Wednesday 17 December 2014

Forgemas 14: Sevrin Loth and Honour Guard Part 2

I have completed the base coats of the main colour areas and done some of the shading on the yellow. Unfortunately I thought I had taken more photos throughout the painting process, but I can only find these 3.

Here is Loth.


I am happy with the way the armour is going. I may need to but a thin blue glaze over it to tone it down. I am always worried that my highlights look too much so I normally ER on the side of caution. This time I am going a bit brighter to see how it works.


The honour guard are also going well. My only criticism of the kit is that the legs are a bit plain. Maybe GW will upgrade the command squad kit or release a specific honour guard kit which has a bit more blingy models. I know the current standard kit is available but that is specifically Ultramarines.


Finally I have started the banner.


Sunday 7 December 2014

Forgemas 14: Treasures from the Lions Vault

Say what you will about the first legion, but when it comes to big shiny toys, we've got lots of stuff hidden away!

As some of you know, The Dark Angels are my favourite army. I collected them when I was younger and started collecting them again when I returned to the hobby years later and since I've been back I've wanted a dirty great centre piece to my army. Something to throw down on the table and let my opponent know I was serious (this probably explains my love of imperial Knights tbh.....). 

Anyhow....

Fellblade......

Wow. Wanted one since I first saw it on the forge world website and after a busy year decided to treat myself at this years Warhammer Fest. Unfortunately they had actually sold out by the Sunday but offered to ship new one with no postage charge if I paid on the day. Which saved me the hassle of carrying it around all day!


Honestly - when this arrived I was kinda sceptical about being able to assemble it with any degree of quality..

Because it's frankly massive..

But I've persevered, cleaned it all back, washed and primed the surfaces and attached magnets to the side sponsons to help with transport etc and over the last coulple of weeks have made some serious progress in getting the colours down. However the size of the model is making life slow going, any amount if time spent working on it seems to just get lost and after a painting session (I only really get a couple of hours at any one time) nothing actually seems to have happened.

Ultimately I'm treating this beast 1 section at a time, completing each piece and then moving onto the next. The turret is now basically finished apart from weathering powders and such and the side sponsons are about as complete as I can get them. I've started to work on the main body now and will update with my progress in a week or so .....

Thanks for reading :) 

Tom



Saturday 6 December 2014

Forgemas 14: Sevrin Loth and Honour Guard Part 1

I only have one Forgeworld model (the Grey Knight Dread from last year’s tale), which was a gift from Hypaspist many years ago which came to me assembled and base coated.

This tale will be a bit of a learning experience for me on how to manage Forgeworld models.
I placed my order and waited a week for the bits to turn up. I was very surprised with what I got. Along with Loth and the guard’s bodies I got a complete command squad. When you factor that in then the price of Loth is quite reasonable.
The first thing that I did was clean off the excess resin and checked that the parts fitted together correctly. Then I cleaned the parts using warm soapy water and an old toothbrush. Once they were completely dry I started to assemble them. I have decided that his time I will leave the arms off the models so I can paint all the chest plates and other normally hard to get to details. I added some extra purity seals and also i am using some spare sternguard bolters.


I have also put Loth on a larger base (40mm). I think it gives the character models a bit more presence.


Once they were assembled I gave them a black undercoat.


After the undercoat I have them all a light dry brush in a dark grey. This brings out the details of the model and gives them a subtle edge highlight. Loth was given a base of Ultramarines blue.


That is it for part one, I have got a bit further with the models but I will save that for part 2.

Thursday 4 December 2014

Forgemas 14; Eldar Corsair Hornet; The Build.

Hello All,

Bluddtoof here with my first Forgemas 14 post, the build of my first Eldar Hornet for my new Corsairs army. I'm using the, slightly out of date, lists from the Doom Of Mymaera book from Imperial Armour and in a new style for me I won't be just buying all the cool toys I can get my grubby mitts on and then leaving half of them sat on shelves for 6 years awaiting some paint! No! This army will be built and painted unit by unit to a series of lists I've written! Will wonders never cease!
So Forgemas has worked out quite well for me as it gives me an opportunity to make a start on the army and paint one of the units from my initial 750pt list. The list contains a Corsair Prince with Bladesworn retinue on a Corsair Venom, 10 Corsairs with jetpacks, 3 Corsair jetbikes, a Hornet with Pulse Lasers (the subject of this post) and a Corsair Wasp Assault Walker with scatter lasers. The bigger lists each add more units to this base list and also add points to existing units here and there. More on those over the course of 2015.
Back to the Hornet and the style of the army in general; you may have seen some of my older posts on the trial build and paint of my first Corsair, they can be found here here here and here, the idea is that the army represents a Corsair raid on an Imperial facility and as such all the bases will be cut away sections of the facility floor, each infantry and bike squad will be distinguished from the others by the type of flooring material they are stood on rather than use squad markings, which don't fit the army in my mind.
All the vehicles will be on large scenic bases, I'm going to go to town on these and make each one into a little diorama with Imperial soldiers and techs hiding or fighting or dying etc, they'll include lots of ducting and pipework both under the floors and above them.

So onto the Hornet, it took me about 8 hours to build this, the base and model combined, and also several hours of drying time for the balsa and plaster sections, all told I built in 2 days and I really enjoyed it. The kit is decent quality, a fair bit of flash to remove but no warping which can be common with resin.

To start here's a picture of the completed build, I'll follow up with some step by step notes and piccies...



Fist step was to start on the base; I wanted to depict the Hornet zipping at breakneck speed down a pipe and conduit lined trench, hunting Imperial troops, the pilot relying on his unnatural reflexes to avoid the perilous structures. To achieve this I decided to pose the Hornet at a quite steep angle with one wing down in the trench, just skimming over pipes on top of the trench wall. The trench wall was the first bit to build and is made from a frame of 10mm cross section balsa pillars, 4 in total, with 2mm balsa sheet shaped around it to form the curved surface which mimics the bases edge and the flat surfaces. I used elastic bands to hold all this in place whilst the PVA set. If you try this ensure that the curved panel has the grain running perpendicular to the direction of curve, otherwise it won't bend! Pics...




Whilst that was drying I started on the Hornet itself, all the bits washed to remove that nasty mould lubricant (the bane of paint!)...



I started on the next new technique for me; magnetising weapons. I have to say it wasn't anywhere near as hard as I'd expected and it will give me huge tactical choice at almost no cost. The magnets are inset into the joints in holes I drilled, carved and filed out very carefully. I used a total of 8 little magnets on the model, the weapon cowling magnetises to the outside of the gun so the gun has 2 magnets, that's 4 on each side. I also ensured that I used the same polarity all round so that any weapon can fit to either side of each vehicle. I'll just have to remember that when I start the next vehicle! Pics of the magnetisation...






Next step was to build the pipework sections to fit onto the base, these plastic pipes are from Nightwing International and are part of their model railway scenery range. They're injection moulded plastic on sprues, each set contains loads of bits and poly cement works a treat. It's a nice modular system allowing almost infinite variation. Pics of the pipe sections and the base with the balsa section dried and coated with a thin skim of plaster to give a nice concrete finish...



Then it was back to Hornet to fit the engine intake and thrusters to the main body...




Once the plaster was dry I did dry runs with all the elements to get the positions right, I built the hiding guardsman, who's lost his helmet, lasgun and canteen in his dash for safety and is left with just a frag grenade and a trenching tool to fight off the raiders!
He's stood on mesh walkway (The mesh is the aluminium mesh sheet used for repairing car bodywork and suchlike, dirt cheep from my local hardware store) supported on plastruct girder. Before fitting the mesh I painted the base below in deep greens and swirls of Nurgles Rot; the black base will all be painted in this way and will have a coat of a couple of mm of water effects applied at the end (This will entail me making a snug polythene mould around the base edge to hold the liquid whilst it sets).
Here's the finished build from a few angles, the Hornet, pilot, canopy, guardsman and his loose gear are all un-glued so I can paint all the bits separately.....






That's it, I'm really pleased with it and can't wait to see it painted. More posts to come as that progresses, as ever C and C welcome.

Bluddtoof.