Painting Challenge Submission #12 - Saturnine Terminator Squad

It's Saturnine time!

As AHPC XVI reached its conclusion, the time came to cram a few more submissions over the line in a desperate rush for points! The best place to start was with some things I had told myself that I would "definitely finish some time during the Painting Challenge", but had been procrastinating about for one reason or another. It is in this spirit that I painted this Saturnine Terminator squad. These are "28mm" multi-part plastic figures from GW's "Age of Darkness" setting (a.k.a. the Horus Heresy) painted in the fine colours of the XV Legion Astartes, the Thousand Sons. Because space wizards want to wreck sh*t too. 

"Let's blast something! Or smash it! I'm good either way!"

"Saturnine" kit is the "new big thing" for the 3.0 edition of GW's Age of Darkness rules. There is surely some lore for this armour variant and...well, I would share but for the fact that I haven't bothered to give it even a cursory scan, as it amounts to a farcically clumsy ret-con into the Horus Heresy story and I sort of don't care about the story. Suffice to say these are really, really big suits of powered armour, with impressive battlefield capabilities, big guns etc. etc. 

Note the blaster mounted on the power fist - so he can either punch someone OR shoot them even more!

These specific models are equipped with...I think that is some manner of "disintegrator" weapon on the one arm, while the oversized fist also sports a shorter-ranged blaster or flame-weapon of some kind. I would get the names, but that would involve encountering the Age of Darkness 3.0 rulebooks and...I can't be bothered. Rest assured the kit is all suitably super-duper-kill-things oriented.

I did not pose the legs very well on this one...looks like he is trying to step quietly or something, which is pretty silly, but whatever, he'll still fight on the table!

These models have a lot of components, and the instructions are not exactly clear in terms of the best ways to assemble them. To the credit of the designers, they want to offers hobbyists different options in terms of posing the feet and hands/weapons...but this goodwill is undone by the sheer "chonk factor" of these brutes. They crowd their bases, so there is not all that much to do with the legs, and the huge oversized, turtle-style upper shoulder sections crowd out any effort to meaningfully pose the arms. 

Close up on the ranged weapon. Cool looking gun - I'm sure it is super safe to use and poses no risks at all to its own side...

I recall GW came out very quickly with a "hey, here are a few tips from the studio" type article for assembling these models not very long after they hit the shelves. Naturally enough the studio guys offered an approach quite different from the one in the instructions....sigh...

Sub-assemblies - the "collars".

More sub-assemblies - the helmets. Took the opportunity to stick transfers on them too, before sticking them in the model.

A mid-point WIP photo. 

In terms of assembly and painting, these models are best thought of as small dreadnoughts, and there are so many overlapping sections that I recommend painting them in sub-assemblies. The "turtle shell" tops do not assemble easily, and you should probably put them on last AFTER you have painted the rest of the model, because they are so dominant that they make significant parts of the figure unreachable with a paintbrush - and yet they do not cover the ENTIRE top area, and so will leave any unreachable sections visible if they are not painted...that is the sort of combo that makes the OCD hobby monkey in my brain MENTAL.  

Close up on one of the helmets.

The head is a real challenge too - once more, a sort of "collar" goes over the head, but small parts of the internal area around the helmet will be visible even though the fit it very tight...so once more, sub-assemblies were called for. 

Maybe this is why these things sat around my painting table for so long. I had primed all of the bits prior to the start of AHPC XVI, convinced I would get them finished as part of my Challenge plan. But as my enthusiasm for Age of Darkness 3.0 really faded, I found other fun stuff to paint, telling myself that I would "do those Saturnine guys at the end." Well, here we are, so better get them done, right??? 

"Let's hit the town fellas!"

Good to have them over the line. If I ever do get them into a game, I'm sure they will cause a fair bit of havoc - even given the doom all newly-painted models seem to face, the rules for these Saturnine guys are pretty silly so they'll have a fun old time. I think you can even give them a psychic power? Which seems...bonkers...but then, to be sure, I would need to crack open the rule book and...I'll just figure it out some other time. 

That's all for this post - just a couple more wrap-up from AHPC XVI. 

Painting Challenge Submission #11 - Leopold's Leopard Company

"Leopold's Leopard Company" is ready to meet an opponent's charge...

The XVIth edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is now wrapped up, but I have (naturally) fallen behind a bit on the blog posting, so I am quickly adding posts to cover the last few entries I had submitted. This one was a particular treat to share - another Regiment of Renown from GW's old "Dogs of War" collection - here is Leopold's Leopard Company, and they are ready to stand in your battle line - so long as the deposit is paid up front and on time. These battle-hardened pikemen are long-OOP metal castings from Games Workshop and the glorious before-times.

One of the front-rankers, pike set, ready for the clash.

A back ranker.

Leopold and his men started out as guards of the Temple of Lucan and Luccina in the Tilean city of Luccini. It was fancy, well-paid duty. The unit is resplendent in fine armour adorned with the symbols of the temple - in particular the visage of the leopard who had guarded the divine twins! They are further adorned with the pelts of leopards. As military units go, the Leopard Company dressed the part!

These chaps are ready for a fight too!

How did the Leopard Company end up as mercenaries? Well, let's just say "local Luccini politics" intervened. In the midst of some civil strife there may, or may not, have been a siege of the temple in which it may, or may not, have become necessary for Leopold and his men to, er, "borrow" the gold offerings stored within which in turn may, or may not, have brought down some kind of divine curse which can only be held at bay by traveling the Old World, fighting as mercenaries and sending a portion of the gold they earned back to the temple to, um, "repay" their "debt."

Leopold and the command group. He is carrying healthy-sized "sword" (more of a cleaver), and I love the pistol tucked into the belt.

Naturally the command group has the nicest collection of pelts!

It is a real thrill to get this unit over the line for a couple of reasons. First, this is a Dogs of War unit which I had not previously painted back when I owned my original collection. I had wanted to take a crack at them, but a) already had assembled a decent-size force and b) was kind of intimidated by all of the leopard-style pelts. Nearly every figure in the unit is wearing a pelt. The studio models in the army book looked amazing (of course), but painting those spotted pelts looked really tricky and beyond my brush skills at the time.

Another ranker.

25 years later wariness of painting the pelts was still holding me back, but I was determined to try...there was a lot of trial and error on the first couple of test figures, but I managed to work out an approach that seemed OK, and in particular looked pretty good when the troops were massed together. Even if the spot pattern is not exactly that of a leopard, I can always push the fantasy-escape-button. "Oh, you see, those are the pelts of the, er, 'Tilean Mountain Leopard', and the spots look...just like that..."

From this aspect you can see some of the assorted small details that add character. Like the chap at the rear with a portion of rope, the different types of packs etc. 

Each time I have completed one of these units, I have commented on how wonderful these old sculpts are. This time will be no exception - let it be said, again, that these old sculpts are just wonderful! So much character, brilliant metal sculpts from the Perry brothers. While there is, of course, broad similarity to the figures, there are a number of small little variants among the sculpts that add just enough difference, and a little touch of character, to let each figure be slightly unique while preserving the overall uniform look to the unit. It has been such a treat to paint these figures, with their crisp, proper metal lines and details. 

I love these big pike blocks!

So that is now three large, chonky pike blocks completed to serve as a solid backbone for my "Dogs of War" army, but this project is still not yet complete. The army will require some artillery support and a bit of cavalry to round things out. Time in this edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is running short, so those elements are likely to have to wait until the next one, but who knows what might be possible before things conclude? 

"Ready lads!"

That's all for this entry - stay tuned for a couple more posts to cover everything off from AHPC XVI. Thanks for reading!

MOAR!! Khorne Bloodletters

OK this will likely be the last you'll hear from me for a week or two... I'm off to Salute this weekend and for a bit of a holiday in the UK. But I finished up these chaps last night and wanted to post them before I leave.

This of course is a box of the "new" plastic Bloodletters... "new" being relative, as these were first released over a decade ago, in 2013. They're quite a different aesthetic from the others I've painted as these ones are quite lithe and slender, as opposed to the hulking metal brutes that preceded them. But I like these ones too as they really harken back to the OG Bloodletters from Slaves to Darkness:

Anyway I painted them very similarly to the metal ones - bodies Khorne Red/Mephiston Red/Evil Sunz Scarlet, horns and nails Kantor/Thunderhawk Blue, and swords Corax White finished with Biel-Tan Green wash.

The poses on these models are generally quite good. I especially like the daemons wielding their swords two-handed. But care must be taken to match sword arms and left arms, don't just cut them off the sprues and put them in a pile!

You get a nice champion-head in the box.

Standard-bearer and musician too for those inclined to do a fantasy-battle unit. Since the sacred number of Khorne is eight and you get ten of these daemons in a box, I reckon that the standard and musician will mostly get LOB in 40K games. But it's nice to have the options.

Cheeky chappies! Unlike the older metal models that sport loincloths, these daemons are fully unclothed. Fortunately they're smooth like Ken dolls :-) 

Anyway that's all for now, I'm sure I'll have a report from Salute in due course! And I almost forgot - Blood for the you-know-who!

Khorne Blood Slaughterer “Impaler” and Friends!

Some more escalation in the Khorne 40K project. This is a Khorne Blood Slaughterer Impaler (a mouthful), it's a resin model designed by Forgeworld. And I say "designed by" deliberately.

The Blood Slaughterer looks like a cross between a Brass Scorpion (cool) and a Defiler (ugh) and there are two versions: the standard Slaughterer with two close combat cleavers, and this Impaler variant with a harpoon on a chain.

The model comes in a bunch of parts, the legs being particularly confusing and tricky to assemble. But I found a blog post that gave some helpful tips and better than that, included photos of the assembled legs. So I just put together the legs to look the same as the ones in the pictures, then assembled the lot. While the other blogger painted the parts as components, I put most of the model together before painting and just did the "arms" and shoulder plates separately. I also didn't glue the model to the base till it was all painted, which allowed access to the underside.

I knew that there was no way this model would survive sitting on a shelf, let alone gaming, without a base, so I got a 100mm round base from GW. It was just big enough.

 

This is a really characterful and cool model. We'll soon see how clever it is on the battlefield.

The other models I've finished for the army are three icon bearers. Back in fifth edition, daemons were summoned to battle, and appeared within a short distance of a chaos icon. If you had no icon still on the table, your daemons didn't appear - an undesirable outcome to say the least. So I had to paint one icon bearer for each of the three Berzerker squads.

This is the only metal icon bearer GW produced for the army, it came out in 1996. It's a great little model too, I like the bareheaded Berzerker. Really fun to paint.

 

I had to convert a couple others, for two reasons. First, I didn't want multiples of the same model, and second, said model was friggin' expensive. So I converted a couple plastic Berzerkers to carry icons. This icon is from the Bloodletters box.

This icon is another random plastic bit, not sure what Khorne kit it's from, but it looks fine.

Here's a picture of the Blood Slaughterer with the Berzerker icon bearer, just to show how big the model is.

And lastly, here's something to make collectors' heads pop off. Yes this is how I got the icon bearer I painted for the army.

                                                

What can I say, it wasn't the first time and won't be the last. Models are meant to be painted!

So until next time... Blood for the Blood God!

Little Bighorn Project

 

Better late than never I guess, but here is the first sizeable tranche of my 2026 project, the Little Bighorn in 28mm. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the battle and as I've said before here, I have some stuff planned, so I have to get off my kiester and get painting.

The models here are a mix of Foundry packs - some from the Young Bloods, and some from the Dog Soldiers packs. Above L to R we have Bear Licks With Tongue, Three Fingers, and Wolf Looks Back.

Here are Running Rabbit, Goes Walking, and Little Crow. As you can see from the photos these models are all characters and don't really lend themselves to "assembly line" painting like the Seventh Cavalry models do. But I did the skintones the same on all of them - GW Doombull Brown highlighted with Ratskin Flesh. I hate the name of that paint but I think it gives a good Indigenous fleshtone.

                                     

 Lastly we've got Pawnee Killer, Touch the Sky, and Plenty Coups. I did put warpaint on a few of the models but I may go back and do a few more as I like the look. 

The apex of the Indigenous resistance against white settlement and colonization was of course the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where a coalition of Indigenous warriors wiped out - to a man - five companies of the US Seventh Cavalry led by Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer (often referred to - incorrectly - as "General Custer" owing to his holding the rank of brevet brigadier-general in the Civil War).

                                 

Well there's the first bunch of Plains Warriors done. Only about 40 or 50 more to go...? Shouldn't be a problem this summer as long as I can stay away from Khornate distractions. We'll see.

                                        

As for the Seventh Cavalry, here's the first bunch. I've painted some troopers here (Foundry) as well as an officer, guidon bearer and trumpeter (not sure who made those!)

This first bunch are mostly Foundry models, I have a lot of them to paint. The command group above are from an unknown manufacturer, I'm sure someone out there knows who. The guidon is of the type used by the Seventh at Little Bighorn and was handpainted by me on paper.

The last eight models in the post are Foundry's "Old Sweats" pack, sculpted by Mark Copplestone.

They're super-nice models as you'd expect from the Foundry. Paint formula is Kantor Blue highlighted with ancient Ultramarines Blue for the jackets. The pants have been troubling for me. The blue should be light blue but not TOO light... these ones were too light and I toned them down with a blue wash, but still not happy with them. Will do some more experimenting with the next group. Black hats, leather equipment and boots were highlighted Dark Rubber. The yellow is Averland Yellow with an Agrax Earthshade wash, then re-highlighted. Rifle stocks are Dark Brown highlighted New Wood.

Anyway here's one interesting thing about the models... when I was at the Little Bighorn battlefield in 2008 I filled a jar with dirt from Last Stand Hill (as you do) and a little bit was sprinkled into the groundwork on each of these models, just to connect the models directly to the place where it all happened. Having the actual dirt also helped me do the colour for the groundwork - it's AK Khaki washed Agrax, then re-highlighted.

I'll keep posting as the project continues!

Dallas