Project: Chaos Knight of Blood Part 3

Oi Vey... This has been one muther of a project! And I'm not done yet. Still waiting for some parts to come in before I can finish it but I can talk about it.

This project has been so incredibly involved that I'm not actually sure where to start with it. The base was it's own special adventure, while building the main body of the machine was practically a project unto itself. So let's start by talking about the base.

As I explained previously, I wanted the Knight to be crushing or standing on something. Something is iconically dangerous. I settled on the body of a Carnifex for this purpose. Carnifexes had long been the "Big Baddies" of the Tyranid army, on a part with Dreadnoughts and able to take utterly horrendous amounts of punished. Well up until 5th edition anyway. Though even in 5th, a Carnifex isn't something you want to ignore. So I put a battered and beaten Carnifex body on the base. The base itself is the Knight Titan sized base from the Goth Teck series by Dragon Forge.

So I got a Carnifex and assembled the main body but not the head. In order to mount the body on the base I ran it across a surface sander for a few seconds to give it a flat side. With that accomplished I mount the body on the base with a combination of pinning and super glue. With it properly mounted I used a hair dryer to soften the plastic of the tail and flex it a bit to give it a more "dead" look to it.

I knew I wanted to distress the body and show battle damage to the Carnifex so that was my next step. For this I fist went to town with a 3mm drill bit and bore out several holes in a pattern to suggest automatic weapons fire. I applied the holes to the back of the armor and across the side of the body. I wanted to make it look like it had put up some sort of a fight. Once I had the holes bored out, I came back with my exacto blade and scored up the edges of the holes and carved cracked into the armor around them. Then I went to work on the head. I used my pin vice to add some bullet marks to the head crest and then to bore out the eye socket of the Carnifex.

Finally I attached the head to the body in a slumped own position to show it's dead as a door nail.The big thing I needed to do in order to sell the entire "Stomping on the dead body" I needed to quasi-level out the back a bit and show some distress and breakage from something the size of a knight titan crushing the back of the Carnifex. In order to accomplish this I took a razor saw and some needle nose pliers to the back armor and made a combination of bends and breaks in the armor to accept the flat foot that was too come.

The big task to accomplish with the base was ensuring there was sufficient space to house the battery pack, wires and switch for the lights. Originally I was going to use a 2032 dime-cell battery to power the circuit, but the battery pack for such a battery has exposed leads. I ran into a problem with these as the glue or modeling putty tended to interfere or even break the exposed connections. So I opted to use a AA battery pack even though it takes up more space. The Dragon Forge base isn't deep enough to accommodate something on the scale of a AA battery pack so I needed to find another solution. I found it by making an exploratory trip through a Michael's craft store where I found an oval wood base only slightly larger then the diameter of the knight base. So with the wood base I was able to route out a space for the battery pack, the switch itself and the wire leads.

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Project: Chaos Knight of Blood Part 2

Starting work on the Knight of Blood. As I explained last time the Knight of Blood is going to be a counts as Lord of Skulls. The conversion itself will be based off of the Knight Titan kit. Today I'm dealing with the weapons. The Lord of Skulls is armed with a Hades Gatling cannon, a GoreStorm cannon and a Great Cleaver of Khorne. So the finished model needs to have the three weapons to represent these. The Lord of Skulls model has one gun arm, a stomach mounted weapon and the Great cleaver is held by the opposite arm. The Knight Titan on the other hand has one large cannon/gun on one arm, with the other arm being the large chain saber. So first challenge is I need to figure out how to effectively mount 3 weapons on a model that normally has 2. Well, what if I do what the Lord of Skulls model did and just mount the third weapon in the waist?

Um... yeah. That idea doesn't seem like a good one. Well unless I was to build a Lord of Rapage and devote it to Slaanesh. Hmm... files that idea away for later consideration.

Okay, so mounting a third gun at the waist isn't a good idea. What about mount the third cannon on the shoulder maybe?

Eh... okay that's better. But still not what I want. So I kept tinkering around in photoshop and decided rather then having the Great cleaver be it's own physical weapon, I'll mount a saber under each of the cannons and just have it count as great cleaver. Which brought me to this design approach:

It was also at this point that I started looking at the Hades gatling cannon and wondered if the sizing was actually going to mesh up with the shield like it looked like it did in the photoshoped image.

As you can see by the comparison of the size of the cannon to my fingers it's a pretty beefy muther. So it did look like it would fix. But of course the real test comes when you apply the saw to the piece and actually fit it to the shield. So end result?

Yeah it fits pretty darn well. I took a chaos star icon and added some detailing to the edges of the shield. I'm not going for a full out total conversion to chaos with this, rather a Chaos Aligned sort of look. This is after all a Dark Adeptus machine before it is a Chaos War Machine. The rest of the Hades cannon amounted to assembling the back section of the rapid fire battle cannon.

The next challenge came from the Chain Saber and was two fold. Firstly the Knight Titan kit has a fair amount of  imperial Iconography on it in the form of surface details made out to be the Imperial Aquial, Renaissance era style detailing, and other such material. Again this machine is meant to be a fresh built unit, not a captured or converted one. So I had to take that detail off. This was a rather tedious process as it required me to come in with an exacto blade and do lots of shallow carving passes to cut away the Imperial details being extremly careful to not cut off the raised armor edging. In many cases I then had to come back and, using a plastic scribing tool, carve in a panel separation that had previously been hidden by the surface details.

Here you can see an example of the armor plates with the ones on the left still with their surface details, and the ones on the right with the detail removed.  I had to perform this same operation to the sides of the Chain Saber.

The second challenge with the Chain saber was mounting it to the carriage of the Hades cannon. The top of the Chain saber is not actually flat, and like wise the shield the cannon is affixed to comes down nearly 4mm below the bottom of the cannon body. In order to address this I carved down the top of the Chain saber to give it a flat body, and then built a mount using a section of 1/4" squad styrene tubing. This gives it a good solid foundation for the Saber to mount to.

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Project: Chaos Knight of Blood Part 1

So I'm embarking on a big project. Well okay, another big project. This is a little different then my normal 'big projects' like the Epyon project for instance, which I need to get back to now that I think about it. Anyway, this project is for my Chaos Space Marine forces, I want to add something big to it. Like Lord of Skulls big, 'cept I hate the Lord of Skulls model. I really want a Knight titan, but I don't want to deal with the allies chart. I want something that I can have right next to my regular Chaos Marines and I don't have to worry about both of them standing around for a turn. So what's a converter to do? Oh right, he converts. In all honestly, my interest in under taking this project was truly sparked when I saw Virtual Strangers scratch built paper hammer Knight Titan over on In The Grim Cheapness. He did a really outstanding job on it and it's inspired me to add something on that scale to my own army.
 
So short version, I'm going to convert a Knight Titan into a Counts-as Lord of Skulls. This is a bit more involved then my normal projects so I really need to start out by getting some kind of visual approach down on paper for it. One thing I knew I wanted to do with was I wanted to have it's leg crushing down on something, something is normally fearsome and dangerous. A Carnifex seems to fit that bill. I also wanted the finished model to have the same number of weapons as the Lord of Skulls. This was a little tricky since the Knight titan has 2 big weapons while the Lord of Skulls has 3. I also knew I wanted to have this model mounted on one of the Goth Tech bases from Dragon Forge designs, so that it would fit the base themes with the rest of my army.

So the first thing I needed to do was to put some digital pen to paper and get a better idea of what I was going to do. With a $115 for the basic kit before I get anything else this would be an expensive project to have an "Oh, that won't work that way" result come up. So went to the Games Workshop website and grabbed a couple images of the Knight Titan and the Carnifex and dropped them into Photoshop. After a little tinkering and moving around, I came up with this:

So I'm going to convert 2 weapon arms, one will be the Hades Gatling cannon while the other will be the Gorestorm cannon. Mounting a Chain Saber under each gun will allow the pair of them to count as the Great Cleaver of Khorne. The other thing I want to do is I want to wire up some lights in this thing so it's eyes will glow red. But there's a sub-point to that statement: I want the eyes to glow, but I don't want them to have lights in them. There is a difference though it is a subtle difference. I don't want to have a pair of LEDs sitting behind the mask putting the light out. I want to have the light glowing from back in the head. So to accomplish this I'm going to pass segments of fiber optics up into the back of the head. I'm hoping this will allow the light be brought up to the head, but disperse in the eye sockets giving it a more sinister look. Now powering an LED requires... well power. Which in this case means a battery. So I will need to add a spacer of some form to the bottom of the base to provide space for the battery pack and switch.

Stay tunes for updates.

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Project brief: King Ghidorah HelDrake

As I said in the post about the Nurgle Mecha-fly, I truely dislike the HelDrake model. And like the Nurgle Mecha-fly I discovered a bit of inspiration for a new HelDrake conversion, though this bit of inspiration did come from a... somewhat different source then the last one. This source of inspiration... well was Godzilla. Yeah I'm a Godzilla fan, but seriously is anyone even remotely surprised by that? So am I going to build a Godzilla style HelDrake? Well.. not exactly. Rather, I'm looking at this guy:

So for the Kaiju fans out there, yes this is King Ghidorah. Arguably Godzilla's archenemy. His origin has varied from series to series, ranging from being a Space Dragon under the control of Aliens, to being the deliberate development of time travels to being an immature Tiamat Dragon. Origins aside, I like the three headed Dragon and I want to build a HelDrake inspired by him.

So what am I planning on doing? Well obviously I'm going to need 3 heads and necks. The larger wings without a question. The tail... that one I'm a little less certain about. In order to accommodate the scale and size, think I'm going to use the the body from a Forge Fiend. In order to get the curved necks into it, I will have to completely scrap the neck from the kit itself and build a series of 3 new ones. But I think I know how I'm going to do that.

It all starts with a length of wire coat hanger that's been built into the approximation of the curve of the neck in question (how often is it I have to take about more then 1 neck?). Anyway, starting with a length of wire coat hanger that's been cut to the desired length. I can then attack wooden/plastic balls of the appropriate diameter to one end of each section. This will give me a foundational armature to build up the rest of the neck around. I can then build up the details of the neck by laying in lengths of cable and wires and the like. Once I have the wires and such down and secured, I can come back with either stripes of kneadite or maybe strips of styrene and afix them around the wires and cables. With those in place, I think I can fashion a series of armor plates from styrene and then affix those over the back of the neck. With the plates in place I can cap off the entire neck with a second ball of the needed size.

Actually, this might make more sense. It is a little animation I put together showing what I am talking about.

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Chaos Rapier platform

So the Hades autocannon and EctoPlasm cannons, yeah those are real nice options for fire power. Putting them on a daemon that's BS3... eh. Putting them on a daemon that's 175 points... yeah. It can work, but with the release of IA13 from Forge World there is a better option. And that's the Chaos Rapier heavy weapons platform. So I'll just hop right over to the Forge World website and order a set of three of 'em for... $120. Ouch for $30 more I can get a Spartan assault tank. So the Rapier is a bit cost prohibitive. At least the official model for on is anyway. Well I was skimming over some images and I happened across the Taurax for the Astra Militarium and I noticed something.

The treads on it are fairly small. It got me thinking, maybe I can take those, turn them upside down and build a platform between then to mount the weapons on. So I quickly ordered a set of the treads from a Bitz Seller to give it a shot. Well, sadly they are not assembled the way I thought they were. See, I had originally thought it was something like the Rhino Chasis where you laid the treads down and then had a section that covers the treads. Well... that not how these are built. The tread mounts themselves including the covers on top are 2 halves that join together. The respective treads then attach to those halves. So.. yeah. Can't do what I originally thought I would be able to do.

But, didn't give up. If I can't turn the treads upside down and build a rapier maybe I can just build the platform with the treads right side up. Which, I think I did pretty well:

I used 2 sections of 1/4" styrene square tubing to build a base connecting the two tread units. This gave me a foundation to build the rest of the platform from. To help with the detailing some I used a section of diamond tread plate on the standing ramp. I then came back in and edged it out with some 1mm striping to the edges around the diamond plating. This give the platform a much more solid and rugged look to it. A fitting appearance when you realize these things are meant to mount heavy weapon systems.

In order to allow me to swap weapons on it I put a magnet on the base. You can just see it in that first image. As long as I put a matching Magnet in the weapon itself, I can just swap the weapons. God I love magnets some days. For instance I used an extra Ectoplasma cannon, added some styrene mounting to it and then placed a magnet in it.

I had to shave down the sides of the cannon and remove some details. Like there's no space to accommodate the tubing that run along the sides of the cannon. I built a quad heavy bolter by taking 2 pairs of the Dark Angles Twin-linked heavy bolters and affixing them atop of one another.

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Something gribbly...

I've made no secret of my disdain for the HelDrake model, here after to be referred to as the 'Helturkey'. It's always struck as being 2 half thoughts that were mashed together into one model, and with neither idea flushed out leaving us with this... half formed, incoherent... thing with wings and a mouth. It's kind of a dragon... sort of, but it's a fighter... 'cept it's not. Yeah, I just can't stand it. So I've been very keen any time I heard "HelDrake conversion".

I found one super great example of a HelDrake conversion that was just a home run for me. It was such a well thought out conversion that is perfectly executed to the model. It was done by a member of the DakkaDakka community who goes by the screen name of GuitaRasmus. He doesn't open many threads, rather continually updating one thread with whatever he's working on. He's got some really amazing conversions, but his Nurgle fly buzzer thing, that he built before the release of the HelTurkey mind you, is what caught my eye.

Built from a conversion based around the Warhammer fantasy battles Arachnarok Goblin monster, it's a flipping daemonic mecha-fly of chaos! It looks utterly creepy and disgusting! Both big pluses. As soon as I saw this I was like "I WANT ONE!!!!" So I've started work on my own Mecha-Fly.

Here you can see the slightly converted Arachnarok model. The body and head are all standard built from the kit. The legs I had to shave down the locking stubs in order to reposition them. But honestly, that's the extent of the conversion at this stage. I am debating about getting a second set of mandibles and affixing them to the lower section of the mouth area, just to give it a sort of Prederish look and to help carry the 'Warp Spawnedness' of the monster.

The rotors were an interesting challenge. I wanted to get the same circular fan blade sort of look that GuitaRasmus did on his model. Thankfully GuitaRasmus did provide a partial explanation of how he went about making his. So I was able to use that information and then extrapolate out from there. I started with cutting a circle of styrene that was slightly less then 1 1/2" across. I then cut out a second one. I then measured out 6 points around the perimeter of the circle at equal-distant points. I used the second circle to mark out curved lines from the center the circle to each of the points. I then repeated the process with the second circle using the first as a guide. I then cut out each of the 12 blades. I glued 2 panels together to form each individual blade. Once I had the blades made I was able to affix them to a length of styrene rod.

For the rotor housing, I used 1 1/2" PVC tubing. I just cut off the junction pieces and used those as the actual housing. I mounted a section of styrene plate to the side of each of these. I had to use a rasp to gouge up the space on the pvc to give the super glue something to adhere to, so once I had the space prepared just a couple drops of super glue was all it took to hold the plate in place. From there I used a pin vice to drill out 2 holes and essentially pin using 2 lengths of styrene rod. This was all in preparation for mounting these rotor assemblies on cut down defiler arms.

Here is an image of the model with the rotor housing mounted on the defiler arms, which are in turn mounted on the body of the Arachnarok. In order to secure the arms to the body I had to go a couple levels of crazy with pinning. I used a series of 8 pins in each joint and then used plasti-weld cement to fuse the plastic of the Arachnarok body to the base of the armatures from the defiler. And even then, I used a drop of super glue to help

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I bring the blessings of the Plague father!

So I've had a Forge World Mamon Nurgle Daemon Prince sitting on my project shelf for... waaay longer then I'd care to admit to. So I've had some time lately, I'm waiting for some materials to arrive to continue working on the stuff for the Apoc game I'm hosting in a few weeks.So with that extra time I've been working on various projects that have been sitting on my shelf. The Nurgle Daemon prince is one such project.

I got this guy as part of a warhammer lot I won on Ebay a few years ago. It wasn't a model I actually wanted, or has explicitly been seeking by bidding on the lot. I'm a bitz monkey. I admit it. The lot had mostly been random bits. $50, and I got like a 10 pound bag of bits and parts. The majority of the parts to build this bloated disgusting mound of rotten filth was among them.

Forge world Daemon Prince of Nurgle.

This is actually a really fun model to paint, it's just so crammed full of details and I don't just mean it's well scultped, but it has lots of extra visual appeal if you are interested in taking note of it.

The Toes of the Nurgle Daemon prince

Each of it's toe nails are visible and with some coloring make an outstanding addition to the model. Here I used some Ushabti bone shaded with several layers of Adrax Earth shade. This gives the toe nails this ugly infected yellowish coloring to it.

There are several Nurglings on the model and they add a lot of little character to it. I'm tempted to go back and sculpt a pair of sun glasses on this one. he just looks like he would be chillin on the shoulder.

The tank of sludge and ooze is great. There's the pair of Nurglings that look like they're just hanging out at the water park, complete with dissolving skull pool toys.

I did apply some creative effects to the model in the form of slim and ooze dripping down the body and hanging off the gun barrels.

This is actually a modified effect I picked up from SchnauzerFaceMinis painting tutorials, specifically the Death Wing Terminator. In that tutorial he used a rubber cement colored with a paint to achieve a congealed blood effect. I took the same trick and swapped the red paint with a bright green to get this putrid slim effect.

In this case I used the X-15 bright green from Tamiya to color the Uhu rubber cement. Once the glue was colored, I used a bit of scrap styrene to apply it to the model.

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Chaos revisited

So I've been thinking about starting a Chaos Space Marines army lately so I've been cruising a lot of blogs and sights that talk about the Chaos Space Marine codex. Surprise surprise (Well okay not really a surprise) there's a lot of talk about how bad the codex is. You get that with pretty much any codex out there and Codex Chaos Marines is no exception. For the most part I ignore it and read what, if anything, else the article has to say. Found some interesting lists and thoughts. Then I went to check my blog roll and I was checking out a post by Virtual Stranger over on the Grim Cheapness where he was talking about embarking on a new project to build a paper hammer knight titan and then to make it Chaosy... you know because Chaos gets crap extras. He had a link to a blog run by a friend of his that explained the point of Chaos getting crap. Out of mild curiosity I followed it and checked it out. It's the standard "This is why Chaos Space marines" suck start but he did something most other people I've seen haven't done: Made reasonable suggestions as to what to do in order to address the issues raised and then explained his reasoning for those points. And there wasn't anything terribly radical about his suggestions and they didn't revolve around "World Eaters should have this" or "I can't make an Emperor's Children army because of that" either which was a real surprise. Anyway, check it out. I won't re-post what he's already gone over.

What I will do is talk about what I did with the information he posted. I took his suggestions, grabbed a digital copy of the Chaos Codex, grabbed some additional art work, loaded them into Photoshop and went to work to craft a revamped army list using the information that Marcus the Blackheart posted. So I present to you the army list for revamped Codex: Chaos Space Marines! Right click and select "Save as" to download.

the revamped Codex: Chaos Space Marines.

Basically the pages in this file would replace the HQ, Elites and Troops section from the normal Chaos Space Marines codex.

The only thing from Marcus' suggestions that I changed was I created a new unit, Chaos Legionaries. Basically, these are Marines who have been around since the heresy but don't fall into the category of being Cult marines, or Chosen. They're still more or less what they were when they were part of their respective legion.

I haven't had the chance to start play testing the changes yet, but I'm gonna try once I get the Chaos Models to put on the table. In the mean time, if any of you want to give it a whirl and post your thoughts on the changes here, I whole-heartedly encourage you to do so. Rest assured I will read the comments and take them into consideration when and if I make any edits to the file.

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The Perfect Space Wolf insult

This is an idea I originally came up a couple years ago for a counts as Thousand Sons unit. The idea is pretty straight forward: Enemy marines that have been captured have been handed over to the Dark Mechanicum and converted into combat servitors. Then in agreement with their Chaos Marine allies, they lead units of these lobotomized marines into combat. The AP 3 bolters is explained by saying they are using Vengence rounds in the bolters while the 5+ invulnerable is explainable by saying they use some sort of force field when in combat.

I sold the original servitor-wolves a while back when I sold my last Chaos army. But I'm starting another one and the whole servitorized captured space wolves that count as thousand sons.... god I just love that irony, I'm putting models of the space wolves on the table that count as thousand sons all it really needs is for them to be lead by a Dark Angels Librarian (hmmm....).... anyway. Sorry ADHD kicking in there. I really love this idea so I'm revisiting it. Last time I got hung up on the counts as aspiring sorcerer model. Well I think I've got it hammered out:

The Adept of the Dark Mechanicum counts at an aspiring Sorcerer.

The mecha-axe is way bigger then I originally thought it would be, but after building the model and looking at it I've found I like it more like this. Gives this look of an over-burdened menial level worker. Like he pissed off his magos so he got assigned to lead the combat servitors into battle in agreement with whatever Chaos lord we're serving this week.

"But master, I am no warrior. I have no weapons." he pleads.

"Error! Condition: No weapons. Rectified." The Dark Magos tones in his digital logic influenced speak as he shoves the Atomic Glave at the menial.

"But... my lord... I can not wield such a weapon." The menial whines.

"Statement: Unable to wield weapon. Condition: True. Subject: Verehnass Omicron Psi 91168. Conclusion: Learn. Communication status: Terminated!" The Dark Magos replies coldly.

Anyway, the model itself is based on the Cairn Wraith model, though it's been rather extensively modified. The only parts from the model I actually used were the cloak and skull face. Everything else was added. I stuck a big wad of Green stuff into the empty cavity to give me a body to work with. Then I took a pair of mechanical legs from Anvil Industries Bionic Legs set and cut the legs from the groin and use wire to mount the legs into the green stuff. I had to cut and chop down the length of the cloak on the model to allow it to accommodate the fact that it's not going to be floating any more. Once the legs where mounted I went to work on the mecha-dendrites. I used a set of Servo Skulls from Forge World  and added the small tools to the end of the tubing I got from Dragon Forge Design. Bending the tubing proved to be a new exercise for me. I used a series of pen bodies, and tool handles of various sizes to provide a form to bend the cables around that way it would 'coil' as opposed to bend. For the left hand... er.... thing, I decided to go with something a bit different and took a small section of medium sized tubing, drilled out a hole in the center of the tubing and glued in a set of three segments of small wire. My intent was to make it look like the adepts hand disassembled and this data connection/micro manipulator/whatever extended out of his wrist. Not sure I succeeded or not.

The weapon was a whole different ball game. I got the axe it self from Max Mini's Steam Punk weapons line, cut down the length of the shaft to better accommodate the size of the model and went to work on the head (jesus that sounds like a lead in for a bad porno). The Emitter Matrix is made from a cut down section of a Necron sniper rifle and then attached to the back of the axe head.

Wow, I just listed off parts that I got from 5 separate companies. I gotta say that kinda surprises me. Anyway, I'm gonna try and base it later today.

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Egyptian Deamon Prince

So, Army builder attention deficient disorder kicking in again. I was surfing around the net and happened upon an image that just hit my mind with an instant "OHH!" Must make that as a daemon prince!"

Genzomans awesome Anubis!

The image is of the Egyptian god, Anubis. If you're interested in checking out more work from him, I would strongly advise you to check out his deviant art page. But wait! Deamon Princes basically HAVE to have wings to be useful in the game. Anubis doesn't have wings. So what do I do? Add wings? Eh... no. not so much. I had a different idea:

So I built a sort of floating base that will be mounted on a flight stand. 3 layers of insulation foam glued together and then carved down forms the basis of the base.

I applied a layer of sheet styrene with a tile etched pattern on it to the top of the foam, making this look like the Daemon used a spell or power of some form to raise up a portion of the ground he was standing on.

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