Old school Eldar Rangers: Dramatic Basing.

A while back, I got my hands on some Eldar stike force, painted in Ulthwe scheme.

Some of the miniatures where terribly painted, having lots of undiluted paint on them, layers of old basing material, and such. I got them stripped down to metal this weekend, and I got my hands on the thing that came within a blister, some 10 years ago (maybe more).

I always liked the Eldar Rangers concept (I lost a squad of chaos space marine terminators by them on one of my first games ever! Damn that AP1 sniper rifles!) and seeing these guys always made me to want to paint them somewhat better. And I always liked the idea of making them somewhat dramatic, dynamic. There is not much dynamic pose on older models especially on metal ones.

So, I sat down and think. Where would be a great spot for a sniper? Amongst the ruins of course!

So, I had the plasticard, I had the cork material, I had the rangers. I just opened an old bag with plasticard scrap and cork scrap and started cutting with this little thingie called "bordure scissors".

Well, this little fella over here, is used to cut paper and cloth in the above pattern, as to make it look nice when you put it somewhere as a decoration. As you see, it's very sturdy, and can cut through plasticard and cork (obviously) with ease.

I used it to cut through some plasticard, to make them look like broken pieces of walls.

I then used a sharp modelling knife to cut small slots on the floor of the cork pieces, and-VOILA!-dramatic basing. The work took me about 45 minutes, and it was fun and quick.

Next thing is adding some more rubble, maybe burnt grass and such, and then undercoating them and painting them. I'm thinking of not gluing them on the ruins, in case someone doesen't think of them as tournament or tabletop legal, so I can just make some bases for them to swap them in the extraordinary possibility I would play an Eldar army list.

Again, as always, thanks for reading. Here are some more pictures.


Cheers.

Slaanesh: Cenobites and music.

Everyone I know make fun of Emperor's Children: the women of the warp, the homos, this and that. Noone, I mean NOONE from those who make fun of them, took a minute to think about their concept. More or less, Emperor's Children, the chosen Legion of Slaanesh, The Prince of Excess (for his followers), She Who Thirsts (according to Eldar), is the manifestation of... well, excess. Debauchery and depravity, carnal lust, martial prowess. Slaanesh has it all. And much more.

The taboo concept around Slaanesh and his influence is the idea of marines having sex. Superhuman, DNA altered soldiers, that once fought for the sake of humanity and now are part of a daemonic pact, that want to stick their laraman's organs into each other's omophagea. Well, fine by me.

When it comes to modelling, I'm far from politically correct. You only have to take a look to my foetus wielding marine to have an idea of what I'm talking about. Slaanesh, is all about sex, BDSM, leather, spikes, pain, excess, whips. Everything points towards that direction. So, who else had the same concept? But Cenobites of course!

Look at the above picture. Now, put on those characters a set of power pack, a sonic weapon or two, some bolters and/or combat drugs. TA-DAH! Noise Marines.

So, with that in mind, five or six years ago, I came upon some mediocre miniatures from the game Warzone (I think, I am not sure). They where in a discount sale on a local store, and I bought them (you never have enough bits and pieces). One of those minis, was a dual combat shotgun wielding guy in a long dress (?!!?). I was like "Okeeeey, someone there had a lot of issues". But, due to the fact that his hands where not attached and he had a great looking face, something like a collection of trumpets protruding from his jaw, and he had a very nice posture, put me to thinking. At that time, the Siege of Vraks from Forge World came out, and along with that, the chaos cultists and chaos psychers. I never had an IG army or anything close to that, so I don't know now (as I didn't knew back then), why I wanted to make a miniature of a psycher like the one on the left:

So, I started sculpting his body, cutting here, and glueing there. I was never satisfied with the outcome. So I kept adding stuff:

It was around the same time I decided to cut down my GW Daemon Prince (the generic one for Warhammer 40K), to make the aspiring champions for the different legions, etc.

As, I have already told you, I continually added stuff. I gave him two fleshy "dreadlocks" like the guy from Star Wars had (Jabba the Hut's advisor), I made a freaky hand, an exposed spine, etc. It was my time that I had found how to work green stuff, and everything suddenly went green. Unfortunately I can't find any more pics from that era, depicting the build from ground up, of the miniature, but the only thing you need to know, (and finally understand why the whole Slaanesh and BDSM intro), is that at some point, I saw the potential of that guy, and started to make my mind in making a Slaanesh Daemon Prince.

During that period, we had a new army come out (Chaos Daemons) and two new codices, so the Daemon Prince lost his purpose (at least as far as I had him in mind). Anyway, at some point I've managed to sit down, and do some more work on him, up until tonight, where I got him out of the closet (no pun intended) and managed to have him about 95% complete.

So, with no further ado, I give you, the 101% non official, non tournament legal Slaaneshi Daemon Prince:

So, first things first.

Yes, that cube he's standing on is a giant speaker.
Yes, he levitates, he has no feet. Who needs feet in the warp anyway?
Yes, those things on his back are bass guitar strings.
Yes, the speaker is made out of cork.
Yes, he has one arm, the other one will be attached when it's time to be painted so I can paint his belly.

So, at first, I was thinking of giving him leather outfit and spikes and stuff like that. But, besides the fact that looked a little to painful to sit and sculpt a lot of leathers on him, he also seemed a little steep, comparing with the official Daemon Prince. So, out of the blue, I recalled some Noise Marines miniatures a guy had made, a long time ago, who where all modelled after a Heavy Metal concept. Those guys had a giant speaker as a chaos spawn, they had guitar amps, flying-v guitars, etc. So I decided to make this, a giant speaker, that connects to the Prince via a large array of pipes and tubes, since he's a former noise marine. I gave him a Lash of Torment, and stuck a couple of Dirge Casters from the old Chaos Space Marines vehicle sprue. And voila! there he is. It's pretty simple really. Most time consuming procedure was the attachment of the tubes (I now have a set of superglued fingers) than making the speaker.

Here are some more pics from tonight's adventures:

The speaker before completion.

Rear view.

So, I hope you liked it. You know there are a few things that can match the satisfaction of bringing something to a completion. I've always thought of making stuff other people like, but finally I am contempt with just making stuff that I like first, and then, if other people like them, it's fine by me.

So, hope you liked it. See you soon.

Cheers.

Better Late than Never.

Isn't that what they say? Better late than never? Anyway.

Happy New Year! I'm here, you're here, so I guess the end of the world came and pass, and nothing happened: No Eye of Terror broke through our reality, no fall of the Eldar, no Age of Great Expansion (I feel a little sad about that last one). Anyway, it has been a while and I've been a little busy finishing stuff here and there, painting, modelling, changing from one army to an other, and so on. So, first things first, let's see what I've been doing all this time.

First and foremost, I managed to finish modelling the Chaos Space Marine Bikers/Riders of the Apocalypse and the outcome is satisfying. I hope I'll be up to the task to paint them (I'm still struggling on that). So, let's see some pictures, shall we?

So, this is the squad. Five of them all with different weapons (just for the fluff) and the standard bearer (who would play the role of the Aspiring Champion. But let's see them one by one:

"I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest."

Obviously, I couldn't attach a bow on that guy over here. But somehow I needed to show the "projectile". So I gave him two bolters: a bolt pistol and a bolt gun.

"When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come and see!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword."

The Red Horseman, the champion of Khorne. As I used the fantasy Chaos Knights models, the use of a hand with an ax/hatchet thing, came naturally. The head came from a Catachan sprue that I had to cover with a blob of greenstuff (here is seen unmolded and unsculpted).


"When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

Unfortunately, I didn't had any scales to model on this guy. So I just made his posture a little more dynamic, like he's riding to reap those beneath him. Although, definitely something will be painting on his horse that will remind a scale.

"When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."

When this project begun, I had in mind the phrase "Behold a Pale Horse" from the Apocalypse. The whole idea came from this guy, over here. So it is with great pleasure that I finished him finally. 

And of course, Lucifer, the Light-Bringer:

For this guy, I used the banner from the Chaos Knights, and the head from the fantasy champion of Khorne on Juggernaught. The unhelmed one. It kind of reminds me the character Tim Curry played on the movie Legend:

So he would be modelled according to that.

Perhaps you've noticed that there are some powerpacks/backpacks missing. That's because, at some point, I didn't had any of those! I really freaked out, cause I cut and made a lot of miniatures, and there should be spare powerpacks lying around. I have to dig deeper and check for more.

I really loved working on these guys. It was nothing really difficult or extraordinary and it was something I had in mind for quite some time now. Now, next thing is to get them painted and make them look really awesome.

Again, thank you for reading, see you really soon.

Cheers.

Re-inventing the Chaos Space Marines

Long story short: I am a farmer. Not a Korean farmer (those guys on mmos that kill monsters and sell the gold over e-bay). A real farmer. I grow plants and I have a steady job in an open air market. So, much of my time is being consumed by that. I need to move from the big city (Athens) to the country (Thiva) to check on my plants, talk to people, do hard work etc. etc.

The past one and a half month, I was in Thiva, participating on a seminar about new farmers, but I managed to paint some Eldar. But now I'm back in Athens, where all my stuff and armies are (except for the Tyranids, those bugs are scattered everywhere). So I started checking on old boxes with bitz and old metal miniatures, and stripped and primed minies that needed to be repainted, and found these:

From left to right, we can see a fantasy Khorne Lord on Juggernaught (who has been "converted" to fit into a Warhammer 40K list - actually just a plasma gun on the shield arm and a round base), a metal Typhus given to me as a present about 4 years ago, a metal Lucius the Eternal (he was a gift along with Typhus) and my very first chaos miniature, Abaddon the Despoiler. Now, this miniature has seen a lot of action: painted, stripped, painted again, sealed with the disgusting Citadel "purity seal", then stripped and primed again, to stay in this state for about 5 years, more or less. Anyway, I've tried to give this guy a dynamic pose, something to make him look more like Abaddon from the Chaos Space Marines codex of 1998. And today, after a lot of thinking, I've made it. It's really nothing special, I haven't even cut or pinned much on him (well I didn't cut anything, I just pinned his arms) and set him on a more or less dynamic pose. I also "repositioned his lightning claw, and turned his head in a way that shows something like "advance" or "charge".

Anyway, I liked the way he turned out, like, out of nowhere.

Now, in other news.

A long time ago, I purchased a pack of Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Knights. My idea was to make a "bike" squadron for my ever growing Black Legion army. Those miniatures (that by the way are awesome) where sitting in a dark cupboard (obviously waiting for the Apocalypse, since they are going to represent the four horsemen). So, with no further ado, a sneak peak of what there is to come:

So, I'm sorry for being so late (for anyone out there who reads the blog), and once more, thank you. See you soon.

Cheers.

The Elder Races

After a long time painting power armour, I chose to see a different aspect of modelling: As I've stated to the previous post , some time ago I was given an army of Eldar, painted with the Ulthwe craftworld paint scheme. Now, to be honest, I never liked the whole idea with wraith bone colouring (I like the idea of the wraith bone being a living matter that can be shaped according to the Eldar whims) so I tried a different approach on the matter. Bellow, with no further ado (my time is short) you can see the outcome.

I hope you'll enjoy it.

P.S.: I know there are a lot of things that can be fixed or made in a better way (e.g. the highlighting on the targeting pole) but I keep this as a reminder on what I did wrong and what can be fixed in the future.

Cheers.

Sneak Peak: Blood Angels

Repositioning the Eldar: A Xenos love story.

A while back, I was given a small (as I thought at that time) Eldar strike force. It started to be an Ulthwe force, painted with those colours, a colour scheme that I like it myself. Recently, I stumbled across them once more. They where sitting in a carton box, 3 years after I moved out of my previous house. Tons and tons of miniatures where sitting there, rolled up in toilette paper (don't ask), just waiting to be unpacked. And in a moment of loneliness, I decided to unpack them and see what's inside the box.

I was overwhelmed.

A box full of miniatures, grav tanks and jet bikes, waiting to be re-modelled and re-assembled. Everything was there: weapon support platforms, a wide range of harlequins, Dire Avengers, Phoenix Lords. And most of them, still in their blisters. But the main problem was the grav tanks and the jet bikes. The majority of those where glued the wrong way, or not glued at all, just stuck together to make a mock up of the tank, just to be used in games. And everything was thrown inside a box of an Eldar Falcon box, mixed up.

So, I took the decision to unpack everything, see what was missing, re-assemble everything, strip what was painted awfully and repaint them. I started with the easy stuff, re-assembling the metal weapon support platforms:

I love the look of those. Pretty good detail, although the Eldar personnel is a little bit static. And metal, that means there is no way of re-positioning those guys.

So, with the easy stuff out of the way, I started to look around for the parts of the grav tanks (an Eldar Falcon and  a Wave Serpent, along with a Vyper and three jet bikes).

Finding the parts for the tanks, was easy enough. I found the schematics, the sprues, (most of them where still uncut). But... I wasn't able to locate the Shuriken Cannon and the canopy for the Vyper. So, I had to improvise. I looked over the two sprues from the grav tanks and found a plethora of spare weapons. So, I salvaged that part of the vehicle. But the canopy was still missing.So... I did this:

I took my small drill and drilled some holes that didn't penetrate the hull of the vehicle. In the finished model, I would make this thing look like it took a burst of rounds right in the face, the canopy was broken and the pilot had to brake it or remove it somehow (just like the pilots in WWII did on their planes), so he could see. Keep in mind here, that the model shown in the picture, was taken apart and re-assembled. In the pictured above, is NOT glued. This is a demonstration of the power of good assembly can do. Always trim and clean your models before applying glue on them.

So, with the Vyper done, it was time to get my hands on the jet bikes. 

A small parenthesis here. All the grav vehicles on the eldar army, come with crystal clear plastic round bases, to give the impression of flying. Those bases were all broken. So I had to make some arrangements. I took the smallest drill I could find, and drilled small holes in them. Then I inserted small steel rods, cut from steel paper clips, to make an effective base. This is the outcome:

I never really liked the rigid look of something so elegant and agile as the Eldar vehicles, so I decided to give them a tilt while on the base. After all they are three in number, and I though it would be cool to make them all look like they are turning together towards an enemy, in squadron formation. The same would apply for the Vyper and the grav tanks as well.

So, after a while, this is a small update on what I was up to. Will a few simple drills and pins, you can give your model a very nice dynamic look. More to come, since this project have only just begun.

Cheers.

Nostalgia..

I've been waiting for two weeks for the Dark Vengeance box to arrive and I've been browsing the internet in search for a project, ideas and other stuff to do with my chaos space marine army, and I've stepped over the old Space Crusade art.

The Milton-Bradley games (abbreviated MB, Hero Quest, Space Crusade, etc.) was my first contact with the Games Workshop miniature range, and I fell in love with them. I even tried to paint some with my plain modelling equipment (Humbrol and Airfix paints). Needless to say, the outcome was horrible.

One of the most exciting stuff in the game, for a nine year old, was the awesome 1st-to-2nd edition artwork, found in the rulebook and on the event cards. Obviously a lot of that artwork was made specifically for the Space Crusade game, and others where taken from the Warhammer 40K: Epic. They were both equally fantastic.

The objective of the game was a mix of 40K background within a Space Hulk environment: you controlled one of 3 Space Marines chapters (Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Imperial Fists) and the "bad guy" controlled the blips on the map. The blips where random, and had the number of the enemies you encountered every time. The mortality rate was high among the space marines and only the sergeant had 6 wounds (where the simple space marine had 1). You could fight against space orks, gretchin, "space androids" (necrons where not a part of the army range back then), chaos space marines, genestealers, and a dreadnought. The game map could change (more like the Advanced Hero Quest) and the space marines, entered and left through an attack platform at some end of the game map. Overall was a great and fun game, for someone who haven't seen or heard of anything that had to do with Warhammer 40K universe.

Bellow you can see some of that artwork that introduced me to the hobby. Enjoy.

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