Monday, February 28, 2011

Chaos Portal

I've seen this sort of portal attempted a number of times -- it is simply the Warhammer Fantasy arcane ruins (in this case with pillars from the temple of skulls, I believe) with a portal attached to it.  The portal pictured here is a swirly sheet painted in purples and pink / reds.  Ideal for an objective for daemons or chaos space marines, or for locating a warp rift (etc.).

Saturday, February 26, 2011

What are embedded in plague marine shoulders?

These shoulder pads are from the Forge World conversion kit for plague marines.  The observant will notice that they contain three embedded spheres, each of which has holes in them.  They seem to be poking out of the shoulder pad, causing cracks where they protrude.

My question for today is this: what are they?!?!  I've seen them on other Death Guard related miniatures, such as Typhus, but I'm just not sure what they're supposed to be?  Nests for the destroyer hive critters?  Or something else?  Opinions welcome!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Wargames Gallery: Dragon Ogre Daemon Prince

About to face off against loyalist space marines derived from Guilliman's geneseed, the Dragon Ogre Shaggoth Daemon Prince prowls around the edges of a fortress of redemption.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Shambling Plaguebearer of Nurgle

This is a plaguebearer sculpt that I fondly refer to as the Shambler Model.  This particular chap has been base-coated with a semi-random blend of leathery yellows, browns and subtle greens.  Several washes of brown later, and the miniature's diseased flesh is brought together in to an unwholesome entity.  

As with many plaguebearers, this model has a variety of sores and pus-filled spots scattered over its body.  These have been variously picked out with reds, pinks, yellows and cream colours.  

Meanwhile, the chains and metallic portions are painted in a rusty bronze colour whilst the plaguesword is done in my odd blue colour to give him a sense of unity with the rest of the Nurgle outfit that I field.

The base has a mixture of fine black grit (dry-brushed in grey), with flock, scatter, and cast-off metal bits and hirst arts odds-and-ends.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Winner of the Feb 2011 Army List Challenge

Congratulations to David who is this month's Army List Challenge winner with a unique Tau plus Chaos Daemons list that gained 58% of the popular vote!

If anyone has exciting ideas that they'd like to see for an army list challenge in a future month, then drop me an email or leave a comment :-)

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Purple Horror of Tzeentch

I can't say that I'm a particular fan of the "beaks" on some of the new plastic horror models.  Sure, it looks Tzeentch-like and all mutation-esque, but I'm just not a fan.  I saw that some other painters approached them by painting them in metallic colours, and I've tried to follow-suit here.  I'm actually half-tempted to paint a free-hand stylized Tzeentch symbol on to the beak to make it a bit more unique looking.

The rest of the miniature is painted in varying degrees of purple to almost an off-red or magenta highlight colour, with a blue tongue.  The feathers were picked out with bleached bone and the accessories with gold paint.  The claws are two-toned, but I might experiment with starting with a darker colour for the next miniature.  

Friday, February 18, 2011

Zombie Bits Backpack for Plague Marines

In collecting Plague Marines for use in Chaos Space Marine and Death Guard armies, I can strongly recommend also purchasing a boxed set of warhammer fantasy zombies for conversion work.  A number of examples of the use of zombie parts can be seen throughout this blog (e.g. Plague Marine squad).

In this posting, I want to draw attention to the use of zombie parts for chaos marine backpacks.  This is a modestly simple conversion to execute and I think makes a plague marine stand out from their brethren more than usual. 

I've taken a standard chaos space marine backpack and lopped off the exhaust vents.  The struts that would normally support the vents have been completely removed and filed down. 

Using a pair of zombie hands (from the zombie standard), I have then attached (pinned to be precise) two hands where the struts were previously located on the backpack and glued the vents underneath them, suggesting that the hands are now the thing responsible for holding them.  I then attached some twisted wire to the terminus of the vents and connected them up with the body of the backpack (the yellow and silver painted portions dangling off the vents in the image).  As a final step, some grit (fine sand) was glued in to place around the edges of the backpack to make it more Nurglesque.

A variant of this is to turn the hands up-side-down so that the vents are held upward by the hands -- I've seen one person do this, but I think the downward hands looks better myself.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Daemonette in Purple Corset

Apart from having to paint intricate details on 28mm scale miniatures, there's very little not to like about corsets.  This daemonette is sporting the 2011 purple (mayhaps pink?) look, with some whiter highlights which really bring out her sharp white teeth and eye saucers... 

Having painted lots of these daemonettes now, I've found that I think bluer colours seem to work better for my painting style for these fashion accessories.

The hair was painted in a similar colour, with accents of pink, red and magenta showing through.  The base meanwhile is a blend of Hirst Arts bits with random metal off-casts, highlighted in an urban theme via some edge highlighting and drybrushing. 

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Planetary Empires: A pair of barren tiles

This pair of barren tiles (Planetary Empires) were painted in a grey waste theme - lots of different tones of greys, together with some yellow and brown accent colours (and on the rockier one) some darklighting to shade where the Sun might be pointing.  I'm particularly pleased with the blending achieved on the left hand tile -- the browns steadily grow in to one another in a very pleasing manner.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Poll Open for the Feb 2010 Army List Challenge

This month's army list challenge is a two horse race.  A poll has been opened in the column to the right.  The theme was to take on a daemon-corrupted Tau force, or design said corrupted force.  The poll will last one week and the entries are repeated below for review.

David (Tau plus Daemons):

HQ: Ethereal 50
HQ: Lord of Change – 230

ELITE: 3 x fireknife crisis suits, team leader with hard wired drone controller & 2 shield drones

ELITE: 4 Flamers - 140

TROOP: 12 Fire Warriors w/ Shasui – 130

TROOP: 10 Plaguebearers w/ icon & instrument – 180

TROOP: 10 Horrors w/ Bolt, Changeling - 185

FAST: 2 x blight drone – 250

HEAVY: Hammerhead w/ railgun, smart missile system, disruption pod, multi tracker

HEAVY: Soul grinder with phlegm, tongue – 185


Suneokun (Tau):

HQ: Shas'El, Air Fragmentation Projector, Flamer and Missile Pod, Stimulant Injector [136]

Elite: Crisis Team #1 [2]: Burst Cannon, Plasma Rifle, Multitracker, team leader, 2 gundrones [141]

Elite: Crisis Team #2 [2]: Flamer, Missile Pod, Multitracker, team leader, 2 gundrones [117]

Elite: Stealth Team [5]: with 3 gundrones [180]

Troops: Fire Warriors [9] in Devilfish (Multitracker, Disruption Pod, Fletchette Discharger, Sensor Spines [205]

Troops: Fire Warriors [9] in Devilfish (Multitracker, Disruption Pod, Fletchette Discharger, Sensor Spines [205]

Troops: Fire Warriors [9] [90]

Troops: Kroot [12] with 2 Kroot Hounds [96]

Fast Attack: Pathfinders [8] with Shas'Ui and Warfish (Smart Missile System, Fletchette Discharger, Multitracker, Sensor Spines, Targetting Array) [246]

Fast Attack: Piranha [1] with Targetting Array, Fusion Blaster, Disruption Pod and Fletchette Discharger [85]

Heavy Support: Broadsides [2] Targetting Arrays [160]

Heavy Support: Hammerhead (Railgun, Disruption Pod, Fletchette Discharger, Multitracker and Target Lock and Smart Missile System) [190]

Total:1755 (feel free to cut out 5pts from somewhere)...

This army is actually designed specifically for killing Tyranid/Deamon incursions and works wonders ... check out: http://pathfinder-devilin.blogspot.com/2010/04/batrep-1850-tau-v-chaos-deamons.html for an 1850pt massacre.

A reworking on the classic 'Fish of Fury'

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Feb Army List Challenge - Last Chance!

There's only one entry for the army list challenge this month -- can anyone make a competition of it and get their name added to the Hall of Fame?!


Can you design an army to take on a chaos-corrupted Tau Force?
Or perhaps you'd like to have a go at designing the chaos-corrupted Tau yourself?!


Thursday, February 10, 2011

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Dornian Heresy: Iron Hands

The unofficial background for Index Astartes: Iron Hands in the Dornian Heresy was written up and published by Bolter and Chainsword in late 2010.  To cut a long story short: the Dornian Heresy is an alternate reality timeline where the loyalist and traitor legion's affiliations have been inverted.  The Space Wolves shed blood and collect skulls for their Lord Khorne, whilst the World Eaters are the paragon of disciplined troops, loyal to the Emperor and on very friendly terms with the Emperor's Children legion.  If you haven't read the alternate reality background, then I'd encourage you to do so -- it is remarkable in a large number of ways. 

For the Iron Hands alternate history, Ferrus Manus slew Fulgrim and they went renegade.  But they're not truly renegade ... they just have a bit of a different idea about how to combat chaos than the Emperor has.  They want to upgrade (ascend?) humanity in to these metallic bodies they located on "tomb worlds" a while back.  By doing so, they will remove emotions from the weak, fallible human bodies and deny chaos their food stuff: strong, nasty emotions!  Perfectly logical, you see.  Just like a machine.  

In their research, they have mastered the phasing techonology of what was the necrons and adapted their Gauss weaponry.  And they're still modifying their own bodies, replacing parts with more reliable mechanical bits.  They're not ready to execute their master plan yet though. Only the very senior members of the Iron Hands have received the new metal bodies.  Most of the battered legion's clans still retain their power armour (etc.).

For a test miniature, I used a standard space marine torso, legs and back pack and combined them with a chaos space marine shoulder pad, necron gauss weapon and hands / lower arm (left arm) and a vehicle upgrade bit on the top of the back pack to give the suggestion of advanced and beyond-the-inert-imperium technology.  The head was chosen to be the bionic human head from the space marine kit.  I was toying with using a necron head, but the bionic head was much better suited to the background and the miniature.  The painting was relatively straight forward, with a standard approach to painting black, with silver edging around the shoulders.  I tried to add some green reflection from the gauss barrel on to the left forearm and the left hand side of the chest.  I'm not entirely convinced it works, but it's the first time I've thought about doing such an approach.  Finally, the base is one of the resin bases that I painted up some months earlier.  

Monday, February 7, 2011

Melbourne in Flames tournament sells out in under 35 mins

For those of you based in Australia, you're probably familiar (or at least have heard of) the Melbourne in Flames tournament -- arguably one of the larger ones (and most popular) run in the country. 

Tickets for this event went on sale over the weekend and were sold in in less than 35 mins! 

Good luck to those of you attending -- I was one of the ones who took more than 35 mins to attempt to purchase my ticket.  I wonder whether this argues that GenConOz should consider relocating from Brisbane?  I really enjoyed attending GenConOz in Brisbane when I was there, and it was really popular.  But I'm left wondering if it would be more commercially successful in Victoria?

Reminder for the Feb 2011 Army List Challenge

Entries are still welcome for the Feb 2011 Army List Challenge.
Can you design an army to take on chaos-corrupted Tau?
Or perhaps you'd like to have a go at designing the chaos-corrupted Tau yourself?!

Enjoy!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Pink Warp Rift Objective

This is the second of a series of objectives that I'm constructing for use with all types of my chaos armies.  The previous objective (a blue one) can be seen on this page.

As with the previous one, I've mounted the agate crystal slice on a 40mm base and used greenstuff (milliput in this case) with a liberal amount of superglue to fix it in to position. The base has had fine sand as well as larger stones from the 40k basing kit added to it.  A bit of drybrushing later, and the effect is complete.  I may add some further grass to this particular base just to contrast with the otherwise stony and urban decay feeling of the base.


Wednesday, February 2, 2011

On the Unholy Might Upgrade for Greater Daemons


All the greater daemons apart from Lords of Change can take the Unholy Might upgrade of 15 points (unless you're a Bloodthirster, or indeed a daemon prince, in which case you have to pay 5 more).  Having played with all variants of greater daemon, I'd like to suggest that the only one worth bothering with is the Bloodthirster.

Why?  Well, the Bloodthirster already has strength 7.  Increasing it to 8 means that it can be even more deadly to the best armour (e.g. landraiders) in the game.  By comparison, both Keepers of Secrets and Great Unclean Ones only(!) have strength 6 base.  Moreover, they both lack wings meaning that it is harder for them to apply the +1S bonus that unholy might brings.  This partially (maybe fully) explains why the unholy might upgrade is cheaper for the these two in comparison to the Bloodthirster.  Okay, so the Keeper can fleet and hit and run, but it still doesn't have wings!  And as for the Great Unclean One, well the slow and purposeful rule means that it probably won't go very far very fast (but it does have excellent staying power!).

Daemon princes are another category altogether.  With a comparatively poor base strength of 5, they're probably not worthwhile upgrading with unholy might given its cost.  The points are better spent toward wings for the daemon prince, or a 3+ armour save.

(The image is of my Realms of Chaos / Slaves to Darkness era reconstituted Keeper of Secrets).

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Feb 2011 Army List Challenge

In anticipation of the Grey Knights release later this year, here's a diabolical army list challenge for you to take on.  Can you create an effective and well-themed army list to take on a chaos corrupted Tau force?

Overview
A Lord of Change has corrupted a Tau Ethereal.  A whole Tau outpost has turned to chaos worship in fact.  Your army needs to take on these corrupted Tau.  The game is annihilation.  Your opposition consists of both Tau firepower and chaos daemons' notorious close combat abilities.  And the Tau have bunkers to hide inside as well.  And did we mention dark sorceries?

The army list challenge is to design a themed 1750 points army list to take on this challenge and destroy the corrupt Tau and their Warp allies.

Alternatively, if you have access to both the Tau and Chaos Daemons codex, then please feel free to create the corrupt Tau and daemons force(!)


Rules
(1) Design a 1750 points army list from any codex to take on this mission, or a 1750 point army consisting of both Tau & Chaos daemons (using a single force organisation chart between the two codexes) to represent the corrupt opposition forces.
(2) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why they're well suited to this mission. 
(3) Entries close at 01:00 GMT on Feb 14th. 
(4) On that same day, I'll open a poll for Warpstone Flux readers to judge which army list they consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.
(5) Winner will be tallied and announced on Feb 21st (and entered in to the hall of fame!).
(6) One entry per person please.

Remember that there are no prizes for these contests, beyond kudos, honour and entry in to the hall of fame.
Good Luck!
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