On the Workbench [June]

 

Greetings!  Things have been busy around the old homestead recently with family birthdays, vacations, and other warmer weather activities.  This has put a crimp on the 262Krieg hobby time, but no worries.  I'm still active and new projects are underway.  

Today, I'm sharing some recent builds I've done while taking a short painting break to refresh my inspiration.  I like to move back and forth between painting and building to mix things up and prevent burnout on any one aspect of the hobby.

This month, I built five more First Legion Destroyers to round out a squad of ten (shown above). Then I moved on to assemble five more Interemptors that I also had waiting on the to-do shelf.

This brought my Interemptors up to ten men as well. My challenge here will be to do a decent enough job with the painting to make sure the new recruits blend in well with the squad veterans. This brings my Dreadwing strength to 20 marines and one character, a Legion Moritat.

Lots of Forge World stuff seems to be sold out and not returning so I went ahead and purchased a few new models which I'll be sharing in future posts to round out this force of Horus Heresy era Dark Angels.  I take long enough with these projects that things are almost always OOP by the time I'm painting them. 😢  Fortunately, I have plenty of storage in the 262Krieg man cave to tuck these models away until I can get to them.

 As a final workbench project this month, I was inspired by a blog post to finally convert a Ravenwing Talonmaster for my Dark Angels 40K army.  I have a bunch of bikes and speeders, but never modeled the Talonmaster, despite having all the necessary parts.  So I took a partially painted speeder from my collection and set to work removing some bits and adding others.

I have ample Ravenwing bits form various upgrade sprues so this project really was a no-brainer to put together. I have to say that being able to fly a hovering speeder AND fight with an immense power sword is one of the things that make the Ravenwing truly something special. 😂

I used a Black Knight shoulder pad to represent the Talonmaster being drawn from their ranks. I figured that Talonmasters are likely permitted to keep their Black Knight honors. I've kept the original back and arms required to fit in the speeder, but added new heads (and a chest for the Talonmaster) to further call out their esteemed rank within the Ravenwing. I chose to avoid any hooded heads as I think they look out of place on bikes and speeders (the force of wind in their faces and all that).  I like the sharp beaky helmets for that. It's really kind funny how we can suspend our disbelief for so many things, then get hung up on something specific like keeping hoods on while riding bikes and speeders. :) 

All of that aside, I think I put together a reasonably Talonmaster conversion.  I mean, it's barely a conversion as it is, since all of the key parts come form the Ravenwing upgrade accessory sprue pretty much for the purpose.

That's my show and tell for today.  I'm getting back to painting and should have some new WIP posts up soon.  I'm still going though the process of setting my inspirations.  I'd really like to have my Titanicus stuff completed; but I also want to see progress on Blackstone Fortress characters and both my 30K and 40K Dark Angels collections.  Clearly, I can't do it all at once! I miss the seasonal blogger challenges that help me narrow down my choices.  Heh.

I hope you and yours are staying safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Horus Heresy Dark Angels Interemptors - TO DONE

 

Greetings!  Today I am able to display the First Legion Interempters as lacquered and DONE.  It's a fun squad, and I guess I'm going to need another five to play a decent game of Horus Heresy. For now, I'll enjoy the project win, the last project of my 2019/2020 hobby season.

To complete the project I caught a few missed areas (oaths of moment, etc.) and finished the highlighting steps I missed on the leather work.  There wasn't really that much to do from where I was in the last post.  Here's how the squad came out in the end.

For my next post, I'll wrap up the hobby season with a run down of what was completed and what was not.  Then we'll put that behind us and move on into the new 2020/21 season.  There is so much good work to get to, that I really can't wait to sit back down and keep on building and painting.

I hope you all are staying safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

WIP: Horus Heresy Dark Angels Interemptors - part 3

 

Greetings and welcome back to 262Krieg.  After a week in the woods camping with the family, I'm back working on the Dark Angels Interemptors.  I'm very excited about the new black book due out soon with the new First Legion rules and hopefully more interesting fluff...and our Primarch! I'm itchin' to get that on pre-order.

The bases are done now and blend well with the rest of the growing force I've been working on.  It really helps to keep paint formulas around to recreate stuff like this more easily. In this case, it's a pretty simple approach, but having the wrong paint colors would leave shade differences that might prevent the force from looking uniform if I didn't use all the same paint.

I'm diggin' the molded shoulder pad legion symbols with the blue plasma.

Black armor highlights were applied completing that step at last.

This Dreadwing unit is gradually drawing to a close.  I'll apply a couple decals to liven things up and address a couple issues...like the one model who managed to avoid having his fuel canister painted...there's always a few issues to go back and touch up with these projects.  I hit them at only a couple hours a crack over a few weeks so it's hard to stay focused across the whole time.  

And this guy's left hand is lost in the weeds between the steel canister, the black armor and the splotchy highlights to the fingers. That definitely needs some tidying up. Otherwise, I'm pleased with the results.  Other than red gun casings, they fit in perfectly with my existing force.  I've decided my Dreadwing have red casings to help distinguish them from other wings.

So one more post this week will put paid to this project...then it's on to September and the start of the new hobby season.  I'll have a wrap up post for the 2019/20 session by the end of this month as well. The hobby just keeps rolling on!

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

WIP: Horus Heresy Dark Angels Interemptors - part 2

 

The Dark Angels Interemptors continue on a piece.  Very close to complete now.  Bases need painting, armor needs highlights, and the any decals need to be applied, though I won't need much on these guys with all their molded detail.

This week, I painted the plasma coils in the usual colors.  I realized I cleaved to the box art for the plasma guns and forgot that I was originally painting black gun casing on my 30K Dark Angels.  Well, who knows that the Dreadwing get up, eh? Perhaps I'll make that a thing so they stand out from portions of the army belonging to other wings.

Next I shaded the armor trim and the reds, then brought in some red highlights.

I also attempted to dot in some yellow over the eye lenses to brighten them up a bit...this appears to have provided some unintended OSL around the eye slits in the helmets.  Bonus, I guess?

So that's where the squad is today.  One or two more sessions to go, depending on how much time I get for the next session.  I will probably put the Knights Cenobium on hold for now.  I failed to consider the family vacation plans and I'll be away from the painting desk for all of next week...and the internet so no posts next week, either.  So this project is likely to be my last for the 2019/2020 Hobby Season, at least I'll have one last week after vacation to complete it.  I could roll into September with the Knights Cenobium, but I'm not ready to commit to that yet.  Lots of other projects waiting for some love right now. I also plan to paint the HH Dark Angels Leviathan from Forge World for DreadTober 2020, so no need to paint HH Dark Angels for three months straight.

I hope everyone has good times next week as corona-summer draws to a close.  Check back in two weeks to see if I push these Interemptors to completion.

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

WIP: Horus Heresy Dark Angels Interemptors and Inner Circle Knights Cenobium

Greetings!  For my next project, I chose to advance my growing Horus Heresy Dark Angels force.  Back along, I built the Interemptors and the Inner Circle Knight Cenobium.  Now it is time to get some paint on them, starting with the Interemptors.

The recipe I use for Horus Heresy Dark Angels is in the tabs above.  I always start out with a coat of Vallejo Surface Primer Black.  Here I have applied the Vallejo Oily Steel to the trim and metal weapon bits.

Next, I applied the red base coat to the weapons, icons, and a few armor panels.  I copied the Forge World art here, painting some red checkers on the greave of one of the marines and various random bits of others (knee pads, helmet panels). Not my original scheme, but seems to be where the winds of change are blowing.  I expect we'll see more of it in the art and examples going forward. These marines will be Terrans all, so no green shoulder pads for this squad.

Last up, I base coated the plasma coils and the mouths of the barrels where some glow will be escaping. The squad is coming along well and should be a nice start to my Dreadwing.  While moving these guys along, I got my Knights Cenobium ready for paint as well.

These gentlemen will be quite a project to paint.  Lots and lots of little details are sculpted into these knights and they should come out fantastic.  So far I have based the capes and shield icons with Vallejo Surface Primer Grey and then applied a red base coat.

Not much to look at at this stage but progress none-the-less.  The red needs at least one more thin coat, maybe two, then shading and highlighting should bring things in line.  Here again, I'm sticking to the Forge World art.

I'm hoping to work through these two squads to close out the 2019/2020 hobby season, but I expect the Knights will quite likely slip into the 2020/2021 season.  There's a lot to do on them and I don't think I'll be able to commit enough time with the remainder of this month to do a good job.

This project sets me up for Dreadtober 2021 when I hope to complete the 1st Legion Leviathan Dreadnought. And all of this to get ready for the release of the next black book with the Thramas Crusade. Not that I'm doing anything about that...no games planned, etc.  It's just great inspiration to move the projects forward.

Check back later in the week to see where I get to next with these 1st Legion warriors.

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

 

HowTo: Casting Space Marine Shoulder Pads

Newly Cast Pad on an Interemptor for Comparison

Greetings!

In this HowTo post, I'm going to discuss how I went about casting extra Dreadwing mark III shoulder pads for my Dark Angels collection.  These shoulder pads have become available as part of the new Dark Angels Legion Interemptor Squad set from Forge World.  They look great, and I thought I could make use of them with other Dreadwing squads in mark III armor, but I didn't fancy buying other Interemptor sets just for the pads.

I found this great tutorial on Master of the Forge and decided to give it a go.  Here are a couple shots of the pads being set up to create the molds.

I used a little 5-minute 2-part epoxy and fixed the pads to the bottle caps using their existing sprue gates which I clipped carefully from the typical Forge World resin block. You can easily attach your own posts from bits of left-over sprue or plasticard.

Then I mixed up a batch of blu-stuff and poured it carefully in the caps, trying to avoid air bubbles and not spilling it over the pads themselves.  I tapped the molds quite a bit (careful not to spill them) to release small air bubbles that get trapped regardless.  The molds sat as shown below over night (though it cures sooner if you are in a  rush, I guess).

Next, I used a hobby tool to pry (um, gently lift) the molds out of the bottle caps.  You should end up with something like this...

The next step is the tricky bit, in my opinion.  You need to locate the pad in the mold and slice down along back of the pad along its flat edge.  See the picture below.  Doing a bad job here will effect the accuracy of your cast around the back of the pad, and could wreck things all together, so go slow.  I sliced down only enough to peel open the mold enough to insert the casting putty. This step helps with alignment and prevents risking mold slippage, if you had two separate, not connected halves.

With the molds created, I mixed up a roughly 50:50 batch of Green Stuff and Magic Sculp as described on Master of the Forge and placed a blob in each mold, trying to estimate the amount of putty needed for a good cast with no voids (not enough putty) and no deformity (too much putty).  This is the second tricky bit, honestly.

Then the molds were closed and pushed back into the bottle caps.  I suggest using a hobby knife to cut/shave off the threads on the inside of the cap.  I didn't, and it was a big pain pushing the molds back in, and possibly led to some deformity in the casts (see below).  I left the molds over night again to be totally sure things were done hardening.

Then I popped the molds out of the caps and split them again to pull the new casts out. Handle carefully and the molds will be reusable.  As seen above, I deformed the pads a bit (they are a little squished compared to the original) and had some minor mold defects, but they work more or less if you aren't a perfectionist.  Certainly a great effort for the first try. I had to do a lot more trimming than I would have liked, but four of them are usable.  The second from the right is the most squashed, and likely a reject, though some well painted battle damage could certainly make it work.

Taking a second look at the example, the newly cast pad works and only careful inspection of the model should reveal that one pad is a bit more deformed with the other.  I'm willing to bet I could improve on this easily enough.  The hardest part is cutting open the mold so that it makes a good cast.  I think I butchered a couple. I would look for a clearer way to locate the pad in the mold if I were going to do this again.

Still, a very easy way to get a usable cast, and less complicated shapes would likely cast more easily too. A very approachable method for those cases where you need a few more of something that isn't easy to get directly, or to cast custom items from a scratch built piece.

Hope this is helpful to the hobby-verse in some way and further promotes the great tutorial on Master of the Forge.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

On the Workbench [May] - The Dreadwing and the Infested Brethren

This month, I decided to build a few more units for the First Legion and assemble the most recent Blackstone Fortress models that have been hanging out on the shelves.  Back before I knew there would be actual Dreadwing models released for the Dark Angels, I had picked up a unit of Destroyers and a Legion Moritat to pal around with them and represent the Dreadwing.  Now we have official models in the form of the Dark Angels Interemptors.

Dark Angels Interemptors

Great looking models, but what caught my attention were the right arm shoulder pads.  We don't have Dreadwing iconography (that I'm aware of), so I don't know if these are meant to be emblems of the Dreadwing, or destroyers in general. The symbol looks very close to that of the Legion Moritat.  Regardless, it seems to be much cooler then the plain pads that come with the Legion Destroyers.

So I dug out my aging package of Insta-mold to see what I could do with some green stuff.  I also ordered some mold making stuff to try duplicating the pads entirely.  But since anything ordered takes a random amount of time to arrive now, I though I'd see what I could do with custom icons to glue onto the pads of the Destroyers.

Insta-mold comes in these unremarkable clear bars which you drop into hot water to soften.  After a few minutes in the hot water bath you can press things into it to make impressions.  So I pressed this bar over the shoulder pads to see if I could make some green stuff emblems.

Next I whipped up a quick batch of green stuff and pressed it into the molds.  The green stiff didn't stick to the molds at all, but stuck to me fine...remember to use water, or something like Vaseline on your fingers so you don't pull the green stuff out of the mold trying to press it in.

Next I let that set over night and checked things out in the morning.  The green stuff popped right out and I was left with some rough art to work with.  Mind you, this was a very quick and sloppy prototype to see how this process could work.  I did it all in about 20 minutes, other than the overnight curing process.

It's possible to cut and file some of this down to glue onto a shoulder pad.  However, I'll probably toss this lot and try again.  It's important to separate the pads to make better mold impressions, I think.  Also, I'll use thinner green stuff material so that I won't have so much to cut away.  After this simple prototype, I believe it could work.  It's still likely easier to just paint symbols like this free hand on the pads.  Or, to sculpt green stuff directly on the pads rather than trying to create glue on bits.

The Destroyers are otherwise cleaned up and ready for assembly. Their plain bare shoulder pads can be seen at the top.  The Legion Moritat is also cleaned up and ready to be built.

I love the paired plasma pistols.  Too bad Horus Heresy uses 7th Edition rules.  This fella will almost certainly blow himself up if he uses his full rules for those pistols.  However, since I paint more than I play, it's the Rule of Cool all the way here.

Dark Angels aside, I kicked off the month by building the Infected Brethren from Blackstone Fortress to take a break form tiny Titans. I had every intent on pressing forward painting the Blackstone Fortress models, too.  But it looks like it's going to be Heresy Era Dark Angels for the foreseeable future. One must follow one's muse.

I hope you are all staying safe out there. Best wishes for your families and essential workers.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!