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Good Reads 2015 Week 36 – Tanks, Titan, Beasts, and Monsters

Published by Joe B

Welcome back to another week of Good Reads. I’ve got a doozy for you this week with great posts on tanks, titans, beasts and monsters!

For the new here, the Good Reads posts are where I gather some of my favorite post from the week and share them with my readers. There are so many great hobbyiests out there posting great content that it can be easy to miss some of their amazing work – I know I keep finding new blogs every week!

So this is my attempt to gather a few that caught my eye and I wanted to share with all of you, so enjoy and click on through to check out their posts!

Predator Turrets by GunGrave

I love tanks, and when someone goes so far as magnetizing them for options, I am always impressed – it has always been way too much work for me. Well the GunGrave not only painted an amazing PredatorÂ for his Heresy Death Guard, but magnetized three different turrets to go along with it.

Iron Warrior by Apologist

The Apologist over on Death of a Rubrist has been making some great Iron Warrior his Heresy army as well. This one is hisÂ Iron Warriors CenturionÂ which he goes in depth on his background and reasons for betrayal.

Queen Bee by Tibbs Forge

Just in case you some how missed this amazing Knight Titan, Tibbs has done a recap post of his Queen Bee build. The model is full of subtle conversions and amazing paintwork.

Mountain King by Dave Garbe

Dave Garbe over at Wargaming Trade Craft finished his Mountain King a few weeks back, but apparently decided it needed to look even more spectacular. So this week he has shown us how he adds natural material to add details to his King.

Helbrute by Rory

Rory shows off another one of his Thousand Sons, this time a Helbrute from the Dark Vengence kit. He builds up a great contrast between the blues, purples, and metals throughout this monster.

Blood Angles Fire Raptor by Gothmog

The Fire Raptor is a really cool version of the Space Marine flyers and Gothmog over at Sepulchre of Heros has done a fantastic job on his Blood Angles Raptor.Â Not only are the colors crisp but the free hand work on the doors are fantastic.

The Beast by Wilhelm

For something a bit more creepy, how about The Beast by Wilhem over on Wilhel Miniatures? His awards at the Fang and Oslo are well deserved for this amazing piece of scary. Make sure you check out the rest of the pictures to see the surprise on the Beast’s back!

So that’s it for this week, as always I hope you enjoyed this weeks selection and if you feel I am missing out on an amazing blog post or two, hit up the comments below as I enjoy finding new creators.

If you enjoy this weeks Good Reads, help your fellow hobby bloggers out and share this post with your friends, just hit the ‘share’ links floating at the top of the screen!

Keep on painting,

JoeB

Mentor Legion Scout Squad WIP

Published by Joe B

As I mentioned in my last post when I finished myÂ Librarius squad, I plan to mix in ‘required’ painting with the fun projects. As the librarians were my fun conversion, I am working on finishing my Mentors Scout Squad as my required choice.

I had these guys nearly base coated a long while back and decided they would be a great unit to finally finish. While scout squads are not everybody’s cup of tea, I like the diverse look they bring to the Space Marine armies, especially since I tend to always put helmets on my Mentors (they are smart guys after all).

Unlike my other scout squad which was armed as snipers, this squad was built for close up action with half armed with close combat weapons and the other half with bolters. The idea was that I could combat-squad them into a ‘hold position and shot’ squad, and a ‘take out the soft targets’ squad.

As with the sniper squad, I am keeping the colors a bit more muted than my traditional Mentors, with Zandari Dust as the ‘white’ and doing less extreme highlights on the green and reds. This in part is to help differentiate them even more than their power armored brothers, but also figured that they would concern themselves a bit more with hiding as well.

With new codex, the scout auxiliary formation requires at least 3 squads of scouts or scout bikers. So in the short term I can break this group into two 5-man squads which gives me the minimum requirement. In the future I need to decide if I’m going to keep the smaller squad and give them a speeder, or add a third squad in the form of bikers. Has anyone had experience with either?

So that’s my progress so far, still up is highlighting the metals, painting lenses and base, and additional weathering. I haven’t decided if I’m going to add the Mentor’s eagle head yet as the transfers don’t have a small version for scouts so I might just add some sort of squad markings.

Let me know what you think in the comments below and keep on painting,

JoeB

Good Reads Week 35 2015

Published by Joe B

Welcome back to another week of Good Reads on the Broken Paintbrush, where I’ve gathered some great articles and inspirations from my blog feed. I hope you enjoy and check out each of the blogger’s works.

The Hunter by Jeff Vader of the Convertorum

First up is The Hunter by Jeff Vader over at the Convertorum. Its an amazing work of his imagination for anÂ alien warrior for his Inq28 games. He even goes into naming the Skadii and giving story to their alien society.

Carnival of Beast by NafNaf

NafNaf over at Objective Secured keeps knocking his Dark Eldar Carnival out of the park, and this time with his completed Beast Pack. With a mix of lions, monkeys, and parrots,Â it makes for a greatÂ riot of color and movement.

The rust turns to yellow by Greggles

Greggles from Feed the Nerd is passionately attempting to finish his Ork hoard for Nova Open. Between using crackle paste for the display boards, to painting 16+ vehicles yellow, and more troops to go, he has been a machine at cranking them out.

Tick Tock Man by Alex

Alex over at Lead Ballony took the free AoS model and turned it into a clock-work automa named the Tick Tock Man. Make you don’t miss his nursery rhyme for him as well, very dark and fitting.

Fabius Bile by Johnnya10

Having completing my own redo of this classic sculpt a few years back, I still have a soft spot for the Fabius. Johnnya10 over at Heresy and Heros has done a fantastic take on Fabius Bile. By shifting some of the colors and playing with some ideas he made his own mark on this classic.

Until next time, keep on painting and sharing the blog love with your fellow hobbyest.

Iron Warriors Sorcerer

Published by Joe B

Haven’t picked up the brush much this week, so I figured I would post another of my older models. Timing is fitting considering I just finished my Mentor Legion Librarians.

Another classic sculpt, this metal Chaos model painted up as Iron Warriors Sorcerer has been part of my collection for probably 15 years – crap that makes me feel old. Anyway, of all the four chaos deities,Â Tzeentch has always been my favorite both from a story and model perspective, so it was only fitting that the 14th Grand Company’s representative be of the Great Schemer’s ilk.

It also adds a great way to experiment with additional colors in an otherwise drab looking army. I mean, no one picks the Iron Warriors for an army based on the cool, vibrant paint scheme. While I have itched the color bug over the years with the multitude of other armies, I always come back to my original favorite.

Its also fun to come back to this classic sculpts as a reminder of how fantastic we have it now. Not only do we not need to worry about the whole piece falling apart when it dents our floors, but the details and poses have come so far in the last decade.

Have any of you ever broke out a classic and given it new life?

Mentor Legion Librarius

Published by Joe B

This weekend I finished my Mentor Legion Librarius built out of converted and kit-bashed models for each Librarian.

First up is Austu Jorimund, who is among the most aggressive of the Mentor Legion’s Librarians.

The model is a small conversion from the Dark Angles Master,Â Balthasar from the Dark Vengence set. A simple head swap, added psychic hood, and removal of the Dark Angles symbols.

The original model is such a fantastic pose that I didn’t want to change too much.

The very large sword was a challenge to paint the crackling yellow power weapon look, and I’m not completely happy with it.

The second Librarian,Â Inae Janykchim, is based off of the Assault on Black Reach Captain.

Both arms were swapped out and I built the staff from parts from the AdMech Iron Strider’s lance and a Chaos Knight’s mace. I believe the book on the back is from the amazing Flagellants kit.

The transfers were done using the Forge World Raptors sheet and painted over with the reds.

Robed space marines have just a cool look.

The third Librarian,Â Anv Shaia, is slated to accompany the assault marines and thus a jump pack was added.

The chest and back robes are from the plastic captain model and the sword was from the Librarian from the Dark Vengence kit. The wings were cut from a winged skull icon from the IG tanks (I think?).

The assault marine legs give him a nicely aggressive pose. I attempted to replicate the fiery look on the sword’s icons, but again, I’m not sure how well it came off.

The book is from the Chaos Sorcerer kit, but with all the gubins cut off. These robes were also fairly flat, and looked like a good place for another icon.

The flame holding hand was built from the pintel-mounted bolter arms with the palm carved back out and the flames were built up using milliput.

Now the family shot, you can see that my original Librarian, Echst Ralelerin, was also re-based to match the rest of the squad.

This was a really fun project and I am really happy how they turned out.

I’ve been planning out my next projects and I am going to use the kit-bash excitement to reward myself to finish my other projects, so next up will be a combat squad of Mentors tactical followed by my first attempt at INQ28 as a reward 🙂

Mentor Legion Librarius WIP

Published by Joe B

So life is getting back to the new normal again, started a new job, our house sale has closed, and we can start looking for a house to buy. In the mean time I took the inspiration left in my last update post and started building out a Librarius from the new Space Marine codex.

I already converted the Librarian from the Dark Vengeance kit, and while I considered buying the new models from GW, IÂ decided that it would be much more enjoyable to hack together my own from bits on hand.

First up was the Dark Angels Company Master,Â Balthasar in his striking robes and huge sword. Fairly straight forward on this guy as I just removed the DA insignia from the robes and gauntlets, replaced his head, and added a Psychic Hood from the archives of From the Warp. The head is from the Centurion kit but couldn’t tell you where the back ordainment came from.

Librarian number two was originally the Ultramarine captain from the Assault on Black Reach set. I didn’t like the front though, so I added a new chest piece and covered up the leg gaps with the new loin cloth. The staff was built up from a chain sword hand, the lance from the new AdMech walker, and a mace from the Chaos Knights. Each piece was drilled through and a long pin holds it all together. The left arm is just a bolter hand where I hope to make magical flames appear. A few extra bits and bobs complete the look and cover up some gaps.

And finally, number three is the most adventurous of the new librarians. I wanted one with a jump pack to join the assault marines I need to build next (to complete the demi-company). The body is from the plastic Captain model, assault marine legs, and the original arm from the DA librarian above. The extended hand is from the pintle mounted storm bolter with the palm carved out and more magical flames added.

I then started laying down the base paints to block out each area. Clearly lots of blue, as is fitting for librarians. As with my first librarian, I left the shoulder pads the Mentor green and white as well as the layers of robes. Accents were done with yellow and red which also match the rest of my army.

I then gave them a nice dirty wash. This was the Vallejo Dark Brown mixed with Airbrush Medium and Flow Aid.

I then went back through each and highlighted with the base color, which gets them to table-top ready – but a ways to go before completion.

Next step is to add additional highlights to each color, paint up the faces, and add decals/details to the armor and cloaks. The bases are also only base colored and washed. Still plenty to do, but having fun working on them.

Good Reads – 2015W29

Published by Joe B

Life is starting to settle back down, which means I have started catching up on my blog article back log. This week brings a great collection from around the interwebs for your viewing pleasure.

Inquisitor by Wilhelm

So lately I’ve been really digging the INQ28 world, not so much for the Blanchian scary/odd art, but for the crazy and awesome conversion people are using to make their war bands. Wilhelm is another new additionÂ to my personal blog roll and his recent update on his warband has some great work in it – I especially liked this Inquisitor.

Marble Tutorial by Apologist

Marble is one of those cool stone looks that really fits well with the Grim Dark, Gothic look, but is really hard to pull off. Apologist from Death of a Rubricist put together a nice tutorial for all of us to make our own marble additions. He even gets bonus points for writing in imperial data slate style!

Games Workshop Ultra Marine Transfer Sheet Review by Stahly

This last month has been a flurry of new releases that have had the community chatting loudly, but one release that seems to have been fairly quiet on was the XL Marine transfer sheets. Stahly over on Tale of Painters posted a nice review of the Ultramarines sheet, and while most of the sheets would be useless for my Mentors, there are a lot of create pieces in there for any marine player.

Foldio2 Review by Greggles

I recently was drawing up designs for a fold-able photo booth made of wood and metal hinges when I saw Greggle’s review of the Foldio2. It has all the right things: large enough to fit his Stompa, folds into a compact square, and has lots of LED lighting. As soon as they start shipping the non-Kickstarter versions I will be picking one up.

Custom Bases by Rory

Rory has been building up his Thousand Sons army and decided to build some custom bases for his dust suites. The bases also help tell his story of the army raising up through the ground on an alien planet. Oh, and a he has a bonus look at one of the crazy detailed Gundum kits he built.

Jurassic Death World by Old School Gaming

Old School Gaming celebrated his birthday by creating a Jurassic themed Death World scenario. Between the idea of dinos eating your space marines or training them to eat the other guys, he put some great thought into this fun game.

Dwarf by Raffa

They guys at Massive Voodoo are some amazing artists, and when they do a tutorial it is well worth checking out their process. Raffa posted one a while back on this amazing dwarf warrior that has epic level of detailing. If nothing else, checkout how he did the shield.

Until next time, keep on blogging, hobbying, and creating awesome.

Tyranid Hormagaunts of Hive Fleet Behemoth

Published by Joe B

After finishing the Warriors brood, I realized that I didn’t have any pictures of the Tyranid Hormagaunts that so feverishly leap forward into the enemy.

Obviously this isn’t run as a single brood, but rather two smaller ones, but I just lumped them together for the pictures. The actual models make up a combination of an old army box and a pile of sprues that I had given my brother in law. He then mashed up as many bodies and arms as he could assemble from the old bits so some of theÂ Hormagaunts are actual Termigant bodies or Genestealer arms.

The difficulty with the leaping forward nature of the TyranidÂ Hormagaunts is that they tend to tip over at the slightest breeze. To prevent this as much as possible, we glued down layers of washer both under the base as well as on the top of some of them. The ones on top then got covered with thick layers of sand to hide them. Overall this made the models much more stable.

You may have noticed that some of theÂ Hormagaunts are a bit darker than the others, this was some of the evolution of the painting progress and some of the models that my brother in law actually finished before I helped out with the rest.

So as much as I would love to build out the Tyranid Swarm boxÂ [on Amazon] which comes with another 40 Hormagaunts, 40 Termagants, one Carnifex, 4 Ripper Swarms, and 10 Gargoyles(!) for the sheer joy covering the table, I don’t think I could stand painting that many more Gaunts! When ever GW puts out these big box sets they kill my hobby budget because they are such a great deal. The swarm box is only $160 on Amazon but includes $200+ of models!

Perhaps at some point these guys will have a few dozen more brood-mates, but until then the TyranidÂ Hormagaunts will hunt on their own.

Joe B.

Talos Conversion by NafNaf on Objective Secured

Good Reads 2015 W28

Published by Joe B

And I’m back! Well at least enough to pull a Good Reads together for you. Life is still a bit crazy, but I have three interviews lined up this week and two offers already in hand, so the next job thing is looking good.

Now onto some Good Reads! Some of these are a few weeks back, just working through some back log!

Iron Warriors Kill Team by krautscientist

I’ve only recently started following Kraut Scientist, but man he has some inspirational kit bashes. Seeing as the Iron Warriors were my first 40k army back in 3rd edition, I couldn’t help but love Kraut’s take on a small kill team.

His posts are also epic stories of his thoughts, work in progress, and finally some painted minis.

Orrus Spyrer by Adam on Sprue Grey

With the improvements in cameras, digital editing software, and light-boxes we are able to see our minis in very high detail – much more detail than with our own eyes. This inspired Adam over on Sprue Grey to write a post on his struggles and breakthroughs on painting viewed by the camera. He gets very honest with himself as well and how we can all learn to improve our painting.

Arch Magos by The GunGrave from A Guardsmen Guide to Glory

Even with all the cool Mechanicus plastics GW put out, Forge World still has aÂ crazy Â cool catalog. The GunGrave from A Guardsmen Guide to Glory painted up the Arch Magos brilliantly. He also takes some great pictures of the creepy underside of his armor – and man did the sculptor go to town.

Iron Snakes Contemptor by M4cr0 on Old School Gaming

M4cro was featured a few months back with his Iron Snakes squad, a very much classical Greek inspired army. He has now finished his Contemptor Dreadnought and it is a thing of beauty. From the plasma glow to the cool Scibor base decoration, it is something well worth checking out.

Talos Conversion by NafNaf on Objective Secured

When GW redid the Dark Eldar line, the new Talos was a huge improvement over the old metal monster. The creepiness and character was very clear. NafNaf from Objective Secured decided to go even further and create his own creepy monsters for his carnival. It appears that many bits were tortured by the flesh artists in the making of this rocket shod, buzz-saw handed, monster.

That’s it for this week. As always, I encourage you to drop by their sites and give them a follow. Also, if you think I’m missing out on some amazing hobby blogs, drop the links below – again its crazy that I just recentlyÂ found Kraut Scientist!

Cool Tools: Silicon Shapers – Very Helpful for Sculpting

Published by Joe B

For this week’s cool tool, I’m switching to sculpting. First up, I am very much an amateur in terms of sculpting with most of my green stuff work limited to filling in gaps and details to bits bashed models.

The biggest issue I had with using green stuff was that it stuck to everything but the actual model. I tried wetting my tools, using vasoline, even used super glue to fix the GS to the plastic, but nothing was nearly as helpful as when I found silicon shapers.

These fantastic little tools are basically paint brushes with a silicon heads in various shapes. For anyone who has used silicon baking dishes, you know how fantastic of a material it is for non-stick properties.

I use them in conjunction with the normal metal sculpting tools to push the green stuff into rough form. Since they don’t stick at all to the green stuff they are great at shoving the clay into crevices that I normally struggled with in the past.

The different shapes also come in handy for creating softer textures than the metal tools would easily provide such as using the chisel silicon shaper for the folds in cloth and the pointed version for pock marks.

The most intense project I used it on was my custom Obliterator a few years back that was about 90% green/grey stuff. At that time I only had a single, large shaper that I picked up on a whim but it was super helpful for shaping the feet and pressing the folds into the body.

Later on I picked up a couple of smaller silicon shapers that I used for my Traitor Guard Veteran squad. While not nearly as much green stuff work, the details needed to be much softer such as the snake-like tail of the heavy bolter mutant.

If you do any sculpting work, even if it is just to add a few small detail, I recommend picking up a set of silicon shapers. Amazon has a set of the firm shapersÂ for $25 which is a great size for detail work and make sure you get a firm or extra firm as the softer ones wouldn’t hold up to the stiff green stuff.

Happy Sculpting.

-Joe B.

Traitor Guard Veteran Squad

Published by Joe B

Next up in my picture re-take experience is my Traitor Guard Veteran Squad. I really wanted to make these guys stand out a bit from the standard traitors so I added a number of extra bits, conversions, and mutations to the group.

The bits includes an array of parts from the Cadian and Catachan Imperial Guard kits, the ever wonderful Flagellant kit, and Chaos Marauders. I also used a good deal of Green Stuff to add mutations including a complete new arm to hold one of the Catachan blades.

Some of the conversions were subtle, such as the extra tentacle on the first snipers trigger finger while others were a bit crazier, such as the eye-stalk head.

Ever squad of note needs a fancy banner to guide them and encourage the troops. While not a real upgrade for veteran squads, it looks so darn cool I had to find a place for it somewhere. His sword army I actually think comes from the Zombie box, so now I’m up to 5 product lines.

For the heavy weapon team, I wanted to go with more of a large mutant in part because it works well with the stat line, and I could use extra bits that normally wouldn’t allow a full weapons team (such as those pesky legs). So a heavy bolter here, a snake-man there, and boom you have a heavy weapon mutant.

And since one heavy bolter isn’t enough, I decided that to lead my squad I would include a count-asÂ Sergeant Harker. So to bring the kit count up to 6, this heavy bolter is from the Chaos Space Marine box. I wanted to use the barrel chest from theÂ Marauders but the great coat look from the Cadian commander, so a bit a greenstuff, and his fancy coat turns into a toga-esque robe.

If you do any kind of conversions for traitor guard, or just creepy Imperial Agents, I highly recommend picking up a box of Flagellants [Amazon], for only $25 those bits go a crazy long way – and I haven’t even used the bodies for anything yet!

Iron Warriors Land Raider

Published by Joe B

For today’s showcase, I present my Iron Warriors Land Raider. A classic for any powered armored army, the Land Raider is beast of a tank considering its age in comparison to many of the other amazing Games Workshop kits.

I finished this model over six years ago now but wanted to post updated pictures since I have improved my photography skills over the years. Considering the number of engagements this guy has gone through, he is in remarkable shape with only a couple of the spikey bits breaking off.

Its also fun to look back on some of our older models and see where we have improved, but also where we may have lost some things. For example, the weathering on the tracks is a mess compared to some of my recent models, but the hazard stripes on the lascannons are in a place I would be timid about placing now.

This was also the time that I actually painted in the inside of the tanks – for what ever reason. To achieve this I didn’t glue to top of the Land Raider on until everything was nearly done. What a pain! While it is cool to have the interior details, personally I don’t open the doors often enough to even think about them and don’t find it is worth the headache.

The grid of screens is a neat bit though and I have seen it used for many other cool kit bashes.

I do think Games Workshop was somewhat lame for through a spikey bit sprue into the box and calling it aÂ Chaos kit so I hope at some point when they revamp the line they create an actual CSM version with all sorts of cool details, but then again they may go the Helbrute route and make it more flesh than metal and call it something crazy like DeathCrazyCan or some such.

Iron Within, Iron Without!

Joe B.