Dark Eldar Venom MK I

Here is my finished Venom for the BOLS venom competition.  Once the link is up to vote, I will definitely put it up.

I wanted to make a venom from all leftover parts, so all I would have to buy is a vyper.  The warrior is magnetized for easy removal/transfer to another vehicle.  It actually went together rather quickly, and this was also the test color for my new dark eldar army.  I have two blue armies and a green, so I wanted a red army.  I think the colors look pretty good.
I also wanted to do something other than edge highlight all the armor plates like most dark eldar vehicles.  Its a great look, but takes forever and I wanted something different.  I went for a quick and nasty dry-brush/streaked look.  I think I will clean it up a bit, but was in a hurry to finish the model.  I really like the new models and can't wait to put together a bunch of warriors and wyches.

I think the key to designing dark eldar vehicles is to make them spikey, streamlined, and elegant.  If you get too over-the-top crazy, it starts looking too much like chaos.  Dark Eldar may be depraved, but its a classy, refined depravity.  

New Space Wolves paint scheme

I finished my first squad of Long Fangs in the new paint scheme.  I started with a grey primer, then airbrushed them a true blue color, then washed with asurmen blue, and drybrushed with space wolves gray.  The other squad was primed gray, washed with devlan mud, and then drybrushed space wolves gray.  I think I like the blue a bit better.

Here you can see the two together.  The rest of the army will be the blue.

 

The dark eldar have arrived.  This is the first time I have ordered an army all brand spankin' new.  My wife said, "that's not true, you buy stuff all the time."  A WHOLE, NEW army at once.  "Oh, thats different."  I am pretty excited to get started on these great models.  I got 3 raiders, 12 reavers, 20 warriors, 10 wyches, 10 incubi, lelith, and an archon.   I am sure I will get some of the new models when they come out as well.  I am going to wait to do too many conversions until we see what GW ends up producing.  I am keeping my fingers crossed for the fighter and bomber.  I am also hoping Santa brings some Ravagers.

Shrinky Dink Shoulder Pads

I did a couple of test shrinks to get a better calculation on how much it shrinks.  My 87 mm piece shrunk to 33 mm.  So not exactly 3 to 1.  I also printed out a wolf picture and used the photocopier to size it up a bunch of times.  Then I found a wolf head that was close to the right size.  I cut the shrinky dink out the size you see in the picture.  After shrinking,  you can see the size of the wolf head.  My only problem is the thickness of the wolf head is a bit too much.   Sorry the next pic is a bit out of focus, but you get the idea.

 

I like the detail that is preserved and the ease of production, but don't like the width.  So what do you think?  Too thick or not too bad.  I am undecided.  Maybe green stuff would be better, and save shrinky dinks for vehicle icons.  Let me know what you think.

Space Wolves Pack done

I finaly got the pack done.  Now if I could only take a decent picture, I would be happy.  Looks like I need to make a light box.  My pics always come out so yellow, and then I have to use photoshop to lighten them up, and never quite get the colors right.   I am also going to replace the transfer wolves with either shrinky dink, green stuff or some other better wolf symbol.   And I thought they were done.

These back shots were taken outside with natural light, and the color came out the best. 

So Aric, lets see your Black Templar.

Dark Eldar

With all the shiny new pics, great looking rules, and excitement around the Dark Eldar, it makes me think a couple of things:

1.  Man I want to start the Dark Eldar.  With two armies stagnating in the painting line- I am looking at you Space Wolves and Tyranids- I find it hard to justify buying a new army.  I am a collector along with being a gamer and painter, so the collector side of me wants the new shiny models, and the dark eldar look great.  I haven't even seen most of the new models, and can't wait to see what the flyers look like.  I imagine they look like something batman would be proud to patrol around in.

2.  I can't wait until they redo the Craftworld Eldar rules!  With all the over-the-top rules we see with the latest codices, Craftworld eldar should have some great rules to match.  I may play my craftworlders as 'counts as' dark eldar until I get the figures.  Maybe they will nail the Craftworld Eldar (as they have the dark eldar feel) and give them fewer, elite troops with awesome armor, fearsome weapons, and agile characters.  Also some more harlequin diversity would be great.   I just feel horrible feeding the last few souls of a dying race into the meat grinder with poor armor, ok weapons, and overpriced transports.

3.  From what I have heard from the rules, they have hit the feel and look of Dark Eldar on the nose.  A fragile, hard hitting, horde army with some awesome specialists.  I could see the merciless dark eldar sending masses of regular troops out to battle in horrible 4+,5+ armor, paper light, lightning fast transports, armed to the gills with devastating weaponry supported by some seriously evil specialist troops.

When 3rd edition hit, I had a dark eldar army for a time.  The models weren't that great, and ended up getting sold.  Now I am thinking about getting a dark eldar army again.

So are you going to jump on the Dark Eldar bandwagon?  Let me know why or why not, and if you have pics from the new codex, lets see 'em.

Tyrannofex MK I and shrinky dink bone swords part II

I have decided that I love to build Monstrous Creatures.  There are enough cool tyranid parts out there that can be mashed together into whatever shape you want.

After deciding I didn't like the tyrannofex like the picture in the codex, I decided to start building my own.  I really liked spite for the dice gods' tyrannofex .  raptor1313 tyrannofex  So I decided to make something somewhat like it.  Here is what I came up with.

 Kind of a cross between sonic the hedgehog and a carnifex.  The head and arms are magnetized so I can rearm him, or make him an armored hive tyrant.  Gotta love customizabiltizationing. ; )

I also pinned and glued the shrinky dink boneswords in place, and put the dremel to them to help get rid of some of the flatness of the sword.  A bit of greenstuff to help as well.

Here are the two monsters together.  I also added to Swarmy's height a bit, and need to greenstuff that together better.  Right now it is pinned with a brass rod, and then bulked out with hot glue. 

(What the objective camping tervigons see every battle)

Shrinky Dink Boneswords

Shrinky Dinks are a craft project for kids, that my kids have been doing all summer.  Looked like a great way to make some bone swords, so I tried it out.  The package says that they shrink 3x smaller, so I started by drawing a picture of the bone sword I wanted to copy, 3x larger.  The Shrinky dinks we bought had 6,  8"  x 10" sheets for $5-7.  Great deal.  We bought ours at Michael's, but I bet most kid craft stores would have them.

Next I copied the pattern onto the shrinky dink with a sharpy 2 times and cut them out.

You can see that the material is very thin, easy to trace and cut.

Next you cook it in the oven for three minutes on 325 F (163 C) on some paper so it doesn't stick to your pan.

While they are baking the plastic material folds as it shrinks and kinda looks like bacon.  Mmmm.  Bacon.  It will flatten back out, but I found it helped to have some paper towel nearby to press it exactly flat once it was still warm.  The first one was a little warped after it cooled and I put it back in for a couple of minutes and then flattened it out with a paper towel.   At this point, I realized that it didn't shrink exactly to 1/3 the size, so I trimmed my second sword before I baked it.  After the material is baked it is very brittle, so trimming wasn't the best idea.  I chopped off some of the length of the baked sword, but couldn't make it skinnier without destroying it.  Back to the drawing board. 

You can see the one in the middle is a little thinner and a little shorter.  I later trimmed the longer one, but may do it again for the perfect sword. 

Here you can see the original drawing and the two new swords.

And Swarmy with some plasti-tac holding his swords on.  I intend to use a dremel tool to sharpen the edges of the swords and put some green stuff on them to make them look a little more organic.  Next time I want to do some Space Wolf icons for my tank doors and tops or make some custom shoulder pad icons for some space wolves.

Air Brush First Attempt

I finaly bit the bullet, and bought an airbrush.  I wanted to see just how much I could get done in a couple of hours.  After two painting sessions of two hours each, I got 6 tanks, a drop pod, and 36 space wolves undercoated. 

The Drop pod is probably the most finished of the batch.  I got a little too crazy with the drybrushing and made a mess of it.  No problem, I just covered over the areas with the airbrush, and problem solved.  I originaly painted this a robin egg shell blue, but decided I didn't want a powder puff team of wolves, and darkened the blue a bit.  You can still see some of the powder blue at the top of the pod.( and a paint spot from the airbrush not having the right consistency of paint.)

Can't wait to add some freehand and details to the Landraider.

I am still undecided on whether or not I like the guitar string aerial on this Vindicator.  Maybe I just need to bend it in a better arc.  You can see on this tank that I basecoated the whole thing with a dark brown/black and then painted the blue over the top of it.  Lastly I drybrushed it with a mix of codex grey and space wolves grey.

Magnetized predator.  Like the look of it, don't know if I will use him a lot.  Gotta love the tanks though.

This shows the color I originaly painted three tanks and a few guys.  I think they will match allright once I wash and drybrush them.  Sorry, a little out of focus.

Lastly, this shows the difference between a sweet resin base and your run-of-the-mill standard base.  The bases are Runic bases from Secret Weapon miniatures.  They look great.  I can't wait to finish them up.

I learned a few things about the airbrush.  I was a little intimidated at first.  It is NOT a magic, make everything look great machine.  It is another tool that has to be learned.  Just like dry brushing, washing, highlighting, etc.  It does paint a lot of stuff very fast.

The most important thing I have learned is to get the paint the right consisitency.  Too thick and it jams it up.  Too thin and you get splatter or watery spray. 

Thunder Wolves

I got my the Thunder Wolves I ordered from the Philipines.  I only had to wait about 5 weeks.  I didn't have any problems with them, and they threw in the bases they are on.  I really like these wolves.  It looks like they could actually carry some marines around.  Some other wolves out there look a little small.

All the bodies and weapons are magnetized so they can become iron priests, wolf lords, or just regular Thunder Wolves.  I can't wait to start painting them.

  I got the wolves on ebay under the search 'Wolf Mounts for Miniature Tabletop Gaming ' Sold by Jeanwulf.  He had some negative comments due to the time it was taking to get the models.  Mine took about 5 weeks to get them, but they are definitely worth the wait.

Now they are being sold by Mythicast, but are currently not listed.  They will most likely come up again.  They also were very affordable.  $55 for the set with $21 shipping. With shipping, that is just over $15 a wolf.

Here is one iron priest.  I need to drill into the metal body of the priest and put the magnet up into his torso.  Other than that, he looks great.

I also finaly took the plunge and bought some resin bases.  They look great.  I bought them from secret weapon miniatures.  I now want to have all my figures on them.  They are really nice looking and really add to the army to tie them together, and really make them shine.  Here is a wolf guard with twin claws on a base.  You can just make out a circle of runes under him.  It should be easier to see once its painted.

Finaly,  here is a pic comparing the Thunder Wolves to Canis Wolfborn.  I think the size of the wolves are great.  I need to get Canis on a better base so he looks like a leader.