Reader Response - Nerd Crush List

Fly Molo back again!

My last article seemed to stir up some interest on the inter-web and I recieved some good feedback along with a few requests for help. Well, who am I to turn away a request for help? Asking me for help with Warhammer is like asking a one-legged dude for help with your next ass-kicking contest, but I'll do my best. A reader (Knight of Infinite Resignation) question from the blog comments section:

Contemplation of a Contemptor via Comprising a Compilation.

Even if you don't like the look of the model, the Contemptor is a pretty awesome model for the hobbiest-lite to have a very personalized model.   This guy is made up of about 27 parts, (Good run down of the model here) all of which are made for maximum articulation.  Since Forgeworld took forever between sending me the wrong dread and then being on back order, I satisfied my need to have this guy in my grubby little hands by surfing the net and seeing what others did.

Ironclad Dread Conversion

After retooling the list I needed an ironclad. I love these guys and was really excited to get on on the table again. So I picked one up a few days ago and just finished the conversion work to make him fit in with the heavily customized salamanders army.

I wanted to make the center sarcophagus part different. I combined bits from the venerable dread kit and the skull piece is from the defense line kit (the one with 2 twin auto cannons). With the use of a seam scraper, dremel and plasticard it didn't come out half bad. There are still a few big gaps but I'm over it. I have to keep on my mentality of my previous post about having too much on my plate. I have this whole flippin' army to paint before January 7th and last thing I need to do is toil over tiny cracks I'd only be concerned about if I wanted to enter it in a big-boy competition.

Knights of Blood Furioso Librarian Dread done for Damian!

Old School here with some shots of the Knights of Blood Furioso Librarian Dreadnought that Damian won from me during the Super Blog Chain Give-Away.
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I finished this model a few days ago, but the crazy Blogger-outage kept me from posting it. Now that it's up, let's take a quick run through the model.

For those of you who saw the conversion post, you already know how it was built, so I won't drudge on about it. Paintwise, I took the model down a cleaner route than I originally planned. There was something less pleasing to the eye about how the model originallt began to turn out, so I took the "techmarine treats this one special" route and made him a bit cleaner. I ended up using the shape of the leg guards as a perfect excuse to fit in the Knights of Blood Iconography, all the scrollwork as an excuse to bust out the Micron pen and managed to throw some white trim in there as a nod to the color scheme of the rest of Damian's army.

Up top, you can see the script work on the book as well as the script work below the horned skull. The book was done with the micron pen, while the scroll was done with a brush - you can be the judge, but the ease of the Micron effect works well for me, especially when it came to all the scroll work on the weapon!

Alright, we all remember the big, over-the-top halberd. I really love this weapon on this model and it screams "I insta-kill Trygons!" I chose the green lightening effects for the blade and the eyes based on Damian's current Librarian and just took it to the dreadnought level. It is hard to get from the photos, but the dread is looking up at the blade with glowing green eyes - as if he is controlling or igniting the energy in the blade.

Here is one final look at the dread. Damian's blog is called Tales From the Warzone and is just one of his incredible sites. He has been hammering out Knights of Blood for some time now and I am only glad to have something to contribute to his work. Damian, I hope you like it - shoot me your info and I will ship it to you right away!

Finished Salamanders Ironclad for Super Blog Chain Give Away! +Video!

Old School here with the first finished Dreadnought from my Super Blog Chain Give Away! This Dreadnought is for Chosen1 at Team Snake Eyes and is full of Ironclad Goodness!
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On the front of the dread, hopefully the first thing that sticks out is the free-handed flames, which I made in order to match the flames he has on one of his current dreads. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out and it almost makes me want to just start cranking out the legion of the damned!
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I went for the extreme line highlighting nd it turned out much better looking than I first thought it would. The Ironclad kit is the best dread for this style due to all the panels and lines across its torso without losing the broad open spaces that make this style pop. I wanted the dread to look clean because most of his army looks pretty clean, so only a minimal amount of weathering went into this project as opposed to my normal weathering madness on vehicles. Chosen1 does have a lava base waiting for this model when he gets it though, so I opted to blacken the feet to a degree.

For the undercarraige parts, I used a chunky metallic paint from the old Wal Mart brand-Folk Art, which made a really gritty finish when washed with Badab Black and gave the appearance to the undercarraige of an oily, gritty, well-used set of machine parts. I then highlighted the higher points with boltgun metal.
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The Mechanicus symbol was painted the way I have seen it in the rule book before with a half black/white skull and a half gold/silver cog.

All of the flames were painted the same way: Three varying colors of orange, three more colors of yellow and then white.

The hammer is from the video tutorial I did on Dreadnought Thunderhammers and I think it works pretty well without going over-the-top and fits the forgefather-built dread idea.

The Drakeskin was rough on me. No matter how I did it, I couldn't get it to match his color scheme for the scale-work he already has in his army, so I just went with the colors that seemed to contrast with the dread. The pink/fleshier colored area is where the skin has turned over reveiling the underside.

That was it, here is the last view of the close combat arm, which I chose to do this way because it looks much more threatening and with the hammer, makes him look like a giant robot blacksmith.

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Last but not least, if you would like to see what this looks like in motion, here is a little vieo I put together for it: enjoy!

A sneek peek at Chosen1's Ironclad from the Giveaway!

Old School here with a painting update on the Super Blog Chain Give-away prizes - well the Ironclad anyway. I decided to start the project off with Chosen1's (from Team Snake Eyes) Ironclad because he was the first winner and painting good guys isn't something I do every day.

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Here is a sneek peek of the work done so far. Most of the hammer arm is done, except for a few items on the hammer and the last touch of scorpion green highlighting. In terms of highlighting, I saw that Chosen1's Vulcan Hestan Conversion (I don't even wat to know what Ron charged for that awesome model) had extreme highlighting and since I have never done it, I wanted to teach myself (thank god it seems to be working so far). I know it is a little much right now, but once the scorpion goes on and a coat or two of thinned thrakka go on, it will provide a much smoother transition. The flames and the symbol turn out very well so far and I am now debating adding scorch marks around it. I originally was going to make it look like an icon, but I could not resist the flame effect painting!

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Anyway folks, plenty of work to do, but it should be done Thursday or Friday and then it is time to paint the Libby dread for Damien! Let me know what you all think! Hope you are happy so far Chosen1!

Librarian, Ironclad Dreadnought Giveaway Progress! Tons of converting!

Old School here with an update on the dreadnoughts from my part in the Super Blog Chain Give-away. I have been hard at work putting my converting skills to the test for the Iron clad for Chosen1 at Team Snake Eyes and the librarian dread for Damien on Tales from the Warzone. So far I am happy with the results and I wanted to share these progress photos with you. The first 4 photos, including the one above are of the Librarian Dreadnought for Damien's Knights of Blood!

Here is a shot of the dreadnought from above. I wanted it to have a larger than life feel and wanted it to look like it has been armoured with the reverence that would fit a former HQ choice for a chapter. The shoulder pads are from the Defiler kit and have been cut down to fit the dread. They are a little big, but I did that to balance out the large Force halberd he is carrying.

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The shoulderpads have been decorated to fir a librarian. The right pad has the book from the Dark Angels upgrade kit chained down with jewelers chain and the other on is decorated with a shoulder pad from the Chaos Lord kit, which fits well for the librarian symbol.

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The head is from the old death company metal models and since this photo was taken, I gave him a psychic hood. Also, if you look at the position of the arms, I have taken cut down parts from the defiler close combat flail to add some cabling for extra detail and to help hide some of the actual construction work.

Here is another look at the shoulderpads from the back.

The force weapon is made from the bottom fin from a landspeeder, the large powercell looking part beneath that is from the Battle for macragge kit and the handle and blade are made from plastic card. The handle was then wrapped in a long strip of green stuff to give it the appearance of a more ornate, man sized weapon.

This is the Ironclad I have been making for Chosen1. This model is much more about function than the heavy form concentration in the Libby build. I want Chosen to be able to switch weapon arms if need be and I want it to fit the style of his army.

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The hammer was made in the way I showed in my recent dreadnought thunderhammer tutorial. The close combat arm is made from the original close combat arm and I really think it looks deadly and like something that may be weilded by a much more tech-inclined dreadnought.

The details I added include the Salamander symbol from an extra Vulcan kit I had in my bitz box and the other arm is decorated with a pelt of dragon skin and some small fetishes from the Lizardmen saurus kit. This badboy goes on the painting table tomorrow and if you are reading Chosen1, What colors of green do you use for your Sallies ... I could guess ... but I want to make sure.

This last photo is from a recent commission project I picked up from a member of the FLGS. He wants me to paint Vulcan and I threw in a free conversion to reposition the spear so that he is holding it straight up and down. The botton did not survive the drilling, so I replaced it with plastic, caped it with a bit and I will make it look good with some green stuff later.

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All in all, each of these projects are being treated like a commission and I am really using this chance to learn something new with each model. I am teaching myself more about using plastic card with the librarian dread. I am teaching myself to make large items and to produce scratch skins and such from green stuff with the Ironclad and I am taking those skills and applying them to a smaller model with the Vulcan project - So we will see where that goes.

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Keep your eyes open for the painting WIPs and please shoot me some feedback either via comments or through our new "Contact Us" tab. Comments and critism can only help improve future works. If Damien and Chosen1 are reading this, by all means, please send me your feedback!

Video Tutorial: Easy way to make Thunderhammers for Dreadnoughts!

Old School here with a quick video tutorial on how to make a Thunder Hammer for your Dreadnought. This is really simple (It is tooooo easy) and if you have the bits on hand, it takes a whopping 5 minutes to make a really excellent looking thunderhammer to act as the Seismic Hammer for your Ironclad Dreadnought or your Libby Furiouso's Force Weapon or to a sprinkle of awesome to your Venerable Dread ... anyway, enjoy the video.

This conversion basically involves cutting the autocannon barrel from a predator turret for the shaft and using a deathwind launcher from the drop pod kit as the head. You can further improve the hammer with the front assault launchers from the ironclad kit to make four rough squares on the business end of the hammers. If anyone wants a photo walk through, I will post it.

As a note, this hammer is being built exclusively for the Super Blog Chain Give-Away Winner Chosen1 at the Team Snake Eyes blog. Check them out, they are on my blog roll on the right column of this blog. Chosen1, if you are watching, let me know what you think of the hammer - you'll have to field it, so ultimately, your the judge!

All comments and feedback welcome and if you need to know how to fit it in the hand, I plan to use a ven dread hand and while I have already build this one, I can show off how it is done quickly with some stuff from my bits box!

Blood Angels Librarian Dread with Force Weapon and freehand!

Well, after a long absence I'm back and like Capt Obvious I have jumped on the flavor of the week. This is the first time ever in my 12 year life of playing 40k that I've jumped on the new codex and followed it like a 16 year old girl follows the twilight series. Its been a fun ride but now that the codex is out, the mini's are here and lists are poping up everywhere its kind of like the morning after and you roll over in bed and ask....did we have sex? NICE!

My one month+ absence has been due to a few things, mainly my wife and I having our little girl, Vivian (shout out!) but now that that's settling into a routine I thought it was time to get the paintbrushes back out. The first model in my new, MASSIVE, blood angels army that I wanted to paint was my Librarian dread. Mostly because of the simple, yet awesome looking force weapon conversion. Here it is:


Some guys at Evo wanted me to talk a bit about the conversion. The base dread is an Ironclad. I used a bunch of the plates from the venerable dread kit as old School had pointed out a few posts back about how it comes with a ton of extra pieces that really let you spice up your other dreads. The left and right front plates and the shin plates are all from the venerable kit. Other than the hammer and the plates its a basic Iron clad.






For the hammer I first cut back the siege hammer cylinder. The first round I did cut it back and it made the hammer just stick out too far and it just looked goofy. After that I trimmed up a typhoon missile launcher to get my shape. I filed the missile points on the front down and stuck an assault grenade launcher chest piece from the Ironclad kit on the front of it. I cut it and sanded it down to make it flush. After that I stuck the non-missile side of a hunter killer missile in the other end to fill up that hole and make it look like its more than just a solid block of metal hammer. For the side pieces it's more pieces from the venerable dread kit to give it some flashy looking detail so its not just flat (also, had to cover a hole) then I just applied some green stuff to fill in around the neck, glued it in place with a long-ish pin to reinforce it and there it is, Force Weapon on a dreadnought.

Here are more angles of the finished paint job. Next I'll be cranking out my dual Death Company Dreads.

Fixing up those Assault on Black Reach Dreads!

Old School here with a little hobby article about using the new venerable dreadnought kit to improve those old Assault on Black Reach dreadnoughts I know you have lurking around your gaming table, bitz boxes and man-caves!

First of, this is about the most basic Venerable Dreadnought I can build out of the kit and I still think it loks great, but the real treasure it that it comes with a ton of bitz that could easily be used on other dreads - including another forge-world style front and two awesome looking Sarcophogas peices. Then ther are numerous side panels and alternate fronts, bits galore and of course the great weapons options (still no autocannon!).

This was the first dread I made from an old Black Reach dread. I just scraped off that wierd compass rose and anything that sticks up from the flat surface of the fron to the dread. Once I did that, it was a simple matter to turn him into a much more respectable looking dreadnought.

Here is another former Assault on Black Reach Dread that I used the same process to improve. Note the bitz used are from the same ven dread box! In fact, I can build a Venerable Dread out of that kit and would have enough side panels and front sections to improve an additional 4 Assault on Black Reach dreadnoughts! If you had any doubts about this kit before, quit messing around and buy it! You will be very happy - and so will those AoBR dreads you have been kicking around. Feel free to comment.

New Forge World Orks and Dreadnoughts!

Exiting new stuff for Forge World! I can't wait to paint it!