Khorne Dreadnought

Sneak preview of my converted World Eaters dreadnought, inspired by the work of the legendary Guitarasmus. Putting a jugger head on dreadnoughts has been done for years, nothing new there, but Guitarasmus' use of the magnagrapple housing completely changes the silhouette and makes the head placement look much better IMO.

He's a counts as Death Company Dread with Blood Talons for infantry mulching duties, the main detachment should be packing plenty of anti armour already. Same as Gabriel Seth, I feel the DCD special rules work pretty well for a Khornate dread, e.g. Fleet, Rage and ignore shaken/stunned.

Still very much WIP but getting there. Converted to a running pose (Fleet!) but the torso and the arms are going be to repositioned to look more "natural". Arms should be fully articulated at the shoulder and poseable when finished. They look a bit weird here as they look "clamped" to the dreadnought's sides parallel to the torso.

Khornate Gabriel Seth

Here's some pics of my allied HQ. My allied detachment will consist of Blood Angels for ass-kicking duties since that's generally what's lacking in a Guard army.

The Death Company and the Death Company Dreadnought are both Troop choices which satisfies FOC requirements and fits the job description pretty well. Guard units can do the objective holding after the enemy have been cleared out.

Leading the troops is a Khornate version of Gabriel Seth, packing his giant chainsword. He's a nice budget HQ anyway but also works well as a Khornate champion. The Flesh Tearers are halfway there already...

Edit - Just noticed the mold lines on the back pack. It's a lot easier to see things like that on camera for some reason. Easy enough to tidy up anyhow!
 

Update. 3 years later...

Wow. It's been three YEARS?

Fair bit been happening IRL which more or less put fiddling with toy soldiers on hold for a while. But I'm back. And I have been able to get a few things done.

A lot has changed since I was last active including 6th edition 40k dropping, fliers, a new Chaos codex and new stuff for a lot of other armies. I was really hoping to be able to do a decent World Eaters army with the new codex and my existing models but unfortunately the codex was still a bit disappointing. Also, the less said about the Lord of Skulls the better... This will hopefully change in the future but for now I'm happy to use the allies rules to plug the CC hole in my guard army using the Blood Angels codex and World Eater models. More on that later.

Actual progresson the traitor Guard army? Not much. Finished my primary HQ choice. I went with the Primaris psyker as it's cheap points wise and I liked the idea of a chaos psyker being in charge! The psyker model is the wyrd telepath from Necromunda which already looks a bit chaotic with the big ring o' skulls. I tried out some new (to me anyway) painting techniques including gems on the staff and OSL for the "glowing eyes" effect. Company command squad will still be added as a plasma kill team using orders once they've been completed.
 
I finished the first squad of the platoon. The second squad is undercoated but have been waiting for a while to be finished. The PCS is built but nothing else. Other stuff is built but not painted because... I really prefer building. Painting is usually the step where I mess it up! Case in point, the sentinel which I built first here on the blog was essentially destroyed by repeated base coats in an effort to get a decent camo scheme. Doh!

Blog design fiddles

Well, progress has been extremely slow, turns out a full time job a, wife and a 14 month old daughter doesn't leave much free time :) Nevertheless, progress has occured:

1. Finalised 1000pt army list
2. Added progress bar to Blog showing the different units I'v egot on the go (50% = fully assembled and undercoated)
3. Fiddled with Baneblade but it's been put to one side in the interests of getting an actual army ready instead. I've also decided to go with the original tracks, the 1/35 Tiger tracks I put on just look too flimsy...
4. Airbrush practice has begun - I crunched some old stuff on ebay and bought an Iwata HP-C with the proceeds.

Plan at the moment is to assemble and undercoat the heavy support section first so that's a Medusa, Manticore and vanilla Russ. Russ is done as far as undercoat, Medusa and Manticore are in final assembly before super detailing and undercoating.

Troops and HQ next.

Watch this space :)

Resin and metal surface prep

I've been stripping a couple of old metal 2nd edition Ogryns for my Traitor Guard army and have found a nice product for finishing off the stripping process before the primer coat. I initially use nitromors or acetone for removing the paint, then rinse with cold water.

The secret ingredient for the final stage is Cif kitchen cleaning liquid and a toothbrush. (Originally called Jif in this part of the world, I think it's one reason why the pronunciation of the word "gif" didn't go the way the inventor of the file intended...).

Cif is brilliant for this job when used undiluted. It's got very strong detergents to remove any oils or paint stripper still present and it also contains micro-granules. These are perfect for surface prep on metal and resin models and act as a coarse grade sandpaper, removing gunk and leaving a slightly rough key for paint to adhere to, making for a more hardwearing paintjob. And your models smell lemony fresh afterwards as well!

Traitor Baneblade

Here's some WIP shots of the lighting project:




Showing the two switches under the rear hatch. I've since magnetised this hatch for easy removal and placement. One switch will do the headlights and lascannon lights, the other will do the searchlight, so they have a common live lead. They need different resistors though.




This shows the solution for the side sponson LEDs. I replaced the spindle with a hollow aluminium tube with a notch cut into it to allow the wires to pass through. This means the side sponsons are still fully functional and can be adjusted once painted.

Hoping to have the lighting part of this project finished by the end of the week, time permitting.

Chaos Baneblade

Pics to come later tonight, but another all text update unfortunately... Got slightly diverted into doing further work on my Baneblade. Since I figure I'll only ever be doing one of these, I decided to go to town on it. This includes making it a lit model, which has involved researching the arcane realm of LEDs, learning to solder and of course drilling and dremelling the hell out of my poor plastic kit :)

Unfortunately, I tried to go too far with the searchlight. I built a 10mm white LED housing but hated it and it looked out of place. Sadly, I ruined the searchlight that comes with the kit so I'll have to use something else and I'm dropping down to a more sane 5mm size, unless inspiration strikes again ;)

Red LEDs for the lascannons and yellow for the headlights and it looks good even without being lit up. The soldering is almost complete, so just the mounting to be done now!