WIP: Crimson Fist Ironclad Dreadnaught

For my Planetstrike game on 11/14, I've decided to field an Ironclad Dreadnaught in a drop pod.  I've been using a regular AoBR dreadnaught proxy in games and I've really liked the Ironclad's performance so far.  Slightly better than a standard dread and well worth the extra points.

I have the Ironclad set from GW, but decided to also kitbash up my own dread.  After trolling various websites for inspiration, I came across an amazing model on Cool Mini or Not by Talarion.  I loved the head piece and the bulky bunker-like look of the model.  So I grabbed my bits and saw and knives and sticky tack and decided to give this conversion a try for my Crimson Fists!

The Dreadnaught shape, of course, is an AoBR model I picked up from The War Store.  I then sawed off most of the front of the model (after much dry fitting and determining best fit and the like).  I haven't glued on the front plate yet as I need to figure out what I want to do with any gaps, but so far, so good.

I used some old LR sponsoon bits (from my LRC) to form the front plate, cutting and fitting as needed.  For the head-lens array, I used a Chaos smoke launcher (at least I think it's a smoke launcher), much like the original inspiration.  Plasticard forms the helmet as well as the armor plate on the model (I don't know why I have black plasticard instead of white...the bag I bought had a large mix of colors and textures).  For the Chainfist, I used an old Epic Titan arm and a plastic tube tacked onto the AoBR arm.

I'm going to detail it up with some pipes and wires and the like.  And the pic makes it clear that I need to smooth out that arm immensely!

For the HK missile, I didn't really like the ones the Ironclad comes with.  It really doesn't makes sense to me that the HKs on Rhinos look so different from the ones on Ironclads, so I just took a normal Rhino HK and cut it down to fit under the dreadnaught.

Lots more to do:

Bulk out the legs with some more armor plates and detail.  Bulk out the body and arms as well...I'm not completely sure about the exhausts on the front...I like it but I don't know if it'll look good painted. And I haven't even touched the back engine!  I also need to assemble the other arm and add in the melta gun/flamer options. 

What do folks think?  Any advice?  I've got a ways to go yet and I may wind up proxying my Ironclad again on 11/14 if this beast isn't done yet.  For fluffy reasons, I'm saying that Pedro Kantor had to reactivate some of the older dreadnaughts after the disaster on Rynn's World…the loss of their armory has left the Fists using whatever they have on hand!

ANFSCD*: Andira Runehand

I saved the Andira Runehand post for last as she was actually the second the model I painted in this ANFSCD series and I had delusions that I would go back and correct all the tiny mistakes on her that add up to a mess of a model.

But then I remembered that ANFSCD isn't about obsessing over mistakes.  It's about trying new things, seeing what went wrong and then trying again on a new model (in this case, Silo was the model I did better on!).  It was also about keeping up with the hobbying despite having burnt out on Crimson Fists.  At least I had some success there!

Runehand has been a staple mage in our group since day 1.  Her focus has been on AoE type spells, both Breath and Blast runes to wipe out the little enemies so Lord Hawthorne and Silo can handle the big threats (while my guy ports around grabbing treasures and supplies).  She's a neat character, though her base ability to pierce 2 armor has become slightly less useful as the monsters we're facing have advanced to Silver/Gold levels...they have a lot of armor to pierce now!  Her player is brilliant though and has done a great job of rapidly building an attack plan and getting us on-board for the killing and the looting. Sometimes he bites off a bit more than he can chew and winds up getting beat up and sent back to town, but his sacrifices are always well-calculated for the overall team win. 

This model is easily the weakest model in the set.  Her fingers and head are mediocre sculpts and there is no rational explanation for her to be carrying a banner through the dungeon.  It doesn't even connect to her power (which is a Runehand presumably.)  Along with this, her drawing demands a gold trim and a highlight on the hand, both of which I failed at!

Many tiny mistakes add up to an angry Andira

I started with a black gesso base and then painted all her armor bits with the foundation paint Adeptus Battlegrey.  In a moment of inspiration, I then decided to give her armor a wash of Asurman blue instead of using any regular paint...so what you see here is just straight blue wash over a grey-white basecoat.  It actually came out looking rather nice for her...makes for shiny armor without using any metallics!

I then tried to use sunburst yellow along the edges (or is it golden yellow now?) and here is where I flubbed it.  Lots of fat lines that should be thin and I feel like I should have used a different yellow to act as gold.  Live and learn, I guess.  Not much time lost though as I finished her in a night (not counting the gessoing that I let dry overnight).  You'll note I didn't bother trimming every bit of armor as I didn't want to continue compounding the error...as stated, I was going to go back and fix it.  But now I'm not.  Take that, perfectionist tendencies!

She looks much better from the back...

This little trip into ANFSCD really worked to keep me painting and as of Sunday, I'm back to fists in preparation for Planetstrike on Saturday. Huzzah!

*And Now For Something Completely Different: A sporadic post about my exploits outside the WH40K hobby.  I paint and play with other minis too!

ANFSCD*: Silouette

In my continuing series of ANFSCD posts, I bring you Silouette!  She's the rogue in our group, armed with a bow that she has come to use with great effect!

One of the neat aspects of the Descent: JitD Road to Legend expansion is the customization you can really put on your character.  In the normal play version, you'd draw your abilities and play them out.  In the RtL version, you start with a single ability, but then you can choose to buy your next few.  Which means you can really tailor your character to do some ridiculous stuff.  As is the case of Silouette here!  As an archer, she has the ability to re-roll misses, draw LOS from a hex away and ignore the first LOS blocking terrain in her way...along with this, she has two kinds of bows...one for killing normal mobs and another that pierces the strongest armors.  She's become a beast nearly as strong as Lord Hawthorne!

It wasn't always that way though.  She started off very weak basically pinging anything tougher than a beastman for 1 point.  I don't know if that was fun for her player, but I know it isn't fun for me (now that I'm the weak link in the party).  So as a party, we invested in her gear and abilities and now she essentially carries the group.  That and we're all having much more fun!

Anyway, here is the finished shot of her:

In the pits, she grew strong!

I'm most proud of the trim on her leather tunic. It matches the picture and doesn't look sloppy.  I'm going to be posting Andira Runehand soon who has similar trim on her armor and I didn't really pull it off.  But on Silo...I totally nailed it.

I also wanted to try freehanding a tattoo to match the picture.  It was much easier than I thought it would be and I'm kind of glad I tried:

It's not a perfect match, but for tabletop play, it's close enough! For a night's work painting (After painting 3 other ones in as many nights), I'm fairly happy with the results!

*And Now For Something Completely Different: A sporadic post about my exploits outside the WH40K hobby.  I paint and play with other minis too!

ANFSCD*: Lord Hawthorne

As mentioned before, I burnt out for a short while and decided to pick up and paint a few Descent Adventurers instead of power armored Marines.  Today, I'll be showing Lord Hawthorne!

In our Road to Legends campaign, Lord Hawthorne is a beast.  Essentially he's our tank, dps and crowd controller on every level of the dungeon.  Part of it is because we've pooled out efforts to gearing him out...and the other part is because his player loves to knock dungeon heads.

The joy of painting these Descent figures was the lack of any pressure to perform.  I simply looked at the card, chose some colors and got to painting.  Any painter can pick out the colors I used...mecharite red, chainmail, badab black washes, etc etc.  I started with a black gesso and used foundation paints to get the colors started.  For the tabard bit, I tried Grey with just a green wash.  I like the way it came out...very light colored cloth!

Front View 

 

Back View

I didn't make him as shiny as his picture though...these guys are dungeon crawlers, so I washed him with devlan mud to get him a bit dirty on the edges.  I've got 2 more coming.  Does anyone out there play Descent?  Or Dungeons and Dragons (for the original dungeon crawling game!)?

Lord Hawthorne will pillage your dungeon! 

*And Now For Something Completely Different: A sporadic post about my exploits outside the WH40K hobby.  I paint and play with other minis too!

ANFSCD*: Runemaster Thorn

*And Now For Something Completely Different: A sporadic post about my exploits outside the WH40K hobby.  I paint and play with other minis too!

After reading Corbania's "That's it! I'm Burnt Out!" post, I couldn't help but empathize.  At least twice this week, I sat in front of my painting station and thought "Man.  I can't bring myself to paint another blue guy."  But I still enjoy the hobby and I still love the relaxation I get with painting. So how to get it when I'm burnt out on Crimson Fists?

What I first tried to do was paint my Dark Angels or my Tau...but I found I couldn't even get into that.  It was still too similar and still too many models to do and still too much.  So I looked around my vast collections of minis for something else to paint.  Lo and behold, my Descent: Journeys in the Dark box set was out from a game a few weeks ago.  I'm playing in a long running monthly Road to Legends campaign and as a group, we've talked about painting our models for a long time.  So I finally took the plunge!

The nice thing about painting these models is that they come with reference cards for each character:

Runemaster Thorn

So all I have to do is extrapolate the colors and get to painting!  I started with my own guy first, the reasoning being that if I wanted to get back the Crimson Fists, then at least I'd look better than my fellow (unpainted) players.  I freely admit that I didn't work extra hard on Runemaster Thorn.  I gesso'ed him in black and then built up the colors form there.  Veteran painters should be able to identify colors and techniques. 

Another nice thing about trying a solo model is that it doesn't have to tie into the rest of your collection!  So you can try something new (like the skin tones on this old guy) you read about on some blog or article.  You can try different highlight schemes or wet blending or what have you.  I played it safe on this guy, but I feel like I did some stuff I've never done before like with the beard.  It's a stretch for me to paint hair since none of my Crimson Fists are Space Wolves in disguise (i.e. they aren't hairy!).

Runemaster Thorn is a spellcaster-type, but as he has the ability to teleport instead of move, I've been using him as a treasure grabber/portal activator.  As such, I've fallen a little behind in the gear curve as we prioritized equipping our true killer-types (the archer and the warrior, coming soon).  Eventually I'll gear up again, but right now I'm having a ton of fun porting around and sniping wounded monsters or grabbing their treasure and porting out before they can respond.

I'm debating if I should try flocking him (and the rest of the heroes), but I'm afraid I'll bury the feet.  Maybe I could try painting a rock pattern?  Or paint the base grey?  On a separate topic, how do you get out of your army painting rut?

Crimson Fist Veteran Sgt

I finally finished my Crimson Fist Sgt.  I originally planned his construction and look for my Command Squad I posted ages ago.  I didn't think it would take so long to paint him at the time (I even tried to get him done by the end of May...but work conspired against me!).  Anyways, I finally completed him!  For the too lazy to click on my link, here's the pic of the Sgt pre-paint job.  Bits from various sets and I used cuts from index card to make the neck armor.  To harden the card, I brushed on a light layer of crazy glue.  Really stiffened it up!

For painting him, I used my standard Crimson Fist colors:

Mordian Blue Drybrush over Black Gesso

Ultramarine+Mordian drybrush to highlight

Straight Ultramarine for highlight.

Extreme highlight = Ultramarine+White

Mecharite Red Fists w/ Badab Black Wash in recesses/Baal Red wash on higher parts.

I quartered the shoulder icon...I'm going to have a few units with this quartered icon somewhere on them to represent their having fought with Black Templars. I plan to have a green half badge on my Sternguard to represent veterans of Rynn's World. I know the Fists don't cotton to elaborate badges and icons, so I'm hoping to keep it simple.

I'm gathering up the courage to try and freehand a design on the Banner, though in looking at this picture, I think I might have to clean up the highlight/lowlight colors. It's pretty stark how fast it goes from white-grey-dark grey! I also forgot to detail up the Purity Seals. Tiny things you don't see until you actually post the picture!