40k 5th Edition

Here are some notes on the upcoming 5th ed. rules, including a link to a torrent download of the pre-release rulebook: Samurai Gunslinger

I must say that I am facing this rule change with some trepidation. Mostly for the rumours about nerfing the Necrons gauss weapon ability. It seems that the ability to fluke a lucky vehicle kill via a glancing shot will be removed and the troops need to wear down a vehicle - one weapon at a time.

Ick. Yuck. Barf.

With the new rules vehicles like the Falcon will take 5 or 6 rolls of 5 or 6 to take down. That is a massive difference and I hope, but seriously doubt, that the point cost will be adjusted accordingly. The choice of high S weapons is pretty limited as I recall (codex not at hand), to the Heavy Destroyer and the Monolith.

I am yet to figure out what the effect will be on my growing Chaos army. But with the vehicle changes I expect something nasty to happen to the dakka predator I was planning. For reference a Dakka Predator (from Librarium Online):

Predator w/ AC + HB Sponsons + Havoc Launcher

Here we have the “dakka” predator. Capable of spewing out enough hot lead to choke a horse. This thing is usually seen running beside two of its AT brethren in larger sized games, the enemy should be so focused on killing the AT predators that this should receive little to no attention.

With the new rules, any movement over 6" will reduce this torrent of horse-choking lead, possibly making other units like heavy weapon Chosen or Havoc squads more useful.

The Big Kahuna

After doing some assembly on my Raptors (pictures as they get painted) I kept rolling and assembled the Daemon Prince.

The assembly was harder than I expected. The model came in thirteen metal parts, including a front and back torso. Nothing seem to fit quite right and in some cases the contact surfaces for gluing were pretty small, which is not good for superglue. I thought I was pretty proficient with pinning but I was stretched with this model - and improved my technique.

The front torso was pinned in place simultaneously with 5 pins. This was not for fun. One for each arm, one for the waist post and two for the body. Getting that precisely lined up was tricky. In short I put all the pins in one side, aligned them all carefully and drilled some over-sized holes in the other side and jockeyed it carefully into place.

Once assembled it was obvious that a fair bit of filling was going to be necessary. A few hours later I had bogged up:

• left and right torso joins
• left and right armpit/shoulder joins
• top torso join
  
• waist
  
• hip
• head and neck
• wrist
• exhaust pipe thingies on the shoulders.
  

I think that this kind of lack of quality with the assembly is really is pretty poor form when you consider the premium price paid for the figure. Shame on you Games Workshop.

The figure comes carrying a sword, but since I had equipped my Prince with the Lash of Submission ability I decided to give him a physical whip. Rather than butcher the hand with the sword I carved a new hand for him holding the handle of the whip. The handle is a section of styrene tube that I formed the fist around. The handle will be trimmed to size and detailed further, including the addition of the lash and tails of the whip.

This is my first attempt at carving anything at all and I must say I am pretty happy with the result. The fist is larger than the original, but seems to fit the model really well. His thumb is a bit deformed looking, but rather than make it worse I decided to just leave it as is.

The big ticket item remaining with this figure is the creation of some wings. I found that wings were really useful for this guy in play testing, so now I need some way to model them. I have been studying the structure of bat wings (the things we do!) and figure I will make the bones out of a few different sizes of styrene tube. The skinning of the wing is still a bit of an unknown at the moment.

I initially wanted to have his wings at full extension like he was had just landed or was about to take off, but figured that this would always be banging into terrain, so I figure now that he will have his wings furled up at rest.

Back to Games Workshop again: why can't a company that insists on WYSIWYG modelling actually supply all the options for the models? Even old models could have some add-on bitz. How hard is it?

Here are some photos for this stage.

The Prince with one of his marines for size comparison.

Close up detail of the new hand.

Class Photo - Royals

The first Chaos warband has been completed - the Royals.

A group that considers themselves a notch above the rest, they have adopted a regal colour scheme, including gold leaf, to demonstrate their superiority.

They have turned out pretty well, but the gold metallic was a pain, and I am totally over it. These paints are built on a yellow base which doesn't cover well and the metal particles are quite large. There wasn't a lot of room to swing the brush properly for dry brushing, so I tried washing the metallic on, but it was too easy to get it wrong. If I was not careful the paint got a bit thick and grainy looking, which was/is super irritating.

You will notice that there are two bases with gold edges in the photo. The right-most one is the results of 4 or 5 washes of Burnished Bold. Looks pretty good in the photo? In real life it looks grainy. Frustrating.

So the search continues for the master class technique for painting golds (and brass, bronze, etc).

The Royals. A Plasma Gunner Warband

Chaos Beckons

The new codex for the Chaos Space Marines has inspired the need to start a new force, something different from my Necrons.

I really like the new background of Chaos warbands, so I decided to work along those lines - a group of warbands, temporarily united under a warleader.

The core of the force will be two squads of CSMs. One prefers plasma guns, and the other melta-guns. An example of the first squad is included below. They are based on the Warriors of Mayhem - and for now are known as "the plasma gunner group". :)

They were supposed to be like the Night Stalkers in the new codex, but I could not figure out how to replicate the look. So instead I just worked with the original purple shade colour and did some highlighting and further shading.

"Plasma gunner" Warband

Boys in Blue

I got interested lately in the idea of playing some Kill Team in WH40k, particularly the Space Hulk variant.

So partially to do something different and to bring a classic team to Space Hulk, I went and got some Space Marine Terminators. After some decision about colour schemes (as usual), I settled on the Crimson Fists. In GW terms the colours are Regal Blue and Red Gore for the fists. The highlights use the typical GW approach - lighter shades of the same colour. The skull ornaments are Snakebite Leather - Bleached Bone - Skull White.

The force field glow technique is thanks to this guy. I haven't attempted the full light casting effect on the model (which looks awesome) - I just went for the power effect.

They turned out pretty well considering I only spent a week or two on them. I am pleased with the basing - I make up some styrene tiles to look like decking plates. Two of them have hoses running in the floor and there are some with floor grills. All very atmospheric for a squad of spaceship clearing specialists.

Anyway here they are - take a look:

Brother Nilius

Brother Nilius - Power Sword


Brother Pain

Brother Pain - Autocannon


Brother Pain - Power Fist


Brother Flame


Brother Flame - Heavy Flamer


Brother Flame - Power Fist


Brother Primus


Brother Primus - Power Fist


Brother Secundus

Hivefleet Itsumaden

I decided to go my own way and create a custom hivefleet for the combat patrol.

Keeping with the "monster" theme for Tyranid fleets (they are really just misunderstood, honest) I hunted around for a suitable monster. I decided to go for something a bit different than the usual and went for looking for monsters from Asian mythology.

The result is the Itsumaden. It looks the part and is easy enough to say - could you imagine someone trying: Negoro-no-ushi-oni. :)

The image comes from the Obakemono Project, which is a great resource for Japanese mythological creatures.

I haven't bothered with any background fluff for these guys yet, though that might be getting a bit carried away...

Scrubs up ok

The combat patrol has been essentially completed now.

This last stage was all the fine stuff - the striations in the skin (what are those things?), weapons, teeth, eyes, toxin sacs and so on.

The skin bits were done with Enchanted Blue to give a strong contrast to the red skin. The toxin sacs were done GW style - approximately. Snot Green, Scorpion Green, White.

The barbed strangler (leader's gun below) was painted to resemble the plant it is supposed to be. The result looks pretty "treey", but not quite what I was after there - perhaps more alien next time. I spent a bit of time with the ammo sac (or scrotum as some have suggested :). This was Bleached Bone base, Elf Flesh broadly dry-brushed, with a careful highlight of White. The skin colour was then washed with a red wash. Looks suitably gross.

Basing still needs to be done, but may take some time to materialise... When finished the whole patrol will be photographed.

I finally got the exposure settings right - it only took till the end of the project! :) The colours below are pretty accurate.

The patrol has their first run at the May BIG club day. They got walloped by Space Marines and Necrons. Wasn't until I got home that I realised that my costing spreadsheet was broken and I had diddled myself out of a heap of points. What a wally. :)

Next game they will be tougher...

Safety Armour Anyone?

Well in line with a previous post about the subtlety of Tyranids, the patrol has been given its yellow safety armour. No Tyranid will ever get lost on the battlefield ever again. :)

This was quite a process. The armour areas were first undercoated with a couple of washes of GW Bleached Bone. The armour base colour of GW Golden Yellow was then also painted on in thick-ish washes. At least two were required, as well as some touch ups.

The key effect is the red effect. A thin wash of GW Scab Red was carefully washed over the armour section at a time and then carefully wiped off (with a Mark I finger) going with the "grain". Some touch ups were required at the plate edges that had to be feathered into the next plate. Some wash was also required in a few places to repair overly enthusiastic wiping.

The area was carefully dry brushed with Golden Yellow to soften the effect and a really scruffy horsehair brush was used to but back some red streaks.

Included since the last stage is a black wash "knock-back" of the skin colour. Despite appearances it was a little lurid. The wash eased it back in intensity and as as result they look a lot less painted.

The claws, blades, hooves and guns were all recoated with black. I used a craft paint that has a satin finish, which enhanced the claws and blades. They were also highlighted with some light grey to fake up a glossy highlight.

Next is skin detail, head details and the guns.

Note with these photos (and the previous set) the colour reproduction isn't perfect. The colours are in real life a less saturated. I exposed these at -2/3 stop to compensate for the camera. I think I really need and incident light meter to do this well. Anyone? :) Still learning plenty about practical macro photography. Next time I'll include a photo of the "studio".

Skin tone

The Tyranid patrol has now been given its basic skin tone.

This consisted of two broad drybrushes of GW Scab Red. This was intentionally left coarse to expose some black undercoat on the painted areas and give the idea of texture. This stage was followed by a targetted drybrush of GW Red Gore. This was applied to all the visible surfaces as a highlight and to add depth. The final pass was of GW Blood Red which was applied to top surfaces, where an overhead light would normally fall.

The result has been a good level of skin texture and a lot of the fine detail has been picked out. This was pretty much the effect I was after, so I am pleased.

There is a bit of "over brushing" on all the models as a result of the dry brushing process. These will be cleaned up as I go along.

Next comes the armour plating.

Black is the new black

Some photos of the undercoated miniatures.

Not much to say really is there? Black makes a good undercoat for this size of model (amd is difficult to photograph).




Next will be the skin.

Long time between drinks

Its been a while since I posted - other projects and work.

Other projects consists of a 1500 Soviet army for the excellent Flames of War rules. Expect some pictures soon.

One the Tyranid front some colour decisions have been made. The red colour will come from the GW Scab Red; the yellow from the GW Golden Yellow. The greens will need to be custom mixed.

Now to get some of this real work out of the way, so I can get back to painting...

Some assembly required...

The assembly of the combat patrol is coming to end with the last Ravener being assembled.

I've taken the time with the Raveners to pin everything. Possibly a case of overkill, but I have a a number of cases of my Necrons dropping unpinned limbs - particularly my Flayed Ones. Considering that the Ravener models have more bits to catch on things and the model is pretty top heavy, I am taking no chances. Eight pins later and the completed Ravener looks pretty strong. I have also been using a new superglue that has some give in it, reducing the chances of the bond shattering on impact.

The Warriors and the Genestealers got the usual plastic glue treatment. But the rear arms of the Genestealers required supergluing - there simply wasn't enough contact to make the plastic glue join strong enough. The Warrior leading the patrol got Enhanced Senses to target with the gun. I glued on a couple of tiny beads to represent massively enhanced eyeballs. I can see a challenge here making them look like an integrated part of the monster, but still stand out so that people notice them - the whole WYSIWYG thing with GW.

Some "before" shots - one picture of each type in the patrol.

Tyranid Warrior - patrol leader

Genestealer


Ravener

Paint scheme

I've spent a bit of time pondering about a paint scheme for the 'Nids.

I considered schemes inspired by the natural world, specifially beetles. I liked the idea of a metallic sheen on the armour plates that bugs have. I baulked at this on the grounds that with my limited skill, they would end up looking like my Necrons!

I also thought about a camouflage paint scheme, but discarded this also purely on the grounds that camouflage is for defence or for sneaks. Apart from Lictors, I figure 'Nids are as subtle as a sledgehammer - so bold colours it was going to be.

By chance I came across the results of the US GW painting competition for Tyranid Warriors - here. Nick Marchetti's entry leapt out at me (Page 3) so this is what I currently aiming for.

Now to figure out exactly what colours he used...

I've reproduced the competition image here, so I can retain it when it eventually gets removed from the GW website. Original competition page is linked above.