XXII. Swordmaster

"There may be a hundred stances and sword positions, but you win with just one"

~Ancient proverb

Not all sons and daughters of Knight Households go on to inherit one of those machines of war. Many a younger son is forced to make his own way and find his own fortune. Some become scholars, some become priests of the Omnissiah; but others, lacking a Knight to be master of, become warriors of a different sort.

XIX. Guards, guards!

I seem to have a problem actually finishing miniatures at the moment. Very good at starting new ones, but not very good at finishing ones I've started.

This mini was something of a test. He's one of the foot soldiers of my Knight Household. Converted from a Solar Auxilia rifleman, I wanted to create a fusion of the deiselpunk style of the Solar Auxilia and the Gothic design of Imperial Knights. I'm very happy with the way he's worked out so I'll be making some more to create a small squad.

The foot soldiers of the Household are equipped with armour supplied by their Mechanicum allies and made from salvaged Solar Auxilia suits. Each man goes into battle with the 'Litany of Striving' fastened to their armour, a invocation of the power of the Omnissiah. This man wears a 'virtutis' on his right shoulder, a large medallion awarded for bravery in battle.

XVIII Onward!

It's been a whole month with no news, but I've not been totally idle. I've started painting a couple of minis but, so far, finished neither.

Duke Ko is coming along nicely. I'm delighted with how he manages to look both regal and creepy. I've also started work on my second 'Art Scale' Iron Hand.

XVI. Building in Iron

I did some work on building Iron Hand number two today. He's more or less finished and ready to paint, but I'll probably set him aside for a while. I'm increasingly finding that if I come back to a mini after a break from it, I can spot how it needs to be improved.

XV. Super Creeps

Everyone has gone a little Mechanicum/Mechanicus crazy, including me ... and I haven't even bought the new kits yet. The last couple of days has seen a 100 percent increase in the number of Murder Servitors I have built. I can now boast a squad of two,

Meanwhile, work continues on my second Iron Hand astartes. The legs have been extended and I've finished the torso.

The next step will be to finish the legs by adding the armour plates to cover the pteruges.

XII. Auto-clade

This is a busy time at work and I'm not getting as much hobby time as I'd like. My first Astartes is coming along though. I'm going to try a big push this weekend to get him finished.

As always though, a big reason he's taking time to complete is my total inability to stick to one job at a time. I've been distracted working on a couple of other miniatures.

The first is a Murder Servitor. These appear in the third Horus Heresy rule book from Forge World and are described as skull faced and armed with crude cutting and stabbing weapons. I kit-bashed this creature from a Dark Eldar Wrack with a head made from a servo skull.

The second is a Cydonian Sister, one of the tech-adept assassins of the Mechanicum. More Dark Eldar bits, a Fantasy Dark Elf witch and a head made from half a servo skull, half a sister of slaughter head and a bit of green stuff to blend it all together.

X The Colour of Iron

I know some people like to see work in progress photos, so here is the Astartes in his current form. All dark and grubby and awaiting ... well pretty much everything.

I've developed a painting style which could best be summed up as, slapping it on and hoping for the best. Like my first attempt at an Iron Hand Astartes, I'm avoiding painting him black. I'd rather suggest black using shades of slate grey. This time I've added some brown in some of the recesses to add interest and warm him up a little. This Iron Hand is going a bit rusty, I think.

A long way still to go to finish him.

IX. Wall of Iron

The Astartes terrify me. Each is a colossus of ceramite and iron. Each is a glowering, melancholic presence on the ship ... and I fear, that since that terrible time I am forbidden to mention, each is slowly loosing his mind.

~J

The build of my first art-scale marine is pretty much complete and he's ready for some paint.

Since I'm aiming for the Iron Hands after the death of their primarch, I want them to look slightly unhinged and as much a danger to their allies as to their foes. This first Astartes has a chain, ending in a cruel hook hanging from his belt, next to the skull of an executed traitor. Oaths of moment are nailed to the armour of his left leg.

I was wary of taking these element too far and perhaps making him look like a traitor, rather than a loyalist who's loosing his marbles. Maybe with the next one I'll push it a but further.

VIII. Building on a Theme

When I first decided that the Horus Heresy was where my interest lay, I was faced with the problem of having to decide what the ordinary men and women of that time looked like. The release of Forge World's Solar Auxilia has been an absolute godsend in this regard and they have really helped me cement my ideas. I see many people online describing them as having a 'steampunk' look but to me they are definitely more 'deiselpunk'.

It's a slight distinction perhaps to some people and I think often anything with a retro look gets lumped in with 'steampunk', but to my mind the difference in clear. The Solar Auxilia would not have looked out of place in an episode of the old 1930s Flash Gordon. So, out with the 41st Millennium gothic medievalism and in with the Art Deco retro-futurism. Think Flash Gordon and Metropolis with an injection of the grimdark.

Someone on Dakka suggested that I might want to use cataphracti pattern terminator legs to build art scale marines. They were spot on. The cataphractii legs have that wonderful cog pattern running around the soles of their feet which fit perfectly with the Iron Hands. This is where I'm at;

What started as an experiment, seems to be working beautifully. I've hopefully managed to build a marine with the bulk, height and power I was after.

The Quartermaster is getting a bit of a make over too, to fit better with the deiselpunk aesthetic. I've lost track of how many months I've been working on this one miniature, but I want to get him perfect to be the benchmark for everything else I go on to create. Gone are the medieval, ruffled sleeves and the sword (which I was never happy with) is being replaced with an Art Deco looking laspistol. I'm also thinking of trying to remove the purity seal from his waist. Is it just too 40k looking? I don't know; some of Forge World's Horus Heresy miniatures do have what look like purity seals modeled onto them so perhaps I can get away with it.

Thanks for reading and a Very Merry Christmas.

V. The Iron Hand

My first Astartes and a test of the paint scheme. I'm trying to avoid just painting the Iron Hands black. Instead I want to suggest black using a dark, slightly slate blue, grey. It just looks better I think and also gives the painting more depth.

III. The Quartermaster

Sometimes, when I'm kitbashing, I have a definite idea what I'm trying to make but often I just playing around with no idea. There are those wonderful, organic kitbashes where everything just seems to work and then you sit back and try to work out what it is you've actually made. This was one of those cases. A while ago I made this chap;

Then he sat in a drawer ...

Now he's finally starting to get some paint and an idea is forming about who he is. He's still a long way from finished. I'm calling him the Quartermaster, though I don't have an actual name for him yet. He is the one who keeps the weapons and equipment of the ship's crew and he cannot resist tinkering with them, like a far future version of Q from the Bond movies.

Neither FW or GW make rules for spaceship crews and I doubt they ever will, so I'm going to use the Inquisition rules for my crew. The Inquisition is perfect in that it allows me to have a collection of the weird and wonderful that still feels human, far more so than any other published codex. With the Quartermaster I realised I could get a (counts as) Jokaero into the crew. Jokaero's are physically weak but can shoot powerful weapons so the Quartermaster is an old man and his weaponised servo skull provides a rational for his ability to shoot.

II. Work is in Progress

There is more to life than space marines. One of the things I love about the Heresy era is the way that each fleet is a real community. Astartes, Imperial Army, emmisaries of the Mechanicum and the ship's crew all live and work together. So, having blown all my money on massive, leather bound books, I decided to begin on some crew ... while I wait for the Iron Hands to muster.

Lycia Jesh is the youngest, but perhaps most talented astropath aboard the Euripides.

Sooner or later, anyone who likes to convert GW miniatures must make something out of a cairn wraith. It almost feels like a rite of passage. How to make something both interesting and original out of a miniature which has been done so many time before? Well, this is my attempt. I'll write up some background on young Lycia when she's finished.