Iron within! Iron without

So while I have not created that many posts of late it is not that I have not been modelling - well not totally.
I have been managing to burn myself out a little on painting mechanicum while trying to burn through a block of 20 tech thralls at once which is not a good idea so to take a break from that I started working on the first of the iron warriors but then I came down with a cold/flu which took me out of action for a couple of weeks but now I am back and I am enjoying a couple of weeks of work so I am hopeful that my progress will be improving. With that in mind here is some pictures of the initial batch of models I have completed.

First off is a siege breaker, this will be the standard HQ for the iron warriors as I feel he suits them perfectly.

This is the terminator armoured character from the battle at calth boxed and the model was wonderful to paint, the pictures do not show it perfectly but the armour plates are not black, they are a dirty metallic dark grey while will hopefully come through some what better on the rest of the models i am going to show.

Supporting him on the battlefield we next have a unit of tyrant siege terminators which honestly are an insanely potent unit for the iron warriors, these are the terminators from the battle at calth boxed set with some missile launchers from Anvil industries added on and I think they work brilliantly.

These models again took a fair amount of time to paint as they have a lot of detail needing to be picked out in gold and the vallejo old gold I am using for them tends to get gloopy pretty quickly requiring regular brush cleaning and bottle shaking but the effects I think are well worth it.

next we have the core of my first tactical support with chaplain support

 These guys should form a solid base for the army, resilient and reliable above and beyond anything that even the iron warriors manage to field

Finally some support troops, three tactical support marines with meltaguns and the core of two iron havoc squads - these units will be expanded as I assemble and paint more models from the two additoonal battle at calth boxed sets I purchased to give me a massive core to the iron warrior force.

Love the classic missile launchers, they have that old school rogue trader look and were fun to paint to say the least, looking forward to completing unit especially when used as iron havocs with flakk missiles, tank hunters and deadly aim - these guys should prove to be the bane of flyers everywhere, well at least that's the hope.

Vorax

More progress to report today, I have pretty much completed my first assault unit for the mechanicum in the Vorax. The hope is that these are going to be either a brutal counter assault force or more likely a aggressive force for heading deep in to opposition territory and threaten opposition objectives

I have assembled one with a irradiation cleanser for added viciousness, I love the rad weapons for their brutal ability to slaughter the enemy and while this is not quite as excessive as the ones carried by the myrmidon destructors but it will certainly help with murdering troops holding objectives. I am planning for generally the rotor cannons to be upgraded with bio-corrosive ammunition.

Reaver - the beginning

So during the summer I was able to get a forge world reaver titan at reduced price due to being pre-owned. It has already been painted and it looked OK on the battlefield but I knew I was going to want to go back over the paint job and redo it to be more inline with the rest of my mechanicum army.
The reaver is such a massive project I am simply sitting back and doing parts of it here and there when I am working on other models, so when I applied the candy coat red to the thallax I was also applying it to the first of the Reaver armour plates.

I have only worked on the one armour plate so far and it is still a fair way off completion, I am desperately trying to not rush this project since the Reaver has the potential to be an utterly awesome focal point model for my combined heresy era force and the model is simply so cool it deserves to be done right.

So with that said here are the initial photos of the carapace armour plate which I am currently working on, I aim to have this at the very least completed in time for the summer apocalypse game, I am not priortising this since I simply have set myself a massive target for that battle in terms of model painting and trying to squeeze the whole titan in at the same time would lead me to rushing it and ruining the effect I am trying to achieve

So far all I have done is the candy coat and oil paint wash on the main body of the armour plate, I have started to work on the scroll using some of the ideas from the new Horus Heresy Modelling Masterclass book as well as doing the very initial stages of adding the gold work on to the eagle and trim.
There is still a long way to go, the rest of the trim needs to be completed with an initial coat of balathazar gold and then various washes and layers need to be employed to make the gold look as vibrant and deep as possible and really show off all of the cracks and detail in the eagle. The scroll work needs several more layers of paint to build up the colour properly. I have purchased a nice stencil with some elaborate text which I am hoping to use that to add the name to the scroll. From what I can see the space where I would actually like to add the name is not especially large before the scroll starts folding which in my mind suggests the name should be pretty short and catchy - I am now having looked at the stencil and the scroll thinking of calling this beast "Dominus" which links in to the mechanicum quite nicely.

Once I have everything else done I will be adding decals to the armour plates to add some more detailed art work which is beyond what my painting skills could achieve, I have the Legio Fureans decal sheet and while I am not using their colour scheme I think the decals will work perfectly well on this battle titan.

Ler me know your thoughts.

Thallax

So the next forces I have completed for my army are the thallax, I have four units of them ready to rock, each one three models strong. Two of the units armed with photon thrusters to give me some threat at range plus a good option for taking down annoying terminators. The remaining two units have a multi-melta and will be upgraded with the destructor option to get them tank hunters to make those guns as dangerous as possible.

 Here you can see the shoulder makring denoting the units, some nice decals from the adeptus mechanicum transfer sheet.

I think they look pretty good and they are definitely a very useful addition to the army, they add some very useful movement due to the jet packs, the weight of tank hunting fire power is always going to be of great use in helping deal with some of those annoying tanks out there although if I have the heavy support slots then the photon thruster units will probably be given the icarian upgrade to allow them to provide some really nasty threat to flyers - minus two to jink saves is really going help against some of those annoying flyers.

tech priest auxilia take 2

I have been informed by one of my friends that the photos I took of the tech priest auxilia were a touch out of focus and blurry and did not really convey the real look of them so here we go again - hopefully these are better.

  and now some details of the magos within the tech priest auxilia

 and then we get some close up shots of a couple of the servo automata - the multi-meltas do feel somewhat large on the models, I have to admit when I first read about the unit I assumed the servo automata would be more akin to 40k servitors but this is what forge world have released and they certainly have a gribbly techno beast feel to them, just a little smaller than I was expecting.

 The overhead shots are trying to capture the candy coat metallic red effect I am trying to create on my automata, hopefully it should be even more obvious and visually impactful on the larger constructs as well as the knight and the tanks.
And now as an added bonus here is my archmagos dominus, just using the normal magos dominus model for this character but it is such a nice model I have no problems promoting him in my army to lead my legio cybernetica cohort.

 Again he has the candy coat effect on his head piece and I think it has turned out really nice, it is good to add another character to the army just to give my poor archmagos some support.

Currently in progress are four myrmidon destructors, 1 bombard, 12 thallax and 3 vorax as well as making a start on the 40k tech priest dominus who is going to serve as an archmagos reductor for my army to combine with the thallax to give me a ordo reductor element to the force. I feel the Vorax though when deployed in the legio cybernetica force and thus getting +1 initiative have the potential to absolutely decimate enemies in close combat, something I have until now been relying on the tech thralls to achieve.

Tech Priest Auxilia

So my friends and I have started making arrangments for another apocalypse battle, this one planned to be slightly more epic in scale as we are going to get as close to every model in our collections - due to this I now have a massive 'to paint' list which needs to be done in short order. With that in mind I have been painting some more mechanicum as well as assembling the plastics from my battle at calth boxed set (I have to admit these plastics are awesome and amazing value for money)
Here is the first results of this painting drive.

So that's a tech priest auxilia with 1 adept, 1 magos (third servo arm), 8 servo automata of which five are armed with multi-meltas and they are typically reductor to give them all tank hunters just to make those multi-meltas as efficient as possible.

I am also working on the magos dominus model who is going to act as the archmagos dominus within my legio cybernetica aspect of the mechanicum as well as four myrmidon destructors generally because they are about the best things in the mechanicum army. I have a bombard under way as well but that is a fair way off completion.

I have started assembly of the next set of models to be worked on, this is going to be 12 thallax and 3 vorax as well as continuing to work on the bombard and starting to paint the titan tech priest I recently picked up who will act as a magos prime in the army.

In terms of the plastics, these are going to form the core of my iron warriors army I am planning, they are the perfect allies for the mechanicum as well as being on the same side as the night lords bringing everything in to a coherent whole all with the sole purpose of bringing death to the false emperor.
I am planning on getting a couple more of the battle at calth sets, the economy of the models is really good, in fact I think it is overall better value than normal plastcs, especially when purchased from a local games store which is offering discounts for various reasons such as the one I use.

Tyrant siege terminators in all of their glory, the missile packs from anvil industries are perfect in my opinion for turning the terminators from the boxed set in to these bad arses and luckily the weapon options from the boxed set include more than enough power fists and chainfists to make the correct weapon selection for the unit. The characters are really nice models and I can see a unit of 19 tactical marines led by a chaplain as being quite a brutal force on the battlefield, I had not really appreciated the power of zealot until I was considering what to do with the chaplain model from this set and really read the rules properly.

There will be more posts incoming, I am for the moment getting painting in every day and thus making progress, I am not currently sure the rate of progress is fast enough to get everything I want ready for the apocalypse battle but I am hoping that the promise of this evennt will be enough to keep the focus in place so when I attend it is going to be with something close to 15,000 points of models including a reaver titan and a couple of primarchs.

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.