Astral Claws Centurion Helmet Crest + Corpse Taker

Timing is everything. Ron over at FTW just posted about Roman style helmet crests. As my first real green-stuff attempt, I sculpted one of these for my Astral Claws Sergeant test miniature. I am not sure if I am going to do this for all of my Astral Claws, or just this one miniature. In Roman legions, the crest went front to back for normal legionnaires, and perpendicular to that (as shown on my sergeant) for officers. This would be a neat way to make centurions and sergeants stand out from rank and file astartes. It would be fun to see a squad of Astral Claws that did not side with their chapter. The minis could form a little diorama showing them throwing down their weapons.

The other mini posted above is the beginnings of my Corpse Taker. For those who have not bought IA9 and read it over and over again like I have, the Corpse Taker unit is a small Apothecary squad that removed gene seed from Astral Claws and non Astral Claws wounded. Basically they try to collect all of the gene seed they can in order to create more legionnaires. This is just about the worst thing one chapter can do to another. Naturally I had to paint one unit up! I used Fabius Bile's backpack thing along with regular apothecary bits.

In terms of color, I am still unsure how to paint white cleaning. No matter how smooth I think the blending is, the moment I take a photo the edge highlights of pure skull white stand out like sore thumbs. I plan to paint the shoulder pads blue and gold like regular troopers. I was also thinking about adding highlighted battle damage as well as blood spatters. These are gruesome marines after all.

Astral Claws Retaliator Squad Sergeant

Since Bolt Gun did not look that great to me, I decided to try a second AC paint test using codex grey as the base. After I had airbrushed Codex Grey on, I increasingly added white to the mixture and sprayed downwards from the top of the mini. The initial effect was great, so I decided to go one step further and wash on a heavily thinned badab black wash. The wash pooled in places, which should not have been a surprise to me these.

I really like this mini. I've never tried to paint a space marine holding his helmet, so this is a first. I have a little green stuff plume that is curing right now to put on the top of it. It may make the guy look a little too ultra-mariney, but since the Astral Claws used Ultramar as part of their legal defense for the independence of their realm it seems ok right now.

Astral Claws

In addition to a lovely FW Argus Lighter, my wife purchased a photo booth for me to use in updating this blog. It turns out my cell phone picts were not well received!

Since the Argus Lighter is for my Astral Claws army list, I thought I should give an AC paint scheme a try. I used very thinned down bolt gun metal, followed by chainmail line highlighting and a watery badab black wash for the metal portions. I did not want to use all metallics on the mini, so the gold was done with foundation yellow. I am not happy with how the mini turned out, both in terms of my painting skill or the methods used. I think the gold really needs to be metallic gold and the blue darker. I think I will use shaded grey instead of bolt gun metal for the body. My difficulty in painting metallics is one of the primary reasons my Grey Knights have never been completed.

Does anyone have a good recipe for astral claws that I could use?

I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things last night, and even had some fun with the light booth. (hence the random chaos minis---or should I say Astral Claw allies!)

Christmas Eve Forgeworld

My wife and I are at my parents condo in an undisclosed place in the northeast. After returning from the requisite haircut at the mall, I noticed a stack of boxes in the hallway enterance. While looking for the 96 gigs of ram I ordered, I spotted a lovely little package from fw. How on earth did fw get a package to my parents place in time for christmas?

So now I have a wonderful new problem. A resing forgworld model, and no way to build it! I supposed it evens out in the end.

Merry Christmas!

My Wife And I Are Playing 40k: Weird

My wife wanted to try the game and we are playing. The game is a simple annihilation game with her as Blood Angels pitted against a Chaos war-band led by Typhus. The battlefield is strewn with abandoned imperial guard tanks with a ruined imperial temple in the center. Her entire force is left, while mine consists of a single unit of 5 lessor demons and Typhus leading three terminators. It is rather surreal playing a game of 40k against her.

Ultramarines Movie Review: It is terrible!

My copy of the Ultramarines DVD came in yesterday, and I promptly watched it as all fans of the genre are likely to do. The short answer is that this is a flat out terrible movie. The story is bland, the animation terrible, and the direction simply unbelievable. The marines move like toys, behave like amateur soldiers, and apparently allow enlisted to challenge officers orders. My wife offered to watch the movie with me, but had to go to an event. I thought the chance to share my hobby with her was such a cool opportunity. However after watching the movie, I will not sit through it again. I would not show this movie to anyone. It is such a shame since they have a normally good writer, and an excellent voice cast. Send this movie to /dev/null and forget about it!

Tau Battle Suits

Since Tau can't function I thought I should add some highly weathered battle suits to my force. They match the color scheme for my veteran fire warriors (the ones that protect Etherial Jones). They started out with a careful air brushing of blues, creating a shaded effect. I then proceeded to spray on sepia wash to give them the aqua color you see here. I have a lot of additional weathering to do, in addition to decals. I am thinking about adding rust to the metal plates as well as going back and adding some edge highlighting. Basically my Tau force look like they have been through hell, so these guys will fit in nicely if I keep weathering them till they are right.

My real camera takes much better photos than my iphone, but at the moment I am having a little painters block, so I am keeping away from the big camera setup and focussing on finishing minis.

Oath Of Moment

I don't normally review books, audio or otherwise on this blog, but today is an exception. Garro Oath of Moment is a fantastic audio book, well worth buying. The sound effects are a bit much, but the story is great, and it finally answers one of the great 40k questions. The script written by Tob Longworth and James Swallow is great. I know Swallow gets a lot of grief from the BA fan boy club, but just like his fantastic Flight of the Eisenstein, this is definitely worth buying. The authors did an outstanding job.