Advanced Infiltration: Heralds of Extinction

[Xenith]

Thanks! The lance is literally just an old dark elf spear - I was going to do a better job, but I figured most of the hand would be covered by the mk3 wrist guard, so I just stuck it straight onto the end of one of the new arms - it's still the original dark elf's hand holding it! I then added a chain bayonet to the gauntlet, which I am still not 100% on but I felt needed to puch the theme, and the charger is from the AoD praetor that I cut up to make my Dynat - backpack is either a resin rapier weapon platform one, or a seeker one, with a vox on the back, with the halo and antennae clipped off. 

[Pearson73]

Love Skorr's helmet on the Siege Master!

[Xenith]

On 7/15/2024 at 7:37 PM, Pearson73 said:

Love Skorr's helmet on the Siege Master!

 

Yea, it was one of those conversions I received in the job lot that I was amazed at, and had to keep. 

 

I've learned a new skill, which is airbrushing! After a long time of pooh-poohing it, thinking it was cheating, and then probably too hard to do, a friend just shoved one in my hands and said give it a go. After a few false starts, I managed to get into a rhythm, and lots of cleaning (something secnod nature with my chemistry background), and I got all the big tanks and thimhs I ws too scared to try and brush paint my scheme onto:

 

Totals basecoated:

1x falchion

1x spartan

2x laser destroyer vindis

1x sabre

1x leviathan

10x despoilers

10x melta support

5x headhunters

5x destroyers

1x rhino

1x scorpius

1x cata praetor

1x Thousand Sons predator

 

As you can see, that's some significant reinforcements for the Legion. You can see from the pics as well there's a bit of a green tint - when reacing the end of the blue, I pipetted the rest out of the pot, and added some 50/50 ork flesh/contrast medium and blasted the models from the top with this, similar to my usual highlight - it comes off quite subtley, but the green tint is there. I need to go and do it by hand on the lower parts like greaves, knees etc, but it will have sped things up. one thing that I see is that the airbrush finish seems to be a bit matte compared to brushwork - any ideas why this is? I think I'll have to give them all a satin varnish after I'm done. 

 

[Sothalor]

What was your experience building the Falchion kit?

 

It's a beautiful, chunky tank, but I wonder what the options are if the larger resin pieces arrive warped.

[Corswain]

That's the best thing about the airbrush for me - getting all that basecoating done in a fraction of the time it would take to do it with a brush.

It is subtle but I can definitely see the green and I think it's very effective. 

[Xenith]

16 hours ago, Sothalor said:

What was your experience building the Falchion kit?

 

It's a beautiful, chunky tank, but I wonder what the options are if the larger resin pieces arrive warped.

 

I had zero issues with warping whatsoever with this kit, and it went together without any gaps I thought needed filling. My biggest issue was with the tracks, I couldn't for the life of me get the angle of the front/rear sprockets right, so the tracks were iffy, and I still have a bit of a gap in one of them. The contact points are also so small, I used a feth ton of superglue to make them solid. 

[Xenith]

Seeing the Thallax rules, with their jump-shoot-jump antics, I felt that was something my Alphas could do with. Unfortunately Thallax are like £50 per box, when I could get the full battleforce for £125, which I did! So now I have a bunch more stuff, and will eventually get round to making it. With the Thallax I was thinking of lightning guns, then 2x photon accelerators, as what's cooler than firing 'angry light' at your enemies, and the disruption from Blind is very alpha legion. With that, I think I need to convert a forge lord to accompany them, as well as a magos to lead a potential allied mech detachment. 

[Cadmus Tyro]

I’ve just picked up some plastic thallax for my Iron hands. I think they’re great units and bring additional durable line to a legion list as well. 
 

I’m debating the special weapon loadout, I wanted to go down the route of plasma fusils, cheap cost, good anti infantry output. The problem is that they now have “gets hot”, which is a real issue for thallax due to the way wound allocation works. So if the plasma wielding thallax takes a “gets hot” wound (which is highly probable with plasma given their high rate of fire AP and 4+ save) when the unit takes damage all subsequent wounds have to be allocated to the wounded model first. So you will lose your specials quickly. 
 

I really think it’s poor game design, and wonder if it’s something the designers didn’t consider and just ported over the “gets hot” rule. 
 

Thrusters have the same problem, albeit at a lower probability, but they cost a lot more. 
 

So that leaves you with pricey melta or just running standard lightning guns which are pretty decent this edition. I’m thinking the latter, with meltabombs keeps them cheap and flexible. They’re a fast reliable MB delivery system which will help give you more board control against vehicles. 

Only problem is, the plasma and thrusters look so awesome…..

 

Cadmus

[Xenith]

I hadn't even considered that, great points! It seems like one of those things that got overlooked as most things holding plasma have 1W anyway? However it's just one of those game design bits we have to deal with - high damage output initially but we lose special weapons first (possibly). Meltabombs are a geat call, I didn't realise they can still charge after using the jetpack move, so they can go 7+6", jetpack 6" then charge average 7", to have an average threat range of 26".  3/6MB's in the grand scheme of things might not do too much. Though, thinking about it, average rolling will get you 3 pens on AV14, which with an even spread is a dead land raider/spartan? so maybe they're ok? If you can get another set of 6 and are going with lightning guns, 3x4 might be a great way to effectively guarantee damage on a tank, dice being dice.

[Xenith]

Been a while since I've got paint on any alphas as I've been working on my Necromunda gang and Magnus the Red, but I put some work into my Scorpius and Rhino last night to try and them both table ready, super easy with Iron Hands steel base paint over the airbrushed basecoat. Pics soon! 

[Xenith]

More progress, I forgot to take pics of the scorpius and rhino, however I did get to tabletop standard a second leviathan and a sabre!

 

 

I have since gone back and painted over the highlight on the Levi head, as it looks pretty bad against the white! Just a couple more details on both, then transfers and weathering to go! 

[Xenith]

Bit of a photodump of all my recent finished/nearly finished stuff - these are all just awaiting transfers and weathering...and in the case of the scorpius and rhino, figuring out where the damn cuplolas went...

 

The cheeky Thousand Sons predator you can see at the back in the last photo is for both heresy and 40k thousand sons (in the Sons of Magnus Thrallband scheme...) and more pics are in my Chaos Plog!

 

 

 

 

[Xenith]

I posted these in my BA Paint log, however they also deserve to be in this topic as they will undoubtedly be seeing double duty - no cupolas are glued so they can hive a crew of whatever legion is needed...

 

[Xenith]

Knocking out another unit that I'd airbrush basecoated, the destroyers didn't take too long - I did make a start on the Despoiler squad, but got distracted by these guys. I think I'll do the despoilers in 2 squads of 5.

 

I've removed the bristle from the sergeants head now, and for some reason I didn't take a photo of the borning last twin pistol guy. Mace and Axe are magnetised so the serge can equip a fist, and I need to get my hands on the new melee weapons box and convert some spears to equip more people! These guys just need transfers, then very heavy weathering. 

 

[Xenith]

I've got closer to finishing my next Leviathan, Antonyus. he looks a bit funny as he's slightly off centre on the base, but I'm pretty happy with the pose overall! He just needs decals, hence the high gloss finish, then weathering. 

 

[Xenith]

I'm looking at getting my Thallax from the mech battlegroup built up in anticipation of the Thanatar Calix/Krios/Rad Nuke Tank. I think the angry light photon thruster sounds the most fun, but is gets hot that big a problem? Are MM's best and have them as fast tank hunters, wasting the lightning guns, or should I keep them as mobile elite infantry hunters?

 

What did you go with?

Edited February 15 by Xenith

[Pearson73]

I think there may be a discussion of this in the Tactica thread, but from my experience the multi-melta is very nice It is a bit pricey, but it means the squad can threaten anything. Their high mobility means you can get the lightning guns to do work on side armour too.

 

I have a squad with the plasma weapon (onlu used in one game) but gets hot going through the armour save is a bit worrisome.

[Xenith]

You're absolutely right, there was a thread back in august on it, thanks for the reminder - I might try and mag them at the shoulders and remove some of the cabling to be able to swap - MM is probably the best option, but the photon thruster seems so cool (though will instawound models...).