Decimator Concept refined...

I've been messing a bit with my Decimator idea, which has to started to distill into a concept;

I don't dislike the Decimator per se, but it just doesn't really fit in with the current chaos aesthetic of 40k - the armour plates are angled instead of curved, and it is extremely top heavy, where most of the Daemon Engines now have most of their weight in the body.

I've used a Blood Slaughterer torso (scavenged from my Maulerfiend conversion from years ago), stripped it, and mounted it on the Decimator legs, with the shin guards replaced by Maulerfiend arm guards, for a nice curved armour look. I thought long about it, and decided to make an armoured belly, instead of a fleshy one - fleshy stuff just seems to me like the easy way out. I made it from a blob of milliput, roughly shaped, and when it was dry I filed and scraped it into the right shape (much easier to me, than sculpting armour with sharp edges) It obviously still needs trims and detailing, perhaps some teeth sticking out from it.

The head is a rough mockup, just an idea I'm trying out - very interested to hear you guys opinions. :)

Also, the cannons (soul burner petards) are a bit of a pain - I've tried making some on my lathe (more on that on the bottom of this post), but I'm not quite sure they work - maybe they just need detailing, maybe they need to be bigger, or maybe they just shouldn't be curved, or maybe I just need to cough up the 24 pounds for the originals. Let me hear your opinion and ideas.

A side shot, so you can se the rather bizarre profile - I kinda like it, it's very different from most other walkers and Daemon Engines.

Update:

I wasn't happy with the tubular cannons, so I was sitting on the FW webshop, credit card in hand, ready to press "check out", when I got an idea. I have loads of Ectoplasma cannons lying about (since nobody wanted them for the last two editions), so I decided to do something with them; I glued them together with some plastic spacers between, giving them a gap of 5-6 mm, to broaden them quite a bit. After this I used LOTS of milliput and Milliput/greenstuff mix to fill in the gaps, cover the plasma coils, and make a new look for them. After this was dried I filed, scraped and sanded them smooth, and sculpted on the trims, and added some teeth were the gap was. They're obviously not finished yet, needing minor detailing work, and perhaps some spikes and/or tubes, but I think they look enough like petards to justify using them, and far enough removed from ectoplasma cannons as to not be confused - but let me hear your thoughts. :)

The lathe;
I was in the fortunate situation that one of my students father (I'm a school teacher by day) knew that I'm somewhat of a woodshop/workshop fanatic (I also work a lot with wood and metal, besides plastic crack) and one of his neighbours was widowed some years ago - her husband used to be a machine worker, and had a lathe in her basement, which was just collecting dust - I could get it for free if I would just come get it. I joyfully drove to her house with my dad (who has 40+ years experience with lathes) to inspect it, only to find that it was freaking enormous. I had hoped that I could just take it in my car - that was not going to happen. Anyway, I talked to my dad (and the missus) and concluded that I would never get a chance to own a machine like that again, and since we had the space in our garage (where I have my workshop), I got some professional movers to do it for me. Good thing, that; they were 3 gigantic guys, who struggled with it for 2 hours. It weighs 450 kg (about 900 pounds), and IT. IS. GLORIOUS. It has all the accessories and tools with it, is handmade in Denmark in the 1930's, and he has kept it in great shape:

It is a great tool to have at ones disposal and something I'll enjoy for many years to come.

A hunt of the perfect tabletop miniature

Some time ago, right before Age of Sigmar was officially announced, I painted a few skaven models. AoS was rumoured to be a new warhammer fantasy skirmish game, played on round bases, with few models on the table. They had me at round bases. I quickly painted 10 test clanrats, but they were  poorly designed in both colour choices and painting technique, and I abandoned them soon after.

These guys are just boring to look at

I have never really given up on trying to find the perfect colour scheme for skaven, but unlike what the rumours said, the game actually requires quite a few models (for most armies). This is bad news for the people, who want to paint a skaven to a certain standard.

A few days ago, while looking around the internet, I found this beautiful fella' over at https://reaktorminiatures.files.wordpress.com. I instantly fell in love with the colour scheme, and I knew at once, that I had to steal it.

For me, there are only two important rules in painting a good tabletop miniature.
1. It has to pop on the table. This mostly comes down to bright, clear colours and heavy contrast.
2. You have to be able to paint an army in the chosen colour scheme. This seems obvious, but most gamers I know, have abandoned a project after painting the first 1-2 units, when realizing how daunting a task it would be to paint a whole army that way.

The above model does this to an A+. I think it is beautiful in every way, and most colours are only 3-4 layers. Simple and elegant, and I want an army like that. I don't know if I can actually do it, but after painting my copy model (with a few personal tweaks), I feel pretty confident.

The green warpstone could probably have been pushed a bit more, but all in all I'm really happy with the result. Unlike most other armies I have ever painted, this model just owns the table. I want to look at it all the time, and I want to paint more... In fact, I'm just going to do that right now.


/Andreas 2.0

A drastic - but good - decision.

Yup - I've made a drastic decision. It was made for two reasons;

First being that I wasn't really loving the Defiler. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't loving it either, and I need to crazy in love with my work for me to really enjoy it and be satisfied. When I make something like that, I can't stop looking at it from different angles, and I felt that the Defiler was lacking in several ways - the scourge wasn't really what I wanted, the pose was sort of boring, etc.

The second being that my Forgefiend, which I really liked, couldn't make it into the Death Guard army list - for some reason DG doesn't like them. I know it could be made into a secondary detachment, but then the Detachment wouldn't be DG, and it just... Didn't feel right. Also, the legs seemed kind of small for it - it bordered on the comical. I want the theme to feel steampunkish, but never comical. I want scary, dammit!

So the decision was to rip both Forgefiend and Defiler apart, and make a rocking Defiler from the best of both worlds, and lo and behold, I think I did it - this, I REALLY like:

The tendrils are meant to be the Defiler Scourge - I reckon they work, but comments and critique are welcomed. :)

I'm still wondering if it should have some of the Forgefiend exhausts - I might experiment a bit.

The legs took a lot of time - first, all the necron pattern crevasses had to be filled, then filed, and then put through distressing/corrosion hell with my dremel - well worth it, at the end. I still need to do corrosion on the armour plates, but that'll get done, once it's put completely together - that way I know where it'll need to go.

On another note, my Daemon Prince's missing leg has arrived - hopefully an update about that later tonight.

Update:

I've started cutting up the legs, to repose them, and blocking in the pose; I think I've finally found what I was looking (cue U2) - they obviously still need a lot of sculpting to rid them of the tyranid look, and give them armour plates, but the basic shape and pose are pretty much in place:

I've also done a bit of work on the Decimator I found in a bag lying about - I've ground down the square leg plates, and have plans to do the same to the shoulder pads, since they don't fit at all with the "rounded armour daemon engine aesthetic" (they were also made before Chaos was revamped), but for some reason I don't think it works as all - it just seems... Lego-ish, like a toy? I'm a bit stumped, because I'd really like a Decimator for the DG army, with dual Soul Burners, but right now it looks like I need to go back to the drawing board.

Update #2:

I've made a VERY rough mockup of a Decimator idea, that seems a bit more "nurglish" - the small bottles are placeholders for the Soul Burner Petards I've yet to make:

And a quick comparison between the different "monsters" so far:

Oh, and a word of warning - a couple of nights ago, I was cutting a piece of plastic with my plastic cutters, and it had some dried superglue stuck to it. The dried superglue is very hard, and a piece of it was launched into my eye, embedding itself into to cornea of my left eye - now, that hurt.
I tried flushing my eye and and I thought it was okay, so I went to sleep. The morning after it was even worse, so my wife (a nurse) gave me a scolding for ignoring it, and sent me off to the emergency room. They managed to dig it out, it had managed to go a little deep, and given me some antibiotic eye drops. It's much better now, thankfully, and my eyesight don't seem to have suffered, but I'll be sure to get some safety goggles when working on stuff like that in the future - and you should too; we only get one set of eyes, and they should never be taken for granted. :)

More Defiling and ... Helbruting?

A small update on the Defiler and the Helbrute:

I've begun bulking up the defiler - and please note that not all of the parts are final (especially
the engines), so it's more like a sketch than anything - but I could use some feedback, since I'm a bit knee deep into doing it, and sometimes I lose my focus when I get there - is it working, or should I go in a completely different direction?

Also some more details on the Helbrute - I gave him some extra exhausts (once again, those Fiend stacks sure come in handy), and I've given him a chainmail loincloth, which help the wide stance a bit. I've also glued on the insect legs on the sarcophagus, and a large spike on his left shoulder:

Bits have arrived! But alas, the warp storms are affecting the bitz store...

Hi guys - my bitz order arrived from bitzbox.co.uk today, and I frantically tore open the nicely packed envelope, and basked in the glory of the new body parts for my Daemon Prince, his means of motion, his grotesque, mutated... Two left legs?

Dangit. They've sent me two left flying hive tyrant legs by mistake. To their excuse, they've immediately answered my mail, and they'll send me the right one promptly. So, the prince will have to wait a bit longer for his legs. On the positive side, they seem to fit really nice, and they seem to have the right dimensions - I've made a few cuts, and mounted on the giant hooves, to see how it fits, and I suspect that they'll look great, once they get armour sculpted on. Please excuse the picture - he really is a mess of non finished green stuff, blutack, and plastic parts as he is:

As you can see, I'm also toying with giving him a mutated, extra right arm.

I also grabbed the chance to order some useful bits, while I was browsing their website, so I got a few mkIII helmets and every single exhaust they had - one can never have too many exhausts!

I wanted to take a shot a converting mkIII helmets into Plague Marine helmets, and with a very small grinder bit, my dremel and some patience, I think it works pretty well (still needs some cleanup, I can see with the closeup):

I've also gotten some more green stuff on the Helbrute, and with the exception of some small details and tubes, he's about ready for paint - really satisfied with this one:

I got another idea, while rummaging through my bits box last night - there lay the wreck of my old Dark Mechanicus mauler fiend, which I was never really satisfied with. I had used the body of a FW Blood Slaughterer, and looking at it, I found some Necron Stalker legs, an Aracnarok body, and the gears started churning; I'm gonna do a defiler. It's only on the sketching state at the moment, but I think it has potential:

(Very much inspired by the Grievers from Maze Runner on this one - obviously needs another head)

Lastly, I'll just leave a small teaser of my project for the army, that's being worked on, on the side - it WILL get done, but I want to take it slow, enjoy it, and do it right. Any guesses?

Update:

I've been working some on the Defilers battle cannon - I wanted to make it into a combiweapon of sorts, combining it with the reaper auto cannon; still needs the bayonets, but I'm kinda digging it; It might not seem like much for a few hours work, but I always find mechanical stuff time-consuming - everything has to be straight as an arrow.

I also added some detailing to the Helbrute; some plague censers where the eyes used to hang on the sarcophagus, some insectoid limbs on the right side of the sarcophagus, a few spikes and a couple of extra exhausts - better?

A quick bad pic of the Defiler as a mockup - barely held together by blutack

More painted Malifaux miniatures

I'm slowly trying to take some well-lit pictures of my miniatures. Most have been shown somewhere else on the internet, but I want to convert everything to a nicer format like the images below. This week I'll be covering malifaux miniatures, and later I will be moving on to 40k and age of sigmar.

Dr. Grimwell, Nurse Heartsbane, and two orderlies

Angel Eyes, Scion of Black Blood, and two Bloodwretches

/Andreas 2.0

Helbrute and Plague Marines incoming!

Since I'm waiting for some bitz for my daemon prince to arrive, I might as well do something in the meantime;

Since reading about the Helbrute in the new Index: Chaos, I got very excited about the Helbrute as a close combat monster - I've always pictured it as a raving maniac given metal form, and the new rules (extra attacks! And wounds like monstrous creatures! Finally!) make it seem like it could actually work - of course it has to get across the table, but 8" of movement isn't too bad, and best of all, the new Power fist/power scourge combo puts out a lot of hurt; 4 base attacks, +1 attack for having two close combat weapons, and 3 bonus attacks for the power scourge - that's 3 attacks with str 8, dam 2 and 5 attacks with str. 12 dam 3 - a grand total of 8 high str attacks!

Anyway, I got myself a Helbrute kit, and decided I had to do something about the legs - I really dislike the kit Helbrutes legs and feet - they feel so short and stumpy, and fat thighs as well, plus they seem so flat and mono-posey. I don't get why they didn't work on the DV Helbrute, and made the legs more like that model. Anyway, chop chop, off with his legs. I cut the legs of the Helbrute kit, just above the ankles, and made that the new knee joint, and mounted them on the lower legs of a couple of DV Helbrute legs I had laying about - this made the legs seem longer, and gave me the possibility of having a more interesting and menacing pose. I also made a new power fist with some Heldrake talons, and a Killa Kan circular saw - inspired by Morbäcks great helbrute on that one.

Furthermore, I gave it the DI Sorcerers belly plate and a plasma gunners head, to make it look more distinctively Nurgle, which I think works quite well. Obviously, he still needs a lot of green stuff work to make it all come together, detailing, and smoke stacks, but I think the basic model works really well.

Update: Someone on a forum requested more angles of the Helbrute, so I might as well share them here too:

I also finally got hold of the new snap fit PM kit, after them being sold out in all my local stores; they must be popular. However, even before getting them, I had planned to cut them up somewhat, since I only really liked the basic bolter PM.

I promptly cut off the power fist, since I wanted to use it on my Blightbringer champion.

The astute reader will also see that I've managed to do some clever cutting with his left arm, thereby giving him a Plasma gun, as well as giving the other champion a back banner, and a backpack with a Plasma gun, thereby giving me two cool Plasma champions:

Lastly, I used the Champions body, and used it for a (in my opinion) more interesting pose Blight Launcher gunner, along with some leftover DI Plague Marine parts: