Sect of the Blessed Lady ... and Ork Lootas progress

Cyrene Valantion ... Confessor of the Word ... also known as 'The Blessed Lady'. There were no candidates in Game Workshop's vast array of miniatures that were worthy of this Horus Heresy First Heretic character so I had to turn to a Kingdom Death model i.e. White Speaker Kisya. So Kisya will now be a proxy for the reincarnation of Cyrene Valantion. As she plays no part in the gaming universe that is W40K, Cyrene will be just fluff for display with my Word Bearer army.

Front view of assembled White Speaker

Back view of assembled White Speaker

Reincarnation of Cyrene Valantion via a Kingdom Death vessel aka Kisya, pictured above with a white undercoat

So far I have only given her a white undercoat followed by a wash of Ogryn Flesh

Based on my previous experience with Lelith, I decided to give Cyrene a wash of Ogryn Flesh before proceeding to paint the basecoats. In addition to covering up potential white spots from showing up in later painting, the wash actually gives me a better view of where the shadows should be.

Cyrene with my Chaos Cultists ... all undercoated with Chaos Black

Ork Lootas
In between preparing my Chaos army for painting, I managed to finish the first squad of Ork Lootas led by a Rokkit Mek. I plan to add another five Lootas to this squad, maybe with a Mek that has a big shoota. But before I do that, I will most likely paint up five Ork Burnaz for variety.

Below is a more detailed look at the three new additions to my Ork Lootas Squad.

Well that's it for this week. Most likely I won't get much done next week as I will be helping Alvin out at MaGaCon 2012. Should be a fun experience.

Rise of a Chaos Space Marine Alliance

It seemed as if the Gods of Chaos themselves had gotten into my head over the past few days. I started assembling one Chaos Cultist to see how it would look ... two days later, the Chaos miniatures in the GW Dark Vengeance starter set were all done and ready for priming.

Finished assembling all the Chaos minis in the Dark Vengeance set in a 2-day mind-blurring haze

Now I am usually a "paint the separate pieces and then glue them together" kinda guy but I was thinking that if I went that route for the DV minis, I would never finish painting them in a timely manner. So for the most part, the Chaos minis in this set will be painted fully assembled ... nearly all of 'em anyway. Old habits die hard so the front of the Hellbrute, the Chaos Lord's sword and the Chaos Chosen Champion's backpack will be painted separately before being glued on.

Awesome details all round ... Chosen will join Abbadon's army while the Hellbrute seems destined for a Word Bearer army

Chaos Cultists awaiting an undercoat and the teachings of a Word Bearer Dark Apostle

After a lot of thought, I decided to use Abbadon the Despoiler and a Word Bearer Dark Apostle as the first leaders of my Chaos Army Alliance. There will be other HQs down the road (Typhus and a Daemon Prince seems the more likely future projects) but for now, a Black Legion / Word Bearers alliance is one I am going with. Abbadon was one of my first HQ purchases many moons ago while the Dark Apostle was just grabbed yesterday.

Abbadon and ... err ... Urkel? Not sure what to name the Word Bearer Dark Apostle yet

Other Non-Chaos Projects
Such is the power of the Gods of Chaos that I haven't been spending much time with my other projects. The Ork Loota aka Rokkit Mek remains very much a work-in-progress ...

Early stages of the Ork Rokkit Mek

... while the Dragon in my future diorama has barely been painted. On hindsight, choosing a white undercoat for this model might not have been the wisest thing I have done because the many small nook and crannies in this Finecast model has made it very difficult to paint an undercoat without some white showing underneath. Not unlike the problem I faced with Lelith.

Initially a homage to The Hobbit but now part of a Diorama with Kingdom Death miniatures

So it has been a rather busy week hobby-wise. Pretty physced up to accelerate my painting for both the Chaos and Ork armies. It's finding the time that's hard now.

Two Ork Lootas, An Ork Trukk Driver and Other Orky Stuff

Got to thinking about the future composition of my son's Ork Army that I am building, and decided to go with maybe 10 to 15 Lootas and 5 Burnaz with the help of some Ork Boyz conversions. That means I have to pick up the pace (I am sounding like a broken record) cause I am only at 2 of 10.

And then there were two ...

Takumi-san ... Ork Trukk Drifter extraordinaire

So much more to paint

More Ork Stuff in the works
Over the weekend, I got my hands on some of Mr Chaos's old stuff which will help speed up the formation of the Ork army. Luckily he was letting 'em go cheaper than what they normally retail for, otherwise they would have been beyond my budget.

Two Ork Big Gunz semi-assembled by Mr.Chaos

Ork Killa Kans, fully-assembled by Mr.Chaos, and now ready for a black undercoat

On my part, I got some parts from my Ork Battleforce and combined them with the Ork Loota Mek to get what I term as a 'Rokkit Mek' (and yes, it's in honour of that great Elton John song).

... I'm not the ork they think I am at home, Oh no no no I'm a rockkit mek,
Rocket mek burning out his fuse up here alone ... (modified from original lyrics)

For the final piece of Orky stuff for this post, I present you with the more detailed pictures of the second Lotta. I didn't do too much highlights on the black/grey metal parts so as to keep that dirty kinda look and feel. Mini could have been improved further but I think I have already spent too much time on it. Stating the obvious I know.

Chaos Space Marine Army
Will also have to concurrently get my own Chaos army up and running. Am thinking of a Black Legion army led by Abbadon which is allied with a Word Bearer Dark Apostle with his chosen marines and cultists, at least something along that line.

Joy of Painting versus a Practical Army List
My armies are forming more from a painting perspective rather than a gaming one. So hopefully I will still manage to find fellow hobbyists willing to give me a game. Also, fingers crossed everyone won't have migrated to the ForgeWorld Horus Heresy stuff by the time I get the armies done up. ^^

Bad Moonz Ork Loota ... First of Five

From the two boxes of Ork Lootas/Burna Boyz in my collection, I plan to build two squads of five comprising an even number of Lootas and Burna Boys. While from the gaming perspective I have heard that the 6th edition has made things more 'shooty', thus making it more sensible to build single squad of ten Lootas, I am approaching it more from a painters angle. With two squads of both Lootas and Burna Boyz ... I would have 10 different models to paint. Thus far, I only completed one Loota. There were an insane amount of details on this little bad boy which slowed me down quite a bit.

Whatca lookin at guvnor?

This big shoota had so much details to paint

Side view of the big shoota

Red and blue wirings did make the model a bit gaudy but he is a Bad Moonz Ork after all

The huge back armour plate allowed for a bad moonz decal to be applied

Close up of the electrical thingamajig

Side view of the Bad Moonz Ork Loota

Big Shoota was angled slightly upwards

Even from the top, there were so much details to paint

This guy took me one week to finish painting so unless I ease-off on painitng in all the little details, it's going to take me too long to finish up the squad.

Currently, only three other Lootas have been assembled and basecoated

Assembling an Ork Loota
As noobish as this may sound, I found assembling this guy a liitle bit daunting. Just to share my experience, I found that doing it in the following order made things a bit easier.

Painted the parts separately

First, the big shoota was glued on ...

... followed by the head ...

... and ending with the left portion of the shoota

Other future projects
Thanks to exposure to board game miniatures by fellow bloggers out there like limp, khairul, MrChaos and others, I am starting to get into boardgames and may soon start doing some boardgame miniature projects. All this and there is still that new Chaos Space Marine stuff to consider. Phew!

Lelith Hesperax (Alternate Version)

Painting Lelith as a practise run - before I attempt the various Kingdom Death miniatures that I have - has thought me several valuable lessons which I will need to take heed of, or I will end up with the less than satisfactory results (an understatement I know) as shown below.

Lelith Hesperax, Alternate Version (Front View)

Lelith Hesperax, Alternate Version (Back View)

I made a number of mistakes which were compounded by further rookie FUBARs along the way.

Firstly, I am still very inexperienced working with Citadel Finecast. This being, by far, the smallest model I have worked with, caused me to be too careful when trying to clean the mould lines, rough surfaces, etc. As I will later know to my dismay, this set up a very weak foundation for the primer. 

Secondly, I decided to prime the model white. Based on my experience so far, white primer doesn't seem to apply as well as a black primer. While choosing white itself was not the issue, applying white primer on a miniature that had not been prepped properly was a recipe for disaster. As shown below, the white primer did not really take properly (not sure if the fact that I had a very old can of paint contributed to the problems) and presented a very rough surface for painting on.

Thirdly, with the primed surface already so rough and uneven, I made it even worse by deciding to cut out some pieces from Lelith's torso armour to make it less Dark Eldarish (noob faceplam). Also, priming white is more for expert painters so as you can see from the final results - there were still some white spots showing after I had finished.

Fourth and final nail in the coffin, I painted this model all through to the wee hours of the morning from about 10 pm to 6 am. Luck would have it, I painted the face at around 4am in the morning when I was dead tired and zombified. I messed up the face really bad and kinda scrapped off the paint and repainted it (I did this twice) before putting up my hands and admitting I had screwed up. So I just touched up stuff the best I could. 

One lesson I have learnt is that patience is paramount when painting miniatures ... when you are losing patience step away from your minis and come back to them later.

Dancing appointment gone wrong ... "Meet more people mom says ... when are you going to find a new husband she nags ... sheesh," grumbles Lilith while out on her date.

Having blonde hair was attracting all the wrong people ... soon Lelith was to dye her hair red.

So long story short ... I messed up. All part of the learning process I suppose.