'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.

'nids part 157 - The Spawn of Cryptus

At this point the Spawn started to take priority, leaving his toxin spewing bretheren hanging around like a bad smell. There's obviously little here that hasn't been covered before, Turquoise highlights on the Chitin.

Once again the detritus on my desk, which makes just painting one miniature reasonably practical.

Second set of highlights have gone on and the first set of Bonewhite striations. You can definitely see when you 'click to enbiggen' just how clumsy my brush work can be. If I'm honest I could have tried harder on such a 'limited edition' model. But at the end of the day he's still a Broodlord and although I'm mad for Stealers at the moment that's only so far as their usefulness and in part because they're relatively cheap additions to a Tyranid force.

I definetely think most nid players should have 25 at least in their arsenal. If you're starting out that's a healthy addition to your army and even just a brood of 5 can be handy in a pinch.

More highlights and the red fleshy bits next, have to admit the Red Oxide primer is paying dividends on this immensely

'nids part 156 - The Spawn of Cryptus/Malanthrope

Gosh, this seems agaes ago now. Thanks to not writing the text to go with these the Spawn is now finished but here he is in all his basecoat glory.

It's amazing how quick he went together, essentially it's like painting just one Genestealer, even though he's actually twice the size of his broodkin. I was reminded how much I dislike painting them but only in a 'oh yeah I recall it being a chore' without actually feeling like it was, because there was only one. I'm sure when I get around to the 31 currently littering my workspace I'll revisit that feeling with a passion.

Which does also cover the state of my workspace, it's atrocious. i really need to tidy up but that in itself is an evenings work and then I'm not painting. However the Malanthope progressed concurrently with the Spawn, up to the point I did highlights.

As soon as the spawn started getting highlights the Malanthrope was sidelined.

It's currently in it's 'wash' state so I'll have pictures to follow and then it'll be on with the turquoise.

He's a curious beast, I still don't know how I'm going to transport him but no doubt I'll solve that problem eventually.

So that's your lot for now, hope that sate your hobby fix from the 40k addict ;)

Christmas Resin - all your base are belong to us

Happy New Year and you'll be pleased to note I have been busy over the holidays. i didn't get many 'toys' aside from the accompanying resin bases but as I did have the Deathstorm boxset I was kept more than occupied and this should at least provide some content over the next few weeks, which I confess has recently been lacking. Unfortunately I'd intended for this to be posted between Christmas and New Year but forgot to add the text to the pictures [and any other pending post for that matter] so I'm behind schedule. That's good news though because it means I should have half a dozen updates to share. Although I was hoping for this post about nothing more than a few bases to be lost in the Christmas reveries instead of heralding my triumphant return, c'est la vie.

For Christmas I asked for a number of Dark Art Miniature's resin bases they're for a number of things. This first one is for Project Z, yes I know it's not been revealed yet, but I'll get to it eventually. Both my brother and friend Pete [not to be confused with PeteB] got me this lava themed base, which is handy as I have the potential to muck it up and having a spare will be useful.

 

It won't be lava though, I'm hoping to make it look like the red rocks of Ferron Proxima bursting through the slurry of a Tyranid reclamation/digestion pit, which should be cool.

My brother also got me a couple of the 40mm Urban hero bases. I'd been after one of these for my Deathleaper model for Blog Wars but hadn't got it [or Deathleaper for that matter]. Now I can mount the model and have a spare for a Dark Angel character.

As you can see it's a really cool base, it come in two part so you can paint the rubble underneath. The original plan was to paint the flag as the Blog Wars logo shamelessly trying to secure the best painted Character vote ;) The irony is I think Deathleaper may have had his last chance at BW8 so whether I get to run him next time is in the balance.

And my brother also picked up a 60mm lava base, now I didn't ask for this but it was certainly welcome. This will form the base for my Deathstorm - Beast of Phodia Carnifex. I'm not about to entertain this new oval base but I recognise the opportunity to make it stand out. I will of course be magnetising the 'beast', I've learned the easy way [and therefore the best way] that magnetising a Carnifex is the only way to go. So I will be able to run him as the Beast of Phodia, or a dakkafex or any other variety should I so choose.

Once again though I will dispense with the lava theme [particularly in consideration of my irrational but technically rational fear of lava] and also represent the digestion pit. To this end I've already embedded a few spikes in the tiny spewing 'cone' to be more pit like

That's it but there'll be some actual hobby progress to follow soon. The Spawn of Cryptus has been painted and just yesterday I finished construction of my 20 new Genestealers and will be kitbashing some of the original Space Hulk Stealers to have scything talons and perhaps more dynamic. Of course none of those are on my To Do List but that's par for the course.

Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah new Print & Play buildings

I know Christmas has been and gone but there are still presents to be had and the 40kaddict thinks you've all been very good this year so please accept this gift as 2014 comes to a close...

Having introduced a number of new colour schemes for the Print & Play Terrain templates I thought I should add some more building shapes so you had a little more variety. This is based on the first beige tower colour scheme but there are 3 towers you can make from the one .pdf. There are double width towers in two and three storeys and you can choose the rooftop, and even use the 40k Standard Manifold Coupling, aka the Modular Plug Socket.

Potentially you could even stack these ad infinitum or even attach them to the modular sockets on the existing Print & Play terrain templates for some crazy structures. Indeed this adds a huge amount of variety to your buildings, which would suit the 'new' Cities of Death rules, definitely a quick way to populate your CoD! Mostly they add line of sight blocking terrain but with a much smaller footprint than the existing templates. And lets not forget you can always tear them apart to make ruins!

These would ideally be suited for the foamboard that has the black foam core as that black foam would make these easily playable from the off, without looking too much like a quickly knocked up bit of terrain.

To access the full STC please point your Cogitators here, be fair warned it is 4MB in size [I make no apologies for this, I could probably render it as a .jpg or spend hours trying to reduce the file size, I tweaked it a little bit and got it down so hopefully it's less of an issue now.]:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B97Rk-BalgZbcV81MFEyMFB5Umc&authuser=0

Meanwhile all the other Print & Play and standard terrain templates are available here:
http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/terrain-is-everything-hail-omnissiah.html