++A Roar amongst the Thorns++ Project Restart (Pg 6)

[TheTrans]

Quote

"Though my guards may sleep and my ships may lay at anchor, our foes know full well that the big guns never tire"

                                                                                                                                                        - The Tyrant of Badab, Atrib 909.m41

So as per usual I've been mincing around the idea and the willpower to kick back into a Tyrant's Legion force, but the thought of redoing auxilia that I did 50 odd years ago sort of killed the mojo.

Anyway, I attended an amazing event called Preferred Enemy down in Melbourne Australia the other week, it was based very heavily around hobby, good looking/thematic armies and just having a good time (it was at a bowls club, so cheap beer always helps!). It has honestly sort of rekindled my enjoyment of 40k. Sure all the 8th edition issues are still there (who ever has more dice to throw at the enemy wins.. I hate to say it..but thats all that 40k is nowadays.. target priority and list building), but while there will always be those negatives, this weekend also showed the huge positives of 40k when played in the correct 'mood'. 95% of the armies where absolutely beautiful, and the other 5% are still leagues above what we normally see down around here as 'standard' 40k tournament fodder.

 

Not only did the armies look nice, they all had a theme associated with them. Not to mention my 5 opponents where all absolutely stellar blokes!! (Thanks to Jason, Mark, Sean, James and Chris). So all in all, great day, atmosphere and hobby! Now the PE TO's are looking at doing a doubles tournament later this year which got a good friend of mines ears pricked.. as he always wanted to do guard.. but never had a direction to go with.. Cue me informing him about our one true savior, Lugft Huron... 

 

Thus we have our doubles project!!

 

So I'll be doing a truescaled marine (god damn do the Primaris help with this instead of the hodge podge of terminator legs and assorted parts etc that was what had to be done 'before'... ) with him converting up some Guard to fit more with the Tyrant's Legion.

 

I'll be running a super useless, overly elite army of only 14 models, that will no doubt get chewed off the table turn 1, young Byron will be running well over double that, but actually be bringing some bits and pieces that can do work.

 

Our Current plan is something like this:

 

Astral Claws Vanguard Detachment

Lugft Huron

'Chaplain' Dreadnaught w/ Twin Lascannon

5x Veterans w/Assorted Gear

5x Veterans w/Assorted Gear

Apothecary

Chapter Ancient 

 

Tyrant's Legion

Straken (has marine stats, so will be a marine commander in the guard contingent )

Leman Russ Tank Commander

Gunnery Seargent Harker

3x 10 Man Guard Squads

Wyvern

Basilisk

 

So as you can see, the armies don't have a whole lot of synergy, but will look cool on the battle field.

 

Byron will no doubt crop up later with some bibs and bobs, but I'll just chuck up some of my WiPs.

 

I Started with my Chapter Ancient as I really wanted this to look like the last hurrah of the Astral Claws, so Huron surronded by hard as nails survivors, with precious chapter relics around him (Thus the Chaplain Dread, will be more an icon of hate dread based on a Leviathan chassis, the chapter standard etc).

 

So the reason I went Chapter over company ancient is I wanted to the 2+ save so I could 'fluff' him having terminator armour. I've done a single truescale termaintor before, but there was no way to really 'mass produce him'. I've had a bag of Custodes termies rattling around the house for 6 odd months now and after seeing what @apologist managed, it put my arse into gear to try it out!

 

I opted to go the normal terminator 'cowling' as not to have it too show boaty, as Astral Claws alsways seem a bit more a functin over form sort of chapter. It also has the benefit of making the terminator marginally 'taller due to the location of its head, so it doesn't look too short next to Huron who is based off a Horus mode.. 

 

So next up I was just going to chuck one of the new primaris banners on him, but upon research, that just seems to be standard form nowadays and is a little 'eh'.. and after seeing the excellent picture of Ancient Galatan that has been around for years I wanted by banner to be (well not that crazy large) still pretty big and impressive given it is the 'chapter banner' which always had such a big emphasis in older fluff.

 

Cue a large basic banner. This required a rolling pin, all the baking paper and over half of my remaining GS (off to ebay I go). It also required some dancing between running it under hot water and into the freezer so I could cut out the shape and get it thin enough. Here you can see the basic out lay of it, just to get the feel.

 

So in this pic we have it next to Huron (who still after a year needs some tidying) which shows the termy scaling pretty well next to him. I've worked in major folds into the banner, but it will stil require more selective 'creasing' in areas tonight once the 'scaffold' of it has set.

 

Anyway that's all I have to show at the moment, I'll be finishing another 5 veterans tonight so will get some pics up of them.

 

Most of Byron's gear is on the way to him so we'll no doubt start to see his conversions cropping up soon (I'm looking quite forward to his basilisk and wyvern).

 

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by TheTrans

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Off to a great start, but I do have a couple of comments and suggestions. 

 

First, LOVE the banner. You're doing a great job making it fold and hang like real cloth but once you get done with all the sculpting I'd suggest cleaning up the little visible bumps by either lightly scraping the GS with the edge of a brand new hobby knife blade, using a high grit wet/dry sandpaper (use it wet to keep dust down), or both.

 

Second, I have a little quibble with the Cataphractii shoulder pads being used as hip plates, not because it's not a clever idea (it is) or that it doesn't look good (it does), but that it's very obvious that they're shoulder pads glued onto the legs. I think removing the trim and possibly rounding off the sharp corners would help. Maybe some rivets and/or a thin layer of GS made to look like segmented, flexible plates would help disguise their origin.

 

Third, loving some of the sculpted detail like the lion head on the banner bearer's knee pad and the animal hair on Huron! Huron's quilted loincloth looks far too long to my eye and seems like a large portion of the front would drag on the ground when he walks. 

[Son of Carnelian]

Huron looks like he stepped out of a Karl Kopinski painting. Top work. 

[TheTrans]

Off to a great start, but I do have a couple of comments and suggestions. 

 

First, LOVE the banner. You're doing a great job making it fold and hang like real cloth but once you get done with all the sculpting I'd suggest cleaning up the little visible bumps by either lightly scraping the GS with the edge of a brand new hobby knife blade, using a high grit wet/dry sandpaper (use it wet to keep dust down), or both.

 

Second, I have a little quibble with the Cataphractii shoulder pads being used as hip plates, not because it's not a clever idea (it is) or that it doesn't look good (it does), but that it's very obvious that they're shoulder pads glued onto the legs. I think removing the trim and possibly rounding off the sharp corners would help. Maybe some rivets and/or a thin layer of GS made to look like segmented, flexible plates would help disguise their origin.

 

Third, loving some of the sculpted detail like the lion head on the banner bearer's knee pad and the animal hair on Huron! Huron's quilted loincloth looks far too long to my eye and seems like a large portion of the front would drag on the ground when he walks. 

Thanks mate.

 

Yeah the banner will be getting a sand to bugger off those imperfections, is in a very rough stage at the moment :). 

 

More rivets never hurt, but definitely get where you are coming from on the thigh plates, will have a play and see where they come out :).

 

Yeah Huron's loin cloth is something I sculpted probably about 12 months ago, it will be getting a full redo to bring it more in line with everything else :).

Huron looks like he stepped out of a Karl Kopinski painting. Top work. 

Thanks a heap mate, I tried to use the artwork of him in the book for all the 'major bits'. But god damn do I love all of Karl Kopinski's works so thanks!! 

[Supe robot gangster #1]

Where abouts in melb are you based? I’ve been looking (subconsciously of course) into getting my motley collection of marines together for the badab war (my favourite piece of 40k lore) and if I can find someone to pit my (most likely) Star phantoms against then I may just start them up! Be very interested in a game if you aren’t too far away!!!

If it helps I’m south eastern :p

[TheTrans]

Where abouts in melb are you based? I’ve been looking (subconsciously of course) into getting my motley collection of marines together for the badab war (my favourite piece of 40k lore) and if I can find someone to pit my (most likely) Star phantoms against then I may just start them up! Be very interested in a game if you aren’t too far away!!!

If it helps I’m south eastern

Flicked you a PM mate, also in the South East... Sounds like we could be up for a glorious reenactment!! 

 

Ok, so managed some more work last night, nothing mind blowing, but trying to get the 'boring' models out of the way before I crack on with finishing all the fun ones.

 

Will also note, that these vets are pretty plain at the moment, but they will get all the trappings as time goes on, just currently trying to get the 'shape' of them correct.

 

First up, have got probably my favorite of the bunch, is just a generic veteran with storm shield:

Opted for a quasi-MK III chest piece and wanted to shake up the storm shield look a bit as while I like the shapes of most of the GW supplied ones (all the crux shaped ones, or the Dark Angels styled ones) but they generally have a lot of detail going on for something that is meant to get shot.. a lot.. so I've simpled it down a lot. It will have some damage and 'fluffy' bits added but you get the basic shape and pose.

 

Next up is the other storm shield toting bro (for squad 2) I'm not loving the boarding shield with the size of the primaris so I'll be looking into some other options.

 

The next two blokes are just some Storm Bolter toters as I had some points left over and really for 2 points... storm bolters are an amazing upgrade doubling the output of the marines. Also I love the tartarus storm bolters which look quite similar to the Tigris style bolters which I love! 

 

This guy I went the lazy approach with a single handed storm bolter pose, makes life super easy, but also wanted to change up the silhouette of the squad up a bit.

 

Modeled this guy to be in a more supporting fire stance, looking at the pic I'm not in love with the MK 3 head on him at this point so that may need to change up a bit.

 

Here we have one of the squads sarges, opted to throw a thunder hammer on him, because they look cool, are very 'space mariney' and seem to be decently effective in game. 

 

I'm also loving the veterans ability to swap either the bolter or chainsword.. as dropping the bolter seems like a crazy bad idea just from a generally 'cool' look. To me even devastators should have a 'fall back' bolter available to them (at least in fluff).

 

You'd all also be seeing the lions motif on knees (and there will be some on forearms also). These will be (and I'll do some fluff write ups once these guys are painted on each of them ) essentially bravery or savagery awards, named something along the lines of an Order of Panthera or some such. Given all these guys are really just the hard as nails extended honour guard of Huron, one would expect them to be bedecked in all forms of accolades and medals. They'll all cop a good purity seal-ing when i get time, but that will be counter acted by chains, wicked blades, trophies etc, so you'll get a picture of these marines while they still one foot in on both sides of the good/bad scale.

 

Also the MK 3 pads are all over the shop for a few reasons. First and most effectively, I feel they fell out the whole upper torso more than any other mark of shoulder pads, while not getting too big as sometimes we see with truescale conversions. Also I'll write up some fluff on it, but in a nut shell it will be due to heavy boarding actions and fighting marines, the Claws sort of said 'hey Angstrom, we really need as many MK 3 pads (and armour in general) as possible". Also Mk3 armour would be espcially useful in defensive fighting when maneuverability isn't as needed. 

 

I'm also toying with the idea of having some scavenged armour segments of a few of the marines.. kind of like the old school 13th company stuff. What are peoples thoughts on that? 

 

Also started a little bit of work on the banner topper (and sanding of the banner) for the Chapter Ancient 

 

Nothing overly exciting, but apt I feel.

 

Also as a quick question/note/plea for help, I'm trying to think up a design for the Chapter Standard.

 

Now at first I thought well It will need to be a lion motif due to that being their actual motif.. but then I thought what are the chances that Huron would of 'retired' the older Chapter banner in lieu of one rocking his symbol.. or maybe a mixture of both (was thinking a winged lion, but its raised claw is the tyrant's claw motif with the maelstrom star in it). Any way, any thoughts or advice on this would be great thank you!!

 

 

I'll kick Byron in the arse and get him to flick up some posts in the coming days as he starts to work on his Tyrant's Legion elements!

 

Have a good one! 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

If this is a full-on Badab War version of the Astral Claws, Huron had changed the Chapter icon to his Tyrant's Claw and dropped the old left-facing lion head. His shoulder pad has a lion head surrounded by wings, so you could probably make up your own winged lion head icon for the banner. 

 

Speaking of the banner, I'm not sure what grit you used to sand it, but the size and depth of those scratches makes me think it was too low. I personally use 800 grit wet/dry on GS and even higher if I really want to get it smooth. 

[TheTrans]

If this is a full-on Badab War version of the Astral Claws, Huron had changed the Chapter icon to his Tyrant's Claw and dropped the old left-facing lion head. His shoulder pad has a lion head surrounded by wings, so you could probably make up your own winged lion head icon for the banner. 

 

Speaking of the banner, I'm not sure what grit you used to sand it, but the size and depth of those scratches makes me think it was too low. I personally use 800 grit wet/dry on GS and even higher if I really want to get it smooth. 

was 350, all I had mate, but it will get a good liquid green stuffing which will level it off nicely. 

 

Good thinking thanks mate.

[Markus_]

Those terminators look like absolute beasts. Looking forward to see how this project shapes up.

[Commissar Lager]

Finally having my Bolter & Chainsword membership approved I have joined the fray!  The second half of our Doubles team will be my Tyrant’s Legion – upon inspiration from Nick (above) will be heavily converted (but not nearly as nice). 

 

The crux of the idea is the Palace of Thorns last stand and my force will be a motley collection of various planetary auxilia regiments that have pooled together.  I will be using a healthy mix of Cadian, FW, Genestealer Cult, alternative companies and other bits to individualize as much as possible.

The hammer of my force will be a Wyvern & Basilisk that I will be converting from Genestealer Cult mining vehicles that I picked up second hand. 

 

 

They don’t look like much yet, but I’ll be adding armaments to the back and building them out to more closely resemble the imperial versions.  Huron strikes me as being pragmatic and resourceful enough to insist on doing anything and everything necessary to continue fighting – STCs be damned.

 

More ‘enlightened’ (-ie- radical) engineers would be encouraged (not killed) towards these efforts.  The background material helps support this as the Astral Claws were known to capture and repurpose renegade space vessels.

[TheTrans]

Ok,

Managed a bit of work over the weekend.

Have pretty much squared away the veteran squad, so they'll be ready for undercoating soon.

I thought I'd get started on the Straken counts-as that Byron will be using, so I give you Arch-Centurion Tamerlaine (heavily WIP).


The head is not yet set in stone and I've actually put a spacer in his waste since this photo was taken as the forward-pose he has made him look a little squat.

 

Now straken.. for whatever reason has a shotgun, so I've stuck one on him for WYSIWYG purposes.

I didn't want to use just the basic scout shotgun and I thought the Deathwatch ones are a little too big and a bit too much. There was the option of genestealer cult ones but they looked a little too 'civilliany' for my liking, thus what we have above. I kept for the front part of the scout shotguns so it alludes to that, but used the rear end of a combi-bolter from FW, I wanted it to have a big nasty drum mag, while still be very astartes. The butt and handle are from a dark eldar splinter rifle. This is just to add a little bit of fanciness to the gun, but also sort of a bit of a 'were they starting to use xenos gear toward the end?' due to, I imagine they'd be emptying the armouries and relic coffers of anything that could shoot or be swung at someone. You'll see this across some of the bros in the form of some DE gear flapping around on their belts like knives and brick a brack.. so hopefully you can see some subtle (and not so subtle) hints as to what the marines are getting up to and the lengths they are willing to go to to win. 

 

I also thought it would be cool to put a big vox-caster looking thing on his back pack, you could imagine him working almost as like a chaplain/dark apostle/IG officer, bellowing out orders, benedictions and threats to his underlings.

Finally I managed to source an Astral Claws Transfer sheet, but given they are rare as hens teeth I'm loathe to cut into it... but cue a scanner and some transfer paper later we have a decent option, quality is more than suitable I feel.

 

Will be trying to get some paint on some bros this week, trying a slightly different oil method to what I usually use, so wish me luck!! 

[Commissar Lager]

Managed to squeeze in some progress on the first Goliath / Wyvern conversion using the FW Thudd guns.  Resin has made progress a little slower as using super glue tends to remove my fingerprints.  

 

Had to chop the rear end of the Thudd and extend out a platform on the Goliath for reloading the guns.  I also added a few wires to break up the lines, reckoning that Huron wasn't big on Work Safe conditions.  Will be adding the wheels and more details (a few aquila?) and trying to decide between 1x gunner and 2x crew, or just the 1x crew and gunner (Wyverns come with a Heavy Bolter on their hull which in this case will be manned on the front port).

 

 

 

[malika666]

Get Huron ready!!!

[Son of Carnelian]

This remains wildly inspirational. Keep up the good work!

[Joe]

God knows I need more of this. Amazing work!

[TheTrans]

Get Huron ready!!!

Haha will try and get him ready for painting soon mate, he still needs some tweaks and neatening :P

God knows I need more of this. Amazing work!

Thanks mate, more you will get!

This remains wildly inspirational. Keep up the good work!

Thanks a heap mate!

 

Ok so started working on some fluff last night, as you can probably see through most of the pics, a lot of the Marines have some lion heraldry on them (stolen from the storm cast range), so I thought I should maybe make up some fluff for it as honestly, who doesn't love some fluff.

 

Tried to have it look very similar to the forgeworld stuff (and yeah I did just pinch the marines from the book and edit them a little bit :P ). Hope you like it and I'll attempt to do more of these little tidbits.

 

Next up we have a pretty simple conversion with some subtle differences to take away from him being too primaris like.

I give you a corpse taker. The second I saw the primaris apothecary came out it hit me in the face like a truck... that was exactly a pose that a corpse taker would be rocking!

 

The base isn't in the pic, but I'll be using the standard base, but I've swapped out the primaris helm for a MK III which I'll either paint as a carcharadon or star phantom. I imagine even up to the end the corpse takers where grabbing geneseed.

 

A few other changes on him, I got rid of his big primaris style holster and chucked a tigris pattern on there to tie him back in as a normal marine. Bulked up his narthecium to be a bit more in your face also. I added an iron warriors head then rigged up the little magnifying glass thing as a death's head on a creepy apothecary seems so much cooler :P.

 

Finally and probably the smaller, but to me the most important change. Was swapping out his progenoid flasks that have all the purity seals on them, for just some normal little vials. I feel this shows his sort of disregard for the sacredness of the geneseed, like he is almost getting close to DKOK Quartermaster levels of not giving as heck. He'll get an apothecary backpack (after some trying it on, the primaris one was a little too busy) and some MK III shoulder pads to tie him on in.

 

Finally we have a leviathan dread. I've loved these big bad boys ever since they came out so just wanted an excuse to run one, so he'll be (in this army anyway) be acting as a chaplain dread. Less so from a purely religious sort of viewpoint, but more along the lines of just sort of being an icon of the tyrant and of Badab in general, a focus point from where the astral claws can let lose their insensate rage from being betrayed by the Imperium ;) 

 

So not far off having everything built, so once that's done, it is minor gap filling and undercoats for all!

 

If anyone has any good suggestions for how to get that nice 'popping' astral claws blue, please let me know!

 

Cheers,

Nick

[Commissar Lager]

So not far off having everything built, so once that's done, it is minor gap filling and undercoats for all!

 

If anyone has any good suggestions for how to get that nice 'popping' astral claws blue, please let me know!

 

Cheers,

Nick

 

 

I haven't even finished clipping my first guardsmen.... 

 

 

On that note, I am waiting for the resin bits to dry from the bath so I can start work on these:

 

 

Will be adding in 10x female guard to break up the "sameness" and really drive home that motley / last stand feel. 

 

Inspiration for this unit will be one of the last remnants from the cowardly attack on Vayaniah, which saw the Tyrant's Legion hold the Loyalists at bay at the cost of tremendous casualties (178 Legion: 1 Astartes).  No doubt well aware they would have suffered a similar fate, the Valkyries of Vayaniah were part of the honor guard of the frigate 'Fortune Reckoning' carrying a Corpsetaker escaping with a wealth of geneseed to Badab.  The Valkyries only solace were the number of loyalists that perished in the stardock they rigged to explode upon exit from the atmosphere.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Commissar Lager

[Pearson73]

Some absolutely brilliant work in this log, especially the sculpting of the extra details on the armour.

 

The first veteran with storm shield is fantastic, the size works really well, however the second's boarding shield is way too small in my eyes.

[Augustus b'Raass]

Wow, great log. Subbed

[Stercus]

This is very cool.

[Doghouse]

Very nice :tu:

[TheTrans]

Very nice

Thanks mate!

This is very cool.

That's the dream brother :P

Wow, great log. Subbed

More the merrier thanks man!

Some absolutely brilliant work in this log, especially the sculpting of the extra details on the armour.

 

The first veteran with storm shield is fantastic, the size works really well, however the second's boarding shield is way too small in my eyes.

I agree whole heartedly mate, he has since had the boarding shield replaced with a press mold of the much better shield :) 

 

Haven't got any pics today sorry gang, just spend last night trying to play with colours and see how those 'knock off' transfers work. Will grab some pics tonight of where I'm sitting at :)

[wiqid]

Great looking conversions and kit bashes mate! Lots of character and very fitting with the Astral Claws. Awesome work bud!

[Achinadav]

I was going to list what I liked, and then realised that I like all of it :) I've had a primaris apothecary sitting in my desk's cupboard wondering what to do with it. Now it might be time for him to become a Word Bearer tasked with the duties of a corpsetaker (what I wonderful job title). And your Tyrant of Badab looks like he lives up to the name!

[Gang Zu]

I am highly impressed of the level of converting and sculpting! Really delightful for my eyes and sense of aesthetics

Would you mind doing a small tutorial of how to skulp capes, as I see how good you did the banner?