Red Corsairs Master of the Maelstrom - Yaga Pattern Maulerfiend

[gaurdian31]

Can't wait to see more paint on these guys and the land raider! 

[TrawlingCleaner]

Progress is still progress even if it's slow!

The power weapons are done:

 

And the washes are down on them all

 

There's till a whole lot to do left but this guy is currently the "most" done:

 

Still loads to do!

[gaurdian31]

Love all the weapons, but the two handed sword is my favorite. Great job!

[TrawlingCleaner]

Cheers gaurdian! Combi-plasma pointing guy has my heart at the moment, although the two hander guy is very close behind

 

I'm getting pretty close to finishing these guys off now, it's basically just all highlights left to do, mostly on the black armour and the leather plus some touch ups:

 

[gaurdian31]

Pointy combi guy is pretty cool, love the Sons of Horus helmet on him. They're all coming along really well.

[Brother Captain Vakarian]

@TrawlingCleaner I’ve followed along a lot of your projects now but I don’t think I’ve commented on them much. You’ve always had a really great selection of colors for your scheme, execution of your schemes, and a really impressive pace at which you complete your projects. Honestly, it’s inspirational. 
 

But, today I needed to chime in to add that your edge highlights on these guys is just next level. I know from experience it’s hard to judge your own progress as a painter, so wanted to comment on how much cleaner your highlights have gotten over time. Really excited to see these guys when they are done. 

[happyslugger]

These look awesome 

[TrawlingCleaner]

On 11/3/2023 at 5:52 PM, Brother Captain Vakarian said:

@TrawlingCleaner I’ve followed along a lot of your projects now but I don’t think I’ve commented on them much. You’ve always had a really great selection of colors for your scheme, execution of your schemes, and a really impressive pace at which you complete your projects. Honestly, it’s inspirational. 
 

But, today I needed to chime in to add that your edge highlights on these guys is just next level. I know from experience it’s hard to judge your own progress as a painter, so wanted to comment on how much cleaner your highlights have gotten over time. Really excited to see these guys when they are done. 

 

I appreciate all comments you lovely lot make on here but this definitely takes the cake on kind comments. I had a bit of a rough few days with flu and some personal stuff but you've made my day here, thank you Brother Captain!

 

"Blackheart often has need of Huscarls and trusted marines when particularly sensitive situations arise. Although they're petty warlords and champions themselves, Huron calls his remaining Astral Claws into service as his bodyguards"

 

 

They're done! Well the first 5 anyways

 

Compared to normal marines, I think they stand out enough that you can tell they're different at a glance:

 

Now I just need to do the other 5

 

Their ride is progressing, I'd forgotten how big this was and how many gubbins I'd strapped to it:

 

I'd also said to myself that I'd wait a bit to pick up some of the new terminators but a mild bit of retail therapy later, scraping, filing and GSing:

 

 

 

 

For those wondering about scale:

VS Legionnaries:

 

Vs New CSM Terminators:

 

I've gone for a minimal amount of trim on the chest/legs compared to the CSM termies. This is two-fold:

A) my GS skills are inadequate to match a GW model's trim, I think it would look largely out of place

B) I like leaning into the "Renegade not Traitor" vibe of the Corsairs. In the grand scheme of things, they're relatively young to the fight and wouldn't have made as many modifications/desacrations to their armour just yet.

 

As with most of my conversions, I think I'm mainly relying on the paint scheme to do all the leg work for this squad

[gaurdian31]

Chosen look great! The Land Raider is coming along very nicely and loving your newest set of terminators! Great job!

[TrawlingCleaner]

Thank you gaurdian! I figured the Terminator Lord I made a little while ago deserved some appropriately sized backup, he dwarfs nearly every other infantry model I have!

 

I managed to get a game in on Saturday vs my pal's 'Quin only force at 1.5k points.

He took:

 

Spoiler

10 Troupe with Shadowseer (reroll 1 Fate dice a turn Enhancement)

5 Troupe with Troupe Master in a Starweaver

5 Troupe with a Troupe Master in a Starweaver

4 Sky Weavers

4 Sky Weavers

2 Sky Weavers

Void Weaver with Prismatic Cannon

Death Jester (Auto 6 once per turn Enhancement)

 

I took:

 

Spoiler

10 Chosen with Huron in a MoN Landraider

10 Raptors with Harken

MoS Daemon Prince with Wings and Gogo juice

6 Bikes

MoN Defiler

MoS Venomcrawler

 

I won't give a blow by blow but I'll go through some thoughts on the game and some interesting bits.

 

 

In the first turn I couldn't see much so mostly pushed up behind some ruins with the Raptors, kept the Landraider back a tad so less could get LoS on it. The Bikes pushed into the top left with the Crawler and the Defiler. The Defiler picked up a unit of bikes very easily here.

In return I took 12 Wounds on the Landraider from 1 set of Haywire bikes and then Dark Obscuration-ed it after the Voidweaver and other bikes lined it up. I think this is the smart play in general as it forces my opponent to split fire and be less efficient with their shooting. On average the Landraider will survive the first lot of Haywire shots but not the second. Letting my opponent get a decent chunk of fire into the Landraider before popping DO means that my Defiler and Venomcrawler are safe because they're out of range.

 

For the rest of the game, my Defiler moves the objective towards my opponent's deployment zone (Deploy Servo Skulls primary) and picks a unit of bikes up for the first 3 turns consecutively, then the Voidweaver in T4. The Battlecannon was the only thing that I got to roll dice for all 4 times and it absolutely rinsed whatever it touched. Obviously, 3W bikes and smaller vehicles are it's prime target but I'm very impressed with it especially with MoN, it's performed in other games I've had too. Is it as good as a Forgefiend? Probably not, but it feels good for a generalist role in the army

 

The Chosen hopped out before the Landraider exploded (which did 6 mortals to one of the Starweavers and dumped a unit of Troupe onto the centre objective, very handy as I was about to try to do that anyways), the pushed into the Centre and held off the large blob of 'quins. I had totally forgotten about the Combis in the squad until I began shooting and them promptly did 8 Devwounds and combined with the bolters wiped the squad. I wasn't expecting that! They didn't make it into combat but they are scary enough with enough movement to keep the smaller troupe, deathjester and Voidweaver at bay

 

The game "soft" ends at the end of T3. My opponent only has the Death Jester and 3 members of a Troupe unit left so my opponent goes for a Gambit. He needs to get units into corners to reduce the roll of a 12+. He manages to get the Death Jester and the Troupe into opposite corners reducing the roll needed to an 11 and unfortunately only got a 9. It would've been a wipe earlier on but I let the Troupe and Death Jester go. More points and more fun! I've never had someone go for a gambit in a game or seen someone get that close to getting the gambit off in a game so I was more than happy to help figure out if he could do it.

The Game ends at: 55-27 (neither of us got fully painted due+10)

 

Great fun overall!

 

I'm working on the Landie at the moment and "Harken" too

Edited November 15, 2023 by TrawlingCleaner

[gaurdian31]

Sounds like a good game and the Land Raider and Harken are coming along nicely!

[TrawlingCleaner]

A Wash and the first highlight down and it's looking pretty slick. There's still so much to do!

 

[gaurdian31]

Looking good! Love the little spots of color the trophies give it.

[TrawlingCleaner]

Thanks gaurdian! Each helmet is either a paint scheme for an army I collect or one a friend collects with the Ultramarine being the outlier. I just like dead Ultramarines

 

We're getting there, I have most of the vehicle done, it's really just the smaller details left: Helmets, skulls, rivets, lascannon glow, the banner and of course the dude on the front:

 

I was struggling to get the red to look right in photos but the Wild Rider Red highlight really makes the scheme pop

[gaurdian31]

The red looks vibrant to me. Still love that your havoc launcher is a guy riding the land raider. That is such a good idea. 

[TrawlingCleaner]

"Huron Blackheart's personal transport, The Tyrant's Fist. The Venerable machine has led many speartip assaults and is infamous in the Ultramar System for it's brutality"

 

 

As it's likely to be the last model I complete for 2023, may as well go out with a bang, eh?

This big fella has been sat on my painting desk for about 6 weeks just needing some finishing touches to take it over the edge.

My partner and I rescued a dog about 6 weeks ago, she's a bit of a handful and is particularly interested in my hobby space which for her means picking everything up with her teeth and running away with it. I've mainly been painting projects at our kitchen table where the light is pretty terrible and the chairs are knackered, so I've been sticking to projects that don't need as much detail doing (like my Flesh Eater Courts army).

 

2023 was pretty mad painting wise for me, I painted 48 models for the Corsairs and they had a large influx of reinforcements (although that was only about 1/7th of the total models I painted this year). Not getting tickets for Throne of Skulls definitely scuppered my plans for getting models painted for the army but it's not the end of the world as it let me focus on some other bits too!

I'm not really big on new year's resolutions, my aim next year is to complete more army projects than I start. I have several army projects that are mostly finished with very little in the backlog that I want to just finish off and tick off my checklist. To be frank, the Corsairs aren't one of those as I have so much built up and  ready to be painted that I'd be especially pushed to get done 

That's not to say I'm not painting more Corsairs (I've literally just started the Defiler), if anything I'm saying I have more ideas and more stuff to paint for this project than anything else I do and that's without mentioning new stuff that'll release next year too (join me in my prayers for new bikes and Huron).

 

Anyways, enough word vomit, Happy New Year and may your raids be plentiful!

For the Tyrant!

[gaurdian31]

The finished Land Raider is great and I really love the banner! Well done on that! Glad to hear you are sticking with the Corsairs and that you have a lot of ideas for them, I'm planning to go back to them this year myself. 

[TrawlingCleaner]

17 hours ago, gaurdian31 said:

The finished Land Raider is great and I really love the banner! Well done on that! Glad to hear you are sticking with the Corsairs and that you have a lot of ideas for them, I'm planning to go back to them this year myself. 

 

Thank you gaurdian!

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do for your Corsairs! More Corsairs is more good.

I do think this year is the year for Corsairs to get some love from GW, Huron being the last Finecast model and having just had both versions of him go up for MTO gives me good vibes for an update soon. I'm not biased though

 

I've got a lot of ideas  of where I want to go with the army and I also have quite a lot of stuff thats already in WIP stages

In terms of WIP stuff I have:

The Defiler

Spoiler

Lord Discordant

A Heldrake

Felgore

Another Helbrute, Venomcrawler and Rhino

5 new scale terminators+lord

Some more marines

A couple more bikes to round me out to 2 squads of 6 (currently only have the 6 outrider bikes and 4 normal bikes)

Harken Worldclaimer

I had a bikes lord in the dry fitting stage but unfortunately he was the first casualty of the dog's side surfing, she didn't chew him or anything, just acccidently knocked him off and he exploded into a million pieces

 

For ideas:

Possessed based on Wulfen

Another Yaga pattern Forgefiend and also a Yaga pattern Maulerfiend (I'm unsure how I'd even start that!)

Havocs, maybe based on Heavy Intercessors

Warp Talons

Plus whatever else they release!

 

I think I'll be keeping myself busy with this project for a good long while

 

The Defiler is on it's way there, as you can see in the spoiler. The thing is huge and will take me a while to basecoat the thing let alone highlight it!

[Kaiju Soze]

6 hours ago, TrawlingCleaner said:

Another Yaga pattern Forgefiend and also a Yaga pattern Maulerfiend (I'm unsure how I'd even start that!)

 

Raptor toe-claw style blades on the feet? Might end up looking like Razor from classic Robot Wars.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

For the maulerfiend, maybe something like this?  

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited January 3 by Dr_Ruminahui

[gaurdian31]

The defiler is coming along nicely! Curious to see your take on a mauler fiend and heldrake. Possessed based on Wulfen sound awesome as well. Lots of good stuff you have coming up!

[TrawlingCleaner]

16 hours ago, Kaiju Soze said:

Raptor toe-claw style blades on the feet? Might end up looking like Razor from classic Robot Wars.

This actually might be the way to do it! It keeps the fast, longer distance vibe as things like Velociraptors were famous for. Also big-ups for the old Robot Wars reference, I hadn't thought about Razor in yonks!

[Kaiju Soze]

6 hours ago, TrawlingCleaner said:

This actually might be the way to do it! It keeps the fast, longer distance vibe as things like Velociraptors were famous for. Also big-ups for the old Robot Wars reference, I hadn't thought about Razor in yonks!

And Matilda as a Juggernaut.  Sir Kill-a-lot is already a Cerastus Lancer.  But also, Razor's pincer reputedly could exert a pressure of several tons at the point, which sounds like a good basis for the Mauler claws.  Put the lasher tendrils as the tail (or possibly use the ones from the Knight Abominant).

 

I may have put a bit too much thought into making actual dinobots for my CSM.  I blame Horizon Zero Dawn's Thunderjaws for making me want a T-Rex styled Defiler.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

In all seriousness, I do think putting the maulerfiend arms on the wardog chasis and kind of getting the "chicken with arms" look could look pretty good - it would kind of have a wierd stooped front heavy look that I think could look more menacing than silly.  That said, the maulerfiend arms, which personally I think are great, may be too fleshy for look you are going for, and perhaps even more so when combined with the fleshless wardog body and legs.

[TrawlingCleaner]

On 1/4/2024 at 8:58 PM, Dr_Ruminahui said:

In all seriousness, I do think putting the maulerfiend arms on the wardog chasis and kind of getting the "chicken with arms" look could look pretty good - it would kind of have a wierd stooped front heavy look that I think could look more menacing than silly.  That said, the maulerfiend arms, which personally I think are great, may be too fleshy for look you are going for, and perhaps even more so when combined with the fleshless wardog body and legs.

I think the Maulerfiend arms are probably a little too large as they're about the same length as Armiger legs and quite a bit wider, however I think I can figure out some smaller arms for this. I've been saving mechanical bits for a while and I've got a couple of sets of Penitent Engine legs that I think with a bit of Jazzing up will make for a great arm basis... maybe

 

Nekrah, Spear of the Night. Night Lord warband leader loyal to Huron. Often used for their Terror tactics for decapitation strikes, Nekrah leads with an iron fist and the wicked end of his spear

 

Not-Harken is done! Those old school claws are definitely making me want to see if I can find a 3d print of them to make Warp Talons with

 

I'm back onto the Defiler now after struggling with motivation to ge the Basecoats on, I've now washed everything and am starting work on the highlights

I might eventually finish this in 2025