Instant Khorne - just add blood!

Prepped for well thinned red: 68 bloodletters, two heralds and one deamon prince.

Warp Spider WIP

Xmas Painting

In the last couple of days I caught up with some of the accusingly white Eldar models in my collection. I still need to add some base gravel and do the gems, but I'm very happy with the progress I made.

A tale of two Hell-Blades

Not too long ago, as part of my first Forgeworld order, I got a Hell-Blade body with badly warped tips and missing molding. As I understand is normal, Forgeworld customer service was helpful and - furnished with the details and a picture - happy to provide a replacement part.

Having worked a bit with resin now, I tried to get the warp out by heating, bending and setting the part with hot and cold water respectively, but was unable to get rid of the bent fork look.

When the replacement body arrived, I decided to get creative and used my hot air gun turned to 180 degrees Celsius instead. Funny enough, this did the trick. I scraped off the mostly missing modling.

The path was clear: I have to built the missing parts myself and get myself another Hell-Blade for my troubles! :)

Besides the Body, there is the tail including the pipes behind and the rear frame of the cockpit, the guns, the pilot, the cockpit cover and the turbine part at the end.

I used 1mm thick plasticard to make a tail section for the spare body, with some guitar or rather bass strings for the pipes. Heavy weapon team machine guns were doubled up and inverted to make twin-linked loooking machine guns.

The gun configuration is different, but clearly recognizable as what it is supposed to be. Good enough for me!

I cut templates out of paper, transferrred the outline to plasticard and cut out the two side window frames. Then I drilled small holes in each corner and lots of medium and big holes in the to be removed window space. Then I trimmed it down to a frame that can - after painting - receive a clear plastic sheet as window.

The original pilot is human rather than space marine sized. I guess that's why the ballistics skill is a point lower ;) I used a guardsman torso, trimmed down to remove the belt and back to fit and added a pointing arm as well as a combination of two other guard arms to make it look like he's fiddling with the controls. The head comes from a Dark Venegance cultist and ended up in my bits-collection when I converted loads of the buggers to look distinct.

Now I have to decide on a paint scheme. Decisions, decisions!

Legion Autocannon Upgrade Kit

Recently, I had to prox special weapons again. This made me sort all my CSM, take stock and get two boxes of regular chaos marines to assemble with special and heavy weapons. I had ordered two autocannon kits previously, and will focus on adapting those to the plastic csm kit.

The magazine backpack attachment does not fit the CSM backpack at all, obviously the mag is meant to fit snugly on a 30k backpack. In particular the CSM backpack is thicker in the lower area and this results in the mag's rear not being in line with the backpack's rear by about 2mm, which again results in thr ammo belt ending up in the wrong position relative to the models arms and weapon.

After some trials,  I settled on clipping the tailpipes off the CSM backpack and flattening the area between them by trimming it down with the hobby knife. In addition, I took a chisel hobby knife blade to the inside of the mag and cut the two tabs on the top at about half thickness.

 

This results in the parts fitting into the right position,  but without good contact for gluing. I superglued a small ball of green stuff into the mag, coated the backpack with superglue and pressed it into the mag. As the green stuff sets, it will be slightly flexible but hold the parts in place.

I'm quite happy with the result!  :)

  

Magnetizing infantry bases

Imperial Armour 13 made me keen on my Chaos Space Marines again. Given an opportunity, I grabbed some Guardsmen and vehicles. For me the first step is squaring the models away for my storage scheme, so I got out the magnet foil.

Recently, I started putting weights into the bases. Initially, because I had some soaring Shadow Specters that I considered likely candidates for spillage, but then just because in addition to the lower centre of gravity, this gives more adhesion surface for the magnet foil. Since the result is very convincing, I thought I'd write it down. :)

1. Squeeze a circle of gel glue into the base and place a appropriately sized coin or washer on the glue.
2. Using a flat object, push the coin/washer into the glue so that it is level with the base edge. Let the glue dry.
3. Sand the edges of the bases and any potential glue flat.
4. Cut the magnetic foil into stripes wider than the base, pull off the covers and place the models/bases on the self adhesive surface, leaving a gap between bases for the scissors.
5. Cut the strips between bases and cut out the foil around the base, leaving a narrow rim of approx 1-2 mm.
6. Trim the rim using a sharp hobby knife by resting the blade on the base edge and turning the base into the blade - just like a pencil sharpener.
7. Enjoy!

Spartan progress

The news about Imperial Armour 13 pushed me not only to order it and some other stuff from Forge World,  but also to grab my Spartan conversion box again.

I've now got the weapons and their mounts built. I've oriented myself a bit on the Sicaran's mounts. I've also attached the heavy bolter and the pea-shooter gunner with magnets. I put the dirge casters on the quad laser where the target optics would usually go.

Next step: paint :)

I also built the Sicaran and can hardly wait to try it out in a game!

Avatar WIP

Just a quick picture post.

MC Eldar

For a while now, I had a Forgeworld Avatar and a Wraithseer queued for some love. Paranoia about resin part preparation kept me from this for a while. Last weekend I put the bits together and got them ready for priming and a base coat of paint.

I magnetized the Wraithseer's head, gun and torso to hip joint. I haven't decided on how I'll keep the spear from breaking when it's bumped. The wrist is very narrow and the elbow isn't much wider. Either try to magnetize and risk a part breaking when drilling or pin the wrist and fix potential damage when it occurs. Decisions, decisions.

Anyway, once these HQ-MC models are sorted, I can fit four monsters into a single combined arms detachment, or five into a double-CAD 2000 points force. The Wraithseer requires a wraithguard or wraithblade unit in the army, which is better taken in the troops rather than the elite section, which again requires a spiritseer as HQ choice.

Update:

Now for the Avatar, that is a whole different challenge!

Spartan on-track update

After dithering for a while, I bit the bullet tonight and just glued on the tracks. To get an idea of how the model looks with the tacks, I blue-tacked the weapons and bits'n bobs on as well.