The Neurode Crusade

[Brother Christopher]

The Rhinos are completed*. At first glance, there is not much of an improvement when compared to the first set of photos, but the devil is in the detail. And I added some of that to the existing base structure to better imitate the amount of stuff original models have going on for them. This means that there are more side armour plates to paint and add the impression of detail and depth, as well as other must-haves such as exhaust stacks, tracks, hatches, headlamps and other minor stuff.

 

Neurode Indomitus-pattern Rhinos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used polystyrene sheets (which as far as I'm concerned are the same thing as plasticard, only way cheaper) and some blueprints for a papercraft Rhino I found online a couple of years ago. This took me 2 weeks of my hobby time to complete. But apart from the significant time investment, the builds turned out to be dirt cheap. With the exclusion of the spare parts from GW's original vehicles I already had (doors, front plates, stormbolters, tracks and hatches), the polystyrene sheets I used cost probably not more than 1 Euro.

 

Overall, I'm quite happy with the final product. Some detailing could have been better and more faithful to the originals, but I wanted to complete this project relatively quickly, thus I cut some corners here and there.

 

*I still need to fill some crevices with green stuff and add rivets.

[TheOneTrueZon]

 

You're a saint for scratch building your own treads. Those look so good, a fine addition to your army! 

[Brother Christopher]

Ah, the tracks are casts I got from a friend (so are the hatches). The rest, however, is built from polystyrene. I was considering building a couple of links with a custom pattern and then recreating them using press moulds, but my mate spared me the effort. Actually, for the first time... the rest of my tanks had hand-made tracks; admittedly, with a simpler pattern, but still.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

​I thought I recognised the hatches! Mk1 Rhino no?

[SWORD BROTHER RYAN]

Beautiful! I am totally impressed!

[Brother Christopher]

​I thought I recognised the hatches! Mk1 Rhino no?

 

Yes, indeed! Though, I didn't do the grooves acting probably as handles for the hatches - I found it too convenient for a xenos or heretic on top of the vehicle who'd like to get inside ;)

[Ciler]

I dare say you got it right !

You really should post this in the Post your homages thread, by the way.

[Brother Christopher]

Thanks for linking the thread; I'll make sure to post this!

[Brother Christopher]

The Neurode Crusade joins this year's ETL!

 

[Brother Christopher]

A small update of the progress on my Marshal for this year's ETL. Base colours, a lot of shading and most details are done.

 

[Hawklynn]

What was your process for the beard? I love that color, it looks like my hair. 

#gingersnap

[Brother Christopher]

There's no process at all; it just turned out this way. It's just a drybrush of Vermin Brown, followed by a wash of Agrax Earthshade. The lighter parts probably appear as such due to a basecoat of white that I've applied to the skin areas to later get the colour of the flesh more easily. But I must say, I'm happy with the colour, as it matches my bear as well. So despite not being as bald or broad shoudlered as the Marshal, I have something in common with my plastic commander!

[Othniel's Blade]

Great. Now I need to work on face-painting skills so my Marshal has a brown beard to fit in with the Hirsute Crusade. 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Your Marshal looks great. I like how pissed off he looks- an appropriate expression to have when fighting enemies of the Imperium.

 

Black Templars Marshal (reducing his opponent's skull to dust): "How dare you oppose the Emperor's will? Accept your punishment!"

[Brother Christopher]

I've just declared my first ETL 2018 vow finished. Here are some photos of my Marshal/Castellan:

 

 

 

 

 

The arms are magnetised, so is the hammer, so I can swap weapons for other options. I'm planning to do the same with my second Marshal as insurance against future changes. I desperately needed this since I ended up with HQs with wargear that looks pretty cool, but is no longer viable. The reason for this is that back when I played, I actually needed only an EC and a Chaplain; now things have changed and there's space for chainswords, thunder hammers and master-crafted bolters in a list.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Again, I must compliment your work on the model. The crusader cross on his cape is a good touch.

[Marshal Wolfhart]

That is a pleasure to look at, i'm most impressed about the shading of the scalp, wonderful attention to detail!

[Aegir_Einarsson]

I know What you mean:):). I have old chapter master with artificer armour with double lightning claws.... back to 4ed. Codex.... old times:). Now all my army is magnetized:):).

[The Spanish Inquisitor]

Really well done ! We can see the purposeful look of the Marshall to walk onwards to the enemy. 

[Brother Christopher]

I've been offline for quite some time now. One probably has to take a break from time to time. Unfortunately, I haven't done a thing in the hobby too. The high temperatures outside, which despite my efforts also invade the inside of my flat, don't help either.

 

Thank you all for the comments and likes. For my skills, I'm extremely happy with how the Marshal turned out. In fact, the only thing I'd want to correct is the face - it looks pretty good in person, but a close-up reveals a slight retardation in his eyes. Still, I probably won't do anything about it at present since I'm too worried I'll just mess things up. I can't get my painting to a higher level yet and control my hand/brush better.

 

I also realised that I haven't posted individual photos of my plasma squad. These marines are my count-as Hellblasters. I'm *lucky* to only have 10 out of my ~200 PA marines on 32 mm bases, so for gaming purposes there should be no problem with distinguishing regular marines from count-as Primars. If I ever happen to play an actual game, that is. Other than that, I couldn't bother to do anything else, like place them on scenic bases to compensate for the additional height of Marines 2.0. I am sure that any potential opponent will be fine with a proxy like this.

 

The Hellblaster squad is currently the only squad in my Crusade with a distinct feature. As you can see, all Hellblasters have yellow plasma gun casing (a homage to the Imperial Fists) and purple plasma cores (for fluff reasons, these are overcharged Neurode-pattern ammunitions which give increased range and penetrating power when compared to regular, blue and green, plasma cells). The colours is also reflected in heraldry displayed on the squad leader's standard (after some time, now I thing it's a bit cheesy, but it stays!). The members of the squad are veterans who excel in ranged combat and are equipped with additional targeters to maximise the utility of the enhanced munitions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But there's more! After years of neglect, I'm working on my ranged marines. After all, who needed Devastators in 5th edition when LRCs and Assault Terminators performed so well? :P Now, I'm slowly making up for that and am working on the designated heavy weapon support (4 of each heavy weapons).

 

I've started work with painting the @#$^@ hybrid devastators with metal plasma and lascannons. These were such a pain to put together, I still remember the fury which filled me during the process. Painting, however, was relatively more enjoyable. The only complaint I have is that I finished them before ETL - a shame really, but I probably had gotten a bit overzealous and wanted to check how my new work routine... works. Here are the photos:

 

 

 

 

 

With the amout of work required, their awkward poses and excessive weight making the models extremely wobbly, I regret ever getting my hands on them. The only upsides are their historical value (I try to convince myself that a collector should have some heavy pewter models as a homage to the bygone [personal opinion: better] editions) and some unique (but awkward!) poses.

 

And a group shot of all the recent fire support additions:

 

 

As always, any comments or questions are mostly welcome!

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I found that small coins stuck to the bases of metal devastators help them balance better.

 

Boys look great, your highlighting is ridiculously neat!

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job on the Devastators/Hellblasters.

[Brother Christopher]

Thank you, brothers!

 

I found that small coins stuck to the bases of metal devastators help them balance better.

 

I've been thinking about using washers instead of coins. I figured that I can find larger and heavier ones to offset the weight on the top of the model and still fit the diameter of the base. But I'll need to experiment with this - if coins are enough to keep the minis more firmly in place, coins it shall be. It would save me some time in a hardware store.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I usually use one cent Euro coins as English pennies are too large, especially for the 25mm bases a lot of my army still have. Washers would be heavier though.

[Brother Christopher]

There is something profoundly depressing in such army shots. I'm a 27-year-old adult who just spent around half and hour of his life sitting on the floor and arranging his plastic and pewter soldiers on the same floor just to have photographic documentation of the extent of his addiction problem hobby which spun out of control. I decided to do this after wasting some more time trying to make sense of my notes which (in January) specified the exact number of each marines with a specific role and weapon. It appears that Chaos attempted some mischief and there was a chance that the notes are corrupted. And I needed to know the status of my Crusade today, of all days.

 

Now I also learnt that in 20 years' time, when I'm finished with all the painting, I'll need an entire day to take photos of the army.

 

Now the matter appears to be settled. In the near future, I'll do the same regarding Terminators, Neophytes and Bikers. But I'm fairly sure that the last time I counted them, I did it right. There should be 210 Marines in the photo. In addition there are 17 bikes (includign 2 assault bikes), 49 suits of Terminator Armour, 6 suits of Centurion Armour, 25 Neophytes and 6 servitors. After adding pilots and drivers of vehicles represented by models I have, the total number of active Crusaders exceeds 350. These are split into 5 Battle Companies with their own standard, Techmarine, Chaplain, Apothecary, Honour Guard and 2 high-ranking officers.

 

 

I need to finally write fluff for the Crusade and prepare an organisation chart, including custom ranks (variations on the original - with all the 'veterans' in my Crusade, I don't want to have too many Sword Brethren). If you're interested in this, let me know - that'd be a great source of motivation.