The Golgotha!

Early on in the Heroes of Armageddon project I knew that I wanted to have a couple of surprises that I could "pull out of my hat" towards the end of the donation period. A little something that would show everyone that we were serious about creating unique armies. One of the surprises I concocted for the Steel Legion army was the mighty Golgotha Superheavy Missile-Platform.

Following a discussion with Matt Bonders from Miniature Wargame Conversions, I knew I had someone who could create my vision in miniature form. Matt pulled together the necessary funds and bought the Baneblade and Reaver Missile Launcher required to put this bad boy together. Although there were a few hiccups along the way, Matt sent the finished tank off to Brandon Palmer of GMM Studios, who put the great paintjob on the tank as only he can do, swiftly, but with a lot of gorgeous detailing.

A big THANK YOU to both these guys for their contributions!

In my mind, a massive artillery piece like this would certainly need an observation post, a spotter of some kind. In stepped Jeremy Webb, who bought this Elysian Tauros Venator for the job. Jeremy shipped it off to Jeff Wilhelm (of Dragon Forge fame) who started on the assembly and paint job. As the deadline drew closer and Jeff's real life workload grew, he passed it back to me to wrap things up. In a collaborative project like HOA, it is vitally important that communication is regular and that expectations are met. In this case Jeff kept me appraised of his situation and we worked out a plan B before things got too late. Success!

Another big THANK YOU to both Jeremy and Jeff!

And finally, nothing this big would be complete without an Apocalypse datasheet from the master of Apoc datasheets, Larry Vela! (or Bigred from Bell of Lost Souls). I laid out my thoughts on the possible rules, then Larry went to town creating a very cool set of rules. You can download the datasheet from HERE.

THANK YOU Larry, for all your work on this too.

So, there you have it. A great part of the HOA project, and a cool datasheet to go with it. You now have all you need to make your own right? I know I'll be adding one to my Blood Pact army ; )

Cheers

Dave

Big Badda Boom!

I had a few very cool (and ultra important) snaps sent my way today, so I'm combining them all in this latest post about the Heroes of Armageddon project.

Last post I mentioned a couple of superheavies. The first is the Stormsword you see here. Donated and assembled by a great gamer and all-round good guy Phil Lisak, this fully resin Forge World tank was then painted by Joe Marshall, Brien Dulaney, and myself. You can catch a glimpse of it in some of our "tank painting extravaganza" photos here. This Stormsword is the 12th vehicle of the 8th Armageddon Superheavy Tank Company. This notable formation was initially composed entirely of Stormswords, but as losses have been suffered and requirements changed, new superheavy patterns have been introduced. This tank is named Hammer of Hades.

And now, I can finally bring you a look at the cherry on top of the sundae that is the Steel Legion army. It's something I started thinking about after having the opportunity to play with a Reaver Titan at last year's War Games Con. After discovering the potency of the Apocalyptic Missile Launcher, I wondered what it would be like to see it on the back of a big-ass tank.

Early on in the HoA project I spoke with Matt from Miniature Wargames Conversions, a guy who has created some pretty amazing "Apocalypse-style" conversions/builds in the past, and he agreed to take on the task. After the past few months Matt has been tinkering away, gathering a few bits from here and there, to create what I would like to dub the "Golgotha".

When Matt had finished the tank, he shipped it off to Brandon from GMM Studios. Again, another great guy and spectacular hobbyist, who whipped up this great paint job on the mighty Golgotha. Brandon assures me the airbrush stripes are Rotting Flesh in hue (to match the rest of the tanks), but his lights appear to have slightly washed it out.

Honestly, both guys have done a spectacular job, donating their time, talents, and personal savings to bring this dream to life. I take my hat off to them.

And of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I wanted the Golgotha to have a cool observation team scouting ahead and plotting in co-ordinates for the massive destruction that would follow. To that end, a mate of mine in Philly (thank you Jeremy) purchased a FW Tauros Venator from Showcase Comics (sometimes Mike deals in second hand kits, often unopened like this) and shipped it off to Jeff Wilhelm of Dragon Forge Design, supplier of the bases for the Steel Legion army. In between casting and shipping off his great range of awesome bases, Jeff assembled and started on the paint work for this cool recon vehicle, before sending it through to me for the finishing touches (including helping it match the other Elysian Recon elements of the army).

So, tomorrow some of these photos head off to Bigred, from Bell of Lost Souls, along with some thoughts on the possible rules for the Golgotha and its spotter. He'll be working his magic and preparing a wonderful set of rules for using this brand new superheavy. As soon as I get the sheet back, it'll be straight up on the blog.

So, if you want these great models, worth over 1,000 points and a retail cost of over $500, then head to the donation button and donate a ton of money, or just a little bit. Every bit helps, so please tell your friends (especially the wealthy ones).

Cheers

Dave

Heroes of Armageddon Update

Here's my latest update on how things are progressing for the Heroes of Armageddon Project.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down for a Skype interview with Romeo and Kyle at 40KRadio. You can check out the interview here. I'm talking for about half an hour, from just after the one hour mark.

Also, my friends at Rankings HQ TV put together an ad that they'll be running in their programming over the next few weeks. If everything goes well with my novice embedding skills, you'll be able to see it below, but head to Rankings HQ and see it in their shows too : )

Here's a shot from John Dickerman from Santa Cruz Warhammer. He's finished off these Armageddon Ork Hunters (will be run as Veterans), and is now getting stuck into his unit of Savlar Chem Dogs. Very cool!

It also looks like other team members are starting to wrap up their commitments. I'm looking forward to getting in the eight other infantry squads, along with the four other vehicles and three sentinels, phew!

Last Friday afternoon Justin from Secret Weapon Miniatures was nice enough to give me a quit Skype tutorial on how best to use the SWM weathering powders to add lots of crazy "road dust" to the tanks I've been working on. He is planning to finish up a video on how to use them in the VERY near future.

It was a lot of fun to see where the dust/ash waste would collect and settle, then pile it on.

On the two Leman Russes with track guards, I went light on the dusting on the tracks where they emerged from under the guards, and then I added a few smears of the Metallic Iron powder to show where the dust would have been knocked and rubbed off as the tracks travelled around.

Here's the 1st tank of the Armageddon Steel Legion 23rd Armored Company.

Here's the 4th tank of the Armageddon Steel Legion 23rd Armored Company.

Here's the 5th tank of the Armageddon Steel Legion 23rd Armored Company.

And here's the 7th tank of the Armageddon Steel Legion 23rd Armored Company.

I hope you like them. Don't forget to donate as much as you can right now! Click on the button in the right column and best of luck.

Cheers

Dave

EDIT!: Looks like Matt at MWC has not only posted my interview with him (see link below) but he has also made a teaser post regarding his contribution to the cause, see it here.

Steel Legion Tank Detailing - Heroes of Armageddon

And we're back...

Last post you saw all the tanks we painted on Saturday. Lots of airbrushing and a fun experiment with the "hairspray and salt" weathering technique. What is this technique Dave? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Essentially the process is this: a basecoat of a rusty color (or colors) is put down on a model. The model is then coated liberally in a lacquer-based varnish (hairspray) and fine salt is sprinkled onto the areas you would like to see significant rusty weathering. Once the hairspray is fully dry, the topcoat is airbrushed over the top, along with any highlights and/or camouflage patterns. Then let everything dry thoroughly.

Once you've reached this stage, you can start to reveal the rusty layer beneath your top coat. Knocking off the larger chunks of salt is fairly easy, then the next step is to use a large, wet brush to soak through the acrylic topcoat layers, softening them up and allowing them to pull away from the hairspray layer, leaving you with smaller "chipping" alongside your larger clumps of "salt chipping".

Here's a fun YouTube video on the technique, and how it can work really well.

As I mentioned earlier, this was an experiment for us. As we were painting 13 tanks in a limited time, it also meant that any "mistake" we made in the application of this technique would be multiplied across all 13.

Above is an example of a Leman Russ once the salt had been chipped off. At this point I realized we hadn't used enough salt, and the salt we'd used was too coarse.

Not to worry, onto the next stage. Removing the softened acrylics from the hairspray layer.

Above you can see the result of a few minutes of soaking and attacking the paint fairly vigorously with an old, old drybrush. I think it looks quite cool, but comparing the ease of getting the paint off to that in the above video. I really get the feeling we didn't use enough hairspray. Oh well, lesson learned.

The next step was to detail up the tanks, painting all the stowage and accessories and insignia and markings and so on and so on. Once these were painted, I added a few more damaged areas using the sponge weathering technique (applying Scorched Brown). In some of the larger areas I applied a few dabs of Solar Macharius Orange to add depth to the new "chipping".

So here you can see the nine tanks I've detailed up so far. I'll be completing the rest this week, and then tackling the final (I hope) stage of weathering over the weekend, applying the very cool weathering pigments supplied for the project by Justin at Secret Weapon Miniatures.

I hope you enjoy how they're looking so far. More to come next week : )

Cheers

Dave

PS. For some more great weathering pictures, check out the awesome model that is this week's prize over at the Heroes of Armageddon blog, and make sure you donate early and often!

Steel Legion Tank Painting - Heroes of Armageddon

Last post I mentioned that I was heading over to my friend Brien's place on Saturday for a day of Steel Legion tank painting. Well, thanks to Brien and Joe (pictured below, left and right respectively) and their airbrushes, we managed to get the vast bulk of painting for the 13 tanks done in a little over six hours.

Stage One - The first step was to spray all the tanks with Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Redleather.

Step Two - As each tank dried, I stippled certain areas of the tanks with Citadel Foundation Solar Macharius Orange (too add depth to the rust we would reveal later).

Step Three - This was the BIG experiment for us. We sprayed all of the tanks with hairspray, then sprinkled them with salt, particularly in the lower track areas. None of us had tried this at all before, but we'd checked out a few videos online, and chatted withe Justin from Secret Weapon Miniatures. Then we talked it through and just went for it, on all 13 tanks.

Step Four - Spraying on the basecoat of VMC Dark Grey. Getting a nice, even coat was very important.

Step Five - We added a good amount of VMC Light Grey to the previous basecoat and then sprayed on the highlight.

Step Six - The final spraying stage. We sprayed stripes of Citadel Rotting Flesh to form the classic Steel Legion camouflage pattern.

More photos to come in the next few days, where I'll show you how the salt flaked off and the results of the hairspray weathering, along with the detail painting I've done on the tanks so far.

Cheers

Dave

PS. How many models do you think a tanks equates to for my little "Hobby Tracker"? Just one, or maybe as many as five?

Steel Legion Tank Prep - Heroes of Armageddon

The Heroes of Armageddon Project continues to gather momentum, like some massive juggernaut-type beast, preparing itself to roll right over any who dare to get in its way.

Foolish hyperbole or prophetic rambling? I'm guessing more of the former.

Anyway, this Saturday I'm getting together with a few friends to paint the vast bulk of the tanks for the Steel Legion army. As the vehicles are the key feature of the mechanized infantry force, I felt it was important to keep things as close as possible when it came to the bulk of the rolling steel.

Below you'll be able to see 12 of the 13 vehicles we'll be painting this weekend. One of the things that helped me realize I was doing the right thing when I volunteered to lead the Steel Legion Build Team was finding a box of nine painted Chimeras in a closet, and recognizing that they hadn't been out of that box in the nine years I've lived here in the US. Eleven years ago, I painted them up as Jantine Patricians (an elite mech inf regiment from the Gaunt's Ghosts series), and they had been allied with Tanith and Vitrian Dragoons against the Shriven in a massive OZ Games Day battle.

I dusted the models off, snapped off a few offending accoutrements, and then started adding more stowage, some of it from GW, some of it from Secret Weapon Miniatures. Above are the APCs of the 1st Platoon. That's right, the platoon will be one squad larger than the original list.

Here are the APCs of 2nd Platoon. The additional Chimera will be used for the army's Stormtroopers (aka Yarrick's Commissariat Bodyguard).

These two Leman Russ MBTs were assemble for the project by a friend of mine Josh Roberts. Josh is an excellent hobbyist and great dad : ) Thanks Josh.

This Vanquisher and Executioner were assembled by another friend, Bob Weiss. Bob is a veteran hobbyist from waaaay back who just loves his tanks. In fact, he might be the guy who has assembled more of them than I have. It took a little while for Bob to crowbar my old FW Vanquisher barrel into a regular LR turret, but the end result is seamless. Thanks Bob!

I mentioned earlier adding stowage to a bunch of the vehicles. Some of the fun bits were using the "panniers" etched brass sheet from Secret Weapon Miniatures, along with the large and small backpacks from them too. Thanks for the hook-up Justin.

Anyway, the are even more prizes being given away this week. Click on the button in the top right corner of this blog and contribute as much as you can to the cause, that gets you in the draw for the weekly prizes! Then head on over to the Heroes Of Armageddon blog to see what's up for grabs this Sunday : )

Cheers

Dave