The Spyders

As discussed in an earlier post, scarabs rely on spyders to generate more of them if you are doing a scarab farm army. I was not sure what to do for the Spyders at first so I trawled through a load of ideas from movies such as war of the worlds until I settled on the idea of the sentinels from the matrix. So I had my plan but how to make them and keep the part daemon theme that I’m looking for.

I looked around finding allot of different options for the base part of the model but finally decided on the forge world mieotic spores. With 3 for £17 this worked out a relatively cheap, as well as giving me a base to work off of.  With a little bit of kit bashing and some greenstuff the first one with gloom prism was made. I used the main body of a scarab as the head to keep the theme working from one model to the next in the army.



Painted Spyder



With the painting I followed almost all the same steps as for The Lord of Flies.

Note: With GW bringing out the new wraiths and spyders mine look alot more like, and are sized much better as wraiths so i may need to redesign new spyders now.

Keep reading.x

Early Thoughts on 6th

Hi all just a quick post with the new rules in mind. I have to say the excitement has hit and my mind is already thinking about what possible options the new rules will bring to my Dark Mechanicus. Several of the rumours that interest me are allies, flyers and buildings.

Allies

I have been trying to make my Dark Mechanicus fit into one codex, Necron being the one I chose as It gave allot of flexibility on modelling projects. However with this new allowance of allies, means I can try different combos to make the army both competitive and fluffy. Chaos Marines with Guard allies maybe, Guard with Daemon allies (don’t know if this will be an option but I like the sound of it), the possibilities for modelling projects will become endless.

Flyers

Well we all expect flyers will play a big part in 6th ed so this will have to be a modelling project in the not so distant future. Where do I start with Mechanicus flyers? I always thought of them having big clunky machines not nimble flyers but they do like to use alien technology and daemons so watch this space!!!!

Buildings

As part of the Dark Mechanicus theme I want to add a contingent of Iron Warriors these would be essentially the guys who guard the factory’s while the Dark Mechanic has his way creating a whole world of new toys for the dark gods amusement. Thematically how great would it be to see Iron Warriors with their own trench system or small fortified walls hastily constructed before a battle?

All in all I’m excited about the new rules from a gaming point of view but these are the bits that get the creative juices flowing. I will still be continuing with the Necrons for the moment but when that is wrapped up I should have a hold on the new ideas for 6th.


Thanks for reading. x

The Lord of Flies



The Lord of Flies



As with all projects it has to start somewhere. This project all begun with my Forge world greater daemon that had been sitting staring at me on my shelf for several years. This model was to be the centre piece of whatever army I now started.

The Idea

I drew inspiration from allot of steam punk artwork and that combined with a few of my close gaming group looking into Warmachine I got the bug for some kind of rusty daemon model.  And so the Lord of Flies was born. I used Fimo green stuff and plasticard to sculpt up all the parts I needed for him at this stage this is what he looked like.

The Skin

I didn’t want him to be in the traditional greens and browns you see everywhere for Nurgle so I tried something different. I went for yellows and purples to give him a bruised appearance. I started with a white undercoat and decided on the top half being yellow with the bottom half in the purple. I base coated with (ID) Iyandan Darksun for the top and (HP) Hormagaunt Purple for the lower areas.

I then blended from the yellow to the purple through the middle of the model.  I then used this mix to shade the yellow areas adding more purple in the deepest crevasses. I then highlighted the yellow starting with (ID) and adding (GY) Golden Yellow starting with 50/50 mix and working in more golden. I then added (SW) Skull White to the mix for the very final highlights.

The mix of (ID) and (HP) worked as a great way to highlight the purple pushing it towards a brown for the highlights by adding more (ID) to the mix. I then used (LP) Liche Purple to shade the purple, now I know (LP) is a lighter colour but with purple and yellows being opposite it makes the shaded bits stronger than using a flat black in my opinion. You will note that by the small amount of colours I use I prefer to mix than to use allot of different shades bought from companies.

Colours used for the skin All GW paints

(ID) Iyandan Darksun

(HP) Hormagaunt Purple

(GY) Golden Yellow

(LP) Liche Purple

(SW) Skull White



Pic of the finished skin



The Metal

This was going to be the most important part of the model I felt as the skin had turned out well the metal had to compliment it. To do this I needed to keep it dark but I also wanted it to be very rusty as you would expect being fixed to a puss seeping greater daemon of Nurgle. I looked at allot of photos of rust to see where it formed where the colours were strongest etc... I then had to adapt this to my own slightly cartoony painting style. Before I really started painting the metal I used a bit of the new games workshop textured paint to give a bit of a bobble to the areas without using sad where the particle are just too large.

To basecoat the metal I used an undercoat of (CB) Chaos Black, and the basecoated the metal with a 50/50 mix of (CB) and (AB) Adeptus Battle Grey. I wanted the surface to be very mat as when you look at drain covers they don’t shine; sometimes I think everything in 40k has been chrome plated.   From this point on it was all about the rust.

I started the rust with a heavy stipple of (SB) Scorched Brown on the whole area I wanted to look rusty (don’t rust the whole thing completely as you will lose some of the depth of the basecoat). I then applied a lighter stipple of a 50/50 mix of (SB) and (DF) Dark Flesh this is done towards the edges and not designed to fully cover the whole area just done. An even lighter stipple of pure (DF) is the added to random areas.

Now it’s time to get a bit creative so I water down 10/1 ratio of water and (BO) Blazing Orange and wash this over some parts of the armour. And I use a 5/1 ratio of the same mix to wash into the crevasses to leave an orange hue.

Once this has dried I apply a final stipple of (DF) and (BO) 50/50 mix.

I like to stylise the metal with a few edges picked out with (MS) Mithril Silver to show a scratch in the metal or a broken edge etc...

It is now time to do a final weather using the forge world weathering powders (AR) Aged Rust followed by (LR) Light Rust, and a dusting of matt varnish to set it.

Paints used for Metal

(CB) Chaos Black

(AB) Adeptus Battle Grey

(SB) Scorched Brown

(DF) Dark Flesh

(BO) Blazing Orange

(MS) Mithril Silver

Forge world powders used

(AR) Aged Rust

(LR) Light Rust



A pic of the finished model including base



I hope you have enjoyed reading this article, the model really was a joy to make and paint and I will have a few studio shots of him coming up in the not too distant future.

Thanks for reading x

Spreading The Techno Virus (scarabs)

OK guys so I said I was going to talk robots in this post, but as the army list developed so my inspiration took me in a different direction. This post will now be about scarabs and the farm list.

As I said in my last post I liked the idea of my Nurgle Dark Mechanicus spreading techno viruses like a plague. With this I got the idea of locus swarms, flies carrying plague etc. These ideas coupled with the fact as a Necron player you don’t want to leave home without your trusty scarab swarm let me to consider if I could make a competitive list based around a large contingent of scarab swarms.

So the idea was there but what do you need to make a scarab farm list?  Well firstly lots of scarab bases I’m expecting to need 40+ of these and you need Canotek spyders 3-9. For anyone who doesn’t understand the principle of the scarab farm list it is quite simple your spyders babysit the scarabs and every one of your turns each spyder (within range of a scarab unit) generates another scarab base so if you have 9 spyders you get 9 scarab swarms extra a turn and also generate the best part of 5” movement in whichever direction you need to send your scarabs through the use of squad coherency.

So what you get is an army of little creatures that are very good against tanks and can drag infantry down through sheer weight of attacks

So I got this far into the list when I decided I just had to start building scarabs. Here are my first 15 bases.

And the finished scarabs once painted.

Thanks for reading.x

Dark Mechanicus a new beginning



Dark Mechanicus


Ok, so I don’t feel it is right to start writing a blog without a bit of background to me and my hobby first. I have been a 40k player for the best part of 20 years. I like to think of myself as a well rounded hobbyist as I enjoy painting and playing in equal measure, and like to think I’m relatively good at both.

I have played just about every army going and that is where my problem usually begins. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over so I often have to come up with unique or quirky armies, to keep my hobby fresh.

A new project

After spending countless hours agonising over numerous codex’s,  I decided I wanted to do a Necron army as frankly they are awesome fun to play with and very competitive which ticks two of my three boxes. The third box, the one about looking cool, is the one they don’t quite cut in my opinion. But a lot of green stuff and  a bit of imagination and creativity can conquer anything.

And so my Dark Mechanicus Army was born. For those of you who don’t know the background to this army, the Dark Mechanicus is a sect of Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus who swore their loyalty to the Chaos Gods and the Warmaster Horus during the Horus Heresy. Unlike their loyalist counterparts they are not beyond experimenting with xenos technology or using chaos gifts and daemons to enhance or power their machines.

For my take on this I wanted to go with the idea of a Nurgle Dark  Mechanicus army with the inspiration being that Nurgle is an equal opportunity disease spreader, be it a filthy plague or a techno virus. This will also allow me to play with rust effect on the painting side, a technique I have been dying to try out.

I want to keep this first post relatively short so will leave you with the first shots of two Herateks (crypteks) for the army. Enjoy!

Both Herateks have been made from Forgeworld models with parts from various Necron kits added.

Next time round I will talk robots and the army list...

Thanks for reading.x