Night Lords "Tenebrous Winter" (GREY KNIGHT 08/12)

[AlanofAngels]

Hey guys! Well, I may have fallen to the Custodes fever going around right now A couple of factors pushed me towards 'em, mainly because I am an insanely slow painter and this is such a low model count army and also because FW won't restock my Chaos extra armor so don't have a lot of places to go on my NL right now.

So, if you have been following my WIP log for a while, you might notice the familiar gold tone on these guys. I wanted something slightly different than GW's Custodes and their warm gold hue, and went for the nice cool brass color, the same I use on my VIII^th legion accents. The current plan is to make a small strike force of these guys because I love small model count armies and even in large games these guys fit that bill, which is good since it takes me so long to get anything done I figure with this army, I can really bump the painting level up a bit since there are so few models. We'll certainly see how it goes!

Thanks for looking, guys! Any comments/questions and C&C welcome!

[Firepower]

Gorgeous gold. :tu:

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Great job on the Custodes.

[AlanofAngels]

Hey guys! On my day off I thought it would be fun to play around and try to get some group photos of my beloved VIII^th! I've taken a few group photos in the past and it's always gone kind of "eh" in terms of uniformed lighting and general picture quality, so wanted to try and get some better ones (which required a trip to Walmart to grab some white foamboard ). I think the new ones ended up a lot better. Be warned, though, there's roughly 5 quintillion photos below Anyways, here goes:

Starting with the full army shot as it stands right now:

And some close-ups in there:

And since I had the lighting all set up, I took some individual unit shots too:

And my favorite type of photo, the good ol "Avenger" ensemble shot of the Champions:

And the army as it stands right now:

Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, taking photos has become kind of a weird side-hobby in and of itself that has 100% spawned off of my love for miniature painting (and to be honest, I don't really care as much to take photos of other stuff ). This has been hands down the most involved army project I've ever worked on, each model being it's own labor of love and possessing its own uniqueness.

I have a ton more stuff planned for this army coming up, not least of which is coming up next in the berserker unit, who will be properly Night Lord-ified, and their Rhino, provided Forgeworld gets their together and restocks the Chaos extra armor kit at some point prior to our solar system's sun burning out In the meantime I can definitely get started on the infantry, so expect that soon!

Plenty more to come and thanks for looking, as always!

-Alan

[Markus_]

It's always nice to see a full army brought to such a high standard. Great work.

[Pearson73]

The force looks great all together, i really do like what you did with the raptors.

[hushrong]

That army looks fantastic. I also cannot wait to see your NL Berzerkers. Going to go with winged skull helms and chainglaives by chance?  Regardless I will be stoked to see them!

[KrautScientist]

The Night Lords are looking absolutely incredible! So is the Custodian! Fantastic painting, and definitely an army project to be proud of! :)

[Soldier of Dorn]

Goddamn, there's a reason this is one of my favorite Night Lords armies around. Great work, Alan. Absolutely stunning.

[malcharion]

That's a glorious view !! Your night lords are really inspiring and trully beautifull ! Great job all around !

 

Malchy

[ShVagYeR]

That is one of the best armies I've seen, not only on B&C but in my lifetime. Great work!

[AlanofAngels]

Thanks a ton, everyone! This army has for sure been a labor of love but totally worth it And still so much to do!

Speaking of....

That's berzerker number one all assembled and primed! In my list my zerkers have chainswords and chainaxes and no bolt pistols, but aesthetically I just couldn't leave the sidearms off and I've found full-sized sheathed blades to often times look kind of awkward at this scale. I don't reckon anyone will have a WYSIWYG issue with that

I'm going with mk III for all of my berzerkers because I think the heavier armor mark fits their close combat ideations perfectly. Only modification I did to that bit was to trim off the dangling groin armor from the torso because I think it limited too much poseability.

One of the biggest things I had been looking for was suitable heads for my fellas; ones that looked both VIII^th legion and berzerker-y while avoiding any heads I've already used to keep this unit unique and not being a huge fan of a lot of the World Eater FW head upgrades. Ironically, I found exactly what I wanted in the Thousand Sons Scarab Occult terminator heads (after scrolling through hundreds of ebay listings for something I liked) I think they look perfectly Chaos-y and berzerker-y with a hint of the pre-heresy mk IV helm which always look slick They might be slightly bigger due to them being intended for terminators, but they fit right in with the mk III plate. And of course, given my desire to arm them with chainaxes, I went straight to FW for those.

We finally have some stuff to paint, guys! So plenty more to come!

[hushrong]

Excited to see this guy put together! I could use some more berzerkers myself but ran out of ideas (and am looking to permanently borrow some...) while waiting for GW to replace the venerable kit we've had for eons. I am really interested in how that Scarab occult head works out on power armor.

[Soldier of Dorn]

Intriguing. As Hushrong, I'll be interested to see how it all comes together with the Scarab Occult helm.

[AlanofAngels]

What's up guys! BE WARNED, FW RANT TO FOLLOW I know it's been a long time since I posted anything, but I found myself lacking a lot of hobby motivation lately, primarily due to a lot of my favorite FW bits now being unavailable after going LCTB. The one in particular that hurt the most was the Chaos rhino extra armor (which didn't even go LCTB it just vanished....), which if you followed my log you'll know I had been waiting for patiently for several months to come back in stock, only for it to be quietly removed from the FW store without them saying a thing about it to anyone, including those of us on the wait list for it. When I emailed them asking what the deal was they just said the molds were not worth restoring but maybe at some point it will be back, not even apologizing for wasting 2 months of my life (and pointlessly having my NL project on hold waiting for it) by making me wait for something listed as "temporarily out of stock" that was never to return from the get-go

I love FW, but lately it's been hard to find motivation for the hobby when it almost feels like GW/FW are moving beyond my army itself and I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle when I try to keep working on it. Between many of the bits in my army now no-longer being in production (despite them being less than, what, 5 years old tops in the case of the mk II shoulder pads) and my marines inherently being the "old" non-primaris ones now, it is certainly a strange feeling, and one that kind of puts a damper on my enthusiasm for my NL in particular. I'm hoping I find some fire in me to get back to them, but for now, they're taking a backseat for other projects that bum me out and frustrate me less when I work on them. It should be fun, after all. But the way FW has handled a lot of stuff the past few months has really ebbed my patience and sucked the fun right out of my VIII^th in particular for me, which is impressive because it's the most work I've ever put into an army and I was so happy with the results. /RANT/

ANYWAYS......

START HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THE TIRED WHIMPERINGS OF A ONCE-FW FANBOY

With that in mind I set out to do something a little different and tried my hand at a somewhat converted Grey Knight. The 666th chapter has always been one of my favorites both in background and appearance and with the Killteam rules coming out I figured now was a great time to try my hand at a force more geared to my personal work-pace I love the look/scale of primaris despite their uglier than sin fluff and I'm firmly in the camp of "these marines are the future whether we like it or not" so figured if I am going to start a new project, I might as well plan for the future and go primaris scale, which I dig anyways.

So here's the first Grey Knight of my soon-to-be Killteam (and possible army at some point):

I'm pretty pumped with how he came out, especially as this is a new method of painting silver for me; I went for a much darker and more gunmetal tone than on my previous GK. The conversion itself I think turned out really well too. I think the "heroic" scale of the normal GK weapons like the halberd and stormbolter look more appropriate on the primaris-sized models and less comically large like they tend to sometimes otherwise. I also opted for the mkIII shoulder pad so I could add some heraldry with more space for iconography along with the Deathwatch pad with the Inquisition symbol on it for their chapter insignia. I know some hardcore GK fans are gonna get all pissed off at the Aquila on his chest but sorry boutcha, I like it and think it breaks up the armor nicely

Anyways, more to come and thanks for sticking with my griping/rambling! C&C most welcome!

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Grey Knight looks great, AlanofAngels!

[GrandMagnus]

Well man, anything you do is gonna look awesome, so night lords or grey knights, I'm happy either way :D

[Jukkiz]

Never seen Grey knights in Deathwatch... But he looks pretty nice and awesome.

[KrautScientist]

 

I know some hardcore GK fans are gonna get all pissed off at the Aquila on his chest but sorry boutcha, I like it and think it breaks up the armor nicely 

 

Well, if you want to get technical about it, it's actually an Imperialis, not an Aquila ;)

 

Seriously, though: The conversion is excellent, a seamless combination of Primaris and GK parts. I also really like the paintjob, although I think the model should have some element that contains the red/white heraldry somewhere on its front, as the colour scheme is looking awfully monochromatic otherwise -- maybe one of the knee pads would be the perfect place for that. Unless, of course, that was exactly the look you were going for.

[hushrong]

Sorry to hear about the FW woes. Sucks to hear about the loss of interest in the VIII. Yours are spectacular and I do hope you pick them up again one day.

 

However. The new knight is awesome and I won’t complain about seeing more of them!

[Pearson73]

Very clean painting on the Knight, especially the shoulder pad.

 

Sad to hear of the lack of motivation for your Night Lords, but I completely get the feeling, things have been pretty topsy-turvy with FW of late.

[AlanofAngels]

Well I'll be damned!! Yes, I'm still alive, having been lurking like an insufferable introverted internet bastard for the past 7 months I mean also real life has been busy but that's no excuse! However, I'm a big believer in occasionally needing some R&R, and that includes from this hobby. I'm sure some of you are like me where your hobby juices and motivation ebb and flow, and towards the end of last year mine had definitely receded to the deep, dark, hobby ocean.

BUT! Now it's back and stronger than ever, in big part due to the efforts of GW with what (IMO) is the biggest revamp of a range since Dark Eldar several years back. And I think the fact that I'm posting this at all is a testament to the quality of the models they are releasing; powerful enough to move me past my disappointment in Forgeworld over the past year.

So with that said, I've got a brand spankin' new project in the pipe to go along with these shiny new Chaos models:

No, none of that is VIII^th or XX^th Legion related, so sorry (for now) to any who were hoping for a continuation of that. That said, those who like the IV^th (or just hate the VII^th) should start getting excited because I'm going full bore on these fellas! For the longest time I've wanted to do Iron Warriors, but haven't wanted to pull the trigger with the previous Chaos range, knowing new models had to be right around the corner. Well, "right around the corner" turned out to be several years, but we're finally there!

As much as I love my Night Lords, I want to do something different with these new kits and don't want to feel like I'm re-doing a project I've already done, and combining them seems out of the question given the rather stark difference in aesthetics and scale. Which, combined with my long time desire to make IV^th happen, made starting up the Iron Warriors an easy choice for me.

So, with all of that stuff soon to be in the mail, I've started working on a few bases to get a jump on that. Once the new CSM stuff gets here, I'll get to assemblin' and paintin'! Also, it goes without saying that you should expect this to proceed as slow as ever as, much like with my Night Lords, I will be assembling and painting each model one at a time to maintain the uniqueness and quality that really makes each model special to me.

With that in mind, hopefully ya'll are up for another brutally long army project! I fully anticipate my first squad to be done by the time they update the range again! Updates to follow; no doubt next time with my first assembled Iron Warrior. The B&C is without a doubt the best community on the web, and multiplies my enjoyment of this hobby many times over So thanks for looking and sticking around!

Alan

[BadgersinHills]

That Night Lords army is a thing of absolute beauty and inspirational as well! Can't wait to see what you do with the Iron Warriors, I have no doubt it'll be great. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

As someone who's just started to do iron warriors as well, I'm really excited to see your ultra crisp interpretation of them. Only thing is I feel the heresy line fits way better than either csm

[AlanofAngels]

Thanks guys! Like I said, while waiting for my orders to arrive I've been batch painting bases.... and I wasn't kidding:

That's 40 bases right there, 30 for my marines and 10 for terminators, I'm thinkin'. I've also been working on my snow recipe as I want to move away from the snow-flock method. Below it's applied to some of my older, slightly darker bases (going brighter now to make them look "frostier" or "colder"):

After a fair amount of experimenting, I really like how this one turned out! I added some 'Ardcoat to give it a nice glistening sheen to the snow, and I wanted it to look a bit melty so applied the varnish past the edges of the snow as well. I figure it doesn't hurt to seal the snow in as well, as I've heard stories of multiple materials yellowing after some time.

For some odd reason the past few days I've gotten a real hankering to paint some Night Lords again.... I suppose I could always revamp the army and maybe take it to the next level with what I've learned since starting that project, but it's a hard pill to swallow for some reason. I guess we'll see what happens

Thanks for looking and all C&C welcome! Especially including on my hobby ADD