Grey Knights Characters

Heading into the new hobby season, I wanted to share pics of the Grey Knight characters that will likely kick off my to do list. I have built these over the last couple weeks on-and-off but didn't have the pics to post up on the August workbench article.  Rather than update that article, I decided to dedicate a new article to these new models in my collection.

Grand Master Voldus is the most straight forward as I built him stock and simply added him to one of my home-made cork bases instead of the plain GW base he ships with. A daemon skull for interest and he was done.

The Brother Captain is perhaps a bit more interesting.  Like the Chaplain, this model uses Grey Knight terminator arms and ornaments on a non-Grey Knight Space Marine Terminator Captain.  I used the Deathwatch terminator captain model in this case, but I expect the sprue is the same as the generic Space Marine terminator captain.  I am simply adding the Deathwatch sprue to my bitz box.  I removed the portion of cape from the generic left terminator arm and set aside the right terminator arm as well.  They will both go into the bitz box for some future endeavor.  I then glued the two main halves together and added the piece of removed cape.

Then it was only a matter of selecting new arms from my Grey Knight terminator bitz and agonizing over a decent pose based on the bitz I could manage.  I'm pretty happy with the result, if not over-joyed.  I happened to have a librarian head the seemed to work great for a grizzled veteran Captain, I added some Grey Knight bling to round things out and convince the eye that this was not just the generic terminator captain model. Some green stuff was used to attach the arms as these Grey Knight arms never seem to sit well in the poses I want.  Here is the result.

The next character is a Brotherhood Champion.  This is more or less a stock terminator with an iron halo attached and mounted on another cork base.

The last I have to share is the Brotherhood Ancient.  I blinged him out as a Paladin, but I reckon he'd serve as a standard Ancient as well.  There is no difference in power level between the two anyway, which I expect to use mostly when playing.  This model is also pretty much stock. Somehow, I am just now realizing that I put the same reliquary bit on the top of the Brother Captain...may need to nip that off and replace it for some variety.  The reliquary on the banner is significant as the bones of someone important to the Brotherhood.

Added with the Chaplain, this gives me some fun new characters to paint and field.  The Grey Knight project in general should provide a good diversion from the black of the Deathwatch (oh the endless edge highlighting...) and allow me to hopefully carry on a pace without growing bored with either. At some point will come the Dreadknights, dreadnoughts, transports, and other large models.  I have all of this built and primed so it won't be too much work to crack on with them.

2017/18 will bring much fun and many opportunities to ply the brushes and not only the glue...

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Results from the 2016/17 Hobby Season

As I align my own hobby work with 40KAddict's hobby season, it's time to reflect on what I got done since September of 2016. My hobby ToDo list was intentionally long and filled more with opportunity than direct goals and I had no intent of knocking off the whole list.  For the 2017/18 season, I am thinking of modifying that approach...but that's a tale for another post.

What got accomplished in 2016/17?

My Deathwatch force started to take shape:

I participated in Dreadtober 2016 as the Deathwatch work continued:

Then it was on to Squaduary 2017 and the Deathwatch caught more paint:

I completed some scatter terrain:

And some Munitorum containers:

And dabbled with a unit of the Emperor's praetorians:

And dabbled with Shadow Wars: Armageddon:

 

And made some beats lab improvements:

And finally, the Grey Knights landed...

That's quite a season of hobby for me! Some solid progress here and there; some flights of fancy as well along the way.  I am very happy where I got my terrain to and I have already enjoyed a few Shadow Wars and 8th ed. 40K games on it.  Some Deathwatch progress, but lots more to do.  And a good deal of Grey Knight enthusiasm as I head into the new hobby season. And these are just the highlights I culled from past blog posts. There were other bits here and there as well that got done for which I have no pictures (lots more deathwatch were built and primed. the new 8th ed. 40K objective markers set got built, etc...).

For the next season I'd like to continue exploring and honing my painting skills.  It is all to easy for me to fall back on building models, which I love, instead of buckling down and getting on with the painting of it all.I will look for new events like Squaduary and Dreadtober for incentive to complete quality projects and will kick myself to fit in a few more on my own initiative. I expect to make more progress on the Deathwatch and to turn up the heat on my Grey Knights.  I'm even setting a goal to paint at least one of my currently unpainted squads of Dark Angels, possibly including a transport.

It's going to be a fun and busy season. Best of luck for your own projects and ambitions.

Cheers and Happy Gaming! 

On the Workbench [August] - Grey Knights Chaplain

Greetings!

August has been a busy month with vacation and other family activities keeping me out of the hobby man cave more than not.  That said, I am not without some progress to report on the hobby front for the month of August.

The release of the 40K 8th edition Grey Knights codex caused me to pause in other labors and bring out the Grey Knight army I have had languishing in their foam trays for well over a year.  Some time back I had been working on a force using the original metal models before all the cool plastic kits were released.  Then I had been reworking the force using the plastic kits and my own homemade bases when 7th edition exploded and I became distracted by a number of other projects, moving house, etc..

I enjoy painting Grey Knights and look forward continuing them into 8th edition. In fact, I have already had two 8th edition games using the Index book rules (nothing with the new codex yet...).  In order to move forward with games using the new Codex, some new models had to be built!

So on the work bench in August, I have Grand Master Voldus, a Grey Knight Chaplain, a Grey Knight Brother Captain, a Grey Knight Brotherhood Champion, and a Grey Knight Paladin Ancient.  First up is the Grey Knight Chaplain:

This model was cobbled together using the old metal Space Marine Terminator Chaplain.  He had been assembled and primed, then also left to languish for years in my Dark Angels force where he got very little to no love and I no play time either...let's face it, he'd been permanently benched!

So it was that his arms and original base were unceremoniously ripped off and replaced by parts more suitable to the Grey Knights.  I plucked out a 40mm cork base (I built up a bunch of these in 25mm and 40mm sizes over a year ago for the Grey Knights) and slapped on some Vallejo Black Lava to conceal the very obvious cork texture. Then terminator arms and shoulder pads were chosen.  The only real scratch build was the crozius.  

The crozius is based on a Terminator arm that was carrying a halberd one handed with the right gesture I was looking for (i.e. pointing as if by command).  The back of the haft was cut in two places to remove some of the length.  The "end cap" was then glued back onto the remaining piece of haft extending back from the fist. As seen in the picture above, some sanding/filing is still needed prior to priming to smooth this glue joint out so it appears one piece. The head of the halberd was removed and replaced with a 3D printed part from Shapeways. In hindsight, I probably could have just used the head from the original terminator chaplain arm that I removed from the model. But at the time, I was planning to keep those arms unmolested to be reused in some further project...

To top the look off, I added a fun shield to the left shoulder and the armorium cherub bit to the right.  The cherub may be a bit over the top, but I thought it fit the feel and flavor of a Grey Knight Chaplain quite well. Perhaps the Chaplain is in the process of commanding the cherub forward on some task...

Hopefully this whole look will come off well when painted.  I am also getting over my initial pique at learning that the cool Chaplain conversion in the new Codex used a limited edition model that isn't generally available (but that can be had for much coin on eBay).  The metal model does serve, though this will be the only metal model in the army probably (having been rebuilt using the plastic kits)...but the weight will no doubt lend the Chaplain some needed gravitas on the battlefield!

I'll have to come back and update this post with WIP pics of the Champion and Ancient as I didn't think to snap shots of those when photographing the Chaplain.

Next up will be a recap of the 2016/20127 hobby season and a post for the new 2017/2018 to-do list.  I will be joining with those hobbyists following the example of 40kaddict in setting goals for the hobby season.

As always, Cheers and Happy Gaming!

WIP: More 29th Zetic Tigers

After another session, the kill team is coming along pretty well. First some edge highlights for the black armor...

Man do I still need A LOT of practice with this kind of brush work. I mean the principle seems easy enough...draw the edge of the brush along the raised edges...but then there is the reality of managing flex and splay in the bristles and that crazy tip that seems to lash about like some chaos spawned tentacle. I had to abandon my Broken Toad brushes and return to the faithful Winston-Newton for this work. Better control and better results but even still...<sigh>

Highlights done, I treated myself to some detail work using the plasma marine as my test model before attacking the squad.

Getting there.  The company insignia on the left knee is crap...it was actually almost there, then I ruined it in a fit of perfectionist passion with the black as I tried to clean up the triangle on the yellow field. I'll practice more on something else, then go back and redo it before attacking the rest of the kill team.

I liked how the lenses and screens came out though, so I applied this detail to the rest of the team and cleaned up some of the highlights on the black.  Oh, and I realized when taking the close up above that I forgot to drill out the plasmagun.  So that had to get done as well...

So still some slow going, but progress is definitely happening.  I'll get one more session this week, then I'm done for a bit while I head out with my family for vacation.  I'm still loving the scion models, but my ambition is out-stripping my skills still at this point.  I'll keep at it and see where they end up.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!