Return to Project thunderhawk

So, who remembers project Thunderhawk? Yeah I know, it's been close to 18 months since I posted about it. what can I say, between my Army Builder attention deficit disorder, school, work, family, and medical stuff my brain tends to jump a lot. It's just the way I am. Anyway, with this years apoc game behind me I decided to return to project Thunderhawk at least for the immediate time being. I still have a great many other projects I'm working on, not the least of which is Codex: Chaos.

So Project Thunderhawk. Last time I talked about this I was talking about casting the parts for the thunderbolt fighter. A year later I haven't gotten any better with that and with my current financial situation I have not the means to practice at my disposal. So that has annoyingly been put on hold. Which is a bit of an upset because with the plastic thunderbolt I was building and the paper-hammer version I had built previously I was moving closer toward having a full flight of Thunderbolts. Be really fun to be put a flight of 6 Thunderbolts on the table for a future Apoc game. Well, may still happen one day, but not just yet.

Returning to the Thunderhawk I actually started with the upper cannon housing first. This is largely an arbitrary choice because of how the template is setup.You could very easily break the finished model down into 8 seperate parts that you could start on and work on in virtually any order and only need to make extremely minor changes to your project plan to accommodate the changes. The wings, the main body, the forward section, the upper cannon housing, and the forward stabilizers are each separate sections of the template So the upper canon housing seemed like a good enough place to start while still having to work with some of the electronics I had previously talked about doing.

So I constructed the upper cannon housing using .4mm thick sheet styrene over a support structure of 1/4" thick hollow square tubing. here is the end result:

Fairly good work here if you don't mind the self congratulations. The only part I'd do differently if I did this again is the vent stack covers. I made them too tall.

Now, there's not much point in building a cannon housing if you don't have a cannon is there? Well I'm working on that too:

The Turbo Laser Cannon for the top of the Thunderhawk

Building the Turbo Laser has been a bit more of a challenge then it first seemed it would be. See money is an issue right now so I'm trying to do as much of this with out buying anything as I can. Basically what I have on hand right now. So while I had the material to the build the mount housing at the base of the cannon, and I had the materials to build the cannon barrel... mating the two parts was a bit more of a challange. Basically I had piping that was 1.8mm  on the inner diameter that I used for the cannon housing, and I had piping that was 1.4mm on the outer diameter which is the cannon barrel basically.  So I had .4mm of space to fill across a depth of 3.5cm. Well I think I got it settled moderately well. Basically I used stacks of .2mm thick styrene to build 3 stacks that I then glued around the base of the cannon barrel and then used those stacks to fill the space between the cannon barrel and the cannon housing.And then I went back in and filling in the forward most space with green stuff. I'll see need to go back and add on a bunch of detail on the cannon and the mount for it. The hydralics for it, the additional bracing, the bolts, ect.

How I mounted the cannon in the housing.

I also worked on the electronics for this part as well. I installed a 1cm yellow LED on the housing where the cannon will mount and then wired in the switch. I installed the monetary switch in the upper housing so that way the cannon will light up as long as I push the button.

I had a bit of a happy accident of sorts when I was working on the cannon. See the Cannon has a sort of recoil suppressor or something on the end of the barrel, and I didn't have a section of tube small enough to accommodate this so I used a length of clear pen tube body for it. The happy accident? The suppressor glows yellow when the light is applied to it.

If I had know the pen body collected light like that I would have used a red LED instead of the yellow one. Oh well, next time I guess.

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So what did I learn from the Apoc Game?

So I finished the Apoc Game and it was a lot of fun, but there were several problems that came up during the game. Not being any sort of a negative nanny or anything here, but I do feel the issues I encountered are worth noting, and like wise I feel these issues should be shared along with my thoughts on them so that others may benefit from my efforts both positive and negative.

A points disparity between the teams. This was a huge issue as 36 hours before the game one team was estimated to having 56,000 points and the other team having 58,000 points. With the 12500 points worth of units I was bringing everything looked like it was a set to have a really great 120,000 point battle. And then we had some people drop out bringing one team to a near crippling 32,000 points compared to the other teams 58,000 points. I handed the lower team everything I had but one person really can't be expected to make up nearly 20,000 points worth of models in an army.

So for next year I think I will put a max-points cap on each team, say 30,000 points. And then break down on a per-player basis. So let's say each team has 10 players. That means each person would be individually responsible for bringing 3,000 points to the battle. If the respective warmasters for the team wants to change this break down so that something unique can be brought to the table, they would be able to do so, one person only brings 1,500 points while another brings 4,500 for instance so that second person can bring 3 Thunderhawks or something of that nature.

Another big problem I ran into was with the tables. I had the tables set up in a sort of 'U' shape, that way people could use the length of the table as the battle field. Well, nice idea... in theory. In practice it lead to horrible bottle necking. On one table there was this huge cathedral terrain piece that basically blocked half the width of the board forcing the invaders army to progress down one side of the 4' wide board. On the other section, the invaders army stalled against the defenders as the units in the front simply didn't move beyond the engagement.

I'm not totally sold on this plan just yet, but it has sufficient merit to it that it's worth serious consideration. I'm thinking of setting the tables up as 3 rows, each row being 24' long by 4' wide, placing rulers/meassuring tapes of some form along the edges of the board, and just assuming that there is no gap between the boards. Like this:

And then for the actual game it would be played long ways. There's also been a suggestion to put the defenders in the middle of the middle board and give them a 4' x 12' deployment area and have the invaders deployed around that area with a 12" no-mans land between them. Like I said, not totally sold on the idea just yet, but am considering it.

Another problem I had was the sewers. Yeah, they were a great idea and the finished product looked really good, but those were honestly the high points of the sewers. That they looked good and were an interesting idea. Here I think my original idea of having multiple levels and dozens of pipes through out the board would have saved the map. As it were, the sewers just created a bottle neck in the 2 cross overs and that bottle was plugged by 30 terminators. For next year I'm looking at options and idea for multiple levels to the sewers and having larger utility rooms and spill ways and the like.

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post Apoc game report

Well... that was a helluva game! Lots of prep work, lots of great fun. Was great to get to see a god damned Ork GREAT GARGANT on the table! What? Don't beleive me? You want pics? Here they are!


One of the things I love about Apocalypse games is the diversity of them. A lot of times I see people talking about trying this different mission or using these special scenario and the usual response is something to the tune of "But then my [insert unit name] won't be effective" or something, so I don't get to see a lot in the way of non-special scenarios around here. With an Apoc game, since there's so much on the table, people are more willing to roll with basically anything at anytime.

In this game I threw a couple extras into it. The first thing I did was I included a War Wall, yes a WAR WALL! Not like the little tiny 4" tall castle wall either, no with the help of a friend I put a massive 12" tall war wall on the table! Yes, 12 inches tall! You want to get over this thing you're going to be flying! Period. You're going to be deep striking units, or running them in Storm Ravens or you're going to have jump pack troops starting their 12" move at the very base of the wall!

The War wall spanned 24 feet of table.

Second thing I did was a multi-board layout. In this particular case the second board was actually a sub-board and was meant to represent the sewers running under the edge of the city wall which the main board represented. These tight confined spaces were limiting to what units could operate down there. Can't fit a leman russ in the pipe? Can't use it down there. Had a scene were a single heavy flamer took out 5 Ork Nobs in a single blast.

The Sewers

I added a more themed objective in the form of a Bulk lander that was evacuating civilians. The Short version is the defenders would be able to earn 2x the turn number worth of victory points when they launch the lander. So if they launch the lander on Turn 4 they would get 8 victory points. But there are 2 'ifs' attached to this objective. Firstly the ship has to be able to fuel up, so they need to hold the Fuel depot. Secondly, a bulk lander isn't meant for combat. Compared to... well to any sort of combat vehicle is is extremely frail and easily destroyed. If the Invaders were able to destroy the lander they would get 3x the current turn worth of victory points, so if they destroy the lander on turn 3, the invaders would get 9 victory points. If the invaders destroyed the fuel depot then the defenders could only ever 2x the turn the fuel depot was destroyed in. So if the invaders destroyed the fuel depot in turn 2, and the defenders launched the lander in turn 3, the defenders would get 4 victory points. Not 6. Lastly I built the Orbital Defense Laser complex.

I wasn't really happy with the end result of the orbital lander.

Over all the game went very well and there are several things I learned from my prior apoc game I hosted last year. One of the big things I did that really helped me avoid some problems was being exceedingly clear about times and schedules. I told everyone, repeatedly that the game would begin at 11:00 am. I actually said "That means you have your models ready to be put on the table in your deployment zone. Not 'I'm turning onto the road leading to the shop at 11:05am and can then figure out my list when I get there.' start at 11:00am." I went a step further and established that if people were late, their forces would be put in reserves and the earliest they could bring their forces in would be turn 2, which was scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm. This helped get people there and prepared to start the game at the listed time.

The other thing I did that helped move the game along was setting a time limit of 60 minutes per turn. Period. If you didn't get to the assault phase by the end of 60 minutes, sorry. This really helped to force the teams to actually carry out their actions and not waste time.

There were lots of great scenes through out the game.

Ghazgul goes to meet the Emporers Champion in combat!

The Wall of Stompa march forward.

Warmaster of the Invaders Seth expresses his dislike of heavy flamers.

One of the best occurances of the game came in the 2nd turn, when an Ork Stompa using it's Lifta Droppa picked up a Land Raider Crusader, one filled to the brim with Black Templar mind you, and then dropped it on top of a Baneblade effectively knocking both out of the game for a turn.

I took over 200 pictures from the game and I can't possibly post all of them, so I will simply post this link to the photo bucket album.

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Down to the wire...

So... that Apoc game is in 6 days. I am down to the wire, rushing to get everything done and ready for that. I wonder if I had started working on the stuff earlier would I still be rushing around like I am to get everything ready for it. Yeah, I probably would be. So yeah. Getting ready for the apoc game so not going to be posting for the immediate future but you can look forward to the awesomeness of an Apoc battle! So stay tuned.

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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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Preperations continue

Wow, less then 1 month until the Apoc game! And my preparations continue for it! Still have a lot of work to do for it. Right now I'm focusing on the Orbital Defense Laser. I've posted images of that previously, but now I'm working on the rest of the building itself. I know I haven't posted much to explain what the intended end result will be, so let me do that:

This is a digital render of the building design. Obviously the hemisphere on the top of the building is meant to represent the Laser cannon I had been building. So I took a half ball from the design, and turned out this:

Well actually that, and this:

So now that I have the cannon itself built, I need to build the rest of the complex. So, where am I going with that?

Well I have part of it built:
Still have a lot of work to do on it, but it is taking shape.

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cannon nearing completion

So got the Orbital defense laser cannon mostly built. Not finished with the over all project, I still need to build the rest of the building that's going to mount the cannon, but the cannon itself is mostly built:

The Defense laser cannon

I have managed to build the platform for the cannon mounting. The platform itself is comprised of 6 lengths of sheet styrene cross mounted so that 3 lengths went one direction while the other three are laid over top in a perpendicular direction.The tiles are then laid ontop of that platform. I've braced the bottom with 1/4" square styrene and that helps the platform maintain it's strength and support the cannon. I'm going to edge the platform in the Games Workshop city of Death fence parts which you can see the corner of already on there.

And then there's the cowling for the cannon mount itself. The cowling is made from one half of a hamster ball with various pieces attached to it to suggest that it's more then... well... half a hamster ball.

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Preparing for apocalypse

So the clock is ticking as I continue to get ready for that Apocalypse game I'm hosting next month. Still have a lot of work to do but right now I'm focusing on building the Orbital Defense Laser for the game. I got the majority of the Cannon itself built today:

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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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Well here I am

Greetings once again all. So some good news/bad news time. Since I prefer the approach of "Bad news first that way the good news sounds that much better" I'm gonna start with with that.

I lost my regular job, yeah the one where I made about $2k a month.

I wasn't fired, the company went through a re-org to stream line a lot of things and my position was one of the ones that got eliminated. Because of my pay rate at the time I wasn't able to take any of the job openings at the time with out a major pay cut and the company was obligated to offer me the same pay rate I was presently getting. So why pay a guy $2k a month to do a job when we can pay someone else $1250 a month to do the exact same job? Yeah, I can't say I fault them. Given the situation I would likely have made the exact same choice. So since I was laid off, as opposed to terminated, I got a pretty nice severance package so I'm not exactly hurting in the money department right now. But I am without regular income. I still have my side jobs and free lance work so I have money coming in, but yeah.

So what's the good news? Got more time for my hobby stuff. Which is kind of a good thing actually because I'm coming down to the wire on getting ready for the Apocalypse game. I've been working with a friend to get the large scale terrain materials completed but her schedule and mine hadn't been syncing up terribly well previously do to school and work between the two of us. But with my schedule freeing up the way it has been it makes it easier to sync up now. I've still got a fair amount of work to do on the terrain. The war wall needs to be finished being built and then painted, the orbital defense laser needs to be built and painted, the orbital lander like wise needs to be built and painted. The annoying problem with these projects is that there are sections where all you can do is wait for the glue to dry. And by large sections I mean like 1-2 days. So yeah... makes it interesting.

Now, has you all know I have an incredibly bad case of ADHD when it comes to projects so yes I will be working on the stuff for the apoc ga... SQUIRREL!

Sorry what was I saying? Oh right, what I'm working on.

Well a while back I did a HelBrute conversion with a Twin-linked Lascannon. You'll remember that this was back when all we really had was the HelBrute from the Dark Vengeance set. And then later I rebuilt another Helbrute to have two power fists. Well I've been working on painting them. Oh and the standard HelBrute from the DV kit as well. I mostly finished the Dark Vengeance Helbrute already, minus the tentacles on the side that is.

The Dark Vengeance HelBrute in Crimson Slaughter Colors

I need to get a good base color for purple on the tentacle. Surprise surprise I don't have one. But with that one largely done I was ready to start on the other two:

The three Crimson Slaughter HelBrutes!

The other two helbrutes are only base colored so far but I am working on them in spurts.

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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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The Servo-Skull tape meassure

So I've been working on the Servo-Skull tape measure a bit today. Work has been taking precidence lately so I haven't had much time to work on 40k material but I've been able to squeeze an couple hours to at least get a base coat and layer down for the skull:

The servo-skull

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Battle Scenes: Blood Ravens vs Chaos Demons

I got a 2k point game in against a guy I met at Game Vault named Matt. He was running a Khorne centered list of Chaos demons with Chaos Space Marine allies. It was the first time I've faced off against a Demons army. I gotta say that is one jacked up army. Every turn he had to roll for some effect on some table. Needless to say it's an army I won't be touching anytime soon for that reason. Might do some of the models, but not gonna play the army itself. But managed to get some in-game shots from the game.

Challenge accepted!

I was trying out a new combo of wargear and units. In this particular case I took a chapter master on a bike with Teeth of Terra and Shield eternal and rather then taking 3 Iron Clad dreadnoughts I swapped for a bare bones predator and allies in the form of  2 squads of  counts as Imperial Fist Stern Guard Death Watch with a Watch Captain (In the form of Pedro Kantor). 

The chapter master just outright messes with units in Close combat. Sending him in solo he get +D3 attacks, which quit nicely makes up for the lack of extra attacks due to carrying the Shield Eternal which in turn gives him a 3+ invulnerable with eternal warrior. Oh and Chapter Masters have 4 wounds. You're not taking him down fast in a normal game.

I did make a couple mistakes with him, like forgetting the +D3 attacks for 2 rounds of combat, and also I forgot that because I was running him with White Scars chapter tactics, he gets hit and run. That could have seriously changed the course of the game.

The Chapter Master continues to cleave through the Khorne Hound unit.

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Repainting a tool

Okay so I lost my tape measure sometime before last Thursday and I had to buy one at the shop at the last minute. All the store had in presently was one of those Servo-skull looking Tape measures Games Workshop releases with the release of 6th Ed. I never much cared for those ones, but I had little choice so I bought it. While I played the game with it I got more and more annoyed with the coloring of it. So I resolved to dismantle it, stripe it, and paint it to look more like... well like a servo skull. So Here we go:

Got it dismantled:

I had it mounted on some cork board and got it primed today. I was going to take a picture of it, but the black primer made it really hard to see details of any kind. So I didn't take a picture of that. In place of it, see a picture of it assembled after being primed black:

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A Son of Titan

So I'm working on a new project. Yes yes yes, my ADHD is kicking in of late. In the last week I've done an Eldar Phoenix Lord Conversion, was working on painting a DeathWatch detachment while converting a DeathWatch dreadnought, and painted a unit of Ultramarine Terminators after converting them from the Dark Vengeance set. So yeah, it's not stopping today.

A while back I was checking out MiniWar Gaming's Painting a Grey Knight Dreadnight video, and I liked what they did with the base so I tried my hand at a similar base.

And then I started working on the actual Dread Knight. And of course I can't leave it at that.

I wanted to make the weapons swappable. So I turned to magnets once again. I had to be very very careful when drilling out the space for the magnets because the magnet itself is only slightly smaller then the shaft of the hands. if I drilled too far off center I would have ruined the piece. Not something I wanted to do.

In order to mount a magnet in the arm itself I had to get a bit creative as there's just an empty space in the arm. So what did I do? Added some green stuff.

I used a mass of Green stuff in the lower arm and then pressed the 2nd half of the arm into place till fill the void. Once the Green Stuff cured I went in and drilled a space for the accompanying magnets.

Now I have to wait for the Virginia weather to figure out what season it wants to give us before I can prime the model. You know, having snow coming down makes it a bit of a challenge to prime.

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Jain Zar!

So I ran across a partial conversion a while back where the converter had used the Lylith model as a base for an Eldar styled gladiator of some form. Looking at it I was struck by the fact that Lylith would make a great base for Jain Zar model. I was somewhat shocked to learn that the Jain Zar model hadn't been switched over to FineCast, yes it is still metal! Still, that worked out to my advantage somewhat:

Jain Zar! The Phoinex Lord of the Banshee!

So the first thing I did to create this conversion was I used instant mold to create a cast of the face and head of the Jain Zar. I didn't need a total cast, just of the mask and from of the hair. The rest I felt confident in being able to sculpt to match up with the details of the model.

While I waited for the instant mold to cool I worked on shaving down the spikes and more angular armor pads on the model to remove much of the Dark Eldar feel from the model. I then used a portion of green stuff to both cast up a green stuff copy of the face and fill in the sections on the segmented pads. This again helped to move the model away from its Dark Eldar origin and closer to the Eldar Phoinex lord I was aiming for.

With the mask casting cured I removed it from the mold and worked to cut away the extra material in the hair and neck of the cast. I just needed the mask itself. I used my dremal to shave down the face of the Lylith model and to carve out a section in the mask casting. Once I felt the mask would sit properly on the model I used some super glue to attach it.

From there it was a matter of re-sculpting to hair to go from the Mask to the hair plum for Lylith.

Here you can see how the mask joined with the head itself.

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