Some Thousand Sons Reinforcements - Part 2, Tactical Squad

XV Legion Marines in Mark III power armour. Plastic figures from GW.

Another post featuring reinforcements for the XV Legion Astarters, the "Thousand Sons". These Marines are clad in Mark III plate, multi-part plastic figures from GW. Nothing that special about 10 more Astartes carrying bolters, but the method used to paint these guys was a little different for me.

Really pleased with the metallic, candy red - all thanks to the "Rattle Can" approach.

As I have mentioned on different occasions over the past year, I have been keen to achieve a metallic red look for the armour of the Thousand Sons, without resorting to the logistical headaches involved with an airbrush. Previous experiments had involved use of GW's "Contrast" paints - with OK results, but with a clear limitation in that "Contrast" paints do not work well on vehicles. Any painting approach that works on the infantry but not on the vehicles will be a limiting one. So I had my eyes out for something new...

Sergeant sporting a Thunder Hammer and plasma pistol. And a few extra mystical symbols...

And another approach duly appeared! Medders' Miniatures has done several YouTube tutorials with what he calls the "Rattle Can Series" - ways of painting Space Marines models that do not involve airbrushes, but rely instead on the selection of a good spray can to achieve a base coat on the armour. I found his tutorial on the Thousand Sons to be inspiring, and so I gave it a shot! 

The armour panels were finished with a coat of satin varnish...although, still pretty glossy...

This squad is the result! I will saw that messing around with oil washes, while kinda fun, is also a much slower process than it seems in the video. For my part, using GW's "Nuln Oil" is just fine, is much quicker and less hassle. Involving oil paints required the use of multiple coats of varnish, and this impacted the detail on these plastic figures, particularly on the face plates of some of the models, where the surface detail is a bit thin.

But overall, I really do like the look of this metallic red - in this case, achieved by spraying a Tamiya Red over a matte white base coat. I am looking forward to trying this painting approach on a vehicle very soon - that will be the real test!  

An officer - AND a psyker!

Tactical squads are pretty basic in 30k (at least, I assume they still are - will be a few days before I finally get the chance to check out the new edition of the Horus Heresy rules) but they are good building blocks for a standard force, and in the case of the Thousand Sons, you can also makes these guys psykers, so they can be flinging spooky powers as well as bolt gun shells as their enemies. Plus, who knows, they probably are secret members of a cabal...right?

Thanks for reading - stay tuned for more 30k content!

Some Thousand Sons Reinforcements - Part 1, Contemptor Dreadnought

"Your library fines are overdue" - Thousand Sons' Contemptor Dreadnought - multipart resin kit from Forge World.

Well, about a year (give or take) after some fuzzy photos first leaked online, a new edition of the Horus Heresy rules is about to be released. I wish I was connected enough to have somehow scored some preview miniatures myself (being online, as a fan you feel like somehow literally everyone else got some), I have channelled my excitement instead toward chipping away at my already-existing pile of 30k stuff to paint. Here we have a Contemptor Dreadnought painted in the colours of the XV Legion Astartes - the "Thousand Sons". This is a multi-part resin kit from GW's Forge World studios.

I love "volkite" weapons! What fun to equip one on a Contemptor Dreadnought!

My Thousand Sons collection started small (don't they all?) - based around the figures and units that came with the excellent box game "The Burning of Prospero". Over the years, I have been inspired to try and build this small cadre into a force that can play in a standard game of 30k. I have also sought out various means whereby I could try and achieve a metallic-looking red for the Thousand Sons' armour without resorting to the headaches of an airbrush. 

Chainfists do seem a touch uncivilized, but just because this guy enjoys books doesn't mean he can't also enjoy carnage.

I have played around with various approaches that involve GW's relatively new line of "Contrast" paints, and IMO the results have been OK - in fact, I think that approach can look really sharp with practice. The problem arises with vehicles - "Contrast" paints have many uses, but in general look like crap on vehicles (or anything where there are larger, flat panels). This model, in my opinion, shows some of those limitations - the red is metallic enough, but a touch blotchy in places (despite my best, careful efforts) as "Contrast" paints just don't know what to do with flat surfaces.

Low-emission power plant...

Even with the challenges of using the "Contrast" paints, it was still a fun bit of kit to work on. I enjoy the pseudo-Egyptian glyphs, icons and symbols used by the Thousand Sons - it's not just that they revere knowing, but they specifically revere knowing more than you do. The weapons are fun too - heavy volkite weaponry, and a crazy chain-fist. This guy won't burn books, but he will burn you, and everyone around you...finishing this model significant increases the combat power of my small-but-growing Thousand Sons force. It's big enough now that I might even call is a "cabal"!

The leadership of my own Prosperine "cabal" taking shape...

And being part of the Thousand Sons legion, you can also make the "pilot" a psyker - so not only is this thing blasting the bodies of its enemies, but also their minds! And, as we know, there are never any downsides to using psyker powers in the Warhammer 30k setting - everything always works out fine, with 100% safety, with no negative after-effects.

Stay tuned for some more Thousand Sons reinforcements, and more about the elusive search for the no-airbrush-but-still-cool-metallic-red...until then, thanks for reading!

The Elucidian Starstriders

The "Elucidian Starstriders" - plastic figures from GW.

The Elucidian Starstriders were a "Kill Team" set released by GW several years ago (amid the previous edition of the "Kill Team" game). They represent a Rogue Trader, Captain Elucia Vhane, and her crew, from the ship New Dawn. And by "crew", we mean, of course, "survivors", since things appeared to have not worked out too well for the New Dawn. These are all plastic figures.

I admit to having no particular interest in the story of the New Dawn - but I recall seeing the figures when they were released years ago and being keen on acquiring them, as they would make for interesting character figures/objectives in skirmish-sized games of 30k and 40k. A purchase was duly made, but of course, by the time the figures arrived, my butterfly-type hobby attention had moved elsewhere, so the figures duly sat around...

Voidmaster Nitsch, Elucia Vhane - and loyal canine!

Anyway, I did finally paint them! The first figure to be painted was "Knosso Prond", an assassin-type figure, painted as a "Curtgeld" for Mike F back in early 2021, during one an Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. The Rogue Trader, Elucia Vhane herself, was painted earlier this year, once more as a submission for the most recent edition of Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. With two figures down, I figured it was time to get off my duff and finish the rest of them - and they have been finished off this spring (or, I should say, "spring"). 

Stanistasia Minst (left) and Larsen vsn der Grauss (right).

We have a couple of space weirdos to round out the complement - some of the most interesting figures in the assortment! There is Larsen van der Grauss, a "communications specialist" - with a get up like that, it looks to me like he gets solid five-bar wireless coverage wherever he goes in the universe!

We also have Sanistasia Minst, apparently a medical specialist of some kind. Like all health care providers in the 30k/40k setting, Stanistasia exudes the requisite air of of techno-dread, sporting instruments that seem more adept to harvesting organs than doing anything to help the patient who may have been housing said organs...

I love the baroque armour on these troopers.

Another view showing equipment/kit.

We also have Voidmaster Nitsch and his small squad of troopers. They feature ornate armour that brings to mind the "Solar Auxilia" of the 30k setting. These are, IMO, some of the coolest-looking figures in this set. Plus, rotor cannons are always fun to use, right?

Rotor cannons solve problems, right?

Also - they have a dog! So you know this squad is great, because dogs are great :)

Great figures in this set, but the dog is a favourite!

What purpose will these figures have? I have no specific idea...as noted above, they would make for great specialist/objective/character figures in games of Kill Team, 30k and 40k, so I hope to make use of them in some such way. But mostly they were fun to (finally) paint. 

That's all for now! Hope everyone is doing OK out there. Thanks for reading!

Scale Comparison for Horus Heresy / 40k

In my previous post featuring the Alternative Armies knights, James Martin requested to see them scaled against some guard and marine models. Since it was such a good idea, I decided to oblige him.

From left to right: Mark III Space Marine, Anvil Industry Regiments, GW Steel Legion, AA Knight, Imperial Guard, Death Korps Krieg, Mark IV Space Marine, Cataphractii Terminator.

The Anvil Industry models are probably the smallest. You really notice it in their guns,which are much better scaled to the models. the above model has a Space Marine bolter, as I felt the properly scaled guns didn't match GW's aesthetic. The Knight kinda fits right in the middle and doesn't look out of place next to the guardsmen.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for visiting.

Traitor Militia Grenadiers

 I mentioned last post that I was adding some units to my existing Imperial Guard army to adapt it to a 30K army. The cool thing about 30k is the use of technology long forgotten by the 40k universe. Some technology in use is rare even by 30k standards. I like the idea of the Survivors of the Dark Age provenance as it gives regular infantry a 3+ save to represent power armor. Power Armour is used mainly by Space Marines, but it was probably fairly common prior to the Age of Strife. A few worlds still had access to power armor, but their availability was dwindling. By the time of the Horus Heresy there would be few non-space marines who had access to Power Armour. 

Many Imperial Army regiments followed Horus during the Heresy and I liked the idea of one of them being relatively favored by Horus and thus given access to human power armor for the elite squads of grenadiers. They haven't gone to chaos yet and follow Horus out of blind loyalty and for political reasons. I'm sure it'll work out great!  To represent the grenadiers I drew inspiration from this picture.

The closest models I could find were Alternative Armies Ion Age Retained Knights. The models are cast in metal and I think were sculpts from the 90's. They share many features of space marine power armor, but I'm not sure who inspired who. The AA models are spindly compared to space marines which I think helps to convey that there are just normal dudes inside. I struggled with the lighting today, so the color is a bit more washed out than normal, but it gives you the idea. I just went with the standard olive green like the rest of the army, but added red shoulder pads and some Sons of Horus transfers. You can't see them due to the glare unfortunately. The banner is also a SoH transfer and the banner bearer is standing beside the platoon commander who's decked out in brass power armor. I painted up 35 models in total. That's enough for 2x 12 man grenadier squads and a large command squad.

 

I have one more vehicle on the way for this group and when it's done, I'll post a photo of the entire army.

Thanks for visiting!