I am still here

Sorry for not posting for a while, been rather busy with personal matters but with Christmas out of the way I am now back and intending to make some progress with my collected armies.
I am currently in discussion with my gaming group about staging anothing warhammer world apocalypse battle in a few months and I am trying to sort out my plans for what I need to prioritise in terms of assembly and painting in order to have the best possible force for the battle.

I am going to be centering the force on the mechanicum, while I love the night lords I feel the mechanicum is the more rounded army and better suited to facing off against my standard 40k opposition.
I have been making some purchases in the last couple of months towards rounding out my forces, i have picked up a copy of the battle at calth boxed set which is a really impressive collection of models for the money and when I get round to it will serve as the basis of the Iron Warrior contingent I am planning to sort out. I have also purchased the following additions to the mechanicum army...
1 x magos dominus
4 x box of skitarii to serve as tech thralls (to give another 2 units of 20 models)
2 x thallax with multi-melta
2 x mars-colossus bombard

I am going to be building up the mechanicum in to three core components, the ordo reductor is what I am working on at the moment since the artillery it brings is an awesome addition to the army and it will allow me to sort out and repaint my medusa and basilisk as well for a massive surge in ranged firepower. The thallax were purchased with that in mind as they are the required troops for that force. I am then planning to have a legio cybernetica aspect featuring the castellax, thanatar and then some Vorax along with some tech thralls and tech priest auxilia.
The final aspect will be the core taghmata omnissiah force which will be continuing to be based around the tech thralls boosted to be as durable as possible.

While I have not achieved much in the way of painting I have managed to get some miniature assembly completed as shown in the pictures below.

So there is the mighty Perturabo as my second primarch and one who adds a very potent option to my force in terms of changed play style, 1st turn ability to roll for reserves is massive and the firepower he offers from his wrist cannon and orbital bombardment is very useful. I will be adding some tyrant siege terminators and a damocles command rhino to the iron warriors army to maximise the potential for the turn one precision alpha strike which should in theory compliment the resilient firebase offered by the mechanicum.
The Bombard is a wonderful model, one I have wanted for some time and one which was really nice and easy to put together, I feel in the metallic red candy coat that I have been using for the rest of the mechanicum force will look awesome on them.

So with that I will close out this entry but I aim to be posting again soon with some more progress, I am currently working on the first unit of tech priest auxilia, this one will be a reductor unit so they have tank hunters and they will be armed with five multi-meltas on the servo automata, the addition of the heavy firepower is always useful in balancing out the numbers of tech thralls. I am also working on the myrmidon destructors in order to bring them towards two complete units of three of them with volkite culverins and anoter three with irradiation engines. The ones officially armed with conversion beamers will be converted in to having graviton imploders, I also have another pack of myrmidons destructors to bring each unit up to four strong - these are possibly the most effective units within the mechanicum army and maximising their effectiveness will make the army as brutal as possible.

See you all soon for another update.

Knight - almost complete

So it has been some time since my last post, I have to admit I was not painting for some time but I have gotten back in to action and the knight is approaching completion. Here are some pictures of the current state of the model.

Still needs some work but I definitely think it is coming along, I am intending to add some snow and ice to the base - I have always wanted an army based up in something akin to the Stalingrad tone and the mechanicum feels like a perfect force this, laying waste to populated zones without caring about the collateral damage.

Mechanicum Knight - early view

So after applying the fifth layer of clear red I did a partial assembly of the knight and took some photo's which I thought I should share.
Still need to apply more coats of clear red and then do an dark oil paint layer to add dark edging to the armour plates before working on all of the trim, decals, detail work and the like so the knight is still a fair way from completion but I should be taking him along in this relatively early stage to a battle this weekend where my mechanicum will be allying with some blood angels against an Ork host featuring a stompa which could be something of an epic showdown.

 

For the weekend battle I will be making use of blu-tack to attach all of the armour plates to allow me to get a better idea of what the complete model will look like, but as it stands I think this guy is starting to look pretty intimidating and the gloosy red armour plates are working quite well at the moment. 

When I have been able to darken them up and clean up the trim the contrast will be a lot stronger and some decals and weathering effects should break up the two tone look of the model but for the time being I feel there is definitely potential there and that I am going in the right direction with him.

As you can see this is the knight warden variant which while technically not part of the mechanicum 30k list is the variant I love for the gatling cannon power fist combo which I feel is awesome, the 12 shot cannon offers enough firepower to worry all opponents and the thunderstrike gauntlet simply is cool and I cannot wait for the chance to pick up an enemy tank and throw it across the battle field - I know it is not the most powerful build but if has weapons which I really like which is the most important aspect.

I am assembling this model with a number of magnets to allow the shoulder pads and the gauntlet to be removed, since the shoulder pads come off the arm assemblies can also be detached which means eventually I can look to getting all of the other weapon options set up for him as well as making transportation a lot easier.

Triaros/Knight phase three

So continuing to progress with the Knight and Triaros, here are the latest photo's. I am currently up to four coats of clear red, still a ways to go but I think it is definitely coming along slowly.

 

I have taken some early pictures of the Triaros as I have to admit this is an excellent model to work on and as I have seen so far this colour scheme really works well on curved armour plates mainly because I am sure that the base coat does not layer on as consistently as it would otherwise be which gives the clear red coat a more varied tone which adds to the end effect.

Knight/Triaros part two

So I have been working on the model components today and I have applied two layers of thinned down tamiya clear red via my airbrush. The intent is to layer up a sequence of clear red coats gradually bringing the tone up through the colour density layer by layer.

So this is the early position of the model components, at the moment I feel the red is far too light and does not have the depth I am after, I think there are going to have to be a few more layers before it is even close to the next stage but this is defintiely a good start.
It is going to take a fair amount of time to get everything completed but it will be well worth it, I currently expect to need to apply something like a dozen thin coats of clear red to the components (there are 26 components currently on my painting table) before then colour density and depth and tone is what I am after but when it is done and I have also applied some oil paint and done some detail I hope to have a couple of really nice models ready for the tabletop especially since there is another apocalypse battle coming up in a couple of months which I would really like to have them ready for.

Knight/Triaros stage one

So I have started working on the knight and Triaros and as stated in the last post I am aiming to bring in a series posts which will be showing the process for painting the new mechanicum paint scheme. I will say ahead of time this paint scheme is nothing I have created myself, this is something I have pulled off from the Imperial armour modelling masterclass volume two which was utilised in the painting of the greater brass scorpion.
At the moment both models are in a pretty early stage but I think this is a good starting point.

 

So at this stage all I have done is prime the pieces in black via my airbrush, I have then given the edges a prime in vallejo model air bright bronze and then followed that up on the main armour sections with a coat of vallejo model air chainmail silver.

Next stage will be to do the same bronze and silver coats on the triaros which I have only just finished on the priming of, it is a rather large and solid model. 

The Triaros has been partially assembled with J B Weld which so far seems to be creating a really nice durable bond between the resin pieces.

Now I only have to deal with the slight problem that during a recent game when I brought out the triaros my opponent commented that the front it resembled doctor Zoidberg from Futurama due to the 'tentacles' on the front of it. Not the most flattering comment about a model which I really like, guess I have to focus on giving it a paint job to remove that association (although it may already to be late for that).

 

I am back

So I know I have not been updating for a while, this is not because I have lost my passion for the game or anything like that, it is rather that I took a bit of a break from painting after all of the stresses of getting the apocalypse force together and after that was over I have been working on an addition for my mechanicum force which is taking a lot more painting than normal and I have only recently got in to a condition which I feel it is good enough to show.

The model in question is the Krios Venator, I grabbed this at warhammer world during the apocalypse battle as I felt that the mechanicum really needed the addition of a dedicated anti-tank weapon. 

For the paint scheme I had to get a new airbrush with variable pressure since my old one lacked that and would not have been able to pull off anything like I have been achieving recently. I also had to do a fair amount of research on painting techniques that I wanted to employ on this tank

One of the main items I obtained for researching this paint scheme is Imperial Armour modelling masterclass volume two, I cannot recommend this tome enough, the techniques contained within are amazing and I am employing the majority of the painting techniques used for the greater brass scorpion to try and create a rich and glossy red colour which is the core of the new colour scheme.

Building up the colour has taken quite a lot of time not in the least because I am still not that used to airbrushing at the pressure levels involved and I really did not want to mess it up. I think I have avoided that and while not complete I think the Krios is definitely starting to look very evocative. See what you think....

 

The only downside of this painting scheme looking like it is going to come off is that I am going to have to repaint all of the existing mechanicum models to match up, I do not mind this too much as I think the end product of a entire army being painted in this fashion will be pretty awesome looking on the battlefield.
My start on the repainting is going to take a little time, before I get on to that I have to complete this tank, then I have a Triaros to work on along with an Imperial knight warden which is going to be done up in the same style and I hope will look amazing when it is complete. After that I will be redo-ing the Thanatar and the castellax before working on myrmidon destructors, esepcially since I have picked up 6 more of them to make three units of three with out having to worry about mismatching weapons or proxying for the preferred weapon set up (irradiation engines and volkite culverins being my preference)

I am also going to be rebasing the mechanicum, with the darker and richer red colour scheme the martian ironearth on the bases simply is not going to work so in the same vein as the night lords I am going to be making use of secret weapon miniatures and getting some new bases, these ones will be urban rubble as I feel it is most appropriate that the mechanicum would be battling in the most highly populated areas but would not care about collatoral damage if their prize is intact so buildings will be levelled before the tread of their implacable war machines.
More updates will be coming as I continue to push this tank on to completion and I will also show reasonable frequent updates on the progress of the knight which will hopefully add as a painting guide for this technique.

Exhibition halls part 6