The Piper at the Gates of Down

They say that he comes out in the dead of night shift. When the forges are only just ticking over, when the Hive hums with the quiet lives of the darktimers, when the lights are low to conserve power. Then he can be heard, metal boots on metal floors. His sightless head swinging side to side, seeing without eyes. And if that blank face catches you, they say, his pipe will rise and a skirl of noise will reach out and wrap itself around you and they say you will follow him to the Gates that lead down, down below even the underhive and there.... there ehy do not say what will happen to you. But you will not come back. So they say. 

I've been waiting for inspiration to strike with the Delaque kit. The Dune Navigator is an obvious choice, but there seemed to be other possibilities in this rather Cliver Barker-esque style.

And so we have this guy.

A relatively simple conversion - a generstealer head fastened in the wrong way round and an arm from the escher kit for a slightyl spindly, out of proportion look and we were away.

The final result is pleasingly creepy, I think.

Kill Team Morbis

"They'd sealed off Orbital Sector Regulus a couple of months ago to try and stop the spread of the outbreak. Hansen's Pox was pretty virulent, and it was felt that the loss a couple of thousand souls was better than risking it engulfing the whole Starport or - worse - it spreading to Hive Karhonnen. 

"They listened to the cries for help and the banging on the pressure doors fade. After a few weeks, it seemed the infection had run its course. But then the banging started again. And where the those massive doors were struck, they bulged.

"It was on the sixth week that the doors were breached and the Sepsis burst through. Spraying bile and inchor with hideously grinning faces they lurched into the Sector Primus. The air was thick with miasma and screams. But worst of all was what thundered out of the smoke; massive figures clad in supperating armour, like space marines who had succumbed to the Pox, five monsters strode forth to bring their gift of disease to all."

-from The Fall of the Orbital Usher, M41.256

I've been having a serious loss of hobby mojo for reasons I couldn't really place, so I needed a quick palette cleanser. Luckily, Kill Team always provides an excuse to knocks something fun up. These are a simple build up of the miniatures that came with the Conquest magazine and a couple of Death Guard bits from the bits box at work.

The only conversion on these was this one plague marine where I build a new hand using some Dryad bits and some greenstuff tendrils. Everything else was built as is for speed.

Painting was my usual Nurgle recipe: slightly rotten flesh tones and then a variety of different coloured washes for tone. Here I added some bright green for that really pustulent look.

Very happy with these for a couple of days work, and feeling recharged and ready to paint some more stuff. Best of all, if all things go according to plan, Kill Team Morbis will be meeting the Church of the Devoured in a game next week!

The Lost Foundry of Sycorax

The ill-fated expedition to Sycroax set off late in 841. It was expected that transit would take 58 days sidereal. Locating the lost Foundry was estimated to take another 15 days, effecting entry 2. Exploration and mapping 11 days and bringing the astropathic transmitters back on line a further 5 days. Contact was therefore expected within 90-100 days. 

After 120 days with no contact an emergency committee was convened.

After 150 days a servitor probe was dispatched to attempt to make contact with the Explorator Vessel Agamemnon.  

After 200 days the expedition was recorded as lost. 

****     ****

No, I'm not dead. I have been very busy with work so it was largely a choice between painting or keeping the blog up to date. So I do have a few bits and pieces to share. Here's the big one, though - I finished my Adeptus Mechanicus force. This is the first army I've ever completed for any Warhammer game so I'm quite pleased.

The last unit that needed finishing was my second unit of Skitarii. For the purposes of identification on the battlefield I gave them blue as an accent colour as opposed to the red of the other Unit. 

So what's up next? Well, I've entered my first ever painting competition. What was originally a very simple idea has become something much more complex - yes, I'm building another vignette. Two, as it happens. If you want to get an idea of what I have in mind for one of them have a look at a photograph I took a few years ago:

The Church of the Twice Born

Since the day you were born, your lives have not been your own. You have been used, and abused, and cast down amongst the filth by those above. You are not a person. You are a cog in the machine. You are production output. You are a target. You are nothing. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your lives. They are as dust.

But it does not have to be that way. You can rise up, on the wings of angels; rise up, born aloft by the love of the Allfather, the True Emperor. The God King who cares for you, who will cherish you and who will empower you. And when there are enough of us, we shall rise from the ashes and dirt and rust and bring vengance upon those who have despised us. Rise up, my brothers! Rise up, my sisters! Let your old lives end and be born anew into glory!

-Pater Dol, preaching in the Underhive

Since the old days I've always loved the idea of Genestealer cults. Necromunda is just the perfect excuse to make some. I've had the box of miniatures for ages as parts have been used for all my conversions over the last year, so the total cost of this little gang was £0.

In terms of painting, I wanted to capture the oily blue grey of the Harkonnen from Lynch's Dune as seen here modeled by Sting:

Creating this colour was a relatively complex process: a grey green base with a transparent blue wash; edge highlighting of sea grey and then a blue glaze over the whole before a black wash to filter everything back down to the darker end of the tonal scale.

I think the hassle was worth it, though, as the Sons of the Twice Born look pretty much exactly how I'd always imagined them.

Walkways

I've been wanting to improve my stock of 40k/Necromunda/Shadow Wars scenery and as much as I love the new GW stuff it's ruinously expensive. So I started to think about how I could build things up without breaking the bank.

The key thing for all the skirmish games I like is to have some height and different levels, so creating some sort of gantry or walkway looked like a good place to start.

A few people has talked about buying aquarium filters and using those for walkways. No-one had ever really said what they would use so I looked on ebay, found a cheap set and took a punt.

When they arrived, I was immediately impressed: they connected together in six different ways, allowing any set up to be completely modular. Even just slotted together, they were able to be lifted holding the weight of quite a few miniatures.

So, how to paint them? I needed something fast, simple and durable - the filters are made of quite soft plastic so I had some concerns about the paint adhering. 

I primed them with Halfords black and then hit them with a dusting of Halfords silver. This gave me a basecoat to work from. I give it a quick drybrush of a lighter silver and painted some black stripes here and there.

Why the black stripe? Well, the most iconic Necromunda colour is the hazard chevrons so I knew they wanted that on them. But how to get them done with the minimum possible? 

The stencils were made out of one of casefile folders. One about 1cm wide, one about 1 inch wide. 

I stippled the yellow rather painting it as this basically makes it 'pre-chipped' and worn. 

Next I started weathering. This was basically Vallejo rust weathering effect painted on then wiped off with my thumb to colour the metal and then stippled back on to create some texture. 

A drybrush of orange finished off. I painted a few sector marking with white and then toned them down with Vallejo smoky ink (if you don't have this, it's a bloody godsend for terrain features, like a liquid Typhus corrosion from the GW line).

I also added some drops of Nurgle's rot for chemical spills here and there. 

So here's all 16 pieces laid out on 36'' by 36'' table. That's a lot of coverage for £6. 

Obviously, I've ordered another set. 

And here's a couple of shots of it against the rest of my terrain. 

Next up - legs.