HORUS HERESY: Storm Eagle Gunship Painting in progress

HORUS HERESY: This is my scratchbuilt Storm Eagle Gunship for my World Eaters.  It is based on GW´s Storm Raven kit with many changes.

The chassis of the Storm Raven gunship was lengthened by about 5" in the rear to be able to accommodate ~20 Marines and the entire rear section plus Missile Launcher is totally new. A new pilot MK6 Armor pilot was added in the cockpit and the landing gear was enlarged to cope with the extra bulk of the plane and look convincing.

This is still Painting in progress, I will need to add weathering and paint the details.Below you can also see some pics of the build in progress. I have been working on this gunship for a long time with many pauses as was I unsure many times on how to proceed with the design. However I think the wait and brainstorming time has really paid out, it looks pretty menacing and convincing now already.

Here´s is also a scale shot of the Storm Eagle, Spartan and Deimos Predator, so you can see this one is a pretty big kit...

Haven´t use this one in a game so far, maybe next weekend though... :D

Cheers

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HORUS HERESY: Scratchbuilt Deimos pattern Predator tank

HORUS HERESY: The Deimos patter Predator tank is a variant of the Space Marine Predator that features the round, bowl shaped turret of the very first Predator plastic kits.

In Horus Heresy this tank has access to a number of unique and exotic weapon options, which makes it a very interesting choice gamewise. Three options are particularly interesting: the Executioner Plasma Cannon, the Magna-Melta Cannon and the heavy Conversion beamer. 

Since I had a suitable Plasma Cannon lying around for years from a non-GW kit, I decided to scratchbuilt the turret and make the weapon modular. The turret was made from half of a plastic styrene ball that was cut to the appropriate shape. The rear part of the turret was modelled with Milliput and the turret mount is a 6cm Warmachine/Hordes base. I made some changes to the front of the Rhino with old Rhino parts added plus new old style hatches and many rivets. 

The turret is fully movable and can be entirely removed, which gives me the option to add different turrets e.g. Scorpius Whirlwind is one idea I have at the moment or just add the Rhino doors and use it as normal Rhino transport. Regarding the weaponry I have already started on a Magna-Melta Cannon, however I am not entirely happy yet with the muzzles, so some work is needed. 

Anyway the Deimos Predator is now good to go for priming in the next days. 

Hope you like it! :)

Cheers

invivos

HORUS HERESY: Scratchbuilt Spartan heavy tank

HORUS HERESY: This is one of the aforementioned side modelling projects I intended to finish prior to getting the Betrayal at Calth supplies for my World Eaters Legion.

The Spartan heavy tank is based on the standard GW Land Raider kit with many, many changes: visible tank tracks are now running all around the tank resp. over the roof similar to the older style Proteus Land Raiders from Forgeworld. The entire roof section was changed with a new hatch and now includes a new re-designed, movable Heavy Bolter emplacement.

The front assault ramp of the original Land Raider was removed and a new extended front section was built from plastic card and bits to symbolize the extra troop carrying capacity of the Spartan. 

The original twin Lascannon sponsons per side were upgraded to now host four Lascannons each and are still fully movable! The movable Heavy flamer on the roof can be exchanged for a Havoc Launcher or a solid round armor plate if no roof weapons are needed.  

In the last days I finished filling and sanding the gaps, added tons of rivets and made some minor modifications here and there. As of now if weather permits it will be primed as soon as possible.

The Spartan has already seen a lot of action in several games and the combination of its high armor value, two quad Lascannons and the Machine spirit capability is really devastating against enemy tanks and walkers.

Next up is the scratchbuilt Deimos Pattern Predator tank! Stay tuned!

Cheers
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HORUS HERESY: Betrayal at Calth & World Eaters

HORUS HERESY: Yesterday Games Workshop finally released the Betrayal at Calth, Horus Heresy game, which makes it very easy for (new) players to start an all plastic Horus Heresy era themed Warhammer Space Marine army. I have been waiting for a plastic release for Horus Heresy for a long while now and I simply couldn´t resist the temptation to grab two boxes right from the start. :)

As you may know I am already building up a 30k World Eaters Heresy themed army and those boxes give me the option to expand this current army, but also to create 1 or possibly 2 new armies. One of those will be the Imperial Fists Space Marine Chapter, the defenders of Terra. The other maybe Death Guard or Word Bearers, we´ll see...

The World Eaters themselves have fought a couple of battles already, below you can see some pics of the World Eaters on my new gaming desert themed table. I still need to figure out a satisfying way to paint the World Eaters, at the moment the majority is just primed white...

Here are some pics of the World Eaters Legion in action (1500 points) vs another "count as World Eaters" loyalist legion. In this game I finally managed to make some good strategic use of my scratchbuilt Jetbikes, the real key to their survival and power is to stay beyond 24" of their preferred targets (infantry) and strike with Plasma cannon and Heavy Bolter fire from afar. The Rhino transport (on the right) was a dissapointment, in the very first round it failed its dangerous terrain test and impaled itself on the trench. My scratchbuilt Contemptor dreadnought also made a very good impression. All in all a fun battle which I lost by Victory points. 

I will also make some changes to the gaming board and terrain to blend terrain and board better together. If you look closely you´ll see that the board is rough and textured, this was achieved by using 3d effect spray cans which produce a sand like effect. The effect is quite nice and with some extra varnish I sprayed over the paint it will hopefully last a while.

For my World Eaters I have been very busy in the last weeks. To be prepared for the Betrayal at Calth release I wanted to get many of my side projects finished resp. ready for priming. One of those projects is my Storm Eagle Assault Gunship which is a lengthened GW Storm Raven with many extra bits. Here are some pics of it in assembly and primed. I used tape to help me mask the areas of the gunship that will be painted blue. All in all I really like the primed look of the gunship, it came together very nicely.

In the next days I´ll upload some more updates on projects I have been working on for my World Eaters so as always stay tuned!

Thank you! :)

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 Castellan Robots -Work in Progress-: I managed to spent some time today on the three Castellan robots and here are some WIP shots. I am quite happy with how the legs have turned out, they are attached with a ball joint at the hip and the foot and the lower leg and its piston is moveable i.e. I can adjust the stride of each leg separately which will be great for posing them on their scenic bases (i.e. with lots of rubble). Also I came up with a pretty nice and easy solution for the feet and toes using left over parts from the leg construction.
In case you wonder about the toes and the upper leg, they are made from old GW plastic electro fence parts. Tomorrow I´ll add some more details to the legs and will start building the scenic bases. After this I plan to glue the legs and hip in position on the base and continue working on the torso and the arms.

Cheers
invivos

Castellan Robot Maniple: 


I started to work on a Maniple of scratchbuilt Castellan/Castellax robots for my World Eaters legion this weekend.  To speed up robot construction I am building three robots at the same time rather than building each one separate. This also helps me to keep track of the available  parts in my bitz box, since I´ll need either 3x or 6x the same part to continue working, which is a bit of a challenge... The main robot body is made from 4 plastic spoons with various bits for the shoulder socket and the hip. Due to the ball socket design a lot of poses will be possible in the end, base size will be 60mm.
Next up is building legs, shoulder pads, arms and the torso weapon system. I´ll try to keep the torso gun interchangeable i.e. either Mauler Boltgun, Multi Melta or Dark Fire Lance as options. Hope you like them so far! :)

2015 Life sign:  No this is Blog is far from dead, there is just alot going on and I rarely find the time to take nice pics to post here. Truely sorry about that! :(

Anyway some pics to show you I have been busy:

Star Trek Borg Cubus: Scratchbuilt, shown here without its base, it uses the "large" base from Star Wars X-Wing. It has seen alot of combat already in our house rule set for Star Trek.

 30K Horus Heresy World Eaters: First shots of my growing World Eaters Legion Space Marine army for Horus Heresy. These were the first test models I painted, I am not entire happy with the paint job (e.g. too little contrast in the armor recesses) but I learned alot for the coming rest of the army to change.
Towering above the Space Marine is my scratchbuilt Contemptor Dreadnought with World Eater iconography, arms are moveable at the sockets, the Multi Melta can be exchanged for an Assault Cannon and there is an attachable top havoc launcher (not shown). Below is a WIP shot of the dreadnought.

Then there is a set of three scratchbuilt Space Marine Jetbikes, like I saied I was busy scratchbuilding stuff :) I haven´t use them too much effectiveness yet in the single game they saw, need to figure out the right way to use them.

Not shown here but in work are a scratchbuilt Spartan Tank (95%) done and a scratchbuilt Storm Eagle Assault gun ship for my World Eaters.

Additionaly I managed to built myself a new desert style gaming table plus city terrain, finally putting most of the City of Death sprues to some good use. :)

Zaku Jenice Custom: this is a kit from the GUNDAM range, which serves me as a test bed for new skills to learn: armor chipping using salt, oil colour and powders etc. Size is about 15cm tall, I applied battle damage using drills and soldering iron, the idea was that the Zaku nearly evaded a super hot Beam/Laser weapon that melted most of his right shoulder.  At the moment the model is primed in brown color and ready for some armor chipping.

That´s all for now, more to follow. At the moment I plan to work this weekend on a Castellax battle robot for Horus Heresy...