Legacy Servitors, Sanctioned Psykers, and a Heroquest Ogre

 These were a pile of minis that I found in a box of WiP stuff that I got as part of a bulk buy of Imperial Guard way back in the day.. either 2nd or 2.5 edition 40k ... I think... anyway it was a very long time ago!

I rediscovered them while unpacking random boxes during a recent move of house (Not sure which one... the one that I am currently preparing for will be the fourth move of house in three years... )

Anyway as these were a salvage project I wanted to get them tabletop ready but also wanted to limit how much work would be put into them.

 I decided to keep some elements of the work the original owner did and just update them to fit in with some of my current armies.

The Ogre was a bit different,  I believe I got it as part of a promotional give away at Gencon.  I did a quick assembly and slapped some paint on it to demo speed painting to someone... it then got tossed in a box and went unseen for a couple of decades...

It was in a frightful state when I rediscovered it in a bag of bits...  so I treated it to a little repair, changed the color of his shirt from blue to green, added some chevrons etc...

 
The servitors are some of the most disturbing minis that GW ever produced for a variety of reasons... from the leering face of the human male, to the dead man stare of the Squat, and capped by the clinically efficient arrangement of the clothing ... particularly the female model... this is the stuff cyborg nightmares are made of.

 The original paint scheme had each model in a different, loud, color... they were quite blinding to look at.  I could feel the cataracts forming in real time!  So I decided to make two color coded teams (red and green) with one team getting the extra servitor.

 The Sanctioned Psykers were a fun batch that got a complete repaint except for the great purple cloaks... I love the color and it stayed with just some touch ups and a few highlights.

The lead Psyker, Frank Primul, is leaking energy which is clearly visible on his face, The effect was created using Algae Wash from Secret Weapon.

I'll hopefully get one more batch of figures done before pack-out day and then I'll switch from models to books and try to get familiar with 8th ed.  Return to working on the Serene Dawn Project, and write some fluff while waiting for the models to catch up with us...

Of course Bones III is drifting around the the mail system... it may, or may not land before the pack-out!

A WiP kinda Day... Orks and Elves... ish... and some Legacy Imperial Guard.

 Now that we're moved in and, more or less, unpacked... I've gotten back to painting.  I grabbed the stuff that I was messing around with at the hotel and discovered it needed a lot of repair.. I'd painted them without the aid of my magnifying lenses and, when I got a proper look at them it was apparent how degraded my eyesight has become... so...  Loads of touch-ups and some complete re-imaginings are called for.. onward!

First up is this very characterful Ork Dok from the guys at Kromlech.  He took bit of fitting and the resin was a bit brittle around the tools but he's moving along.  

 I love the grot medical assistants that accompany the Ork Dok!  This one I imagine has been tasked to procure some "spares" from among the dead and wounded Orks for use back at the DoK Shop... a scary little wretch if I  ever saw one! There are two others in the work pile so its a whole field trauma team.  I'm playing around with blood spatter to get back in the swing after my long break and am getting way too much entertainment out of the process!

 Some Legacy Imperial Guard Sanctioned Psykers... They look a lot like clones to me so we'll be fielding them as the "Brothers Frank" these are salvage works and the colors will be changing, except for the purple cloaks, skin, and the red weapon details.  As a clone group I'm still chewing over making them identically uniformed but with distinguishing tattoos (ala Clone Wars) or having a uniform detail variation to distinguish them... hmmm...

 Along the same lines... these legacy servitors are also a salvage job and the color scheme is subject to revision... The skin is the area that I've been working and some browns but the rest is still TBD.

A sample of the Raging Heroes Mantis Warriors in progress.  These were the models most afflicted by my poor eyesight and are taking a lot of work to get back to a good place.  The upside is that the chitin areas are getting some depth.. also the heads on  these are now strongly reminding me of Asari from Mass Effect so the next batch of them might be blue!

... and ... finally... a look at the full batch of stuff on the desk at the moment.  A lot more Mantis Warriors, a Mantic Dwarf Drill, a Legacy Tech Marine salvage, and a Legacy Hero Quest Ogre Salvage...  That pile should knock the rust back a bit...

Rats old and new, undead musician discovery, and a basing a Kings of War Dwarf Host

 Since I really am a bit OCD about painting stuff that is out of the box before opening something new... I thought I'd better tune up these old Skaven Models, acquired in a partially painted state some time ago, while I was doing the Bones Ratmen.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of the Skaven was actually some sort of Undead Goblinoid Musician!  Worse still... it was originally painted goblin green as though the previous owner was conscripting the unlucky guy into a regular goblin unit!

 If anyone recognizes that fellow post a comment or send me a PM.  I haven't got round to researching him but I'm dead curious.

There was also an incomplete Skaven Warlord, or hero of some sort, that I touched up quite a lot.  I left the banner peg in place because I'm certain, at some point, a back banner will show up that is suitable for him.

 The bases are relatively neutral and void of fiddly bits because I'll want to make a coherent theme for them and haven't yet settled on one... although with a few weeds and bits of junk these might work out fine there is a small Skaven ally force around here somewhere and I'll want to combine them up with these fellows and rationalize the basing.

 The new rat!

This is from the Reaper Bones I Kickstarter.

Looks like it might actually be a ginormous Were-Rat.. 

I based it for use as a Rat Ogre.  This guy is actually a bit larger than the legacy Rat Ogres and will make a great 'Hero' for the unit. 

The Reaper Ratmen have very long snouts and, except for the tail, look rather more like wolves to me than rats.  I'm working on some Ratmen assassins and the wolfish look is very pronounced on them.

 Basing was Grey Pumice which gave a good heft to the figure and stabilized it.  The miniature is made of the light, soft plastic like, bones material and took some convincing to stand in all but the most ideal circumstances. 

 Size comparison with the Skaven and the Reaper model.  Its a good size for a Rat Ogre and much more dynamically posed than its legacy companions.









After a series of Kings of War games it became clear that King of War was written more for movement trays than for miniatures.  There are no pesky formation changes and its even recommended to mount you miniatures, in a visually appealing density, directly onto the movement tray.

With that in mind, and under the direction of Bevie to "Create a Dwarf Host for Bevie! STAT!", I decided that the best approach was to make an army of 17 movement trays painted up in a dwarf theme so she'll have a fun looking army of movement trays to keep her entertained while I get to work on the actual dwarfs!

These are made by Customeeple and are avilable through the Mantic Website.  Once the braziers (really good for holding a die showing the morale status and to provide a kind of handle to move the tray more easily) and any of the curbing is added the trays hold slightly fewer than a full unit number of models while still looking great which allows us to swipe a few minis here and there to generate an additional unit.






The prototype base is the one with the blue, orange, red, and gold.  After looking at this it seems a bit busy so the production bases will be this blue, mauve, and gold (not yet painted).  I think its less busy and the orange was kind of jarring for something on the floor. I will likely match the prototype to the new scheme but I'll wait till the end to see how the new one turns out.

Back to the bench!

Tabletop World Building of the Week: Blacksmith

 Yoko the Psycho is hanging out with her Firestarter at Tabletop World's Blacksmith.

Its a great kit... and quite sturdy!  I dropped one of the completed sections from three feet... it landed awkwardly and broke off a small area in three pieces.  The resin material took glue very well and the repair was seamless... not even requiring touch up paint...whew!

I had a lot of fun with the paint here and was able to practice some particle effects with the fire and some murky liquid depths with the quenching barrel.

The chimney top was also pretty cool playing with corrosion using GW Technicals.  Now that I've had a little practice I like the effect.

There was liberal use of Secret Weapon Washes as usual on these... they really are the secret ingredient that makes these paint up fast.

At the bottom you can see the completed building in its disassembled state... ready for storage.  It all fits together very snugly on the table and does not wobble with use... I especially like how the workbench is molded to the exterior wall and is used to anchor the working floor of the forge are firmly into place.  No unhappy jostling issues!

Happy painting!

Raging Heroes Blood Vestals and Gluttony first looks and some Bug repairs

 I love Raging Heroes, I really do.  Their customer service is phenomenal and I really get the sense that they care about me individually.  Their products have been impressive although the details have a softness to them that requires a bit more work to fully bring out.

My fist encounter with them was with their amazing Ashara miniature which came with enough bits to make the completed variant of your choice (Dark Eldar, Chaos, or Sister of Battle Saint) and then, with the addition of some plastic GW Dark Eldar torsos you could make 2 more figures or just use the bits around your forces to spice things up.  Each variant had significant differences in weaponry, a different head and a different backpack structure all wedded to a common body. 

 With that experience under my belt I was anxious to take a look at their new series based on the seven deadly sins.  They began with Gluttony done in SF and Fantasy versions.  I ordered both!  Today I finally got round to opening them up and taking a peek.

Sadly I was a bit disappointed.  The differences between the two versions were minute.  Basically a gem and some hose and a backpack/tank were added to the SF version.  No weapons, no alternate heads, the two versions are armed....identically.  Fortunately there is a fist that will easily take any number of cool SF weapons so the flaw isn't fatal.  Just not quite what I'd come to expect from there otherwise exceptional catalogue.

 Moving on to their Blood Vestals I was again impressed by the efforts of the customer service.  When they encounted a problem with the supplier of the packaging they sent out an offer to either ship in alternate packaging (which I did) or to wait for the regular package.   The alternate package looked very sharp and they packed all of my Blood Vestals (2 squads and a command squad) in the same package.

I also got what I was expecting from the figures.  They are single piece soft metal figures that are in dynamic poses and have no options.  There are 5 poses for the regulars and 5 command (although one of the command set is repeated from the regular squad)  they look very good.  I would have liked to see SF versions of these to use as Dark Eldar Blood Brides but I can convert them easily enough considering how many extra weapon bits I've accumulated on DE sprues.

These we so clean that I thought they must be pre-cleaned.  Only one figure had any noticeable flash and that was very minor.  I had thought to build these as fantasy Dark Elf but now I'm thinking I'll go ahead with the mild conversion and add the to the Wytch Kult.

Here we see a casualty of the Move.  A Stone Crusher Carfnifex from Forge World that I entered in the Golden Daemons for Games day 2010 (First Cut).  Needless to say I was unhappy that it was this particular model that took the hit but it really isn't a bad outcome for a move halfway round the planet! 



















Easily repaired and back to devouring the universe!

Mystery Figure

While I was digging out and organizing the "to be repaired" pile I came across an old dragon. I've based it and am going to update the paint. That may be kind... I don't think I ever actually finished painting it the first time! At any rate I can't recall where I got it or who manufactured it. If anyone recognizes it please post!