Miscellanea from dark futures: Warzone mutants, samurai, Chaos and more!

[jawd500]

Thanks all again for the comments. I didn't realise that LAF had it's own chapter - neato!

In the end I went with the desert base, although votes-wise it was more or less half and half. Partly I think it was because it reflects the theme from the WD article, and partly because there's no penalty for drybrushing over a miniature's feet with the scheme as the dusty look just blends in with the armour.

Anyhoo, onto the first proper painted miniature of the army; a Myphitic Blight Hauler! Sadly the pictures are non too good; you can blame my phone camera for that fact. A lot of the detail has been obscured, but there's not really much to say about this guy any, given the build-out-of-the-box nature of these guys. The only two things I learnt from this process were A) how to do burnt metal on the Melta Gun, and (B) how to use blood splatters. For the former, it's a base of Balthasar Gold followed by a wash of dark tone. The edge is given a purple wash, then a blue wash, and hey presto! It's surprising how good an effect it creates. The blood splatters were Blood for the Blood God around the mouth, although you can't see it it the pictures. My take away from the process is that less is definitely more; I just flicked some around the mouth with a toothbrush, and it gives a very nice effect.

Whilst I'm glad I learned a few effects, I'm also not sorry to be seeing the back of the model. It was a little bit of a pain to put together, and what with their monopose nature I suspect it'd be a bit of a chore doing more than one, although I'm guessing that you probably need several for a unit to be halfway competitive - I wouldn't know, having not actually played a game of 40k for many moons!

[jawd500]

On the other end of the spectrum, let's have a properly converted mini! Without further ado, I give you the master of my small warband; Lord Refestus of the Mortis Liberators. Lore and the rest of the troops will follow soon, but I wanted to get pics up of something that you couldn't find anywhere else.

Refestus was the last mini of all the warband's soldiers I put together, and I really wanted to go to town on him. For a long while I'd had this weird obsession with making miniatures look 'realistic' - that is, I wanted them to look at least vaguely like actual soldiers in terms of gear, rather than completely over the top science fantasy figures. Fortunately, I dropped that impulse by the time it came to this guy, and resolutely knew I wanted something with:

a) a dramatic pose
b) a great big sword
c) a nice flamboyant banner
d) lots of little Nurgle details

Hopefully I achieved all four of those aims with Refestus. He's made out of about 17 different kits, using a Kromlech not-Deathguard torso and legs set as a base. The head is from the short-lived metal Plague Marine Havocs set - if anyone's got the Melta and Flamer from that kit, drop me a line sometime!

[Freddy]

I like it, the nurgling is a nice touch.

[jawd500]

Hey Chaps and Chapettes,

An update on the nurgle warband. Work is now underway painting the bulk of the warband, namely; Lord Refestus, Vorbast the Sorcerer, and three squads of seven converted Plague marines. Right now it's a case of getting all the ubiquitous elements out of the way, chiefly the armour scheme, the banding and the various cloth pouches. One tip I would HIGHLY recommend for those wishing to save time on the process is to paint the banding with GW Gore Grunta Fur instead of Skrag Brown and Dark Tone - the results are much quicker and virtually identical (for those of a scientific bent, on timing two models it took 25 minutes to do base the banding using the paint-wash method, compared to only 15 using Contrast paint. Note that this doesn't include painting spots of orange and metal).

In the interim, I thought I'd show off the converted marines themselves. Below I've put up a couple of pictures with descriptions.

[jawd500]

First up, Vorbast the Merciful, Sorcerer of Nurgle and second-in-command of the Mortis Liberators (who I'm thinking of renaming 'The Benevolent Host'). Like Refestus, the basic model is built on the legs and torso of a Kromlech Not-Plague Marine conversion kit. He's a fairly straightforward conversion; the only things of especial note are the sculpted Nurgle icon on one pauldron and the cloak made from the flowing tassels of the Dark Imperium Malignant Plaguecaster. On the subject of sculpting, I can highly recommend Magic Sculpt epoxy putty; I've never really gotten the hang of green stuff, and I find that Magic Sculpt fares far better for when you want to blend the putty into a model.

[jawd500]

Onto the Plague Marines themselves. One thing I've always liked about Chaos is the spectrum along which its followers lie. At one extreme are the daemons and those who've dwelt for too long in places like the Eye of Terror; although they're saturated with the power of the Warp, they're constrained by it as well, and can only exist in realspace for as long as the energies of the Empyrean are waxing. At the other end are the Renegades, whose journey on the path to damnation has only just begun, and maybe consists of no more than the bearing of blasphemous symbols.

I wanted my Plague Marines to be somewhere in the middle of this. While they're rotting abominations, they're still also very much soldiers, and need to consider pesky things like logistics. As such, nearly every model has some sort of ammo pouch on it, mostly made by using press molds. I used magic sculpt to make most of these, although nowadays I'd use green stuff as a material instead, as I've found it's much better for that purpose. For the molds themselves I used something called Oyumaru, although hobbyists will likely know it by its more expensive hobby-brand name 'blue stuff'. Either way, along with Isopropyl alcohol, this is definitely one of my go-to hobby supplies, and I can highly recommend picking up some if you have any interest in doing conversions.

As for these four happy chappies in particular, there's a few bits worth noting. The figure on the far left is a very old 90's era plastic plague marine, with a bit of conversion work to get him to a proper scale. The arms were removed and replaced with more modern ones, while I cut and filed his legs off and stuck him onto the taller leg section from the noughties CSM kit. He's also got a little fly pendant taken from a poxwalker. Most of the bolter marines have a bayonet to represent their plague knives; partly because it's easier than trying to stick it onto a belt, but mostly because I just love the look of it. The second-to-right marine is also one of several that had belly armour sculpted onto it to match the old Forge World death guard kit, using a tutorial from Warseer I think. Lastly, I used the microbeads from an old Britta filter to make the pustules that you can see on the shoulder pad and on some of the other Plague Marines. 

[jawd500]

More Plague Marine line infantry, with more bayonets, pouches and sculpted belly armour. The backpack for one of these guys was made using the censors from Dark Imperium's Noxious Blightbringer. I also wanted to make the converted plasma gunner quite mutated, my reasoning being that at some point his gun has probably exploded in his face and he's had the energies of the Warp knit him back together.

[jawd500]

A couple of Plague Marines in the middle with converted Blight Launchers, primarily made from Imperial Guard grenade launchers and a few other choice bits. I've no idea if they're a good weapon to choose or not, but I can always just run them as slightly chunky drum-fed bolters if needs be. The plasma gunner on the left comes from the old Plague Marine Special Weapons squad, and I wish I could get the Melta and Flamer from it as well!

[jawd500]

More Plague Marines, with my love of bayonets, pouches and belly armour on full display here. Several of the bayonets came from the blades carried by poxwalkers. I should very much like to get a hold of another Dark Imperium set.

[jawd500]

Three nurgle champions, one to lead each squad. I wanted to give them some height to indicate their elevated position (pun definitely intended), so I made sure that they each had something on their backpack to clearly set them apart. The mushroom idea for the middle one came from vague memories I have of seeing a converted Death Guard army in the window of a Games Workshop when I was very young; I seem to recall the whole army was incredibly inventive, and it's such a shame I never got any pictures. The rest of the centre model was loosely inspired by a particular Adrian Smith piece of a plague marine in a jungle, festooned with all sorts of grenades and equipment. He's probably my favourite of the three, though I was quite pleased with how the other two came out.

[jawd500]

Lastly, a Nurgle Hellbrute converted from the Dark Vengeance model. This guy has had a few more Nurglings dotted around him since this picture was taken, but otherwise he's as shown. I replaced the Multi-Melta on his arm with the barrels from some Orc Shootas, ostensibly to represent a set of heavy bolters, but really, they could be anything. The right arm was re-sculpted and outfitted with what I think was some sort of leg armour from the old Daemon prince model, as well as some Britta filter pustules and a tentacle from a Poxwalker. I feel like the repositioned arm makes the figure look much more balanced than the flung out pose of the original model.

[jawd500]

Could Mods or anyone else reading this also let me know if people are having problems viewing the images? I tried looking at the page on another browser and some of the latest images hadn't loaded properly. If other people are having this problem, I'll try reuploading them.

[Daeothar]

Showing up fine here using Firefox...

Nice conversion! 

[jawd500]

Hullo again all,

And now for something completely different, as Monty Python puts it! As I work my way through the Plague Marine infantry I thought I'd share some pictures of something I finished a while ago: a squad of Wargames Atlantic Les Grognards painted up as 40k Vostroyans.

Perhaps the chief desire I have when it comes to painting miniatures - a desire that continues to elude me, I might add - is to be able to find paint schemes that look good but can be bashed out in the space of an evening or two. I thought I'd stumbled across something like that with the 'Zorn Pallete', consisting of red, white, black and beige, or mixes thereof. Originally constructed to make more WW1-ish troops (you can still see some of the trench shovels on the miniatures), I gave these Grog-stroyans a headswap from the Adrian helmet and gasmask heads the kit comes with to the fur hats instead, and then went to town with that limited palette. Whilst I'm quite pleased with how the minis came out, and had fun doing a deep, rich red colour, these guys were anything but fast to paint! If I ever do a Vostroyan scheme again, I have a feeling that drybrushing, washing and Contrast paints will play very significant roles.

In the end, the only thing I learned painting-wise was how to get a respectable gold colour. I found that all my bright gold paints - Army Painter, Vallejo and GW; didn't matter - gave a frustratingly thin coat, and I was rapidly losing patience with the process. Instead I cheated, using a base of Balthazar Gold (which is really more of a bronze colour, but has good coverage) 'washed' with a yellow Contrast paint. Whilst it lacks the brightness of a pure gold colour, it's a lot faster and doubtless removed several hours of frustration.

[jawd500]

Hullo again all!

Checking in to make sure this project log doesn't die a death. An update on the plague marines; pretty much on the last stretch now, with the only remaining elements being the metals, the fleshy bits and the bases. Okay; so hardly the final touches, but two more painting sessions should about do it. Then it's just onto the thorny question of varnishing the metal minis...

Stepping back a bit, the squad has been modestly quick, but hardly a speedpaint, which is what I'd really hoped for from the colour scheme. I think this is more a problem with my overall approach to painting minis, and something I'm going to try and conscientiously work towards fixing. Ultimately, my hope is to be able to bang out a squad to acceptable quality in an evening or two max, rather than have it taking multiple 6+ hour sessions for results that are, compared to what other painters can achieve in the same time, merely okay. I've just caught this video by Zumikito Minis and it raises some very good points:

In the interim, I thought I'd share something from another Dark Future, and one that I have a LOT of time for: Target Games' Mutant Chronicles: Warzone universe. Rival retrofuturistic megacorporations fighting each other and a blatant Chaos ripoff across the colonised Solar System of the far future - what's not to love? As unique in it's own way as GW's famous grimdark creation, I'd highly recommend checking out Mutantpedia (https://www.mutantpedia.com/) to those interested in learning more. The Warzone: Universe under Siege rulebook is an insanely expansive repository of lore, whilst the setting has the artistic talent of fantasy game giants like Paul Bonner and Alex Horley behind it. The game is currently being brought back to life by Res Nova games after a successful Kickstarter. Full disclosure: I had a small hand in writing some fiction for the revival.

Anyway, enough rambling; onto the minis! These are Templars of the Dark Apostle Illian, from the Dark Legion faction (aka Not-Chaos). Ilian herself most closely resembles Tzeentch - magic, forbidden knowledge and the voids of space are her deal. Templars are pretty much the equivalent of Chaos Space Marines or Sci Fi Chaos Knights: big dudes in spiky armour whose purpose is to generally kill, maim and burn. Painting-wise, there's not really a lot to put down here, except that I quite liked doing a deliberately retro look with bright colours and shiny silver. I also held off matt varnishing these guys, as I think the satin adds someone to the part-mystic, part-oldschool look of these (the figs themselves are from the 90s, and have that nice solid chunkiness that you don't get nowadays).

If you enjoy Warzone, please leave a comment! They'll definitely be more on this project log from this IP in the near future, and I'm always eager to hear from fellow MC fans. My aim is to make some modern plastic Trenchers - WW1 Tommy-esque soldiers from the Imperial megacorporation, and I'm currently trying to track down spare arms for that purpose (cough https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=141820.0 cough).