Nurgle Knight Titans - Part 16 (Fifth Knight Finished)

As you are all no doubt aware, Armiger Helverins come in pairs. So...

...following on from my recent post about this dude, it won't come as a surprise that I have another one to show off:

More Nurgle Knights stuff:

Solar Auxilia - Dracosan Transport (Part 4 - finished!!)

I really enjoyed doing this tank. Forgeworld have put so much detail into it that it almost paints itself. They didn't leave much room for decals though!

A genuinely lovely model. I want more of them ;-)

Solar Auxilia - Dracosan Transport (Part 3 - detailing)

I like the way this is going!

There's still some way to go (searchlight, exhausts - including a repair, gunner, smoke launchers etc.) but I'm definitely getting there!

Solar Auxilia - Dracosan Transport (Part 2 - starting to paint)

The paint is going on!

Since my earlier post, I've masked off the tracks, searchlight and weapons and then re-sprayed the whole tank with grey rattlecan primer.

The masking was removed and the whole tank brush-mottled with a slightly darker grey, before getting a heavy drybrushing in white.

Next I will start work on tidying up the details on the tank, which is all brush-work. I like this two-phased approach of "broad brush"/"detailed work". As long as you're prepared to treat the detailed phase as "pick out the important bits - don't try to paint everything" I end up with a tank which (I think) looks great overall and isn't too time-consuming to do.

More news as it comes in.

Solar Auxilia - Dracosan Transport (part 1 - rebuilding)

I semi-accidentally seem to have fallen into building a Warhammer 30K/Horus Heresy army.

I was looking for transport options for my Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum army and found a tank up for grabs on eBay for a snip. I grabbed it up before I realised that it was actually a Solar Auxilia Heresy-era tank.

It was in a shocking state when I got it; Mis-built, parts missing etc.

I knew very little about this tank when I got the model. A bit of research told me that it could carry 10 troops if fitted with a demolisher cannon, or 20 if fitted with a twin-linked lascannon. When it arrived, it had neither. In it's place was some sort of control-panel gizmo which as near as I can tell has nothing to do with this model.

The model should also have a searchlight (missing) and a pintle-mounted weapon (missing).

Also missing was the gunner's head.

Off to the bitzbox!

I wanted to be able to carry 20 troops so I went for the tl-lascannon option. I had a couple of old metal space-marine shoulder-mounted lascannon that I glued together. I then removed the control-panel doohickey and routed out a hole in the model and glued them in place, covering the join with green-stuff to represent a flexible cowling like on Chimera hull-mounted weapons.

I had an old flamer which I cobbled together with an old pintle-mounted storm bolter to make a pintle-mounted flamer. An old searchlight was added and the gunner's head came from one of the free-standing pilot models that come in the Valkyrie set.

Judging by the casting quality and the quality of the resin I don't think this is a Forgeworld original. It's a telling sign that it came in a box festooned with Chinese characters too, I think. As such there was a fair bit of warping so some green-stuff filling was required too.

There's not much I can do about the missing rockers from the back.

Still - it's shaping up!

The model with all my repairs complete, basecoated & tracks drybrushed.

Tau: Barracuda

The fight for The Greater Good takes to the skies!

I completed work on this model a couple of days ago. The model is one of Forgeworld's Tau range and I've wanted one of these since I first saw them a few years ago.

Completing this wasn't without its issues - there is a missile-bay underneath it which didn't work as intended due to some ham-fisted super-glueing on my part. It won't close properly now, which I'm not at all happy about.

The overall result, though, is something I'm very pleased with.

Apologies for the gloomy photos - I couldn't get the light right on the day I took them.

More Tau-related stuff:

Tau: Tetras (Complete)

It so nearly went horribly, horribly wrong!

My plan according to my "mission statement" was to attempt a digital camo pattern on my vehicles.

In one sense I completed that mission in as much as I attempted it. In another sense I failed miserably as the end result was shocking. Utterly horrible. A combination of poor stencilling/masking and a poor choice of colours caused an abject failure.

I did go some way towards proving it could be done, but the process was so painstakingly slow on these three Tetras that the thought of applying it to them again, then moving on to three Piranhas and five Devilfish/Hammerhead/Skyrays and 30-odd Drones was just too daunting to face.

So I took a step back and simply applied the same techniques I'd used on my Pathfinders and totally fell in love with the results. I think these are probably the best W40K vehicles I've done so far.

A close-up to show some console detail

Really looking forward to tackling the rest now, which is nice as I was dreading it before!


More Tau-related stuff:

Tau: Tetras (WIP Update #1)

I'm really enjoying working on these models.

I'm about 80% done - the lower portion of the models are complete, as are the pilots (arms excepted). They are based and - IMHO - looking pretty good!

As I mentioned in my first post, this is my first go at airbrushing a vehicle of any kind and I'm feeling very happy with the result so far.

I've shot these from different angles to show the various sides of the models

I'm determined to push my airbrushing nerves aside as I wrote in my "mission statement" so for the upper portion of the models I'm working on a digital camo paint effect - I should know soon if it's going to work.

More news as it comes in...

Other Tau-related stuff:

Tau: Tetras (WIP)

I'm busily (well, not really that busily) working on my first vehicle unit - a squadron of Tetra skimmers.

These are resin models produced by Forgeworld and as such constitute two firsts for me:

• My first experiments with resin,
• My first airbrushed vehicle.

Tetras are a fast-attack option, much like piranhas but are only armed with twin-linked pulse rifles and a markerlight. They are piloted by pathfinders.

Now these are a long way from being finished and the photos below are a bit haphazard (please forgive me for that) but I'm enjoying working on them so much and so pleased by the results so far that I thought I'd share them.

A lot of the colour hasn't come out too well in the photos - I'll try and do better for the finished articles.

These are the three chassis for the Tetra squadron. Apart from some brush-work to pick up the console details, they're pretty much done.

Here's a shot with the pilots and carapace resting in place, on a base. Obviously the pilots don't yet have arms and the engines need doing.

And the same model from the front. The white carapace isn't going to stay white - my intention is to stencil a digital camo effect on it.

More Tau-related stuff: