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!
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