Raven Guard Scout WIP Post #4

More solid progress on my Raven Guard Scout squad. In fact, all of the painting on them is now done! Here is a final WIP shot of painting on one of the models:

This was the addition of Caliban Green on the gun casings. I really like this color here, as it breaks up the sea of black. It'll be even more apparent on power armored Marines, since those guys will have no grey pants to break things up. I'll need to rely on pouches, grenades, and gun casings to break up the black and silver.

An example of a couple final shots:

I really like the Caliban Green on the shotgun. I forget what the green I used for the edge highlights was, but it was a Reaper MSP paint.

I also made some serious progress on my base masters for casting. I took all of the 1" squares of plasticard I'd cut out, and carved a rough bevel into each edge. When I had four squares, I'd slather the base in plastic glue and randomly stick the first square on the base. Then it was a matter of sticking the other three on as well, pressing very firmly, and then  letting them dry.

Once the glue was fully cured (wait at least 24 hours), I flipped the base over, and used my X-Acto knife to score the plasticard around the top of the base. You have to be careful not to slice off pieces of the base itself while you trace around, and also be careful that you don't press so hard that you break the knife blade. One or two passes around are plenty, and it doesn't need to be perfect. It all gets cleaned up at the next step. Once the pieces are scored around the base top, you can just snap the plastic off of the base. Don't throw out the pieces you snapped off!

It's not really visible in this picture, but the next step is to go around the newly-snapped card and carve bevels into it in the same way you did when making the squares in the first place. Again, be careful not to slice the black plastic of the base and take the opportunity to cut away any glue drips that got onto the black plastic. It'll reduce the amount of filing you'll do on the final casts.

Now, for the second base, take those pieces you snapped off and use them to make another pattern. I like to randomly select one, glue it down, and then arrange the other scraps based on its position. It keeps things reasonably random. I don't want all of my bases to be perfectly lined up with the center of the stone seam in the center. That'd be pretty boring.

I repeated this process until I'd made five base masters, and since then I've made three more. I stopped at a total of eight because I only had ten bases to work with, and wanted to save a couple for backups, plus I wanted to save some of my card squares to make some 40mm bases for Terminators someday (Raven Guard actually do use Terminators, not just Assault Marines and Scouts!).

The next step is to check for any fine seams under the stone squares that the silicone for the mold might get into, seal them up with glue, and then get to casting.

In other projects, I've finished painting my Ultramarine Librarian. However, he's still in pieces as I haven't glued all the subassemblies together. Once he's done, I'll set up the lightbox and get pictures taken. After that, I'll mount my lascannon Marines for painting and get started on them. I'm hoping to paint them in a batch, but if they won't hold still in the mounting corks I'll have to paint them one-by-one.

Raven Guard Sergeant Progress

Just a smallish update today. I spent a little time working on the Sergeant, roughing out the shapes of his hand and arm.
First I got the fingers laid out, and a small wad of Brown Stuff pushed into place for the general structure of his arm/elbow. I like this better than a wire skeleton, as I know I can just rip it out of there if I really hate it.

As you can see, really rough work, but I got the general shapes and dimensions in there. Then I started work on the arm/sleeve/elbow/whatever with Green Stuff, as it flows better than Brown Stuff. Brown Stuff is spectacular stuff, but it gets a little grainy when worked too much, and it's intended for sharp lines and sandable edges, instead of folds and curves.

This is where the Sergeant sits as of now. I need to go back in and file his fingers smooth and then patch any low areas with GS. The one thing that's really bugging me is the side-on view of the arm. In the picture immediately above this text, the elbow and bicep area look fine. But in the side-on shot, you can see that the arm looks a little...puffy. There's an unnatural angle to the area right behind the forearm cuff of the gauntlet.

Can anyone suggest a fix for this? It sort of looks like I need to point the gauntlet upward more or something. I can't quite figure out what the problem is, and how to fix it.

Oh, and because Khorne Inquisitor asked about on his blog, here's a picture of my blotting/wiping towel, though this one is relatively fresh.

The List, The Paint Desk

I figured it would probably be a good idea to share the army list that inspired my last entry. It's 1500 points, and designed for a composition-friendly event I'm attending down in MA this coming Saturday. It's hosted by the DorkaMorka gaming club. I've attended two or three of their past events, but had not been down there for more recent tournaments, wither due to family stuff or the bitter taste of being worked over by comp-bender lists the last time out.

Anyhow, here's the list:

Chaplain Cassius
6 Sternguard, Sergeant w/combimelta
5 Terminators, 2 chainfists, 1 assault cannon
10-man Tactical Squad in Rhino (non-veteran sergeant with chainsword, pistol, and meltabombs, missile/flamer)
10-man Tactical Squad in Rhino (non-veteran sergeant with chainsword, pistol, and meltabombs, plasmagun/multimelta)
7 Scouts, 6 snipers, camo cloaks, missile launcher
10 Assault Marines, veteran sergeant with pistol and powerfist, 2 flamers
Land Raider Crusader with extra stormbolter

Pretty tame list. It's got lots and lots and lots of bolter shots (seriously, I added a stormbolter to an LRC). It should be a challenge to play against Tau, Eldar, TauDar, etc. I'd originally wanted to use a full 10-man Dev squad in place of the Terminators, but won't have the required bolter Marines painted in time.

Speaking of which, that is what is currently on my painting desk. I just finished my sixth Sternguard member (fifth if you don't count the one with combimelta I painted ages ago). I'm planning to take some shots using the proper lighting tonight. I am now working on bolter Marines to get to the point where I can run a true half-company of 3 Tacticals, 1 Assault, and 1 Devastator squad. I'd always been three bolters short of that goal.
I'm also still working on the base for my Hive Tyrant. I bought a bunch of Secret Weapon kits to spruce up the base (tree stumps, broken Doric columns, grass, turf, etc). I'm waiting for some small mushrooms I made out of Green Stuff to cure, and then it's on to applying sand. I filled an empty GW static grass tub with some of the wash down material from my driveway. Sand, pebbles, and rocks. I think I need to sift it a little though, as the larger rocks are a little large for my tastes. I'm still struggling with exactly how I'm going to glue the Tyrant to the base, as he's got that stupid little sculpted rock section under his tail. I can't glue him down and then sand, as I won't be able to prime the base with him on there. I think I'm going to have to trace around the connection point, apply sand/gravel, then fix up the edges of the hole before spray priming. Any major gaps can be lightly covered with grass or turf. It's the best option I can think of. With Marines, I just put a little section of plasticard where their feet go and sand around those. But doing so with the Tyrant would mean the little rock he's attached to would "hover" over the sand. I should have removed it when I started. Lesson learned.

I also primed and put a first coat of base color on five Genestealers. I'm pretty excited about getting on with these guys. They've been sitting on top of my paint rack for a couple months now.

Blast from the Past: Master of the Forge

Yesterday I was asked how I created my scratch built conversion beamer for my Master of the Forge. This is a model I made when the 5th Edition Space Marine codex dropped. I'd done a ton of research on conversion beamer fluff, and even managed to get a bit from the old Space Marine board game. Problem was, that bit was lacking in detail. I decided to build one myself.

Originally, I'd chronicled the process over at Bolter and Chainsword on the blog I used to run there. When B&C crashed and decided to not revive the blogs, the whole process was lost to the Warp.

This is my "from memory" attempt to describe the process again...

The first thing I did was select all the parts I wanted to use:

Pictured are a Black Templars scabbarded sword (I wanted the option to give him a power weapon, but didn't want it blatantly visible and therefore a must-take), a set of used legs (this was back in my "too poor to buy new stuff" phase, where I was buying cheap lots on eBay and stripping them for parts and to refurbish), a damaged metal multimelta backpack (the previous owner had lopped off the cable feeds and put some sort of pin in the top), a metal Iron Warriors upgrade torso, bolter arms, the Techmarine head from the Ravenwing box set, a Mechanicus pad from the Marine vehicle upgrade sprue, an a Chaos Marine Terminator Reaper Autocannon.

The first thing I'd wanted to do was repose those legs and give him some bionics. I cut a piece of round sprue from a model jeep kit and replaced the thigh with it. I'd intended to add additional cables and coils around it. This shot shows how laughable the attempt was:

I then decided to get rid of the Dark Angels iconography on the Techmarine head. I didn't have any Greenstuff at the time, so I filled the area with plastic glue. I waited for it to dry, and then filed it down smooth. Again, pretty sloppy and laughable looking back:

 

 

I then started working on the beamer. I began by lopping the barrels off the autocannon, because I wanted those recoil compensators to be energy coils. After some misadventures, I ended up drilling three lengths of paper clip into the front, and slipping tubing from Q-Tips over the top and bottom ones. I then found some random flat oval bit, drilled matching holes, and used it as a brace or end cap. I think my intent was to use this assembly as an energy collection point, with the tubing painted like it contained an energy beam inside each one.



 

 

The amount of glue used to make all this stick was appalling, and it really ruined the finish on the parts. Plus, it looked a little too thin to be a big, scary weapon. I decided to wrap the whole thing in wire to remake the coils. Also, I'd replaced the Terminator arm section with the equivalent piece from a regular bolter arm:



I'd used 40-gauge floral wire to wrap the coils, and it was a bitch towards the end to keep together. This resulted in gaps. However, I needed some sort of support structure for the coils anyways, so I covered most of the gaps with pieces of bent 1mm plasticard (actually a 'for sale' sign I'd bought for that purpose). These are superglued to the coils and then plastic glue was used on the backside to blend the joint by the melt-then-sand method I used for the helmet.

 

 

I needed a little more structure, so I added a random piece from the jeep model underneath the assembly, and then added focusing/discharge coils in the form of the shock springs from the same jeep kit.

I then added a final focuser to the front in the form of the upright from a radar dish off of the Marine vehicle sprue. But the gun was now massive, and would require two hands to hold and fire. I added a handle by chopping up some bit from a Baneblade sprue.

Because of the positioning of the handle, a regular bolter support arm wouldn't fit. So, I grbbed a spare biker arm, sliced off the hand (the grip was too small), and attached the hand from the bolter support arm.

By this time, I'd scrapped the idea of making my own bionic legs, and began searching for alternatives. One option was to slice the legs off of one of these old Devastator models:

But I somehow landed a set of bionic legs from the Iron Hands kit instead:

I wanted him to have a fancy shoulder pad with a deflector on it, so I glued plasticard to the back of a metal Ultramarine pad, and then trimmed away the excess. This is what bitz poor people do in place of expensive bitz!

Some posing and assembly of his body:

And then assembly of his gun, arms, and pack, plus the addition of his fuel delivery lines. These are actually wires from a phone cable I tore out of my house while redoing rooms.

Some WIP paint pics:

And finally some completed shots:

And there you have it! I was pretty proud of this model when I finished it. Lately, he's been showing his age. Funnily enough, while my painting skills have improved overall, I no longer make creative, scratch built models like this. Somewhere in the progression, I lost that bit of creativity and boldness that would push me to make a model like this. I've actually been thinking of replacing him with a new version that uses the Forgeworld Valthex model as a base. I don't' think I ever will, though, as this guy has seen the table less than ten times, ever.



 

Yeah, Purple!

I settled on purple as the color for the ribbed flesh on my Tyranids. Here's what the first pass looked like:

It's Reaper master series Indigo Sky, washed with Leviathan Purple, back to Indigo Sky, then Pale Indigo. it looks nice and rich, but didn't pop as much as I wanted it to. I needed more contrast, so I mixed the Indigo Sky with Ghost White at a 1:1 ratio. The result:

The shot is washed out by the light. For some reason, the large claws always get washed out, and the small ones don't. This is also after cleaning up the green, as I'd gotten brown and purple on small areas and had to fix things up. The talons are all now ready for Dullcote, but the head is waiting for the teeth to be painted. I'm going with a simple ivory there.

I also did some sculpting on the Tyrant's body. I was waffling on filling his back vents, and just decided to go for it:

Pretty simple process. Just push a wad of GS in the vent, and poke repeatedly at it with a skewer or round toothpick. Be sure to drag the edges of the GS upward against the plastic of the vents, or it won't look natural.

I also ripped of the hooves I'd sculpted onto the feet. They just didn't look right. I'm still not sure I like the new ones. I'll get a shot after they're done.

Moving Along Nicely

I'm on my way to cataloging the excess items in my Marine collection. I pulled out a first batch of stuff, and have decided to give the local players at my FLGS first crack at each batch as I make it available, then progress to Bartertown, then eBay. This is mostly due to ease of transactions. An in person sale is easiest (though I have to take the price in store credit), followed by lump and flat price sales/trades on Bartertown, then the crapshoot and fee-murder of eBay.

It was interesting to sit down on the living room floor and open every box and bag I have, write down what was in each one, and then close it all back up and start making "keep" and "go" piles. There was a little less in the "go" pile than I wanted there to be, though. Try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to put the brand new Land Raider with all of the sponson options in the pile. However, I think I'll be performing the sort again after I've cleared out all of the stuff currently in the "go" pile. I figure with some time and effort, I'll be more willing to part with some things.

I did some painting this weekend as well. I finished off the painting for the body of my second Sternguard model. I need to seal him this evening, then paint the base while the sealer dries.
I also started working on my Hive Tyrant! Here is a quick shot of what the first two coats look like:

This is white primer (Rust-O-Leum sandable primer), then two coats of Reaper MSP Olive Green, and a heavy wash of MSP Muddy Green. The wash was straight flow improver and paint, no water. It pooled in some areas, but I'm going to do a 50/50 mix of Muddy to Olive to bring the surfaces back up, then progress upward in 25% ratio increments. The third color in this triad is Pale Olive. I'm thinking at the extreme ends of each carapace section, I'm going to go all the way up to an off-white, so I can then blend the very edges of the carapace sections to a reddish pink, like I've seen on some of the crab shells I was trying to emulate.
I'm not sure what I want to use for the armor plates, though. I have some alternative green colors, or I can try purple or red. I'm thinking a dark color will work best.
What do you think?

I also got my fifth Genestealer assembled, so I have to figure out a way to pin their feet in order to hold them while painting. I'm thinking I can just cut off the slotta tab, insert some thin wire in the feet (like I do for Marines), and then form that wire into a hook shape. I took a handful of picture framing eyelets and screwed them into a wooden paint stirrer. I laid that across the speakers for my computer, and have been hanging the Tyrant's talons and head from the eyelets. It keeps me from touching the wet paint to my desk. I was originally planning on making little vice blocks with scrap wood and butterfly nuts, but I don't feel like spending money on butterfly nuts, bolts, and washers. Although, those are pennies apiece...

I also sat down last night and did some more sculpting. I had found a Genestealer conversion over at Warp Shadow that replaced the stealer claws with Daemonette claws. it looked neat, and fit the crab theme of the army (Hive Fleet Karkinos, remember?). A local Daemons player gave me a bag of spare Daemonette claws, and I started working on trying to copy the conversion. I realized too late that the original conversion was done using the scything talon arms mated to the Daemon claws. I was trying to remove the humanoid claws and replace them with the Daemon pincers. The effect was not as nice as I wanted, so I had to do some sculpting to fix the arms up. Of course, I don't have pictures of this, so I'll talk about it more in a later post.

One thing I do have pics of is the sculpted Spore Mine I made. Every time I have Green Stuff left over after a joint patch or other use, I have been rolling it into little balls to cure. I keep adding to these, like a tinfoil or rubber band ball, each time. I stop when they're about the size of a Space Marine helmet. Once they're that big, I start adding details with the small GS leftovers. Here's one of the things I ended up with:

This little bugger started out as a ball of Brown Stuff that I had left over from something. I drilled a hole in one end, and put a length of steel paperclip in to hold it. Then I started taking little balls of GS and sticking them to the surface. I pressed into the center of a ball with the back of a paintbrush, and then again all around the donut this created. The result looks like some sort of fleshy plate over the gas bladder of the mine. I kept adding to the main ball of Brown Stuff until it was almost covered, leaving area around the wire for tentacles. Those I rolled out by hand using the side of my finger. I found that using the touching portion of my finger would leave fingerprints. The side does not. Hold the resulting tentacle next to the mine and wire to gauge length, and cut to proper size. The offcut goes back into the wad of spare GS. Pick up the tentacle with a wet XActo blade, press into place under the mine, and then use a sculpting tool to press the connection flat for stability. I used the tool to pose/twist the tentacles around the wire. Repeat that process until you've covered the wire as best you can, and filled the blank area under the mine head. I then rolled out one shorter tube of GS, and wrapped it around the tentacle root points. Snip the tube to size, and begin using the sculpting tool to press a furrow in the entire tube. Smooth the area that meets the mine head flat, and then fiddle with the lower edge to make it look like some sort of fleshy skirt. Done!
Does it look pretty good?

The plan now is to either snip the wire just below the tentacles, and drill through the base to allow the wire to fit, or simply bend the wire at a 90 degree angle and a switchback to make it so I can glue the wire directly to the base. Cover with some GS made to look like a rock flow, add sand, paint, and flock. One free spore mine!

I've also started working on the second one:

Not super happy with the tube vents on this one, but they're good enough for a first try. In the future i think I'll attach little lengths of plastic rod or tubing, and sculpt the GS around those instead of trying to press GS into vent shape.

In, or out?

I got some more time in with the Hive Tyrant last night. I went back and applied Liquid Greenstuff to some of the gaps in his torso and toes. They probably would have been ok, but I was more and more annoyed by them the more I looked at them. It was only a partial success, as the gaps I was looking at were really hard to reach with sand paper or a file (which is why I left them alone initially). So, I thinned down the Liquid GS a bit and hoped it would fill enough for the primer to cover the gap. It didn't really work, but the nice thing about thinning Liquid GS is that it clings closely to the model, meaning you don't need a ton of sanding to make it blend in, which is good because I couldn't reach it anyways!

No photo updates today, as I had everything clamped and propped to let the glue cure. I'm hoping to get some tonight.

After that, I got his legs glued to the tail, and the tail to the torso. I'm leaving his head and arms as separate pieces for painting. If I assembled them, I'd have a bitch of a time painting the back of the head, neck, and arm sockets. I have a plan to create a gradient look on the joints, so it shouldn't look too abrupt when the arms and neck join the body.
I tried putting those little spike plates over the arm joints, but wasn't a huge fan of how they looked. Very "tacked on" looking. I also considered sculpting some sort of connective tissue from torso to arm/neck, but am not sure how to go about that while still allowing myself to paint the pieces separately.
Any ideas?

My big "what if" for today is in regards to the arms. I have the two scything talons that come with the Tyrant kit as his upper arms, and two of the smaller ones from the Mawloc kit as his lower arms. I did a test fit of the massive Carnifex talons as his upper arms, but they were too large. Talons that large would be impossible for him to swing with any sort of dexterity.
I really like the smaller Mawloc talons as his lower set. They are wider, with more of an armored look. The plan is to pose those close in to his chest, like a bit of armor covering his abdomen as he leaps forward. Once he's on the ground again and the enemy is in close, he'd start stabbing and cutting with those.
The thing I'm agonizing over is the posing of his upper talons. If he's leaping forward to attack, should his talons be extended like claws, or coiled like a snake and waiting to snap down on impact?
There is only one set of Nid talons in the entire range that are extended, and they're the ones from the old "Monstrous Creature" sprue. Those were designed for third edition Tyranids, and they're ugly as hell. They even lack the same sharp details from the current kits. I'm trying to avoid using them.
My only other alternative, if I want talons extended, is to take two separate sets of the same current talons, and chop the hell out of them. Cut the bicep area from one set and resculpt the elbow joint. Cut the forearm section from another set, again resculpting the elbow joint. Cut the talon from either set, resculpt the wrist joint. Then pin all of those in succession in the proper pose, fill the joints with the correct ribbed tissue, and done! It's an ambitious project for an amateur sculptor like myself. Thankfully, I already own enough sets of the talons to try it out without major additional cash outlay.
Do you think it's needed though? You'd have to picture it in your head as I don't have the pictures up yet, but would the Tyrant look better with top talons extended like spears, or tucked in like scythes?
　
　

Hoofin' It

My Hive Tyrant is slowly progressing. I put in an hour working on his feet this weekend, but forgot to take anything more than very preliminary shots. Here's some photos of the underside of his hooves:

Yes, they look pretty rough in these shots. I took them right after I got the Brown Stuff in place. Yesterday afternoon, after it has cured, I took a file to the surfaces and smoothed them out. The hooves are now flush with the outsides, and the interior has been cleaned up and smoothed out.

Tonight I plan to add the fleshy 'sole' area, as well as the 'frog'. That's the hard little bony area that will extend from the back to the interior. (It pays to have a wife who used to own a horse.)

I also fiddled with army lists for the FLGS tournament this weekend. I struggled a bit with deciding what type of a list I wanted to run. I thought about a Dreadnought list, led by a Master of the Forge, but I haven't figured out a good way to run that yet. I own four Dreads (one an Ironclad) with a mess of arm options, but just haven't ever had any success with running that many. I think I need to either run a full six (after I build and paint the two I have waiting), or get some drop pods into the mix. Dreads simply cannot walk across the board, and don't have the volume of shots needed to be reliable fire bases. I've tried in the past to do a mini phalanx formation with two Dreads with assault cannons and heavy flamers marching forward led by the Ironclad, and a Venerable standing overwatch behind them with a lascannon and missile launcher. It works ok, but not well enough to be a threat that takes heat off my Troops lots.

I then thought about taking a very vanilla list with a Librarian, a couple Tactical Squads, a Thunderfire, and two five-man units of Devestators: one with heavy bolters, one with missiles. This was the "let's kill the new Daemons" list, but I found it boring. Plus, there are only two reliable Daemons players at our shop, and tailoring a build to give those two players a run when the field is typically 12-16 is stupid.

I decided to go back to my area of expertise, and run bikes. I was inspired by a post over at Apostates Anonymous regarding bikes. At the end of the post, the author talks about how he's underwhelmed by his Bike Command Squad that is tooled for melee. Too many points for limited return, essentially. I thought about my own Command Squad, and realized that it lands in about the same place. Too many points for what it does, and I run an even gimpier version (Champion, Apothecary, Banner Bearer, Powerfist, Power Axe). So, I decided that I'm going to run bikes this month (at 1500 points, btw), and do so without my Command Squad.

Here's a general outline of what I came up with:

Captain in artificer armor, relic blade, storm shield, bike

Bikes One, 5x, combimelta, 2 meltaguns

Bikes Two, 5x, combiflamer, 2 flamers

Bikes Three, 5x, plasma pistol, 2 plasmaguns

Bikes Four, 5x, powerfist

2x Attack Bikes, multimeltas

3x Attack Bikes, multimeltas

Hyperios Whirlwind

Hyperios Whirlwind

2x Landspeeders (see blow)

It's a fast list with some semi-mobile anti-air fire. I largely put the Hyperii in because I just got the book for them and want to see how they work. Couple hundred points for a gamble.

This is the first time I'll have ever run four small bike Troops. Normally I run three six-man squads. I wanted to see how having one wild-card unit would work out, where I can just let them sit out of LOS or something. That's what the fourth squad is for, with its powerfist and no other upgrades.

The only decision I have left is how to arm the land speeders. I typically run them as Typhoons for four missiles per turn. It's reliable, flexible, and has range. But I'm also thinking about alternative loadouts. First is assault cannons and heavy bolters for some serious small arms fire. Half the range of a Typhoon, but double the main gun shots. Assault cannons are a funny creature in that they're very generalist. Not high enough strength to be brutal, but with enough shots to get the job done against light AV and small units of troopers. Same points cost as Typhoons as well.

I also thought about a cheaper version that replaces the heavy bolters with multimeltas. With the change to AP1 in 6th Edition, melta is spectacular against anything with an AV. Of course, they have half the range of a Typhoon, and a quarter when going for melta range. They do match assault cannons though.

The range bands of assault cannons and multimeltas aren't as much of a problem for speeders, though, as they can move rapidly, or even deep strike. With the changes to the mishap table, deep striking a couple land speeders isn't a huge risk. The real risk comes from enemy interceptor units.

So, with the above list, which would you run?

New Marine, New Tyranids!

I've spent the last couple weeks or so picking away at this Sternguard model, and now he's complete:

He needs a little bit of static grass behind that rock, but you get the point. This guy uses one of the white helmets I painted as an airbrush experiment several months ago. It looks nice on the model, alongside the white pad rims and gold aquila. He's clean and smooth, and I took some extra time to clean up lines and seams.
The only thing I don't like about him was the assembly of his head to the body. I painted the head separate from the body, pack, and bolter. I trimmed the neck before painting, and had done a test fit of the helmet into the Mk8 torso. Unfortunately, once all the parts were painted, they were a hair thicker in all dimensions. So when I tried to glue the head into the torso, there was some contact made between the helmet and the collar. It scraped the paint on all the contact points, and I about threw it across the room. I was able to repair the chips and scrapes, but the back of his helmet has some very small lumps and bumps from the repair work.
I'm now very leery of using the Mk8 torsos for the rest of the squad. I already have the second member of the squad assembled and primed, so I'll give it one more go, knowing that I have to be careful. But if I mess that one up, I may switch to non-Mk8 torsos and be happy with that.

I also continued working on my Hive Tyrant. I decided to lop off the talons from his feet. I then started resculpting texture on the bottom of his hooves.
The first step was resculpting the ball joint at the bottom of what I assume is his Achilles tendon

The hole in the first foot is actually an air bubble in the cast that I uncovered when I sliced off the talons. I'm going to use Brown Stuff to sculpt a pad under each hoof, similar to a horse shoe, and then more Green Stuff to give the area inside the "shoe" a fleshy texture. I stopped at the Achilles repair, because I wanted the GS to fully cure before moving on, as I didn't want to inadvertently touch the GS while working on the rest and ruin it. Patience!

While I waited for that to cure, I cleaned and assembled my very first Genestealer:

I have to say, assembling and working with Tyranids is half again as much fun as assembling and working with Marines. The swappable talons (this guy has Hormagaunt talons as his back arms), posing, etc is all so much fun. I still love my Marines, but assembling a Sternguard Marine is exactly the same as assembling a Tactical Marine or Assault Marine, just with different bitz attached.
This Genestealer needs a little gap filling around his neck and leg, but looks pretty neat overall.
I'd agonized over whether to jump right into sculpting Ymgarls or not, but decided to build at least five models with the basic Genestealer heads first. I need basic models to work with so I can hammer down my final color scheme, and waiting to sculpt fancy heads will add too much to the queue and further stall the project. Plus, I'll need basic Stealers as Troops far sooner than I'll need Ymgarls as Elites.

On Saturday I picked up some Liquitex artist ink, in a green-blue shade. My plan forward is to prime a few Genestealers white, airbrush my selected shade of green onto the fleshy parts, and then test out the effects of the ink on those areas. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities here!

Tyranids are so much fun to build!

I've finally started piecing together some of my Tyranid models. My main focus is on my Hive Tyrant, but I'm also working on a Genestealer and a scratchbuilt spore mine.

The Hive Tyrant is a very cool kit. I have the upper body together, and it required a minimum of Liquid Greenstuff to look good. I really only used it in the little seams between the back vents. That upper shell is FIVE parts! Two vent outers, two outer arm sections, and the center core section. The mold lines are nicely placed so they don't interfere with assembly and are easily reached with a file and blade to clean them up.
The tail section is ELEVEN parts. The waist ball joint, two tail halves, the tail end, tail stinger plate, two legs, and two toes per leg. The two tail sections went together nicely, with a minimum of seams and mold lines. Since I used the long, curved, "flying" tail, I needed a clamp to hold the midtail section to the elongated tail section. Thankfully, whoever designed the kit had the forethought to place a couple of the spines on the seam line between the two sections, which helped immensely in lining up the sections for gluing. The assembled tail is now sitting on my desk with a bunch of Liquid Greenstuff along the joint lines. I'll file it smooth this evening, I hope.

I have to interject for a moment that my pot of Liquid Greenstuff is starting to dry out. I bought it the first weekend it was released, and haven't used it a ton. But, the center of the pot is becoming granular and semi-cured. I used to be able to use a nylon brush to pull a bit out and use it on a model, but now I have to get a flat toothpick or coffee stirrer and scoop the stuff out of the pot and put it on a piece of plastic. Then add water and it thins back out. Not sure I'll buy another pot when this one is gone. I've heard Privater Press or Vallejo makes an equivalent product in a dropper bottle. Might try that next. I've also heard that a slurry of Milliput also serves the same purpose and is easier to press into the seams. I used to use superglue or plastic glue drawn over the area, but those are messy and leave behind scars if you don't do it right.

As I waited for the tail to cure and set, I cleaned up the legs. The kit only allows you to use the standing legs with the standing tail, and the flying legs with the flying tail. You could do some joint pinning and sculpting to make the legs swappable, but the legs don't really look quite right on the wrong tail anyways. Because I chose the flying tail, I cleaned up the flying legs. Again, mold lines are minimal and the joint has a nice little nub in it to make it perfectly align on the tail. The tail section even has little sculpted in overlays for the joint that make the fit seamless and hide any lines.
Before I put the legs on though, I need some feedback. The flying legs are intended for use on a winged Tyrant. They have scything talons added to the end of the standard hoof-shaped foot. This makes it so a winged Tyrant is always WYSIWYG. The wings take up an arm socket, so no matter what secondary arm set you use, you always have at least one set of scything talons on the model. Because my model is not winged, and instead "leaping," I'm torn over the feet. I can either leave the feet as they are, or cut the talons off and go back to the hoof look.
This won't be a magnetized, optimized game model. It's intended as a fun, artsy project that I can enter into a painting competition (and maybe win). As a result, I'm arming him with two sets of scything talons, and posing him as if he's pouncing forward onto his prey. Picture a velociraptor, or any Wolverine attack pose, or the world's biggest Hormagaunt. Because he's ground-based, I'm thinking the foot talons need to go. He'd never be able to walk around with them, so I should remove them, right? Should I remove them, I'll likely sculpt something on the underside of the hooves. Maybe cut a little bit of thin plasticard and mimic the galaxy's weirdest horse hoof?

The Genestealer I'm working on hasn't made much in the way of progress since I pulled him off the sprue. I'm agonizing over two things: what to do with his slotta base, and if I should leap into the sculpted conversion arena right off the bat.
I have never used a slotta base in my life. On all my Marines, I've snipped off the slotta tab, flied the feet flat, and treated them like non-slotta models. I even did that to my metal models. I do this because I create my bases separately from the model. Gluing a model to a base feels like a major pain when attempting to add sand, paint, flock, etc. Marines have big, fat, chunky feet and legs. Tyranids have thin, whippy feet and legs. I think I can drill a small hole into the Genestealer's foot and lower leg to insert a pin by which to hold him during painting, but am not sure.
I have grand plans for my Genestealers as well, as I intend to hive them all tentacle faces. I've seen a bunch of examples of this done online, and really like the idea. My plan is to cut the lower jaw off of the head, sculpt the tentacles, and attach them to the upper jaw, using more GS to blend the transition so it looks natural. Essentially, they'll all look like Ymgarls from the codex art.
The question is whether I'm biting off more than I can chew. Should I start with a basic set of Stealers to start, just to get the hang of painting, or skip that and go straight to end product? My gut says start with the tentacles, as I have plenty of marine models to build and paint while waiting for tentacles to cure and glue to set.
How do you start off an unfamiliar project? Go for the desired result, or start with small test subjects first?

My spore mine is pretty rough at the moment. All I've done so far is cut a length of sprue, and chop the front off of three Gaunt spinefists. I then glued the spinefist parts to the sprue in a two-horizontal, one-vertical setup. I need to measure how tall I want the mine to be, and then insert a length of wire in the underside of the mine "head" area. I'll use GS to fill in the areas between the spinefists, making the gas sac part of the mine. Add some tentacles and a base, and done. Not at all time efficient, but it allows me to use up some junk bits and make nonstandard models.

I'll get some photos of all this work taken tonight, I hope. I've also got my first Sternguard model about 95% done as well, so you'll see him as well.

Brainstorming Scratchbuilt Nids

As I get further and further into the planning for this Nid project, the more I think I might need a notebook for all my little thoughts.
Today I've been thinking about the ability to scratchbuild/kitbash some of the more annoying-to-buy models. Little stuff like spore mines and rippers. These are little add-on models that are used in units that almost nobody fields, but they run upwards of $1.50 USD per model? That's insanity!
As a result, I'm thinking of ways to simply scratchbuild them using Greenstuff and Nid bitz.

Spore mines are easy. Use the little extra detail bitz that come in almost every kit, and either add them to a small ball of Greenstuff, or glue them to a small brick of sprue, and use GS to seal up the blank areas, like putting crust on a pie or a skin graft on a burn victim, or maybe leather on a rugby ball? All of this mounted on a length of paperclip or brass rod, or even another length of sprue, which is then attached to a base. Use long ropes of GS to make progressive layers of tentacles drifting down from the "ball" and concealing the rod/sprue. Simple enough, and will likely look pretty good. Add small details to the skin of the mine, and done.
I'm also looking at Gaunt spinefists for this purpose. They have some nice detail, and with proper cutting, I think I can put a couple at an angle on a piece of sprue, and make a double-mohawk-looking spore mine.

As for Rippers, I've been looking at either Warrior faces or Gaunt heads. The Warrior faces will probably work best. Start with a face, remove the flesh hook tongue if it has one. Crown the head with a Genestealer armor plate. Slice off a Carnifex tongue from the long-tongued head and use it as a base for adding overlapping plates to the body until you can join it to the head. Fill any body gaps with GS, and add small textures like pores or what have you with some tools. Then, cut the thumb claws off of several spinefist bits and Gaunt arms, and arrange them in order from large to small. Add small knobs of GS as needed to form joints, and then press matching sockets into the GS. Apply legs to body, and body to base (probably with thin paperclip wire painted black), repeat 3-5 times.

I'm also thinking making Ymgarl Genestealers is stupid easy when you just cut off their lower jaw and apply a couple rows of tentacles.

Those are my ideas for now. I found a tutorial on making kitbashed Zoanthropes someplace, but can't find where I stashed the link...