Monday, September 10, 2018

HALT!!! HAMMERZEIT!



Progress on my kill team has slowed down to a crawl, as work and real life suddenly have reared it's ugly head after summer vacation.

I have managed to build a fifth member for my kill team though - the squad zealot and chaplain in training, armed with a mighty heavy thunder hammer. I almost changed the head of the hammer as it's just so ridiculously oversized, but in the end I decided to keep the thing out on account of it's utter badassedness. The crew is sorta kinda battle-worthy now, clocking in at 85-isch points. I will make a few more marines though to have some options when fielding them - namely a sniper and a heavy gunner.





Here's the whole kill team in all it's glory. From left to right:

Battle Brother Komeda (combat specialist), Battle Brother Desplat, Sergeant Dukas (leader), Battle Brother Silvestri and Battle Brother Zimmer (zealot).



Wednesday, August 15, 2018

KILL TEAM

As stated in the last post I've been severely bitten by the the Kill Team bug. Here's battle brother three and four for my Deathwatch kill team who will join Sergeant Dukas and Brother Desplat made previously.








 If I could I'd arm the lot of them with shotguns as reivers with shotguns are my new absolute favourite thing - there's something so quintessentially badass about that combo. These guys will be fielded as regular deathwatch marines - I just use the primaris to give them a proper scale.

I've also cobbled together a custom Kill Team battlefield/killzone. It’s made out of a 60x90 cm cork notice board - more or less the perfect size for a kill team board and it comes with a sturdy wood frame and everything.




The topographical variations are made from cork sheets glued on with PVA glue. The board was then strategically sprinkled with pebbles and some debris, painted with vallejo textured paint (which is great - especially as it it's cheap and comes in a huge 200 ML jar), sprayed with GW grey and khaki and then drybrushed with light grey. To finish it off some powders were applied to give a more realistic look.

Thursday, August 09, 2018

IT’S ALL IN RUINS! (GHOSTHAMMER PART III)

And things were going so well.

I had painted up another reaper, the five glaivewraiths from the box and another couple of chainrasps pushing up the unit to twelwe strong. I was on a roll! Maybe I could actually finish this little army of mine.








And then Kill Team came along...

It started small with testing out the new sector imperialis ruins. They turned out rather well and from there it just started to snowball. At the time of writing me and a few mates are planning a killteam campaign, I'm building a gameboard and are working in parallell on a Deathwatch killteam based on the sergeant and shotgunner I've made in the last year - and that's just one of several kill teams I'd like to cobble together.







The small number of models needed for the game is absolutely perfect for my style of painting and modelling - so I've got a feeling this will be the main 40k game for me in the foreseeable future. It'll allow you to try factions I've never messed with before, like necrons and tyrands, and using proxy rules you could field just about anything - xenos mercenaries, Adeptus Arbites, mutant uprising, renegades, navis nobilite, deathcults etc. etc.

But I'm gonna finish those damn ghosts at some point! Mark my words!




Wednesday, July 11, 2018

GHOSTHAMMER PART II - HELLRAISERS



Boo! Seems like ghosts was what was needed for me to get out of my hobby slump!

I've been painting away the last couple of days and have managed to finish off five more chainrasps including the Dreadwarden champion, one reaper and the Spirit torment. Not speedpainting these guys either, though I do the chainrasps four at a time, so I think that's a pretty good haul for four days work.

Here's the chainrasps. Only a few more model needed for a minimum sized unit - I'm aiming for 15 to start with and keep the rest for conversions.



Here's what the Dreadwarden looks like just after he's recieved the undercoats.


There's three of them: I begin with a standard chaos black undercoat, then a lighter Zandri dust one on top of that that and finally a zenithal light white spray. After that I bring out the toothbrush and spatter the model with watered down mix of black and rhinox hide and then the washing and drybrushing commences.

And here's the first Grimghast Reaper:





Really pleased with how this one turned out. Its slightly converted by adding some spikes/nails hammered into his/its back, but apart from that its pretty much out of the box. These guys are just insane amounts of fun to paint.

Last but not least we have the Spirit Torment. Now this is one cool miniature but I felt there were a few things I wanted to adjust. To begin with I added a tombstone from the old zombie kit that connects with one of the tendrils of cloth to stabilise him somewhat. The original model only attaches to the base with one long thin strand of cloth which made the model sort of wobbly and springy. Any small movement made it vibrate which: A) makes it hard to paint and B) doesn't look very cool on the battlefield (I prefer my models static thank you very much). 
I also added some spikes and replaced the lock with some hooks from an old marauder.  I felt dragging victims screaming back to Hell using flesh-hooks was a tad grimmer than whacking them over the head with an oversized padlock. What I like about the Nighthaunt faction (apart from the miniatures) is that they're basically an army from Hell, so I want to play up the tormented cenobite angle whenever possible.

Then I painted it. It came out alright but there was something off...



I decided to repaint the carapace as I simply didn’t like the brass parts - rusty iron and steel seems to work best on these guys. Here's a crappy pic of what that looks like - I'm going to get some better pics of the final model.


Stay tuned! There's plenty more spooky stuff coming up!



Monday, July 09, 2018

SPECIAL GUEST STAR: PETER HUDSON

This morning an unexpected surprise was waiting for me when I went through my email. There, at the top of the inbox, was a message from my friend Peter Hudson (also known as PDH across the world wide internets, one of the pillars of the inq28 community and an all-around nice guy) with some images attached.
Peter has been working on a Deathwatch kill-team for quite a while and to my utter delight he had chosen to turn the fifth member of the squad into a Metatron marine.

In Peters own words:

Morning buddy! He is finished - meet Kran Seger, Kill Operative of the Deathwatch & The Metatron Chapter.

 I am so pleased with this one. He is based on the Primaris Ancient, from the start set. I bought it specifically for the banner arm for my librarian. I liked the foot pose so much I had to use the "leftovers" for a marine. What better than to use a Metatron as the pose was so imposing, like the chaps you brought along to Rhossum Secondus. I also remember you saying how much you liked the MK5 helmet so added that in and pawed over pics of your Metatron marines for iconography pointers. It was fun copying the shoulder pad and trying to get the colours right (and different from my Deathwatch red), though I think mine is a little more bone coloured than white like your chaps..

Heres Brother Kran Seger in all his glory:






If Pete's pleased that's nothing compared to how happy I was when these plopped down in my inbox. I'm just incredibly psyched over this homage. Peter's completely nailed the iconography and it's just so cool to see a hobbyist you truly admire have a go at one of your concepts, applying his particular aesthetic to it . (I also disagree with Peter regarding the bone colour on the pauldron - I think he nailed it...)

And here he is with the rest of Peter squad. Gotta love Cycnus, the badass stormbolter-toting sergeant...

Vicirian Cycnus, Watch Sergeant of the Deathwatch & Sons of Antaeus

Kran Seger. Kill-Operative of the Deathwatch & The Metatron Chapter 

Astor Vanto Tovak, Kill-Operative of the Deathwatch & Crescent Guard

Rocc Sigeis, Kill-Operative of the Deathwatch & Iron Knights

Lufht Molov, Kill-Operative of the Deathwatch & Castigators



A beautiful squad full of the subtle detailing that is emblematic of Peters work. Great stuff!

If you want to see more of Peters models check out his instagrams: pdh_neglected_fruits

All this makes me want to get back to making more Deathwatch marines... But at the moment there's ghosts to paint. Lots and lots and lots of ghosts...

Friday, July 06, 2018

GHOSTHAMMER

A few days ago I caved in and bought the new edition of AoS. Those new Nighthaunt models are just so ghoulishly delicious I couldn't resist.

It does seem Age of Sigmar has come of...well, age. In the three years it's been out 
there's been some really interesting armies released (apart from the constant barrage of rather uninspired stormcasts) and the new rule book itself is a hell of a lot sexier than the lacklustre first edition

There's still something off with the writing - its ponderous and humourless and just...off. Sometimes its almost as if they're using some sort of word generator that just throws out adjectives at random and there's so much aimless Michael Baystyle epic epicness about you start to skim the text after a while. Sometimes it's pretty good - it becomes pretty apparent after a while that there's many different writers involved. In any case the book is a lot better than the first outing and at least tries to create a setting of sorts. 

Like I said previously the Nighthaunt minis are, as many others have stated, absolutely stunning. GW knocked it out of the park with these guys and as for AoS in general it certainly seems like it's here to stay. If you want to take stroll down memory lane here's a pice I wrote about the new game and the death of the Old World just as AoS came out in the summer of 2015. Three years certainly is a long time in the hobby world - especially considering GWs current relentless release schedule...
http://convertorum.blogspot.com/2015/07/warhammer-is-dead-long-live-warhammer.html

So without further ado, here's my first two ghosties. The plan is to finish up a vanguard size army (1000pts) and then see what happens. I won't convert the spooks that much other than minor details. For instance I'll probably add some nails and spikes to the characters and wraiths to make theme even grimmer, taking some cues from my old mhorrigot stuff, and remove some of the wispy smoke effects where possible.





Wednesday, June 06, 2018

THE COLOSSI OF RHOSSUM SECUNDUS



In the immortal words of Dr. Nick - Hi everybody!

As you may have noticed posting on this blog is becoming more and more erratic. This is actually only partly to do with the fact that I'm not doing as much painting and converting as I did a few years ago - though that's certainly part of the story. The main reason however is that google has more or less stopped supporting the blogger platform. I used to be able to do quick posts on the fly from my iPhone or tablet, which was quick, easy and worked great (or at least worked). 
But without updated apps this is sadly no longer possible. Which means posting nowadays means intentionally sitting down at a computer and writing a blog post. Which is less spontaneous. Which means it happens less frequently. 

We'll see what the future brings - I'll keep this blog for a while but I am toying with the idea of moving on to some other platform or simply starting up a convertorum facebook page. I do like the blog format though - it's easy to navigate and works as a diary of sorts. There's a sense of continuity to a blog that facebook and other social media lacks.

I have been busy though. This weekend saw a few scandiwegians - all of them, except me, named Alexander for some reason - travelling to Nottingham to hang out with Tim Molloy, Peter Hudson/PDH and the one and only John Blanche for a game we called "Colossi of Rhossum Secundus". Other hobbyists like Helge of WilhelMiniatures fame and The Polysmith (check out his outstanding conversions here: https://www.instagram.com/thepolysmith/?hl=sv), pitched in with some lovely miniatures, but couldn't make it to the actual game.

The game itself was all about a bunch of desperate warbands duking it out on the abandoned forgeworld Rhossum Secundus. A running theme was the inclusion of colossi - huge lumbering machines that the warbands had, or tried to take, control over. We played the game on one of the magnificent custom built battlefields at Warhammer World. It was crazy, amazing and a whole barrel of laughs, even though my Inquisitrix and her band of merry squats didn't manage to do very much at all except mildly annoying Pete's armiger robot. This won't be a write up of the battle but I´ll leave you with a few photos of the proceedings. More to come. Eventually...


Inquisitrix Snowe and her mining guild compatriots on the surface of Rhossum Secundus


The whole crew. Acteon assault servitor on loan from the Mechanicvm.


Inquisitrix Snowe of the Ordo Xenos


Her bodyguard, Battle Brother Desplat of the Deathwatch.



Brother Desplat next to two of the squat mining guild representatives, Skaeggi Skaeggisson and Yksi Kaksisson respectively.

And then some random snapshots of the mayhem. Did I mention the colossi were huge?
They. Are. HUUUUGE!!!








Next up will be some spooky new models that got sent to me by GW as part of the early reviewer scheme.

It'll be a post guaranteed to haunt you. 
At night.

*wink wink*