2 Weeks later

So at the end of my last post i was saying i wanted to paint up the platoon command  this changed when i had a game and changed it around a bit so need to wait for my forge world order to turn up some time after Christmas.

I decided to move onto my next project the heavy weapons teams i do enjoy these kits but it is quite a pain removing all the guard symbols from them, so after allot of cleaning up with a knife and a few choice words they were ready to paint.

They follow the same scheme as the rest but then that's to be expected this kit allows for a little more variety to the poses used on the models which makes for a fun looking group of bad guys. I have now played a few games with the army and moved the composition of it around a bit as i learn how it all works which has meant i am adding these to the what is now a 30 man blob squad, and adding a 3 more as a heavy weapons squad for the platoon, this does mean making an other forge world order but i think it will be worth it. so 

Here's the list i am currently using

Not sure if this is the finished list just yet but its fun

After painting all these quite dark modes i wanted a bit of a change, I had seen the alternate colour scheme for the Bloodthrister from forge world so had it in my head i wanted all my deamons to be white. This would do 2 things make them stand out alot from the rest of the army and secondly be some thing i hadn't seen done with khornate deamons on a large scale.

To do the blood letters the whole model was first painted codex grey, then wet brushed with white scar, at this point all the areas i wanted to be black were then repainted codex grey. A wash of codex grey was put across the whole model to blend the white into the recesses more. 2 layers of nuln oil were applied to the black areas with a codex grey high light between each wash on the horns to do the gradient effect, next came the long part of the process re highlighting the white. after quite some time all the white was done and i could have a bit of fun on the swords, this again was a process of highlighting and then washing back down to get a good gradient of colour( tongues done in the same way), the final result i feel is quite a striking unit.

what to paint next......

this weeks work

so this week i got my second unit of guardsmen done so that's now all the standard infantry out of the way for the guard section of my army wooo. this unit was a bit quicker to paint as i was now used to the new paints and had the colour scheme fully worked out so there was no need to play about with it.

the pics pretty much the same as the first squad so not much to say really although i had thought i wanted to show off the whole models a bit more so here's one showing the back packs off.

this pic also allows you to see in a bit more detail the colour scheme. The main colour of all the material is a mix of 50/50 scorched brown and scab red so very dark and works well for the khornate theme of the army. one thing i have done with the whole army is remove all imperial guard symbols from the models this i think has made them look allot more renegade. I have kept the colour scheme quite simple but have spent a bit more time highlighting certain things on the model to make them stand out a bit (heads and hands) and have done little things like painting lenses on the ends of all the guns.

So after painting that lot decided to do my second vehicle the first of my 2 hellhounds, this was yet again an other classic tank for the imperial guard and works well with the theme of the army (in your face), i have no idea how these will perform within the army but what the hey its an awsome kit which i really enjoyed making  apart from removing all the eagles from it. Like the Leman Russ i didn't want to go overboard with chaosing it up so kept it all quite simple  adding bits from the marauder horse sprue  like the shield and some chains, there's also a chaos star painted on the side of the turret

so that's what i have done this week i am not sure what to paint next will probably be the platoon command or the heavy weapons squad so watch this space.

I have been wanting to do an imperial guard army for ages and with the new allied rules decided to do a traitor guard army based around a general allied to khorne. i spent along time thinking about which models i wanted use for the body of the army and was really considering using the krieg models from forge world as love the sculpts, this all changed when i was clearing oiut my room and found a load of caidians still on sprue under my bed so i looked at how to convert them. 

It was pointed out to me by Greg that the renegades that forge world do would work  so i went along with them and so glad that i did. While i was waiting for this these to turn up i started work on the army.

The main idea behind the army was that yes it would be guard but i wanted it to be all quite in your face so have gone for some of the less used units that seemed to follow the theme like  the penal legion a group of convics who have just been thrown into the fight. for these i used the cultists from the dark vengance box set converting them to all be holding lasguns (this took some time) and doing a couple of head swaps to bring a bit more variety to the unit.

The most noteable of these is for the unit Custodian who now has a head from the marauder horseman sprue this completely changes the look of the model along with the weapon swap to a las pistol from the shotgun. The next bit took some time which was deciding on how to do the bases.  I wanted a bright base as all the models in the army were going to be dark and the contast would make them stand out. this wasnt the hard bit doing desert bases is now really easy painting the base first with Armagedon dust then dry brushing this with underhive ash. the bit that i could get my head around was what colour to do the edge of the base so it was put to the vote on a gaming night in the reading store. After lots of debate and voting i decided on XV-88 to edge the bases.

With the first unit done and the dilivery from forge world on my door step i put together and painted the first 10 guardsmen for the first platoon of the army.

I already had the idea for the colour sceme in my head after painting the penal legion so set to work trying out the new shade paints (nuln oil) from Games workshop. i hadn't used these before so used them the same way i had used the washes like devlin mud (used on the penal legion) this ended up giving quite a dusty look to the models when dried which really worked after i highlighted them back up.

the part of the model i wanted to stand out was  the gas masks as this is what is really different from the standard cadian models i played around with doing them green like latex gas masks but decided on what you can see a sort of sack cloth colour this was done by basing with Tallarn sand (yes its a layer but works) washing with Nuln oil then rehighlighting back with Tallarn sand and woking up to a mix of Tallarn sand and Ushabti Bone this effect really worked  and doesnt take long to do. All guardsmen have symbols on their shoulder pads so i wanted to do the same i tried out a few ideas from painting blood splattered hands to khorne symbols but settled with the white chaos star which really stands out on the black back ground.

After complating two infantry units i wanted a bit of a change some went out and brought my first tank i decided on a leman russ demolisher as had always liked the close up and personal infantry support this tank offers plus it has a big gun!

I wanted this to have the same set of colours on it but decided to do the colour scheme reversed so mostly black which i find quite hard to pant over large areas. to do this i heavily dry brushed the tank with a very dark grey to pick out all the edge detail then i ran i lighter grey along all the edges as a final high light. this ended up making the tank look grey which wasnt what i wanted so i cut back in all the large flat areas with abaddon black to darken down the whole look of the vehicle. 

The skulls on the chaos icon where painted up first with a coat of ushabti bone, then washed with nuln oil this was then highlighted back up to nearly white. to finish the skull off i took inspiration from mr Chris Blair who always seems to put runes on his skulls, so i painted the symbol of Khorne on the top skull.

At the moment there is no battle damage or weathering on this but i plan to do this with all the vehicles at once to get a constant look across all of them.

i had been toying around with some idea for a commisar and priest to go in the infantry platoon i wanted them to stand out from the rest. the preist was the first i did work on, i wanted some one that looked like he had devoted himnself to khorne and just become a complete nut job that had hulked out. the idea came to me to base him a bit on bane from batman  so i looked about for a suitable model to work from. the  newish plastic savage orc warlod for warhammer fantasy took my eye i could really see him wielding a huge chainsaw and with a smaller head  so thats what i did with the addition of a back pack and some copper wire as tubing i set to work painting him up.

I had no idea how to do viens on a model so sort out the help of mr palmer at GW to help out as he had done some on his spiffy ogre army. the process is quite straight forward but just takes some time the veins are painted on nearly at the first stage of painting, you then layer up very thin layers of paint (nearly water with a hint of colour) over the top of the model, ths was a prcess started from tallarn flesh and worked all the way up layer by layer to kislev flesh. all the layers were a watered down mix of kislev this ment there were no crazy mixes to worry about if they dried up. I am really happy with how the skin has turn out and will be using this technique alot more in the future.