalogue. I mean, just check out how awesome these guys are:
And words cannot express how much I want that Voidweaver gunner in my bitzbox: Those robes are just amazing:

Perfect for a (radical) Xenos Inquisitor or a custom (Dark) Eldar character, don’t you think?

Another solid kit that plays to the (Dark) Eldar’s visual strengths. It’s not exactly extremely creative and original, but it will have its place.

Conversion options:

As always, here’s where things get most interesting — at least for me ;) So what can we do with all these new kits? How can we put them to good use? And how can we cut them up? …erm, sorry, that must have been the Haemonculus side of my personality getting the better of me for a second there…

It’s plain to see that these new kits will probably have the biggest impact on Eldar and Dark Eldar players: Finally, a whole plastic catalogue is available for the race, spanning almost the entire range of possible Eldar factions (Exodites notwithstanding), allowing you to mix and match in order to create whatever custom Eldar army you want: An entirely kitbashed corsair force is now a very simple and exciting possibility!

Beyond that, the release certainly provides lots and lots of interesting bitz. The clamshell characters could make for very nice custom Exarchs, Autarchs or Farseers — and  if you’re feeling a little adventurous, you can finally convert the new plastic Craftworld jetbikes you’ve craved so much, Eldar players! ;)

Beyond those who already own an Eldar army, I can easily see the INQ28 folks getting next in line — myself included:

The Harlequin Troupe seems like a perfect go-to solution for all kinds of Inquisitorial agents: These guys could become the base models for death cult assassins- Inquisitorial agents or, obviously, particularly deadly clowns of a particularly sinister Circus Imperialis. What’s more, the models are also great conversion fodder for eclectic underhive gangs in the Confrontation vein! For those of you not in the know: Some of the Confrontation (read: Proto-Necromunda) models and concepts seem to have served as the actual inspiration for the Harlequins, so it seems only right to now use Harlequin bitz for your Confrontation needs — just check out Johannus’ work right here. He is making wonderful brat gangers from all those new Harlequin parts!

There are also quite a few possible ideas for the clamshell characters (and that beautiful Voidweaver gunner): I can see quite a few (possibly radical) Ordo Xenos operatives and Inquisitors coming out of this release. In fact, the Solitaire seems like a very promising base model for an Imperial agent — I actually have an idea right now for a somewhat unhinged and very, very dangerous Inquisitorial agent based on that very model! And there’s always the option of using the Harlequin bitz for Slaaneshi cultists and similarly sinister figures.

In any case, I think we can safely expect to see many, many of those bitz and models in the INQ28 section over at the Ammobunker, in due time…

All in all, I think this is a pretty solid release — if a somewhat “safe” one. It seems like GW mainly put the Eldar catalgoue’s visual strengths (and Jes Goodwin’s excellent designs) to good use here, reaping the fruit of earlier design and expanding some pretty brilliant ideas into big enough collection of kits to sustain a sub-faction. There’s nothing wrong with it – I would actually like more factions to get this treatment – but it’s not exactly high-hanging fruit, either.

But let’s be fair: When all is said and done, this hobby is very much about variety, about options. And this release provides us with new options without forcing our hand. The kits are solid, and it’s all in plastic. Good work! And I think it’s a safe assumption that we’ll be seeing something a little more involved – and daring – next month ;)

Oh, and before we tune out for today, a word about the paintjobs, perhaps: ‘Eavy Metal sometimes seems to take a bit of flak for particular colour choices and their way of doing things, but if there’s one thing I really love, it’s how the new “official” Harlequin paintjobs manage to connect the earlier Harlequin designs with some touches that recall technology like projection mapping and almost seem inspired by TRON — very nice!

So, what’s your take on these new kits? Anything you would like to add to my observations? Any conversion ideas you would like to share? I would love to hear from you in the comments section!

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

You are probably aware of the fact that this will turn out to be a rather Khornate month, all things considered ;) But all in good time: Before the realm of blood and brass inevitably engulfs us all, let me take the chance to address the wonderful world of INQ28 once more:

As you probably remember, one of my most important hobby-related new year’s resolutions was to be more productive when it comes to creating shadowy and/or eclectic INQ28 characters. And so far, I am happy to say that I have managed to keep this promise. So I’ll be showing you some new INQ28 characters and conversions in the very near future! Yay!

For starters, let’s focus on some of the things that have managed to renew my passion for actually finishing INQ28 models. While some of the work has been my own, I was also happy enough to receive some wonderful motivational help from fellow hobbyists. So let’s take a look:

I. A Traveler From the Warp…

One event that made me particularly happy last year was when Ron Saikowski got in touch with me late last autumn. For those of you who don’t know Ron (and shame on you, if you don’t!): He used to run an absolutely excellent hobby site called From the Warp, a very prolific resource for excellent hobby advice, and a site that was very important for me when I got back into the hobby in 2010, after a longer hiatus.

Ron unfortunately no longer updates the site — but it’s still there! And you should definitely check it out, if you haven’t already — it’s every bit as excellent as it was a couple of years ago! Anyway, I was still very happy to hear from him — even moreso because he had discovered my love letter to his hobby work. Anyway, to make a long story short, Ron is still in the hobby, and I think that alone is an excellent thing!

Things became really awesome, however, when we talked about an old model of Ron’s that I really love: An Imperial mystic he converted and painted. The model has a very grimdark, Blanchian look, which was probably the main reason why I liked it so much. Now imagine my surprise when Ron simply suggested sending it to me as a gift! And he did! Take a look:

Model converted and painted by Ron Saikowski

Model converted and painted by Ron Saikowski

Model converted and painted by Ron Saikowski

A wonderfully evocative piece or work! And it’s now mine! MUHAHAHA…erm, sorry –got a bit carried away there. Anyway, I am really happy to have come into the possession of a great model like this, created by one of my favourite hobbyists, no less! What makes this even better, though, is that the model’s Blanchian feel is no coincidence: The character was actually based on a piece of artwork depicting an Astropath by none other than John Blanche. Take a look:

Artwork by John Blanche

I think this actually further enriches an already great model! I also think that Ron has really managed to capture the mood of the original illustration. Oh, and for those of you who want to learn more about the model’s creation, I recommend you check out Ron’s original post on the matter here on From the Warp.

It goes without saying that I am really, really grateful to Ron for this amazing gift! The Astropath, named Skorin Saikov in Ron’s honour, will be a treasured part of my collection, and certainly an interesting character for all INQ28 related adventures in the Velsen Sector…

II. Presents from Down Under(hive)

Believe it or not: Ron wasn’t the only person to be so very generous, either: Fellow hobbyist Drone 21c, owner of one of the most beautiful and Blanchian Inquisitor warbands I have seen so far (make sure to check it out here), was also awesome enough to send me some wonderful stuff last autumn — all the way from Australia, no less!

Everything started with this handsome gentleman:

Yes, that’s right: A Rogue Trader era plastic Imperial Guardsmen. I discovered this model when Drone21c posted a wonderfully painted version of it on his blog, and I was shameless enough to ask whether he would send one over to me.

He actually sent two of them, if you can believe it! And I have to admit that I actually spread the love and gave one of the models to the owner of my FLGS: He’s a great guy and provides excellent service, and he is also a huge IG nut, so it felt like the right thing to do. That said, I made him promise he would paint the model, to be presented here on this blog, so we may look forward to seeing it at some point in the future.

But as if that wasn’t enough enough, Drone 21c also included some more amazing stuff: Some wonderfully converted and individualised heads for my conversion projects, some of which you can see here:

Heads converted by Drone 21c

With the exception of the head on the right (which, I believe, is a Perry Miniatures bit), each of these heads has been expertly converted and customised with sculpted elements — if anything, I am actually scared of using them up for “standard” conversions (that said, I do have a cunning plan regarding the flagellant head with the dapper hairdo — watch this space).

And even that was not enough: No, Drone 21c also included a copy of a model he had sculpted himself, — possibly the star of the show:

model sculpted by Drone 21c

You can see better pictures of the original model over on his blog, but the amazing thing is that the model was very obviously based on an iconic John Blanche sketch from the 40k 2nd edition Codex Imperialis:

illustrazion by John Blanche

I finally started painting the model this past Sunday. Take a look:

Model sculpted by Drone 21c

Model sculpted by Drone 21c

Model sculpted by Drone 21c

Model sculpted by Drone 21c

The model was originally envisioned as some kind of Imperial dignitary (or even governor), but I think he’ll also make for an excellent High-officiant, Arch-Deacon or even Cardinal of the Velsen Ecclesiarchy, once he’s done.

Only now that I have painted the model can I appreciate all the fine detail that Drone 21c has managed to create, like the small aquila clasp on the model’s shoulder, the cabling on the back of the head or the lined face — the latter one is a particular achievement, if you ask me. Excellent stuff!

You will probably have noticed that the model doesn’t have a finished base yet. I think this could conceivably become a little project of its own, because I feel the model would look great with a lectern, a pulpit, or even riding atop some kind of walking servitor-shrine or hideous, vat grown monstrosity — we shall see…;)

In any case, thanks again to Drone21c for letting me have this amazing model! In fact, the most humbling thing about this entire affair is that I have yet to send something back over the great pond! But I have been collecting suitable bitz for the last months, and it won’t be long now until I can finally repay this kindness — if it can be repaid at all, that is!

III: An officer and a gentleman

And finally, yet another thing I want to share with you, but one that doesn’t owe anything to other people’s generosity (for once…). Still, this project really made me get my arse in gear on the INQ28 front. So, what is this about?

You may remember this Inquisitor/Interrogator I converted from the plastic commissar. I posted him quite a while ago…

But you know what? I actually wasn’t really happy with the guy before, there was just something off about him for some reason. He seemed kinda pompous and ineffectual, for lack of a better word: More like an NPC than an actual character. A foppish military type without much character to speak of.

Back when I built him, I tried a different pair of legs (from the Eisenkern Stormtroopers), which seemed promising…

…but wasn’t quite there, either. But a while ago, due to a spontaneous moment of inspiration, I tried replacing his original legs with a pair of legs from the Tempestus Scions, and I think this changes the overall look of the model rather drastically. Take a look:

I think he looks quite a bit more formidable and dynamic this way, wouldn’t you agree? Less like an arrogant officer type, and more like a desperado who knows his way around the underhive, even though he’s wearing such a dapper uniform.

The new legs really add some dynamism and agency to the model. And even though he may seem a bit squat now (mostly because he’s leaning into the shot), I think it’s far preferable to the previous version!

However, the new legs prompted some additional changes to the model: I may have spent a long time splicing together that Xenos pistol, but it really no longer suited the character all that well, as PDH rightly pointed out — funny how that will happen sometimes, isn’t it?

So I went for twin autopistols instead:

Much better! But there was one last thing that bothered me, and Bruticus really nailed it: What’s the deal with that chain running from the model’s lapel to the pistol grip?

The longer I kept looking at it, the more nonsensical it seemed. So it had to go! I carefully cut it off and replaced it with an oath paper, affixed to the model’s lapel:

Excellent! And with that, the model was basically ready for painting — at long last! ;)

I really didn’t want to mess this up, and I wanted to go for a mix of a military, regimented look, with a dash of ostentatiousness. Here’s what I came up with, after a while:

It may not look like it, but this paintjob was actually quite a ways outside of my comfort zone: The colour of his coat, for instance was a bit of an experiment for me. That said, I am truly happy with how the model has turned out, and my success with this character has inspired me to go and paint some additional INQ28 models — just you wait and see!

Fairly atypically for me, however, I have not yet completely worked out the background for this model: The change in the conversion and subsequent painting happened so quickly that I basically let myself be carried along by the tide. However, the first ideas are slowly congealing into something resembling a character background:

I think the character should have a pronounced Imperial Guard background: Maybe he was a member of the prestigious Bastold Oathblades, until a momentous event cost him his arm and left eye? Maybe the same event also lead to him being requisitioned as a retainer (and ultimately, Interrogator) by one Inquisitor Marius Solland (we’ll be hearing from him in a future post). I think having an Inquisitor of the Ordo Militum, concerning itself with supervising the Imperium’s military, would be a nice change, after all the Malleus and Hereticus nutjobs ;)

And there are also the small touches on the model itself that could possibly tell small stories: Somebody over at the Ammobunker pointed out the very clunky bionics on the Interrogator’s face: But maybe there’s a story there? If you look closely, you can see that some cabling feeds from the bulky, optical implants into the power pack on the model’s back and into the bionic arm from there — maybe he consciously chose the somewhat clunky implant to gain a battlefield advantage?

Anyway, I am still very open to suggestions and ideas as to the character’s background, so feel free to share any ideas you might have! Only one thing is already set in stone: the character’s name. After some lenghty conversations with fellow hobbyist DexterKong, we came up with the name Brynn Yulner for this Interrogator — a cookie to anyone who gets the joke ;)

So yeah, as you can see, I am back in business when it comes to INQ28! I would love to hear any feedback you might have — rest assured that we will be seeing more shady characters around here very soon!

Until then, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

I think I may have mentioned before that I consider the Sisters of Battle, or Adepta Sororitas, to be one of the most interesting and original parts of the 40k background — there’s just something brilliantly quirky and narratively compelling at the same time about an order of “space nuns”, and I think when GW’s designers and writers were tasked with creating a (female) foil for the Space Marines, they couldn’t have come up with a better solution.

Likewise, John Blanche’s iconic cover for the Codex Sisters of Battle remains one of my favourite pieces of 40k-related artwork, because it really encapsulates the 40k universe in one piece of art. Take a look:

Artwork by John Blanche

It’s all there, isn’t it? The eclecticism, the grimdarkness, the medieval and renaissance influences, the traces of sci-fi — and of course the charming lady dead centre: A Sister of Battle — or should that be the Sister of Battle?

When I first saw this illustration, I didn’t know anything about the Sisters’ place in the background, or about the ecclesiarchy or any of that, but the picture captivated me nevertheless. And maybe – or very probably, come to think of it – my interest in the Sisters was planted then and there.

Alas, we still haven’t seen a plastic re-release/re-design of the Sisters of Battle, so what was I to do in order to scratch this particular hobby itch (without having to dig through piles of old lead)? That’s right — I had to get creative and make a suitable kitbash!

Which I did: I built a Sister of Battle for my collection of INQ28 characters, using nothing but plastic parts. Some of you may remember the model’s first appearance on this blog, quite some time ago:

Like I said back then, I do realise that the model is not entirely without its problems: The head may be a tad too big, the legs are maybe just a tiny bit too long. But I think that, under the given circumstances, I did the best I could with the materials available to me, and I am really enormously proud of the model, to be honest.

For those of you who want to attempt something similar, here’s a short bitz list:

• the leg and torso are from a Dark Eldar Kabalite warrior and remain mostly unchanged. The only exceptions are that amazing aquila bit (I have absolutely no idea where I got that or where it’s from!) and a Fleur de Lys shaved off a Bretonnian bit.
• the head came from the plastic gunner that comes with the SoB Immolator kit — one of the two plastic SoB heads in existence ;)
• the upper arms and the left forearm are shaved down parts from the WFB Empire Knights (from the Knights of the White Wolf, to be exact)
• the right forearm is from the Bretonnian Knights
• the bolt pistol came from the Cadian command squad, IIRC
• the backpack was spliced together from a cut-down GK backpack with a GK heraldic plate, some vents from a Dark Vengeance Chosen backpack and an iron halo from a servo-skull
• I also added some purity seals, pouches and decorative gubbinz that I cannot pinpoint accurately — the kind of stuff any INQ28 modeler has heaps of, I guess…;)

It’s also important to point out that it’s very easy to use a virtually identical recipe in order to create Sisters of Silence — as I have done repeatedly for my own, kitbashed Custodes army.

So what about the paintjob, then? Well, I have to admit that it actually took me ages to settle on an approach, possibly for fear of ruining the model. One thing was easy to figure out: The general colour scheme. Even though the model would have been a great opportunity to invent my own SoB colour scheme, I knew I wanted the model to be painted in the colours of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, for a number of reasons: It’s easily the most iconic SoB scheme, for one, and I really wanted to use it. But there’s also the fact that I needed the paintjob to make the conversion believably read as a Sister of Battle: I have learned from Ron Saikowski that, on a kitbash like this, it’s important to really nail some of the details, so the model will come across as “correct”, even if many pieces are different from the source material. And using the most well-known colours would probably sell the viewer on my model as a Sister, even if there are some notable differences from the official metal models.

When it came to the actual painting, two sources proved invaluable: One was a picture of a squad of Celestians from Codex: Witch Hunters. They had exactly the colour scheme I wanted, but with some additional decoration and golden trim that made the models look even cooler.

The other source that really helped me paint my model was Valhallan 23rd’s kitbashed Sister, because she was also converted using DE bitz, and I really needed an idea about how to apply the classic SoB colours to these particular parts. In a nice bit of symmetry, I seem to have inspired Valhallan 23rd to actually create the model in the first place, while I now took some invaluable inspiration for my own paintjob from that very model — I like that! ;)

So, without any further ado, I give you Sister Euphrati Eisen, of the Order of the Martyred Sword:

You may have noticed the helmet on the model’s belt. This was a last minute addition I made, using part of a resin piece from the 40k basing kit. It just seemed more professinal and accurate to have the helmet actually displayed on the model.

One thing I am particularly proud of is that I even managed to give her a beauty spot on her left cheek:

As you can see, there’s also some minor texture buildup on her cheek, due to the colour I used. This would normally have killed me, but in the end, I think it could represent some slight scarring on her face, which seems a nice fit for a Sister of Battle (and is an element that keeps appearing throughout most of the artwork).

The face may actually be my favourite part of the paintjob, warts and all. This has been the first female face I’ve painted in over a decade, and I am really happy with the way it has turned out, in spite of a few smaller problems:

The sculpt of the head is certainly a bit of a problem. The hairdo is much more rigid (and less interesting) than that of the metal Sisters. But it was really the only (original, “official”) option if I wanted a bare head. It was also clear that my usual approach of “paint the basecoat, wash heavily, apply highlights” wouldn’t work as easily, because this tends to result in a pretty gnarly looking face — great for followers of chaos, grizzled Inquisitors and seven foot tall killing machines, but not so much for a grrrl ;)

So I tried softer highlights, which worked reasonably well. The application of makeup may have been a bit clichéd (if not sexist), but it was also a good way of moving the face away from the usual look. The glossy lips (painted with Tamiya Clear Red, btw) were something that I have wanted to try for a while, and it worked rather well. It’s also a shout out to the obvious absurdity of the Sisters of Battle, as is the blue-ish eyeshadow (created with a careful application of Drakenhof Nightshade). It’s a fairly stylised approach, all in all, but I am pretty happy with the result. Not because it’s perfect or particularly realistic or anything, but because the Sister at least doesn’t look like a Space Marine.

All in all, I have to say I am really happy with the finished model — I think she definitely reads as a Sister of Battle, which was the most important thing. And I’ve also managed to keep a female quality to her face, which I consider a pretty big achievement.

All that remained was a small background vignette, as per my usual routine:

Sister Euphrati Eisen, of the Order of the Martyred Sword

When the Crusade army of St. Sabasto moved to reclaim the Velsen Sector for the Imperium of Man, a detachment of the Adepta Sororitas from the Order of Our Martyred Lady joined the crusade and fought alongside Sabasto for the entire duration of the campaign. After the saint had sacrificed his own life to guarantee the reclamation of the sector, those Sisters reconsecrated themselves in order to honour the martyr, becoming the first members of the Order of the Martyred Sword.

Sister Euphrati, named for a particularly beloved Imperial saint, is one of the sisters of the Order who have been requisitioned several times to aid the Ordo Hereticus Velsen in operations of utmost importance, and so far she has excelled in her service to the Ordo and the Velsian Ecclesiarchy.

Let me know what you think — I’d be happy to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

In my last post, I promised you an account of my first practical experiences with the new Bloodthirster and Skullreaper/Wrathmonger kits, and today’s post will deal with just this subject. So you may look forward to quite a bit of kitbashing. Huzzah! ;)

But all in good order: Before we do anything else, there’s something that I absolutely need to share with you guys. It would probably be far more modest and professional not to talk about it at all, but I am just too much of a blabbermouth — sorry! ;)

So yeah, here’s what happened over at Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s blog a while ago:

I was chuffed to bits, as you can probably imagine! Unbelievable! I just couldn’t stop grinning afterwards!

But enough about my ego: I promised you Khornate WIPs, and you shall have them. So allow me to show you what’s been happily bubbling away in the depths of my kitbashing laboratory for the last days and weeks. One last warning, though: Beware ye, who enter here: There be lots of unpainted grey plastic ahead!

I. Bloodthirster

I bought my own Bloodthirster on the day of the release, although I hadn’t even planned to: I just couldn’t resist when seeing the box at my FLGS, and seeing how there was still one of the kits available for purchase, I jumped right in. So far, building this model has been a lot of fun, since it continues the trend of well-planned huge kits begun with the Imperial Knight. But let’s take a look at some pictures, shall we?

This is my Bloodthirster after an hour or so. Now I did take it fairly slow, even though it may not look like it: Like I said, it’s a wonderfully engineered kit, and it went together extremely well, for the most part.

For those of of wondering about the size of the model, here he is, next to a standard Space Marine:

The Bloodthirster could always have been bigger, of course, but I am rather happy with the model’s size and bulk. There’s also a very handy scale conversion pic here, for those of you who want to know how the model measures up next to the other Bloodthirster models released so far.

One interesting thing is that nobody forces you to build your Bloodthirster all armoured up: Here’s what he looks like with all the armour plates removed:

In fact, Noctus Cornix’ Bloodthirster conversion (which I already recommended you check out in my last post) goes for a mostly unarmoured look, and it works like a charm!

The only armour you will positively need is that belly plate, since he’ll have a pretty big hole in his torso, otherwise.

Oh, and I know you all want to know about the size of that axe, so here’s another scale comparison for you:

Pretty big, huh? I added some measurements, for those of you who are planning a conversion involving the axe:

So, what’s in the kit beyond that? First and foremost, you’ll get the option to build either of the three advertised variants, of course. You also get to mix and match between them to a certain degree. I suppose it should even be possible to create new weapons setups (twin axes, for example) with a bit of cutting and gluing. Now when it comes to extra bitz, here’s a a quick overwiev of my observations so far:

• You get an additional set of arms (for the two handed axe) plus an additional left arm, depending on whether you go with the whip or that – very ridiculous – meteor hammer.
• There’s an alternate breastplate, loincloth and belly plate. You can mix and match between different setups with these.
• You get three complete heads (except for a tongue bit that is shared between two of the designs). The leftover heads are slightly larger than those in the plastic Daemon Prince kit, so they might even be usable on your DP conversions.
• There’s a bunch of chains and talismans of Khorne that you can use on the wings or be used on different models
• you get two axe heads for the one-handed axe.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the bitz:

I. The optional skull shoulder pad is interesting in that it would possibly work as a facemask on a daemon engine or *gasp* even an Imperial Knight conversion (it works fairly well on an Imperial Knight head — I checked ;) ).

II. If – like me – you think that flame pillar is a stupid way to elevate the model on the base, you’ll get it as a leftover bit that might make a cool objective marker or something similar…

III. Here’s the alternate armour set you get: Those belly plates work pretty well as bespoke pauldrons for Chaos Terminators. And the breastplate could be used for an Imperial Knight, with a tiny bit of bending.

IV. The chains and talismans for the wings — I think I’ll rather be using these on a couple of different models, as the Bloodthirster seems cluttered enough for my taste ;)

In closing, let me point out two more interesting bitz:

First up, the chaos icon used on the Bloodthirster’s whip:

I think this would make for an excellent squad standard or a back-banner. I also decided not to use it on my Bloodthirster, because I preferred a whip without a bulky object on its end, but the part is still very cool on its own. More on this in a minute!

There’s also the Rogue Trader-era styled bone crown:

As you can see, it comes as a separate bit, so you could also use it on your DPs, juggernauts or even on a Terminator lord (it almost looks like the top of a Terminator torso front anway…).

So, what about my own Bloodthirster, then?

The model is still in its building stage, and I have settled on the axe/whip combo now, because it’s just so brilliantly iconic that I couldn’t resist it. Here’s what the model currently looks like:

I’ve glued the model to the fantasy base for now, so I can have it upright. A couple of observations:

• As you can see, this guy is fairly massive, even without his wings. I really like that!
• After much deliberation, I chose the asymmetrical axe head: While the other axe is beautifully designed, it just looks slightly wrong to me, held at that particular angle — more like the ‘Thirster is presenting it to the audience. The asymmetrical version doesn’t have that problem, at least not to the same degree, and looks like he is actually preparing for a swing, so it was definitely the way to go for me.
• You wouldn’t believe how much messing around it took to sort out that whip arm — the instructions are slightly ambiguous, with pictures that aren’t all that helpful, so getting the whip into a position where it both cleared the floor and didn’t interfere with the head did take some doing. In all fairness, however, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem if you use something to elevate the model a bit on its base. As you can see, I also left off the chaos star, shaving down the whip so it tapers down into a pointy end instead — this seems more natural and plausible to me, plus I got to keep that burning chaos star for something else ;)

Most of the assembly work has been completed at this point: Only the wings remain, and they seem like a fairly straightforward affair. All in all, the model really went together very well for such a huge piece, with well-planned seams making the model look organic and natural — well, as natural as a daemonic killing machine the size of a house could ever realistically look, at least…

That’s not all though: At the same time, I have also been using some leftover bitz on some other projects:

Since I knew I wasn’t going to use the meteor hammer weapon, no matter what, I used the chain from it to add a final, gladiatorial dash to one of my Daemon Princes:

Some leftover icons of Khorne (and two runes from the vambrace of a leftover Bloodthirster arm) were used to add some extra oomph to his armour and make him look more Khornate. The main attraction is his weapon, though: Both hookswords are now joined by a length of daemonic chain, courtesy of the Bloodthirster’s meteor hammer:

I think this pushes the gladiatorial look even further, which I really like! And while we are at it, here’s a scale comparison picture with the WIP Bloodthirster and the Daemon Prince:

I also promised you that I would be using that flaming chaos star for a conversion, right? Well, I did:

As you can see, it makes for a teriffic Crozius Maul for my Word Bearers Dark Apostle, Belzas Azalon (I also touched up the right shoulder pad, while I was at it).

So in addition to the Bloodthirster itself, the kit has already provided me with a way to make two models considerably cooler — very nice! ;)

II: Skullreapers/Wrathmongers

I have also started experimenting with the Wrathmonger/Skullreaper kit.

First up, take a look at this scale comparison between a (slightly modified) Chosen model and a Wrathmonger:

While the Wrathmonger may be slightly taller, the scale is still pretty similar — so similar, in fact, that parts from the Chosen will fit the new models without much of a hitch. It’s also important to stress that the guy on the right doesn’t even qualify as an early WIP — I just tacked together some bitz, in order to show you the scale.

I also find it interesting that some of the – almost comically brutish – Skullreaper heads work much better when used on “regular” CSM models. Take a look:

Much better, don’t you think? I’ve merely shaved off those stupid “cheek horns”, but now the head makes for a very fitting World Eaters berzerker!

Oh, and one thing that really excites me is that you basically get twice as many torso pieces as you need: One set for the Skullreapers and one for the Wrathmongers. And each of those pieces has its own breastplate, which can be used as intended or cut apart to use on your other WoC/CSM models — all in all, this kit provides an enormous pile of leftover bitz for conversions, which makes it a pretty good purchase, if you are not totally disgusted by the look of these guys.

I also decided to follow my idea above, playing around with a combination of Skullreaper/Wrathmonger parts and Dark Vengeance Chosen. Let’s start with something boring: The same Wrathmonger pictured above, now with a tacked on Chosen arm:

Everything’s just tacked together for now, in order to show you how well those Chosen arms work with the models.

And here’s something more involved: A mix of Wrathmonger/Skullreaper and Chosen parts:

Once again, all the parts have only been tacked together with modeling putty for now, but there’s something suitably gladiatorial and feral about this guy that I like. I also think the model serves as proof that those leftover Wrathmonger chests can really be put to good use!

One important thing, though: Once again, the stock Wrathmongers/Skullreapers are a bit taller than the DV Chosen:

So the best approach would probably be to save the Wrathmongers/Skullreapers for unit champs, Chaos Lords etc. Or you could choose an approach similar to that of Wonkobaggins and use the Skullreapers as counts as chaos spawn and/or Red Butchers. Check out his first experiments with the kit here.

One last thing I did was to play around with the reverse-jointed set of legs for a while: I think it would make for an excellent start for building a plastic Herald of Khorne — or even a counts as Skulltaker! After a bit of messing around, here’s what I ended up with:

All in all, this has been a surprisingly easy conversion: Most of the model is simply a stock Skullreaper, with the arms and head replaced with Bloodletter (and Bloodcrusher) bits. The body already has the characteristic, pocked skin, so it looks like it belongs to a Bloodletter anyway. And the armour is jagged and organic enough to pass for daemonic, don’t you think? One thing I did was to graft on a Bloodletter neck, so I would have a more natural way of attaching the head.

I am still thinking about adding a cape like the one the original Skulltaker has: On the one hand, it seems like a fun challenge (and I do have an idea that might work), but on the other hand, I am really happy with the dynamic posing and striking silhouette the model has right now, and I fear an added cape would just overclutter the model…

And finally, in an act of nearly unprecedented heresy, at least for my own standards, I used some of the hip plates from the Skullreapers’ armour in order to make the armour of a true scaled Slaaneshi Marine I built at an earlier point look more, well, Slaaneshi:

So far for my first round of experiments with the Skullreaper/Wrathmonger kit. In any case, I’d like to point out that I am really going to take my time with these guys, so it will probably be a good long while before I complete all five models. Even so, I’ll be using some of the additional bitz from the kit for all kinds of projects, so you’ll be seeing a lot of stuff from this kit making an appearance in Khorne’s Eternal Hunt! ;)

III. Generosity

In a move of nearly unbelievable generosity, Commissar Molotov recently sent me a huge pile of stuff, including a lot of leftover Dark Vengeance Chosen and Chosen parts. It’s his generosity that has made my experiments above possible, for which I am very thankful. But that’s not even all: Mol provided an amazing bitz drop with lots and lots of fantastic contents. For instance, he sent me this wonderful Kharn conversion: Malthus Dire, a champion of Khorne:

Model converted by Commissar Molotov

Mol informed me that this conversion is actually about ten years old! Which goes to show that good, clean conversion work never goes out of style. It also goes without saying that I’ll make sure to paint him up to the best of my abilities, in Mol’s honour!

I have also used yet another Chosen from the batch he sent me for a different conversion: Taking inspiration from DexterKong’s brilliant World Eaters counts as Huron Blackheart, I have created my own version of the character for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt. Now my version is certainly somewhat less impressive than Dexter’s, and it’s not a true scale model either, seeing how it needs to be scaled correctly to fit the rest of my army, but I am nevertheless very happy with it. Take a look:

As you can see, most of stock Huron’s characteristic elements are there — I even got a bit of a kick out of having the model in a pose similar to that of the stock model, albeit more dynamic. Oh, and let me just add that the axe was inspired by a similar (albeit much more elegant) weapon conversion done by Biohazard!

One thing I really like is how carefully shaving off the original head allowed me to keep some of the cabling from the stock head and make it look like they are feeding into the bionic side of the head:

The model’s pretty much finished at this point — although I am still considering whether or not to add some longer claws to the left fist…

So, as you can see, the great forges of the Blood God are running hot right now! I’d be happy to hear any feedback you might have about these models! Just drop me a comment and feel free to share suggestions or ideas of your own! And expect more Khornate madness soon ;)

Until then, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

“Your Emperor is no god. He is a lost soul, forever trapped within an oubliette of his own decaying flesh. If there is any justice in this world or the next, he must be howling for release somewhere in there. When one of us comes for his shriveled skull, on that last day, it will be a mercy.”

Lord Captain Lorimar of the World Eaters’ 4th assault company

Welcome to this week’s update and to the conclusion of what we may certainly call a long-time project. To make a long story short, today’s post will deal with the finished model for Lord Captain Lorimar, the supreme commander of my World Eaters force, Khorne’s Eternal Hunt. I have literaly spent years on perfecting a model for this character, and I am really happy to finally be able to present the finished piece to you! But all in good order…

I have written – at length – about how hard it was to create a model that was a fitting representation for Lorimar, but in the end, I came up with a suitable conversion. This one:

I am not going to regurgitate the whole story of the model’s inception here (just check out the post linked above to learn the whole story), so suffice it to say that the model was mainly the consequence of three main pieces of inspiration:

image appears courtesy of Games Workshop

This first piece shouldn’t surprise you: After all, the finished model on its base clearly resembles the art. This particular illustration came from Fantasy Flight Games’ Dark Heresy, and pretty much perfectly embodies what a Chaos Lord should look like, if you ask me.

At the same time, I also wanted Lorimar to look somewhat more noble and composed than the guy above. The inspiration for that aspect of his character came from this piece of art:

Still very much a Chaos Lord, but one who is somewhat more regal and brooding, a look I really tried to achieve on my own model as well.

And finally, there was also an inspiration in actual model form: Wade Pryce’s absolutely gorgeous Lord Lucid Furien Kain:

Model built and painted by Wade Pryce

Wade’s World Eaters army may just be the best World Eaters army in existence, and his Chaos Lord is possibly the greatest piece of all — what better role model to emulate, I ask you?

So my own model for Lord Captain Lorimar clearly tried to incorporate elements from all three sources and combine them into something I was tremendously happy with — however, the next complicated part was to actually work up the courage to paint the model!

All in all, it took me no less than three years, and it was a hobby event over at The Bolter and Chainsword that finally provided the incentive I needed: Fellow hobbyist and all around great guy Augustus b’Raass kicked off his very own event – Augustus’ Arena – and my Brother-Slaughterer Biohazard and I took this occasion to challenge each other to finally complete our respective Chaos Lords.

A short while later, Biohazard had already completed his gorgeous model for Lork Malek Deimos, master of the World Eaters’ 18th company:

model built and painted by Biohazard

Brilliant, don’t you think? There’s a reason Biohazard’s army is yet another one of my favourite World Eaters forces, after all (make sure to check out his army at your earliest possible convenience! Seriously!) ;) But this also meant there was no weaseling out of this challenge: I was bound by honour to finally paint Lorimar, come what may.

So I cleaned the model and prepared it for undercoating — and, as it happens, I also made a fairly substantial last minute change, because I found out that the model looked even more imposing with a different cape: the massive wolf pelt that comes with the Space Wolves Terminators:

I had really only tried the cape for the heck of it, but I really liked the outcome! So I removed the ill-fitting wolf head, made a few small changes to the cape to make sure it fit the model’s body and also found out by sheer coincidence that the whole piece worked much better when turned around by 180 degrees on its base. So here was the finished model, right before undercoating:

Oh, and don’t worry: The original cape will still be used on the eventual, inevitable mounted version of Lorimar — scout’s honour! ;)

By this time, the deadline I had set for myself was already fast approaching, so I broke out the paints and gave it my all. And after a couple of days, the model I hadn’t dared to paint for three years finally stood before me in full colour. So without further ado, I give you Lord Captain Baltus Lorimar, commander of the World Eaters’ 4th assault company and Master of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt:

It feels strange to finally have finished Lorimar: On the one hand, I could probably name a thousand things that I could have done better. But on the other hand, I am extremely happy with the model — and really proud of finally having finished this particular project. I also think that Lorimar is a very worthy commander for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, and a definite centre piece for my army. He remains intimidating, even when placed into the midst of his personal retinue, Lorimar’s Fist:

I think I have mentioned before how I wanted each of these models to be unique, and I think I have suceeded with that, wouldn’t you agree?

A very heartfelt thank you to Biohazard, without whom Lorimar would probably have remained unpainted for another couple of years. In fact, seeing how this project has basically been a collaboration between the two of us, I even whipped up a small image to commemorate the occasion:

But wait, there’s more! Because with today’s update, you actually get two models for the price of one, so to speak!

In addition to my 40k version of Lorimar, I have also been sitting on a 30k version of the same character for a good long while: Some of you may remember when I picked up some models from my fellow German hobbyist AgnostosTheos a while ago. The two of us had been engaging in a little project where AT was going to build 30k versions for some of my World Eaters. But then he sold off his army, unfortunately, and left me with no other choice than to pick up some of the pieces. Among those pieces was a converted Terminator model that I thought would be a rather nice fit for a 30k version of Lorimar:

Model built and painted by AgnostosTheos

As you can see, the model was already basically finished, save for the hands and weapons — so it was really easy to choose fitting weapons to make the character resemble his 40k incarnation. I also built a base for the model (and, again, made it subtly similiar to the 40k version). And here’s the result: Captain Baltus Lorimar circa M32:

Again, just to be perfectly clear: I can merely claim responsibility for the hands, weapons and base. The rest of the model was beautifully painted by AgnostosTheos! Oh, and I did add a chain decal to Lorimar’s right vambrace:

This is a sign of him having won his captaincy in the fighting pits by slaying his commanding officer — a rather important part of his backstory!

I am also rather happy with the arid ground on the model’s base, created by a generous helping of Agrellan Earth:

And here’s a comparison shot with both the Pre- and Post Heresy versions of the character:

I am really happy with those two guys, to be honest ;)

And finally, after having met so many of Lorimar’s subordinates and after having seen the man himself, all that remains is to take a closer look at his personal background:

Lord Captain Baltus Lorimar, commander of the World Eaters’ 4th assault company and Master of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt:

Baltus Lorimar has been the 4th assault company’s commander ever since the days of the Great Crusade. A divisive figure among the officers of his sundered legion due to his actions at the battle of Skalathrax, Lorimar has nevertheless managed to stay in command of one of the biggest World Eaters warbands, and one of the few still managing to maintain some kind of discipline and order.

Born on the blasted plains of Europa in the aftermath of the Unification Wars, Lorimar was indentured into the growing Legiones Astartes as part of the tithe the Terran clans had to pay to the Emperor who had defeated them. He became a legionary of the XII Legion, quickly rising to the position of a line officer during the Great Crusade. When the legion was reunited with its Primarch, Lorimar had been stripped of his command and incarcerated by Valna, Captain of the War Hounds’ 4th assault company, because he had refused an Imperial noble’s order to execute a squad of abhuman auxiliarii after a battle. Once the Primarch came across Lorimar during his inspection of the legion flagship, he freed him and offered him another chance to prove himself. This act made Lorimar fiercely loyal to Angron, and he would continue to follow the Primarch unquestioningly, even as his fellow legionaries grew more and more wary of the Red Angel. Lorimar later won his captaincy in the fighting pits, killing his former captain Valna and taking command of the 4th.

During the latter days of the Great Crusade, the 4th fought in the Eastern Fringe at the side of the Word Bearer’s Piercing Gaze Chapter. Lest the 4th evade the corrupting influence of the ruinous powers, First Chaplain Erebus of the XVIIth tasked the Chaplain of the Piercing Gaze Chapter, Belzas Azalon, with introducing warrior lodges and the covert worship of the Primordial Truth to the 4th assault company. Azalon brought Lorimar into contact with the Cult of Cron, a warrior cult the young captain eagerly adopted in order to provide his company with an identity and a code of martial honour.

Once the 4th was reunited with the rest of the legion, Lorimar was very pleased to see that a similar warrior culture had begun to form all across the legion, with the legionaries accepting their Primarch’s gladiatorial origins and cobbling together a mongrel culture from it.

Captain Lorimar at Istvaan

The Heresy itself went by in a red haze, with Lorimar, like many of his battle brothers, growing more and more into a frenzied madman. He and his company were on their way to madness and damnation until the Skalathrax campaign. During the Long Night of Skalathrax, Lorimar suddenly came to and realised, in a terrible moment of lucidity, that the actions of 8th Captain Khârn were about to shatter the legion and wipe out the company he had sacrificed everything for.

In a move nearly unprecedented for a World Eaters officer, Lorimar and the remains of his company withdrew from Skalathrax before the battle was over. While Lorimar’s actions saved a substantial part of the company and made sure it would continue to function as a fairly coherent fighting force, they also earned him the disdain, if not enmity, of many of his fellow officers, who still refer to him as “Lorimar the Craven”.

Ever since, the 4th has been just as threatened by the corrupting influence of chaos and the madness of the Butcher’s Nails as every other World Eaters warband. To combat the effects of this decline and in order to keep the madness at bay, Lorimar used the ancient warrior codes of his company to formulate an ethos strictly based on honour and martial pride: His company embarked upon an Eternal Hunt, endeavouring to kill the strongest warriors and run down the worthiest prey.

Even though the 4th has remained a fairly large and coherent force, the legionaries always have to fight against the encroaching madness, with infighting and rampant frenzy all too common within the company. So far, Lorimar has managed to quell these uprisings with an iron fist.

When not on the battlefield, the Lord Captain is given to bouts of dark brooding, filled with resentment at the ruination of his legion, with disgust at the depths to which many of his former brothers have sunk, and with burning hatred at Khârn, whom he considers the destroyer of the XII Legion.

Let me know what you think! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Today’s post will deal with something slightly different — but don’t fret: We will of course be talking about our favourite hobby, after all. In fact, I have prepared a small tutorial that some of you may find helpful. So what is this about?

When my recent writeup about Lord Captain Lorimar was complete and published, I went back to the photo montage I had made for the model and made a couple of tweaks, resulting in a picture that I like even better than its predecessor:

Now when I posted this on my various forum threads, two things happened. One, fellow hobbyist Kythnos asked me for a similar picture for his own Iron Warriors Warsmith and two, several people inquired about my recipe for creating images like this. And I have actually been posting edited images involving my models for quite a while now, although I certainly don’t consider myself an expert when it comes to image editing — in fact, I am still very much finding my feet when it comes to various techniques.

But I did make that photo montage for Kythnos after all. Here’s what it looks like:

And I realised that, while I may not be an expert, I have managed to come up with a relatively reliable recipe for creating this kind of pictures — brilliantly dubbed “glamour shots” by Flint13 in a recent post.

Now I realise that those pictures may be a somewhat divisive feature: When I first posted a couple of them, some of my readers seemed concerned that these would replace “normal” photos of miniatures on this blog. But these pictures aren’t a replacement for good, honest miniature photography, and certainly shouldn’t be treated as such. This is rather about exploring your models (and the characters they represent) from a different angle, about imagining how they would actually look on the battlefields of the 41st millennium. It’s about creating the dramatic, often hilariously overwrought, scenes we all know and love from the background. And, by extension, it can also become an additional way to start thinking about your models as characters rather than mere playing pieces, and I’ve always been a huge advocate of that!

Anyway, to make a long story short, what follows is a small tutorial about creating suitably dramatic and garish “glamour shots” for your models. I’ll give you the short version (for now), although we may actually revisit parts of this in more detail at some point.

Anyway, before we start, a disclaimer of sorts:

• This doesn’t represent THE foolproof way of creating images like this, but just one way that has worked reasonably well for me. I am 100% sure that there are far more elegant and/or accomplished ways for going about this, and people who are more knowledgeable about Photoshop will probably laugh about my fumbling efforts — fair enough, I say. I am absolutely not claiming to be a professional here, and this is therefore a very “quick and dirty” approach.
• I am also definitely not the first person to do a tutorial on this, but have rather been very lucky to find some excellent tutorials by other people to get me started: A brief but excellent writeup by Tyler Mengel showed me the ropes, and fellow German hobbyist Talarion introduced my to Pixlr, making my life much easier in the process. So thanks must go to them as well!
• When it comes to procuring suitable backdrops for your photos, there’s a big temptation to just steal everything you need from the internet — and to be honest, I have occasionally been guilty of the same crime. However, I try to go for pictures that are (or at least that I consider) fair game, i.e. stuff that is freely available and in the public domain. I will occasionally use material from GW or FW themselves, admittedly, but as I have no plan of using any of this commercially, I hope this constitutes fair use (bottom line, please don’t sue me, GW!). But please don’t just go stealing other people’s work left and right, alright?
• Finally, I will be using Adobe Photoshop for the first part of this tutorial. Similar software is freely available (GIMP would be one example, and there is also the web-based version of Pixlr). Most major functions are fairly similar across various programs, and I am not going into the differences and kinks of the software here. Neither will I be focusing on the details: Using this tutorial will require some (very) basic knowledge of image editing.

With that out of the way, here goes:

What you will need:

• a photo of your model(s) in suitable quality, taken against a neutral background (preferrably white, grey or beige). The photo needs to be sharp, in focus and bright enough. There are some excellent tutorials about how to take good pictures of your models here and here, for starters.
• some kind of image editing software, i.e. Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or Pixlr or whatever else works for you.
  
• I will be using the desktop version of Autodesk’s Pixlr for the second half of this tutorial, in order to add effects and certain colour hues. This isn’t a necessary step, but Pixlr will make things much easier here, especially if you have little knowledge about Photoshop, and the software is free, so I recommend you download it.

And with that, we’re off:

First up, I am going to use a picture of Biohazard’s Lord Malek Deimos — both because Biohazard probably won’t mind, and because I like the idea that he’ll end up with a cool picture of his Chaos Lord, because he’s my buddy ;)

So here’s the picture I chose:

model built and painted by Biohazard

The picture is a bit more grainy than it should be, but it’ll do. It’s against a white background, which is great, because it will make cutting out the model far easier. If you want, you can play around with brightness, contrast and the levels a bit at this stage, in order to make the photo a bit more crisp and rich in contrast.

The first thing you want to do is to duplicate the layer on which your image is, so that you have the background layer (the original image) and another layer above it (also your original image, but that will change shortly). Select this new layer.

Now Photoshop (or any software functioning roughly like Photoshop) has a selection tool usually called the “magic wand”. What this does is to select a particular colour present in the image — which is why you want the background to be in a neutral colour. So select the magic wand tool and click on a part of the white background. It’ll create a selection. If you press Shift while selecting additional white areas, they will be added to your selection. The selection will be marked by a blinking border:

Don’t forget any white areas! There is also a way of having Photoshop auto-select every bit of white on the canvas, but that would mean all the white that’s part of the actual model as well, and we don’t want that. So make sure to select all the bits of white background, until it looks like the picture above. Then invert your selection (this function can normally has its own tab, or it can be found under “Edit”. Once you have done this, the border will be running around your model rather than around the entire canvas.

[I do realise of course that other kinds of selection tools exist, and if you’re familiar with them — great! However, for the sake of brevity, we’ll be sticking to the magic wand here ;) ]

If you want the photo montage to look convincing, we’ll have to get rid of the last remnants of white background, reflections etc. So reduce your selection by one or two pixels. If you want to make it look even more believable, you can also add a slightly blurry edge to the selection (so the model won’t look quite as much like a cutout). Once you’re happy, copy the selection and add it into a new layer. At this point, you should have the original image in the background, the layer above (with the original photo’s background, but minus the actual model) and a third layer with the model as a cutout on top. Delete the middle layer, as we won’t be needing it any longer. And you should set the bottom (background) layer to invisible, so the canvas looks like this:

The little checkerboard pattern in the background shows that this area is transparent. To make things easier for you, you can fill the background layer with a solid colour (or create a new layer for that), because it will make the model’s edges easier to see. Like so:

Not bad, eh? But some remnants of the orignal background and some reflections remain. In the above picture, it’s very obvious on the arm holding the sword.

Now if you’re just in for the quick and dirty version, you can simply ignore this, but your model will probably end up looking like it has a halo in the finished picture. So in order to get rid of this, you select the eraser tool and choose a paintbrush with slightly blurry edges…

…then set it to a size you are comfortable with and carefully work away at those edges that look like they are glowing. Be careful not to take away too much and rather work in multiple increments! If you make a mistake, you can always undo your last couple of steps!

In the end, you will have a cleaned up version of your model:

It’s a subtle difference, to be fair, but it’ll be worth it in the end — trust me ;)

Next step: the background. Find a suitable background image you would like to use (I chose a promo image for the Armageddon PC game, showing a hive that seems to have been mashed together using Google Images results for “gothic architecture” ;) Copy it into your picture so it will end up in a separate layer:

You will probably have to move the model around a bit at this stage, in order to make it fit the background. I also added in an extra step here and blended in some additional ground texture (I used a suitable photo I had taken, copied it into my canvas and just erased all the areas I didn’t need). Here’s the finished composite:

I also cleaned away the parts of the base that didn’t work — especially the black rim.

Okay, time for some colour correction: You can now bring up a menu to control the pictures colour hue and saturation with CTRL-U (for Photoshop at least). Try to make the model’s hue and saturation roughly fit the background (this is especially important if you have a very brightly lit model against a very drab background image):

In this case, I wanted the model to look a bit more desaturated. Just play around with this — if you don’t like the outcome, you can always undo your actions.

The next thing that’s important is to use blur: In the above picture, the hive in the back is very sharp and crisp, while the model seems a bit fuzzy. So we need to blur the background. Select your background layer and select the “Blur” function (under “Filter”, normally). There’s a very handy tool called the “Gaussian Blur” that will let you select how strong you want the blurring to be:

Once you’re happy with the background, give the layer with the model the same treatment — although with much less blur applied. This should only make the entire picture seem a bit more realistic. Make sure not to obscure any important detail on the model during this step!

Once this is done, all that remains is to make some final adjustments to the picture’s contrast and levels:

As an optional step, I wanted Deimos to have a glowing daemonsword in the finished picture. I won’t go into too much detail about the effect for now. Suffice it to say that I basically duplicated the model’s sword, copied it into a new layer and changed the colour. Like this:

And since I wanted the glow to be pretty noticeable, the colour needed to be even louder:

Since the blade existed on its own layer, I could safely play around with it without it affecting the rest of the image. When I was happy with the colour, I once again added the Gaussian Blur effect, and…

It ended up looking pretty cool. Now I duplicated this layer several times, changed the transpareny around and blended the various layers into each other until it looked like this:

Like I said, I might detail those steps further in the future. But since it’s an entirely nonessential step, let’s move on for now: One last adjustment of contrast and levels, and we are basically done with Photoshop. Here’s the end result:

Not bad, not bad at all! We could even call it finished at this point!

In any case, whatever you do, you should definitely save a copy of this picture, once you like the result. And you should always keep a separate copy of this version for future use:

Now while it would be possible to do everything else in Photoshop as well, you can make your life a bit easier by switching to Pixlr for the next steps. Pixlr is a bit of a one-trick pony in that it has been designed to add various effects and colour hues to photos — and precious little else. While this would also be possible in Photoshop, Pixlr makes it really easy for you because it does most of the thinking for you.

So let’s open up our picture in Pixlr.

And from here on out, the world’s your oyster, really: You can add any combination of pre-set colour effects. Like this:

As you can see, I’ve gone for a fiery, reddish hue in this case. But most of the colour effects look awesome in their own way, so just play around with them until you’re happy. This is what my picture looked like after this step:

What’s really great, though, is that Pixlr also lets you add some effects, filters and borders. Some of them are downright horrible, some are pretty situational, but some – especially the various grungy borders – will make some of your earlier errors and inaccuracies in the picture disappear:

So layer some of these on top, and your picture will instantly look grittier and more realistic. Of course this is cheating: We are covering up our mistakes here. But as long as it looks cool… ;)

So here’s the finished picture, with one of my favourite borders added to top things off:

What’s really cool is that the picture could have looked completely different with a couple of different effect employed. Here I created a much more somber atmoshphere by using a different colour effect and a rain filter:

It goes without saying that you don’t even have to photoshop in a suitable background in the first place! If you have some 40k/tabletop terrain at home, you can just take photos of your models in front of it and work from there — if anything, this should make your life easier!

By the same token, making a photo montage of a single model against a background is really just the beginning. There’s nothing stopping you from trying something a little more involved, such as, say, making a composite image of your army ravaging a planet:

Here’s a Photoshop composite I made depicting a part of my World Eaters army in action:

Here I duplicated various layers of the image, making the same ten Khorne berzerkers look like an entire army. As you can see, I also added in a Helbrute and my Wargrinder. Oh, and I used the same background images that appear in Tyler Mengel’s post linked above (This picture was simply my attempt at reproducing his recipe for my own models). Even so, the image is hardly convincing, right? Not enough gritty realism and too many gooey areas of sub-par photoshopping…

Well, here’s what the whole picture looked like with a bit of Pixlr magic sprinkled on top:

Once again, the various filters and effects are doing a great job of camouflaging the many rough spots present in the earlier image. Like I said, it’s cheating — but we can use it in our favour here ;)

On the other hand, you don’t even need to create elaborate montages like that, either: Just use some of your existing photos and go play around with them a bit for starters! Some of my first experiments in this vein can be found here.

Whatever you do, remember that you are not trying to pass of your models as something they are not — you are just exploring another facet of the hobby. So give it your all and don’t forget to have fun along the way!

Thanks to Biohazard for – unwittingly – providing the material for this: Cheers, buddy! ;) And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

They have finally given us plastic AdMech!

…

I repeat: THEY HAVE FINALLY GIVEN US PLASTIC ADMECH!

Seriously, though: I am pretty sure it’s no exaggeration to say that, for many hobbyists, the introduction of the Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii as a separate faction is wish-fulfillment of the first order. There’s just something about the Adeptus Mechanicus that’s so quintessentially grimdark and 40k that it makes the faction almost irresistible to some of us — myself included.

If you grew up with 40k at a certain time and share a certain mindset, then you will have looked forward to any AdMech release just as much as me: I remember coming across illustrations like this John Blanche piece…

Illustration by John Blanche

or this equally brilliant piece by Jes Goodwin…

Illustration by Jes Goodwin

…and starting to wonder what the deal with those Mechanicus guys was. Those ponderings formed the foundation for an ongoing fascination with the Adeptus Mechanicus, and I think the main reason for this fascination is the fact that, not unlike the Adepta Sororitas, the Adeptus Mechanicus is very much at the heart of what makes 40k such a memorable setting: The eclecticism, rampant anachronisms and grimdark feel of these ancient guardians of knowledge (or should that be ignorance?) are what make them so cool. Their heavily augmented, red-robed forms are as iconic of the darker, more Blanchian side of 40k as the colourful, slightly more modern Space Marines are of mainline 40k.

And to be honest, we never really expected there to be an official plastic AdMech release, did we? I think I speak for all of us AdMech aficionados when I say that we would probably have been happy with a clamshell character or two. And many people were overjoyed at Forgeworld making the Mechanicum a faction in the Horus Heresy setting. But plastic AdMech in 40k proper? Unthinkable!

And yet, here it is! So let us take a look at all the new kits and discuss their high and low points. And it goes without saying that we will also be looking at the possible conversion options. All hail the Machine! ;)

Skitarii Rangers/Skitarii Vanguard:

Okay, this is our very first AdMech plastic infantry kit, and right out of the gate, we can see that GW means business.
The kit gives us the option to assemble two types of infantry: Skitarii Rangers and Skitarii Vanguard. Let’s start with the Rangers, because these guys are so quintessentially AdMech with their red robes, cowled and masked heads and heavy augmentations: And not only do they closely resemble the picture many hobbyists have had of the Skitarii, but I also think it’s really stunning how closely these models…

..resemble the Skitarii artwork by none other than John Blanche himself. Just check it out:

Skitarius by John Blanche

This is just the first of several instances where the new models tap into the well established look for the faction, but once again, it’s really amazing to finally have the models to fit the artwork!

One thing that stands out about this kit as well as the whole release is the use of anachronism in the design of the models, particularly the weapons. The inclusion of a very WFB Empire-like sniper rifle serves as a sterling example of this:

Now this certainly goes for all of 40k to some degree, but it’s especially obvious with the Skitarii weapons, both due to their design as well as their idiosyncratic nature: On the surface, these are some really elegant weapons, with beautifully decorated grips and delicate, slender designs, lending a strong 19th century feeling to the models. At the same time, there’s a rather chilling contrast between the very classy, elegant design of the weapons and their terrible function: In a world as grimdark as 40k, the Tech Priests of Mars alone are big enough bastards to let their troops use weapons that not only irradiate the surroundings but also the very soldiers wielding them.

In any case, these guys are very close to the well established Skitarii image and provide us with some wonderful plastic renditions of the art we all love so much — very nice!

The other option is to assemble the kit as ten Skitarii Vanguard, with different weapons and heads:

And while the very different look of the Vanguard helmets when compared to the usual, cowled AdMech look did take some getting used to, I find myself growing more and more fond of these guys: There is something very neo-Prussian about them, which adds to the 19th century feeling of the models. And at the same time, there’s also a palpable influence of 50s SciFi evident in the models’ design.

All the parts in the kit are beautifully detailed and present some of GW’s finest work in plastic. The resulting models are wonderfully scaled, slender and detailed, with a brilliant contrast between flowing robes and highly busy technical components. One piece of criticism I have seen leveled at the kit is that the models seem relatively “safe” and “clean”, mostly devoid of the rampant body horror and man/machine fusion we get in some of the more extreme AdMech artwork. But while that may be true, I would argue that it seems sensible to make the main infantry kit for the faction a bit more restrained — there will be ample body horror later, for one, plus it should also be really easy to make these guys as distressed as you want them to be via some kitbashing. But more on that later!

One last thing I love about the kit is how it gives us ten models to play around with — and at a fairly reasonable price, at that. Sure, ten squad members used to be norm rather than the exception, but so many of the more recent kits have used five models as a new standard that it’s really nice to see a bigger squad again!

All in all, this kit is fantastic and feels like an almost compulsory purchase for every 40k aficionado. Excellent job!

Sicarian Infiltrators/ Sicarian Ruststalkers

Another multi-kit, so we are certainly getting our money’s worth out of this new plastic crack! Both variants of the kit make for some very unique models, so let’s take a look at both of them in turn:

Let’s start with the Infiltrators: Man, I just love these guys: They look every bit the lithe, deadly assassins they are supposed to be. The grafted-on augmetic stilts do a perfect job of making them taller and giving them a more unique silhouette, and their bionic arms with the transonic blades add to that effect. I also really like the gas-masked heads: These guys just have the “Clockwork Ninja” look down pat:

It also looks like their arm blades can be used to achieve all kinds of bad-ass ninja poses. And I love how they are tall and impressive enough to use Termie bases, yet their slender silhouette still ties them in with the classic AdMech look. It’s also noticeable how the lack of robes actually works in their favour, making them look far more dynamic and deadly — beautiful!

Speaking of robes, there’s also the squad’s Princeps:

And, if anything, he’s even cooler than his charges! Seriously, I love this guy: The cowled, heavily cabled face, the voluminous robes extra set of servo-arms — he’s just everything I would expect of a highly combative member of the AdMech. If I have one gripe with this guy, it’s that he almost looks a tad too far removed from the rest of the squad — more like a proper Tech Priest and less like a mere unit champ. But the model itself is pretty much perfect, which is why I’ll let it slide. One more thing: You’ve got to love that evil looking claw, don’t you think?

Apart from that, my only point of critique about the Infiltrators is that the various doodads dangling down from the models’ backpack seem to work against the models’ otherwise very clean and uncluttered silhouette. I guess how these are supposed to be recurring elements all across the army, but they are slightly surplus to requirements here, if you ask me. But ultimately, that is a very minor problem — I just love these guys, period.

There’s also the option of assembling the models as Sicarian Ruststalkers, a squad of high-tech soldiers jamming transmissions and frying enemy brains with their constant broadcasting of the AdMech version of deadly white noise:

These guys have a very obvious 50s SciFi look going on, and their domed helmets really do a good job of communicating their function. I also like the alternative set of weapons — especially the grimdark uzis ;) One thing that I really want to point out is how similar these guys are to a 1990s concept for Imperial robots, courtesy of Jes Goodwin. Just see for yourselves:

What a wonderful way of giving a shout out to these older, yet still wonderful, concept sketches!

Ultimately, I like these guys slightly less than the Infiltrators, but that may just be me: They are a bit goofier and slightly less sinister and lethal looking. What I really like is how a change of heads and weapons really transforms the models!

One thing, though: Doesn’t it just look like the squad leader has a Santa Claus beard made of cabling:

I just cannot unsee this now, especially with that red cloak… Erm…that is one bad ass looking servo-skull, though, so I think that makes up for the slightly dubious head ;)

It also bears mentioning that these guys are less clean and more sinister than the Vanguard/Rangers, hewing closer to the more demented side of AdMech lore. So if the other footsloggers feel too safe for you, these guys should be right up your alley! There’s also something chilling about their backstory: Skitarii so damaged by their prior years of service that their only use is to be turned into utterly terrifying killing machines.

Ultimately, I love this kit just as much as the Vanguard/Ranger kit: One of the main pitfalls for this army must have been to maintain the balance between having a strong look of visual coherency (these are machine soldiers, after all) while also having the different units look original enough. These models are a great variation of the look introduced by the Vanguard/Ranger kit, and I will certainly pick up a box of these sooner rather than later! Fantastic!

Ironstrider Ballistarius/ Sydonian Dragoon

Okay, this third kit certainly ups the ante when it comes to grimdark visuals and puts us slap bang in the middle of Blanchian design sensibilities.

The Ironstrider Ballistarius is the AdMech idea of a mobile weapons platform — and didn’t you just expect these guys to have something pretty interesting going for that? The result is a beautifully eclectic, avian walker with some very noticeable design parallels to the Imperial Knight (the armour plates on the legs make this especially obvious), creating a strong and very fitting visual connection between the two subfactions.

Oh, and this has to be one of my favourite heads designed by GW:

By changing around the various rider bitz and main weapon, we actually get a sub-variant of this kit with a sniper focus:

You may call me crazy, but (mostly due to the 19th century design of the weapons) I am getting a massive “big game hunter” feeling from this version of the kit, which I think is fantastic!

The real star of the show, however, has to be the Sydonian Dragoon:

In his recent review of the kit, Dave Taylor calls the idea of a retro-futuristic Knight riding a birdlike walker and wielding a massive taser lance a wonderful case of “bringing a knife to a gunfight”, and that is a very apt description. What’s more, in many ways this embodies the very spirit of 40k itself: Fighting the wars of the future with the weapons of the past. All the weapons of the past, to be precise — and at the same time, no less ;)

The Neo-Prussian look is also back in full force here, with the rider actually going to war complete with a trusty Pickelhaube helmet. This leads to a fantastic and ultimately smooth blend of medieval knight, 18th/19th century design sensibilities and all the clockpunk/dieselpunk touches you could ask for in a single model.

The result is a model that is, at the same time, the quintessential retro-fururistic steampunk knight and also basically 40k in a nutshell. A real triumph! And I can easily see this guy making his way into the display cabinets of countless hobbyists, even if they have no intention whatsoever of starting a Skitarii force.

So, is everything perfect about this kit? Well, I do have one small issue, to be honest:

The servitor controlling the machine’s movement just seems a bit too BDSM for my taste. Now don’t get me wrong: It’s a very grimdark element. It’s just that it’s almost too much (and there’s also the fact that, god help me, it really reminds me of a particular invention by South Park’s Mr. Garrison, called the IT bike — google at your own risk, as it’s definitely NSFW. You have been warned!).

But that’s just my personal taste, of course, and what’s more, it’s just one detail. All in all, this kit is nothing short of spectacular! This release really goes from strength to strength!

Onager Dunecrawler

And finally, ostrich-like walkers are all well and good, but you certainly cannot have a 40k faction without a beefy tank, can you? ;) So this is it, the Adeptus Mechanicus’ idea of a tank. And it does have insectile legs, of course — no surprise there.

My first thought when seeing this was actually “Oh look, it’s GW doing a Dust:Tactics tank!” And sure enough, there’s more than a little resemblance between this kit and some of the Dust models. But then, spider legged WWII-esque walkers have certainly been done before, so I guess we can let it slide ;)

Obvious inspirations aside, this was possibly my least favourite part of the release, initially. The juxtaposition of the spindly, elegant legs and the bulky main body just seemed a bit off for my taste.

However, the owner of my FLGS – a huge tank aficionado, both when it comes to historical tanks and crazy, half-organic deathmobiles – pointed out to me that some builds of the model look far better than others. The option with the twin-linked autocannon and rocket launcher above is pretty cool, whereas some of the other setups I have seen look overly busy. In fact, the more I think about it the more obvious it becomes to me that the model looks better with a slightly stripped-down silhouette:

Which it why I would probably leave off those strange manipulators/drills and just use the headlights instead- it seems to me like the less busy builds end up looking far better.

So while some of the additional detail, as well as some of the more esoteric weapons, may be beautifully designed, I feel that the model works better with a tidier, more workmanlike look. Interestingly enough, its design makes this tank more futuristic than your regular old IG tank, yet also more retro in a sense, as there is a very palpable WWI /WWII feeling to the whole affair — only with some added spider legs ;)

Speaking of which, the spider legs once again form a visual connection with the Imperial Knight kit — and I think the Onager could even be seen as a bit of a missing link between Imperial warmachines and the dreaded Defiler: While the Defiler was designed from the ground up by the Traitor Legions, I like the idea that the Magi of the Dark Mechanicum should have come up with designs not all that different from those of their loyal counterparts ;)

All in all, while the Onager lacks the shock and awe brilliance of the other kits in this release, I have to say that it’s a kit that grows on you over time. And in a game full of boxy, uninspired tanks, something like the Onager is certainly a welcome change of pace!

Conversion options:

It shouldn’t surprise you that the first AdMech conversions using the new kits are already cropping up all over the internet — after all, we’ve had to make ends meet for years, with no “official” AdMech plastic parts available. And what a treasure trove of conversion options these new kits provide to the enterprising converter! Let’s take a look:

Vanguard/Rangers:

The INQ28 crowd are already going nuts over this kit, so I think we can look forward to seeing all kinds of Inquisitorial and unsavoury characters seeing the light of day due to this release. I’ve collected a couple of very cool examples for you:

• Weirdingway is really putting the kit through its paces, creating some wonderful hybrids of Skitarii and other models. His Tech Gang is especially noteworthy, proving that the Skitarii can work wonderfully as Confrontation-style Tech Gangers (seriously, GW, what is it with all the hidden Confrontation conversion bitz lately? Is there some bigger plan at play here?), voidship crews or similar archetypes.
• EdT, well known for his brilliant warband concepts, is hard at work on another fantastic crew of characters, with some excellent insectile Skitarii on the way that bring the kit more in line with the darker, more inhuman side of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Morbäck of Le blog dé Kouzes has come up with a wonderful way of using Skitarii bitz for converting an excellent Imperial Rogue Trader/Pilot: The way the Vanguard helmets can be made to look like pilot helmets is especially brilliant!
• And John Blanche himself has been working on some truly excellent and evocative kitbashes using some of the new Skitarii parts — check them out over at the Ammobunker!

All these examples are ample proof that the kit will work great for any kind of AdMech related conversion, even though kitbashing these guys requires a bit of thought, due to the way the body and legs go together. That said, even beyond the Skitarii bodies, the kit also provides some beautiful conversion bitz: Those hooded Ranger heads will make Tech Priest conversion much easier, and the beautiful Vanguard helmets would look great on mechanised IG regiments: Maybe this would be a cool way of giving your Astra Militarum detachment that special AdMech look, supposing you want to use a combination of both factions. Come to think of it, there’s even a noticeable Solar Auxilia resemblance, so these heads may be an interesting way of approximating the Solar Auxilia look without having to purchase the FW models. At the same time, they will also work well for Enforcers or even Arbites for Necromunda or INQ28. It would also be interesting to play up the knightly angle of these guys and go for steampunk cavalry — or whatever else you can think of. And what about combining the Skitarii kit with some Dark Eldar Wrack parts? Wouldn’t that be a perfect start for some really creepy Dark Mechanicum models…? In fact, the whole Dark Mechanicum angle is pretty fascinating, with the Skitarii as a possible jumping-off point for all kinds of demented kitbashes. Even now, I find myself thinking of combining Skitarii with Skaven Stormvermin, Empire Flagellants or what have you. For starters, here are some very cool Dark Mechanicum Skitarii courtesy of InsanePsychopath, who has managed to come up with great models with just a few clever tweaks to the models and their paintjobs

Infiltrators/Ruststalkers:

Okay, let’s get the most obvious thing out of the way first: Since these models work so well as lithe, sinister assassin types, they would be great for any Inquisitor’s retinue: It would just take a few tweaks to turn them into Death Cultists with a penchant for body modifications or even a sub-variety of arco-flagellants. They could also be turned into Spyrers with a bit of work, because you can easily see these guys stalking their prey in the underhive, right?

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg: Consider Drazuul’s “Mecha-Nid”, for instance: Could there be a more chilling example of the (Dark) Mechanicum’s ingenuity than the thought of an enterprising Magos Genetor (or radical Inquisitor) trying to improve upon the biological killing machines constructed by the Hivemind?

In fact, the Infiltrators would also work as basic templates for all kinds of Dark Mechanicum killing machines, such as Bronze Malifects. Likewise, I could easily see those domed helmets from the Sicarian Ruststalkers for all kinds of robot/killdroid/drone conversions! And finally, the unit champ works great as a particularly combative Magos for INQ28, right out of the box.

Sydonian Dragoon / Ironstrider Ballistarius:

While it almost seems a bit sacrilegious to use this kit for anything else than its intended use, there are a couple of possible ideas knocking around in the back of my head: My first idea was that this kit would provide a pretty cool base for a – Blood Pact style – stalk tank for Traitor Guard forces. The model’s slightly more organic, creepy vibe when compared with the trusty old Sentinel would certainly make it a viable option for enterprising chaos converters!

Likewise, the legs and main body would probably be great for whenever an even more elaborate, ostentatious walker chassis is needed — for an Ecclesiarchy walker, a walking pulpit or even a kitbashed Penitent Engine.  And the kit provides a great pair of legs for every biomechanic monstrosity you could possibly think of, of course — what about making a Helbrute a bit more impressive by adding those Ironstrider legs, I wonder…?

Onager Dunestalker
Once again, the model should make for an excellent basic template when converting traitor (stalk) tanks: At the very least, the spider-legged build provides a visually much more interesting option for chaos players than the same old boxy Imperial tank models. Speaking of which, this kit should also come in handy when planning possible daemon engines. For instance, AMaxmius recently shared idead for a daemon engine with me that I am confident will put these legs to excellent use –check out his first post on the matter here.

Beyond that, suffice it to say that these legs should work wonderfully for your daemon engine needs, if you don’t want to use the Defiler legs, as those haven’t aged all that well by today’s standards…

So, when all is said and done, what to make of this release? To be honest, I was blown away by these kits! Just when we thought we’d seen it all, GW gives us the most Blanchian models in over a decade, channeling not only the wealth of AdMech artwork created over the years, but also lots of visual influences, from 50s SciFi to clockpunk, dieselpunk and steampunk. The result is something that seems pretty unique, yet also perfectly at home in the 40k setting. Pieces like the Sydonian Dragoon are just wonderfully evocative, while the Skitarii infantry kits provide us with lots of excellent tech-y conversion fodder. And even the less brilliant parts of the release (yes Onager, I am looking at you) are still fairly strong offerings, if seen on their own.

One thing that is interesting to note is the absence of actual Tech Priests (so far): Does GW intentionally stay out of the actual Cult Mechanicus in order not to step on FW’s toes? Or do the Skitarii serve as a test balloon or a mere prelude, with the Magi of Mars held back for a potential future release? The beauty of it is that it really doesn’t matter that much: Even if we never get a Mechanicus second wave, this release stands on its own as a fantastic design achievement — and it provided converters and kitbashers with all the toys they need for their AdMech needs.

All in all, I will have to call this a stellar release, both for its quality and focus as well as for the very fact that plastic AdMech is really happening at long last! I also have to say that these kits speak to me in a way that the FW Mechanicum designs do not (except for a few noteable exceptions like the Tech Thralls and that one tank looking like an art déco car). So yeah, fantastic work, GW! Respect where respect is due!

But what do you think about this release? Are you as happy with the new kits as I am, or do these men of metal leave you completely cold? And would you like to discuss any more conversion ideas? I would be happy to hear from you in the comments section!

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!