Black Templars Army

[Naglfar]

You sir, are a crazy bastard, and a lucky git to boot.

 

I too want relatives working at GW .. or do so myself .. T_T

 

About the tricky backside of the tabards. I paint my models mostly piece by piece, and assemble them as they are completed with some final brush strokes where I glued (and anywhere else I deem appropriate). Anyways, my point is: You could try snapping them off at the waistline and arranging some frame from sprues to hold them in position while you paint. (to avoid touching the model itself)

 

Example.

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/HieraLastStand/Sprueframe.jpg

(What's going to end up on the top of my banner)

 

This, of course will be a bit tricky if you have used a very strong and/or large amounts of glue.

[Bucky]

I love the big daddy!

[Amit]

My impatience often gets the better of me and I end up wasting time going back and fixing issues I could have avoided by spending the couple extra minutes planning before building.

 

You and me both mate ;)

[paulson games]

I like the idea of attaching the parts to a holder while painting, I've seen people also do that with a cork and blue tack or even pinning the parts with paper clips to hold while painting, I may try doing that. Problem is with the majority of the marines if that I build them with kazy glue super glue and that stuff does not let go, which is generally a good thing unless I want to change something later. I might be able to get the arms off the bolter squads but the torsos just won't budge as there's more glue on that connection than the arms.

 

BTW where's that bit from? it looks kinda like the one on teh templar sprue but is differant, looks cool.

 

A lot of the insanity of my build was more or less a direct result of being able to buy cheap bits/sprues. At the time my brother was working, GW employees could bitz order parts for 80% off the normal price, but the loophole in their system was that plastic sprues counted as bitz and so you could order an army worth of sprues for a fraction of what it should cost, also you could bitz order all the parts you needed for a complete model. However if you bought a box in store you "only" got 50% off. GW has since closed that loophole and prior to discontinuing the bitz service they'd changed the employee discount to a straight 50% off for both bits and boxes as too many employees were making out like bandits on bitz and then turning around and selling them online.

 

My brother has a truly insane bretonian army for fantasy, he bought 150 knights and around 100 pegasus knights that way so it cost him pennies compaired to what it should have. The templars sprues cost me just under $2 each so it fueled a lot of the madness as I could be excessive on the conversion aspect for very minimal cost. (bitz ordering the contents of a conversion box was only $7-8 total) The marines and vehicles I purchased later at normal price as he'd stopped working there by the time I managed to get the money I needed to purchase the core of the army. The employee discount is still pretty good, but with a lot of US stores they have a huge turnover rate that's caused by terrible management, and sales pressure. He wanted to stay there but his boss was a complete jerk and made the job hell when it shouldn't have been. Working at a gaming store isn't a dreamjob, as it's a job and work awill always be boring, but at the same time it's a long way from being hell, unless the management makes it that way.

 

He didn't know he was in line for being a store manager, which was part of why the pressure was so high before he left, had he not left they were going to move him to his own store within a month, but both he and his two co-workers quit due to the way his boss was handling the store, having to do a huge amount of unpaid work and the insane stress level he was artifically generating.

[paulson games]

Work was exceedingly busy so I didn't manage to get any significant painting done this weekend. I did manage to get some conversion time in which allowed me to tackle my masters of the chapter box I've had sitting around for a while. I love the models but didn't think they felt templar-ish enough. For apocalypse games I'll use them as the regular chapter masters but for smaller games they will probably stand in as various independant characters, or as an honor guard per my house crusade rules. I haven't removed the moulds lines yet as some of the pieces are still drying or need pinning, I may still do some more work on them with purity seals or smaller templar icons but they are already so covered in detail I'm not sure what else if anything need to be done.

 

Ever since I converted thc first double headed axe for the champion I've been in love with the image and the axes are going to figure prominantly with my crusades image and history, and I will likely make a few more marines like the robed champion to use as honor guard so I can run a full 10 man honor unit lead by the chapter masters. I'm thinking everyone will have axes and probably storm sheilds, while not the most efficient unit as they'll lose double armed bonus they will look pretty darn cool, and if I play them as honor guard they'll have 2 attacks base so it kinda equalizes out.

 

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/bthonor7.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/bthonor1.jpghttp://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/bthonor3.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/bthonor4.jpghttp://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/bthonor5.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/bthonor6.jpg

 

 

I've also be wrestling with the neophytes, I was digging through various conversion threads and templar neopyhtes seem to be the odd ball models that don't quite fit the image of our list quite right. I don't like the stock look the hunting knives look too flimsy, when I think of a templar squad the neophytes are in the thick of it while they may not be in power armor they should be in heavier armor and using chainswords for melee, since i have a large number of close combat arms from the convesion sprues I'll be replacing the stock arms with those so they have more approipriate weapoins and they'll have the chains which will help tie them to the overall chapter image.

 

Additionally while crusing the various threads I foud somebody already working along those lines, using the standard assult marine arms and some modified/cleaned up chaos helmets. They looked pretty good so it re-afirmed my choice with using the cc arms and I'm going to borrow from his idea for the helemts which I bits ordered on ebay. It further helps in my painting goals as I absolutely hate painting flesh tones on faces and the helmeted heads get rid of that chore. My list of conversions is just about at an end, so hopefuly they will arrive soon so I can start tackling the neophytes. Once that's doen then I have no more excuses for anything other than paint. :)

[Commander Draaken]

Those Chapter Masters are a jolly fine piece of work sir! Just goes to show simple weapon and head swaps are often the best.

[Naglfar]

BTW where's that bit from? it looks kinda like the one on teh templar sprue but is differant, looks cool.

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/HieraLastStand/Bannertops.jpg

 

Left is from the command squad box, right is the one from the BT upgrade pack.

 

Working at a gaming store isn't a dreamjob, as it's a job and work awill always be boring, but at the same time it's a long way from being hell, unless the management makes it that way.

 

He didn't know he was in line for being a store manager, which was part of why the pressure was so high before he left, had he not left they were going to move him to his own store within a month, but both he and his two co-workers quit due to the way his boss was handling the store, having to do a huge amount of unpaid work and the insane stress level he was artifically generating.

I don't expect it to be. But assuming that you do get along with your boss, it can be -allot- better than some of the alternatives. (like working as a cashier at the local grocery store .. I'd hate that.)

 

Also, sounds that your brothers problem boiled down to having an asshat for boss.

 

Regardless. Think you did a good job on "templarifying" the chapter masters.

Though the icon on the storm shield looks like it stands out a tad much. I'd try to get it to "stick closer" to the shield somehow. But all ways I can think of run a semi-high risk of damaging the shield or the icon. Anyways, you might want to keep it in mind.

 

Anyways, it should be worth it to give the marines some nudges around the waist and see if they do come off. Those who do will make the whole painting part a wee bit easier in my opinion.

 

Edit:

And yes, Black Templar Neophytes ain't the same as regular SM scouts, and as such, should not look the same. (imo)

Just using regular CCW+BP arms from the assault marine or blood claws boxes works. But might end up looking a bit too "power armorish".

An option is to cut the CCW+BP hands and the wrist and attach them to normal scout hands. Don't have any pictures of anything like that yet myself, but it's on my "to do" list.

 

Keep up the good work!

[paulson games]

Thanks for the heads up about the bit, I have two of those but hadn't looked at the command sprue bits in so long I forgot. The icon on the stormsheild I think I'll be able to thin down some more, and I'll add a bit of greenstuff to fill the small gap between the lip of the icon and the sheild itself so it won't appear quite as stuck on, and more like it's moulded to the actual sheild design. Once it's painted in darker reds and blacks it will likely look a bit less prominant, right now there's a huge contrast between the silver and grey so it draws the eye a lot more.

 

I'm also finding that by getting the exterme close ups with the macro function on the camera really magnifies the look of certain details, some of the gaps and toolmarks are pretty much invisable when I eyeball them up close, but on the camera they stick out like they have a giant spot light highlighting them. A bunch of the minatures I thought looked perfect before hand, but studying the pics I see detail that causes me to scratch my head and say :cuss? how did I miss that?

 

I've got one scout that I've converted to have the BT cc weapons mounted at the wrist with the stock scout arm looks ok, I'll try and get a pic up tomorrow. The secondary issue with using the marine hand with scout arm is that some of the arms are in really awkward poses that I suspect will make mounting the cc weapon slightly difficult, at least with the BT ones. It may not be a problem if I use the standard assualt marine hands but I'm going to have to look over the bits some more.

 

These are the ones I'd come across on relicnews that Titan136 did, I'll use the BT arms instead but probably copy the helmet design as IMO they look the best out of the variations I've seen. Inspired by one of the local players here I tried mixing scouts with bretonian men at arms but it doesn't look right for my list. It works well for his army theme and got featured in a white dwarf that covered chicago games day, but the reason it works well for his list is that he mixes empire bits across his whole army not just the neopyhtes, so they tie together well. He uses far lfewer tabards and his paint syle is also more empire-like in that his initiates have 4 panel colors of red and black, looks amazing on the table but very differant than my army image.

 

anyways Titan's scouts for reference:

 

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j232/ultramarines/Black%20Templars/neophytes1.jpg

the rest of his army is here and looks amazing.

[FireLizard]

Another bit you can use for Scout heads are the plastic Cadian heads. While they aren't marine bits, they give some nice protection in a 'compromising' sort of way as they don't have their full astartes armor yet... and while I gotta admit, I like the shaved down helmets you're showing, that's a fair amount of work for the helmet! :) But again, gotta love it.

[Naglfar]

I'm also finding that by getting the exterme close ups with the macro function on the camera really magnifies the look of certain details, some of the gaps and toolmarks are pretty much invisable when I eyeball them up close, but on the camera they stick out like they have a giant spot light highlighting them.

Why do you think photographers use applications such as Photoshop when doing professional portraits?

 

A friends big brother is a photographer. Got to see some before / after pictures .. and boy. 5 min in photoshop > 6 pints of beer as far as improving somebody's appearance goes. :3

 

And yes, read some of Titan's thread. Good stuff. Apparantly missed some bits as I was merely skimming through it first time around.

 

The shoulder pads are a bit smaller than on the original scout arms. But it should not be all bad. Nor impossible to correct either if one desire so.

Now I just have to set about getting CSM heads for my Neophytes. ..

[paulson games]

I'd considered a bunch of cadians heads, but no matter how many times I look at them they look like they are wearing the big round helmets from spaceballs. (especially when they are black) Hilarious movie but not really what I want on my models :P

 

The chaos heads are gonna take some work to shave, but I've already invested a bunch of time converting my terminators and characters so it's more fitting that I do abit more to make the neo's fit in a bit more.

 

As for photoshop I love that program and it can do incredible stuff, if I ever decide to make a professional gallery for my mini's or put any up for sale I'm sure I'll be doctoring some stuff up, but for the log I like to keep my skills honest, even if it's a harsh truth sometimes. I think it's helped my modeling a little bit, now I find that I'm noticing and correcting details that before I would have left on the model. Although it's extra work it's been a good experience for my modeling.

[Naglfar]

I'd considered a bunch of cadians heads, but no matter how many times I look at them they look like they are wearing the big round helmets from spaceballs. (especially when they are black) Hilarious movie but not really what I want on my models ;)

 

The chaos heads are gonna take some work to shave, but I've already invested a bunch of time converting my terminators and characters so it's more fitting that I do abit more to make the neo's fit in a bit more.

I gotta agree a bit on the cadian heads. They don't quite fit in my eyes.

 

Personally, I'm gonna try some "crusader modified" beakie helmets. Seeing I don't really like those, the beakies that is. IIRC, they end up looking a bit smaller than normal helmets. So they could work.

[paulson games]

Ok made some more progress over the weekend, didn't get much done on saturday as I actually had to work. grr :) Sunday I was at work, missing my friends superbowl party for the 4th year in a row, but at least it was a quiet night (unlike saturday) which allowed me to get some modeling done.

 

A couple weeks back I'd originally toyed around with doing my scouts patterned after this conversion, but the stock poses on the scouts are just plain goofy and they all seem like they are banging on the table demanding dinner, particuarly when they have the stock knife. I got rid of the knife and bolt pistol to add on chained versions from the templar sprue, but I realized that the conversion will be difficult as many of the arms won't pair up terribly well and that it means a lot of cutting on the sholder pads and arms.

 

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout1.jpg

 

 

While this guy looked ok, I knew that doing a whole squad could prove difficult, still look awkward and demand a lot of time so I decided to ditch that option. Plus I still hate the look of the stock scout heads. Crusing the various forums I happened on Titan's conversions and thought his use of modified chaos heads fit fairly well. As I was already leaning towards using the marine CC arms it gave me some backing with what things would look like when completed. By switching to the marine arms it'd not only make them look more heavily armored but it'd also allow me to get away from the hungry scouts and give them more suitable combat poses.

 

Keeping them in theme with my army I gave the models arms from the conversion sprue, and can mix in some of the assault marine arms to give a bit more range on model variety if needed. I decided that I'll be running my neophytes with a mix of weaponry so that I can take advantage of the new wound allocation rules. Here's 4 of the 5 squad memebers I converted over, the 5th guy is MIA in the photos as I left him at work. The conversion went fairly quick, each head only take about 5 minutes to scrape down, and a couple minutes to trim the chest pieces smooth where the arms attach. I also trimmed the edge of the armor down slightly on the right side so it doesn't get hung up on the hip holster.

 

The most time invovling aspect was figuring out how to mesh up the shotgun arms without carving too much out of the chest or arms to get the fit right, I'd tried a mix of scout hands and a marine arm which didn't work so I just went with a marine bolter arm holding the grip and carved the hand off the shotgun barrel, the hand supporting the barrel came from the templars conversion sprue as it had a much better angle and gives him a spikey templar wrist.

 

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout4.jpghttp://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout5.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout6.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout2.jpghttp://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout3.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout7.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/scout8.jpg

 

 

After completeing the scout squad I put together one of the new crusaders I still had unassembled, no major conversions, just stock with the templar doors and removed a couple skulls to replace them with templar icons.

 

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/landraider1.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/landraider2.jpg

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/landraider3.jpg

 

The melta turret hatch is still being finished, the marine will be featuring one of the non tabard chest pieces from the templars sprue, wearing tabards while opperating a tank seemed a bit odd so my vehicle crews will be the only marine without tabards.

[Marshal Rohr]

Man! I want one of those new Crusaders....

[paulson games]

Not a really picture update, but my tax return showed up and my personal rule is that I tend to work all year towards bills and responsible boring stuff, but my yearly return must be squandered on "useless" things I enjoy. So the first part of my squandering was picking up 3 more landraider crusaders :P (bringing my total to 5) Now I can totally own face against armies unprepared for the all armor templars... well at least once they are all built.

 

I managed to crank out one of them in just under two hours while hanging out the bunker, so I'm up to 3, and I expect to have the other 2 built tomorrow afternoon. I need to swing by home depot for additional squandering possibly on a dremel tool, but more importantly I need a new 5/16 drill bit so I can bore out holes for my magnets. I decided that I'm going to magnetize the sponson weapons so I can swap them out. I dont have extra sponsons, so I'll be magnetizing the shafts that support the weapon which will let me swap them out on demand for lascannons, or the uber redeemer flamer if we're playing apoc where I can use all the new SM codex goodies.

 

It'll take 2 magnets on each sponson (1 top and 1 bottom), 1 magnet for each of the targeters, and then two for each weapon. It'll also eliminate the issue I always find with landraiders where one sponson weapon fits nice and tight but the other one spins so loose it moves if you even breathe on it.

 

I posted up my old WIP scratch built thunderhawk with lots of pics in it's own thread, been sitting around a while without working on it, but someday I'll get back to it.

[saadeath]

Paulson games from what it looks like the white on your initiates shoulders are very smooth. I cant seem to get that smoothness, they always seem to be blotch. I hate painting white.

[Ryno]

I like the look of your scouts quite a bit. I might do something similar whence I get the chance to work on some minis

[paulson games]

saadeath: do you mean the lining effect, or rather the look of the white paint?

 

For the white I use dehab stone foundation paint, then a couple layers of skull white ontop of it. I also sometimes use privateer presses P3 menoth white highlight to get a very pure white. I use the P3 Wet pallete to keep the paint at just the right consistancy and go with 2-3 thin layers then I do the black lining around the cross and red trim, after that I go back and clean up any mistakes around the lining and usually add one final layer of white on the other areas.

 

Using the pallete I make sure it's wet but not overly saturated, if the paint runs/bleeds across the paper there's too much waster, drain a tiny bit of water from teh sponge and dab up the runny part on the surface with a paper towel which will help take away the extra water. Put down a small blob of paint then add a drop of water the paint to water mix is probably about 6-1 that way it goes on smooth and even. I don't use flow extender or mixing medium as the wet pallete keeps the paint workable for a couple hours.

 

 

Maggot, feel free to steal the scout ideas. I partially stole them anyways ;) Scraping down the heads gave me some hand cramps from hanging outo those tiny bits, but the result is worth it IMO.

 

 

And onto an overdue update

 

While I've had a paint plan for my basic initiates for a while I just finished the rest of my paint scheme plan using the SM painter and photoshop the results of which I posted here I need to quit fussing around with all the fiddly bits and writing articles so I can get back to painting. At long last I finished assembling the thunderhawk and gave it some game time which was sorely disappointing in performance, I'll get a few pics up shortly. The model is absoultely beautiful but the rules make it a very specialize/limited strategy piece that just doesn't fit well with how I play templars. Despite how cool it looks I can't justify such an exspensive model if it's not going to work with my army, I bought it to use as a game piece, not to stare at it, so I put it up on ebay and hopefully somebody who wants it for the modelling/painting purpose will pick it up. I'm taking a hit selling it and the case less than the original costs and ebay grinds off an additional 12% of the value, ugh.

 

It'll pop up if you run a search for thunderhawk or seller paulsongames*com

 

As for the Space Hulk Project it's progessed well, All 32 stealers are built and primed, I have two full squads of deathwings termies fully built and magnetized, they are waiting on FW sholder pads. The 2-d game board pieces are all printed and I'll be glueing like crazy this weekend. The 3-d pieces are on the back burner as they take 6 times the amount of foam board per piece that the 2-d one does. It'll make a killer board but till take a lot of additional work I hadn't forseen, so I'm doing the 2-d one so I at least have a board to use in the meantime.

 

The templars doors I ordered for my remaining raiders arrived, and 4 of the 5 crusaders are now built save for the melta gun and gunner marine. Only one crusader remains awaiting assembly. I've also drafted rough plans for a later project of making a variant of the Landraider Ares for apocalypse in this thread here

 

I think my bout of gamer ADD has subsided and I'll be back to tackling more of my initiates tomorrow, and hopefully priming the crusaders. I need to stop making so many threads and projects, but they are so cool I just can't help it. ;) Fortunately/unfortunately the lack of contents in my wallet will make sure I can't start anything new for a while, forcing me to focus on the things I have onhand.

 

Last but not least I have aquired the dremel tool of my dreams, which is absolutely amazing and allowed me to magnetize my hulk termis quickly saving me hours and hours of work by hand. It also enables me to produce hobby induced bleeding on levels I'd never dreamt of. :eek

[Ryno]

Regarding the neophyte heads, have you tried shaving down a standard marine helm? I love the look, but I can't really afford to buy a bunch of chaos heads unfortunately. :D

[antique_nova]

wHAT AMAZING CONVERSIONS you got me tempted to revive my interests in modeling again ;), your list is a bt dream :P to field :) lol, gl with the thunderhawk! termis look abit out of breath lol, i tried that idea a long time ago, i dont think it works for the termis maybe a leader of a crusader squad or a leader. ncie ceonbyte servo there, can you try a tech conversion i would love to see that!

thanks

antique_nova

[paulson games]

I bought the neophyte heads on ebay, I need to get a few more but there were priced at $2 for a group of 4 heads, so they ran me 50 cents each. I had to wait a bit for a sizeable lot to be listed but not exspensive at all. The same seller had multiple quantities available so I got 32 heads for just under $12 with the shipping included. The warstore/battlewaggon bits has sets of two heads for $1.29. Also since they are the standard head options for chaos marines a lot of chaos players want to use the slit styled helemts or ones with horns so they have these laying around in droves, it shouldn't be hard to bits trade for them.

 

A regular space marine head wil work, but the design of the chaos head looks slightly more angry and has the extra hose/rebreather bit that the marine helemt doesn't have. I wanted it to look ever so slightly differant so that it looked simular in theme but also differant enough so it didn't appear as an exact copy of the marine helmet. I'm more obessive about the particulars than I probably should be, there's not a gaping differance between the helmet styles but it's just one of those things that I fixate on for whatever reason. Regular assault arms are cheap to come by, and even the templar chained conversion arms can be bought pretty cheap from bits sellers compaired to forking over for conversion boxes. The key is to figure out what bits you need ahead of time so you can weigh the cost of bits ordering vs box purchasing.

 

 

 

I put a tutorial up for the terminators in tabards in the tutorials page, there's actually a second way that was on the french GW site and IMO works a bit better as it doesn't involve as much cutting so I may redo the tutorial. The cenobyte was just simple conversion using a dark angel robed body then the mace and chains cut from a chaos marauder sprue. The bulky sholder pad is from the marine command sprue I think, and the other pad is from teh templars sprue.

[Ryno]

I guess I'll be doing a few trips to eBay for mine, too, then.. seeing as how cheap they can be. I haven't looked at my stuff in ages (couple years maybe?) so I don't even remember what I have lying around anymore. I might have a couple of them myself, even.

[paulson games]

It was bugging me that there's a distinct lack of marines with a useable cape, the commander model caoe is ok but it doesn't flow very well and every other caped marine is in metal which I hate converting. I'd been eyeing the multiple black reach commanders I have laying around and decided he might fit in with the converted chapter masters so I decided to give it a run.

 

I had just finished dremeling out the neck and collar piece and as I went to set the dremel down I managed to graze the chording on the chest piece, which instantly ground it off. I wish that the bit would work that fast when I want to remove material but as soon as you slip on something bam it's 100 times more effective than when it's being used with a purpose, grr. At least I didn't have to mess around with the back piece so I dug out a new chest piece and here's the result

 

http://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/captain2.jpghttp://www.paulsongames.instantecom.net/i/warhammer/captain1.jpg

 

He's still due for recieving the double sided axe conversion like the other chapter masters, other than the dremel mishap it went together fairly smooth and quickly. For the basic learn to play set he's definately not a bad model once some of the fugly bits are replaced. The only minor trouble spot was carving out the hip that's burried under the bolter. It'll need a bit of GS but the pouch covers most of the gap.

[Freakiq]

I love him, looks so badass and detailed, Helbrecht aint got nothing on this guy.

 

Can't wait to see him painted, especially after seeing your scouts. ^_^

[insomniacpyro]

Bloody hell I'm going to rob you once these are done. The amount of awesome per model is off the scale- BT's have got to be one if if not the most badass chapters out there, and you sir are doing them justice!