Daemon Princes and the next steps.

     I opted to not do much to the armor plates. They started to grow on me, so I'll leave it to be changed later if I decide to do that. The quality is high tabletop standard on my Chaos army, or that's what I'll be shooting for. That'll be the baseline, and I'll go the extra mile for more special models.

Converted Tzeentch Daemon Princes

     Also, here's a better photo of the Rhino's I finished the other day:

Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons Rhinos

     That puts me on good ground to push through the 10-man squad, hopefully finishing them and a commission I have by Friday. I'll be taking a bit of a break from building and spraying for a few days/a week, so I'll be turning my attention to painting whatever's built or ready. I may take the opportunity to build some bases for the 40 pink horrors I have on the horizon.

The Weekend Progress.

     Everything came along pretty nicely this weekend, especially considering the wife and I spent a good chunk of it binge-watching X-Files. Even with that, I managed to airbrush my 10 CSM and get most of the work done on my Daemon Princes. Here's what I ended this morning with:

Click to Enlarge

     I'm happy with the colors, but I'm a little unsure of the armor plates. The black to red may be too extreme, but I do plan on ending it with a Tamiya Red glaze if my trials come out well. It doesn't look horrible, and definitely better in person, but worse case scenario has me going back over the black areas with just a darker red. I don't think there's too much more to do as of this picture. I need to finish the metal wash on one of their wings, finish the weapons off (one more wash and one more white highlight most likely), add flames to the swords, do gems, dull cote it all, highlight the metal, and do the red glaze and 'Ardcoat. Okay, seems like a lot of steps, but they should all be pretty quick. And after I'm finally happy with everything I get to practice my weathering pigments on the base. Fun times.
     Two hours of my weekend was also assembling a Heldrake. Oh yeah, got one of them. Kind of necessary for a CSM list, as it's still kind of a big deal when it hits the table, and one of the few power units in the codex. No conversion work was done, as I suspect I may want more just for how great they look. I didn't fully assemble it, but I probably will be the time I get to work on it.
     There was a huge chaos space marine codex leak, but apparently that's bogus. It did remind me pretty well that if I can speed through the "core" of a CSM and Daemon army (Tzeentch-themed "core"), I can really just add a unit here and there. I still have a pretty large list of stuff to paint in that core, but a sample list (from what I own, mostly) is:

- 20-40 Pink Horrors (with an airbrush and my experience, I expect the bases to take longer than the pink horrors).
- 9 Screamers (another super easy to paint unit)
- Heldrake (assembled, so close)

What else is there? A Lord of Change or two and Fateweaver, I suppose. Of course there's a ton more I COULD add to that list for stuff I want to run, but that's the core of it once my DPs and 10 marines are finished up. I'm avoiding Cultists since I want to see if Age of Sigmar gets Tzeentch-themed guys that can act as Cultists. But largely I'm avoiding a lot of things with rumors and obvious codex (CSM and Daemons are owed a new Codex) release window with new stuff. So starting with the "should haves" and going from there.

PS: Amusingly those two DPs are more points than I have painted in Orks total. Orks are so cheap.

Thousand Sons Update.

The Daemon Princes have come along pretty nicely, and I'm satisfied with them. After some mold line clean up and a few gap fills, I should be able to get them on the paint table within the month. I'm still a bit undecided on how I'll be basing (other than just sand), so left and area on one open to toy with.

Blurry Tzeentch Daemon Princes Conversion

I also picked up a mold making kit and tried my hand at creating some resin copies of a MK1 Rhino conversion I worked on. This is the outcome after some priming.

MK1 Rhino Conversion

I have another in the exact same stage, so I didn't see a reason to take pictures of both. Both are close to being ready for painting. I cut down to a 1,000 point list to make painting and building a bit less of a chore. Zenithal Highlighting was used to make the models look a few stages above "crappy and not primed". The 1,000 point list keeps it to me just having to finish off the 2 Daemon Princes, 2 MK1 Rhinos, 10 Space marines (two squads of 5 with a melta each), and 10 Pink Horrors. Since I need to spend extra time building and painting summonable stuff, every list point value is much less than I actually anticipate putting on the field.

Thousand Sons: Daemon Princes

     I've been hitting the Daemon Princes pretty hard. There's no easier, cheaper way to bulk up an army list's points than to toss in a Daemon Prince or two. They can pull some substantial work, of course, but it's getting to be a pretty dangerous universe to live in for these guys.
     Some time ago I saw some Thousand Sons army that had a Daemon Prince forming out of the sand, and I knew immediately I wanted to do something similar when I turned my attention to Tzeentch Daemon Princes. Both of these are for a standard "Daemon Prince" model, as I'll hold out for a bigger Lord of Change or Fateweaver kit. While still work in progress, one shows off my green stuff efforts, and the other how that progresses to my desired effect. Wings are still missing off of both, but I can't do much more on that front until the bits I ordered arrive in the mail. I'm very excited about the current beginnings of this force.

     The staff was made out of some bits I got at a swap meet, using the halberd the original kit came with. I'm still uncertain how I want to go about the hands and weapons on the second Daemon Prince, but I have some time to think about it. I'm not sure if I should continue sculpting my own sandstone blocks for the desert ruin bases, or buy some plaster molds or something.

Uggh. No where near enough time for absolutely anything.

Trying to rock through a ton of models. My local area is hosting a 2,000 point tournament this weekend and I have a pretty silly plan. Not overpowered silly, just...silly. I want to play painted (before turning around and selling a lot of it), so it's leaving my options very -not- open. So my list is bad. As of Wednesday my paint table had:

- x5 Chaos Spawn
- x2 Wave Serpents
- x1 Wraithknight

Not anywhere near enough points, I impulsed purchases something yesterday while at my game store. Adding:

- x1 Bloodthirster (new kit)

Beautiful models, and the army should look really nice. But it doesn't really do much, and it doesn't really work well with itself. But that's a lot of stuff to paint to a high tabletop quality by a tournament on Saturday. On the plus side I can mark off the Chaos Spawn and the Wave Serpents. Already done. Can't get much more finished up today, though, since I have a dinner party thing I'm attending. But tomorrow will be busy painting up:

Mr. Prince and Dice.

These will be mine soon. I love Chessex. I love them so much. I highly recommend customized dice, as it just adds to the great experience of playing our chosen hobby.

But more importantly, I finished the work on my Chaos Nurgle Daemon Prince. I'm very happy with it, and can't wait to start painting tomorrow.