Ordo Biologis acolytes

There are some ideas you just don't see coming although they've been in your head for a while. Well these guys are of that kind !

I was very excited about the release of the objectives box along the new 8th edition of warhammer 40k and one model had especially grabbed my attention.

The Shadow legion

It sometimes takes a good self-kicking in the rear to get some things done...

This has been precisely the case with this project. I got the genesteealer hybrids from the Overkill box about a year ago, build a band of genetically engineered warriors in September 2016 and only just managed to finish painting them after letting them aside half done for months.

The recent release of Shadow wars : Armageddon has proven to be the sparkle that could ignite my interest and after a slow come back I decided to set my standards lower to get them done rapidly.

The deepest blues are black - Inquisition hunter force

Proper zenithal underlit and desaturated group pic

So here we are, end of yet another project (so far at least). After starting painting one model at a time and then painting two at once, I've upped the game and made it to 3 models at a time !

That's probably due to the project in itself being far more fun than I expected to be...

Sergent Trepas and acolyte

Alright, after a quick and silly group painting session, it was time to get back on my Inq28 painting challenge.

Since I've already built 6 of them (and am in progress on the 7th because even numbers look odd... well strange, you know what I mean), I just had to pick a couple I could do rapidly and here are the guys I picked.

Sister Smierć - Duty beyond life

I'm keeping the Inq28 ball rolling for a challenge at my FLGS so here's the second member of my inquisitorial retinue. This time we have Sister Smierć. 

...and sidekick with panache !

I absolutely hate deadlines, with a passion really. But it seems they do get the best of me and force me to pull the fingers out (of whatever you might think worth pulling out from).

With Knavecon nearing I had a model left to paint and very little time to do so, since I'm on holidays with the kids right now. You will read more about the game involved but I needed a sidekick for the Rogue Trader I showed the other day.

2D to 3D - A rogue trader with panache !

This is a bit of an unusual model today. Not that the style, inspiration or genre are particularly original for me but it's just that I'm not used to base my whole work on a single illustration like I did here.

But why did I do that ? That's a fair question to ask.

Once again, it's because I was tempted by another of my WIPster colleagues namely Axiom. You might remember the excellent eldar pirate he built, based on an illustration from the Rogue Trader Rulebook. Well as soon as he had published it many of us decided to do exactly the same and that's how I ended up with the project of creating a Rogue Trader from scratch.

There's a feeling inside... - Martial artists in the 40k universe.

You know what ? Lately I've felt the urge to have models of Martial artists for my 40k games... Why is that ? Well that's one long and sordid story really... I'll tell more about it on the Scale Creep though as it involves some of my WIPster colleagues...

Kaleb Daark the doomed one, he is back. !

Kaleb Daark has always been a fascinating character for me (and for many people I guess), I won't go and tell his tale again as some have done it far better than I could do but I did paint his model a while back. Malal has alway been a fascinating God too since he was mentionned in warhammer RPG and a few publications but got erased for some sordid IP reasons.

The appeal of both is still very strong and from time to time, small details can ignite a barrel of renegade god fuel. For me, it started all long ago with this tiny bit :

Rings a bell ?

Helmawr gangers

Patrick Landmait, Jefferson Murdoch and Steve Taylor

Just try and guess what we have on today's menu... Oh good ! You've been following then ! Yes , more Helmawr gangers indeed !

I had planned to blog a ganger after the other but for once painting happened faster than blogging (can't really complain here) so here are three new entries for the gang !

They are all different in styles and definitely are something different from the previous members. I hope you'll agree they go together quite nicely.

Just try not to think about this song if you can... (from 1991 like confrontation)

So who are our new candidates then ?

Pierce Gavestone - Helmawr Gang leader and Jokaero

Pierce Gavestone (with caryatid) and Gordo the Jokaero

Back In April 2014 (yep that's more than a year ago) I was in my preparations for BOYL14 and much of my attention was on confrontation.  A year or so later, not much has changed (on the hobby front  only) with me still preparing myself for BOYL and with my attention still highly focused on confrontation.

You may remember from a post at that time that I had modelled a couple of Imperial nobles but my studies on confrontation and the whole Necromunda setting and a few interesting trades lead me to consider a whole Helmawr gang.

For those of you who are a little less familiar with the background of it all, Lord Helmawr is the Imperial commander of the whole Necromunda Hive world. His position makes him very influential and important. He has to rely on many mercenaries and bounty hunters to work in the shadows for him (like Venators to cope with the pyskers and mutant threat) but also on his own gang for tasks that require unquestionable trust.

Imperial commander Lord Helmawr

Chaos grav-attack !

Alright, some things get in our way sometimes... when I moved (back in December 2013) to the house  I'm living in right now (and am about to leave), the first model I started with was the dreaded chaos grav-attack.

Being of the obsessive kind, I knew I wanted my grav-attack to look like the original glorious grav-attack designed by Rick Priestley :

Picture from Solegend

And that meant starting on a deodorant stick base.

Steal your face - part 2

Some conversions require dedication, yep, that's right, dedication.

The venator bounty-hunter for confrontation are not a gang you cast "resurection" on that easily...

I took some plastic bits anddid some dry builds (well with some blue-tack) for them during new year's eve :

 but I was looking for some proper heads.

This resulted in me trying to steal the heads of other miniatures by taking prints and casting them in resin but it proved to be quite a failure as you can see in that post. 

The idea of making the band has no left me at all so I took a little trip on the background  side of the venators to see what could be done.

The necromunda redemptionists are going to offer their heads in sacrifice to the Venators but Mutantdale made me feel remorses about cutting the heads off of them for this purpose only. So I decided to go back on the copy way...

This time it would be pressmoulding.

After some very interesting discussion with Shoebox, I opted for Oyumaru and greenstuff and used this tutorial by the very same Shoebox.

Oymaru is the exact same product as instant mold, the only difference being it is not sold by the same companies and comes out with silly colors. 

I opted for Oyumaru because :

- It's cheaper

- You can have many colours (though it has no impact on the modelling whatsoever)

- It's japonese (Yes I'm that superficial)

Basic ingredients are simple :

- Some Oyumaru sticks (I used the pink ones because my daughter asked me to)

- some models

- some hot water

- 3 minutes

Pour some hot water in a mug and make yourslef and your wife/husband a nice cup of tea with the rest.

Cut some oyumaru pieces and put them in the hot water for 3 minutes.

Put the  pieces in sime absorbant paper to avoid having water drops on it.

And then apply them on the heads of the models like a maniac, screaming horrible things in a mad laughter...

It looks fairly similar to the siligum and resin casting so far doesn't it?

Well now you will see how the dreaded pink-blob gang is far superior to the blue-blob head gang...

Forget the flashes around the heads, this will be fixed, i even think I'll do another batch ut making sure the oyumaru mould is perfect, I kind of rushed on the first batch and I've lost some details but second batch should be good. I'm really liking how things are turning out. The lady on the far right side won't have the complete masl but just a part like a sort of venitian mask.

While I was at it, I also built the 2 nobles I had in mind :

They will have fancy hairdo like this :

or this 

If I manage to sculpt them of course...

Apart from that, you can see here that the nimber of Work In Progress is quite high on the table at the moment. 

- 20 red redemption cultists

- 9 chaos androids

- 7 sensei gangers

- 1 sphincter beast

- 1 plastic Kaleb Daark

- 1 adventurer paladin

- 1 adventurer cleric

- 10 marauder archers

- 10 chaos warriors

- 1 chaos lord

- 12 slaanesh cultists

- 3 dark elf crossbowmen

- 2 minotaurs

- 1 wizard

- 1 chaos grav-attack

Hopefully I should be able to lower the number a bit...

Just when I didn't need anything more on the "to do" list , I decided to build bases for my chaos dwarf swivel guns... (sorry about the very bad pictures but you get the idea)

I guess I can consider myself busy for the time being... ;)

The Realm Of Chaos warband Challenge - Start

Over the oldhammer forum, there has been a challenge launched to build Warbands in the most oldschool fashion. The idea was simple, each contestant rolls a warband and gives it to the Challenge Master who randomly assigns them between all players.

You may have already seen Erny's warband start so I felt like showing you how I'm going to do this :

Warband 7 – Asslessman
Champion of Slaanesh:
Human 10 Wizard (rolled 71, upgraded him to lv10 for survivability)
Gift: Willpower increase (Slaanesh). Second gift to be decided upon by painter.
Trait: Short legs (first rolled silly voice, then short legs - decided short legs was funnier from a modeling point of view)
Trait: Spits acid

Retinue:
• 3 Dark Elf (light armour, hand weapon, crossbow)
• 12 Chaos Cultists (handweapon, shield, no physical attributes)
• 2 Minotaurs (fudged. Rolled 4 orcs - didn't feel very Slaaneshi, so rerolled and got 2 minotaurs. Perfect!)


From what's above you can see that Mr Phreedh (who rolled my band) felt no remorse from rolling a huge band to be done in a month and a hal...

SO... Starting with the leader of the unit, we have
- a Slaanesh evil wizard
- short legs and silly voice
- spits acid

For the short legs part, I knew I just had to reduce a normal pair of legs to get it so I started using plastic zombie parts. Having short legs felt creepy so I enhanced this trait by giving a bent position, almost crooked, to the model.

Then I started looking for a head and I met this part which had been lying in my bits box for quite some time :

Cocorico pour la Bresse ! - The proud bretonnian Rooster knight

Ok, I finally took the time to give this model the attention it diserved.

You may remember how this project started on the old hammer forum from my will to make a regional knight to represent the diversity of the community. I started this oroject here and followed here.

I decided to make a bretonnian since I have a bretonnian army and that I love them. I decided to take my region mascot being the "bresse" white rooster.

I won't rephrase everything but you can see the little story behind my bretonnian army here, which explains a bit my choices for this project (you can also see that every detail counts in this project).

Hugues-Edouard de l'Ain, Baron de Bresse in all his glory

Here are some shots from different angles and with the optionnal arms available since the right shoulder has a rare earth magnet which enables me to change its gear as I will.

 I have to say though I began this project with very naive intentions, but now I can't look away from all the innuendos and possible jokes about such a concept. Knowing that some people might be looking for some huge cock on the net and get dragged here (Google stats proved this happened more than once...), I don't want to fool anyone so here are some "in situ" shots of Hugues-Edouard in his every day life so you can see our knight here is nothing else but virtue made flesh...

Hugues-Edouard, a true Gentleman :

Hugues-Edouard is always prone to helping ladies in thge most honorable way, he insists on escorting all the ladies of the court when they go in the woods.

"- Oh please mesdemoiselles, rest assured and don't be afraid, as true as I have a huge cock between my legs, I'll take good care of you and won't let you be harmed whatsoever !
-...
- Come on mesdemoiselles, what are you afraid of?"

Hugues-Edouard hunting :

Hugues-Edouard insists on training his men for the hunt.

"- See ! Look at how my cock is standing firm ! This is how you hunt and how you win battles, always stand proud. You understand ?

- ...

- Alain ! As my squire I would like to know why you're hidingyour face in the palm of your hand? Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Hugues-Edouard against Evil :

Hugues-Edouard is always taking the side of the weak and he will always lend a hand when his people are in danger.

" Ahaha my poor Tristan, when you said "Monsters" I thought you meant REAL monsters like dragons or wyverns ! I see no monsters here, some corrupted and lost creatures at best. Come on, let's show them how great the lady of the lake is with some well-placed sword hits ! EN AVANT!

Hugues-Edouard fights eviler :

 "- Oh I'm afraid you're misinformed about my mother Mr Black ! And I don't see why on earth I would let you mess with my organs as you said.

- (some horrible curses in a mix of old worlder and dark tongue I can't write here)

- Well, if you want blood for your blood god, that's a thing but I don't see how on earth this sordid idea of yours about your axe and my anus is relevant. Prepare yourself to fight for your honor ! I challenge you !"

and so on and so on...

You see, I already like him a lot...

Oh and Happy new year to you all, guess what I did on my new year's eve? Yep, blue-tack kitbashing for my venators (heads to be changed)...

Face off - How to start a venator gang for confrontation

OK, if you read yesterday's post, you might have seen some models captured in blue putty to get their faces copied. The mold has been made and the resin has been poured...

But what is all of this about?

Well, if you've ever read the confrontation rules published in a series of White dwarf magasines  between n°130 something and 140 something, you might have come across some of this :

And I am pretty sure it must have left a trace inside of you. It's evocative, it feels crazy and it's full of little details (like staff faces as you can see here).

Steal your face - the ultimate conversion

OK, the ultimate conversion MAYBE is a little overrated but you got to make people dream a bit... (and maybe when you see the final result you will find it ultimate).

What all of this is about is this : 

These were the 2 basic components of yesterday night's work :

• The 2 blue and white putty boxes are known as Siligum (which sound like sillygum if you're 8 years old).
• The paper bag beneath containning plastic bits from an online bits store.

First part  of the evening was used to prepare the bits (I just love doing it). There's nothing like annoying your wife and cats with the sound of a moddeling knife removing flashes from models when they're watching a bad movie or TV program...

Are some of you getting a view of where this is heading ? Nope?

Demon of the fall - Battle chaos part 29

If you need some music with this post, may I suggest either :

 or Vivaldi's Autumn but it feels far more wood elvish to me...

Anyway, here's my entry for October's painting challenge at the oldhammer forum. It was built with no true purpose at first but just to use some bits I had here and there and as I was building it, I realised it could fit in many slots. 

In can be a vargulf in my undead army if I play it in 8th ed but it can also be a minotaur lord in any chaos army. What interests me the most with this guy though is the opportunity to play it as a Malal Demon Prince.

When Malal got in the way, I reconsidered the whole model and made a few changes : 

•  I added the chaos star stone at his feet to show he's sort of desecrating some sort of chaos altar or temple.
• I changed its head for a bestial head with as many teeth as I could to fit the description of Malal's greater demons.
• I chose the head of a chaos hound with half his face ripped to make a reflection on Malal's device being a black and white skull. (the background behind this guy is that he has ripped his own flesh in a self destructive manner befitting Malla very well I think).