Dark Angels Drop Pod

This is something I gave to a friend for his birthday. I learned a lot about washes on this model. The metallic areas are where I really put them to use. I still have a lot to learn about it, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I also learned a lot more about hard edge highlighting as well as working with metallic paints.

Over at Bell of Lost Souls they have a great tutorial on building one of these. It's not hard, but you do have to build and paint it in a certain order, or you're in trouble. Basically, I painted everything separate then glued it all together. I had to do some touch up painting after, but it wasn't bad.

Above you can see some script on the doors. I hand painted some latin phrases on the doors, including the famous "Ave Imperator morituri te salutamus." The hand-lettering was pretty tough. I had to calculate the halfway point of each phrase, and then make sure it would look ok. I wrote half of it backwards to make sure I didn't get to the end of my space and still have more letters.

Tyrant Guard Update

Here's my newest Tyrant Guard update. I repositioned the arms to make the shield more defensive, and buffed up the head carapace even further with a leftover carapace bit from a carnifex. I'm more satisfied with this one. Now I just need to learn how to take better pictures of my miniatures.

Updates

I had to strip the paint off my jetbike autarch. As I did so, all the glue fell apart so I have to redo everything. This is a good thing as I think I can do much better than that. I found a better way to do the wings, and I'm going to put the fusion gun under the fuselage with a magnet so I can swap it out for a reaper launcher. Almost everything else of mine is magnetized; why sell myself short on this one?

I've also discovered airbrushing. I got 40 something gaunts basecoated a bit ago in a matter of an hour. By hand that would have taken days.

I also painted a Dark Angels drop pod for a friend, I'll post pictures of that later.

Furthermore, I am building a hinged game board. It's 4x8, but is hinged in half for storage. It's hard to fit a big board in a small house. I've been taking pictures of the process, those will be posted soon.

Autarch Tragedy

So I was working on my autarch for Way of Saim-Hann's contest. I used Armory black primer, and it destroyed my model. It came out looking like he had ridden straight through a black, sticky snowstorm. The model was covered in powder. Not to mention, it wasn't black but a dark gray. So I'm never using Armory again. It did the same thing to my Scorpions, but not as bad. It didn't powder my vehicles, but I did have to go over them in black because the basecoat wasn't actually black. And while I was holding it one of the flags broke off. So no contest for me.

Settling Down

Well we're finally in our new home, and my Warhammer stuff is mostly found and mostly unpacked. Once things are really settled around here I'll be posting some new stuff. I am currently painting my Jetbike Autarch, and am finishing up a Windrider Host. Still a ways to go on that one.

This weekend, I'm hopefully going to begin construction of my own gaming table. I have only attempted to build terrain once, and while it looked nice it fell apart after just a few months. The proper building foam isn't available in California, so I'll have to wait on building it until my friend goes home for a vacation, to pick some up for me.

The Tragic Breaking of a Titan

Here is a picture of my titan in action at a 12,000 pt game down at the LA Battle Bunker. My Eldar and a friend's Dark Angels versus the Orks, controlled by two other friends. This picture was taken before the game started, as we deployed our heavy armor up front, right on the line.

My friend needs to paint his stuff. I need to finish painting mine. The titan's paint job is not complete and his basing is certainly not done. I would be finished painting it by now, but tragedy befell.

Anyone who has driven on the 405 in LA knows how the road is bumpy and uneven. I had my titan on my lap (my Dark Angels friend was driving), guns facing up because I didn't have a case for it. I was reading the Apocalypse book (pictured in the background) when we hit a big bump, and the inertia of the book dropped it straight down on the tip of the right gun. Because it is slanted, it twisted and snapped the arm right off.

When we got to the bunker, I whipped out the superglue and managed to get it stuck back on temporarily. I'm still not sure how I did it, clay doesn't normally work well with superglue. The game began. On the first bit of movement, my friend reached past the Titan to move his stuff. He hit the barrel of the left pulsar and the side jets, knocking them right off. This time I couldn't get it glued back on. We continued the game though I was upset that my ally was destroying my own Titan!

On the second turn, he reached for some dice near my Titan, and broke the other pulsar off, in a different place than it originally broke! My now armless Titan was a mess. We finished the game and I plotted how to fix it.

It took me a while, but it's fixed now. I braced the arms with bronze rods, and put large rare-earth magnets on the ends, as well as on the guns so they're detachable now for transportation and clumsy hands. I braced all the protruding parts with tons of epoxy. It's a lot tougher now, but now I'm beginning to regret building it in clay, in case some other accidental brushings occur.

When I finish painting it, I'll post the pictures. Might be a while. I've got an autarch to paint.

Scratch-Built Revenant Titan, Part 2

Here's what it looked like totally put together. I used heavy epoxy to glue everything together. Looking back, I should have drilled holes in the wet clay so I could pin the joints.







I spray painted it roughly black before gluing, to make sure that black got in all the hard to reach areas. I used a lot of spray paint, because fired clay is so absorbent. This lets the nice acryllic paint coat the surfaces easier.




Next up is the semi-finished product, and the tragic story of its debut.

Scratch-built Revenant Titan

I made this a while ago, but here's my scratch built Revenant Titan. I'd love to own the actual Forgeworld model, but this will do. It was quite the undertaking. I started building it in February of 2008, after playing my first Apocalypse game. My friend had two scratch built Stompas which wreaked havoc, and I wanted to join the fun and show him up.

I have a lot of experience working with clay, so I built it out of that. Clay is wonderful but has some limitations. Once it has been fired, it is very very difficult to drill or do any other post-construction. Also, when it breaks there's not a lot you can do to fix it. No pinning, only glue and you'd better hope it's in a glueable spot. This came back to haunt me after the first game I used it in, but more on that story later.

Here's the starting stages:



You can see that I started out with a round clay base, but I abandoned that idea after I realized I wouldn't be able to drill holes in it after the fact, so I'd have to know exactly where the feet would go, so I bought a 7" round base at Michael's. I messed up on a few parts, after the fact it was obvious. I used printed out pictures for my references, but they messed up the detail slightly because some were so light. I should have referenced the computer more often for accuracy, but ah well. Next update will be the construction of the titan.

Minor Tyrant Guard Conversion

While at the local (and by local I mean 1.5 hours away) Battle Bunker to pick up 5th Edition, they were having the "Mercenary Night" where people come to sell their armies and make trades. There was a guy there who had loads of third edition stuff. He happened to have a bunch of Spore Mines and two Tyrant Guard. I didn't like the third edition model too much, but the price was just too good to give up.

The picture quality is not the best here, but you can see that I added some spikes on his shield. These were from the Genestealer scything talons. Using Green Stuff I also made him blind as the 4th Edition fluff makes them, and extended his carapace to match the hive tyrant. It looked a little plain before this, but I think it's a little better now.

I am considering re-doing the spikes on the shield as I'm not fully satisfied with them. His legs are also too spindly, and I may do something about that but I'm not sure what. They are just cannon fodder so I shouldn't worry too much about them, but my hive tyrant needs a proper retinue.

Basic Autarch Conversion

I am just getting into the conversion side of the hobby. I enjoy making little tweaks on the models. This is my first piece that I'd truly consider a conversion. A few extra bits, nothing drastic.

The first thing you'll notice is the wings on the jetbike are handmade. I got a bunch of bikes from a trade deal, and one of them was lacking on the wings. I decided to take some plasticard and create new ones anyway. The rest of the bikes were really messed up and didn't have enough riders, nor enough arms. Someone tried some really weird conversions and failed. They're all fixed now but it was a nightmare. Anyway, I used plasticard and green stuff to recreate the missing wings. Looking back, I think I could have picked a better shape, but at this point meh.

Here, I just swapped out his normal arm for a Shining Spear arm. I figured that as an Autarch he was once a Shining Spear and would opt for the same control scheme as he used before. I had to do a lot of filing to get the shoulder to fit in his socket.

I also had to raise where the control actually sits. If I kept it where it's supposed to go, it's too short, or rather on a different angle. So I had to move it towards his body and set it higher.

This was the easiest part. I took his fusion gun, sawed off his hand, filed that smooth, sanded off the bump on the other side, then set a pin in it. I then drilled a hole on the jetbike canopy, and set the gun in with epoxy.

I considered magnetizing it so I could swap it with a reaper launcher, but that is not happening. I would have needed a mounting and way more work than I was willing to do. Possibly, I could have mounted the gun underneath and that would have made magnetizing easier.

I also switched out the tip of his spear. This was the trickiest part. I happened to have some High Elf spear people laying around, so I chopped off one of their spear tips and drilled a hole in the top and bottom, then inserting a pin and gluing it together. The hardest part was getting the drill to bite on the small points.

Finally, I added the tail stabilizer/thing that Shining Spears have since the box of Shining Spears I bought came with 4 models instead of 3 plus a bunch of extra controls and tail fin things.











Not terribly complicated, but it makes a slightly lackluster stock model unique and more befitting a command position.

Awakening Ynnead

I have begun this project to document what I've been working on with my Warhammer 40k models. I will mostly be uploading pictures of either my own interesting Warhammer conversion projects or painting details. I am mostly doing this for myself, but I'm looking for comments and criticism of my work. The name of the blog is inspired by a bit of fluff from the Eldar codex, concerning the end of the Eldar race and their last glimmer of hope.

I play both Eldar and Tyranids, and I have work from both of those to be uploaded shortly.