Cerastus Knight Atrapos finally done...... well, mostly done.

For once I have actually finished a project! I got this sexy Atrapos last year and have been tinkering at it for a while now in between armies. I was using it mostly for my 30k forces but as I am winding it down into more 8th edition 40k.

The biggest tip of course is paint your Knights armor plates separate and please for the love of god make a big center piece model like this have a cool pose!!! I see way to many fantastic paint jobs on these big models ruined by the static and utterly boring poses, put some love into it! I themed this guy around a rogue or rebel Mechanicus force, so lots of suspicious runes and techno jargon symbols instead of the usual numbers and imperial symbols, anyway hope you like it!

Horus Heresy 30k Projects, Mechanicus and getting ready for Briscon : Dark Mechanicus Painting Part 4 + Painting a Knight Atrapos in 2 Days.

Briscon is quickly approaching and Operation Molten Storm 30k event with it! A narrative 2 day 30k event with 5 games played and lots of cool dudes looking to roll dice with other cool dudes. Army lists are 2.5k with a optional LOW slot............. shit........ I need a LOW....... a Dark Mechanicus LOW. I kind of have a half painted Chaos Knight, but that just doesn't feel mean enough, how about that Knight Atrapos I have sitting unpainted on my shelf with less than 5 days to go to the event and more than half my infantry still to be painted and based as well?

Challenge Accepted!

So I had a long weekend in hand and a goal, lets get to this. Army scheme is carried over with beaten brass/copper with slick black stripes or face plates to give it a slightly more sinister look. I also punched out the primary painting of some Vultarax as well.

 Vultarax with a quick glossy black stripe ties them to the theme of the rest of the army, I was slack and haven't set up my new airbrush kit since moving so just did the stripe with some tape and brushwork.

Hammered out the main paint job on a Triarios as well.

 Rebased and primarily finished the Usarax squad, just needs decals now

Same story on the Thallax squads, only decals to go!

 Hoplites are decal ready as well, they will be traveling in the Triarios

And a quick progress shot of the Mad Malagra Magos Coatl + his four themed Cyber-Occularis, also the Myrmidons are like 80% finished.

So now onto how I did the Atrapos in 2 days..... I literally woke up on the weekend before Briscon and just had to take him in the army nothing less would suffice. As with all Knight Painting you should start by base coating the skeleton and armor plates separately. This allows for a much tidier painting routine and better access and coverage for the model. I base coated him silver and then gave that silver a heavy black wash followed by a spot wash of brown to dirty him up some.

 The I hit all the panels with 2 coats of bronze to get an even coverage.

 The bronze plates then got a heavy wash of nuln oil and started on the green gun sections.

 Black stripe was done in the same manner as the Vultarax, painters tape and brush work.

 Weathering on the bronze is done with a old scruffy brush and some silver, I tried to make it look like the scrapes are legit wear and tear. Also started highlighting the green sections and glossed up the black stripes.

 Did up a nuclear winter themed base with a couple of ruins and skulls scattered around, no the most striking base but fits in with the rest of the force and was very quick to get done in a limited time frame!

So there you go, 2 days to the basics of a Knight Atrapos and most of my 2500 worth of Dark Mech! The Atrapos has a huge amount of detail yet to complete but this was all about getting him table top ready. Once the event is over I will have plenty on time to go back and flesh out the cabling, read panel detail and even the pilots seat of the interior. I will try and get some decent pics of the whole force together come event day and do a quick write up of the whole event plus pics galore of all the armies present!

Horus Heresy 30k Projects, Mechanicum and Raven Guard: Dark Mechanicum Legio Cybernetica Painting Part 3 and Part 1 Raven Guard

My love for killer robots is unending and as such I have got my hands on some new addition to my Dark Mechanicum 30k army.

I couldn't help myself and with a cheeky Myrmidon Destroyer unit for a solid addition to my Zone Mortalis lists, also a Macrotek with some servitors for cheap flamers and a Grav imploder.

The Knight Atrapos is a monster and will fit in very well as the lord of war choice for larger games and the new Vultarax Stratos-Automata is a vehicle hunting, haywire spitting drone of violence.

On the burner as well is an idea for a small 1250point 30k Raven Guard list. One of the biggest things I have learned about ZM games is mobility is king. The ability to forward deploy via infiltrate, scout or outflank is a massive game changer in ZM. Lots of first time players of ZM will bring very heavy slow units that only have a few counter but then due to the objective based nature of the majority of missions find themselves left out in no mans land or out of the action due to slow movement and the inability to quickly redeploy.

  

My idea for a Raven Guard paint scheme comes from the actual bird itself, the plumage of Ravens looks pure black from a distance but up close you will see they have a purple iridescent sheen to them. I wanted to try and replicate this somewhat on the actual marine models to try and move away from a pure black scheme. I achieved this by basing the model silver, then 2 coats of purple wash and then 2 coats of black wash. This was a quick and dirty test model but the effect did come through! with the static photos its hard to tell, but in reality on the table it looks black until a light source hits it and then the iridescent purple sheen shows through! Pretty happy and will now look at refining the process and mass producing a squad or two.

 

With Raven Guard you get all your infantry infiltrating and units such a vets or Mor Deythan squads coming with scout on top of that. In light I want to run a force with the theme of ship to ship infiltration or vacuum combat, think of this army as Raven Guard who conduct sabotage and infiltration of space stations, ships and the like in the cold vacuum of space but in a sneaky fashion. So lots of more heavy armour marks as opposed to the Mk4 to Mk6 you see most Raven Guard forces in and a heavy core of void hardened Mk3 for durability and space combat.

Brothers Revenge 2 ElectricBoogaLoo 30k Horus Heresy Doubles Event!

So Yesterday was the second 30k event for the Warrior Lodge club here in sunny Brisbane, Australia. We have been working hard to bring a friendly and chilled atmosphere to the 30k scene and to the club as a general rule

I finally finished painting my Scoria delivery system army and had a blast watching him eat all the HQs and elite units people would feed him only to find out his hunger for tears is infinite.

We had a great turn out with a good diversity of lists and all the painted armies on the painted terrain with FAT MATS was a nerds dream to see and play on. The work that has gone into furnishing the clubs gear has really paid off. If your in the area hit up TheWarriorLodge on facebook for times and days or just a chat. We play almost all the major systems out there not just Heresy.

Anyway here some of the pics I took on the day, I was going to get heaps more but I was hellishly sick the whole day and was just happy to be present and able to roll dice!

And here are some "action" shots of my teams games