Converted Deathwing Terminator

I put together the first of my new Deathwing Terminators tonight, and here he is.

The main body and right arm are from the Assault Terminator box.  The legs are from the Dark Angels Veteran box.

The left arm is also from the Dark Angels Veteran box – I took the one wielding the power sword and cut the sword and hand away.  I then used a open hand from the Grey Knight Terminators box and rested that on the shield.

The shield and right shoulder pad are from Scibor Miniatures.  They both fit in with the styling on my Belial conversion, although the shield is smaller (the boss should have the biggest of everything!).  A note on the Scibor shoulder pads – they are large.  As you can see.  Way to big for marines, and still on the large side even for Terminators.  However, on the inside they won’t fit Terminator arms, and I had to take my Dremel to them with the sanding wheel to open them up enough to glue them onto the arm properly.  Bear in mind, and wear a dust mask!

The head is from the Assault Terminator box, with a custom greenstuff hood, for that Dark Angels look.  It took a few goes to get right, and to get the greenstuff thin enough.  What I did was to roll out a sausage shape and then sandwich it in the clear plastic wrap the greenstuff comes in (well watered so it won’t stick).  Then I used my craft knife handle as a rolling pin and flattened it out.  Then I cut it to shape and peeled it off, and wrapped it round his noggin.

Lastly, I want to go with a Mjolnir look on all the Thunder Hammers in this squad, so I cut the normal Thunder Hammer down quite a bit.  I will smooth out the join line with some greenstuff.  I love the way it looks; short and brutal, like the Terminator equivalent of a sawn-off shotgun.

Primed and Assembled Forgeworld Venerable Dreadnought

I got this guy assembled and primed.  What a gorgeous model!  Painting this is going to be a lot of fun

His arms are magnetised, his feet are pinned but not glued to the base and the ball-and-socket joint at his waist is not glued either, so he comes apart for painting easily.  Oh, and his head isn’t glued in, either!

Here is a video:

I bought these two from Maelstrom recently.

Taelor I have always liked (under-bewb!), her sculpt is excellent and matches the flavour of her rules perfectly.

Misaki I have a special fondness for since I have written a story featuring her for Wyrd.  I proxied her in a game against Hamelin the Plagued, and she was able to get into melee very swiftly and, with plentiful Obeys from my Perdita crew, she could leather her targets easily.  She has a spell that grants her +2Dg, and the effect lasts until the end of the Turn, so have Misaki go first, get her into melee range with a couple of moves, and use her Melee Expert to deliver a single hit.  You can then use Obey from Perdita (and her totem/ Abuela if you brought them along) to get Misaki to make even more hits, all with +2Dg.  Nasty!

Taelor is a one-piece model.  Her hammer and pointy finger were slightly bent, but nothing serious.  I pinned her on a Black Cat swamp base.

Misaki was a pain to assemble.  She comes with that rock base you see, but her feet do not line up to the two holes cast in it.  Not only that, but only one of her feet (the right one) has a pin cast in the sole.  I had to bent her left foot slightly to lie flat.  I then had to cut her right foot away from her robes so that I could bend it (and twist it) to lie flat.  Then I lined up the pin on her right foot with the hole in the rock, held the model steady and drilled through underneath her left foot.  I pinned that hole, and glued both body and base together.

Her head was fairly easy to attach, but I put a small pin in just for stability.

Her bisento.  Ah, her bisento!  It comes in one piece, with part of her forearm and her right hand already attached.  The haft of the weapon was bent all over the place, and took a while to straighten.  Because the forearm and right hand are moulded onto this piece, I could not replace the haft of the weapon with a brass rod, as I would have preferred.  I had to stick with the moulded piece, which means this model will be incredibly fragile.  Practically any contact will bend that weapon haft.  Attaching this piece to the main body of the model was also a huge pain, and I wound up using a tiny pin and a lot of patience!

I also picked up the Malifaux Hats and Guns box set from Static Games in Glasgow (hi guys!).  None of them will go with either of these models, but I have one that is perfect!  Coming soon

Just to keep my options open I am working on a 1000pt Deathwing army for the coming Crucible 2011 tournament.  The current list is as follows:-

Belial with Lightning Claws
1 x 5 Deathwing Terminators with TH/SS, including an Apothecary.
1 x 5 Deathwing Terminators with PF/SB, including a Cyclone Missile Launcher
1 x 5 Deathwing Terminators with PF/SB, including a Cyclone Missile Launcher and a Chainfist
1 x Ravenwing Support Squadron (1 Land Speeder) with Typhoon Missile Launcher
1 x Ravenwing Support Squadron (1 Land Speeder) with Typhoon Missile Launcher

Pretty simple, and clocks in at exactly 1000pts.  The FAQ has given this army all the boost it needs to be viable.  Belial joins the TH/SS squad, who all get 3++ and FNP.  Belial keeps his Lightning Claws for more and higher Init attacks, although this drops his 3++ to a 5++.  Need to keep him away from Power Fists.

Support comes in the form of the four missile launchers, which all have Frag and Krak options and all are Heavy 2.  Love that FAQ!  8 S8 shots at BS4 is not quite so good as my Tau, but not half bad, either.  I need to pop open transports so the Termies can go to work, otherwise I will spend all game running around after vehicles and getting shot to pieces

To make this army, I needed to paint 5 TH/SS terminators and convert one of them to an Apothecary.  Here is the arm I made for the Apothecary, based on an Assault Cannon:

A tiny wood screw, some Plastruct and some 0.5mm brass wire completes the look.

I also need two Cyclone Missile Launchers.  I raided my bitz box and found two Chaos Havok launchers.  Perfect.  I will paint them up in Deathwing colours and attach them, probably with a magnet.

Here are the squad primed and ready for painting:

You can see the Havok Launchers off to the left.

Now all I need are two Ravenwing Land Speeders.  Painting them should be easy enough – I have lots of black

 

 The Showgirls are my favourite crew in the game.  Not only do they have a look that is unique, not just in Malifaux but in miniature games as a whole, but their playstyle suits me perfectly.  When I want to shoot things I pick Perdita, when I want to run around like an idiot and throw explosive pigs I pick Som’er or Ophelia, and when I want to elegantly screw with my opponent’s brain and pull tricks so bent they create wormholes to their own past, I pick Colette.

Here are some model close-ups:-

The doves were bought and added to the crew after I took the group photo at the top.  Rather than do them all in a silver colour, I went with gold, silver and bronze.  I am particularly fond of the coloured smoke on the gold dove – I think the blending there worked very well.  I think the trick was to leave hardly any pure white showing.  Most of what looks white is actually extremely pale pink or blue.

These two were not painted in my speed-painting technique.  I did not use that for any of my Showgirls crew, as I wanted them to have strong, vibrant colours, so I went with traditional base colour/ highlight/ shade techniques.

You can see how these two are built here.  They can come off those smaller bases and “Dance Together” on a single larger one.  The roses are handmade.  I made a very thin strip of greenstuff, and then glued a length of 0.5mm brass rod to one end.  When the glue was dry I rolled up the strip of greenstuff.  Then, using the edge of a craft knife, I pressed the sides and top to form petals, and pinched the bottom of the rosehead tight around the brass stem.  The leaves are just cut freehand from more very thin greenstuff.

You can see some pics of Colette and a Showgirl (whom I repainted) here.  I don’t have any photos of Cassandra for some reason.  I will put some up.

Man cave.  As the name implies, gamers from before the dawn of civilization have wanted – nay, needed – a place to call their own.  A place to hold their dreams.  A place to store their junk.

The very first gamer probably used an actual cave to hold his collection of carved whalebone figurines and customised mammoth-tooth dice, but that is pure conjecture on my part, and I cannot back it up.   Suffice to say that today, few of us will use an actual cave to hold our proliferation of gaming goodness, and progress is a good thing as caves are damp, dark and lacking in the door department.  I suggest a garage or spare room, but whatever.  Here is my man cave:

Here you have your classic B&Q plastic shelving.  Clockwise from top right you got terrain and bitz, more terrain and rulebooks, more terrain, and terrain-making supplies in that white tub.  Under the tub is a box with a painted Macharius Vulcan tank, and more bitz.  Carrying on there are boxes of AT-42 armies, a landing pad beside a tub full of plasticard and a bazillion other modelling supplies and above that more and more terrain.  Out of shot above is, yes,  more terrain (and Heroscape).  Models?  Yes, I am getting to those.  In fact, there are some excellent Chaos models in that briefcase.

From top left down.  Two hefty tool boxes with two Deathwing Land Raiders apiece.  Next down, my shelf of bottles – everything from spray paint to liquid rust to varnish to glues to paint additives.  Below that, my modelling toolbox (worth a post in itself) sitting on a stack of paper terrain I have not yet got round to cutting out.  Next to that is some of my Malifaux terrain.  Below that is two tubs.  The left one has sprues – loads of spare sprues, most with plenty of bitz on them.  Also all my Robogear bits.  Next to that is a tub full of Hirst Arts pieces.  My airbrush is in there, too.  Bottom shelf holds – well, not sure what is in that tub on the left!  Hmm.   Unassembled cardboard boxes by the look of it, from my last Ebay selling spree.  The tub on the right has lots of terrain painting supplies, as well as a Bio Chemical Plant kit I use for bitz.

Bored yet?  I’ve only just got started!!!

A stack of boxes.  My office will never miss them…  From the top, Malifaux terrain. Then some Necron terrain that I will rip up for bitz one day.  Below that is a box full of my Chaos army vehicles and daemon princes.  The three boxes below that are all terrain, either home made or bought.  The orange box has small terrain elements in it (mostly resin), and the heavily spray-painted box below that has all my Chaos infantry models packed in foam.  I have about 2500 points of infantry in there – my original Chaos horde of Ebay

On the right is my foamboard, three MDF boards for a gaming table, grass mat and some 3″ thick pink foam for terrain.

Two sets of trays full of minis.  Deathwing, Witchhunters, Malifaux, Chaos Renegades, Orks, moulding supplies and some Tau that won’t fit anywhere else.

The pressure washer is for stripping minis.  It really works*

Painting station up the top.  I don’t paint in the Man Cave – I take that out so I can paint somewhere else.  Like Starbucks, or the local pub.  All the foam trays have Tau in them.  The  black laptop bag is packed with everything I need to play Malifaux, including a couple of small foam cases of models.  Under that are two foam hardcases, both empty for now.

Hey, there’s my Munchkin game!  I was looking for that!!!

Underneath is a load of terrain bitz and supplies, and 3/4 of a large cardboard box I use as a spray booth.

Two Figures In Comfort foam cases full of Tau.  Both of them still have my 3350 point army from my recent game against Jamie.  On the right are bags of cat litter and sand for, yes, terrain.  I also have cats, but this litter is not for them!

The workstation folds away, but it is handy for doing the odd small job.  As I said, I don’t usually work in the Man Cave itself.  I made the mistake of sawing some wood in here last year, and covered everything in sawdust

And lastly, a shot of the whole thing:

And there you have it.  I keep telling myself I have enough junk supplies here to keep me hobbying for a year or three, but I also keep buying new stuff.  Damn hobby!

(*this is a lie)

Comin’ out the Bayou faster’n a greased porker on rails: the Gremlin Kin.

Friends of the Ortegas, beware – Ophelia and her inbred ingrates will be rootin’, tootin’ and shootin’ in your general direction when you least expect it (note: shootin’ you may be postponed for and/or interrupted by drinkin’, wrestlin’ hogs, chasin’ girls, wrestlin’ girls, chasin’ hogs, more drinkin’ and generally actin’ the fool to get Ophelia’s attention).

IN GAME

I have played one game so far with this crew, against Mark’s Rasputina crew in a 25ss game last night.  We only played 4 Turns, and Mark forgot about Raspy’s Overpower (which, let’s be honest, is a huge ability for her) but the Kin did very well.  After Turn 4 only the December Acolyte was left, and I had Ophelia, Francois, Raphael and a Young LaCroix for 6VP to 4VP.

Raspy pulled a mean trick on Turn 2 – I had Ophelia and two Young LaCroix hiding next to a tower in the middle of the table, and Raspy used Freeze Over to make them stick to it!  We decided the Gremlins had chosen to lick the frozen structure and their tongues had stuck fast   The two totems could shoot their way free (their guns Push them back 1″ when fired), but Ophelia was locked there all Turn.

I managed to use “Ooh! It’s a girl” to slingshot Pere Ravage into position for a perfect bombing run.  I ran him up 10″ right into the middle of Raspy, the Golem and a Gamin, and then forgot about Reckless(+1), which would have let me attack with him as well.  He got assaulted and exploded, doing some damage at least.

The shooting this crew can put out (esp with three totems added) puts most other shooty crews in the shade.  At 30ss, I think I will try a Slop Hauler – the healing and lowering of Def is too good to miss.

I am not sure about Francois.  Like Francisco Ortega, he does not seem to have an obvious role.  Hmm.

PAINTING

I painted these models using my speed painting method (you can see it in action here), and managed to get the bases done in one night, three models done in a morning, and the last three the next evening.

I painted the bases and models separately this time around, and it’s the first time I have done that.  I clipped the tabs off the models’ feet and pinned a single foot with a 0.8mm paper clip.  I was wondering how to hold them for painting, and then hit upon the idea of drilling a 0.8mm hole in the top of a empty paint pot.  The pin in the model sits in the hole with plenty of grip, letting me paint each model in turn without having to touch it.

This let me work on the bases without the models glued to them, which made painting them a whole lot easier.  I recommend it.

The bases are Black Cat swamp bases.  Black Cat sell a blister with 4 30mm inserts, 2 40mm and 2 50mm for £7.  Compare with Wyrd’s 50mm swamp blister – 1 insert for £5.  Competition is a wonderful thing

BUILDING

The Pig-a-Pult is scratchbuilt from plasticard.  Since there is no Pigapult model (yet), I came up with this. I considered a trebuchet first, and then a Roman-style catapult, but this felt to me like what Gremlins would come up with: a giant swamp slingshot.

The user ratchets the seat back with the lever and, when he’s ready to go, yanks the lever out and – wooooof! – off he goes!

I got the inspiration for using plasticard to make wood from this Youtube video.

The Malifaux: Rising Powers book introduces two fantastic new figures for the Arcanist faction, the Coryphee.  Those are the ones on the cover with the blades for hands.

The models come in a blister pack of two, each with its own pose, and three bases.  Why three?  Because the two models have a rule called Dance Together than lets them combine into a Coryphee Duet which, at 14 Soulstones total cost, must be the most expensive beatstick in the game.

I think Wyrd’s idea is that you buy one blister and make regular Coryphee, and then get another blister and make the Duet, on the 50mm base.

Nuh-huh.

I am a cheapskate and, more nobly, I love a modelling challenge.  “I am going to do it all with the contents of just one blister,” I cried – which, it turns out, is not something to shout when waiting in line at the clinic.

I thought about magnets, but while the crouching Coryphee (Crouching Coryphee, Hidden Colette?) could be dealt with in this way, the other is standing on only a single foot. Tough to magnetise that at all, let alone securely.

I have seen some pinning approaches, but this one is a little different. Pics will explain it best:-

Apologies, but my camera is still on its last legs, and I haven’t got a new one yet.

Pinning this model was easy – there are two 0.8mm paperclips in her base.

The base is wooden-textured plasticard from Wills Models.

This model was trickier to pin. I got one 0.8mm paperclip into her forefoot, but had to settle for a 0.5mm length of brass rod in her heel. She is very secure

But that is not the whole story – I had to find a way to combine them on a single 50mm base.

Here is the 50mm base, along with a doughnut of the Wills plasticard added. The middle is exactly the right size to allow me to do this:-

Turn around, girls, let’s get a good look at you:

And, if it’s not obvious from those pics, here is how it’s all done:

Each of the 40mm base inserts has been cut in half. One half is glued solidly to the 40mm base, but the other (the one with the model pinned and glued to it) is doubled in thickness and has three 0.8mm paperclip pins inserted in the bottom. Then, three matching holes are drilled in the 40mm base. The pins sit in these very snugly and securely.

But it is quick and easy to lift the models out with their half-bases attached and plug them into the matching holes in the 50mm base.

It took a long time to make, but I think it’s worth it, if only to save me buying and painting another two Coryphee (and, to be honest, the painting is the bit that takes me forever!). The cutting of the bases and the pinning had to very precise. For anyone interested in trying this, I recommend getting a circular cutter. Make sure the join of two ‘boards’ on the textured plasticard runs down the centre of your bases – it makes everything symmetrical. For making the holes for the pins, make a jig and use it for the 40mm and 50mm bases. That way, either model will fit on either base, and on either side of the 50mm base.

Lastly, test out your pose, since you wouldn’t want to pin those arms in place only to find that your models will no longer fit on the 50mm base face to face. And no, this didn’t happen to me, but I can imagine the horror I would have felt if it had :O

C&C welcome.

So I was on From the Warp, scrolling down the Blogger Group Expansions as I usually do so see if anything catches my eye, and three things occured to me, only one of which is of any interest to you(*).

Every time I check these updates, there are always several posts lamenting progress in this or that project, apologising for falling behind, wearily listing how many models are still to be painted, cursing the day they ever picked a yellow colour scheme etc etc.  There are even some blogs that take their names from these all-too-familiar experiences (I will leave it to you to find these blogs and list them all in the comments section for extra credit).

Like anyone else, I have loads of unfinished models.  I am good at the assembly, but not so good at the painting.  I am good at starting things and getting them 80% done, but not at finishing them.  I am good at kitbashing and making unusual things, but not so good when I need to make another three or four of the same.  Like a butterfly, I flit from project to project, landing briefly with flush cutters and hobby knife in hand (yes, I am one scary-arsed butterfly) before launching myself on an ill-advised and Paypal-funded journey to the next bright flower in my hobby garden.

For a while it bothered me.  So much so that I sold all my Orks, since the thought of 100+ unpainted minis was getting me down. 

And then I thought, “sod it.”

There are so many aspects to this hobby that I love, why not just dart from one to the other as the whim takes me like an nectar-crazed and horribly unaerodynamic insect?  If I want to paint, I’ve got plenty of things to paint.  If I want to make terrain, I have tonnes of raw ingredients.  If I want to kitbash some models, likewise.  And so on.  Some evenings I might get nothing done apart from getting some primer on a handful of models, or just tidying up my workspace, but so what?  It’s not like this is my job or anything, and if all I want to do is the equivalent of pottering around in my shed for an hour then not only am I going to do it, but I am going to enjoy myself and not feel guilty about all the other stuff I could be doing instead.  The world won’t end if I don’t paint the rest of my Chaos Renegades, and they will still be there for when I decide the time has come to paint them and I will enjoy it a whole lot more than if I sat down and forced myself to do it.

It’s my hobby and I won’t let it become a ball and chain.  What kind of butterfly would I be with one of those?

(* the other two, since you are apparently interested, are (1) why do some posts have thumbnails and mine don’t, even when I put a thumbnail in the post? (2) is the distribution between Blogger Group Expansions 1-3 random or does Ron have some sinister algorithm working behind the scenes?)

Skyrays are cool. Let’s just get that out the way, put it over there and let it stew for a bit. They just are. Moving on.

Magnets are also cool, and if you put two cool things together – I dunno. You get two cool things in a bag, I guess.

Being able to remove the seeker missiles ingame is handy, since it looks better than a dice telling you how many you have fired. Or is it how many you have left? Bleh. But magnetising the seeker missiles (which look meatier and sleeker than regular seeker missiles or even the FW ones) is tricky, because the missiles have a fin and the Skyray wing has a series of narrow slots 2mm deep by about 1mm wide. Fin fits in slot, but adding magnets into the mix is not straightforward. Here is my solution.

I used my regular 3mm x 2mm neodymium magnets. A 3mm drillbit opens up the narrow slots. The drillbit just pushes the walls of the slot outwards, and does not really remove any material. The magnet glues flush, as the slot is 2mm deep. Then on to the seeker missiles.

I clipped the first 3mm of the fin off with flush cutters, leaving a flat surface. I then made pilot holes and used the same 3mm drillbit to make a space for the second magnet. Check polarity and glue the magnet in place.

All the magnets are polarised the same way, so the missiles are interchangeable.

Here is a pic of the turret with all the missiles attached. The remainder of the fin on each missile fits into the slot on the wing, so ensures each missile is lined up perfectly straight.

As per my previous post, I want to make this chassis swappable between all the options, including the Ionhead. Using the greenstuff method I mentioned in that post didn’t appeal, so I tried out various pieces of square plastic rod I had.

Digression – it is very handy how many times GW sprues feature parts with integer dimensions. Gaps that are exactly 4mm wide. Holes or pins that are exactly 3mm in diameter. Rods that are exactly 6mm long. I am sure there are good reasons for this, but it does mean that if you stock up on plastic rods (like Plastruct) of these dimensions you will find making modifications very simple.

Anyway, this is what I did. Two pieces of square plastic rod. One fits into the gap on the Ion Cannon and the other fits snugly into the mounting receptacle on the turret base.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Tau player with a Skyray kit will be in want of rare earth magnets.

It still amazes me that GW sell a Skyray kit that includes all the parts for a Hammerhead, for the same price as a Hammerhead kit itself, but I am not about to let the boggling of my personal mind get in the way of making a chassis that can be Devilfish, Hammerhead, Ionhead and Skyray. Not all at the same time, sadly.

There is an excellent guide over at Tau Online, but I prefer to work things out for myself, using whatever I have at hand.

The turret doesn’t concern me. All the turret options simply fit into the hole on top of the chassis snugly, without glue or magnets needed. The railgun and ion cannon options also fit snugly into the mounting receptacle on top of that, so no magnets needed there, although you only get one mounting piece. Easy to make another by (1) oiling the recess on the turret the receptable slots into (2) pressing greenstuff in to shape it and carefully removing it – hence the oil, and (3) glueing that to the ion cannon once it has set up.

The only place magnets are needed is at the nose. The Devilfish has a burst cannon and the others have a targeting array. I decided to magnetise these.

Note that the only thing the Skyray kit does not include is three burst cannons. It only has two. So if you take one of those for the Devilfish nose, you don’t have enough to give your Hammerhead/ Skyray the dual burst cannon option. Fortunately I have a spare vehicle burst cannon in my bitz box. If you don’t, following the Tau Online guide is your best bet.



Any questions let me know, and thanks for taking a look