say cheese

a quick group-shot (note the unpainted guardsman - still waiting for my regular opponent to decide on a colour-scheme for his guard. once he makes up his mind, i can paint this guy)

I am ripper...

so, a stop-gap unit to give me something to do whilst waiting for bitz and kits to arrive (i had a bit of a mix up with wayland games, though everythings' settled now and I should have a few orders on the way, including 4 boxes of warriors, some gaunts and a tyrant and tervigon).

Anyhow, this is the first of 3 batches of rippers that ill be working on to add to the army, giving me about 15-20 bases-worth (depending on how many i can get out of forthcoming kits and what I can find in my bitzboxes). I doubt I'll be using these guys much as theyre pretty crap (though I'd still like to try 20 deep-striking bases, if nothing else, deep striking close to the enemy will cause him to devote quite a bit of shooting against them, giving my other units a turn of freedom in which to advance, at least that's the idea...)

you'll have to excuse the rather crappy pics though my lightbox is out of action for the moment, explaining the low quality balcony pics etc!

I'm also working on some zoanthrope commissions at the moment (pic below) and am starting work on some spore mines (another left-field tactic id like to try is a battery of biovores and spore mine clusters, with hive guard and warrior support).

And now, for something completely different...
Well, not that completely different... My tentative second project, a Tzeentch marine/daemon/IG army. of course, I can't use all 3 options in the same game (though luckily, the addition of cultists and dark apostles means I can sort-of use IG traitors as standard in the army, with daemon allies).

The plan is to have a core of thousand sons and/or mark of Tzeentch marines - I'm envisioning a core of 2 thousand sons units, with some marked marines, chosen, havocs, raptors/warp talons, all in the style of the new Dark Vengeance chosen models. To that I'll add Tzeentch daemons (I have an idea for a Tzeentch flying circus daemon army with fateweaver, 3 lion-headed feathered-winged daemon princes and lots of screamers and flamers) and imperial guard units, the latter of which will be heavily converted, with lots of highly individual character models; making a sort-of fallen =][= lord and retinue... though that's in the future...

For now I received 18 chosen from the DV box (to add to the actual box I'd like to get by years' end), forming a good core to the army; 24 'chosen' (likely to be converted and used as standard marines), 1 lord. 1 helbrute and 20 cultists (to add to the considerable fallen guard models and bitz I already have - always fun to model!) looking forward to trying this army out, and experimenting with converting the chosen into different poses and equipment.

Also on the agenda is finishing off the Howling Griffons and (likely when the marine codex is re-released in hard-back) the Angels of Censure... though I wouldnt hold my breath if I were you!

the tyrant guard are coming along nicely.

this is actually a slightly older pic, and theyre almost done - all thats left now is the imperial guardsman and the eyes/teeth. ill take more pics once theyre done.

ive started work on the rippers and have made 6 bases so far, ready for basing and highlighting the armour

WIP

Here's a quick post, just showing you that I'm still working on this army. I've started painting up the tyrant guard:

and am converting some older warriors and gaunts that I'm recycling from my older (pink) tyranid army - where available I'm repalcing parts with new unpainted ones (arms, heads mostly) and will be priming them soon. im hoping to finish off work on the tyrant guard over the weekend

Prime time

I received the parts I ordered for the Prime yesterday, and started work on work on him today.

I cut down the hive tyrant legs (reducing the size of the ankles and shortening the thighs) and scratch-built a bug-like abdomen to match those of the other beasties I've converted. the abdomen still needs the addition of armour-plates on the top and work done to the tail tip.

I'm looking forward to starting work on the thorax - I'm imagining a larger bulkier version of a warrior, with the head nested inside a hollow surrounded by plates. We'll see how that works out!

also, to anyone interested in the abdomen's basis, it's just made from 7 layers of plasticard (not sure if its 1.5 or 2mm) roughly carved into shape:

Vorropohaiah's musings

Not so much a modelling post, but rather an introspective on the hobby in general.

I'm 29 years old now and first got in the hobby with my fried Paul in the summer of 93 ('twas a good year, Jurassic Park and the Nightmare Before Christmas came out that year; two films that, alongside my introduction to GW that same year, had a large impact on my life), at the tender age of 9 and 360-ish days. My first glimpse of the hobby was a blood bowl and 40k (2nd ed) flyer with the old-style egg-shaped blood angel and ork dreads. I was instantly hooked!

From there it was a solid 5-6 years of gaming, primarily 40k, though dabbling in Necromunda, BFG, epic and Warhammer quest, before the onset of 4th edition saw me largely leave the hobby, due largely to my regular group disbanding after the closing-down of our haunt ( a great indie-store that I basically grew up in and spent most of my days skiving school it to paint and game...). It was then that I became interested in world-building and, perhaps naturally, I moved on from wargaming into roleplaying (though never grew too distant form the hobby, keeping up to date with new releases and the general goings on in my areas of interest).

Though I was a decent painter (I was never very good at gaming and spent most of my hobby time converting, reading fluff and painting, in that order), I became obsessed with worldbuilding and have spent the better part of the last 7-years of my life creating (and getting ever-so-steadily farther away from finishing) my conworld of Elyden, which also has a blog: http://vorropohaiah.blogspot.com/. Over the months i tended to concentrate more on the worldbuilding aspects - cartography, history, conlangs - rather than writing fiction, and that's where I decided I needed a break.

This is where my obsessive personality comes into play. I find it very difficult to multitask, in that I can't spend my free time on different hobbies. i tend to obsess over one thing for a period of time (ranging from months to years), before burning out and naturally moving onto some other long-neglected area of interest. I find myself moving from conworlding to hobbying again, and the transition took little more than 2-weeks.

What does this mean? I have lots of ideas, least important is the continuation of my tyranids. I hope to finish off the Howling Griffon squad that features earlier on. I hope to finish off a nurgle warband composed of ransom converted models. I want to carry on converting individual chaos 'guard. And I hope to start work on random retinue-ish models, which will allow my to exercise my converting skills. I envisage lots of strange quasi-imperial characters and roguish figures coming to light over the coming months - inqusitiors, rogue traders, strange xenos beasties, and, my favourites... worshippers of chaos. And the number of plastic models have greatly increased in the years I've been AWOL.

Well, watch this space and see if this hyperbole actually leads to anything...

So the converting is pretty much done on the tyrant guard (just need to fill in some gaps on the hapless guardsman (tm) and they're ready to undercoat, just after i buy some spray). I'm going to try a slightly less quick and easy painting approach on these (largely because they're bigger models than the gaunts, but also because i want to try make them a bit more complex - as they are now, the painted models are just drybrushed, with proper painting on the armour plates and flesh/eyes).

It's been a while since I've touched any GS, though I'm pretty pleased with the carapace - relatively smooth and will look pretty seamless once its painted black. I could have done a better job on the weird part above the head, which is one of those things that comes about through interesting shapes done with the sculpting tool that in hindsight I should have worked on. As it is that area looks too random and unfinished. I'll try add something to it before i prime them (hopefully over the next few days).

I just ordered a tervigon, 3 boxes of warriors, tyrant and some gaunts as well as parts to start converting a prime and 4 hive guard (all of which I'm really looking forward to converting...). I also got some magnets to magnetise the gaunt weapons - fleshborers for tervigon spawned beasties, and devourers for the others, interchangeable; and I hope to be able to remove the scything talons from the carnifexes without damaging the paint-job, so I can magnetise them to swap between devourers and talons. Here's some random pics of the models so far:

and a group shot:

tyrant guard... or warriors... or lictors

so here's some WIP shots of the tryant guard im working on. theyre based on the ubiquitous tyranid warriors (they are to me at least - love em! if the rules for them werent such dross id have an all warrior army, but thats a rant for another day).

they use carnifex crushing claw arms for the main limbs, with the addition of spare carnifex carapaces to bulk them out and make them look tougher. the claws are monstrous creature rending claws, the arms of which were used as the base for the secondary limbs, which in turn use warrior scything talons. this makes both pairs of arms larger than those on normal warriors. the legs are unconverted for now (might bulk them out, not sure. i quite like the top-havy look tbh). the abdomen is made from spare crushing claw claws (much like the zoanthropes, leading me to think that this hive fleets' variant warriors have that sort of abdomen (so expect lictors and hive guard to have similar tails, should i make them).

here's a close up of the claws, both sides. the ones with lots of GS on them show the underside. im thinking of painting them in the normal blue/black of the rest of the fleet, though blending the blue into black on the forearms, sort of softer carapace giving way to hrder, or just painting them black, to convey the thicker armour. possibly the latter (easier to do, as well).

as theyre converted model im free to use them for a variety of roles, most obvious being tyrant guard (meaning ill need to get me a tyrant!) though at a stretch i can also use them as normal warriors with talons/claws, or maybe even as counts as lictors (maybe a stretch, but i think the idea of these hulking things skulking around enemy territory is pretty cool).

im hoping to finish off the GS by the end of the week. I still need to finish the carapace (whats visible behind their heads is just a skeleton so the proper sculpting has something solid to adhere to), the arms and the waists, and possibly bulk out the legs in some way.

let me know what you think

'well, I'm back,'

as a mr. Gamgee once said.

Impossible, you might say, he's been gone for far too long!

he's back? IMPOSSIBRU!

After a long absence (real life, other commitments, burnout, you know) I think im back. that's the plan at least. got some more tyranid conversions on the go (tyrant guard made from warriors, carnifex carapaces and lots of GS), an entire tzeentch daemon army (my first army in a long time), random traitor guard (i just love making traitor guard models), chaos marines (those chosen from dark vengeance sure are nice) and a few other bitz and bobs (lets forget the 12" marine thing, shall we... getting the parts together for that was a nightmare).

Spurred on by the release of 6th 40k (not sure what to think of the rules to be honest. i think their intentions were good, though the execution is a bit meh. random charge is fine. new rapid fire weapons rules are a huge improvement over the old rules (perhaps too good). though the new meta seems to favour shooting far above assaulting/combat. ill see soon enough i guess.

expect picturey updates over the next few days, including C.I.P (conversion in progress) tyrant guard and P.I.P (painting in progress) traitor guard