Like a Baron!

So I haven't gotten nearly the number of games in to keep going with my tactics articles, hopefully that will be remedied a bit this weekend.  So what have I been doing? Sitting on my butt? Ya, mostly . . . but I've also been doing some painting and conversion work.  One of the units I've been working on getting ready for play is my Hellions.  They aren't quite done, but expect some pics coming soon.

I've also been doing some minor conversion work.  While looking for some bits for another project (that got pushed to the back of the workbench) I came across an old partial conversion that I got from a friend in a trade.  It was meant to be a hellion skyboard for an Archon in the previous edition, simply a part of an Eldar Vyper with some small conversion work.  Problem was it got broken and never completed.

"Hey, I need a Baron Sarthonyx to go with my hellions, and joing my beasts.  He needs a cool skyboard!"  As the though went through my head the bits started flying.  A couple evenings worth of work I got what you see below.

Comin at you

So as you may be able to see, the central board is made from the rear half of a Eldar Vyper.  One of the wings was broken, so I trimmed it down to the body, did some slight re-gluing and then filed it flush.  The new wings are the bottom part of some left over Raider rudder blades.  The guns were just the barrels off a couple extra splinter rifles that come with the raider kits.  You can't see it in the vents, but the reason they are so centrally located is because of the location of the vents and corresponding jets on the front and back of the board.  Finally the board needed a bit of greenstuff to hide the center line (this was done previously by whoever started the board, but I wanted some slightly different details, so it was removed and redone).

Quite the "pigstikka"

So I had an awesome looking board, now I just neede a Baron to ride it.  Since I had been working on 10 out of the 15 total hellions that I had, I tried putting one of the half assembled hellions on.  He just didn't quite  have the look I wanted.  I started going through other bits, and came across the legs to one of the Venom passengers.  A quick pop off of a Hellion body from the legs, some dry fitting with Blue-Tac and I had something that looked like the start of something.

Next I needed a Hellglaive.  My first though was modifying the powerspear from the Scourges set, but the pulled back nature didn't flow with the pose.  While I was digging for that bit though, I noticed the spear from the Raider passengers.  This was a wicked looking hook, and had some promise.  I built out the glaive blades by trimming down the top side of the spear head so it was flat and then adding a second spearhead .  I did this with another non-wielded spear, and then trimmed down the handle on both spears and glued them together.  A quick check of the Baron's wargear, a pistol arm, and some more Blue-Tac and the model concept was dryfit together.

Looking down at trouble.

I still want to add a flowing component to him.  I'm going to steer clear of the superman capes that seem so prevelant.  My goal will be one of the sleeveless trenchcoats similar to the old incubi that came with Vect's Raider.  It should be a good test of my sculpting skills, but I may take a few days to do some testing with tissue paper to see how I want it to flow.

Dark Eldar Raven Mk II

Elegant but Deadly Silhouette

So one of my projects that I started as a learning process is coming a little closer to completion.  My Dark Eldar Flyer, which was aiming to be a Raven substitute, but that may change.  The IA Apocalypse 2nd Edition brought the Raven back to the  potential of usability for me.  They were 205 pts for one twin linked dark lance shot, and four Str 4 AP 5 shots, it came down to 125 and changed four bolter shots for ten poison 4+ shots.  It seemed right where it should be compared to the Eldar Nightwing.  As of the Aeronautica book however, it's back up to 205 pts, with the same lance shot, and poison shots and a rule that doesn't seem to exist.  Add the flicker field to it, and it costs as much as the Tantalus?

AV 10 2 Hull Points, 1 lance, 10 poison shot flyer = AV 12 4 HP 16 transport, 12 Str 5 AP 2 shots?

I may just mount another gun in the nose vanes, and run it as a 'counts as' Nightwing with Eldar Allies unless an Errata comes out.  Anyhow enough ranting.

The Sky Asssin itself

I had used it as a Raven from the IA Apocalypse 2nd Edition book during Apocalypticon.  I hadn't quite finished getting a mounting system done, so it was Blu-Tacked to a flying stand, and in a lot of the footage if you see it, it looks like it's crashing.  Surprisingly, for it's last minute priming, it received  quite a bit of attention at the event.  Because of how smooth and stable the wings were, many thought it was a resin product that they hadn't seen.

Side Profile

So since my last update on this project, I constructed and added the top slugh tail.  This is a combination of some plasticard to buffer the gun, and then a Splintercannon body run along the bottom of an inverted and trimmed shuriken cannon from a leftover Wraithlord kit.  The main fuselage was rounded out with Milliput, including building up around the cockpit, and housings were added for the Dark Lances, and further rounded with Milliput.  I found it was a much better medium than Green Stuff, as with a little water it became much more malleable and allowed you to smooth it much more organically.

Oncoming death

My actual canopy ended up getting broken, it is currently sporting a replacement made with the half canopy DE rear, but an Eldar canopy front.  That will be replaced for the DE canopy front with the half canopy reversed and connected to the back of the full canopy.  Then the goal is to try and get a cast of the canopy by itself, and then try the difficult task of getting a cast of the whole plane.

Tormentor Titan update 3

So I was hoping to get this posted before I left, but some last minute issues with the assembly, and airbrush problems left me with more to do than I had time.

"Wow, What is it?" - most common phrase to refer to the titan

Still, I managed to get it assembled, and at least a basic colour set put down.  The guns still need alot of colour, but it gives a general idea of the look of the model.  So my logistical problem came when I realized that he was going to be too big for carry on, and too big for any of the containers I had.

19" titan + 15"x12"x9" container = problems.

I get a "We'll be back" roll, right?

So with a little help, I managed to split him right where the torso meets the leg plates, then recessed a 1/2" rare earth magnet in each side.  Double win, he travels a big safer and now he pivots nicely at the waist for improved effect.

Preying Mantis Style

The guns we mounted on pins, that slide down through the tubing of the arm that slides into the torso, so they hold the blades up in place.  The head has a nail with a 1/4" nail recessed into it, with another 1/2" magnet on the neck area of the torso to hold it on.  A couple of the leg blades came off on transport home, but you can still get the idea.

Standing Tall

A very last minute addition, as in throw the bits in and finishing upon arrival, were the eye gems.  I had originally cast these to be glued to the body, but realized they'd look better in the eyes.  They may have to be pulled and re-slotted after a bit of work, but the concept is wonderful.

Here's looking at you.

So that is how the build finally shaped up.  When I got down to Welland, I stopped and had a quick visit with Kris from Riders of the Cosmic Serpent & MiniWarGaming.  After a quick inspection and ensuing titan battle, he convinced me that an Eldar Phantom Titan would be a better choice, and more aesthetically fitting, than being a Chaos Reaver.  Since the model was quite a bit bigger than I expected, equal at the head/shoulder, and not quite as high on the back fins, it wasn't a hard stretch.

So off I went to Apocalypticon with an extra 1000 points because of that decision, bringing me to just over 9500 points, and it was a decision that I would not be displeased with.

Tormentor Titan update 2

Just a quick update on the titan.

I added the jump jets, and protective plating, I built the guns that were supposed to be Splinter Cannons on my home brew datasheet.  The arms are to the point of complete, I'm contemplating how/if I want to make them removable.  It has sort of taken a back burner the past week because of my newest delivery. . .

So at this point, the plan is to hit Apocalypticon in Hamilton in just under a month with approx. 7500-8000 points in tow.  Hopefully I have more soon.

Tormentor Titan update

With 2 updates in a week I've obviously gotten more done on the titan.  Legs are greenstuffed and connected to the torso, upper torso is done except weapons, back fins are on and arms are in the production phase, you can see the mock-up put on with blue tac in the pics below.  I figure it's also a nice change from the current uproar of 6th washing across the interwebs.

Tormentor head on

After I got everything together I thought the legs were a little large at first, but after it's all together they've grown on me.  One of the problems I ran into is balance and that the legs are just connected with styrene tubing and seem a little flimsy.  I believe the model could hold its weight just standing on the shelf, but I expect it would seem breakage during table play.  So I've currently put him on a small plywood base, with a 1/2" tube propping up the model(about a 1/2" off the ground currently); the plan is to replace the tube with a clear acrylic rod.

Side profile

I'm going to go back and add some additional tubing to represent hydraulics where the lower legs meet the upper legs, and possibly where the upper leg meets the torso.  The lower part of the torso still needs to be detailed with protective plates and jump jets in between the legs. I'm probably putting some sort of belt piece as well to divide the torso.

The plan for the should mounts are to make them look slightly like the new heat lances, I found some nice mechanical pencils that have a similar shape so it should make it easy to convert up.  The CCW currently is a foam board mock up.  The plan for this is probably going to be a single piece of styrene sheet for the whole shape, and then build up with smaller shapes of styrene sandwiching the main blade.

Titan update

So the I've finished the 4 legs, gotten them cleaned up and prepped to remold the tips of the legs after putting some solid pins in there.  I found the leg tips were pretty flimsy, and sparse, so I cut them back far enough to pin in the pins.  Most of the spiked fins were also pretty deformed or flimsy, so I removed most of them, I'm thinking I may just remove them all and either put individual bits on all the legs, or cast the fins by themselves.

Four legs, pinned and ready for Green stuff

While resin was curing and in between leg cleanup, I moved on to the torso piece, and upper legs.  I had originally decided that I was going to use a ball type joint on the upper leg to connect to the torso as well.  I expected to cast and mold that as well, but as I was looking a little closer at the Forgeworld Eldar titans I noticed they usually used a flat connection.  So I picked up some 7/16" Evergreen tubing and I'm just going to connect using the tubes cut to size.  The torso had holes pre-drilled to fit the ball joints, so I just expanded them slightly so the tubing will fit.

Torso with a small mistake

I had used a series of PVC pike connectors to build the torso, it is a larger 1" piece, with a smaller connector fit inside, and half of a third smaller connector within the second one.  You can see the second connector with the leg holes, and you can see the third connector through the holes, and the small stop piece at the bottom.  This gave a nice little tapering effect towards the bottom, I just needed to expand the top a bit so I could make it resemble the Kabalite Warrior torso.  So as I was cleaning up, I found an old Tylenol bottle that was the right size, I had to expand the opening, and then slipped it on the top of the PVC connector.  This gave me a nice thickness for the torso, as well as a flat top with a slight indent to attach the head at a later point.  A short set of 1/2" tubing was added to either side of the medicine bottle to give the torso the width I wanted from shoulder to shoulder.  Now it was ready to be built up and get some definition going.

The first though was going to be heat and mold styrene around the frame until I got the shape I wanted, and then add detail to it until it was passable.  But since the gaming table doubles as the work area and is shared by my girlfriend and her daughter there are often lots of odds and ends kicking around for inspiration.  So the kid was working on trying to build items with the intent of going larger and larger to an eventual cosplay outfit.  One of the materials that she was using extensively was the sheets of flexible craft foam.  I was moving it out of the way and noticed how it flexed nicely, was of a decent thickness, and was easy to work with, so I asked to borrow a couple sheets.

Torso back with spinal plates

The torso plates were laid down from bottom up using the foam, because of the natural stepping nature of the frame I didn't have to do all the way to the top each time.  The one problem I had, is I got a little too anxious with foam and started forming the torso before I remembered that each band was supposed to taper up in the center where the hole was.  Still, the foam has worked great, it's given me a nice light frame that has been easy to work with.  The only real problem I've had is some shaping problems with edges, and stray bits and bobs can leave impressions in the foam.  After the torso was built, I cut away a section down the middle of the back and inserted the layered spinal plates, and guards on either side of that.  I think it came out quite nicely.

So the next step is going to be building the back fins, and deciding on what I want to do with the torso piece.  I had originally thought of casting the torso as well, but I realize that it may be too heavy to sit properly on the legs once everything is assembled.  So I've been throwing around a couple of ideas.  The other problem is how to prepare the foam for detail and paint.  I should be able to use a glue/water mixture to seal it like a foam terrain piece, or maybe even a sealer, but one of the things I've noticed when I get some resin spill over onto any newspaper is it soaks in and hardens almost like a fibreglass (which it should since it is basically the same product); so I may mix up some resin, and paint it onto the foam to harden it.  This may also be revisited for the flyer build as well.

On a seperate note, I may be moving soon, and I've heard there is a decent sized Apocalypse game being planned for the middle of this month, so I may try and hurry this to a standing frame with temporary weapons to try out.  As far as the MiniWarGaming Apocalypticon event, as I expected, they don't want to sent a precedent of having to manage house built rules, so if I get it built and am able to attend it will likely proxy as a Chaos Reaver.