Archive for ‘40K’
10 items.
Though my Squats have been retired from the tournament circuit for years now, and I blogged at length about them for years, I don’t have that many photos of them finished. Time to remedy this.
Working back through the iterations of 40K, this squad’s never game legal. In Rogue Trader the 10-strong squad would only get generated with one “special” weapon (then a catch-all term for special and heavy weapons). In the Rogue Trader Squat army list the Squat Combat Squad was 8-strong and everyone (yes, all eight of them) could have heavy weapons – but no Plasma Guns. In 2nd edition 40K the Combat Squad was split into Warrior, Attack and Thunderer squads (analogous to Tactical, Assault and Devestator squads) – but were 5-strong. Though everyone in a Thunderer Squad was entitled to special and heavy weapons.
And, looking at the squad now I realise I’ve paired off a Lascannon gunner with a Heavy Bolter loader. Oops.
I’m really quite fond of these blighters. I’m always tempted to strip them back and revisit them, but the models are so battered and worn and loved I don’t think they can be painted to a higher standard.
In other news, Ninjabread is now part of the House of Paincakes blog network, along with all the other awesome-cool kids like friend and co-Englishman Kapt. Von. Unlike some people, they don’t object to words like “cocking” and nobber”.
Very kindly, they published my 500-word essay on why I’m God’s gift to the Internet. Cocking nobbers.
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Back into the big pile of Horrors of Tzeentch to paint for Project Change. This Blue Horror has been done in Liche Purple through to Jade Green. Not blue as such, but both colours are almost there.
Games Workshop have just released their new plastic Horrors. It’s a big departure from the third generation of truly disturbing Horrors. But, oddly, there seems to be no tip-of-the-hat to their splitting any more. I’ve yet to get my hands on the sprues themselves (but it’s my birthday soon so fingers crossed) so I could be wrong. There’s no game reason to paint them blue these days, but I’m sure people will. Here’s how they appear in blue with a little Photoshop magic.
Now, how to capture that effect with paint?
Games Workshop’s What’s New Today featured my Blood Angel captain.
Here’s my photograph of it, just because I like showing it off.
Their article about it’s found here. I got a little thrill when I read through it as I thought it would link back through to Ninjabread itself. Ha!
Here’s the article I wrote about how I made it.
(Hey, the mention was indeed several months back, but Ninjabread was on hiatus back then.)
And back to Project Change the Thousand Sons with a modern Sorcerer from the current boxed set.
I’ve used a similar scheme to my classic Thousand Son. I mentioned I’d spent months trawling eBay for a squad of those classic models, only for Games Workshop to rerelease them alongside the other classic Goodwin traitors.
I love Ork artillery. As a kid they were the fullest blisters on the shelves, and they contained an alluring wonder – what did those assortment of parts look like when assembled?
Well, I’ve got a squadron of converted oldskool Smasha Guns (count as Zzap Gunz) in my Ork/Stealer Hybrid army. They’re great fun – they fire a traktor beam which picks up its target, then drops it on its friends, much to the krew’s amusement.
The krewz aren’t converted (I figured they’re crewed by very late generation grot/stealer hybridz) – but the guns are. They’ve had their hideous old Fantasy-style cartwheels replaced with modern chunky Ork tyres (from the Trukk I think). Plus, to make them work with the Genestealer theme, I’ve added a third claw. This was simply done by cutting an old Smasha Gun in half.
Here’s the classic Studio Smasha Gun by way of comparison, and also for a bit of retro Orkiness.
I’m continuing my focus on the Thousand Sons with the classic 1990 Jes Goodwin Thousand Son.
I’ve got ten of them! It’s taken months and months of trawling through eBay, buying one here and one there and now I finally got enough for a complete squad without paying more than a couple of quid each. They’ve stripped back beautifully too. In fact, I have one too many (the last auction I won was for a group of four) so I can test a second scheme out before deciding how the squad’ll be done.
As I’ve just started reading A Thousand Sons, I thought I’d try implementing the colour scheme on the excellent Neil Roberts cover artwork.
As you can see, Neil’s interpretation of the Heresy-era Thousand Sons features quite understated headpieces, leaving plenty of scope for them to get corrupted by the time the Battle of Terra comes.
This is an awesome model. The early 1980s Chaos Renegades were sculpted by the Michael and Alan Perry and Kev Adams. This was at a time when Chaos had a yet undeveloped visual identity, and so most models were unique mindfracks with crazy bespoke armour. They involved a lot of cross-over from the design of the 1980s Chaos Warrior, with elements or H. R. Giger thrown in. Though the sculpting quality was a tad primitive, they were full of a vibrant creativity. Here are two. (Hell, I’ve been whining about doing red without it looking Khornate too long now so I just went and painted a World Eater.)
Then, in 1990 a young Jes Goodwin came along and produced a renegade model for each major Chaos God. At about the same time Jes was working on the then-new mk7 Space Marine armour (which endures through to this day), and he took a lot of the design elements through into these Renegades. So much so they’d not look out of place in modern 40K armies, despite being 20 years old.
Interestingly, this is the first type the Egyptian motif appears for Tzeentch. Prior to this, Thousand Sons were just gribbly fungus bird marines.
And finally, I’m not sure if I’m cheating the terms of Project Change here (i.e. no conversions), but rather than model the first of the Marines with the Chaos Renegade backpack, I chose the mk7 Imperial backpack. Neil Robert’s illustration doesn’t feature the debased stabilser jets of Chaos backpacks (which I’ve written about at length here). Ah well, I’ve got another nine to paint with the correct backpacks.
Who better to lead my Greenstealer army than the first Genestealer that infected the first batch of Orks? I present Patriark Zurk-Seez, born aloft on a mighty palaquin.
Starting with a little background on Genestealer Cults – the cult begins when a purestrain Genestealer infects some hosts. They are then psychically slaved to him, and spawn the first generation of Genestealer Hybrids. That first purestrain Genestealer grows in power and stature as his cult grows, developing psychic powers and acting as a psychic beacon for the Tyranid Hive Fleet. A fitting choice for HQ.
So, Zurk-Seez is much bigger than a regular Genestealer. He’s built out of of the two of the metal B-Movie Broodlords and a Lictor. The pose (top right arm clutching bottom left arm) is homage to the original throned Patriarch model. I wish the plastic Space Hulk Broodlord model had been available when I started this. Ho hum.
Oh, and the little Gretchin Magus advisor whispering advice is another homage. He’s converted from a Night Goblin Shaman, with his staff replaced with another classic Genestealer Magus’.
Now, the palaquin. I knew when I was converting him I wanted him on a throne like the classic Patriarch, but I couldn’t work out why there’d be a huge immobile chair in the middle of the battlefield. But then I remember Xerxes in 300, and so searched high and low for Grot models posed as if holding something. Eventually I found a Goblin Bolt Thrower crew member that fitted the bill very nicely, so bought four of those. One of them on each side has their mouths resculpted to provide some variation, and they’ve got their feet reposed.
The throne itself is also homaging the classic models, with three big spikes off to each side, and skulls (albeit Ork/Genestealer Hybris ones) on the ends of each of the arm rests. Lovely.
Here’s a picture of him before painting. The copper-coloured bits (tongue and loin cloth) are tomato puree foil.
In games he’s represented as a Weirdboy Warphead as he has psychic powers, and Weirdboys have no weapons.
Ork Dreadnoughts have four arms. Genestealers have four arms. So, my Ork/Genstealer Hybrid army must include one with four gribbly klawz.
This involved buying lots of klawz, and as Genestealers have three claws on their hand I bought lots of extra blades so each klaw has three blades too. This means in real life they wouldn’t be that effective (there’s nothing for the top blade to shear against, and it stops things getting between the other two klawz, but IT LOOKS AWESOME so nothing else matters). Each klaw is removable and attached with rare earth magnets for ease of transport and to stop them breaking off. It also means I can detach them for vehicle damaged results, and wave them around in my more childish moments while making robo-wibbly noises.
The pilot is taken straight from the goofy 2nd edition Ork Dreadnought. I love the way he’s sticking out his tongue. And, I really want to see Dredd pilots, it gives a sense of scale. I wonder if the upcoming Deff Dredd kit includes one. The Dredd model has a solid closed hatch that took an age to drill and dremel out, and then find a replacement hatch from my bits box the right size to replace it. But it looks fantastic.
The big chompy skull is from the Chaos Dwarf Hellcannon. I wanted the Dredd to look like a giant bug, and attempts at doing this with plasticard and gubbinz looked silly rather than scary (in a goofy kind of way). I added a classic oldskool Squig in the mouth because he’s awesome and I want a whole army of them. I miss stupid smiling models.
In terms of upgrades, this also has Grot Riggers, which is the dude on the base, being the Direct-only Oiler Runt. He needed no conversion work (I figures he’s a third or fourth generation Gretchin/Genestealer hybrid and therefore quite Gretchiny apart from the purplish skin hue).
There’s also some fairly major reposing in the legs, to give the impression the Dredd’s powering forwards on its stubby legs. This was incredibly difficult – and all the weight goes through it left leg and required some heavy-duty brass pinning. What’s annoying about this is soon everyone will be able to achieve similarly awesome and dynamic poses with a minimum of work as the new kit will be plastic. Bums.
More of my Greenstealer army soon. If you missed the thirty-strong Shoota Boyz mob – take a look at it here.
The Dark Angels have a dark secret. They’re absolute chumps for product placement.
I always feel Bugman’s Bar misses a trick not theming its food to the game universes. Well, they used to have a “Space Marine Sandwich” and I think a “Waywatcher Salad”. But no! That was just taking names and putting them in front of foodstuffs. What do Space Marines have to do with sandwiches? We could have a Lemon Russ, and Epic Parmageddon.
