Steel Legion Stormtroopers - Militarum Tempestus Scions

Another Steel Legion post today - just showing my recently completed unit of Stormtroopers. You kind of have to call them Stormtroopers for Steel Legion as they pre-date all of that Militarum Tempestus stuff, and that's how they're referred to in the books too.

I enjoyed painting these guys a lot too as they're a little bit different from my usual infantry models. They really came alive when I did the blue details too - like all the pipes and stuff. I tried to make the screens on their wrists look like some kind of bio-readout monitor thing, so I did a heart-beat shaped thing on each one. Equally though, it could be some kind of vox signal (or maybe Codec like in Metal Gear?)

At some point, I'll have to get another 5 so I can have a full unit. For the moment, there's no rush as they're not in any of my planned lists, and I've got so many other units to finish that I can't justify buying anything new. My Steel Legion have become a bit of a dumping ground for older guard army projects - these guys were originally earmarked for my now defunct Traitor Guard force, so they were basically free as I had them laying about the place anyway. The upside and downside is that I have tons of tanks to paint up too!

More Steel Legion tomorrow....

Steel Legion Sniper Squad

I've been hard at work again on a plethora of new units for my Steel Legion army - in fact, it got to the point where I had units just lining up to be photographed for the blog, so I though I'd better get started.

This sniper team is a command squad consisting of 4 guys with sniper rifles, although with a slight adjustment, they could be a special weapons squad. They were quite a simple conversion too - just Kreig bodies with Anvil Industry arms, cloaks and guns added. The guy laying down firing his rifle was a lot more complicated though, as I had to convert a standing body, and reposition his arms around a plastic scout sniper rifle. Unlike the others, his cloak is entirely greenstuff as his pose was too far from what the resin ones were designed for. In fact, his pose was so wild that I replaced most of his right arm with a piece of wire and re-sculped over it to make things fit. It worked in the end though - and I love it when a plan comes together! (I might have been watching the A-Team lately too...)

Painting-wise, this is just my standard Steel Legion scheme. I batched these guys with 13 other models, so it was a bit of a busy one, but I made it to the end. The only thing that was a bit out of the ordinary for me was the camo cloaks. I sort of based the design on some of the recent marines from Shadowspear, and I'm quite happy with how the patterning came out. Camo is always one of those things that I'm a bit hesitant to do as it can look terrible if painted sloppily (which is generally my preferred style!). Getting these right did take a bit of time, but it was worth it as it's quite key to making them stand out.

With any luck, there'll be plenty more Steel Legion posts on the way, as I have a lot of units. It might even be tomorrow if I can get things written up!

A view of the cloaks

Everchosen - Update - I'm in the Gallery of Glory!

Well, I didn't really expect to make it far in Everchosen - what with all of the great painters out there, it was obvious that I'd never win the global competition. Despite that, I got a nice surprise over the weekend as my entry is up on Warhammer Community!

I may not have made the final 3, but I'm in the gallery below them with the top 100 highest voted entries. Not bad, as I'd entered with the hope that I'd make it into some kind of official gallery.

You can check it out for yourselves here: 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/09/06/the-top-3-miniatures-in-the-world-and-100-other-awesome-ones/

It's a nice achievement anyway, so I'm pretty happy with that. I haven't updated the blog a lot lately, but I've been doing quite a lot of painting; I just need to set up the camera to take some pictures, so more posts should be on the way soon.

Escher Gang

I haven't been working on my gang a lot lately, but I found a few photos of them that I hadn't posted. I made it to 7 finished gangers, so it really wouldn't take much to see them completely finished and ready to be fielded in all their painted glory.

Looking at them now really makes me want to work on them though - I think it's the old 90s Warhammer throwbacks like the red guns, hazard stripes and migraine bright hues! Did you spot the 2 original metal gangers in there?

I also did a piece of fiction to start the campaign:

He was now known as Bilge Master 4. It hadn’t always been that way, but an unfortunate encounter with a stray las blast had destroyed half of his cranium; melting away most of his sense with it. At that time several years in the past, he was called Korruk of Clan Goliath. His stricken body had been dragged to a doctor who had done their best to rebuild him with the only parts available. Unfortunately for poor Korruk, these parts had been hastily scavenged from the computer core of a sewage skiff and the programming was never fully wiped; leaving him with an identity crisis of sorts.

“Cleanse and sterilize!” As usual, the battle cant made little sense as the steely words left Korruk’s lips in a toneless boom.  He let fly with his stub-cannon into the darkness; lighting up the under-deck for a moment in the brilliant light of the muzzle flare. Somewhere in the distance there was a momentary sound of panic that soon grew still again.

Korruk had been patrolling the lower decks of the Brawndo production plant for several months after the Bennett Brothers had relegated him to a distant support duty. In truth, his delusions and obvious brain damage had made him a liability to the rest of his crew. For his part, it seemed that the newly self-coronated Bilge Master 4 was a lot happier wandering the tunnels aimlessly in a hallucinatory stupor.

Another noise issued forth from the darkness; it was closer this time. Bilge Master 4 cocked his weapon in readiness; just in time to see a huge rat bristle forth into the flickering halo of a wall mounted illuminator. The hideous beast skittered a few steps forward on misshapen legs. Its pudgy bulk reared up; sniffing the air as it moved. It seemed to realise that it was not alone, but it didn’t have enough time to put that knowledge into action; Korruk had already pulled the trigger. The dull, hollow bang of the weapon echoed through the maze-like structure as the rat’s body burst open in a wet puff of filthy viscera.

“Cleanse and sterilize.” Korruk repeated the words emotionlessly as he took a lumbering step towards the fresh kill. “Initiate docking protocol.” He reloaded the gun; a string of drool hanging from his mutilated lip.

……...............................................

“The plan is simple; that goon thinks he’s some kind of sewage processing plant. So all we have to do is flush.” The end of the sentence was punctuated by a wet popping noise as Tabby’s bubble gum burst. The Tabby Cats were in their den; the gang had managed to get some meagre digs in Bunk Town, but the room was packed to bursting as the Escher crew squeezed around a sector map that seemed to have been etched in crayon and splashes of hair dye.

“Care to explain that one boss?” The Juve received a quick slap to the back of her head for her audacity from one of the older gangers.

“We run around town flushing everything in sight right down on his head. He gets confused, and we slip by into Clan territory unnoticed … hurr hurr hurr.” Despite her slight stature, Tabby’s laugh was deep and goonish like a drunken Ogryn in heat. She had quite the complex about it too, and she shot a warning glare at the few who dared smirk at the simian sound she was making.

The dawn of battle would be trumpeted a few hours later by the sound of several dozen toilets ringing in unison.

Oldhammer Project - Test Skink

It's back to the 90s today with the first bit of test painting from my diorama (As discussed a few months ago Here). I scrubbed off the old paint and to be honest I was surprised how good the model looked under all of that gumph.

For a project this nostalgic, not just any colours would do. He had to be really really bright and eye catching (so basically as saturated as possible). I also wanted to sort of update and recreate their original scheme which was basically goblin green skin and red frills. With that basic idea in mind, I busted out the airbrush and went to town.

Really old - and really bright!

I started off with a coat of Vallejo Emerald, which is a nice saturated colour that went on well over the black undercoat. After that came a highlight with Vallejo Foul Green, which I added white to and highlighted again. I did a pre-shade with white before blending the white in with Vallejo Fluorescent Yellow. The result was an almost migraine inducing green hue that can be seen several feet away even though the model is about 1cm tall! Pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. As I'm planning to put him in a diorama, the base is just temporary, and will be removed at some later date.

As this is an oldhammer project, I want to keep this bright with the other models. I'm going to use this scheme for the basic skinks, although I'm also planning some different skink schemes as well; particularly for the ones with different frills. It also feels a bit counter-culture; painting old models in really bright colours (when fashion is for Blanchitsu and grimdark) so I want to play with that and really push it to the max, so when the diorama is finished it'll be like a riot of fun and colour. Well, that's the plan anyway...

Tyranid Termagants - Gooey Organic Colour Scheme

For the Overmind!... oh wait, wrong franchise...

Just for a fun little side project, I painted up a few Termagants recently. I actually got them for free from my brother, so I can't complain, but they were a bit of a sorry band of rejects when I first clapped eyes on them. Especially two of them that I stripped; having had ugly old paint jobs given to them some years earlier by some unknown eBayer.

For the scheme, I wanted to get a decent amount of colour in there, and make it relatively fast to paint. I used the airbrush to lay down some flesh-tones and then worked over that. I also used a decent amount of both Blood for the Blood God and Gloss Varnish on them to get a nice sticky wet look, which I like on my alien bugs from beyond the stars.

Probably the most interesting thing was building their biomass looking bases. I like to think they're inside the bowels of a hive ship or something. As this was a cheap project, I wasn't going to buy anything fancy, so I sculpted the bases myself using milliput. The style does vary across the unit a bit as it took me a while to find my footing. Basically, after a bit of experimentation, I found that creating a wave like texture a bit like a ploughed field worked well, and then pushing the rounded end of a paintbrush into the divots to create ribs made quite a nice looking base.

This was just a little side project, so at the moment, I'm not planning a full army or anything. I would like to try the scheme out on a larger monster, but maybe a bit later, I guess we'll see.

Everchosen - I'm a Winner!

Just a quick update post to say that my Battle Sister made it through, and that I came first in my local competition! Next up, I'll be going on to represent the store in the online vote.

Just for fun, I also entered the open category, and snagged 2nd place with my 40k Skaven Dragoon conversion. All in all it was good fun, and I think I'll probably enjoy going into the online vote too. I'm not expecting much as I'm sure the serious golden demon guys are going to be out in force, but It's just nice to get a little bit of recognition, and it is a very big global stage, so it should be interesting.

I had a bit of a look around the internet, and I think quite a few people entered Sister Amalia into Everchosen, so I'm sure I'll be up against some very directly comparable models in the next round! (I've seen a few that made it through), so at least I can see how I do compared to them!

Winning was quite fun too, as I was presented with a mysterious golden envelope. Unfortunately, it just continued instructions on how to enter the second stage of the competition, and wasn't stuffed full of gift vouchers!