Lord Halfpenny- WIP Daemon Prince - Relictor Style

Hi all!

Just a quick post to demonstrate one of our projects - another Daemon Prince to add to the vast Daemon collection - this one has had several additions and minor conversions to make him stand out.

Firstly I wanted to try something a paint scheme that was a little different, and one that would be interesting to paint - I love Siph's Relictor scheme and thought 'why not' after all, Relictors are known to dabble with chaos weapons - what would happen if one such Relictor Captain went a bit too far and became one with the warp... thus the Daemon Prince was born..

I wanted to make the plastic kit more marine like, so I converted the head- I chopped back the original neck portion, and added a spare Contemptor head to the model a perfect fit! Both in size, and the look- I decided to model horns to the helmet from one of the daemon heads to 'chaos it up a bit' The overall look of the model with the converted head is less hunched over- more 'humanoid'.

The next additions was the skull rack and banner pole - the racks were taken from the Daemon Prince kit, and modelled to fit on the upper shoulder/back portion. It was after I finished the model that I realised it needed something extra- I dived into my bitz box and found a spare Bloodletter banner - I bored a hole into the back of daemon, to allow the pole of the banner to fit tightly. The overall affect of the banner is to make the model look bigger and to stand out - I also added spare 'sprue' pieces to the base to look like detritus of war and to make him slightly taller.

The armour was painted to reflect that of Siph's Relictors and was surprisingly easy to get a nice affect. I opted to paint the 'workings' of the armour a fiery red/yellow/orange- as if chaos is now burning in is soul - I carried the same scheme into the shoulder pads and the eyes. The banner was painted similar to those of Siph's, again trying to achieve a true likeness of Siph's models.

For the models skin I decided to go for a deep rich purple to contrast against the grey armour, as well as to be different to the the skin tones of my other chaos models.

To finish the model I want to add transfers to the banner and shoulder pads, and then overlay these transfers with the 8 pointed star of chaos. I also need to finish the base as well as maybe adding a few skulls and SM helmets as 'trophies..'.

I hope you like the results!

Relictors Drop Pod Armoury - Pics of all 5 Pods!

This post is really just a nice picture fest of my completed Pods, please enjoy. If you want to see the WIP and how to magnetise drop pods, please see my previous posts (here). The first pic is all the finished Pods in gaming glory. Just add some righteous fury filled power armour clad Relictor Marines...

The Emperor's Holy wrath made incarnate, the Relictors surge forward from their Drop Pods 

 The dropsite was leveled by the missiles of the support Deathstorm Pod before the Tactical Squads landed.

Squad I advances towards the enemy lines 

 Squad II

Squad IV

 Squad III - Until next time Traitor Scum!

Iron Warriors – Rhino

You would think this lowly little Rhino is a Forgeworld super-heavy by how much I’ve been fawning over it for the past week – but it’s the first tank that I’ve built/painted and apparently that’s enough to get me excited...

It is going to probably be one of a pair that will provide some long range fire support (via Havok launchers) in the early turns and then take their respective squads to their objective-based destinations mid-game.

The build was a fairly easy choice; take the Havok launchers as yet another form of shooty and leave off anything spikey (spikes really don’t fit my armies look all that well). I picked up the Iron Warrior doors from Forgeworld – the motto whilst building this army seems to be “if you are going to do it, you might as well do it properly/expensively”.

I was a little concerned whilst painting it; people often talk about the difficulty they have painting flat expanses without the use of an airbrush and this was going to be twice as bad painting it almost solely with metallics. Luckily I managed to keep all my brushstrokes going in the same direction and it turned out looking a little like brushed steel. Not sure what will happen with Land Raiders though. The hazard chevrons were also a pain to paint – apparently I can paint in a straight line on shoulder pads, but not on a flat surface...

The lights were a nice chance to try out painting jewelled/reflective effects which turned out pretty well for an early attempt.

It was also a chance to try something new with the weathering powders; normally I have been applying them in their powdered form, but for this model I added some matt medium to the pigment to make it think and almost like a paint, which I then stippled on and finished it off with a dusting of the powder, to make it nice and dirty.

I have managed to include it in one game so far and it really was the little engine that could, after wiping out half a DE squad and taking two penetrating Dark Lance shots without exploding.

Iron Warriors - pre-Heresy Havoc squad

Hi again all – another out-of sequence Iron Warriors army update (despite working on my core CSMs squads for what seems about 3 months now...they still aren’t finished). Today’s bad-ass goodness is my new Havoc squad.

 

If you have read Storm of Iron/Iron Warriors Omnibus, you will know that the Iron Warriors are an original founding legion and were instrumental on the Siege of Terra. As such, a number of their forces are the original (10,000 year old) marines that stood on Terra as the walls were being torn down. They later managed to steal imperial gene-seed for Abaddon and one of his crazy crusades...and are able replenish their own ranks with new CSMs. That means that it is possible for an Iron Warriors army to contain a mixture of both pre and post heresy tech.

 

This have given me a great opportunity to use some of the Heresy era goodies from Forgeworld and one of the main things I have had my eyes on are the MKIII Iron Armour marines. Other than the name, this armour is perfect for Iron Warriors; it is old, the helmets are similar to the Iron Warrior skull markings and perfectly fits aesthetically (they look like evil marines – rather than spiky/chaosy marines) – they are pretty similar to how they would have been pre-Heresy. The Heavy Weapon squads are also built to take the Legion Heavy Weapons – which I went and bought seeing as CSM Missile Launcher and Autocannon bits are really expensive to pick up online and the GW Havoc kit only has one of each weapon (which look crap anyway). And check out how the Legion Autocannon looks... pure awesome.

So drawing back on the Iron Warrior fluff, I think that any veterans of the Heresy are going to be taking pride of place in the army – most likely with the big guns; so the plan is to mix pre-Heresy marines into prime places in the army; heavy weapons, Champions, special weapons, Chosen etc. This does mean I will need to buy some more to mix into my existing CSM squads (yet another reason why they wont be finished any time soon...).  

I am happy with everything apart from the Champion...I was in a hurry and wanted to give him a combi-weapon which a) I bodged together in 2 mins and looks crap (especially after I realised Siph posted a tutorial on making great looking combi weapons *stupid*) and b) why the hell would a Champion sitting in the backfield with Missile Launchers and Autocannons need a combi-plasma??? Needless to say, this model will be swapped out for something more appropriate when the army gets larger.

BTW – I managed to get my first 900pts test game with the army and the Havocs were amazing! As someone who has only ever played Nids, you cannot understand how awesome cheap S7/8 weapons with an AP are...and they all have an armour save!!! These guys got into position on a tower overlooking the entire battlefield and shot anything off the board that dared show their face (and then I forgot they were there for the last two turns...).

Relictors Drop Pods Finished! - 3 Troop Pods

Hello avid readers, thanks for stopping by. So, I finally finished all of my remaining Drop Pod doors and now have 5 Drop Pods finished, 1 from ages ago, and 4 new... all painted to match the earlier pod - which made me paint the interiors to a high standard to match the first! No scrimping and saving time for me.

+++EDIT+++ I've edited this post's picts to put this one first, as it captures the Pods best! Nothing better than a shot of the Pods disgorging their cargo on some alien or heretic planet!!  I got all the Pods and four of the Tactical Squads out for a show... so until the next post you'll have to make do with this grainy pict capture, I've taken more in colour and less like a grainy pict capture for eye candy next time.

Here is a shot of the 3 new troop Pods in all their door-chevron glory - I thought painting 20 doors was tough, but 120 chevron stripes was evil! All marked out with pencil stencil first so they are the same orientation and size. The chevrons on the door were a lot easier than they looked, firstly I used a 1cm card stock to measure lines and marked with pencil along the door length, I then painted the yellow in between the lines with Citadel Foundation Tausept Ochre, then 2 washes of Devlan Mud on the lower halves and then a final line highlight of Foundation Iyanden Darksun on the upper edge. 

One of the new Pods has a missile launcher for some variety, albeit, only a minor difference! I think I'm done painting drop pods now... for ever! Ha Ha.

I forgot to take a shot of the outsides, so this is the original pod. Trust me, they are all identical.

Relictors Deathstorm / Dreadnought Drop Pod Finished!

So here is the finished Pod, the first of my project of four Pods I've been busy doing recently. This one is different from the others as it uses 3rd party parts, namely Chapterhouse Studios Armoured Doors and is a Dreadnought Pod or Deathstorm Missile Pod. I've used the small StormTalon aquila's to decorate the doors to match my first Drop Pod and as usual, a white skull chapter badge.

I love the look of this Deathstorm Launcher, and gamewise its not bad either, cheap and great against horde armies, on the turn it arrives it pie-plates every unit (friend or foe) within range, with a large blast. After that, every turn it fires one large blast at an enemy unit within range - see Imperial Armour books for rules.

Here is the view of the Pod set up as the Dreadnought Drop Pod, or Lucius Dreadnought Pod.

Just a different view of the Dreadnought Pod configuration showing the Deathstorm FW sensor head and the deck protrusions.

This shows the magnets in the Pod vanes. For more notes on construction see my earlier posts on magnetising drop pods and using Armoured Doors 3rd party products. I'll be posting the completed 'normal' pods soon, just as soon as I've finished the remaining 4 doors... nearly there!

A final shot... or 40!

Lord Halfpenny's WIP Forge World Stuff

Hi!

Recently I've been pretty busy building up several of my Forge World kits, and I thought I'd share some of the WIP.

Spartan

Firstly, the Spartan Landraider- this kit is huge, and was pretty straightforward to put together. I'm planning on making a few additions over the next weeks before painting

Typhon

Second up is the mighty Typhon tank- this was a little harder to build, the tracks were extremely warped, thus I ended up having to remove a track link to fit them into position.

Deimos Predators

I've built up two Deimos Predators, with the various main weapons pinned to allow me to swap them as required.

Fellblade Superheavy

The mightiest of my new Space Marine tanks - this tank is a beast - I love the feel and look of the tank, it feels and looks right.  I had planned on building a Fellblade using the Baneblade tank, however I'm glad FW saved me the hassle of building one!

Scimitar Jet Bikes

I've built 4 of the HH Scimitar jet bikes, which will count as either attack bikes/land speeders in 40k. I've added different heads/arms to the drivers, and converted one to have a Blood Angel wrist bolt pistol.

StormEagle

I built this a while ago and I am now painting the flyer. I've armed it with both the lascannons and meltas, so once it drops of the troop cargo - it will become a flying tank hunter.

Caestus Assault Ram

I've had this a while, and it has been used in battles previously, however I am only just getting round to painting it!

Armoured Drop Pod Doors - 3rd Party Resin Conversion Kit

The Chapterhouse Studio's Armoured Drop Pod doors are great for making a Games Workshop Space Marine Drop Pods stand out from the others. I've used them to differentiate between the normal Drop Pods and the Support element Drop Pod which can be played as a Deathstorm Missile Pod or a Dreadnought Drop Pod as seen in the previous post (here). The small Aquila are from the StormTalon kit, the doors come unadorned.

The casting of the underside of the Chapterhouse Door Armour is not perfect - so to fit flush to the GW Drop Pod, I removed the rivets (12 rivets each door) from the plastic Pod doors that were under the Chapterhouse Kit. The resin kit is designed with holes for these rivets, they just don't always cast with enough room so it's easiest to just trim them off the door instead, allowing a flush fit.

The second thing to note is shown in the photo above, once closed, the rivets on the Drop Pod vanes catch at the bottom end of the Chapterhouse Armour when fitted. This can be easily trimmed off to allow smooth door action, or in my construction, the vanes have a certain amount of give as the are only fixed at the top, in my design the bottom is magnetised to the Pod deckplate and door sub-assembly, meaning the doors slide past these rivets without too much problem.

When dry fitting the Chapterhouse Studio's kit to the GW plastic door prior to using super glue, I needed to soak each resin piece in hot water and hold to the door so it cooled into a flush uniform straight fit. If you use resin kits, this is normal but worthy to note here.

 Here is the position of the doors closed if the vane rivets are not removed... not good.

Here shows the closed doors if the vane rivets are removed (or in my case, allowed to move past).

Hopefully this helps any potential Armoured Drop Pod builders with your hybrid kits! I hope you agree this kit gives the normal pod a great sense of heavy duty hardware and sets them apart from the 'normal' Pods! Overall a great resin extra and easily fitted to your drop pods.