Crimson Tears, Deathwatch and Inq28 Updated - 05/02/23

[Vairocanum]

Congrats on finishing (almost) the full company! Definitely looking forward to seeing a full army shot! The henchwoman looks really nice, the plasma pistol looks great especially. And thank you for the well wishes, Japan is nice but too many temptations to buy nerd stuff.

[hushrong]

Oh man! So close to 100 marines! That's awesome!

 

The henchwoman for Vykes also looks great. I like the pose and swagger she has going on!

[Riconas]

That is a sexy plasma pistol; I like the color contrast. Also, the coils are magnificent.   (I'm still working on mine; getting better I think.) Awesome model overall. But then, I would expect no less. 

[sockwithaticket]

Took a while because I hate highlighting jump packs, but here we are, the last two marines of the assault squad and the entire Crimson Tears 2nd Company:





Combat squad of the most recent 5


The full 10 with half the models painted 4 years ago. I'd like to think there's some measure of noticeable improvement.



Because procrastination is the true hobbyist's middle name I was also painting a new 4th Company veteran who's done apart from his shield.


I've a few more of those mauls and I love how brutal they look, so he should be joined by a few brothers in due course.



On the Inq28 side of things I finished the henchwoman:




Saskia Willemse, Acolyte: Intelligence and Warrior.

A former hive ganger Saskia is as fierce and cunning as any to survive in lethal environs of the underhive for any length of time and martial prowess is always of use to an Inquisitor. While now serving a far more noble cause, this grounding has made her useful as means of accessing networks of information and people that other members of Vyke's retinue would struggle even approach without being killed, let alone fit in with.

She came to Vyke circuitously. Through other agents and double blinds, Vyke employed Saskia's gang to surveil some new rivals; activity they were already undertaking and so more than happy to be paid for. The Inqusitior was investigating the possibility of a new cell of heretics having already eleiminated 2 Alpha Legion affiliated cells on the planet's nearest neighbour. However, it emerged that the surveillance subjects were actually a nascent Genestealer Cult who must have determined that they were being monitored, for not long after Saskia's gang began gathering intelligence the cultists attacked them in force. They were repelled, but the gang was severely depleted and the remnants scattered, attempting to blend into the underhive mass for protection. Before making her own way, Saskia sent back one last report assuming - correctly - that whomever sought the information she'd been supplying thus far would also be interested in and willing to pay for details of the skirmish and its action. Pic captures of a cultists corpse that had been missed in their retreat prompted Vyke to quickly mobilise several squads of Inqusitiorial Stormtroopers to embark upon a seek and destroy mission. While reviewing the operational intelligence he noticed that several of the gang's reports were more detailed than the others, displaying an innate acuity as to what information would be most useful. He used his agents to track Saskia down and offer her a position in his retinue. While disinclined to co-operate with such an authority figure, life in the underhive is tricky enough when affiliated, bereft of this support and protection it would only be a matter of time before someone or something caught Saskia out. Vyke's offer was at least potential salvation from a lonely, petty fate and so she took it, though it would seem that over time and with exposure to the Imperium's myraid enemies she is gradually becoming a true believer in the Inqusition's cause rather than simply a useful hanger on.

Finally, for now, I put together someone new to join the yet to be painted pile, an ex- Pit Gladiator (Arco-flagellant):





Oh and happy 2019 everybody, may your brushes stay pointed, your paints refrain from dyring out and your wash remain unspilt.


Bjorn, - thanks muchly.

Vairo - Cheers, buddy. It has taken a while, some people seem to be able to crank out what  I've done in a little over 7 years in a few

Hushrong - when you factor in my Deathwatch and various character figs I've been on 100+ for a while, but yeha it feels a little crazy to have actually done a proper company's worth. I can 't claim much credit for Saskia's swagger except having the good taste to purchase her,  all I;ve done are weapon swaps. Including now switching her knife blade around to try and give even greater swag after your comment.

Riconas - thanks a lot, man. I've always liked the look of Iron Hands white/light grey weapon casings and wanted to try it out. Coils on a plasma weapon should always be a visual highlight imo, so I'm glad the work into those has paid off.

Edited January 12, 2019 by sockwithaticket

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Your Crimson Tears and the Inquisitorial Acolyte look great! Although you stated the ex-pit gladiator counts as an arco-flagellant in-game, does he retain the ability to think for himself in-story, i.e., he wasn't lobotomized, and retains the ability to outwit an opponent he otherwise can't outfight?

[sockwithaticket]

71: Servitor

71 was recovered from an abandoned explorator dig site when Vyke responded to a distress beacon on one of the many dead worlds that mark the approach to the Ghoul Stars, deviating from his arranged visit at Watch Fortress Pykman. An ex-miner among Vykes retinue had made use of this pattern of servitor in his former life and was rather taken with it, he asked to bring it with them and promised he could make it useful. So it proved.

Designed for heavy duty mining in locations inaccessible to larger equipment, 71 has been invaluable. Whether clearing passages in a variety of the less salubrious environments Vyke's investigations may take him, be they dense jungles or the decrepit urban warrens of the underhive, enabling quick entry to sealed vaults or seemingly secure enemy positions or even fighting - industrial equipment defeats much tougher substances than flesh after all - the servitor has found multiple uses in Vykes' service.



Came together pretty quickly after choosing to go metallic with the scheme. You can see in the second shot where I attempted to add a barcode to his head, it felt like a cool detail to add. Quite pleased with how the pale skin came out (what little of it there is).

Bjorn - cheers, man. I appareciate the attention you give my stuff. I haven't come down definitely on one side or the other, but I'm leaning towards no lobotomy for the reason you suggest; he wouldn't be a particularly good pit fighter without some level of consciousness. My nascent fluff has him being a veteran fighter and I don't think he'd have survived long without most of his congnitive faculties.
 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Servitor 71 looks great!

[Grotsmasha]

That is an excellent combination of bitz, topped off with an excellent paint job :tu:

[Dragonlover]

Yeah that servitor is sweet, as is the pit fighter. What's the body, a Khorne Bloodbound guy?

 

Dragonlover

[Pearson73]

That veteran's looking sharp, I really like the helmet design. Big fan of the arco-flagellant too, nice use of parts in there.

[sockwithaticket]

Completed the finishing touch for the Veteran and made a start on the next Henchwoman an interrogator/torturess. Annoyingly she had a little accident which ruined her cane and snapped a couple of her Freddie Krueger-esque finger knives off

Nascent fluff is that she's the daughter of an aristocrat, hence she's a bit more flamboyant in her style than most of the other retinue members. Her, shall we say, proclivities make her more suitable to assist the Inquisition than for high society.


 

Servitor 71 looks great!

Cheers

 

That is an excellent combination of bitz, topped off with an excellent paint job

Thanks a lot.

 

Yeah that servitor is sweet, as is the pit fighter. What's the body, a Khorne Bloodbound guy?

 

Dragonlover

Thanks man and good eye, it is indeed based on a Bloodbound model. A couple of the bodies don't have much overt Chaotic/Khornate iconography, which makes them perfect for this sort of thing.

 

That veteran's looking sharp, I really like the helmet design. Big fan of the arco-flagellant too, nice use of parts in there.

Thank you. I think those 30k DA helmets are some of the coolest marine bits ever designed. If I didn't already have more heads than I'll likely ever need (same as most marine players I reckon), I'd get a couple more sets. In28 kitbashing is fun :)

 

Edited January 23, 2019 by sockwithaticket

[sockwithaticket]

Been fiddling around with some bits to come up with some new henchmen.

If any of you can remember far back enough to Kapitan De Vries, this chap is intended to be one of the NCO's unjustly incarcerated with him and joined the Inqusiitor who secured their pardon. The regiment is supposed to be trench warfare specialists, so I thought a chain-glaive and rather ancient looking firearm would be appropos.



The Executioner:


Still working out what to do with the right arm, but I think he's basically there design-wise.


Torturer


Came together through a lot of trial and error. I've had to order some bits to finish him off, but I know where I'm goiing with it. The left arm will be finished off with some claws from the Rust-stalkers as a sort of injection mechanism for the cocktail of toxins injected via his gauntlet while the right will be the shock maul/taser thing one of the Wrack arms has. Gonna find a few more cruel looking blades and things that could be vials of vile chemicals to top him off.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The new models look promising, but I'm constantly reminded of adventurers in Darkest Dungeon. What tragic, tortuous, and terrifying pasts do the soldier, executioner, and torturer have?

[sockwithaticket]

The new models look promising, but I'm constantly reminded of adventurers in Darkest Dungeon. What tragic, tortuous, and terrifying pasts do the soldier, executioner, and torturer have?

Im a big Darkest Dungeon fan, so I can imagine some of that is bleeding over. I've got a vague idea that the Executioner and Torturer are going to have been plucked straight out of criminal detention, spared execution in return for service. They'll be part of van Graal's retinue, I have in mind that he's a veteran inquisitor with all his idealism stamped out by what he's seen and he's more than happy to use monsters to root out the enemies of the Imperium and if they die in the process then it's no great loss.

[War Angel]

That's a great looking color scheme. I couldn't help but notice you mentioned having completed an entire company, but I didn't see a company picture....

[Pearson73]

The NCO is cracking, both the plate armour and pose look great.

 

The Torturer is a most sinister figure, the purity seal is a nice touch though, it's quite chilling how such a character is one of the setting's 'good' guys.

[sockwithaticket]

Geralt Waskiej – DKOK grenadier - Acolyte: Warrior



One of a number of Guardsmen or Enforcers Vyke has accumulated as part of his retinue for when he may need experienced fighters, but the use of Inquisitorial Storm Troopers is impractical or excessive. Of course Vyke also well knows that on occasion it doesn't hurt to enter a room with a skull masked warrior at his shoulder so obviously from one of the rightly renowned Death Korps regiments.

Geralt spends little time with the other retinue members and they are content to leave him be, anguish at being separated from the Korps radiates from him oppressively. Yet he does not return for reasons none have gleaned nor that Vyke has chosen to disclose and it's not as if others have not been permitted to re-unite with their precinct or regiment of origin in the past. The closest the grenadier's posture or demeanour come to relaxed or satisfied, as far as anyone can tell given his general disinclination to de-mask in plain view, seems to be when observing flames, be they gouting from his impeccably maintained weapon or atop the candles that clutter his quarters.



I've had Geralt sitting around primed forever and he just kept being forgotten, so I resolved to go back and complete him (plus a couple of others) before progressing with anything else.

Also decided to blow the rust off my Deathwatch painting, it's been more than a calendar year since I last added to my boys in black and now we have  a marine from the Aurora Chapter. Their fluff indicates that they're vehicle specialists, so I kind of wanted him to have few techmarine-esque design elements as a result like the up-armoured legs and the wrist scanner which my Deathwatch tend not to have,


 

That's a great looking color scheme. I couldn't help but notice you mentioned having completed an entire company, but I didn't see a company picture....

Thank you. Yeah, getting that many marines out of the cupboard and lined up is quite the endeavour and I've had a pretty busy start to the year. Next week I have some time off, so I'll probably get a couple of snaps then.

 

The NCO is cracking, both the plate armour and pose look great.

 

The Torturer is a most sinister figure, the purity seal is a nice touch though, it's quite chilling how such a character is one of the setting's 'good' guys.

Cheers, man. Spot on with the Torturer, that was exactly what I was trying to reinforce and what I'm going to try and and go with for the whole warband he's part of.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Excellent work on the Krieger and the Deathwatch member.

[sockwithaticket]

As promised, a picture of my full 2nd company. It's the best I can do with my camera. With several detours it took me from September 2011 to December 2018 and a whole lot of improvement to my painting and modelling skills in the meantime. That time period also explains the composition somewhat; the BA used to have Assault Squads as troops. I haven't bothered getting the 8th ed codex, so maybe they can again, but whatever, it's 100+ marines.



Front (L - R):

Assault Squad, Penitents (Death Company) w/Chaplain, Fragioso, Command Squad w/ Librarian and Captain, The Revenant (Cypher), Furioso, Ezekiel (Seth), Samkiel (Mephiston), Samael (Tycho), Phonubiel (Corbulo), Nathaniel (Malakim Phoros), Jump Librarian, Jump Chaplain, Vanguard Veterans

Middle
Assault Squad (on foot), Sternguard, Tactical Squad, Assault Squad, Jump Chaplain, Jump Sanguinary Priest x 2, Baal Predator

Back
Assault Squad (on foot), Dreadnought, Devastators, Tarantulas, Tactical Squad, Devastators.




Bjorn - Thanks

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Impressive works.

[sockwithaticket]

Most of the latest henchman, thanks to Bjorn sticking the Darkest Dungeon parellel in my head he's currently dubbed The Survivor:


A new Deathwatch marine in progress:


A little something bigger to back up the Ordo Xenos' chamber militant:


Was playing around with bits to make more weapon variants too:


And 'cause you can never have enough hobby butterfly syndrome I thought, why not an Executioners kill team? Thinking of  them as just post-Badab so I can sprinkle in a couple of Astral Claws trophies like they're pursuing their erstwhile allies as part of their penance and to punish the ACs for roping them into what the war became.

 

[hushrong]

Awesome models, crisp paint jobs, all spread around various little project? I love it! The army assembled is a great sight as are the inquisiton henchmen and the death watch marines. They look fantastic.

 

The Executioner also looks very promising. Cannot wait to see a whole team of them.

[Biohazard]

Man that full company shot really warms my heart, almost makes me think about straying from the Eight fold path....almost. :D

 

The latest updates all look amazing as always bud. Really like the work on the Survivor so far. :tu: and you know I love your Dreadnoughts so really looking forward to that develop!

 

I also have to curse you on the Executioner WIP. You’ve rekindled thoughts of my long forgotten Star Phantoms project. I reckon Kill Team is an ideal way to resurrect them.

[sockwithaticket]

Gruund Uries - Acolyte

The lone survivior of a small moon come mining complex overrun by Genestealers after an infested piece of Space Hulk fell from orbit. Although the miners had rudimentary defences, even at their best they would have been hard pressed to withstand the handful of xenos killing machines that had survived the descent from the starts and they were caught entirely unawares.

Some of the miners managed to seal themselves inside their living quarters block, but the sanctuary was not long lived. Eventually the Genestealers were inside with them. One by one the men were hunted down and torn to shreds; all but Gruund. Vyke has never quite extracted the full story from his acolyte, but between the snippets Gruund has been able to disclose through his trauma it would seem that he was able to evade and kill the last three creatures via  ingenious improvised weapons and traps in the days it took for the distress signal to finally be answered by Vyke whose cruiser happened to be the nearest Imperial vessel. Exploration of the quarters was a slow and torturous process, one several of Vyke's retinue bid him abandon after numerous brushes with a variety of devices rigged to explode or impale in the confines of corridors and rooms. Their Inquisitor bore them forward, intent on discovering an explanation for the siaughter inside and outside the block, even if the hope of finding survivors had been snuffed by the eviscera that seemed to permeate the block interior.

They found Gruund in the mess, eating from a ration packet, his tattered mining suit coated almost head to toe in a dark mixture of ichor, ash, blood and dirt. At first he believed his deliverers an illusion of his mind, teetering as it was on the brink of sanity. Vyke at length coaxed the basics of the incident from the miner and persuaded him to leave the nightmarish surrounds of the block, taking him back to the ship. Having nowhere else to go and profoundly grateful for his rescue, Gruund pledged himself to the Inquisitor's service extolling the virtues of his explosives training the result of which the retinue had all borne witness to trying to find him. Intrigued by a non-military man who killed at least three Genestealers Vyke allowed him the chance to prove himself and so he has. An acquisitive man, Gruund is forever picking up sharp implements and explosive devices to add to the plethora already hanging from the re-purposed remains of his mining suit and he has found many opportunities to demonstrate his tactility with both, particularly setting traps and enabling ingress or egress as situations require. He's a quiet man, still haunted by his ordeal, but liked well enough by Vyke's other companions.

Also finished is the latest Deathwatch marine, a battle brother of the Star Dragons:





I really like the little mods I made to the Reiver carbine (which never looked anything other than a regular bolter variant to me). Customising the guns is a lot of fun.



And I got the most boring half of the Dread done:




hushrong - thanks, man. You may love it, but my list of half finished projects just keeps expanding! Can't do it any other way, though. I need the variety these days.

Bio - do it, we have cookies and exterminatus. Kill Team would be a great way to find your way back to the Imperium's light with your Phantoms. To be honest, the Executioners may well stay largely in the concept stage for a little while, I seem to have less and less time yet more and more ideas of things i want to do. Such is the way of the hobbyist I guess.

Thanks, as always for your kind words on my efforts.

[Leviathus]

Oooh I love Gruund's pose! Really well done.