Tor Megiddo, part IX, Tech Priest & Robots

Together with my Warband i brought a couple of NPCs for the game: the Abalone Mutant and a Tech-Priest with a couple if robots. 

The Tech-Priest was a quite simple conversion. It's based on a Tech-Priest Dominus with Poxwalker and Tyranid arms. The scythe is from a Death Guard upgrade pack from Forge World, and the head is taken from a Gaunt Summoner of Tzeentch. I used very stiff guitar strings as cables. The cables coming out from under his robes are the only thing that touches the base, so if you see the miniature from the right angle it really looks like it's hoovering over the ground. 

I finished the Tech-Priest the day before I left for Helsinki. So I had to paint it really fast. The robes and arms were painted by quickly building up the highlights with a sponge before applying washes in the recesses. The metals were done with drybrushing, heavy washes and extreme edgehighlights. My favourite part of the miniature is the reflection on the scythe blade. This was done by glazing orange, red and brown GW shades over a light silver colour. 

The robots were originally part of my Genestealer Cult project. They were supposed to go with my two larger Babyface-Walkers. I use dark green bases on my Genestealer Cult miniatures. This work really well with the orange and bone colours of my Genestealer Cultists, but not on dark metal robots.  The bright orange desert bases of Tor Megiddo really gave these miniatures a new life!

Nestorian Infestation: Giant Psychic Spore

Here is my newest creation for the Nestorian Infestation project. This is the same kind of miniature as the baby faced giant servitor I made last year (LINK). But this one has a mix of both mechanical parts and flesh. 

The Genestealer Cult uses a mix of Mechanicum and Genestealer technology to create their warmachines. This one is an unstable Psychic Spore hidden behind a metal shield made from the face of a metal statue. 

I based this model on the big spore and tentacles from the Tyranid drop pod kit. The face is a greenstuff copy of a cheap angel statue. 

Black Pox part V: The Crimson Queen WIP

The leader of my Pestigor warband is a being called the Crimson Queen. She is an ex Tech Priestess. 

The Queen has turned her back on the Imperium to find greater power elsewhere. On the planet Vortapt IV, the fourth planet in the Vortapt System, she discovers a group of Abhumans/Pestigors. This group is slowly dying of the plague, the Black Pox. The Crimson Queen provides medicine and mechanical augmentations for the dying Abhumans, saving them from their imminent death. They start treating her as a saint, and she quickly becomes the leader of the group. 

I made the first version of the Crimson Queen using a Tech-Priest Dominus, but when the new version came out, I changed my mind. This version of the model is based on the new Belisarus Cawl model. I still have some work left to do on her, but I really like where this is going!

I really like the silhouette she gets with wings, but I'm not sure if they're a good mach to the rest of her. What do you think?

Outgard: The King's Champion

My Knight riding a mechanical steed is complete! This turned out to be one of my favourite models in the warband. I was a bit sceptical at first, because the model has some really fancy technology compared to the others. But mounting a Medieval Knight on the robot horse suggests that the people don't understand the technology, even though they have it. Which I think is an important aspect of 40k, and especially the Outgard setting.

The steed is based on Forge World's Mechanicum Vorax Battle-Automata (the robot bugs with miniguns), with a horse head from Tomb Kings. The rider is an old Bretonnia Knight with a Space Marine chest armour, and Gorka Morka mutant legs.

Armies on Parade 2015 part VIII: Kastelan Robots

Today I have another Unit from my Armies on Parade 2015 army that I want to show you, the Mechanicus Kastelan Robots. When GW released these models, I was quite surprised. When I first heard of them I was expecting boxes with legs, like Space Marine Dreadnoughts, as GW usually do. But these guys don't have any sharp edges at all. The first time I saw them, I didn't like them very much. Probably because of their wired looking round heads. But I did however buy a box. And after switching out their heads, with the ones from FWs Thallax Cohort, they looked a lot more fitting in the 40k universe.

The Robots were painted in the same way as the Imperial Knight I posted last week. A layer of black was chipped off showing the red underneath by using the hairspray technique. I didn't have much time left before the competition when I did these, and I think they turned out a bit boring. I should have painted some plates in a different colour, or given them a chess-pattern on some of the plates like I did with the Knight. But there weren't any time left. I am however quite pleased with the result, and they fit nicely in with the rest of the army. 

Armies on Parade 2015 part VII: Imperial Knight

It has been more than a month since the last time i posted a unit from my Armies on Parade 2015 entry. But I still have a couple of units left. The first model i want to show you is the biggest model of the army, the Imperial Knight. 

This is probably the least converted model in the army. I only added a couple of additional details, and gave it a new pose. The paint job is however quite interesting. To make the model fit in with the rest of the army, I thought about painting it red. As this is the colour of the Space Marines. But I felt that this would make the Space Marines stand out less than I wanted. The tech priest of the army, The Reaper, is black, which would be a fitting colour. But black is quite hard to paint on large plates. Instead I decided to go with both colours. Using hair-spray weathering, I tried to make it look like the Knight was originally red, and painted black by its new owners. Through many years serving its new master, the black paint has started to peel off, showing the red underneath. The original Mechanicus symbol is also starting to show through the black on the Knights left shoulder plate.

Armies on Parade 2015 part V: Cyberhounds

It's time for another unit from my Armies on Parade 2015 entry. This time i want to share my Cyberhounds and their Handler. Originally These models where made for my daemons, as Flesh Hounds. If I ever play a game using Daemons, I'll probably use them as such. But when I was building my second batch of hounds (the four painted beige), I put them beside one of my Mechanicus models and they looked great together. I then decided to use the hounds as some kind of dog servitor, with servo-skulls as heads. 

The Houds are based on GW Fantasy Chaos Warhounds and Tomb Kings horse skulls. I only had one Horse skull in my bitz box, so I made a quick instant-mould to cast the rest in green stuff.  Green-stuff dries softer than plastic, so I was able to cut off the lower jaw, and glue it back into place on some of the hounds, to make a couple with open mouths. If I make more hounds, I'll add some cables and other mechanical details to make them more 40k/mechanicum looking. 

The Handler is based on the Corpse Cart driver, with a FW servo skull and servo arms. 

When using them as chaos hounds, I decided to make a daemon leader for the squad instead of the Mechanicum Handler. I had a FW hound in my great box of bitz, and made it into a classic Cerberus conversion. The model is still WIP, so I'll add some more 40k details and cut the cables.