Ordo Mechanicus 003

Quick  update here. The first Skitarii is nearly done with paint. Looking at him now I realize I missed some gold trim. The 3rd ed Stormtrooper in the back has a suppressor clipped from one of the Space Marine Scouts that got converted to a command unit of Scions/Henchmen. This guy will be another Henchman; a mercenary I think. He might count as an assassin sometimes.

Anyway, I plan to paint him tomorrow using the wet palette. I'm not trying any tricks yet, just learning how to use it. I promise results soon.

Cheers,

CJ

Techmarine Command Squad 001

In March I painted up this guy for the painting contest over on /r/warhammer40k.

He counts as a Librarian with that big ass axe of his. I decided when I was organizing models and bits into potential units back when I updated my overall Drax-agram that he needed a command squad. Now that I have a (sort of) regular game to join in, I'm actually getting it put together.

A couple years ago and in anticipation of this project I bought a few sets of bionics from here and there. I ended up with four legs that I couldn't help but try in the above configuration. I seem to recall a Skitarii commander from one Black Library novel or another with four legs and a battle axe. With that in mind I set out to build my company champion.

Early configuration of legs

The torso on the hips made for too squat a profile, so I added a 'spine'

This arm proved impractical for the pose I wanted, and has been replaced

The Company Champion is well on his way now. He will be equipped with a power weapon and combat shield. As intended, he is a bit taller then the other lads.

Apothecary's power pack

The Apothecary will have the standard gear, of course, and I used another of the bits purchased a bit back to add a servo arm and a couple of mechandrites.

My Standard Bearer is an old white metal Techmarine. His bolt pistol has been swapped out for a storm botler and the banner is the mechanicus sigil with a couple bits from the Rhino kit added on. The sigil is from a CoD panel originally.

Here is the  assembled command squad. Most of them still need power packs and servo arms, but by the time I get to publishing this post I will probably have started on those. Hell, at the rate I post these might even be painted by then.

So here is were overall the army sits. I have the bits to move forward on the Devastators. Once their done I need to decide how I want to represent all those servitors.

Cheers,
CJ

Paint Table Saturday no. 8

It is time for the eighth installment of Paint Table Saturday.

I had a busy week, as you can see. I got this AdMech Marine finished, as well as the assembly and beginning the painting of the Contemptor's weapon upgrades.

Cheers,

CJ

Contemptor Up Armed

I got myself some Contemptor upgrades recently, in the form of an assault cannon, a heavy conversion beamer, and a plasma cannon. The HCB has some fiddly bits, but the assembly will be fairly straight forward. The plasma cannon is one piece, so no problems there. The assault cannon, though, was another story. There were six pieces: The muzzle clamp, three barrel pieces, the gun housing, and the piece that runs underneath the gun. I needed ten pins in these six pieces to get it together in a fashion that I was comfortable would not fail under the rigours of travel and gaming. I wish I stopped to take a picture, but the glue was set before it crossed my mind.

Both the close combat arm and multi melta arm are magnetized, but they are oriented in such a way that the pieces aren't interchangeable. The solution? More magnets and some pins to boot.

With a little force the multi melta was slipped from it's elbow joint. The tab which slots into the elbow joint will be used as the attach point. The one from the multi melta will serve well for the right arm. A second elbow tab was prepared with magnets for the left arm.

All of the heavy weapons for the Contemptor have the same style 'hub' where the elbow tabs slot home. I drilled holes in the center of each hub, one side at a time. Once the holes were done, I slotted the tabs into the heavy weapons and drilled through their centers. Using pins prepared pins from floral wire, the heavy weapons will be secured to the attach points drilled through both the hubs and tabs.

With these simple modifications, my Contemptor can field any combination of weapons I have in my armoury.

The final upgrade this model received was a new waist pin. The old one was largely serviceable still, but the thin wire was harder to get in place, and prone to bend. The new pin is brass rod.

I look forward in testing some of the new arsenal on the table sometime soon.

Cheers,

CJ

Paint Table Saturday no. 7

Welcome to another week's look at my paint table.

This week saw a burst of activity with me getting another squad of ten Henchmen painted up. I still need to complete their bases, but as mentioned before, that is a whole different story.

I started work on this conversion about a year ago. He has been pretty much done, and I am painting him up in hopes of winning a signed hardbound copy of the forthcoming Vengeful Spirit Horus Heresy novel. Fingers crossed, eh?

Cheers!

CJ

Counts As Coteaz and Henchmen

I apologize for screwing up weekly posting already. It seemed a stretch in the first place that I would manage it, but even I didn't think I would miss the first week's post. I'll get on top of things around here. My excuse is work has been a blur of late; my project is ending and I am preparing to move to another. It's been all nerves waiting to see who lands where so far. My posting is secure as of yesterday.

Enough of that.

I have mentioned before about how I wanted to expand the Adeptus Mechanicus theme to more Imperial forces. There are a couple things that happened today that excite me even more in this regard; Forge World has released Tech Thralls, and Blight Wheel Miniatures has announced the Brotherhood. I'm sure I can find a home in my ever expanding forces for these beautiful miniatures. I have used the Blight Wheel Miniatures bionic arms as Servo Arms for my AdMech Marines, and they are crisp.

Today though, my expansion focuses on the Grey Knights codex (also the Inquisitor supplement I suppose, but I haven't seen it). I wanted to include Coteaz as an Allied Inquisitor in my force. He has been in my army since Codex: Daemonhunters. I've always loved the look and feel of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, and to include them I need him. So I set out to create a 'counts as' Coteaz with an appropriate Mechanicus feel.

I started with these bits. Coteaz is in power armour, right, so I planned another Techmarine, this one with a great hammer and some servo skulls to count as the psyber eagle. When I laid out the bits, though, I really wasn't feeling it. I tried a few different heads, including a couple IG heads thinking that sure, he is in power armour but he isn't a Space Marine. Still not there. I dove back into my bits box and tried to find better bits. No dice. But I did find one Techpriest Engineseer.

I had won him off eBay over the summer and forgotten about him. The Engineseer model has the baroque armour that fits an Inquisitor. He has a power pack and servo arm, which I modified to be a bit more dynamic. The model also has a two handed tech axe, which I handily converted into Coteaz's daemonhammer. I can't say this is an original idea. since I swear I've seen this conversion somewhere before. I wish I could give the guy credit. The model even has a searchlight, just as do the rest of my AdMech Marines. I did add three different servo skulls to count as his familiar. The psyber eagle gets extra attacks in assault, so I figured a swarm of servo skulls would represent that well.

At the same time I was working on getting my 'counts as' Coteaz finished, I was waiting for some greatcoat legs to arrive from Mad Robot Miniatures. I had ordered them as part of the Roll Call Steve ran to raise money to produce the amazing Kurgan Winter Guard. Sadly, my order was stolen right out of my mailbox. I waited a few weeks then, until I could afford to order more greatcoat legs. This time, I was able to expand my order somewhat, including 20 luminous CQ battle rifles, 10 combat shotguns, and 6 each of the flamethrower, grenade launcher, thermal gun, and plasma rifle. I have torsos aplenty standing by, as well as arms to build some 'counts as' Inquisitorial Henchmen.

But wait, there is more! I want each unit of Henchmen to be able to double as a squad of Stormtroopers or Veterans in my IG force. So there will be a de facto sergeant for each unit. For this I ordered Mad Robot Mini's Personalities head set. With all these details, I'm guaranteed to get a unit that stands out on the battle field.

I used Cadian torsos, heads, and arms. It is a pain in the ass to remove hands from lasguns, but it has to be done. The sides of the heads have been shaved down, the eyes filled with so called liquid green stuff, and then respirators from the Cadian command sprue added. For this initial squad I chose flamers and combat shotguns, which will be 'count as' hotshot lasguns.

They paint up real easy with red armour over grey coats. The exact mix was Adeptus Battlegrey, drybrushed Codex Grey and Fortress Grey. Black wash, repeat drybrush. The red armour was simply Mordian Red followed by Blood Red and Baal Red wash. Eventually my supply of paint 1.0 will run out and I will have to upgrade.

'Counts as' Coteaz all finished. His armour was painted exactly as the rest of the AdMech Marines in my force. The robes were based with Graveyard Earth, then overbrushed Kommando Khaki, followed by drybrush coats of Bleached Bone and Skull white.

I have to cast up some more custom bases for these guys. More to come on these guys soon. I'm waiting for respirators to arrive from an eBay win so I can get back to it with them.

Cheers,

-Xi

Adeptus Mechanicus Devastators

So I happened upon these models on eBay and at a glance they seemed uniquely suited to my purposes. I snatched them up and what a deal, I must say. All of the Space Marines have the driver chest piece with the cog sigil, as well as the Mechanicus shoulder pads. When the models arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the bolter marines had SM Scout Biker combi-bolters. The close combat marines had a variety of bits, including two of the old Blood Angels Honour Guard tech-axes, two each of Space Wolves power axes and swords.

Now unfortunately, these guys were assembled poorly and pained sloppily. Worse, even though they all sport the cog shoulder pad it is on the wrong side of the model. I carefully snapped all the arms off of the figures. They had quite a few layers of paint that a brake fluid bath took care of nicely. Once they came out, there were blobs of superglue revealed everywhere.

I did my best to scrape it out where I could.

Meanwhile, having this lot of marines arrive meant that the time had arrived to get some more heavy weapons, in the form of a SM Devastator box. I really can't say too much more to sell it than eight heavy weapon options. I've started out with the heavy bolters, since my first ever 40k figure was one of the 3rd edition versions of the same.

The challenge that the heavy weapons present is that they all have shoulder pads moulded as part of the sculpt. They also happen to be in the same wrong place for my amry... time to break out the razor saw.

It took a bit of doing, but I managed to get the pads replaced on the heavy bolters. The first taught me quite a bit about how to screw it up, but some greenstuff will fix that. The second went much smoother. Seen here as well are the bits for a missile launcher Devastator. I have a second set prepped somewhere. These were much more straight forward to convert once the moulded in shoulder pad was removed, just insert cog pad and viola. The rest all sit against the weapon or the power cables. I say its all worth the work in the long run.

Cheers,
Xi

September Update

Just a brief shot to show where I'm at.

Going into September, I have completed the first squad of Techmarines for my Adeptus Mechanicus themed Space Marine force. I have also finished my first ever Contemptor pattern Dreadnought. The next step is to take some decent pictures of the completed squad and their custom bases so I can show off.

I mean, you do deserve better pictures than these.

I have also finished making moulds for the aforementioned custom bases, and a related post is forthcoming.

Next on the workbench is another unit of Techmarines. I've already began assembly.

With what I learned from the last squad, assembly of servo-arms should be easier, and construction smoother.

Cheers,
Xi

Adeptus Mechanicus 003

I finally got the servo-arms settled for the first squad of Techmarines. Now that they are complete, I am able to move on to painting them. I started with a basecoat of Testors Flat Black, and then a coat of Mechrite Red.

Once that dried I applied a drybrush of Red Gore, then Blood Red, and topped it off with a wash of Devlan Mud.

After the Devlan Mud dried, I went back with the drybrush and added a layer of Blood Red, followed by Blazing Orange, and another wash; this time it was Baal Red.

Once the red was completed, I painted all the metallic bits with Gunmetal Metal, and then gave them a wash of black.

They really look like Word Bearers at first glance (to me, anyway), and make me want to get moving on a CSM army (again).

C&C welcome,
Cheers!

-Xi

Adeptus Mechanicus 002

I've been working on my Space Marine allies lately, making bases and constructing servo-arms.  I've also been getting my Contemptor ready for paint.

First, I finished the task of magnetizing the close combat arm.  Then I added cog tooth embellishments to the shoulders using .030x.060 sheet styrene.  I plan to add the same detail to the knee pads.

I've also put together a bunch of servo-arms.  With each one I build, the next becomes easier and a bit more ambitious.  I'm working hard at making sure they have that Mechanicus feel, as well as not being too oversized for the models.  I use a selection of sheet styrene from Evergreen that includes .030x.060, .060x.120, .0625dia rod, .125dia tube, and .1875dia rod.  The power cables are made in my usual fashion, wrapping floral wire.

Some of my sergeants will have a full servo harness.  I've since completed this one, stay tuned for the finished product.

Remember this base?  I really liked it at the time when I produced it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wouldn't fit with my other bases I've been building for this force...

...so I had to make a new one.

Much better.  I'll keep the old one for a Heavy Weapon Team or a Sentinel.

Cheers,

Xi