Original Space Hulk plastic Terminator

Hey all, just a quick one today, you might have sensed an interest for Space Hulk from my part over time and a little while ago, there's been a paintig challenge on a Space Hulk page on Facebook (how boomer is that ?) to paint one of the original plastic terminators.
And I realised I had never painted one of those monopose monstrosities ! Well only one way to fix that I guess !

The scythes of the emperor - Space Hulk Terminator force

Just so that I'm honest with you, I've only come late to Space Hulk. My real first was actually when I played at my friend Sho3box's.
Now the game really pressed my buttons and I really liked the self contained nature of the project. Of course, like most sane people, I've wanted to have a 3D space hulk but I guess that could be arranged pretty easily with modern kits now. I've also realised many of my friends were into it so making my own force to have the opportunity to play it every now and then could be fun !
So just put this album, the intro is probably the most accurate rendition of how a Space Hulk sounds like and just dive with me !

Rogue Trader Chaos - Traitor Terminators

 Nothing like a deadline to get things done ! A week ago these guys weren't even on my schedule but a last minute appointment for a game next Week End decided otherwise and here they are !

Those models are meant to join the ranks of a growing chaos force for which I've foolishly decided to collect all the models as you can see HERE and HERE.

If you're not familiar with the models (quite unlikely but not impossible after all) they are the first chaos terminators sculpted during the first edition of Warhammer 40k by the talented Jes Goodwin who had already sculpted a goo load of their imperial counterparts.

Picture taken from Solegend

Citadel devout cleric...and some muscled reinforcments

Alright people ! Some of you may remember that I am currently engaged in a 2nd edition Dungeon and Dragons campaign on the Oldhammer forum. This campaign is run by the most excellent Captain Crooks with fellow players Gaj/Weazil, Count von Bruno, Penddraig and Weismonsters.

The party has reached the 3rd chapter of its adventures and as the time goes by, the bound between players and the fun had is ever growing.

If you fancy having a good read with adventure, laughters, great cultural references and all, I strongly welcome you to give them a read. All the player's and GM's notes are hidden to make the story clear and nice to read but you can see how the work goes behind the scene (if you wish to) by clicking on the spoiler boxes. The 3 chapters so far are :

• 1st Chapter : The Quest for the Abbot's cheese
• 2nd Chapter : The chase to the Crystal city !
• 3rd Chapter : The temple of Pieter Onne-Dray

 

Back in March, I decided I wanted to have new models to represent our characters in the  campaign and while I clearly knew I was going to use the classic paladin from the Citadel adventurer starter set, I learnt that my friend Bruno found the devout cleric to be close to what he had in mind for his Spellsword Rambulge.

So here he is ! The devout cleric is now officially going to be a Spellword, or spellmace since Rambulge is more comfortable with a cudgel than with a blade.

Terminator Inquisitor - Forces of the imperium

Ok so finally the good guys came out first !

I am happy to FINALLY finish this one. I actually bought 2 models like him back in the days because I did (and still do) think he was the coolest inquisitor ever.
What's not to like in a Jes Goodwin terminator with hoodie and demon faces all over the armour?

I chose to paint his armour with a very rusty and worn-out look to represent the armour has been passed from an inquisitor to another. I painted the weapons and decroations in bright colours to contrast and to show each time the previous owner dies, the new one equips the armour with his own gadgets and weaponry.
For the record, as can be seen on the pad, he is the 3rd carrier of the armor (hence the very worn)out look of the metal parts.

We can do it anywhere ! (At last some real pics of actual minis) - part 2

Summer is a hard thing you know...

I'm not talking about these insanely high temperatures but about these hard hobby times holidays are... Hard to get the time to paint, when you do, you find yourself lacking time, material or simply energy to do it...

I feel like a goldfish in its aquarium... I don't even have Kendo to get all this energy out since the dojo is closed during summer. Hard times, I told you.

BUT, now I'm lying on my towel at the beach, burning under the mildly hot sun of the Normandy coast. Can I still get something done? The answer (and you knew it already) is YES.

First of all, I managed to bring with me a few paint cans and some brushes to finish my entries for the painting challenge on the Blood Forum. 

First model is the dread with my first attempt at OSL on the plasma cannon, I'm not sure if painting the lenses red was such a rilliant idea and I still consider erasing all of this with pure black to give a more sinister feeling. The terminotor lord is quite to my taste even if the OSL on the power claws is weird and the face is totally messed up...

The jezzail Champion is my favourite so far in this army, I tried for the first time a "sort of Blanchistu" style with bright red and chessboard patterns (I find it almost insulting to sum up John Blanche's style to just that but you get the idea). This one is quite probably leading my cultists once they're painted.

At last I decided to get my Sorcerer lord in line to be painted with the others and I'm glad he's done. He will remain the benchmark for the whole army since it was meant to be built around him.

Chaos marines champions and dreadnaught

The squats next, they obviously need some sort of banner but I still don't know what to give them...

I've already painted the beards with brown and white vertical lines but I don't fancy it much, maybe it will come back on the painting range...

Chaos squats on power armor (Rogue trader era)

I maintained a very limited black pattern all across the army on purpose because I wanted to give them the most sinister look I could. This lead me to changing my basing habits. I usually drybrush brown, flesh and bleached bone to get some sort of dirty limestone ground effect but this being a 40k army I wanted to change things a bit. I also discoverd much to my surprise that Dark flesh + Bleached bone gives an unexpected purple-ish affect... I considered erasing it but then found myself enjoying this old school touch. I also decided to paint the edges in grey to enhance the black of the marines.

As I was getting hot at painting energy coming out of weapons I also painted some effect on the power gloves in the unit (in fact they look better than on their terminator captain).

Chaos traitor marines (Rogue trader era)

 (Sorry for the low quality here, it's just smartphone photos on the kitchen table...)

I said finished but I meant sort of finished, I could declare them done and field them shamelessly but I want to add a few things here and there beforehand.

Here is the start of my upgrading for this army :

The banner is a test for now (hence the pigeon looking eagle), I used it to have something to field and to try Orlygg's tutorial for banners which proved really useful. It's given me the will to try some new things...

The black spots you can see on some of the bases are meant to be some sort of oil leaks or equivalent and will be glossed once everything is varnished.

I'll update all of this once it is to my taste (a few touches here and there and varnish on top of that and then I'll give you good photos so you can judge the result).

Now, this was the start of what I could do during nap time for babies, but then I had to get all the family to the beach and everything : I took the time to go treasure hunting after getting inspiration from Don Hans.

I found a whole lot of broken seashells which should help me add some sort of organic feeling to the bases for my champions or stand alone minis. I don't intend to copy exactly Don Hans' bases but I love the idea of giving some bit of mutated look to the ground to represent chaos wastes.

 A mixture of all sorts of pebbles and small rocks for big bases and terrain :

And I decided to put my everyday morning tea to full use and dry the used tea leaves. This brand is quite good actually (don't know what it is since I'm at my wife's parent's) and is already cut in small pieces.

I have particularly great expectations of these tea leaves with my recent collection of birch seeds to make lovely autumn bases for my fantasy adventurers.

So that's all for now, I'll be visiting Southern UK for a week and won't get anywhere near a computer for that time. Once I get back from Holidays, prepare yourself for some Khorne champions and the finished Rogue trader Renegades (first wave at least).

Cheers.

Rogue trader army WIP - 40k Chaos Part 5

I'm currently participating in a painting challenge with other members of the oldhammer forum :

I've decided to enter the challenge with the RT core of my chaos army :

So far, I've only managed to spray them all grey after the black prime to give a first zenithal lighting and give some of them some highlights :

First step : black prime

 2nd step : Zenithal grey spray (I may have been heavy handed on these) :

 3rd step : highlights (11 minis out of 18)

The result is a bit bluish which gives a sort of surreal vibe about them. I hope the black wash will be enough to get them from the "grey" zone to the "light black" one. What I was told to use is a mix of black with matt medium (50% of each) thined with water. This proved to work great for him so I'm keeping the same recipe here.

I have to confess that first time I painted those some 17 years ago, I didn't enjoy the experience much. Details were not clear enough for me and since we were in the midle of the "red era" they appeared weak to me.
This time I actually took the time to outline the details by highlighting everything and though I still hate edgelining, I hav eto confess it's a real pleasure to give them a more subtle approach. I understand now why these looked great in the photos and not in my hand, they are demanding minis but the time spent is well worth it for they have this really stange and dark feeling. one of the best examples came out yesterday, check out Don Hans' version, it looks like Giger himself bent over Hans to guide him...

I apologise for the new backpacks but the old ones I have are coverd in paint and varnish and I still can't get my hands on Dettol in France (I may have a way of getting some from canada though). Chloroxylenol is hard to find here...

Anyway, progression so far :

- basing and priming : 100%
- Zenithal grey spray : 100%
- First highlights : 61 %

What to do next (until end of July):

- finish highlights on everyone
- dip everyone in black+ matt medium + water mix to darken everything
- special parts (flesh, bone, fur,...)
- metals
- details
- varnish


PS : oh and don't forget Round 2 is out for the selection of the best Khorne champion : http://bestminiever.blogspot.fr/

Cheers everyone

A bit of make-up and new friends - 40K Chaos part2

My chaos spacemarine leader got some luv' and some make-up with teh help of the incredible guys from Hobby shop in Grenoble. If you ever come here, pay them a visit, they rock.

They helped me get the hang of what I wanted this army to look like.

There still is a lot to paint on this one, but this is the result I'm aiming with this army, black, dark, dark black and black dark. There will only be light touches of red and metal where needed but no gold or shiny bling for these lads.

I also dug in my dead lead box and found these littles guys I massacred when I got them 15 years ago. I had to strip them from their 47 layers of thick paint and repair the damage done by unskilled converting and now I can sing "different strokes" when putting these guys on the table as chosen.

hey hee, hey hoo... Well... Chaos squats

Squats were weird with their drunken biker feeling, chaos squats on the other hand always looked fine to me and though these minis are really tough to paint, i felt like ding them justice...

Since I want this army to have a vintage vibe with the dread and some other pieces, I will also add full units of chaos traitors, but everything in its time... For now it's gonna be TERMIE TIME !
The termie lord is an absolute must-have for any reasonnable chaos player/leadaddict. I wanted to give him an Horus feel and decided to just add him the lightning claws from the termie sprue (though this sprue really sucks compared to lots of others).

Chaos terminator lord with lightning claws

The chaos terminator lord sprue is kinda like the terminator sprue, it sucks. Nonetheless, I took it because I wanted to have as many entries I could and I wanted to use the daemon weapon on a sorcerer. I also like for sorcerrors to have a hand using something else than guns orthings like that, I like them to cast spells or in this case to open a copy af Harry Potter to unleash hell on their foes. I'm currently working on an Arhiman version casting a spell with his free hand.

Chaos terminator sorcerer with daemon sword

Don't know what else to say...