Varangian guard and arm weapons WIP

Haven't had much time to work on Varangian, or any other models lately (nice weather and a large piece of land) but I have managed some progress small progress here and there. I am currently a bit unfocused and are working on several projects in parallel which is not helping. The release of the knight codes and associated models have my brain working overdrive with conversion ideas which is definitively not helping me stay on target.

Be that as it may, I have finally gotten over on major design hurdle on the Varangian, how to attach the arm weapons. I have seen some different designs on different fora but nothing that got struck me as how wanted it done. Since the weapons are quite heavy and if I am posing the arms at some stress position this will put a lot of forces on the joints. One thing I liked from my excursions on the internet was to reinforce the resin with a metal tube to take the forces from the screws or pins if using this attachment method. However, I could not find any suitable tubing for a reasonable price. The closes I got was breaklines but these were only sold in 5m lengths and up. In the end I found what I think is a neat solution, some bushings with a 4 mm clearbore that probably was not intended for this use but thy fit perfectly and will help protect the resin edges from shipping or cracking. The pins were made from M4 threaded pin that was cut to length with some endcap nuts. By tightening the nuts I squeeze the weapon lip in the arm braze so that I can set the angle of the weapon relative to the arm. I hope this will hold up. Anyway, it is a relief to have decided on this so that I can move forward with painting of the upper arms.

Apart from this I also had what I think was a small epiphany the other night. I have not been really happy with the rear platform and especially the railing. The scale has been of somehow. So I thought that if I ad some guards to hold the platform from boarders it might give it a bit more life and a feeling for scale. I remembered that in the baneblade kit there were some commander bodies standing in a non moving pose and that there were some belt feed heavy stubbers for shooting over the sides of one of the baneblade builds. So I thought that a combination of the commanders, some skitarii helmets and heavy stubbers would look cool on the back platform. However, the railing was to high to get the guns over in practical way so I decided to cut of the top rail and shorten the "legs" a bit to get it more in line with a waist high railing for a human soldier. And by just doing this, suddenly the platform did not look so off as before, adding the gunners then was just topping on the cake. I must say that I am really happy with how it turned out.


Not much painting, or much building but at least I have made some design decisions that will help me move forward, and as it is holiday time I will have some more time to sink into this.

The Skag-Valkyrie and Warlord Knight

I have started a new small project, the "Skag-Valkyrie". When the Armiger-class Knights were released I decided that a small banner of fast hunters would make an excellent addition to my growing Knight host. And since these Knights are inducted into the Northern Ghosts I thought that I would call them Skag-Valkyrie to keep with the norse naming that I use for my titans (Varangian, Joluns Modh, Uthola and Ylgjar Ergi). I have not given the Armigers their individual names yet, nor have I done so for their larger cousins but I am working on it. That as well as some background etc. I will see if I make a small series of posts, one for each Knight, later on.

Well, apart form thinking about cool names to give to small plastic models I have also been working on on the plastics. Off course I needed an interior also for these Knights, and since they are Valkyries the pilots needed to be female. I did not have any seated models left (I used all my sentinel pilots for the last trio of Questoris-class knights) so I was looking through my old sprues to see if there were any suitable candidates for some conversion work. What I found were some very old Dark Eldar plastic models form the 3rd edition (?) 40k starter set. These had some female upper bodies and the legs were skinny enough to look easy to get into a sitting position. So, some cutting later I had the start of some pilots. This was complemented with some heads from the Sisters of Silence sprue together with some arms. Now they need some green stuff to get them into shape but apart from that I am really happy with how they turned out.

Next I needed an interior for the pilot to sit in. Since the upper body of the Armiger-class is much smaller than the Questoris-class I decided to go simple and just make a combined "wall and chair" sort of thing and mount it to the bottom of the torso instead of making a complete interior with floor and all (as I did for the other Knights). They also got a dash board and a viewing screen to top things of. For the "engine" I used one "turbine" from the same type of jump packs (maxmini) that I used before for the larger Knights, all to keep with the theme.

I also cut out the hatch so that it can be removed/opened as well as opened up the air vents on the back. So far I have only made these changes to one Armiger and I am using this to fit all six of the interiors I am building. I want to see that it turns out ok before starting on any other kits. In the end there will be two Warglaives and four Helverins.

I have also been working on my last Questoris knight, adding some extra armor plates etc. With the additions I have made I would guess it is more in the Dominus-class size but I do not have one of those to compare with. But next to a "regular" questoris you see the difference. There is still some green stuff work to do, mostly chaos growth and so, and some missing plastic bits, but I should soon be able to start painting.

Varangian bodyboz and inside WIP

For the last week or so I have been shipping away, quite literally, on the body box. The weathering and details take forever. One thing that I have done which I am not sure is worth it is to paint all the armor attachment points with black and yellow chevrons, some thing that we never be seen but would probably be there. And who knows, I might want to display it with out some of the armor at some point?
Since I am making progress with the outside of the box it is getting time to start thinking about the inside. The internal panels have been done now for some time but I have not put them in as it is a very tight fit and I do not want to risk the paint job more than necessary. But to know what to paint on the inside I needed to do at least one fit to mark the areas that will be painted. I am quite happy with how it looks with the panels fully painted in there. But these will also only be visible at special occasions. I am really looking forward to finishing the top box as it is a pain to paint. It is a bit on the large side when it comes to all the detail painting.

Varangian WIP

I have finished some more of the panels on Varangian but I am no ware near finished. This model is just a beast, there are so much things to paint. I do not understand how people can pain this thing in just a few days. Apart from that I am happy with how the torso shields turned out. The wings sweeping back along the body really gives it a more sleek look. And the neck armor really works with out the inner part. Now I just need to finish all the pipe work on the body before I can start with the interior. And as far as the interior goes I have finished all the panels, which I will show in a later post.

Sisters of Silence

As we have had a real streak of nice weather here about I have not had much time to paint as most of my spare time has gone into shifting big boulders in the garden. But before the weather struck I had managed to finish of my squad of Sisters of Silence. I already had one painted from a long time ago so I just made the rest the same way except for the sister superior who got some white gray armor instead of the golden that the rest of them have. I sort of remember this from Beast series that the characters in the Sisters of Silence armies have different colored plates then the rest and I thought it might look cool.  It is just the five man (women) squad from the burning of Prospero so I had no real intentions of making this into a legit army so I was not to concerned about if the squad is playable or not.  But if the plastic battle sisters are released I might have to see if I will not make some additions to this so that it is filled out to proper strength.

Varangian, body box WIP

So, after finishing the head from Zed I decided that it was time to start with the body box. This is a huge piece and there is a lot of detail. There was no way of doing the whole box in one go so I had to break it down into manageable areas. Since I am dry-brushing it also meant I had to wash the whole box in-between areas and wait for it to dry, so very time consuming.  I also decided to break it up using the two shades of green that has been a comon theme through out the titan. In the end I managed to get it done to a pre-weathering stage in a surprisingly short time compared to what I expected. Now I need to go back to each area and add chipping, streaking, rust etc. But now I can see that I am really making progress. I need to finish up the armor panels so that I can start painting them.

The head from Zed

When I had just bought my Warlord I was complaining (alot) about the head choices available. At the time there were only two and for one of them you had to visit the GW head quarters. Of course I wanted the one only available at headquarters...  After asking Forgworld about if it was possible to get it with out spending the same cost as the titan to go there they more or less said that it was that or ebay. Luckily a fellow blogger read my post and offered to get one for me as he was anyway passing by GW (which I am very grateful for).
After checking my blogg back log I realized that the head was actually built more or less as it is now already in dec 2016. Well almost one and a half year later it is painted. As per the Northern Ghost scheme it has a bone white face paint over a green base. To show that the bone is painted on and not meant to represent real bone I made it so that it is flaking away. I tried to get the flaked areas to make the bone look like a skull, I don't know if it comes across or not (the crown hides the effect I think). I also decided to brake up the dark forest green with some areas painted in the more yellow "primer" green that I have used elsewhere on the titan. I think it gives it more structure without being to over powering. For some reason I received an extra pair of lascannons with the titan body so I thought it would go with the chaos theme to add some head weapons. If I remember correctly this was not an unusual option in the old epic game.
The crown of command is painted to match the bronze borders of the armor plates but the blades are in a rusted white metal to give them some distinction. I am not sure the the "eye" lens looks ok. On my Reaver I made the lenses so that they look more like eyes with an iris. It might look strange when there is only one, but as it is now it does not have enough character. I will let it sit for a few days and decided if I will re do it.

The inside is painted in the primer color and painted to look dirty, rusted and worn but that is as far as chaosifications that I did. I had already assembled the head and there is so much detail in there that I did not think I could add anything that would not look to clumsy. I will see if I will do anything to the crew but I think that I will come to the same conclusion as for the interior. We will see if FW makes a chaos head at some point and if it can be bought over the internet and looks ok I might do something about it. I still have the original head that I bought with the titan, so I might do a brand new look Northern Ghost of this at some point.