Rogue Trader Khorne Renegades

Hey everyone ! Now I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one in the northern hemisphere but temperatures here are not the most painter friendly at the moment right ? They're not paint friendly either but I had a WE on my own and felt like making the best of it so put 10 hours of historical podcast (unusual for me) and just went through the motions.

Khârn the betrayer - KILL ! MAIM ! BURN !

Hey there, like I said a little while back, the hobby sometimes comes with some form of self inflicted pressure and with the end of summer, real life comes back in the way, energy levels start to get lower and you end up setting impossible goals like paiting a 11 man gang for Necromunda and 7 models for Strontium Dogs in a month... Stupid I know but as I felt things were getting a bit out of control, I decided to give myself a break... by painting something else !

Now for some reason, a guy posting his unpainted 2nd ed Khârn has ignited an odd fire in my heart...

I used a lunchbreak to check his Background, got my codices out and had an immediate crush for the guy !

Warhammer underwolds Shadespire - Garrek's Reavers

It took me a while after Steelheart's champions but I finally managed to paint the second half of my box of Shadespire !

To be honest, this is the first time I paint all the models from a single box so that's quite an achievement ticked !

Just like for the Stormcast, painting the Reavers proved to be quite more challenging than expected due to my muscle memory being entirely focused on painting old lead.

GORECHOSEN : Willy Gutshagger

Long time no see huh ? Well I've been in holidays for a while now and this is still a model I painted before leaving but since I'm getting access to a computer, I thought I could post a little something !

This guy is part of an ongoing challenge with my fellow WIPsters on Scale Creep and I was meant to select an oldschool chaos model to make myself a character to play in the upcoming game GORECHOSEN by GW.

The idea of playing with small lumps of lead against titans of plastic was just enough to motivate me even if the word CHAOS is generally sufficient for me.

Khorne Blood Slaughterer and a little rust tutorial

We all have one of those, I 'm sure you do. I'm not specifically talking about a Khorne Blood Slaughterer but I'm talking about that one model most people find shitty (and which we partly find shitty too) but that we love for some obscure reason...
I'd like to think there's no shame in loving those because as long as it makes us happy and annoys no one, then it just makes the world a better place.
Well the model above just happens to be one of those. I must have discovered it in a WD a loooong time ago and I was immediately shocked by the concept.

Khorne Bloodthirster...the Rogue Trader way

Blood thirsters get a lot of attention these days and though the release of mine coincides with those of the latest edition by GW, there is absolutely no link between the 2...

Some time ago, I was having a friendly chat with Diego Serrate on the Oldhammer facebook page and he proposed me to trade some Bloodthister body from the realm of chaos era. The body was missing a left arm and right hand...

Kiss my shiny reddish ass...

After discussing with Diego the potential donors for new arms and hands, Diego kindly proposed me to sculpt a new arm to my liking !
You read that right, a professional sculptor, (and talented with that) offering to sculpt me a custom arm for a model of mine !

Unleash the 3 beasts - Battle chaos part 30

Ok, back on our khorne champions :

We have 3 bestial champions now, all of which having bestial attributes.

First one has a warhound face and what appears to be a vampire blade. I really love how the sword ends broadly to make it good for chopping and not for piercing.

This model proved to be one of the most enjoyable to paint in the series because of its very good sculpt and very crisp casting.

I had to change the colour of the fur during he painting process becuse brown fur didn't suit him at all. I opted for an albinos fur which gives him individuality and colour-wise works far much better.

Juggernaut, lack of personnality and some green teaser - Battle Chaos Part 28

Today's champion is the Juggernaut. He has the head of a juggernaut and hence has the most fearsome headbutts you can find in the wastes. I imagine his axe is merely here to chop cadavers and bring the skulls back to Khorne's throne. Even is mace tail sweats blunt force.

I really like the fact he shares his whole body woith Mr Bloodletter head from my previous post and though gives a totally different feeling.

Still not much on funky painting or markings, he is one of the champions I purposedly left with little marking to have a "clear" unit, while some other models get more attention and colours (an dare yet to be seen as you've understood).

Khorne champion with the face of a Juggernaut

(Com)Passion and Warfare - Battle Chaos Part 27

Howdy guys,

Compassion and warfare it is today. Warfare, you know about it, the idea is very simple : shoot/kick/punch/stab the other guy(s) in front for whatever reason you can find. And when it gets to this, you want the best. In the warhammer multiverse, the best you can get is khorne worshippers, simply because that's their job, hobby, and when they get home, they even get some more because battlefields are their home.

I suggest you hire this guy if you have some warfare around (for over situations, maybe you can hire the A-team). This one packs both fantasy and sci-fi goodness with a demonic face and a scorpion tail just so that you know he's not here for the tea. The guy even has the severed skull of his first date hanging form his belt.

I love his bluntness, and his "you're next" attitude. Both weapons are in the air just like if he's asking to himself with which one to slay you (realising he can slay you with both at the same time for added fun). 

At the end of the day, when you sit in your couch with a cup of tea, a newspaper and you chat with your wife, this guy takes a big bag and takes all the skulls he can to Khorne's throne, whistling and shooting people in the face.

Khorne champion with face of a bloodletter

In hot blood - Battle Chaos Part 26

Today's champion is one I like a lot and always have. I love hime so much it's actually the second version I have (the first one ended sawn in many pieces which I may show just to prove how a single chaos champion can provide so much awesomeness to so many models)

I kept very close to the original paintjob I had done some 20 years ago apart from the thick enamels I used at the time.

I'm still not very happy with the photo which gives a bright flat red wheras the real paintjob has a more red to orange contrast (looking more oldschool actually) but anyway.

The sword has been painted to look like a frost sword with frost coming out of the guard.

Khorne champion with horns and frostblade.

 The shield has some fancy freehand with a device you might have seen in a previous post. It's not excatly clear from the photo but I used the boss of the shield to make the eye stand out. I may give it a gloss coat to make it shine a bit more.

 

I tried to find some of his other incarnations like the one from the combat cards (also seen in the Slaves to Darkness books). This version is really good if you forget that horrible lipstick. The flame pattern on the leg armour is reaaly good though (I copied that on the mechanical champion earlier if you remember). Mayb it's not make up and it's just he's been licking his red hot sword just coming out of the forge but anyway, its looks awkward.

 

Funny to see ow on some illustrations, details of the model are shown but in another way. the skull sympbol on this picture is on the actual model but in the drawing it looks like a jewel planted in the forehead whereas on the moel it looks like some hot-iron marking. I wonder if the illustratyions were made beforehand, after or at the same time as the models where sculpted?

That's all for now but we still have some other chmapions to see, plu swe're still in Orctober and can hopefully expect some news from that front...

For whom the blood flows (and a new Fantasy football team) - Battle Chaos Part 25

Ok, we have seen 3 of the Khorne champions this far. Today's champion is one which as suffered some serious wounds from my conversion spree during youth. My teenager self used to cut parts form every Jes Goodwin chmapion or warrior to add mutations to my chaos space marines.

Some of the casualties have been fixed to their former state and some like this poor chap have been fixed just how I could.

Instead of a halberd which doesn't strike me as a Khornate weapon, I decided to add some spiked mace instead. The tail being gone too, I simply gave the champion some plastic tail from the chaos spawn sprue (a real treasure if you use it as a bits box and not to make spawns...)

Khorne champion with the face of a bloodletter

 The flesh parts were painted normal but with a redish glaze to make it look like burnt or wounded because of too much mutation. I also added some points on the armour to add some contrast in the pure RoC fashion which gives a "living" touch to the armour.

Same champion as can be seen in "The Slaves to Darkness" book

Same champion fighting a Slaanesh champion

Another thing I wanted you to know is that you can now buy some excellent FantasyFootball Beastmen from Beastface Miniatures :

I feel doomed because I somehow managed to avoid the Blood Bowl frenzy so far but this might very be the first toe in a pool of madness.

Gone with the kill - Battle chaos part 24

While I grandly enjoyed reading "Waaagh the orks" and the very nice background you can find in it, today's update is about some more of the Khorne champions. The 2 I 've chosen this time go together quite well since they're built on the same base and both bear a mutated arm.

The main goal for these 2 was to try to make some sort of blending from flesh to weapon for the former and from flesh to claw for the latter.

The first one is one we don't see quite as often as the others and that's a pity for it's one of the more heavily mutated champions. I tried to saty as natural as possible on his left hand and weapon to enhance the fact it's the only human part left.

The snake horns have benn blended from flesh to black but the result is not up to my expectations.

 The second one is very nice too but as silly as it may seem, my main issue with him (just like for the others) was to choose the right hair colour. I wanted something chaotic but not too bright and not too flashy. Then I thought of giving one of them red hair and explaining the champion had been bullied by morons all his life (stupid kids in his youth till inquisitors when he reached adulthood) because of his hair. I decided to let him keep his natural red hair since it's most likely what made him put his first step on the path to chaos to seek revenge. 

My intrepretation of the model is clearly less colourful as the one which can be seen in the Slaves to Darkness book with the traditionnal checkers :

I realise that so far I haven't been able to paint leather flesh or other parts in another colour than a natural. This is mainly due to the fact that to me, gods like Nurgle and Khorne have little if any interest in cosmetics, hence why I painted them all champions in a similar fashion (that and all-red for Khorne tends to enhance the martial look). This will change with Slaanesh and Tzeentch champions whose nature will tend to add some diversity.

Of skulls and blood - Battle Chaos Part 23

Just so you have a slight feeling of how I feel about what's following :

I don't especially love the song in itself, it's just it's the one which immediately makes me think about glorious success or great achievements. It's the sound of glory and victory... (plus it's glam rock which is always nice for a oldhammerer).

And why is it you have such a victorious feeling then? some of you may ask (and you'd be completely right to).

Well, I just put the last varnish spray and static grass touches on my Khorne champions. In Febuary, these guys were already standing on my painting table, waiting for some love. They've been a patient lot, I can tell you. Never eheard a complain, neverwhining like some... They stayed with just a layer of red on the table looking with a stiff upper lip and dignity in their eyes.

Well now it's over, here's the lot just for you :

Doing the details and special care on each of them may have taken me the same amount of time than doing the reds, blacks and metals on the lot.

I had to start doing them at once to have a good coherence. Then when the base colours were done, I moved to a semi-individual approach on them. Some of them whith little extra detail or few mutations got some freehand on either armour, shield or weapons. I also tried to give magic weapons to those with no special mutations.

I'll present them one or two at a time but the first one is a special one to me. It was a gift from my little brother who got it from someone who couldn't really appreciate its goodness.

It's the champion with a power mace and the strange mechanical parts. A champion who's quite loosely fantastic and could very well dwell in the 40k universe.

He in fact began his carreer as a berzerker in my 40k army before I decided to him justice and remove the ugly backpack to restore him to his former glory.

Chaos champion with mechanical parts and power mace

 As you can see, the mechanical limbs have received flame patterns to represent the fact they are valued gifts from Khrone and the source of his might. Not visible on the photos here, I added OSL on the heat tank on the top of his back (should have taken pics of that) and in in right eye. ONe silly detail too is the fact I painted his chin and head like he hasn't shaved in few days. I tend to hate perfectly bald characters when their baldness is not due to age. I just can't imagine space marines shaving their head delicately before each mission or chaos champions giving much attention to their outfit (with the exception of slaanesh worshippers of course). So 3 days beard and hair for him and the others.

The Khorne champion fighting against a Slaanesh foe (taken from the Lost and the Damned book)

I'm still working on a good way to take photos and those above are still not up to my expectations. I have to contnue working on this. Anyway I managed to take some better shots of the chicken knight with his lance built (just needs little greenstuff here and there) and with some extra plastic bits to give some more detail.

Next time, some more khorne devotion and anything fancy I can find.

Cocoricooo Messire ! (plus some other silly things) - Bretonnia Part 4

OK, last time I told you about the "knight project" I started on the oldhammer forum (no longer Blood forum) and told you to have a look at Axiom's very good blog and involvment in that project. I feel being the initiator of that projects implies I should not get too late on the others, it's why I tried to make some progress on this.

If you remember previous posts, I decided to mount my Knight on a rooster for it is the symbol of my Region on France (Bresse). I found a perfectly fitting model here and found out the scale was exactly what I was looking for. These are made in some kind of hard rubber or soft plastic with paint on top. 

I tried to remove the paint with a 3 weeks Dettol bathbut couldn't remove any paint from it. I decided to dip a part of it in acetone to see the result and the paint immediately began to fall off. It just took a few dips in acetone to remove the paint with a toothbrush (I would not recommend a long bath of acetone since it seems the rubber/plastic melts slowly in it).

Next step was to remove the silly details at the feet (this is mainly grass and branches sculpted next to the legs to make them more sturdy since the rubber is not rigid enough) removing these made the model fall apart so I just pinned in the legs and added some wire and now it stands proudly on its 2 feet. I will have to sculpt back the legs properly with GS but no big deal here.

The giant rooster waiting for a rider

 As you can see, the sculpt is quite good fro a rubber touy and I hope the paintjob will make it look convincing.

Now, for the rider part, I chose the easy way over the oldschool way and ordered a plastic pegasus knight to ride the bird. As the legs come in 2 parts , this enabled me to glue them a little wider than normal to fit exactly to the chicken body. The upper part of the model has then just been glued slightly orientated to the left and I put a "Louen Leoncoeur" on top of it. I'm considering adding magnets to the right arm to be able to choose from magic sword, lance or even the arm holding an eagle.

Some decoration wil come after that in the form of a blanket and some treasures in his back. I will also add a saddle with leather straps to attach it to the chicken. Maybe some decoration in the feathers could do the thing but I will sort that out as it takes shape.

Oh and the total cost for the parts is 3.5£ for the rooster, 2.5£ for the knight parts and 0.5£ for the base which mlake it a very cheap project for once ;).

So here is the Rooster knight for the time being...

Another thing that got my attention recently was the stripping and basing of some old eldar pirates. A few Ebay purchases here and there, got me to get some of the models I didn't already have.

Amongst them is the eldar captain with a demon mask. This is one very interesting model. It's actually built from the more classic captain you can see on the left in the picture below. But if you look at the cpatain on the right carefully you can actually see that all the details have been added on top of the other details. You can see the soulstone under the left horn and you can even see the remnants of the left holster under the bag with a face. Seeing models with common parts is no surprise in these ranges but I was more used to seeing parts used for several models. This time it's just the same model but with lots of things on top (plus an arm swap).

 

 

Rogue trader eldar Captain (sculpted then converted by Jes Goodwin)

 

But what to do with that particular model. For some reason I want this army to be compatible with both Rogue trader rules and 6th ed and I wanted a normal leader. This means an autarch for the 6th ed rules. I remembered reading about autarchs in the compilation book so I gave a quick look yesterday but couldn't find anything. It does say some exarchs can change aspects and wear gear from multiple aspects but I couldn't find the actual word "autarch" in the book. Maybe I dreamt of it, I'll have another look. If any of you know if it's actually really in there, please tell me. Another things is I want to equip the guy as the model is but couldn't understand the true advantage of an autarch in 6th ed (if anybody knows please tell me, what's a good use for an autarch equipped like this guy?).

If I don't find a use for him as an autarch he will make a perfect dire avenger exarch.

Anyway, I decided to put this little fella on a nice base with some shale I looted from my hollidays hunt (remember this post). These shale pieces proved worthy since you can easily break them with bare hands to the shape you want and they can be drilled with no effort. I even believe drilling is essential because I think just gluing them means it'll break in no time.

BUT, pinning a mini to its base means cutting off its tab and You know this is 1st class heresy right?

Eldar captain on base

 I found a way to concile both the hobbyist and the archiver in me : I just cut the tab off but glued it under the base to keep it as a souvenir :

Now I still have the model and its tab to remember this model is just 6 years younger than myself...

On the painting range, the Khornish boys are very close to being finished, the final details awaiting a bit because I decided unexpectedly to add freehand on some of them to make them more sexy. Here's the bunch as they were yesterday night and next time you're seeing them , it's gonna be party time with varnish and complete basing !

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.