Legionaries now really finished, finally with shields!

Hi again,

back in 2012 (!!!), I painted these guys but forgot the shields. So, it took me only 3 years to get the shields done! ;-)

Necromunda - Redemptionist Crusade (Gang)

Hi,

I finally came around to paint up my Redemptionists consisting of most of the classical models plus some of the newer Fanatic resculpts.

Owing to the fact that both my storage and my brain are swelling over with miniatures and ideas for projects, I decided to increase my production rate! However, since I do not have more time for the hobby (as you see from posting rate ;-)), I decided to paint faster (and dirtier)! These guys took 1.5 hours per model and were painted in small groups of two to four at the same time...

I did not use the "Juve" and Zealot bodies of the Fanatic version because they are too small I think! They look strange right next to the classical models.

In addition, I converted an inquisition priest from 40K, and I gave all of them "proper" Redemptionist hoods. My idea is that all of them would hide their faces as good as possible (apart from the crazy zealots maybe) since the Redemptionists are "outlaws".

This is how I came up with the color code (no classic yellow flames because the do not go well with the white, and more importantly they would have taken too long to paint! ;):
- Novices (no models yet; to be converted still)  have only white hoods,
- Brothers have white hoods and red cowls,
- Deacons have black hoods and red cowls,
- and the Redemptor Priest is all white.
- Then, Zealots are also all white but dirtier.

The idea behind this is the following: The red is obviously the color of redemption so a full brother can wear the red, while the white is for those of pure heart, a higher level of sainthood basically. Now, a practical problem of the white is that it is easily seen in the dark corridors of the Hive and thus invites a high number of head shots. Therefore, the Deacons (the only true warriors in the "Gang"), wear black hoods. This way they can easily hide behind the mass of brothers! Since the priest is a leading figure of high sainthood he can obviously not wear black. It has to white! This of course means that he will have to be protected and has to stay behind during the battle so that he does not get shot at.

The Zealots are special and wear all white as well because they gave up basically everything to reach the ultimate redemption on the fast track so to speak. In practise this means that they are going to die in the next fight with a high certainty. However with they Eviscerator chain saws they are probably going to kill some mutants and heretics in a frenzy! Then the Eviscerator can be given to the next "lucky" soul to enter the highway! ;-)

For the Novices, I plan to convert some chaos cultists wrapping their heads into white hoods. Isn't that a big irony?! ;-)

Happy painting!

Relic -- Painted my busts

Over the last months I had not a lot of time for painting and if at all then only incoherently...
This project was exactly the right for this period: very relaxed painting on very characterful sculpts on larger scale. I am talking about the busts from the Fantasy Flight Games board game Relic! In case you do not know it, I highly recommend to check it out! It is a lot of fun with a lot of Warhammer 40k grim atmosphere, perfect for a night with friends and some beers...

So there are 10 busts in the core game and this was is the art on their character sheets:

This nice painting was done by Ning over at Deviantart. For easier recognition of the miniature on the complex game board, I thought it is a good idea to try to paint the busts as in this art...

Here they are:

And this is how I painted them:

They exactly fit onto these Stabilo pens, which makes it very comfortable to paint the busts. I can not wait to buy the add-ons for Relic and paint more of these!

Happy painting and board gaming! :-)

Making of the "winged" Demon Prince of Nurgle (with rotors)

Hi again,

so as mentioned already, instead of normal (dragon-like) boring wings, my Nurgle Demon prince should looked more industrial/mechanical just like the Blight Drones from Forge World. So I set off to do a small conversion building a pair of rotors, which I describe below in case you like it and want to do one yourself. I am sure that the same would also look good for an Iron Warriors Demon Prince...

But before I start, one word of CAUTION: I did not plan the conversion beforehand but just implemented new ideas on the fly. Therefore, the order below is not necessarily -- well certainly -- the best for doing this conversion. So, before you start, read the whole thing and make corresponding changes in the order...

So the idea of the rotors was to make them look "half-way" realistic, just as they could "work" in reality... ;-) Therefore, I thought a bit about the moving axis and somewhat realistic dimensions for stuff, as well as some cabling to transport the energy where needed but see yourself below.

1. First we need some kind of framing for the rotors. After looking around for quite a while, I found some scotch tape:

I unraveled all the tape and put it onto another tape roll (quite a stupid idea  as it turns out as evident above, so I guess you will just have to waste the rest of the tape on the roll...).
Then you have to cut the edges of the roll to get a shape as shown in the image above. I also used a fine rasp and sand paper to make the surface rough (so that it is easier to glue stuff onto it and paint it later). Obviously you need two of these "rotor frames".



2.  Cut the rotor blades themselves. In my case I used thin metal sheet from a travel chess ;-) You can as well use some thin plastic cardboard but it would be good if you can bend it later slightly as shown in the pics below. They shoudl have a diameter such that they just fit tightly into the inside of the tape rolls, eh rotor frames.

 After cutting the four blades, two for each of the rotors, I drilled little holes (3mm) into their centers.



3. Construction of the central cones. For these I used two rockets from the sentinel sprue. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of these steps but I reconstruct explanatory images below.

I cut each of the rockets into two pieces after the first winglets as shown by the red line in the image above. In addition, I cut away the lower part below the lower winglets (see above). Then I used a rasp to form a cone from the lower part so that it looked like a rocket tip itself. 

Then I drilled holes into the bottoms of the rocket parts with the same size as used for the rotors. In addition, I used a cylinder-like piece of plastic of ~5mm length with a diameter matching those of the rocket parts. I drilled a hole through these as well.

4. Now, we are ready to assemble the whole rotor-cone systems: 

 The black line in the image above shows a piece of wire with the right diameter to just fit into the holes. Two of these have to be assembled of course.

5. The next step is to glue these rotor/cone systems into the rotor frames as sketched below.

6. Connectors from cones to frame. For this step I used some thin metal strip that I found in my bits box. However, thin plastic card should be as fine.

I cut twelve pieces in total, three for each side of each frame. I glued them with super glue between the cone and the frame in angles of 60 degrees.



7. Mounting of the rotors. To connect the rotor frames to the rest of the model, I used several parts from 40K vehicles from my bits box:

Unfortunately, I can not say where the next piece is from but it should be easy to find or build a similar part.

I used a rounded rasp to connect the piece well to the round surface of the frame.

I modified the parts in the following way.

8.  Gluing the rotor frames to the mounting and both to the model.

The following images show the positioning of the rotors.

9. Some details and generator backpack.

This part is from Robogear.

Energy cable connectors between generator and rotors (from the Sentinel sprue).

10. Details of the rotor frame. Now was when I realised that I wanted to add more details to the rotor frame, so I unmounted the rotors again. Thus, you probably want to do these steps before gluing everything to the model, i.e. before step 7.

First I added some narrow guitar strings from the cone to the cabling on the outside of the rotor frame. For this, you have to drill suitable holes through the tape roll. In addition, I used some sprue frames to fill out the part of the tape roll at the mounting (see images below). This was done on the upper and lower side of both rotors.

Next, I added some spikes :

Finally, I added some cables in the outer ring of the rotor frame:

Then I painted the inside of the outer ring black...

... before I glue fine mesh ontop.

11. "Ageing" of the rotor frame, aka Nurgle's rot. Before gluing (back) to the model, I carefully drilled many holes with different diameters into the rotor frames:

12. Final step: Armour opening of the power armour around the rotor mounts. To blend in the connection between the model and the rotors I used Green Stuff.

After priming: