Back from Holiday - Here's Something I Made Earlier

Ok then, I'm back from a week overseas in the sun. I got to read the entire Sigmar Omnibus (Graham McNeil is the God-King of fantasy) as well as the Dragonlance Legends Trilogy. Dragonlance is an under-rated, perhaps even unheard of franchise these days, but the story of Raistlin's quest for Godhood and Caramon's quest for, well, his self, is a great one.

Anyway - I've managed to get in my second game of 40k since I got back, but no painting, so here's some stuff I painted a while back.

 This fella started life as a Black Reach dreadnought. He's had a few paint jobs, all poor, before I decided what I really needed for my Blood Angels was another, fourth, dread. He's painted with my usual BA recipe of Blood Red over Mechrite Red, with Blazing Orange line and Vomit Brown edge highlights, and a shade of Graveyard Earth in the recesses.

 In case you're not familiar with it, the Frag Cannon is awesomeness incarnate (at least, it was in 5th). You get two rending template hits worth of bang for your buck and this guy  has been something of a unit-assassin for me in the past. Flying around on a Stormraven, he likes to jump off, blast a 'safe' unit in a building, maybe assault them if they haven't all been minced by the cannon, then jump back on the 'raven and do it all over again.

 As I said, the body is the Black Reach dread. But I had enough spares in my bitz box to give him a BA fist.

 At this point, with a few thousand points of BA's in the box, I'm running out of synonyms for rage. This dread got good old 'Anger' on his scrolling. And, to be honest, I couldn't be bothered to think of something clever/paint that small for his glacis nameplate so he's just got some random squiggles there. Dont' tell anyone.

 Another nice view of the Frag Cannon. I'm also quite pleased with how the decals came out on this model too. The yellow is perhaps a tad overbright for the dark red plates, but this emblem, the skull on the shin guard, and the numeral on the other shoulder all look natural and painted.

 One of the things I love about the latest BA codex is the versatility of the army list. You can have a jump pack army, a flyer army, a dreadnought army, and a fast tank army. This one is unique to BA's too - the Baal Predator. Once again though, you can see my slight shortage of enthusiasm for names in the lack of a title for the nameplate. I've only used it once in a fight though, so I guess eventually I'll be inspired to name it.

 As well as being fast and having Scout, the Baal can be equipped with lost of flamers. A Flamestorm on the turret and heavy flamers in the sponsons. Great for clearing buildings - a possibly increasingly likely target in the new edition of 40k.

 I used Forge World's Black Soot weathering powder around the vents and exhausts for a nice little effect. The barrels were washed with increasingly dark washes of browns.

 The yellow decal on the turret didn't bed down quite as well as I would have liked - you can still see the edging on the drops in the right light. Unusually, repeated treatments with Micro-sol didn't help any either :(

 The decals on the front came out a little better though. The extra weathering the received might have helped, being a mix of weathering powder and sponged on Mechrite Red.

So thats a couple of my BA vehicles. Tomorrow (probably) - Terminators!

Final Gallery - Sun Blitz Brotherhood Eldar Corsairs

Alright, these boys are about as done as I want them to be. I could add a few more little details here and there - glyphs on the helmets, that sort of thing - but I really don't want to paint them any more. Time to move on to something else. So here they are:

 Its a ten man squad, complete with a missile launcher and a shuriken cannon. I envisage them holding an objective in my deployment zone and taking shots at anything that comes too close.

The heavy weapons are both scratch-built from several spare parts from tank kits. This guy did have a really cool looking forehand grip - that got lost somewhere during transportation ><

 I started building the missile launcher before I realised the hand holding the handle was the left one. That meant I had to find a right hand that didn't have a weapon, leaving this Corsair looking as if he is suggesting a new direction the squad should attack.

The squad leader is carrying a shuriken pistol and power sword. Just a little bite in case of being assaulted. Not that Str 3 is likely to worry too many enemies...

The bases were all painted with GW's Stirland Mud textured paint with a few pieces of slate and small pebbles mixed in for variety. These additional parts were painted Bestial Brown before I dry-brushed the whole thing with Kommando Khaki and Bleached Bone. The addition of a few tufts of reedy grass and some orange rubber foliage helps break up the bases and tie them in to my flyer bases.

Right, I'm off on holiday now - see you in a week or so.

Eldar Corsairs

I have been posting a lot of photos and text about my Corsair flyers. The sad truth of it though, is that you have to field at least one unit of Corsairs in a legal army. Sad because I hate painting Eldar.

Not their tanks or planes. Just the little individual models. Maybe its the quality of sculpts (unlikely), amaybe its a weakness in my painting skills (most probable). But while I can paint Terminators and Space Marines till the cows come home, Eldar armour is a pain the bum. But still, needs must...

So here are my pretty much finished Sun Blitz Brotherhood Eldar Corsairs. They're not much to look at - I have had to adopt a 'tabletop standard' philosophy towards them in order to just get them done so I can move onto something more fun again.

 

I hope they're more fun to play than they were to paint

 Its probably worth saying a few things about the Forge World Eldar Corsairs upgrade kit though.

For your money, you get 10 Corsair las-blasters, 10 Corsair heads, 10 Corsair backpacks, and 20 Corsair vanes to stick on them. For the Felarch you have the option of a shuriken pistol or fusion pistol to complement his power sword.

How the parts come in the bag

The las-blasters will require their handles to be chopped off for you to add them to the arms that come with the Guardians box ( from which you will of course need to remove the shuriken guns). The backpacks stick straight onto the Guardian bodies and the vanes are somewhat poseable, having ball and socket joints to fit into.

Orientation of the backpack and vanes

The vanes are the most distinctive parts of the kit and are what will really draw people's attention when you field the models. The helmets and las-blasters though are both nice sculpts though and do a nice job of differentiating these wayward space elves from their worldship-bound cousins.

Some nice options for the Felarch

 Apart from the modification necessary to use the guns, the kit is very easy to use and put together. Some of the guns and vanes in my kit were a little bent but they are so thin they could be reset with hot tap water. No miscasts or bubbles that I could see.

Are they worth the money though? Well, its horses for courses, really, isn't it? You could get away with painting up some standard Guardians in your Corsair fleet of choice's colours, I'm sure. But, if you really want your pirates to be clearly different, this kit is great, particularly if you are planning on fielding them alongside Codex Eldar. Its not cheap, but nothing Forge World is. I would have preferred the guns to have come without handles to eliminate one stage of the upgrade process, but its not a deal breaker by any means. Generally 'ok' for value then.

I did, however, draw the line at the special weapons kit Forge World offer. You get one of each type of heavy weapon Corsairs can carry but for me, this would just leave two weapons on the sprue, never to be used. If the kit came with two of each type and didn't cost £4 per weapon I might have sprung for it. As it was, I decided to kit-bash a missile launcher and shuriken cannon. Each weapon consists of four or more pieces stuck together and are reasonable, if slightly oversized, simulacrums of the 'official' parts. And a lot better value for money.

Just the bases and a power sword to do then, and I can get on with painting something a bit more fun :)

Eldar Corsairs Nightwing Gallery

I think I've got my Sun Blitz Nightwing where I want it. I used some mixed herbs to add some leaf litter around the base and finished off the cockpit canopy and engine blocks this morning. I wonder if Battlefoam do a tray that will fit it alongside my Phoenix....

I buffed the varnish a little, but its barely noticeable

Looks pretty mean from this angle :)

Side view

Top view

This is what happens if you use a rush tip to move the water effects around

Mixed herbs make pretty good and easy to apply leaf litter

Finishing Touches - Eldar Sun Blitz Phoenix

Its been a busy few days, what with having two kids to wrangle and all, but I've nearly finished the paint job on my Phoenix.

Basic colours

Having finished the main body, hihlighted the edges with Bubonic Brown and a tiny edge of Sunburst Yellow, I did a pretty basic job on the pilots and glued on the canopy. Most of the gems are blue as a contrast to the flaming yellow of the fuselage, with just a couple of orange ones for variety.

With added highlights

Something was missing though. My Nightwing fighter has a nice Sun Blitz crescent (not a spiral, as I had previously erroneously described it) but it was not so easy to get this painted onto the bomber.

I tried the liquid mask method I used on the fighter, but it just didn't look as cool as I wanted it to when I pulled off the frisk. Actually it looked awful. So bad I had to respray the whole thing :(

The problem is the shape of the plane. It doesn't have a lot of large flat areas for painting such details on. It has a tiny strip of wing on each side, connected to the jet sections by a very thin strip, then the dorsal surface is, well cluttered and there are the two fins to get in the way too. I just couldn't see a way to paint on the crescent, or even crescents, without it just looking like a weird red stripe.

So, a couple of nights to think it over were necessary.

I had my eureka moment this morning. I had thought I was going to go with a sort of sunrayish motif, using the two panel/instrument pods as the centres. Their location was still a little problematic though and I couldn't figure out how to do it, using a freehand brush, and get the lines to look straight over a curved surface. I was dreading putting the brush down to find I had just painted, again, some weird stripes.


But then it hit me - the Phoenix! It is, of course, a legendary bird of flame, not just a pretty word the Eldar (the Imperium?) used to denote this flying beast. So, perhaps I could freehand a flame motif on the wing.

A quick bit of research (google) gave me this image:

I also found some other, less savoury pictures

I then practiced drawing those organic, naturally curving and authentic flames/feathers in a notebook (another good tip for freehand painting - practice it with a pencil first) before committing paint to model.

Too much?

 I used thinned Mechrite Red, followed up by a thin layer of Blood Red. Then I went too far, trying to add realistic flame effects, with lines of Gold Yellow, Blazing Orange, and Sunburst Yellow. In the flesh, as it were, the flames looked ok. Only ok. Part of the problem was I'm not very good, that is, haven't practised, at drawing flames. The other part was the yellows and orange were too close to the plane's base colour, giving a sort of diluted effect to what is supposed to be a strong contrast colour.

Not a complete disaster though as I was able to paint back over the flames with Mechrite and Blood Reds. I then added a thin highlight or Blazing Orange and thin shade line of Dark Flesh to each flame. It looks pretty good, albeit not as smooth a finish as it should be. 

I will probably add some more layers of Purity Seal on top and may even polish this, so I don't think the unevenness of the paint will be too apparent in the end. I will also do some better quality shots too as the paint job is, in places, better than these pictures show.

Review: 'Fear to Tread' by James Swallow

Another great positive from going to GW events is the chance to pick up pre-release copies of Black Library titles. The period of the pre-release varies and, most of the time, I'm happy enough to wait until the titles are on Amazon, thus being able to afford almost twice as many books.

But I'm fairly addicted to the Horus Heresy series, particularly when a title features a chapter I collect and play with. So 'Fear to Tread' was a must-buy for me.

I finished it this afternoon and I can happily say its quite good. Not amazing, but a decent read overall.

For my money, Graham McNeill and Dan Abnett are the kings of the Heresy titles. Noone else seems to elevate their style and standard of writing quite so effortlessly when tackling the grand themes and great icons of the 30th millenium. But James Swallow comes close.

'Fear to Tread' is a Blood Angels novel as much as a HH title. It deals with a central theme of the army's codex and history - the Red Thirst/Black Rage, also sometimes known as 'the flaw'. A couple of brief flashbacks provide the setting - Horus is aware of the flaw, while few Blood Angels other than Sanguinius's inner circle are, and uses this knowledge to set a trap for the Angel and his sons. Part of this trap involves exposing the genetic weakness in the bloodiest of marines and using to destroy the chapter, or the Primarch, or perhaps both. Also lots of daemons. Gunplay ensues.

This is probably the maddest title in the series so far too. Glimpses of the real horror of the warp have been seen in 'Fulgrim' and 'The Mirror Crack'd', but 'Fear to Tread' leaves the reader in no doubt - allying with the warp is not just an alternate lifestyle choice for disaffected Astartes, its a deal with devils, with the emphasis on 'evil'. There's some pretty gruesome stuff in this book.

Sorry if this is a spoiler (it really shouldn't be), but Sanguinius at least does survive the trap set for him. But not without he and his chapter making some hard choices and some major sacrifices. While possibly beginning to answer one of the big questions that hangs over the Heresy series (clue: how does Nikaea tally with what we know of the 40k universe?), the end of 'Fear to Tread' leaves the reader desperate to know what happens next.

Some parts of the book did seem to drag a little bit - notably some of the exposition feels a little stilted and forced. But the action is well written and generally well paced.  There are a few incidental characters who don't seem to serve any real purpose, but then this occurs in quite a few HH books. Maybe the reasons for these characters inclusion will become clearer in future titles.

For fans of the Blood Angels then, this book is required reading. An unparallelled insight into the Primarch and the roots of the chapter we know and love today.

Its possibly less essential for general followers of the Heresy. I don't think there's much there that is truly pivotal in how the war turns out, although its quite revealing as to how Horus and Sanguinius feel about each other and does set the scene for that battle barge showdown nicely.

Next up on the pre-release pile: 'Path of the Outcast' by Gav Thorpe :)

Eldar Phoenix Bomber Paint Job - Now with Greyscale!

Finished greenstuffing all the gaps and holes in the bomber this morning. One of the tips I picked up at the GW open day was using the back of a knife to smooth down GS surfaces once they've dried for at least a day. Using this, I've done a passable job on all the surfaces and its time to paint.

I decided to use a greyscale base on the plane, so as to help with shading and highlighting later on. The idea of pre-shading and -highlighting is to apply a multi-tonal base. When you spray thin coats of other colours on top of this, the difference between the dark and light areas shows through.

First then, I sprayed the whole thing black.

Nothing special here, just some black primer.

Then I carefully sprayed a layer of Codex Grey. I took care to avoid the base of the slopes, and where pieces were joined together.

Then a layer of Fortress Grey. This was lighter than the previous one and I took care to put more on the edges of the wings and fuselage and raised areas, such as over the jet intakes.

Now its time for some colour. First a layer of Mechrite Red. This goes on fairly evenly - I'm counting on the greyscale to add depth and definition.

And (almost finally) some Blood Red. As with the greys, I emphasised the edges of surfaces and raised areas.

Thats it for the base colours. Now I need to use some liquid mask to mark out the spirals and probably to protect some of the gems and other details too. This is because this red recipe is really strongly pigmented and painting over it can be a right job to do. For example, painting the gold bits on my Blood Angels sometimes requires a layer of flat brown before the gold paints as the red just shines through otherwise. I want to do some blue gems and the detailing will likely be in gold too, so there's some work to do this evening...