Critter kingdom

I was looking through the massive backlog of draft posts to see what was in there and it seems I got half way through posting quite a few things from the painting challenge last year... so here they are as some filler ;)

These rats and bats are from Mantic's dungeon Saga. These are probably the nicest things to have come out of it, besides the furniture!

 

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Goliath from Shadows of Brimstone. Like most of the other monsters from the SoB boxes so far, the detail is soft and it needed a lot of filling and resculpting... but he looks pretty imposing now he's finished. That base he's on? That's 70mm... he's one biiiiig critter. Sven once again provides a scale reference.

Universal Carrier

Speaking of universal carriers (or I will be tomorrow), this one isn't automated, sadly, but does provide more detail on the ins and outs of the markings and placement of some items. Shame I'd forgotten these pictured from Bovington when painting the automated carrier!

Apparently there were nearly 113,000 of these built by 1960, solely for use in Commonwealth armed forced. This would make it the most produced armoured fighting vehicle in history*

*If Wikipedia is to be believed.

M10 Tank Destroyer

And another useful set of photos pulled form the Draft queue that is related to the recent painting spree.

The M10 is one of those tanks that I clearly got to near the end of the day and forgot to actually take full shots of. I did get a few detail shots that might be useful to someone though. I'm interested to note that the turret has loops on the side of it. these are not present on the kit, though this one doesn't have the rear section of the turret, to it may be a different version of the M10.

Winding back to '47 for a bit

In a dramatic change of pace for recent posts, we're now winding back to an alternate 1947 where WW2 is still going strong. These were originally bought to go with my Bolt Action Commandos, but with the release of Konflikt '47 they have changed purpose slightly...

I need to have a proper think about what I want my weird war to be. the Konflikt universe is... ok, but feels like a copy of Dust and SoTR blended together, with some of the more interesting things taken out and (to date) not all that much new added back in other than the automatons for Britain. I've been reading the Dust and Achtung! Cthulhu rpg books recently that make me want to go through and create my own timeline that picks the best bits form all of them to make it more interesting as I want to blend in mythos and magic with technology and super heroes.

Anyway...

The M10 Wolverine has remained unchanged, except for the addition of one of the Carrier crew being added instead of the provided gunners. While this is a really nice tank kit, I wasn't overly keen on the crew that came with it. There was something about the detailing that looked off compared to the rest of the Warlord plastics, so I decided to add one of the passengers from the Universal Carrier kit to the open turret and one of the tarps to the front for a bit of stowage.

One thing that I decided upon was that these tanks should look a little bit more lived in than would normally see service. The allies are also being pushed really hard, so all their older tank designs are rolling straight out of the factories and into the warzone without any markings as no-one has the time or resources to apply them any more. 

With Konflikt, the British forces gain more automated units as Turing turns his hand to robotics and advanced logic systems. An interesting one that is in the rulebook is an automated carrier. Technically these things are supposed to come with twin HMGs, but I decided that a twin bren on a larger hopper/turrety thing (who knows what it actually is) might be better than slapping some Imperial Guard machine guns on it. Besides which, these could feature armour piercing ammo and improved feed mechanisms, which equates to a similar thing. To make it look more like an automated thing, I've covered over the crew compartment and added some lens/light things to the front. I've no idea if it is supposed to retain the passenger section, but it is now.

And to put them in scale/context, here they both are next to two of the soldiers finished last month

Oh the Horror(s)!

In a weird twist on the usual one or two posts and then radio silence for months... I've actually got another update or two for you already lined up!

Rounding off the Horrors part of the Silver tower box set is the remaining Pink and four Blues.

The right hand one of these Pink Horrors you saw in the last update, but the left had one features a minor adjustment to his hand and tentacles to try and vary it slightly. I suspect some of the tweaks are too small to notice, even side by side... so I'm not entirely sure why I bothered! Still. Two Pinks now done. Like the last one, this was a series of pinky purple washes over a white undercoat with some green and purple inks over the top to give it some variation in tones and show the constantly evolving nature of the beast

The Blues were done in the same manner, but using a bright blue over the white instead. I still used purple washes in the shade and on some of the features to tie them into the Pink Horrors

I'm not 100% convinced that the yellow highlights from the flames work, but still. They are weird, magical creatures... so who knows how they react

Re-opening the Tower

As I mentioned on saturday, I have actually painted some stuff over the past few months... I've just been godawful at updating here. This next batch is the start of Silver Tower, the new Warhammer Quest edition.

I never got around to painting the free Sigmarite on WD, so as this was going to be my first dive into painting for the new Warhammer universe, what better figure to start with than the Sigmarite Questor. Rather than painting him in the studio gold scheme, I opted for a dark turquoise and silver. I really liking this colour scheme, so the other Sigmarite characters will end up with the same scheme.

As Silver Tower is Tzeentch based, what better place to start than with one of the Pink Horrors?! This was actually quite a simple one to do with a series of washes over a white undercoat. We will see if I can get a similar feel on the other one when I get around to it!

A new addition to the Horror theme are these little things. We all know that when you kill a Pink, it splits into two Blues... but magic is strong within the Tower, so killing a Blue splits it into two of these sets of things. They look like fire... so fire they became. It took a couple of attempts to get these right as they were too white the first time around, but this version captures the magical essence.

Heresy recommenced

Looking back through the blog I notice that in one of the very few updates this year I started to show some of the progress on by Betrayal at Calth and Silver Tower box sets. I can't believe I never actually posted finished versions of anything. As I mentioned last time, I'm painting up the full box as Imperial Fists so that I have some options when facing off against some friends. Still not sure if I shouldn't pick up a second copy for a chaos force as well as I can't actually play the game at home any more. Then again, there was the leaked preview of the next Horus Heresy boxed game this morning, so that may be mostly painted up as Thousand Sons instead of the even split.

Anyhoo. The BaC box is still unfinished, but it is looking nice so far...

The captain is wearing a nice set of gold duds, with a shiny new combi-pistol (I forgot to heat-colour the barrels!). I considered converting it, but the kit is so well designed that the pieces only really fit in one way, so it would have taken a fair bit to hack it apart.

The Word Bearer character has become an Imperial Fist champion instead. This one had some hands removed and a head swap to bring him more in line with chapter equipment and give him that IF feel. The power fist he has is intended to be a Solarite Power Gauntlet.

I've only done 5 tactical marines so far, but these were far more enjoyable to paint than the Red Scorpions I did years ago. Now I just need to get around to the other 25! The simplest way to paint these was to leave off the pads, guns, pack and head until the main colours have been finished. Transfers and weathering can then be done. These are also the first marines that I've painted on the new larger bases. They look so much better than on the smaller bases

For now, the last set is the terminator squad. In the HH ruleset, the Imperial Fists are allowed to use assault cannons instead of Autocannons. As I had a spare one kicking around in the bitz box, it made sense to upgrade the heavy flamer arm to the assault cannon.

I've still got the dreadnought and a pile more marines left in the sprue mountain for when I need to paint something yellow.

Secrit Santas & an actual update!

So, it is that time of year where Chris, Ian and Cath start polling for the secret santas for this year. As always, I'll be in for both as they are the highlight of my year. Who doesn't like getting mystery presents through the post? Go sign up!

Which reminds me... I still owe a model for last year's Analogue painting competition too. Must get back to that one before this year's competition starts!

Speaking of getting back to things, today has been the first time in weeks that I've not been working (I kid you not), so it was nice to unwind a bit with some painting. My Commando force now has some slightly heavier support. The base is still waiting for some flowers to go on it, but nearly done. The white at the front is my impatience... so the glue on the grass was still wet when taking this photo ;)