WH 40k- Tyranids- Warrior Prime

I wish I had enough time in the day to spend time with all my hobbies. These last few weeks, rather than completing one of my many projects, I've been spending every non-working minute playing Persona 4.
Luckily for me, I've finally completed the game, which only took me 70+ hours of game time. BTW, amazing game. Check it out. It's worth it.

Now that I've taken care of that particular hobby time killer, I've been messing around trying to finish converting my Warrior Prime. The goal of my Tyranid army is to have a primarily Warrior based/evolved force. This means Warrior Primes as the HQ, Warriors as the troops, Shrikes/Ravenors as fast attacks and a brood of Lictors tossed in for the elites.
Of course having nothing but warrior based bugs won't help me trash vehicles so eventually I plan on throwing in Zoanthropes, hiveguard, Trygons, or Tyrannofexes. It may not be the most competitive army, but I'm hoping it'll look freaking awesome.

Here's a picture featuring the mostly finished conversion with a regular warrior as a size comparison. Primes are supposed to be the biggest, deadliest Warrior's so I chopped up a couple old Hive Tyrant models to represent them.
The old model is one size bigger than a regular warrior and smaller than the current Hive Tyrant, so it seemed a perfect choice.

I had to beef up his arms to make them muscular enough to carry my "boneswords" and a little putty work to build up a turned neck. He's modeled with "Twin linked" Death spitters, but that is only because I like the "Wild West" look it gives him.
I plan on magnetizing some lash whips to make him a bonesword/lash whip monstrosity.

WH 40k- Chaos Daemons - Bloodthirster? Keeper of Secrets?

After three months without a day off and no real time to work on anything, I started to get frustrated. Besides the joy I get out of it, painting also provides me with an outlet for all the irritation I build up managing my employees and dealing with irrational customers.

I knew it was past time to work on something when little irritations seemed major problems, so I pulled out an Ultraforge model I had been tinkering around with for the past year, sat down and pretty much finished it...6 hours later.

I'm actually rather proud of this model.

If you haven't checked out Ultraforge you really need to do yourself a favor and look at some of their sculpts. They are cheap for their size, all resin, and amazingly detailed.  I had picked up the Tree Woman as I felt it would make a good alternative to Games Workshops Keeper of Secrets. The official model is hideous.  Slaanesh is supposed to be the Dark God of excess, desire etc. He's the only evil God to look beautiful. So beautiful he can entrall any mortal with a glance. 

Why then does his greatest minions look like a cross between a man, woman, crab, horse thing?

Starting off, I chopped off all the extra tree limbs and branches that were...branching out from her body. Then I started smoothing out all the jagged cuts I left behind and removing the small amount of flash that was left on the model.
I wasn't sure if this was going to be a Keeper of Secrets to start with or a Bloodthirster, so I ventured into the world of magnets for the first time.
I drilled out a couple holes in the shoulder blades to place some demonic wings I had on hand along with a spot in each arm.
The model came with alternative hands that are holding wooden knives? Eventually I want to model her holding gigantic axes rather than knives so I went ahead and magnetized them all.

 This was also the first real time I worked with modelling putty to fill in holes and work in some extra details.  Sadly I tore up big chucks of the model as I tried to fit in my magnets for the first time. The holes were too big. Detail was lost. The dremel missed it's mark.  I'm not sure if those are common first time mistakes, but all 3 hit me at once. On a large expensive model at that.
To fix my mistakes, I had to learn how to use putty quickly. If you want to do a decent job at molding putty with very little effort, get some shaping tools. They are cheap and they helped a newbie fix some pretty nasty mistakes.
You can't even tell where my mistakes or magnets are, that's how easy they were to work with.

Hmm...you can see in this picture that one of my magnets didn't lie completely flush with the arm. I'll have to go back and fix that at a later date.
I started off painting her the same as all my previous Khorne daemons using purple/pink as the main color. It was going great until I finished the base coat and it was pink. Overwhelmingly pink. PINK.
It really was nauseating how much there was on the poor model.

The pale flesh tone at random intervals ended up looking much better than expected at breaking up all the pink. It's vaguely sexy while creepy at the same time.
I had a blast using the GW washes on the model, in case you couldn't tell from looking at it.
Sepia shaded the flesh while red and black shaded the pink.

Slight highlights to brighten the edges of her "skin" and she was pretty much done.

I stuck her on an extra Trygon base since nothing else came close to her size. She is a big girl.
She looked so lonely though on that large base, so I had to add something to spruce it up.
I was going to add a few casualties to the base, body parts littered around, but it didn't seem very cinematic.
Not sure where I got the idea of having the Greater Daemon rescue a lesser Daemonette, but it looks good.

I modeled the Daemonette to look as if she was kicking away the Marine in an attempt to escape. Her claw is trying to shear the boltgun in half and her mouth is screaming in rage and fear.
The Marine doesn't have a care in the world. He's knocked the Daemon down, has her pinned under his foot and boltgun and chainsword ready to eradicate her evil from the galaxy.
Too bad he didn't look behind himself or notice the pentagram seared into the dusty landscape.

First attempt at a "lava" effect which really needs more rocks and large flat areas to be effective. The little raised portion of the ballast/sand really aren't tall enough or large enough to give it the fiery brimstone look I was going for.
I may have also been a little heavy handed with the yellow in an attempt to show a glowing light.

Over all this may be one of the best models I've painted to date. It's definitely showing much improvement over my other Daemon models and I started work on those barely a year ago.
If this keeps up, I may be getting ready for more advanced painting techniques like blending or Non metallic metals. Woo!

WH 40k- Chaos Daemons - Bloodcrushers

Bloodcrushers were the first model from the Daemon codex that really excited me to attempt to convert.  While I absolutely loved the real Bloodcrusher model, I couldn't see myself trying to pay for several $50 dollar metal models and then trying to make each one look different from everyone else's models.

Luckily for me, as I was complaining loudly to my wife about my terrible, terrible problem, I chanced upon a sale that Miniaturemarket was having on old Rackham: Confrontation minis.

Each one was going for $10, used the same base size, and looked freaking amazing! It was a gift from the Chaos Gods themselves!

I painted them up using the same color scheme as my Bloodletters, adding in a great deal of copper and brass to give it a Khorne feel. Excessive violence and murder eventually turn my bloodletters into a massive, mindless version of themselves so they have to be chained and led into battle. Luckily my Bloodletters don't seem to mind the change.

More bright blue to help them fit in with the Bloodletters, but you can really tell I painted them onto a back that has no little bumps. I should have gone and sculpted little bumps all over like their lesser kin have.

The shadowing from the washes turned out better on these larger models and helped tone down the brass, but I'm not sure I toned the silver down enough it feels too clean for my tastes right now. Maybe I'll go back and dirty them up a bit.

The biggest complaint I've gotten for these models at Dakka Dakka was that the poses were way too similar, something I agreed with. 

So, I went back, tore several of the arms off and repositioned them so that they looked slightly different. 

The change to the arms helped, but they really are in the same pose and have their head cocked in the same exact angle. Not sure what I can do about that as these models aren't exactly pose-able.

WH 40k- Chaos Daemons - Bloodletters

I've been listening to a bunch of podcasts lately and the one I've been enjoying a great deal the last few days has been The 11th Company. One of the main hosts actually plays the army and I enjoy listening to his tactics and list ideas.  The more they talk about how random, erratic yet effective the Daemon's are, the more I've been wanting to paint them.

The Fluff for my army is still in the working stage, but it basically goes along the lines of Slaanesh slowly stealing away Khorne's minions away from him with the promise of an excess amount of warfare, bloodshed, and violence to keep them happy. This would inevitably make Khorne weaker and Slaanesh stronger.  

Unfortunately Slaanesh under estimated the sheer violent nature of Khorne's daemons and instead of minions fully under his control, they have become a mixture of the two God's natures, creating sleeker, more deviant variations.

Since I don't have a working camera right now, you'll have to make due with the few models I actually have pictures of. Starting off are my Bloodletters of Slaanesh. 

I really disliked the Conehead look that Bloodletters have so, to start, I chopped them down to a semblance of a proper shape.
Using scything talons from my leftover Tyranid sprues, I replaced about half of the sword arms, sometimes replacing both arms.
I tried to show that they were slowly growing "Daemonette" rending claws and Daemonette arms were way too skinny to use as replacements.

The skin tone turned out a nice, bright, purplish pink hue that I've grown to love. Not quite the pink of Slaanesh and definitely not the red that Khorne favors.  The bright ice blue was a nice easy way to keep the pink from overwhelming the models.
These were the first real models I experimented washes with. While they look pretty decent, I think I could do a much better job now with what I've learned the last year or so.
Sadly, I'm really not sure exactly what steps I took to get them to look exactly like this, so all newer models I paint up will look very similar, yet not quite right.


I've only got about 16 or so of these guys painted as I want the Khorne part of my force to be the minority. Bloodletters, Bloodcrushers, and a Bloodthirster will be pretty much all I'm bringing. I'm hoping to make them about 33% of my 1850 army.

WH 40k - Space Marines

I want to start the post off by saying this at the very beginning. I do not like Space Marines. At all.
I'm not really sure why I don't like them. I think it may have more to do with the fact that EVERYONE plays Space Marines and it's obvious that GW gives more love to the Space Marine chapter than any other army.

To be honest, I wasn't going to start a SM army, because of those reasons. I ignored every post I saw about them. Even to the point where I didn't know all the units/stats of the most played army in 40k history.  The only thing I really noticed about the entire SM line of models was the Techmarine and Dreadnought, both of which are my favorite models.
Then I heard about the Dreadzilla list. A list where most of your army is put into Dreadnoughts and it's being led by a super Techmarine. It could be made even better by adding in Vulkan Hestan, a special character that pretty much is another super Techmarine.  That's when the urge to build this army grew.

The army needed to have a theme that revolved around giant robots being led by what is basically their creator/upkeeper.  I found some fluff on the Iron Hands chapter and loved the idea that these were SM's that made themselves stronger by removing their weak, soft fleshy parts and replacing them with cold, hard steel. Cyborg super soldiers= Glee!

Since this was the first army I had created to follow a specific them, I decided to get resin bases to outfit the entire thing. Enter the clockwork bases from https://ironhalo.net to fit in with the mechanical theme.
These are so amazingly detailed, that I'm shocked that none of the pieces broke off as I handled them. These terrible pictures really don't do them justice. You have to see them to understand how well they add to my army.

The whole urge to create the army was for the dreadnoughts. I decided to go with nothing but ironclads. The idea of a a bunch of robots rushing forward to tear shit up with their bare hands made me constantly smile.
4 of them are based off the Assault on Black Reach dreadnought with some forgeworld arms, 1 is a real Ironclad, and 1 is a converted regular dreadnought I got somewhere that didn't have any arms with it. Out of them all, the actual Ironclad is the one I hate the most. I added little detail bits to spice up the looks, and I'm really happy with the Imperial Guard one.

Leading the army is the Master of the Forge. This guy was a beast to paint. So many little details, that it felt overwhelming. I didn't know where to start, and I'm horrible at painting weapons, let alone Power Weapons. Still not sure how I like what I did with him. He's also the first guy I tried "weathering" on. It turned out well enough that I did it to the whole army, but I'm sure I could do much much better.

While cleaning this model of mold lines, I managed to slip and slice apart his poor hand. I was upset for a little bit when I realized that he'd be GLAD to get rid of those weak sausage fingers and happy to replace it with a smoke launcher! Now he gets a cover save all the time! Not really, but it doesn't look too horribly on him.

Purity seal guy, he's sort of a religious nut. He knows that troops are among the first units to die horrible deaths and firmly believes that the Emperor will save his life as long as he believes strongly enough.

Purity Seals=Faith=Belief, thus Belief=safety

So he shoved as many as he could find onto his body and so far I think it's working. The Emperor truly does love him.

WH 40k - Trygon

Of all the new models the Tyranids got when their new codex got released, the Trygon was the one I was most looking forward too.  I love this model.  From it's serpentine pose, to the little spiky bits that just out all over the place, this model just screamed paint me.

I had actually put off painting this one till I had enough troops to make 2 minimum sized squads.  I detest painting gaunts. They are mindnumbingly dull to paint. Each one is like the other, very little details to pick out, and they all have the same boring pose. Bleh.
Painting the Trygon was a reward for managing to paint up 20.

I really didn't do much of any converting of my first one. I like the Trygon model so much, I really wanted it to leave it as is. I did magnetize all the arms to be switched out at need, and shorten the tongue of the Mawloc mouth.

Not much else to mention about it other than the fact that I need to finish my other one, and get 2 more to convert into Tervigons. That's a long time down the road though.