Tag Archives: hobby

Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch

Finished Nurglitch yesterday.  (Technically, I finished him today, but all I did today was glue the banner on, wash a few small things and varnish him; I did a lot of work on him yeterday.)  Here he is:

I’m not entirely happy with him; I relied a little too much on washes, which might have turned out okay but my Devlan Mud seems to have thickened up a bit.  Still, he’s pretty cool, and I think the base looks great.

Pustulent Rat Spawn

In preparation for next week, I had to dig around to find the Nurglitch I’d assembled and gap filled about a year ago. I also searched, in vain, for the Lord Skrolk miniature I know I own (but can’t seem to find).
Anyway, here’s Nurglitch, Arch Plague Lord of Clan Pestilens in all of his pustulent glory.

I also assembled a Rat Spawn. I’d orginally intended to use the Chaos Spawn model as a base and throw in some Rat Ogre bits… but that really never really came together. I have to say; I appear to have unreasonable expectation for the Chaos Spawn kit; it seems particularly unable to produce what I’d like it to produce. (See also: The World’s Crappiest Daemon Prince.)
Instead, it ended up being a Rat Ogre with a couple of Chaos Spawn bits and a hunk of green stuff. It’s not as impressive as I’d hoped, but it’s sufficient. Better than the Daemon Prince, that’s for sure.



Those snakey things in the background are D&D Minis I’d considered sawing into bits and using as a lower torso… but I ended up deciding against doing that. It’d be weird to have a snake-like lower body… and a tail.

Progress – 20090901

I don’t think I should call these posts “Painting Progress” anymore… I feel like I haven’t actually painted in too long.
I did have a little free time over the weekend and was unable to motivate myself to do anything with my Daemons. I really need to knuckle down and come up with a paint scheme for them: I’m sure that, once I do, I’ll have the army done in just a few months.
In the hopes of getting something done, I did some puttering with my Dark Angels.
I put some more effort into finishing off my Sternguard Veterans (they’re just waiting on some studded pauldrons that should arrive any day now).

I also assembled two heavy bolter brothers and another devastator sergeant (I’ve had two assembled for quite some time) for a new Devastator squad. I started painting them last night.
I also fixed this poor assault marine: he’d been a bit too enthusiastic with his chainsword, holding it up higher than the trays I store my marines in were ready to allow. So, he got a new arm.
In other news, I’m officially cut off from buying more AT-43 stuff. I’ve got two Sierps, two Dragonov Kommandos boxes and two Dragonov Kommando Attachment boxes on order. That’s more than I should have bought, but it’s too late, now. (They’re hard to find, which is my excuse.)

Painting Progress – 20090826

Last week, I finished assembling and basing four Juggernauts. I still need to convert (for the icon bearer and musician) and mount the Bloodletters on them, but it’s enough that I think I can start playing the revised list I’ve worked up that contains Bloodcrushers.
Then, this weekend, I painted terrain.
For starters, I painted four of the five Blastscape pieces. Only four of them, because I’m having trouble figuring out exactly how to paint the lava. It’s not something I’ve ever really done before. I’ll come back to it at some point.
The Blastscape pieces really were disappointments. Reports of them being pretty shoddy were true; the plastic really is paper thin in a few spots, and the detail isn’t as good as it is on other terrain pieces, like the crashed Aquila.
But… that’s okay. The detail is certainly good enough, and it’s unrealistic to expect vac-formed stuff to have as fine detail as the molded plastic terrain. I think it looks pretty good for what it is. The extremely thin points, where the peaks are easily crushed suck, but aren’t nearly as noticable when the whole thing’s been painted and been drybrushed.



I really like the way that gem came out; I’ve never tried painting one before, and I think it looks good.
I also painted the Aegis Defense Line walls that came with the Strongpoint I got… a month or so back. I haven’t painted the guns or mounts yet, but the walls, like the bastions, painted up very quickly.

As with the bastions, I primed them dark grey, airbrushed Charadon Granite over the whole thing, then dry brushed it with khaki. For the Aquilae, I basecoated them Scorched Brown, then did a heavy drybrush of P3 Menoth White Base and a light drybrush of white. Very, very easy.
While I’m thinking about it: I don’t know that I’ve posted finished pictures of the Bastions. (Of course, it’s hard to take decent pictures of things that are quite so large, but something’s better than nothing.)



Finally, because I didn’t feel like starting up on the Bloodcrushers’ Bloodletters or fiddling around with a paint scheme for all of them (my brain really needed to be offline), I puttered around with building those Dark Angel Sternguard. Nowhere near done, but progress. I think I’ll have to buy another Space Marine Commander: when bitz-ordering a dang Combimelta costs $9, I might as well the extra $4 for the full kit and use the extra bitz elsewhere.

Mid-August Update

The past two weeks have been busy, first with a trip to visit Mrs. Rushputin’s family in South Texas and then busy with catching up at work from having missed a week. So, understandably, Painting Progress has been slow.

I’ve finished the one Bastion (which I need to photograph), and have gotten most of the way through the second, larger Bastion.

I’d started working on assembling some Bloodcrushers, but that’s been put on hold until a magnet order shows up (possibly today). I’m going to do some experiments with magnetizing the Bloodletters riding the Bloodcrushers because, as someone else has pointed out, there’s really not much in the way of contact points for them. Hopefully some teeny-tiny magnets will help with that.
I’m going to have to figure out how to convert the Bloodletters, too. They all have Hellblades in their right hands, and grip the collar of the Juggernaut with their left. I’ve got to work in a horn on one and an Icon on another.
Something else I plan to fiddle with in the next couple of weeks is assembling some boltgun-toting Dark Angel Veterans. Currently, the only unit of veterans I have are configured for assault; they’re pretty much the only viable non-terminator assault unit in the Dark Angel codex. I’m looking into using the vanilla Space Marine codex, though, for more variety and because I’d like to step back from playing Deathwing and return to playing with Battle Company marines. I’m absolutely going to need some Sternguard veterans when I do that, so it’s time to make some.
I also expect I’ll want to run a Predator. I’ve got one assembled, but unpainted. Of course, I’ve got a half-painted Land Raider I should probably finish first…
On the gaming front, I’m still having a wagonload of fun with my Khornate Daemons. I’ve lost hard and had my teeth kicked in only the once. I’ve walked away from every other game I’ve played feeling like I’ve won… even though I’ve probably drawn twice as many times as I’ve won. That’s entirely because I’ve put up a good fight and have had the draws be extremely close.

Painting Progress – 20090726

I’ve had a strange terrain fetish going on lately. It’s probably the result of getting in the Imperial Strongpoint and Landing Pad over the weekend.
I’ve had the crashed aquila lander from the 4th edition Battle for MacCragge floating around in a tub for a couple of years now. Unpainted, no longer!

It’s not the greatest job, in that it’s 90% drybrushed, but I think it’ll look good on the table.
I also combined the two bastions in the Strongpoint kit into a single, bigger bastion much like BrassScorpion did on Bell of Lost Souls. I’d forgotten that they’d written that article until I was nearly done with the project, though, which is why mine’s not as good. I didn’t think to use the spare door from the kit, so I ended up using a spare door from one of the Cities of Death kits. It looks… okay, but not as good, for sure.

I had more success with the Landing Pad! I’d had some concerns about storing it, that it would take up more space than it needed to and prone to breaking. At some warning about the poor contact points from John, I decided to magnetize the support struts.
I shaved off the lights inside the contact points and glue 20mm metal squares (of the sort I glue to the bottom of my WHFB figures) in their place.

Then, I cut plasticcard to fit across the inside of the strut, leaving room for the metal squares. I glued magnets to the inside of the plasticard before gluing the plasticard in place.

The end result are struts that are removable but, when placed, are disinclined to go anywhere. Had I used bigger, or more, magnets I’m sure the contact would be stronger, but what I’ve got is more than sufficient to make sure the terrain piece is stable enough to play with.
I also followed through on an impulse I had earlier this week: magnetizing my turn counter. I painted my turn counter last summer, when I got fed up with being unable to read the symbols on the (then) new 40K token set. I’ve been happy with it, and I always get a nice comment about it at tournaments.

The arrow’s loose, though. I obviously can’t glue it into place. So, I had the thought of drilling a small hole in each piece and glueing tiny magnets into them. Surprisingly, it worked really well! (Though, unfortunately, the process of drilling the holes seems to have pulled up some of the paint. Grrr.)

Daemon Prince of Khorne

On a pseudo-whim, I decided to see if I could build a Daemon Prince out of a Chaos Spawn kit. On Tuesday, I’d seen that Casey had done it and it looked really good, so I figured why not? I’ve got a couple of Bel’akor models that I plan on using as Daemon Princes but 1) they’re all winged (which I probably won’t use on account of cost) and 2) are metal and therefore a lot longer to assemble.
So I popped into GW Fair Oaks on the way home from work and started fooling around.
I’m not altogether pleased with it. It’s too runty for a Daemon Prince and the model has a strange balance to it. Also, I was shooting for “hulking, ‘roid rage Bloodletter,” and the Spawn model has too many freakish, lumpy and asymmetrical features to it to really get the effect I wanted.
But, it is what it is, and it’ll do until I assemble some Bel’akors.

Painting Progress – 20090715

Because it looked neat and because I wanted to use it as an objective marker in the Apocalypse game over the weekend, I painted up the Communications Arrray that comes with the Bastion kit. It’s incredibly detailed for what is, ultimately, kind of a throwaway kind of model and it’s just the right size for an objective. I’m looking forward to my Strongpoint coming in this weekend/early next week so I can assemble and paint the two that will come in that kit.




I’ve also made some more progress assembling Bloodletters (when I played Bill last night, I only had to proxy four!) and assembled my second Bloodthirster. Hopefully the rest of this week will see the last of the Bloodletters assembled and maybe a stab at either a Daemon Prince or some Bloodcrushers.

Review: Avatars of War Netherhound

In starting up my Khornate Daemon army, I decided very early on that 1) I wasn’t enthused about the Flesh Hounds (they fail to grab me and are all metal) and 2) I love the Warriors of Chaos Warhounds. So, it was a very easy decision for me to just use the Chaos Warhounds, instead.
When it came to Karanak, the decision was a little trickier. I didn’t want to use the Karanak model, because it didn’t fit with the Warhounds. I could have probably cut up three hounds and, with some greenstuff, made something work. Instead of doing that, however, I decided to use the Avatars of War Netherhound model. It fits much better with the warhounds, looks pretty cool, and will involve a great deal less sawing, greenstuffing and cussing, right?
Almost. As it turns out, this model involved a great deal of greenstuffing. Gaps were enormous and everywhere. Plus, I messed up slightly somewhere in my attemp to stick the front of the model to the two back halves (for things like this, where there’s nowhere really good to pin, I use superglue / greenstuff / superglue; it’s strong, but can be unforgiving), which made the non-negligible gap even more of a problem.
I’m more than a little disappointed by how much gapfilling I needed to do. If I want to add more to the model (and I’m debating it), that’s one thing, but I can’t think of another model I’ve had to work with that has had gaps like this out of the blister/box.
Even more disconcerting is the pose of the model. It doesn’t actually work the way it’s photographed on the AoW site. The flatness of the feet are out; the model is clearly sculpted to have its rear feet elevated half an inch!
Although this is manageable, it’s also painful. I’m basing all of my models with cobblestone plasticard that I’ll paint brassy. Now, I’ve got to figure out how to do a block beneath this model’s rear feet and have it look like it fits.
Overall, I’m pretty disappointed by the model. It looks good, but really required more work than I think it should have.

Painting Progress – 20090706

Things have, as usual, been slow with the Harad. I’ve gotten more than a little burnt out on War of the Ring, which helps nothing. Fundamentally, it’s a fun game, but there are too many niggling little yet confusing rules inconsistencies that add up and what seems like some not insignificant balance issues (though I can’t tell if that’s because of my approach to the Fallen Realms or not).

I’ve finished a few more things, and am maybe halfway through some Half-Trolls. My goal is to finish the Half-Trolls by the end of the month, and not worry about painting any more War of the Rings for a while.
I’ve finished off a tray of Corsairs, as well as both a Bosun and a Captain. I’m not likely to ever run these guys, though, so I’ve been using them to fill out trays of Haradrim.
This is my Saruman. I could just as easily used a Saruman figure, but hey: this guy’s got a cool, big hat so why not?
This is my WIP on the half-trolls. Weapons, bone ornaments, and belly/face skin are pretty much all that’s left. I’m quite pleased with how the reed armor came out. I didn’t expect it to look that good.

Outside of War of the Ring, I’ve been much busier. I’ve started to pick up some momentum on assembling my Daemon army. So far, I’ve finished putting together:
  • 16 Bloodletters
  • 16 Fleshhounds
  • 2 Soul Grinders
  • 1 Bloodthirster
  • 1 Karanak
Which means I need to finish:
  • 24 Bloodletters
  • 5 Bloodcrushers
  • 1 Bloodthirster
I’m also starting to think that I need a third unit of Fleshhounds, so we’ll see.
I picked up a Bastion over the weekend: I’ve got more on order, but I figured an impulse-bought third wouldn’t hurt anything. It goes together very, very easily: the only snake in the woodpile is that the middle section (the section that is neither the top nor the base) has two wall sections with windows and two without windows. I didn’t realize this until after the glue had finished drying, so I had to get creative with placing things where the windows should have been to make the building look balanced. The communications array and Icarus-pattern lascannon that come with it are amazing… especially the communciations array. I think I might bits-order a few more and use them as objective markers in regular 40K from now on.
Finally, I made some progress on a Chapel that I’d bought quite some time ago, painted sandstone, changed my mind on and repainted dark grey. All it’s needed is some drybrushing (which it got) and some minor details (torches, doors, rafters and window frames… which should happen tonight).