At the Butcher's behest

[cathar the great]

The boarding ramp came down with a muffled thud and sound was lost.

He could no longer hear his warriors around him. Gone was the metal snapping noises as magazines were punched into bolter rifles. Gone was the faint hum of Brother Puska’s power pack that allowed him to carry his custom heavy machine gun that weighed twice as much as he did. Gone was the rumbling and tumbling of their transport as it made its way towards the enemy line, shaken by the rough terrain and enemy ordnance.

The ramp had come down and sound did not matter anymore. Rifle magazines and power packs did not matter anymore.

He had seen the enemy soldiers, soft flesh glistening from sweat under their light flak vests. He led the charge out over the ramp.

Rifle-fire hit his armor and helmeted head. It did not slow him down. He barely perceived the heavy gun emplacement to his right, even as the soldiers handling it swung it around to aim at him. They took aim, and vanished in a thunderstorm of explosions. Puska had already set up his own heavy weapon and was now bathing the frontline in fire.

He was still running, his gigantic man-stopper axe clasped tightly in both hands, ready to swing. He did see the enemy squad commander, a broad-shouldered woman with augmetics covering half of her face. He saw her red eyed stare, the bionic face sinister, the fleshy face scared :cuss- and witless.

Left and right, enemy soldiers were blown to bits as his squad found firing positions and opened up with their bolter rifles. He was close enough to see flames reflected in the helmet visor of the nearest soldier. Then the flames went past his left shoulder, setting a whole flank awash with red-blue fire. Brother Ohen had barely kept up with him, but now he stopped mid-sprint to spread the fire with his long barreled flamethrower.

He still did not care. He could taste the fear and pain in the burnt air around him. He did not care.

Then he hit the line and the first two Imperial soldiers were simply crushed by the weight of his body and fury of his charge. He swung the axe, faster and stronger than any actual human could. Left, right, a swing backwards. Human blood and dismembered body pieces were flying in a whirlwind around him, as he painted the battlefield red.

The enemy commander was swinging at him from the right, a powered saber clasped in her trembling hands. He swung his own weapon and swept the saber away. His head came down at her, smashing hers in and bathing his own visor in her blood and bone. He flicked brain matter from the beak of his crested helmet with a casual flick of his hand.

Knee-deap in the carnage, he took a second to take in his immediate surroundings. The encampment they had charged was down; what he had not slaughtered had fallen under the surgical fire of his own warriors. Only now they were following him in deeper. They were content to stay at a distance to cover him, not only because they liked it and were good at it, but because they knew that staying near him meant to duck a lot.

He turned to face the next heavy weapon camp set up by their enemies and once more led the charge. There was no time to stop. If they stopped, the others would catch up with them.

He was Sekera, chosen of the dark gods, champion of the Wretched Guild and second equerry to the Butcher. And he ran, not only because he liked it, but because he knew that standing still meant that the rest of the Butcher’s Legion would catch up with them.

Champion Sekera, Chosen of the Chaos Gods, Second Equerry to the Butcher and Leader of Squad Sekera

Squad Sekera, Second Assault-Squad, Butcher's Legion, Wretched Guild

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Soo, reposted the images that were somehow deleted when I edited the thread, sorry if someone came here expecting pictures XD

C&C is greatly appreciated, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Cheers and thanks for looking,

Peter

[AGPO]

I really like the assault cannon conversion and the bionics. I'm guessing you used guitar wire? Now get some paint on these!

[Kizzdougs]

Wow! these guys are looking great. I really love the kit bashing and conversions, especially the mix of CSM bits.

Can't wait to see them painted!

[cathar the great]

@AGPO: Thanks. I wanted the asscannon to be somewhere in between demon engine and mechanical construct. And yes, it's guitar wire. It's just a quick and easy way to add bionics to arms and legs without too much hassle.

 

@kizzdougs: Thanks. Most of these were made from salvaged bits from my previous Space Marine armies, and I still have quite the stack, so the kitbashing won't be over for a long time.

 

And yeah, paint will take a while. I have enough time here and there to throw together some minis, but I won't have time to set up my painting table for quite a while.

 

Cheers for the comments, I'll have another mini up by tonight, hopefully.

[plasman]

Any c&c is as always greatly appreciated!

 

Cheers,

Peter

 

I understand you're not a big fan of horned helmets :yes:

[Kierdale]

Very nice! Rough n' tough!

 

Can I ask what type of guitar wire that is? I'm looking to buy some myself.

[Wicced]

brilliant idea with the guitar wire bionics, need to try that myself ;)

 

i think the autocannon guy shouldn't use his boltpistol, it distracts from the glory of his "big gun" imho.

 

another thing i'm not sure about is the imperial heraldy on some of your guys, aquila on chests, templar cross on bolter and aquila on Sekera's axe for example.

i think you should desecrate those symbols to support the renegade/chaos feel.

 

apart from that, great models brother, looking forward to more...

[Brother Ambroz]

I agree with Wicced. These guys look pretty badass but the imperial heraldry should be desecrated or removed in my opinion.

[cathar the great]

@plasman: Yeah, those horn are just a tad too silly in my opinion. I also wanted this squad to have a more practical and stream-lined look. Less trophy flapping, more equipment and weaponry.

@Kierdale: Sorry, but I have no idea. I have a bunch of old wire I got from my roommate years ago. I'd go with the thickest you can find, maybe even look into bass strings (which I believe are usually thicker than guitar strings, right?)

@wicced: The thing with the bionic is really easy, I might do a quick tutorial sometime. I was a bit torn about the bolt-pistol on the heavy gunner, too. But I just can't stand the old pointing arm again, and any non-outstretched arm makes the model look too busy on the cannon side.

As for the heraldry, I completely agree, but that will happen during painting. I'm a big fan of the big red X's on renegade marines, and I'll slap them on these guys like crazy. But like I said, painting will be a while..

For now, I give you:

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The All-Slayer, the Glorious Brother-Captain Zbran, Chosen Champion of Khorne, First Equerry to the Butcher and First General of the Butcher's Legion

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Yes, he is a Khârn Counts-as.

First things first, the bunny ears in the neck design was blatantly stolen from Captain Engelhardt and is featured on his Ironhand Straken conversion.

I prefer this design to the silly ears on top of the helmet, and his squad will have a couple of warriors with a similar look.

As for the huge cloak, it was my first attempt at something like this with GS and I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out. I used a method detailed by fellow B&C member Lorenzen and it came out as rugged and heavy-looking as I hoped it would.

Also, you just gotta love these armor variants by Forge World. Nothing says "I have been killing people for thousands of years" like a suit of MK III Iron Armor.

Keep the c&c coming, this beautiful building machine runs on props! :P

Cheers,

Peter

[Wicced]

i like him!

 

the bunny ears behind the head look nice, might try that myself.

his cloak looks good, but it's a tad long for my taste, i wouldn't want him to trip, while spinning around chopping heads off people :(

 

as for the heraldy desecration in the painting process, i'm looking forward to that ;)

[Myxx]

love the assault cannon! (although I agree that the bolt pistol seems a little... Dainty in comparison...)

[cathar the great]

@wicced: Thanks, I like him too ^^ And yeah, that's pretty much the only way I can tolerate the bunny ears on anything. The cloak is supposed to be a huge and heavy ceremonial cloak that he drags with him as long as it hangs on and he doesn't really care if it falls off sometime.

@myxx: Thank you. And I guess I'll rummage in the left-arm compartment of my bitz box and see what I can find to replace the bolt-pistol. It was a quick fix anyway.

Here's a quick mock-up of the color scheme I'm planning to use:

The main color will be something between Bleached Bone and Rotting Flesh, with red/purple armor trim, white helmets and shoulder pads and of course the red X's on the Imperial heraldry. Might also try some light battle-damage in some places.

Cheers,

Peter

[cathar the great]

I give you the first of my Terminator Honor Guard for the Butcher:

Revered Brother Zlom the Bookkeeper, First Tactical Dreadnought Squad, Butcher's Legion, Wretched Guild

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First try at a GS tabard, I think it went quite well.

In other news, I've finished basing Squad Sekera and Zbran, maybe I'll actually get to throw some paint on them soon.

I'm still hoping to get some feedback on the color scheme, I'm open for ideas!

Now off to university, the grim darkness of the middle ages awaits.

Cheers,

Peter

[Ch@oZ]

I really like your minis- they all seem to just drip with detail, which is great. The termie looks awesome especially with the collar and the ammo cartridges and the shield-tabbard.... great work all around. As for the colour scheme- I think Your choice of a rather tame painting scheme will be great considering the plethora of detail all of them carry- the base colour should imo be rather mild to let the bitz stand out. I kind of imagine them in the "stripy white" I've seen floating around this forum recently on nurgle marines with white+gold vertical stripes on the shoulder pads.

[MNONE]

Think about the background a little, if you don't have any firm ideas for a paint scheme. That ought to tell you a few things about how they would paint their armour.

 

I like the off-white, but maybe shaded a bit more towards grey/bone rather than that bilious green.

Maybe make the red a bit darker? A dried-scab or red brick colour perhaps so it doesn't compound the potential brightness of a lightish armour plate.

(You MIGHT want to rethink red trim completely,however, if you're going to do red crosses through the imperial heraldry and icons, as that might make the trim look messy at a first glance. I could be wrong though.)

 

In general I think you should go for a fairly clean paintjob and then add weathering over to represent wear-and-tear/damage, maybe some very light blood spatter on areas where you would expect it to fall.

[cathar the great]

Thanks for the extensive input, guys.

 

@ch@z: I think I'll save the stripy white style for my counts-as plague marine I'll eventually do. I've also seen it on this board and I think it looks great, but it might make these guys too busy, like you said, they have a lot of bling on them.

 

@mnone: I'm also unsure about the red trims. Maybe I'll just do the trims in a slightly darker base color. The scheme won't be exactly the same on every marine, so there'll be some variation between them.

 

And the background is fairly set, I'm still working on the Index Hereticus (or whatever I'll call it) about the Wretched Guild, the Chaos Warband the Butcher's legion belong to.

 

As far as it concerns the way they paint armor, the Guild is supported by elements of the Dark Mechanicum, who are responsible for maintenance of the armor. So the base colors would be tidy and meticulous. On the other hand, the squads are often in combat for weeks or months, so the battle damage would be extensive.

[Terminatorinhell]

So...when do we get to see the butcher <_<

[cathar the great]

So...when do we get to see the butcher :P

Soon :P . I'm still working on him and his Terminator guard. As proof, here are two more of them I finished last night:

Revered Brother Nasili the Steadfast, First Tactical Dreadnought Squad, Butcher's Legion, Wretched Guild

Revered Brother Moc the Twisted, First Tactical Dreadnought Squad, Butcher's Legion, Wretched Guild

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The second pictures of Moc shows what I did for tabards. I'm still not sure if I should do these again. They work for me, but I guess there is a lot I could do better. I've been modelling for years but Green Stuff is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Anyway, have a nice week-end everyone!

Cheers,

Peter

[Brother Ambroz]

I love those first two terminators. Their poses are very dynamic.

[cathar the great]

@Tanith Ghost: thanks! Getting the Terminators in dynamic poses is a bit of a drag, but the newer sets (like Space Wolves and Chaos Terminators) made it a bit easier.

Now, before I post the Butcher himself, the (for now) last member of his personal guard:

Revered Brother Guidon the Bearer, First Tactical Dreadnought Squad, Butcher's Legion, Wretched Guild

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A bit of a pain to get into a picture, but you get the essentials ^^

I hope I'll be able to prime them all tomorrow, that is always a problem in a flat on the 3rd floor without a balcony.

Until next time,

Cheers,

Peter

[MNONE]

Ha! Awesome, always wondered why that shield-banner combo isn't used a bit more.

The head looks a little odd from that bird's-eye perspective, but I guess it might be because you can see a slight lumpenness of the plastic where it's been stressed, and the rest of the pics look fine.

 

EDIT: Also, what does the toothed circle on his right knee symbolise?

[ThisisJimmy]

Love the spawn mouth in the leg, that looks awesome!

 

Pretty keen to see how the paint scheme works out, as it looks pretty good on the test graphic

[cathar the great]

@mnone: I know, right? It might just be my favorite bit from the Chaos Knights box. And as ThisisJimmy pointed out, that is a spawn mouth, which fit surprisingly well once the kneepad was shaved off a bit. I plan on adding some water effects to that area when the painting is done, to represent a gaping, saliva dripping demon mouth.

You know, for cracking nuts and stuff <_<

@thisisjimmy: Cheers dude. I'm actually really excited to start painting again, now that I've found my muse again, so to say.

But before, there's someone that is just dying to meet all of you:

Light.

Not bright light, but the dim light of dawn, spattered with the flicker of flames. But still, light.

Light and with it, safety. If they made it to the launch pad, there would be a transport. If they had a transport, they might just be able to leave the fortress. Of course there were still fighters in the air, both their own and those of the enemy, but it was a chance. More than what their own soldiers had had.

It would not be fair to say that their defense force had been slaughtered like animals. A hunt had something of a system to it. Hunters would pick their targets, the old, the weak, the useless. A hunt might be brutal, but not like this. Not savage.

One more flight of stairs. Two more steps. One.

He was the first of their squad out on the launch pad, and the first to see the burning wreckage of the last Valkyrie on the fortress grounds.

It had started to rain, too. Not yet the acidic rain they got at the end of the mining season, when the gigantic planetary ore hauler came down through the atmosphere. It was a light drizzle of what you might even call water. Sure, swallowing a mouthful would give you diarrhea for a week, but it wouldn’t kill you.

With a sound that was halfway between a sloppy kiss and the explosion of a frak grenade, five figures blinked into existence between their squad and the destroyed transport.

There was no time to think. “Guardsmen! Close ranks, combat formation!” he barked and then the butt of the chainsword slammed into him, breaking his jaw and, moving further, dislocated his shoulder. A knee, heavily armored and caked in blood and dirt, came at him next. It caught him below his breastplate and knocked the air out of him. He fell and the pain was gone.

Time slowed to a crawl. He watched, without any real energy or interest left, as his squad, and the governor and his family, were killed. The five enemy warriors were not rushing in to meet their prey like the others they had encountered.

In a way, he had wondered, these past few, horrifying days, why the enemy seemed to be as scared as they had been. The wild men, beasts and traitor Astartes had met their ranks with hasty, determined expressions, but it had always seemed to be fear, pure, undiluted and painful fear, driving them forward with such ferocity. Sure, they had obviously enjoyed themselves, but they didn’t waste time relishing a kill, or feasting on the corpses of the slain.

Onwards, onwards they had pressed, never stopping, their weapons in a tight grip.

As he watched his friends get butchered by slow moving, lumbering giants, he began to understand where all this fear had come from.

They saved the governor for last. He was kneeling in a fresh puddle of rain-water and blood, screaming at the heavens above them, as everyone around him died.

From his position on the ground further back, he watched as one of the warriors walked forward and raised a gigantic sword. The blade came down, leaving a trail of sickly, yellowish energy in the air. More blood was spilled, and his mission had failed.

The governor was dead. The minister of war was dead. The president of the mining facilities was dead. And probably, by the end of the day, every man and woman on the planet would be dead.

“Do not worry.” The voice sounded like it came from far away, and at the same time, as if it was right inside his head. It sounded like death, not fresh death coming at you, but old death, that had happened long ago and hadn’t caught up with the owner of the voice yet. “Do not worry, for their deaths will not have been in vain.”

He managed to turn his destroyed face up. He blinked away the rain drops and looked upon the face that had scared both enemy and allies alike. There wasn’t a lot of face left, to be honest. It was a huge, deformed skull, but there were still eyes in the blackened sockets, small, white ones, that stared down into his. Blood caked the bare teeth and dripped from the holes where ears might have been long ago. It was smiling. It would have probably been hard not to smile without lips.

“Rejoice,” it went on “For they will feed many mouths in the months to come.”

The warrior-creature bent down on one knee and lifted his head into its lap, holding him with one gigantic claw, as the hand still holding the sword gesticulated wildly.

“Their skin will clad our soldiers, their heads will hang from their belts, and their flesh will feed them when times a dark, and there’s no fresh meat to find. Their bones will hold spells and prayers, and form daggers and speartips.

“Trust me on this, son of the corpse-emperor. Nothing will go to waste.”

The skull was now filling his vision, the eyes piercing into his very soul, as the creature spoke the last words he would ever hear.

“Because I take my job very seriously.”

The Butcher, Quartermaster of the Wretched Guild

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He's not yet fixed to the base, as it still needs some work, so he looks a but funny on it.

Also feel free to ignore my scribblings with the black pen, just wanted to see what he might look like when he's painted. And there's still a bit of tin foil on the GS shoulder cloak, can't really get that off. <_<

And yes, there is a backstory to the Grey Knight parts, don't worry, I'll get to that (I feel like Ted Mosby when I say that)

Next update should be paint, I hope.

Cheers,

Peter

[Myxx]

I really dig the terminators! Nice job...

[Subtle Discord]

Amazing work. Can't wait to see it progress. You've got me wanting to work on my Terminators, but I... must... stay... focused...

 

Also feel free to ignore my scribblings with the black pen, just wanted to see what he might look like when he's painted.

 

Nothing at all wrong with using a pen. I use them all the time before and even during painting. A very fine one can make the most flawless eye pupils. And if you use a slightly larger coloured one, a finer one for a black dot, you'll have people begging you for the secret to your eyes.

 

Go to a good art store and look for the pens and find some fine point felt tips with 'archive' quality ink. 03 and 02 are fine, and 005 is very fine. You can do all sorts of lining, tattoos, pupils, scroll lines, fine text (readable and really fine scribbles that look like really small letters), and tricky details. Just think of a paint brush with a 0.20mm (005 pen) tip that never runs out of 'paint'.

 

The major trick; Remember that paint, when dry, is a plastic and can be softened by solvents. Pens use solvents in their ink. When you use a pen it will ever-so-slightly soften the paint (don't worry, it's not even enough to effect the paint job) and that can cause the pen to 'clog' with a trace amount of paint. While using a pen on paint, you need to take it to a piece of paper now-and-then and draw some long lines to clean the tip and get the ink flowing again. Then, get back to work.

 

Pens can do some amazing little details that are very hard with a brush.