Celestial Lions Kill Team (part 1)

Kill Team has brought to me the opportunity to work on my secondary and/or tertiary 40k armies. These are armies that I want to build and do something with, but my primary armies always tend to take up my time and focus instead. With my Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors Kill Team finished it was time to dig in the toy box for the next one.

I settled on the Celestial Lions. This is an army I have talked about doing for years. The idea would be that it would be a small Codex Space Marines army that would let me play with the stuff my Space Wolves couldn't use. As well as allow me to broaden my paint palette (way too much green, gray, red and black in my armies!). I was about to embark on building this army when my brother decided he was over 40k and sold his Ultramarines to me.

The first Celestial Lion model I ever painted was this guy:

Don't be afraid, 'e's 'armless!

And yes, he isn't done. He was a test model for the color scheme, just to see if my fast method for painting this army would work. I was satisfied with it and it turns out that right around this time a local store (The Maelstrom, for those that recall it) held a painting competition and I cranked out a Celestial Lions Terminator Captain. You can see him on the Other Armies page. Other than defending the notion of ever doing this army from the relentless taunts of Da Masta Cheef, until now that's all I ever managed to do with the Celestial Lions.

Here they are in the state they have been in for years:

Vet. SGT. 

The Veteran Sergeant was a weird experiment when I built him. For those that don't know the story of the Celestial Lions, they first appeared in the 3rd War for Armageddon Codex that came out in support of the summer campaign of 2000. They got barely a mention in the codex, but the supporting web site provided an illustration and brief history which stated that their entire Chapter had been sent to the war after pissing off the Inquistion. And after a series of coincidental battlefield misfortunes they had been wiped out down to less than a company's strength by the Orks. It was this rag-tag group that I originally, and ambitiously, had hoped to model up. This Vet. Sgt has a grot tied to his trophy pole. Not sure why, I guess war does strange things to a guy after a while...?

Grot prisoner/trophy.

The next 3 guys were probably intended to be bolter troops. For reasons that I can't explain I had never readied arms or weapons for these guys. Otherwise they were mostly done.

Ready to be armed.

So today the project was renewed. The first step was to expand their bases using Secret Weapon conversion rings.

Afixing the extensions -one half at a time.

Next, I used greenstuff to fill in the joins. Then I glued on the grit for their bases.

Slathering on the glue!

While the bases were drying I decided to finish the grot. He had been dabbled on over the years usually because I was working on other green skins and had left over paint on the brush and he was still on my modeling station. But today I completely finished his skin tones.

Skin tones completed.

 After this I finshed off their bases, primed their arms and began selecting their weapons. I scoured the internet looking for examples others have done and for some iconography ideas. But I'll talk more about that in part 2 (which hopefully won't take another decade to accomplish!).

The progress so far.

Bolt Action: British Infantry Division (Part Five)

A'hoy there! As I declared in the last post, these lads are done! All I had left to do was add some static grass and some grass tufts and that was it.

"Advance!"

"Take this table!!!"

However I decided that these models would be the perfect candidates to try a touch of a bit more realism: leaves. 28mm scaled ones anyway.

Bag O mini leaves.

I first became aware of this nice modeling accessory a few years ago while skimming through the gallery page on Warhammer-Empire's Brush and palette page. Somebody had used these on a city street scene and it made the whole thing look so much more alive. My local gaming store got some of these in stock with their Secret Weapon Masterclass Scenics supplies and I had to buy a pack. I was hoping to add them to my death castle project but since I never got back around to ever finishing that, the pack of leaves remained unopened. Until now that is!

Now with leaves.

I applied them by first adding a dot of PVA glue to the spot on the base that I want the leaf to go and with a pair of tweezers I then pressed the leaf onto the selected area. After letting the glue to dry, they were finally finished. The added flourish of the fallen leaves does add that touch of realism that I hoped to get by their inclusion.

"Crikey, where in hell have we been deployed too?" 

(The dynamic artistic shot)

With that, the first phase of my Bolt Action British Army is complete. I have another 10 Infantry left to complete, some spotters and Command Offiers and that will get me mostly done with phase 2 unless I decide to add something else. Phase 3 is a box of Red Devils and some Wargames Foundry Home Guard on bicycles. I am toying with getting some heavy artillery and maybe another tank, but we'll see. I want to keep this fairly small and not get carried away like I tend to do with 40k.

Black Legion Aspiring Champion (Part 2)

For this part of this series I want to take the opportunity again to share with you how I get the bases of my models looking the way I do, specifically on the paints I use, So what follows will be a sort of step-by-step in these regards.

Before I continued on with painting this model I decided that he needed a Secret Weapon 32mm conversion ring. After gluing it on I next had to figure out how to top off the base so that the extender would blend in seamlessly with it. This would be tricky as this was one of the newer plastic kits that came with a scenic base. The rocks are already sculpted on it as well as a few scattered necron bits. And a skull; -Gotta have a skull! The chaos champ himself is actually made to be stepping on the fallen necron's detached head.

After selecting the right basing material, some fine rock grit from one of the GW basing kits, I glued it on and was pleased with the results.

Actual True Grit.

Next I had to paint over this along with the ground that was already painted.

Territorial Beige. 

Here is the whole thing re-base-coated, at least the ground parts anyways. I use Apple Barrel Color Territorial Beige for all my bases as I like that sort of warm yet earthy dirt color. I recently had a scare regarding this color, as I discovered that I was about to finally run out of it. I went to the store that I usually purchase it and discovered that they, Michael's, seem to have dumped the entire Apple Barrel line in favor of some other, far lamer, brand. Luckily I found it, in passing, at a local Walmart and for only $.50! Just for piece of mind, I bought two bottles!

Country Tan for the mid-coat.

Here I next dry brush on a layer using Apple Barrel Color Country Tan. I have used Apple Barrel and other craft paints for years as it is essentially the same stuff as the other over-priced miniature paints that are out there -and you get a heck of a lot more paint for your dollar. Also note that the other parts of the model are coming along as well, and in the pic above you can see that the knife blade is mostly finished.

Sandstone highlight on the base, and the current state of the whole model.

Finally, for the base anyway, I applied an Americana color called, appropriately, Sandstone. It's a great highlight color for ground effect and desert tones. It's also incredibly cheap compared to Citadel and other name brand hobby colors, and you get lot more of it as well!.

For the rest of the model, you can see above that it is coming along as well. The whole tongue-armor thing is still weird to me. After apply some colors I thought I would like, I decided to wash the tongue parts with a red ink. So far it seems to be working. The brassy/gold trim parts are now mostly done, at this stage I am chasing down the strange and copious amounts of unnecessary details that this model has and I feel that I am entering the final stretches of completing it. Hopefully that will be soon!

The Deadly Assassins (Part 1)

Deadly.

In my recent post regarding Secret Weapon Miniature's conversion rings I used four Imperial Assassin models as an example of how their conversion kits work. They turned out well and I intend to acquire more conversion rings!

My unpainted model of the Imperial Assassin 

I have collected Imperial Assassin miniatures since I started playing 40K. When I first saw the Doctor's Warhammer 40,000 miniatures way back in the last days of '88, one of the stand-out models in the collection was his Imperial Assassin, the bad-ass one that looks like a ninja. He hadn't painted it yet. The previous owner had only ink-washed the model, and it looked like one of the stained miniatures that used to be in the catolog section in the back of White Dwarf. Even in this state I thought he was awesome.

The Doctor's Imperial Assassin painted back in 1989

 Eventually the Doctor painted the model in a camouflage scheme, leaving the gun as it was. I can bear witness to the efficiency of this camo-scheme: in a few classic Rogue Trader games we had that bastard actually truly hidden on the table before springing out and kicking all sorts of ass. "Hiding" was actually a rule in the early editions of 40k, and the terrain we used back then was mostly clumps of moss to represent heath. This model excelled at hiding in that stuff. So much so that us players would forget about him for hours.

The Doctor's assassin. Painted in 1989. 

Also I also fondly recall a big game back then when he lost a fight with a genestealer and was implanted with a genestealer embryo. Ah, fun times.. It was a very epic game! Seriously we were playing Apocalypse-sized games way before anybody else was but that moment alone stands out as the (hilarious) highlight from a 6 way (it could have been more) all day-long and well into the night, Rogue Trader game!

I think the Eversor  inherited that short sword

Yes, GW used to sell miniatures with slotta-hex bases!

Anyway, I eventually managed to track down a model of my own (in the '90s he was sold over here in the States along with an Inquisitor model, the one that looks like he has VW Bug for a chest) as he was a somewhat vital model in the early days of 2nd ed 40k. In time I tracked down all the original Rogue Trader-era Assassin models, and here they are in a flossbox along with some other Imperial Agents.

Having fun identifying all that! 

In this box we have 2 sets of the Assassin temples, each set being a unique pose with exception of the Culuxus. The last model of the middle row next to the Calidus is the Space Eunuch, whom I always thought would make a great Inquisitor or Inquisitorial Agent. Next to him are 2 female assassins, one with a sword and wearing light robes and one being a horribly sculpted woman armed with needles and wearing synthskin outfit. That last one is probably the precursor to the Calidus Assassin design concept  and is mostly interesting due to it's scarcity.

The 4 deadly assassins with their converted Secret Weapon bases.

The Assassin models in the Secret Weapon post have been on my table, off and on,  for years now and I have been tinkering on them slowly (barely at all, to tell you the truth). The bases have been fully converted and I think they came out great.  Inspired by that post I have continued to tinker away on them, and here is how things have progressed:

Completed Eversor!

The other night, I had a burst of inspiration and I just went all-out on painting the Eversor and I was able to knock it out from start to finish! Knowing my precious free-time was very much fleeting I didn't even stop for the typical progress photos, I just concentrated on finishing him! I will talk more about this model in part 2...

Secret Weapon Conversion Rings

With GWs discrete decision to shift their Space Marine miniatures over to 32mm bases (i.e. they aren't officially required), I was skeptical at first but now it's been over a year since this change I have found that I really do think the Space Marines look better on them. But I wasn't about to re-base all of my guys. I just wasn't passionate about that idea at all. At some point someone suggested I look into Secret Weapon Miniature's 32mm Conversion Rings. I checked it out and the concept intrigued me.

Recently I caved in and bought 3 sets, which is enough to convert 30 guys.

I am impressed! The quality is pretty high with minimal flash and clean-up. Although some pieces will require that I drill the holes a bit deeper for a more secure connection, this ought to be minor thing.

Assemby was slightly tricky and I found that starting with one side and then the other worked best for me. The pic above shows my method for preventing the model from being superglued to my table top.

I can foresee that some models will need some filler to eleminate join gaps but this shouldn't be a huge problem for me.

Getting the basing materials to match shouldn't be too challenging and as you can see I didn't have a problem with these guys, granted they are unfinished. These are the classic Assassin minis from the mid-'90s that I dug up last year around the time of the  Assassinorum: Strike Force game release and started to work on them at that time. However, like the marines, they are being shown on bigger bases and they do look better on them so I waited. Now with that wait over they re-enter the painting queue with their bigger base enhancement complete.

So, back to the conversion rings: they rock! Especially if you have completed bases already that you do not want to rip off of your minis. But, do get the basing redone right away otherwise people will think that your models look like Heroclicks!