'nids part 161 - And yet Moar Genestealers

These were the final 5 Genestealer to be based. I was looking to make scenic bases with barrels but in the end just went with slate as I had it to hand and it would cost me nothing. But it was here that I realised just why these old models work so well. This is mainly because they come in two body poses with separate arms to give the vatiety. When I was kitbashing the others I tried to distribute the two poses evenly but somehow ended up with 4 leaping poses and one standing pose in this brood of 5.

And this is where the pose came alive. Once you attach these to stones you can shift the position and the result is a really dynamic leaping pose. The main reason for this is that it's leaping off the back foot whereas the current model has the front foot being the point of contact. There's just something in the back foot pose that implies there is far more momentum at play. Even when you look at the Spawn of Cryptus he's stood on the front foot.

That's not to say you couldn't reposition the new ones leaping off the back foot it's just they're naturally sculpted with the front foot attached to the 'slotta' slot. When they're all finished I'll line them up so we can compare and contrast. For now I just need to add some sand to these bases and another 5 from Deathstorm.

Then it's undercoat and put away as some of the other items need some attention, whether it's my Realm of Battle Board, Dark Angels or other secret squirrel projects I need to crack on with them instead of 30 genestealers which will ultimately drive me insane!

As there was only 3 pics I thought I'd just throw in the primed pictures and ended up taking considerably more and I could have eeked this out into another post!

Of course red oxide primed models don't show up too great on a my red planet realm of battle board but you can catch the gist until the finished models get photographed.

Toxin stealers, once again primarily used for unit identification. The majority have two pairs of toxin sacs, but I stumbled across an odd non-Macragge, on the left, and he has some of the Carnifex sacs for a more organic 'riddled with poison' effect. If I ever get any more I'll kitbash them the same so I have 5 at regular intervals and 5 poisoned all over the shop.

Some straightforward carapace armour biomorph.

Original Space Hulk stealers with extra carapace and scy-tals. I also noticed some of these have tails that look like worms, segemented with a 'head' you can use your imagination for what I'm describing it's a common image. However some of them are the same but have more of a 'cap' like pointy toadstool.  So it's interesting again to see the variety in this model.

Carnifex armour plates, scy-tals and urban bases left over from the 2nd gen Space Hulk bases that were too big for 25mm bases, if only we knew of 32mm back then...

More scytals and armour and I had one feeder tendril head left. I recently did a trade in which I swapped 3 Feeder heads for 2 pairs of Fleshborer Hives but I was sad I'd got rid of all the Feeder heads only to discover this guy amongst his mates.

And some tilt-shift shots with a bit of post production messing about.

That little matter of varnishing

My Realm of Battle board has been languishing in the garage for a couple of months now. Although I repaired the damage wrought by the Polyvine varnish I had not finished adding shading and painted the skulls. More alarmingly the garage is where we keep the tumble dryer so it's been regularly exposed to warm, moist, fabric dust! I've covered it up but I'm well aware I'm not doing any favours to its future prospects. So I need to tackly the varnish issue. To that end I prepared this 6" strip of MDF and painted it up.

As you can see it follows my standard Red Planet Basing and I can test out a suitable varnish instead of doing it on the boards and ruining it and having to start again. Although the grain is more pronounced than my boards I'm confident that if I can seal this neatly it'll be more than OK for the smoother RoB board.

Now PeteB, Liam and Ben think I'm overly paranoid about protection*, Liam and Ben haven't varnished their boards but this 'ultra tough' floor varnish seems to be ideal.

However, the milky/creamy consistency was worrying and there is a mention of it leaving a white finish on the tin which brings us back to Polyvine territory.

So I applied the varnish, foolishly to two thirds of the piece instead of half and I think you can see it's not acceptable. Granted this was still wet but the varnish managed to 'rehydrate' [not sure if that's the correct term] the top layer of the craft acrylic and mix with the varnish. This meant the varnish took on a slight orange tint and together with it's thickness has obscured much of the deepest shaded recesses.

I was going to be much happier with a brush on varnish but at this stage I'm contemplating a spray lacquer, of course I now only have a small amount of my test strip to try it out on. The question is which brand do I go for. There are some cheap clear varnish sprays available and I know 'cheap' should have alarm bells ringing but I recently saw some forum posts saying they were very good. I've actually even got some from a purchase at a £1 shop a while back.

I wont' be touching Purity Seal but there is Plastikote and there is even a supply of Rustoleum, which usually is only available in America.

I'll hopefully pick up a Plastikote, test it and my £1 shop version if the results don't stand up I'll have to accept this isn't going to be sealed. Meanwhile I might make another test piece just in case!

 

* Update, this is the reason I believe I need to varnish the boards:

These are just two of the five or six paint chips I discoverd on my Realm of Battle board which hasn't even been used for gaming! It's been sat in the garage, covered in bubble wrap for a weeks

I may have caught them bringing them into the house but that questions the durability of the paint a great deal. Anyway, I've got a Matt Plastikote Varnish Spray so I'll give it a go, on the test piece first.

Moar of Otty's Inquisition force

Otty has been at it again, adding to his Inquisition forc. More berobed maniacs carrying bolt weaponry.

Once again I think that's a Lord of the Rings Ring Wraith in the middle with the Power Mace.

Here they are with 3three of the previously seen standard bearer.

And some Heavy Bolters, nice to see those Dark Angel hooded heads getting use.

But surely those legs are heresy! Filthy Orks by the look of them.

And here's the muscle. The awesomeness of the Island of Blood Rat Ogre, used this time for some heavy duty henchman.

This back view shows the slightly more extensive kit bashing that took place to make it less fantasy and more Grimdark, although all those newly released Rat Ogres are doing a damn good job of that on their own

And kudos for repurposing that Warlord Titan head as a 'man in the Iron Mask' type helm. I love the eyes just visible through the eye slits. I couldn't do that.

Amazing work as always from Otty.

'nids part 160 - TO DONE! The Spawn of Cryptus

Thanks to how easy this guy is to paint I finished in a bit of a flurry because although it was fun I still couldn't get 'its just a big Genestealer' out of my head and really wanted to move on.

In fact I'm probably more excited for the 30 remaining stealers, which is saying a lot as I've stated I don't like painting them AND they're only supposed to done to primer level!

As per all my other Capillary Towers the fleshy bits are painted red, gloass varnished and then additional Tamiya Clear Red X-27 adds the gore.

And you should have seen the size of the one that got away!

Personally I think a more vertical tower would have suited better. It would allow it to fit on a 40mm round base and made it taller too.

Stripey pants.

     

That glossy sheen really works on the fleshy bits of Capillary Tower.

Can't say I'm a big fan of the sculpt of the face but I hope it doesn't come across as immodest when I say I did a good job of it. I'm certaainly happier with it than I thought the sculpt would produce [althought the highlight on the crest is a bit iffy, though I do see it as a skin stretched across a bony protruberance].

And some close-ups of the base, in case you're interested.

And here's the Red Stamp of Approval, now to get something done from the actual list!

'nids part 159 - MOAR Genestealers!

With 8 fresh Genestealers on sprues in Deathstorm I thought I best remove the ebay ones from the Dettol dip. Now there are 10 original Space Hulk stealers absent, as I kitbashed five of them with Scything Talons and carapace armour just to make them a bit different and form an evolutionary step between the various editions. When I did come to kitbash them I actually found another stealer so there will be 31 to add to my horde. But in this shot I've tried to distinguish broods of five:

These five use cutdown Carnifex carapace spines and scything talons. I've also mounted them on the remaining bits cut from my 2nd gen Space Hulk bases. this makes them taller so they look different on the battlefield and makes for more interesting bases.

Five Macragge stealers with Toxin Sacs on their pack, which will make them stand out

Scytals and claws with carapace armour

Five stealers with carapace armour and a rending claws but a mix of the two varieties of claw and some with two pairs of triple claws and some with two pairs of the ones like normal hands.

Of course I can combine scytal stealers together or carapace armoured stealers to make bigger easily identifiable broods. With these upgrades no longer having practical purposes it's all about making the unit more distinguishable and unique, particularly when most of the models share similar poses [the original Space Hulk and Macragge sets especially]. Anyway, I'll base them next and prime them but won't start painting until I've had a concerted effort on my WiP Dark Angels - they deserve some love.

'nids part 158 - The Beast of Phodia

That's the thing when you try to kickstart your mojo by doing dull and tedious jobs - at the point your mojo kicks in you begin to feel you're wasting your time on these necessary yet creatively unfulfilling tasks. Thus over the Christmas period I magnetise 'the Beast'. The Deathstorm formation has him armed with Stranglethorn Cannon and Scything Talons so I made sure these were all magged up. Interestingly I noticed that the actually casting on the Carnifex sprue isn't great. Much of the detail is softened, presumably because the master mold is decades old now.

However, I had a set of talons and Stranglethorn from the Hive Tyrant kit and clearly that's been converted to a CAD mold and the detail is now super sharp. I think that level of 'sharpness' is also informing a lot of GW output - with a much more angular look, Ogryns spring to mind with the new Orks also becoming sharp edged.

 

 

I was hoping to create a more upright pose for the Beast, I'll mainly run him as a second Dakkafex so wanted him to be posed differently to War. I managed this by removing the locator pin in the abdominal ball joint. I also snipped off a few of the small crest ridges leading to the tail section. This allowed the base of the carapace to lean further back, helped by rotating the upper body.  Also, note the addition of the Carnifex spikes to the base to make a more organic mini digestion pit instead of the lava spewing volcanic 'cone'.

The end result is he's now rearing up further and the twisting motion makes him more dynamic, as if he's raising his Brainleach Devourers to the sky to ward off enemy aircraft. The problem with magnetising for me is quite often the random poses that result once the magnets are positioned. You will never get as good a pose as gluing a pose in place but I feel it's a small price to pay for versatility. So the ammo feed for the Stranglethorn Cannon still needs to be adjust to fit the gun, I'm sure the wife's craft heat gun will come in handy here to help bend the feeder tube, once I get some tiny magnets to help locate the end in the Cannon.

Other than that the magnetising was quite straight forward. The Carnifex body was easy to do, I saw a tutorial recently that advised doing each half of the body before gluing together so if you push the magnet all the way through it's not lost inside it's torso. Of course the last time I did this the model was an ebay purchase and the body was already built but this makes sense and the drilling is much more stable. I did however make a mess of a couple of arm joints - drilling completely through one and splitting another but some liquid green stuff solved those problems.

Lastly the head magnet, this is the large Magnetix magnet with a smaller one in the head. I built the 'enhanced senses' head first. I'm not actually a fan of it but felt compelled to make one. The 'firing into the skies' image suggested a creature with more awareness of it's environment would make more sense. So, six eyes and antenna, but I can always swap them out and it prompted me to finally magnetise War instead of relying on the locator pin in the back of it's head.

 

I've also got the Old One Eye head ready too, in fact all of the heads have been glued up and attached to sprue so I can paint them individually, then I'll remove the sprue and magnetise. All worth it in the end as when the third Carnifex gets made I'll already have the heads done.