Sprue Whispering

Paint finally hits the Sisters of Silence. The gun arms are separate and the heads will be completed separately. As with Nykona, I need to add a shade wash and highlight the panels back to black. More to come.

Posing and assembling of the Contemptor Dreadnought continues.   First lower leg is positioned. Hips attached to the lower leg. Second lower leg attached to the hips. You'll notice the rare earth magnet set into the top of the hips. Attaching the upper torso and arms. Still some weathering left to do, the skulls to clean up and finish the red jems. More to come.

With the build work completed, I made my first attempt at painting black armor. Using a Stynylres BLack primer, then a base coat of mixture of four (4) parts VGA Imperial Blue mixed with one (1) part VMA Black. Now on to laying in black wishes and shade it back down.

It has been a while since I did any work on my original Bjorn kit-bash. However since I had the airbrush out and some Burnt Umber ink ready, I decided to try doing "barrel burn" and I added some weathering into the knee joints, feet and shoulder and elbow recesses. Now I need to go back in and touch up the panels where I managed to over-shoot the ink.

I dusted off the Landraider today, after being a little inspired from a series of Caleb Wissenback videos on YouTube. I tried to copy his weathering on the interior of the Landraider. Great set of videos, Caleb makes it look so easy. So here is how my attempts turned out. Apologies on the lighting. I still have to get used to the adage of "Less is more", when it comes to weathering.

Just the backpacks and shoulder pads left for this one. More to come.

When building out a list you often build out the exact number of warriors to fit that list. Sometimes it means you don't build out round numbers, for example 10 or twenty men units. That being said, I find myself short three (3) Bloodclaws to make a round pack of twenty (20). So I quickly threw these together. More to come.

Further progress on the Sisters of Silence. All assembled cleaned and mounted on cork. Ready for cleaning and paint.  More to come.

Progress on Nykona continues. The rifle is slung and I have settled on a Mark III backpack. I am imagining Nykona is still wearing the cannibalized pieces of equipment from his retreat from Istvaan V.   More to come.

So Forgeworld has already made their own version of Nathaniel Garro. All round it is a brilliant model, but when I was looking at it I thought I could match the pose of the model using some bitz I had laying about. Digging around I came up with this, below, as my first attempt. Garro did not have a beard, according to the fluff, so I might have to switch that out. I used a Phobos pattern Bolter instead of the Tigrus pattern Bolter. So maybe I will switch these out. More to come.

Work continues. The Wolves are mostly completed. some edge highlighting on the armor and finishing of the remaining shoulder pauldrons. The mix of 40k Mk VI & Mk VII Grey Hunters chest pieces and boltguns mixed in with the 30k Mk IV armor worked out quite well.  

So it's been a while since I had done any work on the Land Raider. Given I had recently finished the Shield brothers, I thought it was about time to continue with the tank. Given I will need to finish assembling the Land Raider overall, the interior needs to be finished first, before I can button it up. This time around I put a few hours into finishing up the interior, tidying up the engine, multiple control panels, gun racks and a few other embellishments. Here is a close up on one of the control panels. One thing to note, the interior will likely not ever been seen in its entirety, so spending countless hours agonizing over the interior is a little bit of overkill.  One pro-tip when painting the inside of tanks: Paint the tank interior with a very light color. As the Land Raider has an assault ramp, chances are only a small portion of the interior will be seen only when the door is open. More to come.

More progress, the twenty man squad of Vlka Fenryka are almost done. Just have to finish up the eye lenses, shoulder pauldrons and backpacks. More to come.

For the second squad of Scouts I switched up the weapons, usually they would be armed with Scout Shotguns, but I don't really like the way they look. Given the calibre of a bolter, I have always been of the feeling that different shells (i.e. hellfire, stalker, inferno, kraken, banestrike, etc.) are more effective than shotguns. Taking that into account, here are the next five scouts. Again they still need cleaning up, trimming flash, barrels drilled and green stuff in the joins.  Scout Sergeant #2 Wolf Scout #5 Wolf Scout #6  Wolf Scout #7 with Mark VI helmet. Wolf Scout #8 with Mark IV helmet and targetter. More to come.

Today some close ups of the Wolf Scout sniper. I still have to clean up the flash, drill the barrels and green stuff the joins. The Veteran Scout Sergeant with combi weapon. Sniper #1 with Mark VI and targetter. Sniper #2 again with a bionic targetter. Sniper #3 with a more static pose and targetter.  Sniper #4 using a Mark IV helmet with built-in targetter. More to come.

No force, be it 40k or 30k, is complete without a pack or scouts. They help when using the wolves as allies, or just camping in cover being pains in the ass. The only issue with Games Workshop Scout models is that they don't really appeal to me. Enter Anvil Industries and their Exo-Lord Black-Ops selection. A bit of cutting, filing and trimming, and two five man scout squads were created. More to come.

With the Horus Heresy Book 7 Inferno looming on the horizon, I thought it would be a good excuse to round out the forces of the Vlka Fenryka. As you know, I have been amassing a small force of Vlka Fenryka and a small squad of Sisters of Silence. But I thought I would stretch my hobby muscles further and well, I actually started working on their foes. The tragic traitors, The Thousand Sons. So I was trawling around and found a bunch on Thousand Sons alternates on Ebay. It took a while for them to turn up, but they finally arrived. Here is one I quickly mocked up. It was the first one that I plucked from the baggie. The legs are from the Betrayal at Calth box. More to come later.  

Guess what the cat dragged in.   Yup, no Vlka Fenryka force would be complete without a squad of Sisters of Silence, or Adeptus Sororitas (Sisters of Battle). Especially for when the Rout burns Prospero. So I grabbed a Box of Dream Forge Games Eisenkern PanzerJagers, added some WH40k SternGuard Bolters and Statuesque Minatures 28mm Female heads. And off I went.  More to come.

Again, it's always good to announce the finish of a project. Arjac's Shield-brothers are finished. Time to move onto their Landraider Crusader, it's been languishing too long waiting for rivets, emblems and a final paint job. Shield-brother #1 Shield-brother #2  Shield-brother #3  Shield-brother #4  Shield-brother #5  Hopefully an update on the Landraider soon?