The Angels Adamant

[Malalite]

Hello there! I got into 40K many years ago when the 3rd edition came out, and played sporadically until around the time the 4th edition arrived. Recently, I've had a surge of enthusiasm for gaming again, and I'm trying to redo my old army, with a spiffy new paint job, name, fluff, etc.

 

I sought a little advice on names and paint schemes over in the Liber Astartes forum in this thread. I decided that I was probably in good shape the first time, going with a dark gray paint job and the name Angels Revenant.

 

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/3420/angrevright.th.jpg

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/363/angrevleft.th.jpg

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7928/angrevfront.th.jpg

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/8276/angrevback.th.jpg

 

I'll try to get larger and better pictures up later. I didn't have enough ambient light at the time and the flash really over-emphasizes the highlights.

 

The army list I plan on working with is in this thread, at the end. Essentially, it comes down to 24 assault marines, 10 scouts, 8 footsloggers, 3 attack bikes, a Baal Pred, and a dreadnought.

[Malalite]

Okay, so now that I've committed myself to the project, my first goal was to dig up all the space marine bits. I organized everything I could find into piles, and then put each pile in a plastic cup, so I could find everything. I've still got a loose collection of miscellaneous arms, and I've also got several character miniatures grouped together by parts. This is all arranged on my work table, which is badly cluttered.

When I first conceived of doing this project, several years ago, I purchased a bunch of Dragon Forge bases. Conveniently, I have enough of the right sizes of bases to suit the army list I'm preparing in 5th edition (the plan dates from the 4th edition rules). I decided to start with those, trimming flash from the edges and priming the bases with Krylon White Gesso Spray.

I then began to paint, starting with the metallic bits on the bases. These are Urban Rubble Wasteland bases, and are basically broken walls littered with large bits of metal such as gears, i-beams, and tank treads, strewn with shell casings. I started by painting the metal black.

I followed this by painting the steel bits with Vallejo Gunmetal Gray, and the shell casings with Vallejo Brass.

I then gave everything a wash of Vallejo Smoke.

This was followed by drybrushing the steel bits with Vallejo Natural Steel, the brass with Vallejo Brass (again) followed by Vallejo Gold. The shell casings were then given a thin wash of Vallejo Verdigris Glaze. Then began a series of progressive washes of the steel with various combinations of brown, iron oxide red, and orange, going up from dark to light, from a heavy wash to a light wash into crevices, to simulate rust. I did this with craft paints, which are cheap and dry very flat. I hit the edges with another drybrushing of gunmetal, which I think I might give one more brown wash to tone down.

[Malalite]

A few more days, a bit more work accomplished.

Still working on the bases. Yes, thrilling, I know, but hopefully good basing should help the army look sharp on the table.

After getting the metal work taken care of, I started painting the rest of the bases. The goal is to do a ruined city, so the color scheme is all gray and brownish gray. I used a craft paint color called Drizzle Gray for the main color, and did washes with a slightly darker, brownish gray called Lichen Gray, a grayish brown called Territorial Beige, and a mixture of Drizzle Gray and Black. I applied the Lichen Gray everywhere, then went back and did certain areas in Territorial Beige or the Gray/Black mixture, to give different areas a different color.

This is what the attack bike bases looked like after the process. There are several skulls on the base, and I marked those with a tiny dot of red paint so I wouldn't paint over and forget about them.

After drybrushing to bring out the texture, I'm doing another pass to get the details and fix mistakes. Here's a dreadnought base, drybrushed, with work begun on one of the skulls.

In general, it's looking pretty good, I think, but I still need to make it pop. I'm probably going to go back in, maybe paint some of the bricks in different colors, and use a very dark wash specifically in the crevices to bring out different features of the landscape. I don't want it to be too busy and distract from the miniature when that goes on, but it shouldn't be boring either.

[Night Runner]

Some really great work here. You have certainly inspired me! Keep it up and be sure to post more pics when your project is finished.

[Malalite]

Thanks! I think just the fact that I can upload pictures into my gallery here and update this thread every couple of days is a wonderful mechanism for helping me actually finish the job.

 

I think the next piece of the project, once I've got the bases done, is going to be to customize my dreadnought.

 

I've got one of the old metal dreads, and I'm going to be turning it into a furioso librarian dread. I've got a variety of things I'm going to use as extra armor (to represent the slightly higher front armor value of the Furioso model), and I'm planning on doing a custom force blade arm, psychic hood, and just to top it off, wings.

[Malalite]

Okay, the bases are pretty much finished. I may post an 'after' shot when the dullcote dries.

Now I am embarking upon the construction of a furioso librarian dreadnought.

Here are most of the parts laid out:

This is an old metal dreadnought, which provides a reassuring heft at the cost of easy modification. The left arm is a slightly modified standard dreadnought close combat arm, using 1/4 of an old standard dreadnought CCW, and 3/4 of what used to be a Space Wolf Dreadnought claw. It gives a sort of fingers+thumb look that I like.

The right arm is an as-yet-unmodified close combat arm with meltagun, which sadly is going to lose the meltagun. To the left, that sort of whitish thing is the cap off a tube of super glue, which is going to be chopped down into the base of a new Force Weapon.

The tan objects under that are some resin Reactive Armor Plates (RAPs) I purchased a good number of years ago from DLD Productions. I'm not sure they are actually in business anymore, as the website doesn't appear to have been updated in 4 years, alas.

Below the RAPs are a pair of shields I salvaged from a very old Wood Elf Warhawk Rider kit. These are going to get some greenstuff edging, and be repurposed into leg armor for the Furioso.

Up at the top, mostly standard stuff, save for the wings, again from that Warhawk kit. When I figure out a decent means of attaching them to the back, they'll go on as decoration.

Last and least, I just wanted to get some recognition for this:

That's my old customized dreadnought plasma cannon arm. I made that back when GW didn't make dreadnought plasma cannon arms (even though they were listed in the codex) by sacrificing a multi-melta arm and a devastator plasma cannon. The armor plating at the top is from an old GW vehicle accessories sprue, from when extra armor really seemed like a good idea.

[Malalite]

Continuing to make progress, bit by bit.

Here are a couple shots of the finished bases. In the bright light of day, I noticed a few things that need touching up, but I'll probably wait on that until I'm actually mounting the miniatures.

Here is the torso, with RAPs applied. The only other thing I'm going to do with the torso is add a psychic hood, which I'm still planning.

Legs, nothing too special. Eventually I'll attach the leg armor. You may notice the feet seem a little off-kilter. I have actually pre-positioned those so they plant squarely on the uneven terrain of the base.

Next is one of the wings. I decided to use some styrene tubing as a collar for the wings. I'm stuffing the tubes with putty, and stuffing the wings into the putty. The hooked pin on the end of the wing should hold it in pretty securely. When the putty has hardened, I'll file the collars smooth, possibly dress them up a bit, then put in two more pins: one going into the back of the dreadnought shoulder armor, one going into the side of the exhaust/power plant thingie.

A shot of the putty-stuffed collar.

And the collar-and-wing assemblies setting up.

Here are the shields for the leg armor. My intent is to put edging around the shield. I was going to do it with putty, but it turns out I suck at pushing putty, so instead I'm using really thin strip styrene and plastic welding cement.

[Malalite]

Well, it has been a while since I have posted anything here. However, it has not been for a lack of effort. Rather, I've been putting time in on time-consuming fiddly bits, which have finally payed off (I hope). I present to you the completed additions, conversions, and preview assembly of my Furioso Librarian Dreadnought:

Here's the body, showing the scratch-built psychic hood perched on top of the sarcophagus. This was sculpted from brown/aluminum epoxy putty, with springs, wires, and little knobbly things from my bits box added on. This was after several false starts, and ate up a large amount of the time spent on the project.

Here's the force sword arm. I had to cut off the meltagun from an old metal Furioso arm ;) to begin with. The 'collar' of the blade is from the cap of a tube of Locktite superglue, the blade itself is made of sheet styrene. The greebly bits are a combination of styrene rods and half-round pieces, as well as some spare guns from old Babylon 5 starship miniatures. And, those little knobbly things, which if I remember correctly are from a bag of watch parts sold in a hobby lobby. The pattern on the blade was painstakingly sculpted from brown/aluminum putty, and is nearly duplicated on the other side. The hose was actually hand-wound using fine gauge brass wire wrapped around a piece of thicker floral wire. The thing on the shoulder is some gizmo from a bag of model railroad scenery. I had to bulk out the shoulder plate of the arm using more brown/aluminum epoxy putty, and glued on a few strategic bits of styrene sheet. This was the other major time consuming part of the project, and although I had the vision down from the beginning, the actualization took a while.

Finally, two shots of the thing, tacked together:

The spring things looping up from the psychic hood to the wing joints are going to get trimmed down and slightly re-positioned. With this beast, I'm probably going to paint the parts individually and then re-assemble it.

[Lord_Ikka]

Awesome. Can't wait to see it painted and finished!