Assault Knight

I am currently in the middle of a building frenzy. Al the ideas that I have thought about regarding my Mechanicum army are trying to get out at the same time. This we I had to build the Heavy Assault Knight. I have had this idea of taking the Defiler Knight and clothe it in heavy armor and equip it with the CCW arms from the Defiler kit. Since I bought two sets of Imperial strongholds, I have a lot of aegis defense lines to work with. I have seen some Knights on line that have used Aegis parts for the shoulders, but I think they look a bit unbalanced as the shoulders tend to look to large. My idea was to use more shield and use them both for arm and leg plates as well as for the shoulders. As this will make the Knight more heavy I have decided to use a more sturdy build for the legs using the defiler CCW instead of the slimmer back legs that I used before. I have made a basic assembly partially glued and partially held together by blue tack. I am quite happy with the result. It is distinct from the lighter Knight that I built before but there are still enough of a resemblance to tie them together. I will keep on building the different models for this project before starting with green stuff and later on, painting. In this way I can change the design and have the changes go through to all the models.

Myrmidon update

After playing around a bit with the Phirana body for my heavy Myrmidon I came to the conclusion that the body was to small and it was completely obscured by the weapon  arrays. So I decided to use the original defiler upper body as it is more massive. I also decided to use the shield over the front as in mordian7ths version of the myrmidon. This will also help tie the ordinary myrmidons to the heavy one. I also decided to use the battle cannon in its original position instead of putting a head in the front. It did however look a bit lonely so a added the twin linked autocannons to the same mount. I am quite pleased with how it turned out. The weapons arrays  are immense and I have decided that they are plasma lances instead of ordinary solid shell cannons. Well now it is just to finish it up, fill in the gapes with green stuff, add some insignia etc...  and then I have two smaller myrmidons to do...

Cannon building

A report from my first initial work. Apart from the boxes I bought I also bout some hammerhead weapon sprues. The thought is to use these to build some field artillery to be mounted on the heavy myrmidon and on one of the raptors. I had made some initial tries using the sprue pictures from the GW website and paint to see how one might remodel the peaces into something less tau. Now, you can not remove the origins totally but I think they turned out ok.
 

I also started to assemble the Phirana that will make up the main upper body of my heavy myrmidon. I will mount two twin mounted artillery guns to this. I have not decided exactly how they will be attached but I will have to wait with this until I get the body on to the legs so I can get the proportions right. So now I will just have to build another twin set and assemble the legs of a defiler to carry it around. Then It will be time for some plasticard  and green stuff to fill in the gaps and ad some nice details.

New project

So, the things for my new project arrived today. When I got home from work I found a large package guarded by Balthazar in the hallway. After some unpacking I realized the magnitude of my purchases. This will be the next installment in my mechanicum army which will hopefully give me, two knights, three raptors, three myrmidons, two or four re-arming bunkers and a lot of bits for coming projects.

The myrmidons will be based on some conversions that I have found on the internet. There will be two myrmidons based on the model made by Mordian7th. Then there will be a heavy version based on a scorpion pattern defiler by tentakel games. They will not be copies but similar.

Then I will make one more Knight like the one I have. I will also make a heavy version with more armor and dual CCW. The left over legs and weapons from the boxes will be used to make some smaller two legged weapon drones that can accompany the knights. 

The bastions from the strong points will be made into rearming stations where knights and titans can stop to reload their weapons, or I might make them into drop pods for the knights.

These units are not taken from the fandexes that are out there and I will make them mostly to look good, not to be playable other than in very freindly games.

Space Wolves

During the last week(s?) i have painted some more Space Wolves. I am starting to get a feeling for the color scheme. I kind of like the dark color that they turned out to have. In the beginning I thought that they might be to dark and that they looked kind of lat in the color. Some more high lights might have been good. Then I started to look at the painting process. After I have painted the base blue in its two stages of dry brushing they are very detailed with a loot of highlights, but as I start to ad the other colors I lose the contrast of the base armor as it is so dark compared to the yellow and bone. So it is a trick of the eye rather than a real lack of highlight. And, if you look closely at the model you still see the highlights. Strange, but that is how it is. And as I accumulate more and more of them they look better and better, strange. In a group they look much better, the highlights pop out and so on. I also tried to use some transfers to get the Company logo on, but I could not get them flat on the shoulder pads and the borders got wrinkled so I took them of again. This probably means that I will have to free hand the symbol...   which might be for the better since I have gone for a very heavily chipped shoulder paint. Well I will paint up the last of the models I have and we will see where it goes form there.
I am also on the verge of buying the thing I need for the next mechanicum project, so this will also take up a large part of my time.
So here are the latest of the Space Wolves, Wolf Guard, Grey Hunter and a Blood Claw.

Random minis

I have found that I have somewhat of a difficulty to maintain a strict focus on the blog now that I do not have a project running. It was much easier to remember to update the blog with the progress of the week. It was also a way for me to document the progress. Now however I only paint random miniatures without any greater context, not that I don't enjoy it the painting, but documenting painting a single marine and then posting about it becomes some what lame. During the last weeks I have painted some more Desert Eagles, Space Wolves and Scitarii as well as finishing up the Desert Eagles command rhino. But since I am not painting an army it is still random minis. So what I need is a new large project to keep me occupied for some mounts so that I can post about it. I have an idea about building two more knights to join my mechanicum force. I have also seen some Myrmidons based on the Defiler kit so I am tempted to build three of these. I have made a list of parts that are needed and it looks promising. I need 5 Defilers, 2 Sentinels, 1 Phirana, 2 Imperial strong points and 4 hammer head weapons sprues. The cost is about a war hound so It better last at lest 4 mounts. I only have to come up with the funds for this, and order the bits...

Command Rhino

We have finally found our camera again. It had been face down in a field for two weeks, suffering both snow and rain as well as some trampling. Well we brought it in, wiped it down, dried it out and now we can take some pictures again. Apart from this my hobby time the last weeks has gone to other family related activities so I dont really have that much new to show.



I did however get an impulse to make myself a command vehicle for my Desert Eagles. I hade done one a long time ago for my Dark Angels, based on the old rhino model so I started looking through my stach of boxes and lo and behold, I found an old rhino kit that hadnt been to badly raided. So I started to look for more bits and managed to get something together. The bolter racks at the back was not really meant to be there but it was the only peaces that I had that would fit. There is still some work to be done on it but it turned out ok, abit of old school.