Tag Archives: WH40K

Inquisitorial Sisters of Battle army

17 Saturday May 2025

Posted by in Inquisitors, Sisters of Battle

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I have often thought about a Sisters of Battle army. They’re delightfully gothique, and have some wonderful miniatures. I would have thought that the whole sexy goth nun thing was kind of a generational trope, maybe beardlings don’t really have that whole late night telly – Bizarre mag – plastic trousers cultural foolishness axis. Perhaps these days Sisters of Battle stand for nothing more or less than Ladies Who Purge The Heretic. So anyway, when Imperium magazine had some Sisters that seemed like a good time to jump in. I bought possibly too many, but they were bargainishous. So this is the first round of Sisters, to see how they feel. I think the future ones will be converted, possibly heavily to make them chaotic. Meanwhile these have been both fun and frustrating to paint. Fun, because I tried some new techniques, frustrating because there is SOOOO much kibble and detail on these guys that just don’t really fit with my painting style [skills].

My big thing with these guys was an attempt at pearlescent armour. I got it wrong, but next time will be better. I chose Wraithbone as my undercoat and Flayed One Flesh mixed with Irridescent Medium for the armour base coat. Next time I will use Pallid Wych Flesh and more Irridescent Medium and then glaze with pure medium over the top and see if that looks more like pearl. Or try another of the colour shift paints I bought a couple of years back – I used one on the Chaos Knight and liked it a lot. Either way this was an acceptable first attempt but you can’t tell really. No complaints though.

The Inquisitor was really an excuse to paint a mini I liked. This is Athera, The Blade Of The Matriarch, who is an Escher Gang character from Necromunda. A little digression about Necromunda. Necromunda is where so much of the cool shit is happening right now. Almost every mini released for Necromunda adds new colour and character to 40k. It’s all full of amazing levels of characterisation and drama – GW have taken the opportunity to zoom in on a single planet out of a million (or more) and fill it full of grotesqueries, monsters, and humans trying to survive in a psychotic fascist death machine. I could buy everything because its all amazing! And I don’t even have the boxed game! For no good reason. One day…

Finally, there are some female space soldiers from god knows where. Drew Williams, I think. I thought that these would fit in fill up some gaps as well as creating a new heavy weapons squad for a bit of long range oomph.

Space Marine Motorised Attack Team

10 Tuesday Dec 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Space Marines

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Another batch of Space Marines finished. These are mostly newhammer with some older bikers from the Dark Millenium (or was it the Dark Imperium? fucked if I can remember) boxset and some really battered Land Speeders from my junk pile. A solid slab of grey and red moving swiftly and angrily towards aliens and heretics! The hardest part of this lot was working out the points values at 10th edition! I had to fudge it, there is no way of doing it! You might notice a lot of Dark Angel kibble on these guys.. well this is the fluff for it. Steel Guard aspirants are trained according to the perceived disciplines of all the (loyalist) primarchs. Within the chapter each of the primarchs are honoured in the formal name of one of the companies (the first company is The Emperor’s Company, whilst the second company are The Lion’s Company. Whilst all Steel Guard are expected to be equally proficient in all aspects of battle, some are more attracted to certain styles of battle or philosophies. They are able to express this through trinkets, gewgaws, and honour marks that are associated with those primarchs or their legion. Thus Ancient Ypsima who leads this group is clearly a devotee of Lion’el Johnson (they so should have retconned that name at some point) and has probably picked for the job a few others who feel similar.

I’m pleased with these. Should have used a different green for the company colours, should have used a different colour for the bases as grey on different-grey doesn’t work. I experimented with a different way of painted the red flashes on the backpack, which works for the newmarines but not the old ones. I have decided that any future newmarines will have the new style of red but the oldmarines will stay the same. Steel Guard are flexible enough to be able to handle different paint jobs on different styles of armour… this might alarm the inquisition, who have already had to deal with this chapter’s flexibility when ***REDACTED***PLEASE REPORT TO THE NEAREST INQUISITOR FOR RE-EDUCATION***

The Threshing Touch: the warband of Inquisitor Gravet Rūm

25 Sunday Jun 2023

Posted by in Finished Work, Inquisitors

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Inquisitor Rūm is an all action, shiny-armoured death machine. She and her warband are a very visible reminder that the Emperor’s reach is long, and his grasp is crushing. As an Ordo Hereticus warband their role is seeking out heretics and rogue psykers within the Imperium. As such they are well equiped for fighting, for psychic battle, and for research. Rūm herself is a battle-psyker, and wields a force axe for getting up close and personal. Her team includes a number of powerful psykers: the pink-haired witch Yuromka who affects a wild and feral disposition but is really as disciplined and cultured as any Inquisitorial agent; the personable Gratbogs who is maternal and ordinary but sucks the secrets from your mind without you even realising; the Squat Chandra, an ancient abhuman from a dead planet; and Waul, an unassuming middle-aged man with a talent for prediction. But there are times when a less subtle strike is needed, and so Rūm has a team of military experts too: Aliki is an Astra Militarum captain who has been on secondment to Rūm for many years; Veza was one of the leaders of a counter-uprising against a cult who had taken control of his home planet and was recruited by Rūm following her investigation of the cult; Olaye’s crimes are not known by any in the warband, what is known is that seeks to atone. Then there is Enginseer Wittel, who is not actually an real enginseer but a tech-thrall gifted to Rūm by a grateful tech-priest and whose genius for adaptation has got the warband out of more fixes than they can count. With Wittel comes Sweetie, a felid-based warmachine he put together one afternoon. Finally is Rūm’s datasmith Korber and his ‘children’ Chang and Eng, a pair of servitors who assist the savant. Korber looks like an ancient tech-thrall but don’t be fooled, he’s a crack shot and his exo-unit contains a power-field generator strong enough to punch through a wall.

Zogarg’s Speedwaaagh! – Renegade Speed Freekz

30 Wednesday Mar 2022

Posted by in Finished Work, Orks

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My final orktober offering is an oldhammer-newhammer combi. When the Speed Freeks game came out a few years ago I fell in love with the ork vehicles inside but I couldn’t afford the whole box. Later I picked up this Boomdakka Snazzwagon, which is a lovely kit, feels very old school, full of orky goodness. It could easily pass for a battlewagon in my opinion, especially against the tiny metal vehicles of old. Orks can buy heavy weapons to mount on battlewagons, so the weapon roll out here is whatever i roll on those lovely charts (heavy bolter, heavy plasma gun, missile launcher). Speed Freekz also get access to cheap vehicles, so I added a warbuggy and wartrak (skorcha). Poor tiny vehicles! The skorcha really needs a (full size) modern kit, by the way GW, hint hint.

Tactical Squad Kunze, first squad, seventh company

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in Finished Work, Space Marines

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A quick Steel Guard squad, using a sprue of modern marines that I had lying around. They look alright but they’re not as characterful as the old ones, are they?

I haven’t painted sergeant helmets white before, but I think I’m going to stick at it, I think it adds a nice flash of colour. Of course, the first third of the chapter don’t have white helmeted sergeants, but it’s my goshdarned chapter and I declare it OK.

Wazgob’s Doorboyz – Freebooter Minderz

20 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by in Finished Work, Orks

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The Freebooter Army project continues, with Freebooter Minderz. These are big tough Orks that would make an ideal close-combat unit. I picked a more modern Nob as the boss due to its size, and used some generic Space Crusade boyz for the same reason. A couple of Stormboyz minis to try and keep a vaguely uniform theme, to tie into the more modern idea of bodyguards being in tuxes, and used lots of greys to give that impression too, sort of. For most of us the closest we ever get to bodyguards are doormen, your names not down etc, so they’re Doorboyz. Randomisation of bioniks tables adds that orky feel, whilst assault weapons play to their strengths. I love painting Orks.

Brother-Chaplain Fier Russkikh, Space Marine Chaplain

05 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Finished Work, Space Marines

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Just a quick update before I get to some juicy stuff later… Brother Russkikh is a lovely old Rogue Trader Chaplain which has some fantastic details on it but a horrible helmet. I did the best I could with the face but it doesn’t look very skull-like. I have to say that it looks better in the metal, as it were. The picture here is not very flattering at all! Oh well, its hardly spoiling my chances of getting called up for an invitational 😀

Dark Mechanicum Explorator Team

11 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in Chaos, Finished Work

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A newhammer diversion! A few years ago, just at the point when GW started releasing cool new minis again but we didn’t know how much awesomeness was to come, I spent a GW gift voucher on the Start Collecting Adeptus Mechanicus box. Then it sat there for years whilst I did other things… so I thought I’d better either shit or get off the pot, and decided to, er, shit…

What I was aiming for with these miniatures was to try out some fun conversions and learn some blanchistu stylings. I certainly did the first, but I simply am not a good enough painter to use such outwardly minimalistic techniques effectively, and my attempts to add layers and bursts of colour have made it all a bit of a dogs dinner. Still, I enjoyed myself, especially the process of imagining what the Dark Mechanicus might look like.

This Explorator Team are from a minor Forge World recently fallen to chaos. The team itself aren’t high enough up the hierarchy to realise that their worship of the Omnissiah is now chaos worship, they just follow their leaders and see their mutations as gifts from that Omnissiah. Sooner or later they’ll just be another set of fanatic berserkers, doomed to end up chaos spawn with interesting metal bits embedded in their protoplastic limbs.

Techpriest
Up close!
Dunecrawler conversion
Skitarii

Orktober! Bad Ork Bikeboyz

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by in Finished Work, Orks

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Hello everyone, its Orktober again, and its nice to see so many people painting Orks in celebration of the happiest time of year.  GW have done well, releasing some properly Orky vehicles and a new game that I might pick up if I find a spare ninety quid at some point in the near future.  My Orktober has mostly been spent packing boxes, as I am moving house, and indeed country.  I am moving to Caerdydd, where they speak a different language.  What’s Welsh for “more dakka, ladz!”??

My contribution to Orktober is one that I’m not really very happy with.  To use a common expression, “they’re a bugger to paint”.  Four 2nd Edition warbikes, and a tiny RT warbike.  He’s the yoof, on his practise bike!  Actually, the RT bike was a pleasure to paint, but the plastic ones not so much.  I simply don’t think that they are very good minis.  The scale is better, but they feel like a cheap children’s toy rather than a finely detailed collector’s model!  I also had to repair and rebuild them, all of them being scrap from the bitzbox.  I think I did alright but compared to some of my previous Freebooter mobz I don’t get the warm glow of success!

Never-mind, its all a learning curve.  I present to you Magog and his Bad Ork Bikeboyz, the only survivors of an Evil Sunz warband who were wiped out by Space Marines.  They survived because they drove right through the Marines and off into the distance, more into going fast than shooting.  By the time they calmed down, turned round, and found the battle again there was nothing left of their old warband.  Now they’re Freebooterz, willing to fight in exchange for food and fuel.

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