September 26, 2011

Custom Vanguard Veteran

This is the test mini for what will be two full squads of vanguard veterans.

They are made from various kits and the Forgeworld Raven Guard upgrade kits.


In this mini the legs, the hammer, and the right shoulderpad come from the blood angels death company box while the jumpack come from the assault marines box.
The torso, left shoulderpad and head are from said forgeworld Raven Guard upgrade kit.




The jumpack is adorned with some forgeworld Raven Guard etched brass.



The legs have been slightly modified so they don´t resemble any blood angels iconography.




A detail of the head (in latter posts I will touch the theme of why the whites are a bit sandy).





More to come!!!!




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September 23, 2011

Dreadnought.


As you can remember I´m a huge dreadnought fan.
Things are that I show a ex-workmate my blog and he liked the dreadnoughts, indeed he liked so badly that he bought me everyone except the forgeworld raven guard one so I´ve bought some new dreads and starter to paint them again (and I´m enjoying it as much as ever).

First of all there is the classical plastic standard dreadnought, with some add-on from the Raven Guard Etched Brass things.
Oh, that and the combat shield from the assault squad sprue.

This time, I´ve tried to paint de dreads in a blacker scheme, more akin to the whole Raven Guard fluff so no white shoulder armour.

Just a little raven there.

In this dread I´ve opted for a mortis pattern dread, with lascannon and a missile launcher, and that is just because I´ve seen the forgeworld new dreadnought close combat weapons and I´m not going to use the standard GW´s again!!!!

As you can see I´ve not highlighted the metals, just to give this dread a darker feeling, and it´s just this dread because the others I painted after this one got their metals highlighted.

The other thing you can see is that there is no golden paint on this model, that is because I´ve decided that the only guys that will have something painted gold are the captains, honor guards and the 1st company guys, being venerable dreads, vets, termies or whatever.

Here you got a close-up of the sarcophagus and the shield.

I´m still thinking the names of the dreads, because I want to give them some kind of theme in the names of each type of vehicle, one theme for the dreads, other for the land raiders preds and whirlwinds, other for razorbacks and rhinos...


What do you think about it??



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September 21, 2011

WIP Raven Guard

Here they are a pair of hints of my future projects:


Gotta love the FW Raven Guard etched brass.

As strange as it sounds both bits are part of the same mini.















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September 19, 2011

My first finecast experience (from when it was released)

Here we are from our vacation-driven hiatus back to warhammering and to blogging.

Today I´m going to talk about my first finecast experience.

Back then, when finecas start to appeared in the stores, I went to buy a pair of minis, so I went to a GW store and purchased three minis, the eldar autarch with wings, the space marine chaplain with jumpack and an eldar dark reaper box.

First of all, I have to say that I double, even triple checked the minis inside the blisters, cause even at that time we were hearing the whole failcast thing along the internet so caution was high in my mind.

After a triple chech the minis seemed to be in perfect shape, but when I opened them the surprise came...


This is the first mini as it came in the blister art:







And this is the wing-pack that came in my blister:







Now if you take a look to the wings you´ll notice that the wings are so damaged that it seems the winged autarch get into a fight with a path-of-the-hunting-cat autarch or something, but it gets even worse, that is the way the feathers are IF YOU DON´T TOUCH THEM, because when I barely touched it with my fingertip the feathers started to tear down.



The areas what tear down when you touch them are the ones outlined red.



So, the autarch went back to the store.






The other mini was the jumpacked chaplain:

In the finecast box-art you can´t notice it, but the mini stands atop of some rocks with a censer (inbuilt in the miniature).

There is the miniature the way I opened it:




First of all, when I took the mini to put it out of the blister, the hand fell down, and then I noticed the whole base dissappeared with no hint of where it was.
Bubbles... huge bubbles, I suppose.


And strange as finecast is... the rest of the mini was totally perfect in shape, with perfect details, perfect plain zones, the face was perfectly casted...

So this mini went back to the store too.

After this, I opened the dark reaper box, and as I looked the minis I noticed that the helmets were lacking the eldarish things that are at both sides of the head, so three minis out of three went back to the store.

After this, I went back to the store and the guy in it let me open the others and, if the mini inside the blister was ok I can pick it.

Things are the autarchs were wrongly casted and it was pretty noticeable from outside the blister so I went to the chaplains, open the first one and his face was unrecognisable and the jumpack has a huge bubble in both vents, and the second one (just three minis on each store, remember) was casted in a super-soft kind of resin, like bubble gum, you can twist it, even the legs (as the store was going to bring the mini back we played with it quite a bit, amazed at how much we can twist it without it being torn).

And there was no other box of dark reapers so I went out of the store with no minis and my money back to my wallet...

When we went out of the store we went to a store in the downtown of Madrid called Atlantica, and there I purchased the chaplain in perfect shape, a dark angels company master (converted to be a Raven Guard champion) in even more perfect shape and the box of dark reapers without bubbles or miscasts.

What I suppose, the GW stores went the first stores to receive the minis, just in case they were not enough miniatures for all the stores theirs were totally supported, but this backfired as the first minis were the ones with more errors, miscasts, twists and bad proportions in the mix of resin...

But there is still more:

After this, some weeks, even months after, I went back to the store and tried to purchase a termi librarian, which has a bubble in its leg so huge that a lot of its waist and kneepad dissappeared (and the other termi libs in the store weren´t better, and some weeks after the lib, tried to purchase a techmarine with its servitors, and I´ve said tried because his face was melted and somewhat it remembered sloth from the goonies.

What the hell is happening, is this store cursed or what?
Maybe it´s me when I enter this store... I don´t know, but I haven´t been able to purchase a good mini in this official store...


And apart from this... I love finecast, lighter, easier to convert, more resistant minis... YAY, count me in!!!!

I cannot wait till they release the masters of the chapter box and Pedro Kantor blister.



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August 5, 2011

Eldar Avatar.

Here is the turn for the Avatar of Khaine, shard of a dead god, fighter and commander at the very same time.

I love the avatar fluff and everything albeit it isn´t the best of the best in the tabletop, but I´ve played it and killed Belial and other 3 termies (just cause the biggest part of the melee was being done by my pa, so it killed almost double the points I spend in buying him (great thing by the way).

I bought the finecast Avatar and it came almost in perfect shape, just some bubbles in the feet and right arm, but apart from this... perfect.

Thing is that I´ve going to paint the inner part of the avatar in a blueish energy way, but is too much complicated for my skills at the moment.

Being a demi-god I wanted him to be kind of a central point in my army, not only in the battlefield but visually too, so I´ve painted it grey with lots of white, which no one in my army has except for Eldrad Ulthran so I´ve achieved the effect in my opinion.


I´ve painted his gems in my army´s classical purple/red but as long as he is painted grey, I decided to paint some of them in the shadow grey colour of my army (adapted for the gems) to give it a more cohesive look in my army.



The mount of the gems is white, as if made of wraithbone.


Here you have a shot of his back to take a look at the grey tones and the back of the head.


A detail of the sword:

I´ve painted the sword gem-like, just to give and ancient-alien look.



The runes were painted with vallejo old gold, highlighted with Vallejo Gold and I´ve put a reflection white dot in each rune to give it a brilliant look.


Other thing: Don´t know why, but in the photos the sword seems to be bended, but in real world it is almost perfectly shaped... what means I´m a crappy photographer :D




I still have to paint the eyes and some eldar motifs in the tabard... but I´m still deciding what to do with those.




What do you think of it??





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August 2, 2011

War walkers, third walker and group shots

Here, as promised, you got the pictures of my third War Walker and the group shots too.




Close view of the pilot: I´ve changed the main colour of the helmets of my army (white helmet with black faceplate) just cause I don´t want the pilot to take the attention out of the vehicle so I´ve painted the helmet in the main colour of the army and the faceplate white, to add a bit of colour.


Here they are, the full squad in all its glory.


And another shot of the full squad.







Comments and criticism will be welcome.

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July 28, 2011

Eldar War Walkers: first and second.

In the eldar army there are lot of thing that amazes me, Farseers, Warlocks, Wraithlords, Wraithguard, Striking scorpions... and war walkers.

I know people think that they aren´t the best choose point-wise, but I still like them and the huge torrent of fire they are capable of deliver.

I´ve assembled mine with multi-lasers to unleash 24 str 6 shots in a 3 walker unit, but they are eventually armed with whatever I need each battle.

Thing is I´ve played them 2 times, and outflanked them, but they came when the battle was almost finished so I haven´t time to test them properly.

They are painted in my classical shadow grey, black and white scheme.



Of course they got a pair of white stripes as almos any other of my minis.

I don´t know how to finish the base, but soon an idea will come... I know.





I love the new design albeit I still like the old one.




A close-up of the stripes.





Next post: the third one and group shots.






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July 26, 2011

Second Fire Prism finished.

And here it is the second fire prism.


In this prism the white stripe is like a wave with a dot in each wave, don´t know where did i get the idea, but I like it so much.

And I think this stripes thing helps improve my freehanding skills.






There are the two prism one besides the other.







Comments and criticism will be welcome as ever.









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July 22, 2011

Eldar first Fire Prism finished.

There is my first finished eldar fire prism.

As you can see the scheme is exactly the same as my wave serpent one but with a black stripe instead of a white one.



As the mini was going to be quite boring and I wanted to add some white details, so I freehanded a stripe in its side, which will be different in each prism not only to add some colour, but to diferentiate them on the battlefield.

In this prism, the strip is a plain one with some "holes" in it, that I think gives the prism kind of a unintentional "tunning" look :D





As ever, the pilot is painted as is iluminated from the control panel.








In the other side I´ve added a spirit stone from the eldar vehicles sprue.





And a close-up of said stone.







And that´s all.


I will be posting the other fire prism soon.






Hope you like it.








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July 20, 2011

WIP: Eldar Fire Prisms turret.

Here is the prisms turret finished.

I´ve painted both turrets before going at it with the hull of the tanks.

The prism is painted as you saw in a previous post, but I still don´t know how to paint the white in the prism tip.... Jewel-like? Just in the tip? As the rest of the prism?.






There is a close view of the prism, a part that is a huge pain in the back to glue and make it fit.





I´ve painted the cabin as I painted the wave serpent one, as the pilot were highlighted from the control panel.







And ... there are the turrets of both prisms I´m painting.














Next post: the finished first prism.









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July 14, 2011

Eldar Autarch´s Standart WIP.

Today i´ll show you one of my current WIP´s, an autarch´s standart.

As the main colours of my army are Shadow grey wit black and white, I´ve decided to paint one banner white and one banner black so it fits the look of my army.

The first part is a depiction of a exploding star and the second is the symbol of my craftworld (a dragon around a planet) with some eldarih glyph.







That is the actual status of the thing, because I don´t know what to paint in the other side (the side painted is the side that faces backwards).





I have a little idea, and here it is.

Is a purpleish depiction of a galaxy, maybe it is the galaxy as seen by the eldar.








And... in the white flag of the banner? Any ideas?






And... in the other banner? Any ideas?






P.S.: Sorry, it auto-published too soon :S


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July 9, 2011

Eldar Fire Prisms WIP.

A glimpse on my current WIP: a pair of eldar fire prisms.

This is just the prism, I wanted to give it an uncommon feeling, kind of a trapped universe inside the prism... that is an effect I think I haven´t achieved but still I´m proud of the effect :D


The chipped paint in the corners are where the other plastic part should be, if you prime the prism part, the kit will not fit perfectly.





More pics soon.



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