Kaleb Daark the doomed one, he is back. !

Kaleb Daark has always been a fascinating character for me (and for many people I guess), I won't go and tell his tale again as some have done it far better than I could do but I did paint his model a while back. Malal has alway been a fascinating God too since he was mentionned in warhammer RPG and a few publications but got erased for some sordid IP reasons.

The appeal of both is still very strong and from time to time, small details can ignite a barrel of renegade god fuel. For me, it started all long ago with this tiny bit :

Rings a bell ?

Demon of the fall - Battle chaos part 29

If you need some music with this post, may I suggest either :

 or Vivaldi's Autumn but it feels far more wood elvish to me...

Anyway, here's my entry for October's painting challenge at the oldhammer forum. It was built with no true purpose at first but just to use some bits I had here and there and as I was building it, I realised it could fit in many slots. 

In can be a vargulf in my undead army if I play it in 8th ed but it can also be a minotaur lord in any chaos army. What interests me the most with this guy though is the opportunity to play it as a Malal Demon Prince.

When Malal got in the way, I reconsidered the whole model and made a few changes : 

•  I added the chaos star stone at his feet to show he's sort of desecrating some sort of chaos altar or temple.
• I changed its head for a bestial head with as many teeth as I could to fit the description of Malal's greater demons.
• I chose the head of a chaos hound with half his face ripped to make a reflection on Malal's device being a black and white skull. (the background behind this guy is that he has ripped his own flesh in a self destructive manner befitting Malla very well I think).

Kaleb's on his way - battle chaos part 22

OK, this is the end of the first step. Modelling and building are complete., There may remain a single detail being the helmet. I believe a skull would be more than appropriate instead of the sun on his forehead? I've been thinking about it since I wanted to paint the sun as a wind rose with black and white halves.

The helmet is made of an elf shadow warrior helmet with wings taken form a bat I git with the Avatars of War female vampire (very good mini BTW). I've been a total douche by not anticipating the issue of the big shoulder pad which makes the helmet hard to place. If I had thought of that before, I would have placed the bat wings slightly more on top of the helmet and it would have been perfect. In real life he would be unable to turn his head or to ben it on the sides.

If you compare this version with the previous one, you can see I changed the shield to have a big demonic skull instead of the multiple eyes, this will allow me to add Malal's design more easily and it reminds in a distant way of the original concept for the shield.

You can see I finished the awe by adding some teeth on the lower jaw to close the mouth.

The base has benefited form addings in the form of shell pieces and sculpted mushrooms. I wanted to give a less regular look and more twisted feeling to the base. I want this one to truly look like he's in the middle of the chaos wastes looking for champions to slay.

The on foot version is pretty much the same as before, the only difference being I added a malestone eye like on the original concept.

And here's the undead version of him, he has lost some hair and his rotting skin makes his face look bigger (the first case I see where an old model has a bigger scale than a recent one...)

As you may have started to realize, I always feel compelled to working on a ridiculous amount of minis at the same time. As I found some parts in the dettol box, I found an old friend of mine n the form of a power armoured chaos squat. The lad had been cut in two and the upper part is not usable anymore. I took the lower half and decided to cast ressurect on it. Here is what came out of it :

It may be hard to see but the helmet is a space marine one glued to a dwarf head for the beard. The torso is a chaos space marine but backwards (up is down and front is back). The problem is the arms are far too long for this lil'chap. I may consider something else but I don't know what for the time being... I really like his mechanical torso (the back for the marine coming in the rhino sprue)

To finish this on a happy note, the khorne champions are nearly on their way and should be finished soon. Her's a pic of the most advanced one, he just needs some freehand to make him a little bit more vibrant/funky and he's good to go.

Work in progress and things to come - Fantasy adventurers part 1

There have been much things lately but nothing incredible since nothing is finished yet. I'm starting to get distracted by all the things I see and want to do.


First of all, the rogue trader renegade army is advancing at the pace of a sick koala but it's advancing nonetheless, next step is a personnal dip recipe of black, matt medium and a bit of water to darken everything down. Then will come the fun part of details and metals which will give life to the minis :

Then, I still have some guys who get attention when I have some green stuff left :
This one still needs to have some mould lines removed when I look at the picture.

And then comes Kaleb Daark, the doomed one, you can see him in his most doomed version :

And here in a more glorious pose

While romaing through the leadpile, I came across someone I had forgotten. This is actually my second version of the mini and I know the first is somewhere to be found in that mess of mine.
I find the new arms fit quite well on this antic daemon hunter :

And on top of everything comes a will to get back to my first rpg love.
I got my hands on these for a very reasonable price. I never owned these before, always playing with other's versions. At the time I could only spend my hard earned money on anything chaos. But now I want to give these the treatment I should have back then. (if you ever know where the painted mule comes from, I'd be glad to know since it was kindly offered by the seller). The monster set is missing the chaos warrior and the ogre like it could be expected but I guess in time I shall find these lost on ebay.

And these :

 The Moorcock's eternal champions are my "madeleines de Proust" or the ones I've always been looking for without realising that everything That they had been in front of me this all time.

And then I've got :
- a Battle choas army which will never be truly finished
- a chaos 40k army to finish
- a complete undead army to finish
- a confrontation campaign to build
- roleplay to play and adventurers to paint
- a Roleplay videogame to finish (I'll have to whip the developers and graphists)

Dare tell me that time is not the most precious thing that is...

PS : The contest for the best Khorne champion is still running till the end of the WEEK, go vote for the best for at this rate there won't be a 3rd round! Send links to help !

Cheers

The doomed one rising from the bits box - Battle chaos part 19

Last time I showed you Kaleb's new embodiment he was just a pile of bits roughly assembled with blutak and some magnets.

This time I'm going to show you a little more.

The next step after drilling and placing the magnets was to create a joint of both receiving parts (the legs) so that the chest fits nicely on them. I started from this :

I added a big putty roll around each receiving part and pressed the chest part on them the way it would be when assembled (I also used saliva to be sure the fresh Duro wouldn't stick to the wrong part). This gavec me the print of the chest part. Once dry I only had to cut off all teh exceding material and do a nice putty blending to reach this state :

The very same was done with the heads.

Once this part was done, I could go on with the actual building process !

The building process happened yesterday night and nothing nor anybody was there to stop me so I guess I overdid it a little... I found so many bits I wanted to try I may have used too much.

(I had to use the wolf cloak, giving a mini something sculpted by Jes always reassures me since it can't be a total failure with JG parts)

 You can see on the picture above I've started to alter the axe to give it teeth, the next step being the lower jaw.

Another great interest in using magnets to assemble parts is that you can paint less parts (the chest goes for both mounted and on foot versions) but you can also give the mini different attitudes :

Dreadaxe, you're my weapon and I will always love you, you know that?

Morning everyone, my name is Kaleb and this is Dreadaxe, my daemonic axe aiming right at your skull.

 This magnet strategy also allows me to give an alternate head to represent Kaleb after a long time romaing in the wastes, his vital energy being drained from him by his powers (needs hair but you get the idea) :

 And at the end of his journey, I can even assemble him as a chaos fiend in a "Pete Taylor way"

Next time I'll do the base and show him aside his oldschool version just to have a laugh.

Cheers

Kaleb will live again !

I've recently been lurking in my bits box and found a few things that teased me...

Someone dare tell me this is not our beloved DREADAXE, the pterodactyl axe given to Kaleb Daark by Malal himself.

I might want to add some green stuff under the blade to make its lower jaw.

Thanks to Orlygg's fantastic article about Malal, I've learnt many things on Kaleb and his brief journey amongst us. I should have mentionned it in my first post about Kaleb Daark and the chaos brothers but I simply didn't know this brilliant post at the time.

There seems to be remnants of Malal's existence in many ways amongst the fluff and minis of recent GW's productions, a few hints here and there. Maybe it's just fanservice or is it a clue about the love designers still have for the doomed ones...

Anyway, now we have dreadaxe and other epic 28mm pieces, what do we do?

You got it, we're gonna make a brand new model. The aim here is to use every bit I have to try to match the best I can to the original mini but with recent plastic bits.

Here are the ones I've selected so far...

And since I'm lazy as hell, I've even decided to use the magic power of magnets to build only one torso of the guy. This way I'll just have to stick him to the proper legs (mounted or on foot) whenever I want...
I'm also planning on doing the same for the head but I have an issue so far being I can't really find the right helmet. I do have the bat wings to put on it though. I might find what I'm looking for amongst the new High Elves release.(if anyone can help me with a spare shadow warrior helmet?)

I'm also tempted to build an older version of him like if he never had died or like if he had come back from the grave , thus giving him an old or ruined face instead (his powers drain a lot of his energy). Or shall I go for a clean one to match the original mini?

Seriously, magnets are soooo good. It's like playing LEGO but making Malal champions out of it, how good is this?

I'll make updates about this one to show the evolution and to keep me motivated to finish it.

I would appreciate any thought on the matter  regarding the bits to add or the old/original choice and even on the painting style, hardcore oldschool, modern realism or just my regular style.

Shall I cover the base with corpse of champions form the 4 gods?

Any idea...

The chaos brothers - Battle Chaos part7

After talking about our dear Kaleb, the least of things is to introduce is nemesis : the chaos brothers.

I don't know how on earth these guys came to being a mixture of the blues brothers and roman gladiators to embody khornate thugs but man ! they must have had real parties at the time they came up with that. (If you happen to know the origin o such a concept, I would be more than delighted to hear the story)

To get some good Chaos brothers, you basically add :

 These kind of lads :

And these to guys here

 

You just add a spoon of khorne devotion and you end up with these :

Though I'm not big on gladiators (nor on gladiator films), I'm an absolute fan of "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues and since I love Kaleb, I had to give a try to his ennemies.
Findng the minis is not an easy thing, since you often find incomplete sets or complete ones for a ridiculously high price. I currently only have the two "on foot" versions with a mounted Jaek. I'm waiting for a sign of Khorne on Ebay to find my missing mounted Elwud... (or for a pm of a very kind person happening to have doubles...)

My painting of these two is not what you would call a golden daemon winner since I painted them in the middle of a rank and file bash. I chose to stick with the colour with the rest of the army since it's black and that black and only black is what they should wear.

It's 106 miles to Kaleb, we got a full horse, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

OH and by the way, my guess is Jaek would be a retarius but what would Elwud be ?...

Kaleb Daark, The doomed one - Battle Chaos part6

Here is an absolute classic for old timers : The doomed one...
I won't go through an explanation of why Malal is no longer supported by GW since others before have done it and well A good ewemple being this one.

The very concept of Malal is excellent and I find all the fluff around hime deeply inspiring. In this situation, I feel compelled to have and paint the only miniature related to the rebel God.

You can find two versions of him : a mounted one and one on foot.

The chaos Steed Kaleb is riding seems ridiculously small if you compare it to the latest knights but still, it gets us to have 2 minis to paint instead of one ! The sculpting style (espacially the heads and the dreadaxe) reminds me of Jes Goodwin's but I'm actually not sure at all he is the actual sculptor of this guy. Feel free to correct me if you happen to know...

I've chosen to link my version with the rest of my army so I kept the black armour. I also wanted an old school feeling at the same time so I went for Bright red edges for the shield and the shoulders. Malal's device being a 2 colored skull, I went for a black-white pattern on the shield and a silver-black one on the armour (to keep the black-white pattern light and to avoid a "chessboard" feeling).

I painted the severed head with blond hair to lighten up the mini, but I feel now it attracts the eye where it's not necessary, maybe I'll do better next time...

You will have noticed the poor attempt on OSL around the eye zince Kaleb is supposed to have a Malestone eye. The helmet make him look more like a lost eldar than a chaos champion...

After that, I'll have to show you Kaleb's 2 nemesis : Jaek and Elwud Chaos. If I remember right, these khornate lads are the ones to have killed Kaleb as a symbol of GW ending with stuff they don't own...

For now, keep on painting my fellow leadaddicts...