Space Hulk, Death Wing style

This was a peice I had some planning behind it. I recently fell in love with the Captian Lysander model and started thinking about what I could do with it. And I stumbled up the idea of doing a Death Wing termi in a space hulk scenario. For those of you old enough to remember space hulk, you'll remember that the primary enemy Terminators faced in it were Genestealers. Hence the recently de-limbed genie lieing on the deck plate.
The two most difficult parts of this model were the chest and the right knee. Both were originally modeled with the Imperial Fist icon on them, so that had to go. Enter a dremal! Once I ground off the Imperial fists iconography I attached a shield from the Terminator sprue to the chest and shield emblem to the leg. The rest is pretty straight forward.
A few things I over looked when I originally built the model, and plan to correct when I redo this peice:
1) Mold lines. I was so dead set on the chest and legs, I totally ignored the mold lines. ::Slaps hand::
2) The chest shield: initially I was pleased with how the plastic shield sat on the model, but upon closer inspection it does appear to actually be a totally seperate peice and doesn't really look like it belongs there. I should have shaved down the back of the shield a bit more.
3) The leg/groin area. This one totally got over looked until the model was built, but the peice I attached to the leg is of similar shape and design to the groin gaurd of the model. Not 100% sure how I'll fix that next time. I might grind down the groin gaurd and putty in a tabard or robe of some sort. Death Wing are Dark Angles after all.

Update: Media center

A bit of a minor update today. I picked up what I'm ultimatly going to use for the video card in the center:
The ATI All in Wonder 2006 edition. For those of you who are computer savy, it's not the most powerful video processor out there and not particularly well suited to video gaming. But I'm not using it for video gaming. I'm using to interface with a TV.
The big reason I'm going forthe 2006 edition as opposed to say the X850, well for one I have an X850 on my main system. Fantastic card, but waaaaaaay more then I need for the media center. The other big thing I like about the All-in-wonder is the ability to not have cables you don't need. The card uses an interface system with an adapter that you connect the various cables you actually need to it. So If I don't need, say the DVI cable, I don't attach it. It should help keep cluter to a minimum.

Not warhammer related...

But a project I'm working on none-the-less. For several months now I've been working on encoding all my dvds and VHS movies to digital files on several hard drives (Quit an endevour when you consider I have over 1000 dvds alone) with the intention of building myself a media center/server computer system. Well I was talking with some friends last week who asked if I wanted any extra computer parts. The extra parts ammounted to a mother board, a mid-level video card and a case. Thinking about it, I figured I could use the parts to build a "proof of concept" machine for myself.
Now, here's where the real work comes in. I want to put the finished machine in with the stereo and AV material in my parents living room. But I didn't want this ugly beige computer case sitting there. So I needed to turn the case side ways.
However, my parent's are slighty technophobic (YEah, if you haven't already guessed, I'm the tech priest of the family). So I needed to make it resemble something my parents are already comfortable using.
So after some though, I decided if I rotate the DVD drive so it is parallel with the case, I could make the system resemble a DVD player (which I finally got my mother to use after 4 years).
So, here's the results of my effort thus far:

I'm going to craft a case housing out of acryllic then give it a jet black finish. I'll post more pictures as they are availible. Oh, on the note of this project, I'd like to give a big shout out to the fellas over at www.thebestcasescenario.com who have been a tremendous help to me on this project thus far, and continue to be supportive of my efforts. Thanks guys!

Cursed Founding: Legion of the Damned

I'm finally getting back to work on my Cursed founding chapter trait system. Check it the entry for the Legion of the Damnaed

50th post!

YAY!!! 50 Posts! Yup this is my 50th post thus far! But rest assured, I'm no where near finished. If anything, I'm just starting. I've still got my campaign kicking off in January not to mention an Eldar army I hope to have ready for Games Day Baltimore this year and a Chaos Army with more conversions planned for it then I dare own up to at this time, plus I've got some other random pieces here and there I'm working on that I will show you guys. I've got plans for some Eldar warlocks that will be in the same spirit as my Farseer though not as intense certainly. The Farseer is the leader of my Eldar army after all. I also have some ideas for more space marine conversions. Maybe something based off 80s cartoons, hmm a Dreadnought that transforms into a Predator....
Well that will be for a nother day. Here's my model post for the day:




















Following a similar concept to the marine putting
a bolter round through the gaunts head, this marine was similarly jumped but got the upper hand, this time by shoving a combat knife between the armored ribs of the gaant and getting a killing shot.

I stand Victorious

This fella was one of my more interesting conversions, because it was the first time I ever tried a weapon conversion. By weapon conversion I mean a conversion of the actual weapon, not a parts swap. It's difficult to see from this picture, but the sword in the marines left hand is actually 3 peices. The first is the hilt which is in face the chainsword from the Commander sprue. The next peice is a open mouthed ripper with the tail and body carved down so it fits over the hilt of the chain sword. Finally the actual blade is a Gaunt talon.

Kill team continued

Once agian, this model was designed around a fight scene. In this case, the split second where the fight is decided. This marine was about to be jumped by a gaunt, but the marine reacted first and caught the gaunt in mid-leap. Taking advantage of the gaunt's momentary confussion he levled his bolter and shot the gaunt throught he mouth.
I drew some inspiration from real life milatary tech for this though. See, I figure the bolter is similar to modern day grenade launchers, based on how the bolter shells actually work. The shell detonates after it breaks through the enemy's body. Well with current day grenade launchers, the grenade must spine x number of times after leaving the barrel before it will detonate. Figuring the bolter works along the same concept, I figure the shell wouldn't have armed before it busts through the Gaunts' skull. Hence the bullet exiting the back of the gaunts head.

Face the beast...

This marine was modeled with the end result of a fight in mind. Speccifically, the marine was jumped by the gaunt which was then able to tear and gash away at the marine until finally, the marine was able out of sheer determination and desperation, grab hold of the Gaunts arms and snap off it's talons which he promptly used to stab the gaunt to death.

Kill Team Sergent

Somewhere around the launch of the Current Space Marine Codex, I built a space Marine kill team. Always seeking to annoy certain other players, I modeled my kill team has having just killed, beaten, broken, evicerated, slain, slaughter and generally spanked a bunch of Tyranids.
This is the sergent of the group. Equiped with Master Crafted lightning claws and an Auspix I'm pretty sure he'd hurt in Kill Team Close combat.

The Lightning claws I made to be speccifically slim and more akin to the Hunt Claw the Alien used in the movie Predator. I took a Dark Eldar Helmet and cut off the side blades and then mounted the blades on an Auspix on the back of the Marines wrist. I then ran a bit of wire from the auspix body back to the powerplant of the Marines armor. On the left wrist, I used the blade from a space marine knife to make it look like the blades on that gauntlet hadn;t been deployed yet.
In order to drive home the idea of this being an Tyranid elite kill team (not nessicarially Ultramarine Tyrannic Vetrens though) I converted the sergents back pack to have tyranid themed vents which consist of the forward portion of a pair of Guant heads glued in place of the normal vents of the power plant.

Father Nurgle blesses you

So, I was working on painting my Eldar Dire Avengers and somewhere I jumped form painting Eldar to converting Terminators. No idea what line of logic or insanity possessed me to make that jump, but I did. So now I have some new conversions to detail. To the left is the first of them.
I donno what it was that brought an image of a Nurgle terminator to mind, but I went with it. One of the trade mark images I've come to associate with Nurgle is a bloated gut with spilling intestines. Using a bit of green stuff I molded a swollen and disfigured gut onto a terminator. Using a hobby knife I cut into the gut and opened a large wound. Using more green stuff, I rolled out a long thin snake and by long I mean it was nearly 12" long. I let this piece cure for about 40 minutes before I touched it again. Using some super glue and a pair of tweezers, I began to attach the intestines to the body from with in the wound. It is truly amazing how 12 inches of 1/32" tubing will fit into such a small area. But that was the intestines.
The Claws/talons are actually genestealer hands.

We shall bring the firepower that is needed

I recently compleated building a three man Eldar Warwalker squadron and am not very far from finishing painting and basing the models. But I needed to get something up so people don't think I'm like dead or something.

Much like the new Wraithlord, the New Warwalker is a quantum leap beyond it's predessecor model. Looking more like a vehicle then some form of guardian strapped to a walking engin the new models actually looks like it would work. I can also see immense possibility for convertions with this model. Perhaps a Version Vyper, or some form of Wraith Spirit piloted Walker by combining the Warwalker with the wraith lord. Ah the possibilities...