Cult of the Twin Tailed, a WIP blog (picture heavy!)

[Slaanbull]

Hello everybody, welcome to my first topic on this forum!
I’ve wanted to make a WIP blog for a long time, reason one is that I’d like some more feedback on my projects. Reason two is that I’m bad at sitting down actually painting for more than 20-30 minutes a sitting. I hope that this will push me a bit in the right direction, and help me to focus more of my free time on painting.

Getting that out of the way, my warband is called the Cult of the Twin Tailed, it is a fleet based warband that chases through the galaxy, led by a council of six who suffers from visions of a twin tailed comet soaring through the void. They’re promised a paradise world to call their own where the comet finally makes planet fall.
This fluff is still evolving and I hope to flesh it out more as I paint up my dudes.

Following is some pictures of completed models for you to get a feel of my painting level and style, I apologize for the grainy pictures, my camera is hidden away in a box somewhere, so these are taken with my phone.
I’ve mostly focused on cultists and ideas on how to make a lot and still make every single one of them unique to the others, there’s parts from old one-piece empire handgunners, flagellants, stormvermin, marauders, Dark Vengeance, catachan, empire militia, beastmen. And probably a bunch more.

I really dig my cultist champion made from the renowned nurgle lord, I always get him the gift of mutation after he took two(or one, I actually can’t remember, but he boasts a lot to his minions) wounds off of an ork warboss in mega armour before getting crumped.

Here is the terminator I painted for an Inspiring Friday Challenge, and after him a marine with a bolter and a mohawk.

Last we have the legs of a helbrute, a guy with the excess banner, and a marine wielding a homecooked sonic blaster, was mostly an experiment incorporating termagaunt arms into a marine looking weapon.

Thank you for watching! My next post will detail my current project which is a bunch of cultists and two marines for a kill team campaign in my local GW store.

[Slaanbull]

These are a bunch of cultists for my kill team in progress.
They're made from empire greatswords mixed with forge worlds renegade upgrades, I would love an army of these(even contemplated buying the warhammer forge empire infantry upgrades and chaosifying), but they're quite expensive.

I really like these next three, it was a lot of trouble drilling a hole in the pointing guys hand, and yes, that is a stolen astartes sword the one to the left is swinging around!

Here's the banner bearer, with the new FW book out I guess it's a chaos sigil.
He was the first one I assembled, I'm quite proud of the pose.

Lastly is the boss of my kill team, a champion with a power maul and a doom siren, and a chosen with his trusted autocannon and a ceremonial knife.

I hope to continue working on the cultists this evening when I'm home from school, and would love some ideas on how to paint them up, I'm thinking of going more rust heavy than my marines are, with a creamy/dirty white for the cloth that isn't already purple.

[Forté]

Fantastic beginnings with loads of details to spot. Keep it coming (even if it's only 30mins of of painting).

[Pearson73]

Really cool conversions. Great cultists!

[KingBlanco1994]

Wow dude these look awesome :)

[Slaanbull]

Thanks guys! I hope to get done with the kill team and on to newer projects soon, I have a forgefiend I want to paint up, but the larger models intimidate me a bit. :)
've been painting up five of the cultists, and I hope to get them done tonight for some weekend pictures.
How do you guys usually paint different pieces of metal? I don't want the swords of my cultists, their belt buckes and the trim on my marines to look like the exact same material, a tin bitz undercoat under the leadbelcher usually helps making the metal on the cultists look much more battered and low quality.
But is it all washes from there or how do you do it? Maybe I should invest in more different metallics do you have any brands or colours of metallic paint that you simply couldn't do without?

Tomorrow I have a 1v2 game against orks and tyranids, I'll be playing with a necron detachment allied by a small chaos force, cultists and marines to keep the monsters at bay while the tesla and gauss ruins their hordes(hopefully!). How do you usually kill monstrous creatures with CSM?
Have a nice day and thanks for taking a peek.

[Brother Ambroz]

Wow these guys are awesome. Been looking for conversion parts for my traitor IG and I'm going to have to check out the empire greatswords. Thanks for the inspiration!

[Slaanbull]

@Tanith Ghost: Thanks man, the greatsword kit is awesome to work with, well-proportioned hands and arms too. And the two-handed weapons are easy make awesome conversions out of, I'm making a bunch of guys wielding shovels for trench work, and bashing tyranids. A bunch of crazy dudes bringing down a tervigon with trench tools is just too funny.

Here are the only pictures I took from the battle this saturday, the shops closed early so we fought back at my apartment.

The cultist champion(Jussan the Fat) rolled +1 toughness on his boon table, and therefore the challenge between him and the ork runtherd was very equal, neither of them managed to wound each other and the runtherd escaped(terminator lord preventing sweep). In the next turn the remaining two cultists, Jussan and my terminator lord got blasted away by twenty shootaboyz..

I've got no painting done the last few days, but I hope to finish the five cultists I posted earlier this week.

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

Lot of cool conversion.  The Champion with Power Maul & Autocannon marine are really great.  Looking forward to see how this army turn out.

 

IP

[Slaanbull]

Howdy! Been a long time since I posted an update in here, but this time I have a lot to show off, and some stuff I hope to get a bit of advice on.

First up is the finished cultists I posted earlier, they ended up being quite a rushed job, and I broke a deal I made with myself to be really meticulous with every model in my army. It just didn't hold up with a model as cheap as cultists and I found it to be more satisfying to leave them as is and call it done until I can revisit them some day.


Next up is my try at a large chaos marine blessed by the gods(large frame, wielding an autocannon with a single arm, removed his backpack and power source).
He was originally supposed to be a rapier battery with a hades autocannon, hence the square base, but the new skaven stormfiends are going to provide me with a much more exotic looking autocannon. He'll probably be degraded to an obliterator some time next month.
Still a painting project, I wanted to try some patterns on him, the sun-ray looking tails on both shoulders inspired mostly by old fantasy artwork.

Last up is my two Gal Vorbak converted lords, counting as Slaanesh marked lords on steeds. First one a powerfist/claw wielding guy. One arm from the terminator lord/sorceror, the other from a lizardman kit, I'm thinking that the left arm will be painted completely golden to accentuate the unique look, I tried to integrate it more into the model by blending the sinewy looking parts of the shoulder pad into his gauntlet.


Last up is the other lord on steed, wielding a sword and a whip that is an integrated part of his arm(bit from the blight kings kit). I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to sculpt the whip, I started with a wire base and a tiny bit of greenstuff, now I'm in the process of giving it several coats of liquid greenstuff before shaving it down with a knife.
I'd love for you to give me some ideas on other approaches, it is easy to remove the wire so I can try some different method until I find one that works properly.



Thanks for looking, I'm moving to a different apartment this weekend with a friend of mine that also collects and paints a 40k army, I hope that will rejuvenate my creative juices and result in more frequent and finished(!) updates.

[RolandTHTG]

Oooh! Those cultists look awesome. Same with the oblit and the lords. Where is the first lord's head from? The demonette kit? I also really like the lizardman claw for a unique lightning claw. For the whip guw, might it be easier to get a whip from the demonette or hellstrider kits to convert? 

[Slaanbull]

Thanks Roland! First head is from the hellstriders. I thought about using a hellstrider whip, or maybe the one from Lucius(got a metal version of him, used the head for the second lord, his body is for a counts as Khârn the Betrayer). Problem is I want it to look organic and nasty, and felt that it would be a nice challenge for me. Has anyone tried to make a roll of greenstuff with a wire core? Maybe I could do that, add teeth or whatever and then bend it to shape afterwards..

[Pearson73]

These guys are smashing!

[Slaanbull]

Thank you Pearson! Looked through the thread in your signature and saw you had some of those evil craft bits; how do they hold up to the plastic space marines? Heard that they're a bit bigger, which might make me interested in picking up something from them.

 

I've now moved and I am in the process of unpacking, I hope to update with some paint on one or two of my lords soon.

As always thank you for looking. :)

[Pearson73]

The Evil Craft stuff is a tad bulkier and taller than standard marines; think more Dark Vengeance Chosen. I can post a comparison photo if that'd help?

[Slaanbull]

Yea, I'd love it if you'd post some pictures of that Pearson. :)

Here's an update of the painted and finished Chaos Lord I posted some pictures of last time. I am really satisfied with the piece and just had time to take a few photos here after work, and before the sun set.
I ended up just continuing the whip/tentacle made of greenstuff, and I like the way it ended up.
Comments and criticism is extremely well received and I hope to soon post some pictures of my paint-in-progress spawn based on the Nightmaw model from forgeworld.

Enough talk; here are the pictures.

[Forté]

Why, why, why did you have to make that look so good! Awesome :tu:

[RolandTHTG]

He looks really good. One question though. Had you considered adding more of those purple flames from his shoulderpad to other parts of the model? Currently I feel it kinda makes the rest of the armor look plain, especially his right arm and leg.

[Forté]

I'm now tempted to get a set to make some Oblits. All your fault.

[KrautScientist]

Not only is that an excellent looking Slaaneshi Lord, but also a killer looking true scale version of Lucius the Eternal! I particularly like the whip -- suitably intestinal, that one

A slight deduction for the mono-boob, though. Yeah, it frequently appears in the artwork -- but I cannot help feeling the model would have been better off without it...

[Teetengee]

very nice lord there

[Slaanbull]

I have considered adding purple flames other places yes, or, black streaks and waves in the same style. But I'm not totally sure where they would fit and not dominate a part, any suggestions? I was thinking about adding some to the right greaVe, but should the pattern originate from top or bottom, or maybe even from the toe that breaks through the armor, and they use the patterns to designate and celebrate gifts, mutation, possession etc?

 

Thanks Forté, now you gave me the idea for the last of the bodies, an obliterator of course. :)

I would definitely recommend the kit, nice to work with, awesome details, and compared to GW stuff I wasn't too miffed about the price.

[Forté]

Well the size is about right for an Oblit and easily looks like Fleshmetal armour.

[Slaanbull]

@krautscientist holy :cuss! I hadn't even noticed that I geared him the same way as Lucius, quite fitting though.

I also feel that the original model was better without the chest enhancement, but with the longer and slimmer sword opposed to his mutated claw he was missing something, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. :-) thanks for the critique, it means a lot to me.

 

@Teetengee cheers! :)

 

@Forté Yea, they really are, maybe make them as gigantic noise marines. I've always wanted my obliterators to have exotic looking sonic weapons. Different tune=different weapon!

[Pearson73]

Here we are (Dark Vengeance on the left, Evilcraft centre and regular marine on the right):

Also that Lord looks smashing, love the tentacle whip!