Dragon Warriors - Chaos Space Marines

Hey guys, I'm back with some test miniature shots of the Dragon Warriors that I'm working on.

In case you missed it, I'm building this army for a small paint and play escalation league being run locally.  Since the Dragon Warriors are basically as close as you can come to fallen Salamanders (they are led by a former Salamanders Librarian Nihilan, check out the wiki), I wanted to use lots of meltas and lots of vehicles, preferably walkers.  So I decided I'd start with a Warpsmith, and a Helbrute, and when I looked around, I decided the Black Legion book would serve me the best, since I could take Chosen as troops, and load them out with Meltaguns.  I know the Chosen are not going to be cheap, so a couple units of cultists would provide some cheap objective control in my back field.

The inspiration from an old codex.

I was inspired by a bottle of metallic red paint that my girlfriend had picked up quite some time ago.  I looked at it and was reminded of the Dragon Warrior scheme from an old Chaos Space Marine codex.  It wouldn't be easy, but I could probably pull off the scales now; I was never confident, or patient enough in my painting to think I could do it before.

So I did a quick test pattern on some cardstock, and liked the way it looked.  So a quick basecoat of the Helbrute, some paint and lots of dabbing later I had the guy pictured below.

Camera loses some detail at this size, CLICK IT!

Top view of scales.

Overall, it turned out pretty good.  I think next time I'll try and do smaller scales all over.

So with the Helbrute done, I was decided on a similar scheme for the Chosen, but I had to wait on some bits.  So I moved on to the cultists.  I had wanted something a little more different, so I got some of the Wargames Factory Shock Troopers, and put Cadian arms on them.  This gave me a great militaristic feel that reminded me of the Death Korps a bit.

At first I tried doing the entire trench in red with black trim, and putting scales across all of the red areas, but it looked too busy.  So I tried reversing it, black trench with red trim, and then just do the armoured bits in red with scales, shoulder pads and helmet.

They are all going on custom lava bases made from corkboard.  The first batch turned out a little too digital in the transition, so I'm working on more of a wet blend on the second batch of bases.

Overall I like the way they look, certainly much more eye catching in person, but at least it gives people another idea on what they can accomplish with some practice.

I just got the bits order in to work on converting the Chosen, I'll probably do a quick review of the bits in the next few days.

Re-Focusing

Updates will be coming, April is officially my re-focus month.

I haven't played any games for about the last month, mostly been getting together and doing some painting.  So that means some new eye candy coming.  Mostly with the general disgust with the GW happenings, I've been focusing a lot on Malifaux.  I've finished up my Rasputina crew and hope to be getting some games in shortly.

My Rasputina Crew

As we roll into April, I am looking forward to the summer and the July 26th Apocalypticon date.  I'm still not certain if I'll be able to make it, but with MWG closing, my worry is this may be the last one for a couple years.  

One of the requirements for this year is that all your models have to be painted.  For just my Dark Eldar,  that means I have to finish up some vehicles and obviously the Titan, but more importantly I have 30 Grotesques that need to be finished for the Carnival of Pain.

One of the pluses is the inclusion of Allies this year.  The way it will work is you can take any ally you could normally take in a 40k game; in addition you can take a second ally provided they could ally with your army and your ally normally.  I think I'll probably end up with only a single Chaos ally force, since Chaos and Eldar cannot ally.  The driving force behind that is I've already got some some Chaos Apocalypse scratch builds; the Doomsday Device, and the Silver Tower of Tzeentch.  The Doomsday Device is mostly done, just needs a paint job, the Tower needs a bit of work still.

Videos may be a bit fewer and further between updates, I'm trying out a new video editing software to give me access to better voice over and effects.  I'm currently trying Vegas Movie Studio for 30 days, and I have access to an Adobe Studio suite so may try whatever they have available.  The goal is to try and do some small model showcase videos to test out the capabilities, so feedback on those posts will be greatly welcomed.

The Rasputina Crew and the converted Dark Eldar Archon will probably be the features so stay tuned.

Army update

Just a quick update to post some pictures of what I’ve gotten finished on my army so far.
Most things still need some touch ups, and everyone needs to be based.
The goal was a quartered black and red theme on the warriors inspired by Harley Quinn from the Batman comics.  The wyches were then done in a compatible scheme, which I later realized looks identical to one of the ones in the codex.

Infantry

Wyches

Warriors

The vehicles were done in the same Charadon Granite and Scab Red, but it’s a bit harder to wash the vehicles and bring them down to a better black.  So I’ve started my Ravager with a black base coat to see if it turns out better.

Raider

Venom

Incubi and Klaivex almost done

So when the new codex came out I made a decision, I was going to change my colour scheme. Now I have a fairly large Dark Eldar army already, and it uses a nice blue and dark green colour scheme(with some splashes of red) and purple weapons, I like the colours, but never really managed to get it to look as good as I'd like. Since I've been waiting on this new book for a long time, and with how great the new models are, I'm probably building another Dark Eldar army from the new models. So, when I looked at my existing models, I picked out one of the units I did like quite a bit and started with them, my incubi.

The old Incubi always had to have the coats, even if there were only 2 poses for them

They didn't see much use with the old book, I just didn't find that happiness in the points vs. effectiveness balance. But I did like how they looked, the deep red, with the off white faces, and the black jackets looked pretty badass, so it didn't take much decision on how the new incubi would look. Besides it would allow me to use the old incubi with the new ones if the opportunity arose, because they still look great.

So once I received the new Incubi, I painted up four of the five in a similar colour scheme, and then started some conversion work on the last one.

They hurt as good as they look, which is the best part

One of the things I liked about the new incubi rules, is they have that Aspect Warrior feel from the Eldar codex. I really liked the Klaivex with his special options and powers, in particular I liked the versatility of demiklaives and the onslaught ability, I've always been fond of random abilities because your opponent can't count on them. So the search started through the bits box. I had some Dark Elf swords that looked ok but didn't quite hit the feel for me, the next closest thing I found were some Ork choppas. Finally in the bottom of one of my Dark Eldar boxes I found this single metal sword that was part of an uncompleted conversion I received as part of a trade with a friend. It was perfect, except it was only one sword, and I needed two. The sword looked familiar, so I knew I had seen it before and after some searching I thought it was the sword on the old Lelith model, but it wasn't quite the same. Then I found it on one of the old Wych models, I almost bypassed it because the sword is normally connected to the wyches hair, so some work had been done to fix the end of the blade.

Second in on the bottom left

So out came the jewellers saw and files and I salvaged a second sword, and started removing the klaive from the existing model. After a bit of pinning and some repositioning, I finally had them setup half decent. They still had the look that they could hit hard at +2 strength, but could also be lightning fast in skilled hands to give the +2 attacks. So off he went for some painting as well, and while they still have a few touch ups and some basing to be done, I'm quite happy with how they came out, and how the conversion worked.

A change from the norm

So in between school and projects, and with this short break I got to do some painting. As much as I like to play with my Dark Eldar, I just can't get into the models all the time. Some of the kits are really nice, and some of the metal models are great, but sometimes I want to work on something different.

That in mind, combined with the fact that during our small trial run of Planetary Empires I'm churning out some Chaos pleasure and change, I decided to paint up a few of the models that have been sitting on the shelf in various forms of completion. So I finished up a few Thousand Sons, and some sonic toting Noise Marines, Ahriman and Lucius both recieved some paint, except back packs(althought I'm thinking of going back over Lucius a bit).

Most of those were done when the break rolled around. For the break, my goal was to finish up the last of a couple Sons and Noise marines, and then put some paint on my dreadnought that has been based on a shelf basically since the new chaos book was released. He was one of my first conversions, and some of my only luck with green stuff sculpting. So I finished him up and have moved on to a box of Bloodletters that currently act as generic demons, but may hopefully lead to a demonic force later.