Greetings Terrans, this will be my last post this year – a few new minis to share as I round out my Warband for Heresyofus’ Daemon Ink event. I completed the rest of the Elucidian Starstriders to round out the warband to 14 (Marines count as 2), so in the interests of rounding out the numbers, I also added Sergeant ‘Ripper’ Jackson to the party. Stylistically she restores a bit of balance to the party, as it was starting to look a bit too heavy on the Steampunk aesthetic.

So from the top, let’s go through the warband – all names are TBC but some light background fluff is starting to take shape in my thoughts:

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Inquisitor xxxxxxxx – Vigilantia, the watch-fire in the dark – Ordo Chronos (because timey-wimey stuff is cool). Agenda is unknown, but whatever it is, it is sufficiently grave to warrant a slow shift towards the radical end of the Inquisitorial spectrum.

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Xenos companion & psyker – mysterious Harlequin Shadowseer xxxxxxxx who accompanies the Inquisitor at all times, but to what end?

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Brother-Tutor Marine xxxxxxxxx from the 888^th Mentor Legion, assigned to the group at the request of the Inquisitor… Whether the motivation is to observe and learn, or to be vigilant and constrain is unknown.

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Astra Millitarum Veteran xxxxxxxxx, a tough, no-nonsense individual, completely loyal to Inquisitor xxxxxxx & friendly rival to Brother-Tutor xxxxxxxxxx

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Rogue Trader xxxxxxxxx, attached to the Inquisitor by mutual agreement – the Inquisitor benefits from her resources and discretion, while she benefits from the Inquisitor’s access to highly classified intelligence and artefacts.

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Rejuvenat Adept xxxxxxxxx, Chief Medical Officer to Rogue Trader xxxxxxxxxx, responsible for xxxxxxx’s longevity treatments.

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Tech-Adept Explorator xxxxxxxxx, Chief Engineer & techno-historian, part of Rogue Trader xxxxxxxxxx’s crew, but as with all priests of Mars, his true motivation is his own.

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Death Cult Assassin xxxxxxxxx, a superlative bladeswoman, xxxxxxxx is loyal only to Rogue Trader xxxxxxxxxx, and guards her fiercely.

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Voidmaster xxxxxxxxxxxx, leads an elite cadre of Void Guild soldiery, and is contracted to Rogue Trader xxxxxxxx. He is an experienced leader & tactician, and he expects the best from himself and his team in discharging their contract. He is staunchly loyal to his Voidsmen in return.

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Voidswoman xxxxxxxxxxx, second in command to xxxxxxxxxxxx, she exemplifies the duty & honour expected of the Void Guild.

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Voidsman xxxxxxxxxx – Void Guild veteran

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Voidsman xxxxxxxxxx – Void Guild veteran

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Voidsman xxxxxxxxxx – Void Guild veteran & heavy weapon operator

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‘Voidsman’ xxxxxxxxxx – Void Guild mascot, guard & scout

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Here’s a few pics of different groups within the warband:

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And a final team photo:

So that’s it from me for 2020 folks – I wish you all a safe & happy Christmas, enjoy it however you can. Fingers crossed that 2021 is less of a shit-show!

Greetings Terrans, a slightly bizarre little post from me today, I’ve been a bit of a hobby butterfly & got side-tracked… Not my fault though – I had an interesting challenge from Mark over at Hereseyofus – ‘do you think you could make a few lesser Daemons’ (for his Daemon Ink campaign) … well, what could I say? Of course, I agreed, but didn’t have any actual Daemons to hand, just a ridiculous pile of bits, a shit load of glue, some Greenstuff and a head full of dreams.

First things first, with any challenge like this, I like to set some parameters and guidelines to frame the project, and after a bit of mulling, I came up with the following:

1: No money to be spent – if it ain’t in the bits-crate (it’s too big to be a bits-box) then it ain’t happening

2: A proper unit of 10, with Leader, Musician & Standard (old-school), and with a solid look to unite them, but…

3: Proper mixed up Daemons from no particular Chaos power – not too uniform, I wanted influences from across the animal kingdom and beyond

4: Disturbing rather than cheesy

5: Quick and easy to finish with contrast paints and a relaxed & messy style

Wading through the bits-crate produced a goodly amount of Sylvaneth bits, and some random Dark Elf cavalry (as you do – some half-arsed project idea from a while back no doubt). Hmmm… 5 horses… that’s 10 pairs of legs right there! A quick bit of tree, a Genestealer skull and a DE cavalry weapon arm, and I had this in hand:

Promising!

I quickly got to work and assembled 9 more, fiddled & fettled them, and then broke out the putty… A few days later the paint went on, and I ended up here:

Chaotic AF!!

I roughly painted them in 5 pairs, with each pair getting a different contrast paint as the start point. I then went back in with washes, drybrushing, gunk, blood, technical, etc… minimum effort really, just fart-arsing about until it looked ok. Here they are in fives & with angles:

I must admit that I’m pretty pleased with this effort from essentially a disparate pile of bits, and I hope you like ‘em too! I wish I’d done them all with the paler skin tone, but fuck it – chaos is as chaos does  😊

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I have something new and different to share with you today (yey!!). I fancied a break from my LoTD project & picked up a Truescale Marine that I had converted by splicing bits from the LE2 anniversary Marine on to a Primaris bod. I wanted to paint him up to include in my Daemon Ink warband, so green and gold was very much the order of the day. I also really liked his crazy experimental gun, so figured that the Mentor Legion would be a good fit for him. I went back through my OldHammer book stash, and found this beauty of an illustration in the 40k Compendium from 1989:

I wanted to follow the colour scheme & markings as closely as I could – whoever designed that Chapter badge is a sadistic sod, but I gave it a damn good go. The only real deviation from the book art is the use of gold instead of yellow for the chest & left shoulder studs, and the repeat of the Chapter badge & Tutor marking on the left leg. I also added a Chapter number to the right knee & some chequered detailing on the right hip for a bit of visual interest. I added some light battle damage, and this is what I ended up with:

I have also been clearing out my loft & found a Kill Team box that I had picked up a while back. As I was thinking about my Daemon Ink warband, painting up the ‘Elucidian Starstriders’ to join the crew was a no-brainer, so I quickly assembled the Voidsmen to paint up. I love the steampunk vibe with these guys, and was reminded of Nemo and his crew in the movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, (a very underrated film in my opinion!). With that in mind, I did a very light conversion on the squad leader & swapped his head for a turbaned one that came free with a modelling magazine. I also repositioned the head on the rotor-cannon guy – no big deal, but the face on look stuck out a bit too much for my taste. Other than that, I left these minis well alone – they are gorgeous as they are if you ask me! Again, I let the green & gold of the Inquisitor guide my palette, and ended up with this:

So here’s the whole warband as it stands today – not too bad eh?

I’m particularly pleased that they manage to be cohesive without being uniform. I’m also happy with how big the Marine is in proportion to the baseline humans – just what I wanted!!

Anyway, that’s all for now – I’ll be finishing of the rest of the Starstriders in the run up to Christmas, and then I might go back to the LoTD, or maybe dip into the Blackstone Fortress… we’ll see what floats my boat… Peace out dudes, stay safe out there!