Warhammer 40,000: Dark Vengeance Unboxing

Originally I wasn't going to buy the boxed set of 6th Edition Warhammer 40,000, Dark Vengeance.  The Dark Angels are a little too angsty, goth, and arrogant for my tastes, and while the chaos models are cool, my Word Bearers army is still in its infancy, and has been on the back burner for ages now.  But then I thought, I do want to get the rulebook.  I did find the small rulebook in 5th edition to be very useful, and far less cumbersome than the full size rulebook.  So I thought a bit, and decided that if I spent a little bit more money than for the big rulebook, I'd get a boatload of great minis too.  If I didn't want to ever paint the Dark Angels, I could always trade them or something.  In the end that put me over the edge.

Brazen Claws: Completed!

It took me far, far too long to paint them, but here they are.  It is with a sense of accomplishment and no small amount of relief that I present them:  the Brazen Claws 2nd Company, a detachment of support units and the Chapter Master his retinue.  I think it is fitting that this is also my 300th post to Arcadia Prime.

Brazen Claws Chapter Master

And here he is, Chapter Master Aeneus, the last miniature left in my Brazen Claws Army. I thought it was fitting that the chapter master of the Brazen Claws be armed with a pair of actual Brazen Lightning Claws. So I got the bitz of a pair of Lightning Claws for a Terminator Sergeant and put them on a converted a Terminator Captain model. 

Brazen Claws Land Raider

My Chapter Master and his Command Group needed a suitable ride, so a Land Raider Redeemer fit the bill.  I took these pictures before I did any weathering, but they'll do for now.

Inspired by Art (2)

A while back (yipe, almost two years ago!) I made a post called Inspired by Art, where I showed a bunch of pictures of models that I had converted that was inspired by 40k artwork.

Master of the Arsenal

Next up for my Brazen Claws is the Master of the Arsenal, the 3rd Company Captain. I'm getting close now--just the Master of the Watch, the Chapter Master, and his Land Raider and my Brazen Claws are done!

Master of Recruits

A while back (ok, a long while back), I posted some pictures of the Master of the Fleet. Well, I've finally gotten around to working on my Brazen Claws again, and I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Here's the Masters of Recruits, the 10th Company Captain.

Death Company Marine

Here's the first member of my Death Company, Brother Elemiah.

It's hard to tell, but I tried to give him a very angsty, sleepless complexion. The pale skin didn't come out quite as starkly pale as I planned. For his eyes I wanted to make them look bloodshot with dark circles under them, so after I painted most of the face, I gave both eye-sockets a wash of red gore, which I think came out good, but doesn't show up well in the photo.

I still need to flock his base, so that part's not quite done yet.

Brazen Claws Command Group Part 3

The second member of my Brazen Claws Command Group is completed. He is the 4th Company Captain, the Master of the Fleet. His chest eagle and cloak are indicative of his company affiliation. I'm not too sure of his facial expression, however, as I think his eyes and eyebrows give him a look of uncertainty...almost fear. Oh well...

Brazen Claw Command Group Part 2

Here's the first member of my Brazen Claw Command Group completed. An old school terminator librarian. I've had this guy, well, forever, so it's about time he gets a paint job and into the field.

Grey Knights

(Note: All these pictures are taken either from GW's website or from a mass e-mailing)

I've been awaiting the arrival of the Grey Knights with anticipation.  Although I'm not really in a position to start up yet another army right now, I'd been looking forward to seeing what the new models were going to look like.  I had heard rumors that the new Dreadknight was "hideous", but it was hard to tell from the one blurry image we got.  Then I got the standard press release e-mail from GW.

My initial response to this was...eh.

Nothing really to write home about here, either.

Or here.  Although I have to stay this obsession with really wide stances for terminators lately to make them seem bigger is bordering on ridiculous.  These guys are in serious danger of groin pulls...

But I wanted to see a little more detail so I went to check out GW's website.

This is a small image, but I like the sword on the Dreadknight a heck of a lot better than the hammer.  And since the model's plastic, that's a big plus, so I'm already imagining all sorts of conversion work I could do on this guy to give him a really dynamic pose.

The Grey Knights themselves are pretty cool, and I like all the options that are available.  The move to plastic is a good one.

Same goes for the terminators...

...which can get pretty complex.

I'm not all that impressed with Lord Kaldor Draigo though.  I mean, the model has tons of great detail--the shield is amazing, but...  I just think that in a horde of baroque Grey Knights, this guy just isn't going to stick out all that much.

In the end, I'm pretty impressed with the new offerings--I'm really tempted to pick up the Dreadknight at some point.

Brazen Claw Command Group Part 1

I'm getting very close to finishing my Brazen Claws, so I figured I'd post progress on them as I go.

This model is a conversion of a Terminator Captain which will serve as my Chapter Master. The original model had a storm bolter and power sword, I think it's only fitting that the Chapter Master of the Brazen Claws be armed with Lightning Claws...

Sawed off parts of the plastic lightning claws and parts of the metal arms of the mini.

Supergluing the lightning claws in place was pretty easy--now I just need to fill in the gaps with green stuff.

Snow Day

Two feet of snow on the ground, at least, and yesterday we got another six inches or so, with another six or so planned for this morning.  Rather than drive to work in a whiteout, I took the day off.  Fortunately, my condo complex has landscapers, do I didn't have to do shoveling other than digging the car out.

A benefit of a snow day is that I have some some to paint up some miniatures, so I was able to do up these two guys yesterday:

I know that two isn't much, but I guess I paint slowly. I'll take what I can get.

Inspired by Art

Every so often I see a picture in a Codex or White Dwarf and I think, "That's really cool. I want a model that looks like that," and I feel inspired to try to duplicate it.

This first one is of a Tau Commander, the art coming from the original Codex Tau (I believe the same picture is in the current Codex: Tau Empire as well. It required a minimum of converting--I just had to trim off the lower legs at the knee joint and reattach them to make them bend more.

I always thought that this picture of Commander Farsight looked pretty cool, so I felt inspired to duplicate it. This one also required a minimum of conversion, I think it was just bending the knee a bit like with the Tau Commander.

Next is an assault sergeant from the new Blood Angels Codex--I thought that the Blood Angels marine with the pair of Lightning Claws looked particularly cool. This one required some more converting. I used one Lightning Claw from the Space Wolves Grey Hunters set (generously donated by Badelaire), while the other is from the Space Marine Commander's box set. I had to chop them off at the elbows and rotate them to get the angles right.  To match the breastplate, I used a normal tactical marine breastplate and filed off the skull, replacing it with a blood drop from the Death Company sprue.  The pauldrons (er...shoulder pads) are from the Death Company sprue and the Sanguinary Guard sprues.  For the legs I hacked off the right leg at the hip, and replaced it with another assault marine right leg (so now both legs are the ones from the assault marine sprue that are more bent at the knee).  I'm still working on the conversion (I have to greenstuff some power cables), so this is still a work in progress.

This last one is a model that Badelaire did, based on the picture of a particularly mean looking nob in Codex Orks. The arms and lower legs are from the Warhammer Fantasy Black Orcs sprue, while the choppa is converted using normal Ork Boyz bitz. The rest of the bitz are standard ork nobz bits.

Three Blood Angels

Now that the Blood Angels Codex is out I've started painting some up.  The problem is deciding on which painting method to use.  Since the early days the Blood Angels have appeared in various colors.  All red, but different shades of red--from a solid, medium red, all the way to brilliant orange.

Now my personal opinion is that the color of the Blood Angels should be, well...the color of blood.  And that's not orange.  It's definitely a deeper red than that--more Red Gore than Blood Red.  So I did up a series of three test models to try to determine which result looks the best:

Model 1:  Primed white, then painted with Red Gore.  This requires a few coats of Red Gore, but the result is pleasingly bright.  The color looks decent, but maybe it's a bit too pink?

Model 2:  Primed black, then painted with Red Gore.  This requires several coats of Red Gore because it takes a lot to cover up the black.  But like the Mechrite Red over black below, the black primer is good in that I get instant shading, and instant dark lines between the armor plates, which adds a lot to the final product, I think.

Model 3:  Primed black, then painted with Mechrite Red.  Mechrite Red has much better coverage than Red Gore does, although I still need to put on two coats to make it even.  And I'm not sure it's quite the right shade of red that I'm looking for.  I think that it has a slightly orange tinge to it.  Also, its opacity makes it look less like blood because real blood isn't completely opaque.

Now which looks the most like blood?  I need to figure out which one, because there are a lot of Blood Angels in the pipeline...

Sons of Sanguinius

After seeing the new Blood Angels sprue picture on Jawaballs' blog...


This guy needs some battle brothers...soon.

Working on a lot of different things at once...

I haven't had that much time to paint recently (usually on the weekends), but I've managed to finish a few sundry miniatures. To keep things fresh I've been working on a variety of miniatures.

First is my first Salamander ever. I think he came out pretty decently. And after enough bad experiences with trying to get decals on curved shoulder pads, I was resigned to freehanding the chapter symbol, which came out pretty well I think.


Next is a pair of Middle-Earth Rangers.


And then a selection of three marines from three different chapters: Brazen Claw, Salamander, and Raven Guard.


Next is my first Deffkopta. Boy, do those things have a lot of details! Anyway, after painting this one up, I've decided that my Deffkopta Skwadron will be known as the "Tusky Airboyz".


And finally, some Middle-Earth Orc Black Guard. They'll form part of the command group for my Orc Army, which is rapidly nearing completion.

By Request: Epic Pictures

By popular demand, I took some pictures of my various Epic scale forces. Some of them are in a state of disrepair, and I caution that the paintjobs are woefully out of date, but here they are.

Back in my days of playing Space Marine with some fanaticism, I collected and fielded an entire chapter of Space Marines, my homegrown chapter, the Nightblades.Now the chapter is somewhat depleted, as I cannibalized some of them to paint up other Space Marines from other chapters.

Back in its heyday, the Nightblades' usual foe was the Eldar from the Yriel-Dyann craftworld:The Eldar were formidable opponents, and the superheavy grav-tanks, the Tempests, and the Eldar Exarchs caused me untold amounts of frustration. As did the Eldar Phantom Titans, which unfortunately got lost in the shuffle, so I don't have pictures of them. Suffice it to say, one of them was armed with twin Pulsars, and pretty much vaporized my titans with ease.

Speaking of which, here they are, Bellator, Pugnator, and Venator:
As you can see, they've seen better days, and are due for some attention from the Adeptus Mechanicus.

My Space Marines were on occasion aided by various other forces, including the Imperial Guard:
Imperial Knights:
and the massive Imperator Titan, the Iustus Potestas:

Occasionally, my Imperial forces ended up fighting the forces of Chaos, represented here by one of their Titans:

The Ork forces never got to see battle, but I still started building a force anyway. In the future sometime they may still take to the field.
The Orks, of course, had to have some heavy support.

After Epic 40k was released, I started building forces using the new strip bases. I ended up cannibalizing some the Nightblades to make my Ultramarines force:
Also, as an experiment, I wanted to paint up squads from other chapters, so I did up a squad each of Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and another homegrown chapter, the Sea Warriors.The Sea Warriors were an experiment of mine, even their name wasn't set in stone. Their symbol was similar to that of the Dark Angels or Blood Angels, but instead of a winged sword or blood drop, the Sea Warriors had a winged trident.I had not developed the chapter background all that much, other than that they had a nautical theme.