Genestealer Cult Gargoyles - Summer 2013

[rtmaitreya]

Finished all assembly over the weekend with new weapons, legs, heads, and stands! Up late to get this in before voting. I'll be playing my first game with the new gargoyles this coming weekend! I will try to get them primed black before then, but unlikely to get any paint on.

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Here are some blurry photos of three of my favorite new guys. I love the banner guy, in particular, with the "in gloriam" exhultation to the fatherly sky god. To finish up modeling, the unit leader is not done, as I want to do him separately and last, spending a little extra time. I'm using a mutie raider upper body, and one of the yoofs lowers that matches well.

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Note deep plier marks oriented to appear as wood grain on the gunstock. *I'm proud of those kinds of engineered details. . .*

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Kind of reminds me of this guy: [url]http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/008/120/1325161207226.jpg[/url]

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Thanks for watching! This project has been a blast, but sure was a lot of work.

RTM

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

I'd forgotten about this project; still like it! Looking forward to seeing the leader. Got any other Genestealer Cult stuff online?

[rtmaitreya]

I'd forgotten about this project; still like it! Looking forward to seeing the leader. Got any other Genestealer Cult stuff online?

Thanks! Yes, the leader is underway already. I'll be posting tonight or tomorrow if things go well. I don't have any other photos online yet. This contest-for-hybrids was the motivation I needed to start to document my progress on the army, which I've been collecting for 20 years and actively building for the last 18 mo. I have a full army with some decent (if wacky) conversions, so I can just pile that in here as I take pictures. Lots of paint still needed, but the army is otherwise quite playable and wins some games as well. There's so so many cultists and hybrids that get ripped apart by bolter and frag fire in every game that it's fun to play and fun to play against.

[Da Gof Rockerz]

You had me the moment you said you where inspired by Black Sabbath's the Mob Rule (or is that [URL="http://www.reverbnation.com/dagofrockerz/song/17955463-da-mob-rule"]Da Mob Rule[/URL]?). Great conversions, I love GorkaMorka and I love Tyranids. Hard to go wrong putting the two together seems like peanut butter and jelly. I hope you post some pictures when they are painted.

[rtmaitreya]

Solid progress this past week, finishing up the models and moving on to the bases.
I finished up the leader, created my "duel" centerpiece, and figured out the basing magnetization and material scheme.

Here is my Gargoyle brood leader, a smoove operator and third generation hybrid. He's got a bit of a talent for leading the rabble owing to his higher than average psychic awareness. His charisma far outstrips his comeliness, fortunately.

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I saved the most work for last; a duel. I have long wanted to have a duel miniature on a normal play base, so I can taunt my opponents forevermore. The hapless assault marine shall be done in perfect replica of one of my local foe's brooding sanguine finest. He has a single pin mount on his back heel, which I am holding. The rest is pinned all up and through the joints so he is far stronger here than on a regular flight base.

Why, yes, I drill out the gun barrels of my basing fodder in my seven point models. Doesn't everyone?

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The last bit of work is on my basing scheme. I found a pack of 1/8" magnets I have been hoarding for ten years. My work bought them at an auction lot of an optical switch company after the 2000 boom-bust cycle, and were going to throw them away. Oh, no no no, swooped in and grabbed maybe a thousand rare earth magnets for free. I've been using the 3/32" flat discs from K&J Magnetics for well over a decade (they fit well under normal slottas). I had never found a bona fide reason for more than a handful of these tall 1/8" cylinders and used maybe 10 for weapons throughout the ages. The flight bases are a pain to drill with large drill bits, and are very tall solid plastic. The flat discs don't work, but these babies do.

The basing scheme for prep is as shown in the image below. I sand the top first, then drill out (two stages drill operation not shown). Also note I re-drill the centers for the flight stand riser. These flight stands were designed way away back when before GW had anyone with any knowledge about plastics design, injection molding, and thermal coefficients of expansion, so the flight stands don't press fit the way they appear they are supposed to. This is the same root cause of why we have been getting red whippy sticks for far too long that are generously referred to as "playing aids" as opposed to "actual accurate rulers". Hot plastic shrinks, duh.

ANYhoo, once we drill the holes, we pop in some magnets (mindful of polarity so all minis across the army match), superglue them in, epoxy the top, and then epoxy on some grit. I am doing these bases as industrial wasteland, owing to their "outlander" appearance compared to the rest of my army. The rest of the army is more "ruined gothic building" with some tech scrap thrown in, whereas these guys are all scrap and detritus.

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The steps not shown are white glue and kitty litter (new clay, not used and stinky, you reprobates, sheesh), then watered down white glue and mixed grit sand dip. I water glue coat everything after that, then prime black. You'll be seeing my next work down this path towards priming. I put a lot into each mini before the first paint hits the plastic.

Cookin' now, unit modeling is done! Have to crank on the bases and paint to hit my deadline, though.

RTM

[rtmaitreya]

Weekend update: all my base!

I have all bases done up with scrap objects, big rubble (decorative rock), small rubble (kitty litter), and mixed grit sand. Epoxy the scrap and large rocks, then use carpenter's glue for the rest. Clean the edges so they will look sharp when painted up.

They are all magnetized and strong, sitting on sheet roofing tin (my standard material for all movement trays).

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The look I was going for was to remain somewhat respectful of the original Heavy Metal blasted scrapscape.

[url]http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/heavy-metal/w448/heavy-metal.jpg?1289465100[/url]

There is a nice video of the fly-by here.

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqqa_oiHw5g[/url]

I think I did a good job of "warhammer 40king" it up.

Next step is to paint the bases a bit and get them ready for mounting.

[Tornik]

Genestealer Cults, Diggas and Heavy metal, oh my. I am most definitely subscribed.

[rtmaitreya]

Update on Genestealer Cult Gargoyles

I've actually been working my butt off to get ready for the Labor Day tournament. Every spare moment is dedicated to modeling and painting the remaining items in the list, and I haven't had time to upload, sort pictures, and report to y'all, but I *did* take pictures throughout the last few weeks as I've been forging ahead. Here are some updates to begin to catch everyone up on this major summer project.

Finishing up bases was early in the process, with the final color scheme going for heavy gray-based rubble with severely rusted scrap.

Here are pictures of the bases under indoor lighting and in sunlight, so can see the color. I went for a dramatic orange-on-brown for the rust, so the bases pop. Scrap is painted iron oxide brown, then drybrushed heavily with Reaper rust color, then selected rivets and edges are touch painted with privateer press Khador highlight (light orange). The end result is pretty sweet.

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They are very similar to the bases of my other gargoyle unit, which is a bunch of skyboard gangers. Here is a closeup of some of those bases. The round dot in the center of the skyfboard is a magnet, so all of my gangers can be removed for easy transport and for easy replacement with squats, necromunda heroes, whatever I want later on.

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Some closeups of the boards' construction (also a major project, but was constructed over the winter):

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The two units look very different in modeling and style, so I wanted to make sure all the colors and the bases would help tie them each in with the rest of the army. It helps that I will generally be fielding one gargoyle unit on each flank, so they are very far separated so the dichotomy of "hive surfers" vs "wasteland mutants" won't be so evident.

[rtmaitreya]

Here's two more skyfboards for comparison.

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Next up was the daunting task of painting all these gribblies, as well as a host of other units that were not painted. The biggest problem I had was that I wanted the entire army to get upgraded to the quality of my nicest unit. This unit was done by Qrab, with hybrids constructed out of Stealer bits and Catachans, but a paint job that would ultimately be my greatest challenge to match/approach. I had received plenty of advice from Q over the years, but now to paint an army instead of just a few models and units. . .

Here's a good example of the paint job serving as inspiration:

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The flesh color is done with various colors of fleshy paint, with a magical wash of sapphire blue ink, a tiny bit of flesh wash, all in a base medium of Future floor wax (acrylic gel) adding a touch of water with a fraction of a drop of dishwashing detergent to break the surface tension of the fluid. The magical wash does a great job of settling in and drying in the recesses of the model, much better than "raw ink" or many of the commercial washes.

[rtmaitreya]

After several days of failed experiments and agony over "the right look", I ended up choosing colors and techniques that would be rather difficult to do, but looks very crisp with good complementary colors. The look will support good addition of spots and details later on, but still look great on the tabletop from gaming distance until I get the time for doing the tiny details. I plan to never repaint anything over, just add detail later as real life permits over the years. Sometimes I actually go back and add such things, but I will admit it's rare, since I still have thousands of miniatures and only a few decades left to paint them.

Here's a closeup of the front and backside of the gargoyle. The body is based in necron abyss, then heavily drybrushed with a reaper dragon blue paint. The wing vanes and ribs are painted on, so the color appears much bolder and stronger. The purple items are painted the standard GW liche purple, then drybrushed heavily with warlock purple (which I don't think is available anymore?). The wing membranes are painted reaper suntan flesh, then washed with the magical blue wash described above. I will eventually do a thin transparent flesh painting over the centers of the wing membranes when I am much further along in the project (like, maybe next year or something, who knows, low priority, eh?).

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You might find humor in watching the paint stains on my fingers vary throughout these posts. I have done a metric load of painting done in the last couple of weeks, much to the chagrin of my wife (but amusement of my child). Here is a vanity shot of my painting station in my dining room. You can see the project has taken over the main table in the background.

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In the photo, you might notice my magus (zoanthrope). I'll post closeups of him later, but for now you can see the value of good old fashioned father-son nerdliness. My son is not yet four, but he's got some mean brush skills already:

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It's important to have a bunch of very-similar-looking-but-non-critical models available for children to play with and paint. A fistful of extra stealers (that I hadn't slaved over carving mold lines, basing, or converting) fit the bill. Throughout the project, it also included some termagants, Orks, and monopose skinks and lizardmen from back in the day. Anything to help him practice and NOT on daddy's high-end stuff. . . By the end of the summer the only "real" casualties were one good brush, one skyfboard rider, and some permanent scuffing on a tervigon bus. For that I got many, many hours of bonding with boy, and his own skills improved dramatically. Win.