Display Cabinet – The Catachan Morgul Khamir

Let us open the display cabinet once more and have a look at one of my early w40k conversions. I made this for a painting challenge many years ago, wanting to kickstart a Catachan roughrider project. I wanted a bikergang, riding Space Marine bikes, so I made this one as a prototype on the gang, and that led me to abandon the thought of using the SM bike as mount for a whole unit of riders.

I remember the conversion work to be cumbersome and requiring many odd bits to make the rides stick on the bike. The legs for instance are those from a Ork wartrack. Another thing that struck me was the fact that such a large bike would have a hard time maneuvering in the jungle. So instead of making myself a whole gang of these it ended up as a one off.

I would use him as Morgul Khamir, if I was ever to field him in a battle, but that is another story…

Enjoy!

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet - Saving Private Cryan

Today we reopen the Display Cabinet, and have a look at the Saving Private Cryan diorama. I made this just when the new commissar models was released. I have always enjoyed the wounded soldier from the old Cadian command box. Nothing seems to be wrong with him, no bullet holes, no nothing, just scared and unhappy about the situation. That is the kind of whining that commissars can cure instantly, and the commissar model was perfect for a little do-or-die diorama.

I’ve build the base from balsa wood, with holes for the bases, so that the minis can be used for gaming as well. Balsa is a nice material as you can easily cut it with a hobby knife, and glue it with PVA. It does however have two characteristics that you need to be aware of:

1.     It breaks easily, meaning that precision cutting small bits is almost impossible.

2.     It curves when large areas are glued together, unless weighted down.

I painted the Cadian trooper standard uniform colors, and went for a light grey uniform for the commissar. I wanted commissar to be clean looking, just as if he just stepped out of his vehicle, whereas private Cryan is more dirty and muddy

 

Enjoy!

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet – The Sanguine Warhost

Today’s peek into the Cabinet is at an entire army! 1550 points of golden artificer armour and master crafted power weapons! – Commander Dante’s sanguinary guard is on display today.

Just after the release of the lovely new Blood Angels dolls I bought this army. They were primed with metal as base, and then the gold tone on the armour was created using inks. The fathered wings were taking quite a long time, as each feather had to be painted several times with white to cover the underlying grey colour. as far as I remember I spend at lease half an hour per set of wings!

Army list

HQ: Commander Dante

1 Commander Dante

HQ: The Sanguinor, Exemplar of the Host

1 The Sanguinor, Exemplar of the Host

Troops: Sanguinary Guard

5 Sanguinary Guard with Death Masks, Chapter Banner, 1 x Infernus Pistol

Troops: Sanguinary Guard

5 Sanguinary Guard with Death Masks, Chapter Banner, 2 x Infernus Pistol

Troops: Sanguinary Guard

5 Sanguinary Guard with Death Masks, Chapter Banner, 2 x Infernus Pistol

Elite: Sanguinary Priests (one in each of the Guard squads)

3 Sanguinary Priest in Power Armour with Jump Pack, Plasma Pistols & Power Fists

Total Roster Cost: 1550

Death masks can be removed if game is less than 1500 point, and a furioso dreadnaught in drop-pod can be added if the game is to be 1750 points. With 2+ armour save + FNP roll, the only real danger to these guys comes from plasma and other low AP weapons.

/Nicolai aka Atoom



Display Cabinet – Steam-punk VC ’MMMM’

Last up is the Mechanized Mortuary Metal Monstrosity. It is the new and improved version of the black coach. It is a quite simple kitbash using the GW Black Coach and a resin kit from somewhere I have forgotten…

That was the last of my steam punk vampires…

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet – Steam-punk VC ’Roboghulf’

Next up in the display cabinet from the steam punk VC project is the ‘Roboghulf’. The Vanghulf is obvious to go Killer-Robot, and I was instantly thinking w40k Dreadnaught, but didn’t want it to go too high tech. Luckily my local store has just the mini needed for the job – A mechanical Skaven, that with a little modelling could be turned into a mechanical vampire. After some dental work I added the casket from a black coach, some whirring and w40k bits and then the Roboghulf was ready for painting.

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet – Steam-punk VC ’Doomsday Machine’

Next up in the display cabinet from the steam punk VC project is the ‘Doomsday Machine’. This is in fact a unit filler for a skeleton unit. It was build from various components, most notable the bone swam from Privateer Press. The bone swarm model was in fact one of the models that I had been looking for an excuse to paint for quite a while.

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet – Steam-punk VC ’Rygnar’s Rocketeers’

Next up in the display cabinet from the steam punk VC project is Rygnar’s Rocketeers – Stand in for fell bats. The idea to this was spawned from a search through my bits-box that unveiled a lot of hunter killer missiles. Looking at these, I thought about rocket knights, and who was better at rocketry than dwarves. The story behind this unit is that the old count hires a dwarven engineer called Rygnar and entrust him with the task of providing some rocket powered knights.

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet – Steam-punk VC ’Auto Reaper’

A while back a started a modelling / painting project that was based on a steam punk themed vampire counts army. I’ve been fascinated by steam punk setting ever since I met it for the first time in the computer RPG called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscura).

So one day I got the idea of combining steam-power and Necromancy, and the idea for a steam-punk based VC project. I’m quite fond on some of the creations that I’ve made for this project and I’m going to show you these over the coming days.

I’m going to start with the Auto Reaper – A mechanized corpse cart that was inspired by the modern reapers. I started off by looking for a suitable steering house / reaper part, and cam across the old snotling pump wagon, that in fact is some kind of reaper – All I had to do was to build a conveyer belt that could take the recently reaped bodies to the corpse chart. The engineer on top is one of the old handgunners from a previous WFB start kit.

Modelling the Auto Reaper was great fun, and I must say that I’m very impressed with the quality of the new corpse cart. Painting was done with comic book style in mind, looking for a colourful look – Very different from the dirty look of w40k.

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet - IG Dioramas II

I showed two IG mini-dioramas the yesterday, but just came to think of this one that is in fact the first of the mini-dioramas I did. It was done quickly, and it shows, as mold lines and transfers really don’t work well, but I just thought that I would show it anyway, as it was in fact the one that spawned the idea behind doing the dioramas in the 1^st place. It was creted using a plastic cadian trooper and a leg from the WFB zombie sprue.

This one is called 'The dancing accident':

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Display Cabinet - IG mini-dioramas

Following the release of the Cadian trooper box, I was (as mentioned earlier) very inspired by the grunts. The multipart kits inspired me to try out some modeling of scenarios that had otherwise been out of my league, as modeling metal minis will never work for me.

The first mini-diorama is titled ‘Resting Guardsman’ and was made to try to show another more peaceful side of the guard. Sitting on his backpack this trooper has taken up study of the Tactica Imperialis to kill time.

The other mini-diorama is entitled ‘The Ripper Incident’ and was made after a friend of mine gave me a ripper and started arguing how cool it would be if a poor trooper had it bursting out of him like in the movie Alien. This one had some bits from the Forgeworld veteran upgrade pack mixed with standard Cadian trooper bits.

/Nicolai aka Atoom