Iron Warriors - Hell Blade number two

 Hi everyone - today I'm showing off my second Hell Blade/counts-as-Heldrake. You can find the first here.

I've got to say, the quality of this build was much higher than the last - with less rough edges and the body only required minimal straightening - which was a piece of cake with the missus' hairdryer.

 I painted it up to match the first - so now they make a nice pair.

 The canopy on my first Hell Blade wasn't great - so I removed the panels to keep it open. This one was slightly better, but quite cloudy so I ended up painting the glass - it didn't turn out great, so thats something to practice some more.

 The engines were given the mandatory blue OSL.

 

 

For the base, I put together a little scene with a fuel pipeline that had been taken out by the Hell Blade in a strafing run and used the old tealight and stuffing to make a fire/smoke effect and a bit of liquid water effects as some spilled fuel that might ignite at any second.

Hope you like!

BTW - does anyone have any tips for taking pics of larger models? I like to use a backdrop, but even with A3 (what I used here) it forces me to get in tight to the model to be able to fit detail in frame.

Iron Warriors - Hell Blade

Hi all - so this is one of the latest models I have been working on - a Chaos Hell Blade.

Lets be honest, the Heldrake is pretty much an auto-include for CSMs...I wish they weren't, but if you don't want to go down the zombie-cultist route, Turkeys and Obliterators are your best choice. I have a Heldrake model (here) and whilst they are ok, they don't really fit with the aesthetic of my Iron Warrior army - so I've been eying up a Hell Blade/Talon counts-as for a while now.

I did a bit of research and the general consensus was that the Hell Blade roughly matched the size and shape of a Heldrake (if you modeled the wings forward) - which is nice seeing as the Blade is half the price of a Talon.

The model was relatively easy to put together - with the wings just needing a bit of the hairdryer treatment to get them straight and aligned.

I had already planned on making the model as dynamic as possible - with the Hell Blade swooping low over the battlefield, so I actually started work on the base first.

The chrome rod that I use to stand the model is randomly from an old printer...

I painted the model up using my normal IW techniques and colour schemes and went for some blue heat-glows from the engines to liven it up a bit.

 

Hope you like!

Iron Warriors – Heldrake

Hi guys, I managed to grab 5 mins last night to take some pics, so I can now post up my newly(ish) finished Heldrake.

Boy this model is a doozy! I didn’t appreciate how big (and spiky) it was until I started building it. This one is just a standard build with no conversions – I will be getting another, so this was really an exercise in how it fits together and what is in scope to be changed next time; I’m thinking a new head and change up the position of the wings and legs…

The model is also a beast to paint – the second I glued it all together I regretted not painting it whilst unassembled, although in the end it wasn’t as bad as I first feared (definitely doable because the bits you can’t reach also can’t be seen in detail). I’ll definitely give respect to anyone who has done a good job of painting more than one of these those – curse those wings!!! It took me around an evening’s painting to get down the gold vein basecoat on one side of a wing – so four nights of painting gold veins. Then another night of clean-up. Then another four nights of highlighting the gold. And that was just the wings! Because I only have time right now to grab an hours painting every other night or two – this model actually took me about 6 weeks to complete.

I have tried to use blue glowing effects on the eyes and belly to match the Forgefiend and plasma weapons in the rest of my army and I think it’s starting to get neater.

The base was pretty fun – seeing as it only needs to hold a flight-stand, there is loads you can do with it. For a start, the base is made from about an inch of polystyrene, carved to shape, sealed with PVA and sand and a cross cut into it for the flight-stand. I’ll definitely be doing that on similar bases because it means you can slot the flight-stand into the base and model and it holds without glue – so great for transporting.

I decided early on that I wanted a pit filled with smouldering bodies; as if a pile of (imperial) corpses had been burned (might be a little morbid looking back now…). I used zombie models from the Zombies!!! board game (you can buy a bag of 100 for £10). The models aren’t great and are all the same pose, but I cut some up, repositioned a few and finally held them over a lighter so they twisted, contorted and the surface bubbled a little.

Anyhow, I am pretty happy with how it turned out – comments and suggestions on how to improve the next one are appreciated as always.

P.S. Just thought I would mention that these guys live up to their rep on the table – you HAVE to prioritise and kill them the turn they arrive or they will make a mess of your army…doubly so if you are running power armour (in BW5 my Heldrake got taken down immediately in game 1 but in games 2 & 3 went on to massacre about a third of each opponents army).