Power swords and Lightning claws (or why I5 is awesome for characters)

So I apologize for not having an update the last week or so I had some personal shit go down an it's still ongoing so expect odd updates, but short of that lets get this ball rolling.

So about 3-4 weeks ago when I picked up the forgefiend (which is still in progress) I also picked up a box of the new raptors some parts of which I mixed and matched with a box of regular CSM but we'll get to that another time. Four of the raptors became Lords/Captains, and I gave two of them power swords and the other two lightning claws so they could be switched out. Though most of the time I honestly think I'll be running a lord with lightning claws. 

Now it's no lie I love raptors, and almost all jump troops, something about the phrase "Strike from the skies brothers!" sounds almost magical to me. Thus I love having a massive amount of jump troops to harass the enemy early in the game I5 with the option of FNP is simply a nice icing on the cake. 

 I was slightly torn on how to paint these guys weapons though, as I thought too much metal would make them as characters look kinda bland. I decided to go for the classic glassy blue color, as I thought it would be nice to bring a cool color into the model. Though It was pointed out to me that I chose in doing so the three primary colors blue, yellow, and red.

 That being said though I really love the design of the claws, most of them are designed very very well and produce a fear effect that I find quite nice. my main bitch about them though is the lightning bolts. I cannot properly describe the annoyance of these thin lines but I'll do my best, Imagine that you are painting on a space as large as your paintbrushes brush but you can't get a smaller one because the paint is too thin and runny. It looks neat but I would have much preferred an alternate claw without the lightning bolts.  

The only other thing I realy don't like is the lack of laying with the models movement, most of them look nice, but some of the arms and heads together don't quite look well, and most of the heads have the problem of the neck joint being too short and kind of sunken into the chest cavity. 

 Now I felt these two looked much better than the first, in terms of movement and decided to make them white helmets (vets.) but it is worth noting that these heads were altered and not in the raptors box, The one with claws is a standard topknot CSM head which was cut off and shaved into the arrow, I having never been fond of the top knots with few exceptions (Abbadon and the fantasy Slaanesh lord being they) The other was a khorne berzerker helmet that I cut those stupid looking bunny ears off of, actually if you do this with most of the berzerker heads they look much much better IMO.

 Not much I can say about this guy, he came out how I wanted, though I kinda feel I should have put a mark on his shoulder.

 now I did some other converting on this guy most notably adding the sword from a Chaos knight from the fantasy line, but I think it will look pretty good should I ever decide to take a lord with the murder sword. I took a bolter from the sanguinary guard and gave it to him, though I kinda wish I had some fire effects to add to it.

So moving on from the raptors are a couple of champions I made/painted for my noise marine squads. Though I not sure how often I will be using both.

 Now let me start off by saying I love this shoulder pad, it looks fantastic for noise marine dudes in general. In fact most of the paldrons with those vents that look like speakers do.

 So you may be wondering why they have tongues. long story short I had these fucked up helmets, I kinda wanted to do something with them but I wanted them to look a bit more like chaos, so I drilled them out and put an elongated tongue in their place feeling it would fit the slaanesh theme.

 Now I kinda like this guy, even though I'm not a fan of the X-23 thing he has going on with his version of the lightning claws, though I suppose it beats the retarded look of the wolverine claws they made for the 5th set. Not too much I can say other than that, I decided to do a royal purple here, thinking blue would look weird but I'm kinda regretting my decision now....maybe I'll change it in the future but chances are I'll leave him as is as a reminder.

 Finally we come to the last painted model of this week. I struggled for a while trying to decide how I wanted to paint him, a suggestion coming my way of a family member to do him with an homage to david bowie with glam makeup.... So I did...and I think it looks pretty good.

Not much I can say that the picture does for me.

Finally the last little pit this week, a W.I.P. that might not see finishing for a little while but looks cool none the less. 

That's it for this week, Hope you enjoyed it, Comments, questions and such are always welcome below, Have a great week. 

~SWL

Not much of an update today.

Got my kitbashed sorcerer done for you all however, I have been working on the rank and file dudes, as well as the special characters/ captains of units but this week and the better part of last week made it an absolute pain in the ass to work on stuff. Regardless, gonna try and crack down on painting and modeling some stuff this week as I don't want to be tempted into buying more stuff.

So this sorcerer I plan to use the assault 4 primary power for  his psychic power as it seems really good if a bit random, So I used one of the backpacks form the noise marine lord (which I talked about back when I painted the blood angel and NML) to represent that.

 Now I'm not gonna be naive and not think the first thing you noticed was the scythe, I made it using the empire wizard staff head along with the icon stick from the CSM box, I had briefly considered putting red or blue for the roses but ultimately decided on a pink with purple wash as it made them pop and break up the yellow.

The scythe blade itself is the ivory bone that I like to use on clean (non-aged) bone, it's rather simple to do starting with a regular slightly tan white color (in this case menoth white), use a sepia wash or watered down brown ink over it, and then add a bit of white to the first color, recovering the main area in broad strokes.

Due to lack of interest in the giveaway I will not be doing one this week, but those who entered last week will be contacted rest assured.

See you soon.

~SWL

How 'bout an actual update?

So long story short I don't have the full army of space marines painted, after a rollercoaster of a week including new classes, running out of sepia wash and replacing it with watered down brown ink (NEVER DO THIS), an old friend showing up in town, ect. ect. ect. this week has flown by. However I did manage to get a daemon prince painted for you folks so lets check him out real quick.

 I'm sure the first thing you notice on him is the crab claw which came courtesy of the daemon princess I ordered a little while back for my daemon army before I actually got Babylon. I wanted to give it a chitinous look though so I decided to do it daemonette hide and then hit it with a secret weapon purple wash which I feel complimented it rather nicely.

I feel maybe I could have added some more metals than silver to this but I'm not sure it would work out so well, the black fits with what I'm going for (again Slaaneshi Imperial fists) but I feel I could have thrown some gold in there somewhere.

The horns were from the Tzeentch banner of the CSM box, I think they add nicely to the model itself, and I hardly see any daemons with more than those two derpy looking ones. Honestly though I would have loved it if I had an extra fiend of slaanesh head to swap out, I think it would have looked pretty good on a daemon prince.

Now for what most of you no doubt came for.

As I'm not done with My CSM army I have decided to do this, a giveaway every week until I am finished. Standard rules, email in the comments, I pick a winner and send them an email for their contact info. Good luck, See you folks next week.

~SWL

Unexpected Delays

Whelp let me start out with this, My buddies the same folks who are doing the stoneface episodes on youtube are running a fundraiser stream for extra life, Their website/team page is Here and their stream should be through my buddy sean's livestream channel Here, please spread the word, donate or at the very least pop in to see what they are playing, you might find yourself entertained.

With that being said I have been working for the better part of the day to get my CSM army finished and table ready, however having not worked on streamlining 50+ models in a while I fear I have fallen behind. I did manage to get most of them ready for detailing however so as soon as I have them done I'll be sure to post the entire army here. Once again I apologize for not having a proper update.

And I know I'm going to hear some grumbling before the next post so I'll give you folks something to look forward to, a penance in gift form, I'll be doing another giveaway next post.

 

See you next update 

~SWL

It's how big!? (small update)

Sorry to disappoint, but with some stuff going on this week as well as not being able to pick up anything until today (friday) I seem to have fallen behind, rest assured I still have an update but it's a smaller one before I show off the one of the projects I've been working with off and on for a year now.  SO let me start off by saying the Chaos codex is great having picked it up and thumbed through it. I forsee quite a few good matches coming from it's rules and am rather liking the idea of a slaanesh sorc riding around with 9 feel no pain noise marines tooled for assault in a land raider. Also it gave me a good name for my Chaos Imperial fists so I don't have to call them "Dornian heresy" Marines anymore. The brotherhood of Lethe, Which opens up all sorts of ideas for scenic basing. But that isn't what I want to talk about today, what I want to talk about is one of our new toys for heavy support.

Now I was dubious when I first saw the fiends, but have been since convinced that they can fill a much needed roll in our army, so I picked one up and while being surprisingly simple to put together is also quite large, I was actually amazed how big the thing is.

I recall being surprised at the size of the Tervigon when I got one of those too and wonder if I just have a hard-on for Monstrous creatures. But I find that the more I look at this model as well as it's conversion potential to other projects the more I find myself liking it. The guns look good, the pipes on it's flanks look excellent (for just about any vehicle that you want to have a small pipe-organ feel. The only thing I'm not a fan of is the reptilian head, but I must commend them for giving us the alternative shown above.

That's all for now, expect a larger update this week which will also include some W.I.P.s

~SWL

Need for speed (part two, also first impressions on the new CSM codex)

Hey folks, lots going on this week so lets jump right into the skaven painting tutorial I got set up, I will reference a couple of things I did with the goblins so take a look at that if you haven't already.

So first things first I wanted to give our vermin lord here a green flame atop his banner, I always liked the imagery of the Warpfire that the skaven use on a bunch of stuff and try to mimic it every time I can get away with it, As with last time I started with a white basecoat, and to achive the almost neon greel glow of that fire I added 4 drops of P3's yellow ink to 3 drops of P3's green ink and Applied. it was that simple.

The next couple of steps came vary quickly and naturally, Some watered down liche purple for the robes, and I decided on a 1/1/1 of menoth base+ vallejo's light brown and a drop of water to create the skin, which is a creamy light brown, the fur would later be a reddish brown of dark flesh to give a bit of contrast.
I must confess I also added a drybrush of scorpion green to the flame as I though it would make it pop more but only proceeded to muck up the nice ink I had applied.

I started on the banner and rusted armor next, the banner would be simple as I wanted to make it look like bloody skin, I went for menoth white base instead of rotting flesh to avoid the greenish tint, I would later add a purpleish red wash named "drying blood" from the secret weapons line to make it look like strips of flesh. Now for the Rust walkthrough, which is what I wanted to show off most, You start with a watered base of black over the sections of armor or blades that you want to make rusty.

Then you take a light brown and water it down to wash consistency and apply it to the black sections. (You'll note I added the yellow brown wood color for later as well as added the wash for the banner as well)

After this Brown wash has dried you will notice it looks like a thin layer of dirt in the cevasse and areas where the wash has pooled. Now it is time for the rust. This can be tricky and ultimately depends on what look you like better, you can make the orange a wash and over the parts, or you can attempt to drybrush it over certain areas. I recommend different styles for the different paints you will be using, Vallejos orange is always runny so it doesn't take much to make it a wash, but GWs is so thick it doesn't take much to drybrush with that, experiment see what you like best.  I went with both though I think the wash worked better on this model.
 After all this rust I began painting metals in order to make the lord here look like he had a mismatched or looted armor.

 Shortly after this is done I begin to add washes to the wood and metal, adding a light flesh to the tail followed with a flesh wash, little leather straps being touched up with dark brown as well, and finally adding the reddish brown color to the fur.

Finally, I added some blood spatter on the cleaver, and on the arm holding it as well as painting the pillar he is standing on, with a light grey, and covering it with a black wash before adding white to the stone and then covering it with the green wash from earlier.

So with the Vermin lord completed, I figure it's time to discuss the new CSM codex a little bit.

Now let me start off by saying I am by no means an expert and have no doubt people will like other things that I don't and hate things that like,and that's fine but I'm a firm believer of "play what you want to play" and I'm going to talk about stuff that I liked and stuff I want to play.

-Things I am excited about-

-First off cultists being back is awesome. I plan on getting about 60-70 of my traitor guard painted up specifically so I can run nice looking cultists. 
-Noise marines are back and pretty freakin' cool this time around, they can't really assault but don't lie to yourself you weren't going to use them for that anyway. You now HAVE to take a champ now which I'm not a fan of but the sonic weapons are cheaper so I'll deal with it, Blastmasters and doom sirens are still good so be prepared to see them get used quite a bit.
-Dirge casters on vehicles are awesome, every CSM army is going to use them, they kill overwatch within 6" so get ready for Khorne armies especially to abuse the shit out of them.
-Forgefiends are good, and I'll pardon the dinosaur attached to the guns because the guns and pipes look so good. but I might find myself hiring some sculpting help for a slaaneshi top.
-Lords are cheap as hell.
-Eye of the gods is awesome
-All slaaneshi troops can get Feel no pain for cheap.

-Not so excited-

-Deamon weapons mysteriously missing, except for two upgrades and two HQ's they have mysteriously vanished, and granted it's not a bad thing but I miss having the option to have a slaaneshi lord w/ jumppack and a daemon weapon menace the opposing side.
-We all knew Lash was going to disappear, but to replace it with nothing else that messed with movement? Seems a bit harsh. Spells are still pretty good, but all in all not looking like something I'm gonna take often.
-Not excited about the maulerfiend, or the Heldrake. Seems like there are things that do these two new toys jobs better (except for maybe the heldrake which can chase flyers). Others may like them but I'm not a fan.
-Daemon princes are probably gonna be what you see mostly as the Hq's again. Though having to take a  humanoid to take the cult troops as troop choices instead of elites.

-Things that need errata already-

-Only thing that currently comes to mind, although I'm sure there are going to be more....is the nurgle zombie cultists. If you haven't heard when taking typhus you are allowed to take cultists as zombies, and they gain some good abilities such as feel no pain, but here is the rub, you are not allowed to take options, adding extra dudes to the unit is under the section called options, so reading the rules as written you are only allowed to take ten zombies with each unit of cultists which pretty much mean many people won't (although you could just take plague marines in the elite choice after filling all your troop choices with the zombies.) Point is it needs an errata already.

Hope you enjoyed the post, I won't have another up until monday at the earliest as I'm going to a concert tomorrow and work the rest of the weekend.

~SWL