Chaos Space Marine Project Part 1 - Chaos Daemon

A side project of mine is Chaos Space Marines for 40k. This isn’t going to produce a usable army any time soon - but is rather a chance to model and paint interesting units in between other projects.

My force background is that of a large Imperial space cruiser (formerly the Lex Talionis, now known in whispers as Naga Oblivio) that has been possessed by a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, the crew having been overcome, seduced and entrapped by its magic and lies.This particular aspect of Tzeentch is that of the snake - deceiver, whisperer, influencer, manipulator. Having taken control of the ship, the Daemon is working to a mysterious plan, ambushing other vessels, luring in boarding parties, appearing seemingly at random to launch its attacks and then inexplicably disappearing again. The denizens of the vessel are barely aware of their own sentience - their minds only clearing from a haze of magic and warp visions in time to attack the latest objective of their deviously insane master before lapsing back to their nightmare existence.

The snake presence will feature strongly in all units of the legions of the Naga Oblivio. These are not so much Space Marines who have adopted snake iconography - rather the essence of the snake is taking them over slowly and surely.

The first unit in my army is the centrepiece Daemon Prince, J’Ssurus. No one is quite sure how he came to be - part snake, part Daemon, part machine. His slithering form leads the assault in boarding parties - huge though he is, his lithe and supple body is able to compress and slither into vents and service shafts, erupting behind the defenders in a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Sometimes he prefers to use mutated thruster vents to propel himself across the void between the ships and tear his way into the enemy bridge using his daemonic strength to rip through the bulkhead walls.

The model is a combination of the standard GW Daemon Prince and a rather excellent 54mm giant snake figure from Grey Matter Figures with a bit of greenstuff embellishment thrown in too. So far its just undercoated with a brown guidewash. Full painting will have to wait till after my summer holidays.

Wire Mesh Fences

A Space Marine Biker from my son George's collection eyes up
 some mysterious aliens beyond the perimeter fence

For Christmas I got a copy of GW's rather excellent How To Make Wargames Terrain. I've never really made my own terrain before (except for a few 10mm trees) so I thought I would have a stab at something straightforward before I commenced building a Minas Tirith or similar. Wire mesh fences it was then. The guide has a good photo of a fence made from aluminium mesh and foamboard. Here's how I got on following their instructions.

Card & Foamboard bases

First step was to cut out bases. I used strips 15cm x 3cm. The book says you can use card, which I did, but I ended up with a small amount of warpage. Next time I think I would use wood just to be sure. The foamboard is the 5mm stuff which I think is the standard size you can get from any art shop.

I removed the thin card strip from one side of the foamboard (this was easily done by sliding a sharp knife between the foam and the card). This was then used as the top side.

I stuck the foamboard to the card with PVA glue (this is when the warping happens - I was able to gently bend it back into shape when dry). I tapered the ends to more easily make corners when setting up a game. 

Now, a craft knife was used to carve the foam into something resembling a rough sloping bank of earth.

Carved base

It was now time to add some fence posts. For these I used some of the girder shape plastic strip that is available from most model shops. This was the most expensive part of the fencing - I ended up using 2 strips that cost about 90p each making just 4 fence bases. When the fence posts were cut - I pushed them into the foam and then used super glue to fix them in position.

Posts in position

I now painted the posts a steel colour (using the Foundry metal paint triad) and washed them using Devlan Mud. It is compulsory in wargaming to use Devlan Mud in all painting projects. The foam base was then coated in PVA glue with sand and other scenic rock stuff sprinkled on.

Bases ready for painting

I painted the bases using a formula from an article in an old Battlegames article. This involves a coat of chocolate brown, a wetbrush layer of Vallejo Orange Brown, a drybrush of Vallejo medium flesh and finally a drybrush of Vallejo Buff. And a little bit of Devlan Mud on the rocks. Naturally.

Painted Bases

Now to add the wire mesh. For this I used some mesh that I had rescued from an old kitchen sieve. I'm not sure where you would buy mesh separately but sieves are easily available from pound shops or places like Wilkos (or for the foolhardy they can be stolen from the kitchen).

Rescued from the kitchen (with permission!)

I cut the mesh into strips and distressed it a bit using pliers so that it looks like a battered piece of fencing before glueing it to the posts. Now a handy tip for idiots. If you use super glue and hold the mesh in place against your post then the glue will seep through the holes in the mesh and handily attach your finger to the mesh and fence post. This it not a theory. I can vouch for it.

Once the glue has set I drybrushed the fencing and posts with some dark brown and orange brown to create a dirty rusty effect and that was just about it....

I added a small sign to one of the fences using a bit of plasticard and an old transfer from the bits box and now I know that my little plastic men will feel totally protected against any alien incursions...

Necrons Update

Well I've finally finished the first stage of my Necron project so thought it was time to post some pics. It's only a small army at the moment and I may add the odd unit to it in future, but its' enough to be going with and has already roughed up some Eldar nicely in a trial run....

In the end I went for a traditional metallic look for the Necrons. If you look further down this blog you will see that I was thinking about a sandstone colour scheme but it would have taken too long to paint and so I opted for a scheme that could be done mostly with spray paint. Only when I finished did it occur to me that I could have used sand coloured spray just as easily as a metallic - so a bit of a senior moment there. I have tried to keep a colour theme throughout - dirty steel for main bodys (Army Painter Plate Mail with Gryphonne Sepia wash), dirty bronze for special components (Vallejo bronze with Devlan Mud wash) and various shades of green for points of detail.

I don't like the supplied gauss rods for necrons so I took the decision (which I later regretted) to paint all of them with a sort of electric lightning flash effect. This was done by coating them black, then painting up the electric with three shades of green (goblin, scorpion then 50/50 scorpion/white) followed by a wash of Thraka green. Overall I'm happy with the effect but when you've got 40+ of them to paint then it starts to get soul destroying (which is sort of appropriate for a Necron I guess).

Warriors

Scarabs 

Destroyers

Heavy Destroyer

Tomb Spyder

Destroyer Lord

Necron Army Diary - Part 1

Bit of a change of direction at the moment. I'm painting up a small Necron army for 40K. The main reason is so that I can play some games against George's Eldar. I really don't want this project to derail my historical projects and thats the reason I ended up choosing Necrons since a quick scan through the various 40K armies gave me the idea that they were probably the quickest to paint up.

I put some thought into a Necron colour scheme and was originally hoping to be able to do something a bit different to the normal metallic fare. My first thoughts were to paint them up Egyptian style with bodies of stone and bronze. I knocked up a test figure (see left) but it took me too long to paint. I am a really slow painter. So this wasn't going to work without putting my AWI armies back a year.....

So I've gone back to a standard Necron metallic scheme. They're going to be steel coloured, but dirty and rusty. I'm going to concentrate on a few small areas to detail and do the rest of the figures as quickly as I can. The main point of detailing will be to paint the Gauss rods. I'm not happy with the garish translucent rods as they come out of the box and so I'm going to do a variegated electricity pattern on them (I had a go of this on the tester model). My other area of concentration will be bases. I want to do some Giants Causeway style rock formations, so i've ordered some hexagonal plastic rods and we'll see whether I can knock up anything that looks reasonable.

Okay so now I've got the main force of warriors assembled. Before moving on, I really need to have a moan. I hate sticking plastic figures together and these were no exception.

Two main points of irritation for me;

Firstly the skulls are connected to the sprues by two joins, one under each cheekbone. That makes it impossible to snip off cleanly and finger-stabbingly difficult to then trim using a craft knife.

Secondly - it seems you need at least 15 fingers to hold the arms in place when glueing them together. In the end though, I managed to find a sequence that worked;

• Put glue in the socket holes not the socket balls. Put a blob in each shoulder socket and one in the gun socket. 
• Put the left arm into the gun socket and hold for about 10-15 seconds so that it holds in place but is still flexible. 
• Now attach the gun/arm assembly to both shoulders. It should just about hold itself together as you position the arms. 
• Hold it for a few seconds until it can support itself
• Curse GW and then move onto the next one

So, next step, painting......


Right, my secret weapon in speed painting has been deployed. Army Painter Plate Metal primer spray. So in only a couple of minutes they are primed and painted in the base colour. If only they did a 10mm tartan spray to do AWI Highlanders. From now on though it's all downhill speedwise..... I'm to be doing a series of washes to bring out the detail and add a general dirty rustiness to them. When I've had a go, then I'll post some more pics in Part 2.