Night Lords Kharybis and Dreadclaw, Word Bearers troops and Scoria works in progress for multiple Horus Heresy projects

Busy couple of weeks and finally got my Night Lords forge world drop pods in the mail so I was keen as beans to get these at least built this week and base coated. Also while I was waiting with baited breath for them to arrive I was working on some more dark channeled Word Bearers troops because why not!

So the Kharybis and Dread claw are pretty challenging to assemble but a real pain to paint. The multiple legs, fins and spikes make for a real paint to try and get smooth total coverage on all the panels in 1,2,3 or in my case 4 passes............

My Word Bearers desperately needed more bodies after putting together and painting all those tanks last time, so I cranked out some more conversions based off the dark vengeance and betrayal at calth boxes.

And to round it all off I got a little bit more work done on Anacharis Scoria, woo!

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Converted Night Lords Breacher Squad and Caestus Assault Ram Part 1

Another month another project for my Night Lords 30k army. This month I am attempting to paint up a 10 man breacher squad and their spiffy punch a hole right in your ships side Caestus assault ram. As my forces theme is a loyalist faction of post Istvaan renegades with a space based raiding/corsair fleet I'm reflecting this with lots of boarding or orbital assault units and the Ram is right at the top of the list for awesome tied with the Kharybis Claw. So onto the converting!

 I started off with the basic conversions, so breacher torsos and then Night Lord terror squad helms, this is simple enough and will fit in with the rest of my infantry but I wanted to spruce up the coolest part of a breacher and that is the boarding shields. I raided my bits box for hands, feat, skulls on hooks/chains/and dangley bits. I also chopped up some smaller jewellery chains and stole a few spikes from the chaos marines kit. Chainglaive for the champion is from anvil industries this time instead of my usual custom job.

Time to prime and shade

 So priming and shading are the same airbrush recipe as before, black primer, white highlights from above and then 2 coats of Vallejo blue .004. I had a 3rd party drop pod lying around as well so used the time to give that a hit as well.

 

 Once the priming and shading is done its time to give it a quick seal with some kylon flat matt sealant, this is especially important with the Ram as I will have to handle this model extensively to be able to paint it and the coat of varnish will provide a protective layer for the paint and stop it rubbing or peeling when I handle it.  

 I use warplock bronze as the base for the metal trims and then hit it with a wash of nuln oil. you can see the difference here in this picture between the base colour and it washed. I also do the start of the base here as well as it helps me get a better feel for the scheme on the models as I am painting them and brings out the colours

 So far I have only done all the gold trims and the start of the death masks for the terror squad helmets but I think its coming together well. Hopefully I can punch the squad and maybe even the Ram as well before the end of the month, but that will have to be another update. As always any questions just leave a comment and thanks for reading!

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Calth Terminator Lord and Chainglaives Part 2

Welcome to the next step on my loyalist Night lords 30k army built mainly from the flexible Betrayal At Calth boxed set. My previous article for the terminators and terminator Praetor was about making the chainglaives that are the signature weapon of the Night Lords, this time lets get into painting them. I have yet to finish basing this unit but I am waiting until I get my Night Lords decals from Forgeworld, then I can finish them off and seal with some matt varnish all in one hit.
Please note this is a Loyalist Night lords force so it is far more clean and bright then most of the traitor forces seen, this is a deliberate direction and theme for the army.

Step 1: Undercoated and completed the shading of the base colours with an airbrush as detailed here

Step 2:  Paint all the trims and details in a bronze gold colour

 Step 3: Paint all the weapon and chain details in silver and then wash the gold and silver parts with nuln oil wash, Also start painting the power weapons, powerfists, chainfist teeth and Chainblade/Praetor paragon blade-chainglaive with a dark green and then highlighted with a light green on the tips.

 Step 4: Drybrush leadbelcher silver onto all the gold trims too highlight it and give it a more worn look. Paint the lapels and red areas with khorne red, then hit it with a red wash and then highlighted with a lighter red. This shot also shows the custom Combi Plasma Bolters I kitbashed out of the Calth set. Let me know in the comments if you want a quick guide on how to do them.

 Step 5: Lightning and Clean up stage. Lightning is done by a 4 step process of gradually lighter shades of blue and then highlighted where the forks break or hit with a dot of bright white.

 Step 6: Almost done now just do decals and bases to your own taste!

Night Lords 30k Painting Fliers WIP Part 1

With a rapidly upcoming 3000point 30k event on the horizon I need to desperately try and finish off a large chunk of units for my Heresy army. My Night Lords 30k army is built around the theme of them being a strike force deployed to the galaxies fringes during the Istvann purge and betrayal, led by a Terran veteran Praetor from the original founding of the legion their loyalties lay more with the Emperor than with the increasingly insane Curze. Upon returning to the greater crusade space and learning of the betrayal of Horus they are turned into a marauding force shadowing the traitor fleets throughout the galaxy and preying on the isolated and vulnerable rearguard.

The style and theme is a bit more clean and fresh then most of the other traitor Night Lords that are floating around. Force layout wise I wanted a highly mobile air/space based army, with lots of units that can be used in boarding actions and quick insertion on ground targets while maintaining air superiority, so lots of fliers, infiltrating terror squads and the odd Caestus Assault Ram because I love that hulking monster of a model and the thought of smashing into ships and tanks like a madman is awesome.

So painting! I followed the same recipe I used for my infantry units on these vehicles. Airbrushed Black undercoat/base, then a highlight with airbrush white on raised areas or parts you want to outline or make pop and then 2 coats of Vallejo Model Air Blue 71.004.

I only got 1 coat of blue done on these 3 fliers because I ran out of paint! more has been ordered and once it arrives I will do the 2nd coat and touch ups. I cant stress how important it is to do the 1st coat and let it dry overnight and come back the next day to do the 2nd coat of blue. You always pick up all the mistakes and parts missed in the 1st coat and once the paint fully dries you can give it a hit of matt varnish to protect the base coat.

Warrior Lodge Opening day, New Club For North Brisbane

So while stuck here in Australia while the Heresy weekender was happening I attended and helped to run a new club here in sunny North Brisbane http://warriorlodge.blogspot.com.au/  or found on the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheWarriorLodge/

Isaac and Isy have done a huge job organising and running things for this club and all in the name of rolling dice with cool dudes in a chilled environment. Events are already planned for the rest of the year including two 30k doubles events and some 40k ITC events as well!

Here is some pics from the day, we can run 10 tables at a time with full terrain and FAT Mats for each and enough styles to cater for anything played on all popular systems including Xwing, Hordes, 30k, 40k and the Fantasy range and soon some fully decked out Mordheim tables

My Night Lords got a tad beaten up by some nasty firedrakes on the day but was great playing at the new local!

.

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Calth Terminator Lord and Chainglaives

I have had the Betrayal at Calth Terminator Lord sitting half assembled on my bench for a while now, silently judging me for not completing him while I work on other stuff. So today I decided to finish him off as well as the second lot of five Calth Terminators I had spare as well. I am upgrading all the characters/Sargeants in my force chainglaives because they look cool and are ok on the table top as well, who doesn't love the odd rending attack!



This is just before base coating and shading, I chucked on a spare Volkite charger because they are all through my terror squads and heaps of fun, and then just carved away the chainfist on his left hand and made a Chainglaive out of tooth pick, spike off a random chaos bit, and a chainsword blade from a chaos space marine. I did the same with the terminator Sergeant's weapon as well. I also chucked on some parts from the 40k Chaos termies sprues on the unit to fill them out with the weapons I wanted.



All primed and shaded and ready to be painted now! Time off over the Xmas break will be well spent I think



Got my Sevatar almost complete now as well, just the scenic base to go. Merry Xmas and happy new year!

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Terminators, Raptors and Sevatar

My current Night Lords project focus is on filling out some of the fun slots of the army and also the most fun to paint. Using the same base coat painting technique used on the tactical marines I developed I started filling in details on a squad of Raptors, Terminators, a Contemptor and even the man Sevatar himself. These are all a work in progress, only about 50% completed



Contemptor and Raptors still in the very basic stages of painting. The Raptors are covered in little details and will take a fair amount of time just to fill in each one, very cool.


Sevatar is chugging along, only about half way done, this is a really fun model to paint. Have left him off his scenic bases for the moment, will magnetise them soon.

Night Lords, Zone Mortalis and getting stuck in a doorway

So I had the pleasure of playing on a really sweet Zone Mortalis board done by a fellow gamer Scott from 2nd Legion. This is only part of a huge ship based Zone Mortalis project Scott has done and is a dream to play on.


The Laser cut flooring and wall sections made with GW building walls/flooring terrain pieces really pop and make it feel more real. We played a 4 man Zone Mortalis with Night Lords and Space Wolves vs Alpha Legion and Word Bearers. Stars of the match were the Gal Vorbak murdering everything and my Contemptor Dread getting stuck in a door on a difficult terrain test because he was too fat and being immobilized all match!


For anyone stepping into 30k and and the Horus Heresy for the first time Zone Mortalis provides a really good entry for game play. Small focused games 1000 points or under are quick and crazy affairs. Once you start chucking in some interesting scenarios from the red books and using the random effects and terrain modifiers it feels like old space hulk! It is also a really good way of running campaigns and forging a narrative which I think 30k really excels at and 40k is somewhat lacking in spirit at the moment.

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Learning to love lightning

So the one of the biggest things for me to learn with this project is lightning patterns on armour. After watching some videos and looking at the different ways other painters had implemented this I decided on a thick/stand out from the table top version. I wanted something that when I was playing it was easily seen and didn't require a up close high focus camera shot to be appreciated. After a few test runs at it I nailed it down to a 4 step/paint process which I can do batches of models with.



Fairly happy with the result I applied this to a few more models

Now to the whole tactical squad

Next on the list, Terminators!

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Basecoats and a Test Model

So now I have assembled the core of the Night Lords force from the Calth set its time to basecoat and get the first bits of shading done. After visiting a fellow gamers place and him giving me a whirl on his airbrush set up I was hooked and promptly went out and got an airbush myself. This project is my first go at utilising the airbrush for basing and shading an army. Primarily I wanted a darker more midnight Night lords armour colour than is usually seen, but at the same time I wanted to try and have some transition/shading.

I picked up a Vallejo Model Air starter paint set and it came with everything I am going to need for a couple of projects in the future as well. Base coat was of course black, once this had dried I did a 45degree spray of white on the top 15% of the model. This was a thin and selective coat which will give hopefully a smooth transition for the blue once it goes on top of the balck/white pieces. The blue used is Vallego 004 - Model Air Blue.

With this done it was time to try a test model and see if the overall feel of a darker Night Lords paint scheme actually works.
I think it turned out ok, now all I have to do is try and learn how to do lightning bolts on the armor..........time to watch some painting tutorials and thin my paints.

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Betrayal at Calth Converting and Starting an Army

Current work in progress project is a 30k Horus Heresy Night Lords army, looking to paint up and convert a flexible 2k force that I can change up to play on any given day. The group of guys I regularly play and hobby with are starting to get big into Zone Mortalis as well so hopefully I can get a board done up once the army is finished.

So to start with I picked up 2 Betrayal at Calth boxes, the Night Lords force will use up one box as the core of my army and the 2nd box will be canabalised for conversion and filling out the optional units. Whatever is left over will go towards the building blocks of a possibly World Eaters Zone Mortalis force!

So to start off lets get to the best part of the Calth boxes, the Contemptor Dreads! I saw bit of downplay of these models pre release due to the static nature of the pose, but as any converter knows a few quick cuts in the joints here and there and its an easy fix. I also wanted to change the helm on one and was able to cut up a Bloodthirster of Khorne's arm guard for a easy skull helm.


I will magnetise the arms eventually but waiting on a new set of slightly larger magnets to arrive. Next was too Night Lord the models up a bit, a few chains, skulls, etc.


With some Night Lords esc additions to the Dreads I also made some Chainglaives for the unit champions as well as a head and weapon swap on the Chaplain so I can use him as any of the other HQs choices as needed.