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Warhammer 40,000 – Greater Blight Drone

Months ago I won an eBay auction that appeared at first glance to be a real good deal.  A Forgeworld Greater Blight Drone.  A figure that has been the icon for me of all things Nurgle in Warhammer 40K.  A great sculpt with every surface covered with detail (no wide flat surfaces that defy my simple weathering skills). A miniature that would take an ink wash in its stride and look all the better for it.

This is almost that figure…

Purchased from Poland which appears to be a country that is creating a vast number of new alternative resin based miniatures companies.  I have a number of items from these companies and have had great service from them all.

The figure I got, for half the Forgeworld price, was not from one of these companies.  It was however, a very poor recast.  Holes in almost all the main parts and sporting broken gun barrels. Worse than that was the amount of flash and mould lines on the smaller parts.  In dismay, it was placed on a shelf and almost forgotten.

With my recent Death Guard army slowly growing, I decided to dust it off and try to turn the flaws into features and see how it turned out.  I must admit to having to remove so much mould line from the rotas that it was almost like carving it from a sheet of resin.

The original forgeworld sculpting actually helped to blend in my amateurish re-sculpting. The original model has so many details that losing some of them as I rebuilt it didn’t detract from the overall look too much.

A simple paint job and plenty of rust effect in the holes and at the damaged parts makes it look even more like it was made that way…

In the end, after a lot more work than planned, it actually looks great, and all for half the price of a real one. (Next time I will buy direct from forgeworld methinks…)

Scrappers – Rounding Off The Crew And Some Truly Dodgy Painting

So after a very satisfying win in our first game, I was all a flush with points to spend after the campaign stage of the game.  Enough to buy some new kit and at least 2 new crew members.  Therefore there was more hurried painting in the days between games, so as to be ready on time.

Luckily a quick paint job was all that was needed for the first of them.  I don’t know about you but when I look at this chap, I see a cyborg electric eel! So he is half machine, half shock inducing mutant eel-man…  With a gun…

In that moment of creativity and bouncing along with the first real win for me in months I feel I may have got carried away.  Stay with me as I explain the horror that is the paint job above…

As these are birds, and birds have feathers, and as feathers are usually bright (in my mind anyway…) I thought I would try a bird of paradise look for the first of these chaps.

Now, I have had some bad ideas in the past.  None was as obvious as after adding the first colour and noting that the figure doesn’t actually have feathers exactly but more of a fur ruff and woolly pant suit.

What made things worse was that a second one needed painting in a similar style or they would not look matched…

I think that I last painted things like this when I was 3 years old. When I used my fingers not paint brushes…

That was before I discovered ink washes though.  One heavy coat later and its almost hidden.

If birds of paradise were hooked on drugs, grumpy and cranky due to poor working conditions, and didn’t wash more than once a year you might see the resemblances.

All in all they fit the crew quite well.

Anyway, if you had such shocking feather/ fur colourisation you would be reluctant to wash too often as well… Wouldn’t you?

Scrappers – More Crew Members

As 3 figures does not make a well rounded scrappers crew, the next 3 were lined up to be finished off.  Three specialists (grunts with jobs) make up the next lot.

The first is a ‘tank’ slow, thick skinned and heavily armoured.  Second is a close combat specialist (although a read through of the rules makes me think that he maybe making a mistake bringing a knife, or two, to a gun fight…). Last of this lot is my little tinker.  Small lightly armed and quick mind and feet.  Who knows if I will need a tech boy but always worth bringing some brains.

After totting up the crew roster for the first six chaps, I found that I still had enough points left for a low tech, crossbow wielding dog boy.

As I finished planning my force for our first official game, I already had their reinforcements lined up ready in the painting queue.  As Scrappers is a campaign based game I expect to have enough points after the first game to hire a fresh faced new recruit (or replace a dead dude).  These three are from CP models.

Scrappers – First Crew Started

So, after owning the book since it came out, we got to play scrappers for the first time recently.  First impressions are good and a little more play will likely secure it as a go to game for quick and dirty gunfights.  Even after just the one game we were left thinking armour is a key requirement in this game.

Before I could play though I needed a crew.  These guys have been sat on the shelf of shame for far too long and it was nice to get them started at least.

My crew is a band of mutant Freelancers, all themed on animal traits (at first anyhow). They are a mix of figures that I have shown off before. Some are Hasslefree miniatures, some from the Rogue Stars range and a couple of Mantics Deadzone figures. The odd chap out is Tinboy Tim their trusty synthetic service bot (an Astropolis figure by Lead Adventures).

First finished were the Hasslefree chaps and Tim. Simple colours this time as these guys are the professionals in the team and therefore not wanting to be shot up because of any gaudy space suits.

The next guys might get a slightly brighter or more exotic colour choice.

Warhammer 40,000 – Something Nurgle This Way Comes

Some purchases are made because you plan and prep for an idea and build with a purpose.  Some purchases are just made because they are there and make you think ‘maybe that will be useful at some point’.

This purchase was made because it was just so cheap I could not refuse.  Luckily it has a Nurgle-esque look about it so should be usable in the Dragon Rampant force if I cannot make it fit into my Death Guard force.  Its originally a Warmachine or Hordes figure but for the life of me I cant remember what its called.

I am thinking about using it as a proxy for a Heldrake (although, that said, Heldrakes are not actually in the Death Guard Codex…)

It came with a female fantasy rider but a Plague Marine rider shouldn’t be too hard to build.  Should it???

My bits box has recently been stripped of many of the chaos parts I would have usually used, so this first attempt is the legs of a Marine biker, a jump trooper torso and some Chaos Marine shoulders.  Hands and weapons will follow in time but this first build has him almost ready.

Base coats done, I wonder how long this one will sit in the pending queue.

Warhammer 40,000 – A World Turning More Yellow

My Space Marine army was painted so long ago that I cannot find a match for the original blue any longer.  A first few new figures were painted in a black, with grey edged drybrushing, but I don’t want the remainder of the new forces to be so dark.

Therefore, as a few of the scouts were already undercoated for a yellow based camouflage, I have decided to use this colour to get the remaining units done.

First up is a Dreadnought donated to the cause by Coronasan.  I have quite a few weapon options for this chap so he should be quite versatile when he is completed.

An old Rhino, that is unlikely to be used in 8th edition, is due to become a Razorback when I get a few weapon options sorted for it.  A couple of other spare figures also crept under the spray can this time too.

This Forgeworld Landspeeder Tempest has been lounging in a drawer for a few years now.  That was until a bath in Dettol stripped off the original blue basecoat and second black spray that the seller had used to hide a terrible paintjob before putting it on ebay.  Those two coats had obscured all its details when I bought it.  After stripping, it was resprayed in the chapter colours and is ready to be painted.

All in all the paint queue has all of a sudden gotten much longer…  Wish me luck!

Warhammer 40,000 – Daemon Prince With Wings

Something I have been looking to doing for some time (ever since I read the rules in the Chaos Index) is adding wings to my proxy Daemon Prince.  The model is an old Mantic Games Plague figure from Deadzone.  As a Daemon Prince, with twin malefic claws, he has been very effective on the battlefield.  The option to add wings seems like a no brainer. With them he can charge into combat sooner, and avoid being shot at quite so much.

Coronasan recently ordered some items from a company in Eastern Europe named Wargames Exclusive.  These wings are in their range and are perfect for this conversion.

It has been a few years since I painted the original model and a cannot match the colours that were used as some have been discontinued.  So some repainting of both the original model and the wings was called for.

I think that it will take a further coat of ink to the model, in its finished state, before the old and new parts are sufficiently blended to my satisfaction. Even so, he is good to go as he is, and will be flying in to a game real soon I suspect.

 

Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Knight

So I have finished all that I plan to do with the ‘official’ Imperial Knight.  My renegade knight will be sat on the paint queue shelf for a while, as other things have been taking up my time of late.  This chap only got the simplest of paint jobs, so was quick and easy to complete.

The kit comes with enough decals to sink a ship, so painting simply was never going to be an issue. All those added colours and images give an extra something special to the look of the model that my paintbrush could never achieve.

I toyed with leaving him baseless as I prefer my vehicles to be that way as large bases always look odd.  After playing a game this way it proved he needed one to allow measurement and close combat to be easily worked out without argument.

On spray varnishing with GW purity seal the fabled frosting effect has again been a problem.  No matter what temperature or humidity I try to spray in I never get a clean layer using spray varnishes.  There must be an alternate method that does not involve brushwork.

I have used the simple basing method that is found on my other imperial forces but as the base was so large have added in some cork tile and cobble stone paper to break up the surface a little.  Overall a good model and I am happy with how it came out.

 

Dragon Rampant – Nurgle Vs Stunties

My Nurgle forces got an outing recently as a Dragon Rampant army against Coronasan’s freshly finished Dwarves of Tir-Na-Bor (They are all stunties to me).

A wing of Flying Light Riders fills one side of the table.

Bellicose Nurglings and a Greater War Beast form the strike force while Offensive Heavy Foot (Snails) and Offensive Light Foot (Worms) complete the force.

My Nurglings took a pounding from a mounted chariot cannon while everything else advanced.

Trying to use cover worked to a slight degree but Dragon Rampant makes you stay 3 inches away from other units so it makes you think more about unit positions and spreads you out for a lot of the game.

The Flies managed to evade and strike a few times before being caught in a retreat and wiped out to a man (or fly).

Worst played unit goes to the Nurglings who were useless when they got caught out in the open by a charge, but who also managed to recover and rout Coronasan’s elite armoured dwarf foot.

I fun game and a great excuse to get a few lesser fielded units on the table.

Warhammer 40,000 – Knights, Imperial And Renegade

I’ve been feeling slightly inadequate lately. Veganman turned up with a trio of Dread Knights and a host of Terminators to one game and Coronasan has wiped my army off the table with armies of teleporting dreadnoughts and assault cannons galore.  I feel slightly under gunned at times with just a land raider and some marines. Therefore I felt the need to rectify that with something a little more special.

As I play both Imperial and Chaos armies I wanted to make up some kits that could fulfil that need for both armies. So, I decided bigger is always better, and that I needed a knight for each force.  I didn’t fancy making two of the same model so one would have to be a bit different.  I am no great converter so most of the look would need to be already there in the base model.

Luckily GW does a nice big Nurgle beastie called the Glottkin.

After a chat with Wayne at my local GW store I was decided, and when I started on this kit I was surprised how easily it went together.  Half way through it looked a bit like a half eaten Easter egg though…

Its full of detail so had the look I wanted to bring to the force.

My worry was that if I varied the look by chopping bits off to replace with 40K era weapons I would lose some of its usefulness.  I have hopes of using this in a Dragon Rampant force as you might have guessed.

In the end I decided to leave most of it as is and to play it as a proxy calling its longer arm a melee weapon and its maw like shorter arm as a bile vomiting cannon.  It has figures to ride on its head but I will leave them as removeable and add in a 40K figure as a rider for when it appears in the Nurgle Chaos army.

A standard Imperial Knight that I found on a Bring and Buy sale at Colours recently will be the boost my imperial force needs.

If that wasn’t enough eBay supplied me with a sensibly priced Great Unclean One that will allow me to use my Mother of all Worms as a proxy for a different type of figure (Coronasan sorted me the stats for a Spined Chaos Beast that might fit the bill).