Lautrec's Emporium - 30k (and more?)

[Lautrec the Embraced]

I've decided to start this WIP thread to share some projects I am working on. Mayhap it will help to keep me motivated... 

 

In the last 2-3 years I amassed some considerable amount of miniatures, mostly second-hand minis that I got a good deal on. Now, I really should start painting them. Yet, I have been slacking recently - the only model I worked on since the end of Call to Arms last year was this quick Spartan Assault Tank I gave to a friend:

 

The transfer sheet from BaC did a number on me and started desintegrating mid-applying. So some markings ended up a bit crooked. Suits the legion I believe...

 

Anyway, I've decided to take a break from my beloved Night Lords (for a while at least, I have some ideas for them still). Recently I procured some absolutely botched Mk6 tacticals and Tartaros, for low, low price of a few $. So, they got conscripted into my fledgeling allied Raven Guard detachment! So far I only got 15 of them painted earlier last year:

 

 

I went with weathered look - think Isstvan survivors, smth along these lines. I should refine my techniques a bit, let me know if you have any suggestions. But, so far, considering how quickly I've done them, I was quite happy with the results! 

 

So, I got to work with the new guys, stripped the many, MANY paint layers, ripped most of the bolters, and tried to give the squad some character. I've tried to put my bits box to good use. Some paint is still there, but I don't expect it to matter under the weathering, rust etc. 

 

I hope I'll manage to start painting these soon, though I am still putting together some other squads. 

 

 

Edited April 21 by Lautrec the Embraced

[Firedrake Cordova]

Nice work

[BadgersinHills]

Very nice! Looking forward to seeing more. 

[W.A.Rorie]

Very nice!

[Lautrec the Embraced]

I wanted to add just one more squad before batch painting and it got me thinking about Dark Furies. I have some fond memories of this unit - some 10 yrs ago, I played RG in my first game of Heresy (with everything proxied) and these guys clutched up. The sarge even beat an Emperor's Children champion in a challenge! 

 

Obviously I don't have the official models so I have to make do. What I need:

 

- Jump packs of some peculiar pattern. I happen to have some old 40k jump packs. A bit anachronistic but they can pretend to be some cutting-age tech in 30k. 

 

- Wings. Well, it's problematic. I don't really get why they have them. But I do have some tiny backpack wings from Reivers for, uhm, manoeuvrability? symbolism? idk

 

- Raven Talons. Luckily, I have enough Claws from Vanguard Vets for the entire squad, I suppose they look rather distinct in 30k. Just had to file some Crux Terminator-like ornaments. Note   I have no idea how official Furies use grenades with their ginormous claws. Mine at least still have their fingers free. 

 

Besides, I thought regular Mk6 squad will do as they are not that blinged out. I got some RG pads, Sarge gets a laureled helmet and voila - minimalist Dark Furies:

Think I'm done with assembly, painting shall commence soon

[BadgersinHills]

They look cool! In the later Heresy Corax and friends were scattered raiding at Horus' rear while he advanced to Terra, if I recall correctly, and he later met the Lion and Russ when they were on their campaign to destroy Traitor homeworlds. These could be prototype jumppacks that would later be proliferated throughout 40k. 

Edited April 25 by BadgersinHills

[The Pounder]

Your tank is fantastic, I’m loving all the added chains and skulls, very gritty.

[Lautrec the Embraced]

Time for a small update. I vowed the Raven Guards in Heresy Call to Arms for 25 pts. It is going alright, i decided to paint 20 of them at once and am mostly done with the armour now. 

 

Meanwhile, I've been assembliing some more salavaged second-hand squads. Here I have some rather barebones Tartaros but  one guy got a banner and another was promoted to a Champion. 

I am yet unsure if I want to add more Raven guards (their transfer sheets will run out soon though...) or start a new army as I have also Mk2/3/Termis which seem a bit at odds with my vision of the XIXth. 

 

Now, I also do have some Primaris, liberated from many thick coats of paint. I thought I'd try something different and painted one test model as a Lamenter. He's not done yet, checkerboard is a bit challenging and am scared to freehand the heart... but overall I'm quite pleased with this test so far!  Perhaps more will follow...

[BadgersinHills]

Love the Raven Guard armour! Did you use an airbrush? 

 

I really like the pose and painting on the Lamenter as well.

[Lautrec the Embraced]

On 7/4/2026 at 5:43 AM, BadgersinHills said:

Love the Raven Guard armour! Did you use an airbrush? 

 

I really like the pose and painting on the Lamenter as well.

Thanks, glad you like them. I don't own an airbrush, I just use a drybrush/sponge and try to build some lighter colours on the exposed panels.

Kinda as with my Night Lords, maybe a tad more aggresive for RGs and with more battle damage 

[kabaakaba]

Nice NL. Is it a freehand winged skull on central terminator's shield?

[BadgersinHills]

Love the Night Lord blue. The Indomitus terminators look great as well in NL colours. What paints did you use? 

[Lautrec the Embraced]

On 7/6/2026 at 11:18 PM, kabaakaba said:

Nice NL. Is it a freehand winged skull on central terminator's shield?

Partially - it's a filed Deathwing shield with a skull bit attached, but the wings are freehand. I've tried freehanding skulls before but they were ... less agreeable.

 

8 hours ago, BadgersinHills said:

Love the Night Lord blue. The Indomitus terminators look great as well in NL colours. What paints did you use? 

Thanks, I use Vallejo's Dark Prussian Blue over black, then Medium Blue and some Wolf Grey - I mostly stab at it with a drybrush. It does get a bit too light so I bring it down with some diluted dark tone wash. Ideally, I think wolf grey could be replaced with something, but I don't like mixing paints and alternatives I've tried were too vibrant. 

[Lautrec the Embraced]

I've completed 20 of Raven Guards recently - my favourite got to be the plasma support squad:

 

So decided to take a short break from 30k and work on some Tyranids instead. I've plenty of old models but so far I've only ever painted a total of ... 4. I've painted these warriors a good few years back:

 

So Call to Arms motivated me to perhaps add a few more to the fray. Warriors as usually are providing synapse for the swarm:

 

All well and good but painting carapaces and other bits quickly proved to be more time-consuming than I expected. I think I'll go for something simpler than I did for Warriors...

 

 

[Firedrake Cordova]

The Tyranids look great

 

The plasma glow on the Raven Guard works well, and the basing's nicely done. 

[Lautrec the Embraced]

Call to Arms is done and with it I managed to paint 30 nids, 25 raven guard and 1 quick master of executions during 3 months. Not bad at all for me, considering I only painted 1 miniature (albeit it was a Spartan) during previous 9 months....

 

So thanks to @Dr_Ruminahui for running the event and keeping me motivated. :)

[Lautrec the Embraced]

I need to decide now what to tackle next. Looking at the grey pile, the main options are:

 

- chip away at tyranids (plenty of swarms left but few larger models). Painting gaunts was a bit of a slog - next time I'll be cutting corners left and right. 

- my NL - no plans really. I am very happy about my Master of Executions but need to think what to do next

 

-continue 30k RG, I earmarked a few Tartaros for this, though I'm running out of transfers. I also have a Praetor ready to paint:

I think he's a bit too bulky, maybe I'll drop his jump pack. 

 

-more exciting, a new legion detachment for 30k! 

 Preferably somewhat distinct from my NL/RG in tactics/units/colour scheme. Preferably without further expenditure. Preferably with early Heresy/Great Crusade feel. I have a good few squads of older armour Mks, around 20 Cataphractii laying around, along with 2 rhinos, 1 sicaran and 1 LRaider, some already mostly assembled:

So I am considering the following:

- Alpha legion? Fun but overlaps hard with my NL/RG, that'd be imo 3/3 of 'stealth' legions, have a lot of seekers/snipers already

 

- Blood Angels? Always liked them but I have virtually no BA bits and that'd be 3/3 of 'jump' legions. Unless...as pre-Sang Revanant Legion, I don't think they had so much drip back then, and with no Angel around they could rely more on Despoilers than jump packs. But ... kinda bland then? Not sure how I'd make them distinct, other than a "IX" on the pads...

 

- Scars? Tempting, very cool, have some jetbikes and 40k's bikes stashed... but I am scared of white and low on relevant bits

 

- Luna Wolves? - straight up cooler SoH, no questions about it; alas white + no transfers to be had, and I won't freehand it...

 

- Iron Warriors - interesting, kinda polar opposite of NL, can do without fancy bits; I have parts to build like 20 of Heavy support marines, but no siege tanks/artillery. Strong contender. I don't like them that much though. 

 

- Isstvan 3: loyalists: some combo of EC/WE/DG/SoH. I really wanted to do this one. EC are problematic though, doubt if i can paint metallic EC nicely+lack transfers/aquillas; the rest I can pull off i think. Besides, 4 different paint schemes as one army... seems a bit problematic

 

 

...I'll give it some thought.

Edited Thursday at 02:25 PM by Lautrec the Embraced
struggles with duplicate pic

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Glad that CtA could help motivate you!  Just wanted to say that all the stuff you painted for the event is great, even the less "flashy" stuff like your tyranids (love the red and blue).

 

Plus, I wanted to say that guy trapped in the base of your Master of Executions is so cool!  Hope he does well in the Master of the Forge.  As an aside, he does strike me as more of a Sorcerer than a MoE, despite that being the base model - I think its probably the mace that does that, though there is nothing saying a MoE can't have a mace, so it may just be one of those models you could field as well.

 

As for your next project, can't really offer an advice as a non-30K player other than to push EC (as I'm contractually obliged being a 40K EC banner carrier).  

Edited Thursday at 05:37 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[The Pounder]

The amount of work you get through is astounding!

 

Loving your Tyranids too!

[Heraclite]

Have you considered salamanders? It's quite a departure both in theme and in colours from the raven guard and night lords? + You could make them fit with your raven guard as shattered legions.

[WBRBloom]

I'm here to fan the flames and say 'Isstvan 3 loyalist survivors'. I love this concept and anything relevant with the lore. As for the armour/paint scheme, remember that a lot of the survivors, especially from traitor legions, became Blackshields/Shattered Legions, meaning that you can have a fairly easy black scheme with the occasional transfer and insignia here and there.

[Lautrec the Embraced]

Thanks for your kind words and comments. 

 

On 10/8/2026 at 6:33 PM, Dr_Ruminahui said:

As an aside, he does strike me as more of a Sorcerer than a MoE, despite that being the base model - I think its probably the mace that does that, though there is nothing saying a MoE can't have a mace, so it may just be one of those models you could field as well.

I can see it now. For me the model kinda looked like (barring the axe) some chaos apothecary - that cloth/coat thingy looks like Fabius'.  But I like when models can double duty, the guy could be MoE, Champion, Lord, Sorcerer...

 

 

On 10/9/2026 at 1:02 AM, Heraclite said:

Have you considered salamanders? It's quite a departure both in theme and in colours from the raven guard and night lords? + You could make them fit with your raven guard as shattered legions.

Yeah, I forgot about them... The idea is good, matches nicely with RG lorewise, offers different tactics and paintjob. Though I am not sure how easily I can paint flames consistently and for me that'd be mandatory.

 

 

On 10/9/2026 at 10:52 AM, WBRBloom said:

I'm here to fan the flames and say 'Isstvan 3 loyalist survivors'. I love this concept and anything relevant with the lore. As for the armour/paint scheme, remember that a lot of the survivors, especially from traitor legions, became Blackshields/Shattered Legions, meaning that you can have a fairly easy black scheme with the occasional transfer and insignia here and there.

Interesting, with Isstvan/Blackshield theme I could use whatever bits from various legions to show where they originate from / who they scavenged recently. I'd prefer a small reprieve from painting black - but some members could retain some of their og colours while others go for bare armour black or steel. Though I suppose it'd be best to tie them somehow together.

Edited Sunday at 09:52 AM by Lautrec the Embraced

[WBRBloom]

On 10/11/2026 at 10:48 AM, Lautrec the Embraced said:

Interesting, with Isstvan/Blackshield theme I could use whatever bits from various legions to show where they originate from / who they scavenged recently. I'd prefer a small reprieve from painting black - but some members could retain some of their og colours while others go for bare armour black or steel. Though I suppose it'd be best to tie them somehow together.

 

Exactly! And you can also mix and match stuff such as shoulder pads or legion specific things, like the old 13th company of Space Wolves did while fighting inside the Warp, since they couldn't replace anything that was destroyed, so they replaced them from fallen chaos space marine armour parts!

 

It can be an amazing project, I can almost see it in front of me: unorthodox war during the Horus Heresy.