26/02/2024

These are not the droids you are looking for

 At least I'm sure they're not the droids you expected. If you ever were expecting droids. Oh, whatever.

I found this batch of Chaos Androids from Space Crusade and also found the willpower to give them a second chance of a new life. They were awfully painted (you know it was kind of 30 years ago...), so I had to start from the beginning.

I don't prime in white that often

I had originally painted them in metallics, kind of Terminator style, which was the closest reference (Necrons weren't yet invented at the time!). But this time I've opted for the truly classic scheme, or something close enough.

There's no way to see it on the pic, but there are three different whites there

I first applied a very, very light grey layer, then nulned it and then went again from the light grey to basically pure white. I discovered than the sculpts, though crude, are in fact better than I credited them for, and have some more details than I remembered, hidden here and there.

How would Mike McVey have highlighted those weapons? I tried my best

It's a very straightforward job, nothing complicated. From this point on it all was just a matter of metallics and little else. I've seen that the original paintjob includes some brass on arms and feet, but I didn't fancy the scheme, I think that plain white looks better.

Before I chose the classic pattern, I had some doubts. If these are Chaos Androids (for these are not Necrons at all!), which Ruinous Power should be their Unholy Patron? The obvious choice for me was Tzeentch, Lord of (forbidden) knowledge. I believe that an AI (Abominable Intelligence) should fall under the Lord of Change's domains. So I shortly considered using a blue and yellow scheme. But in the end I thought that the white, basic pattern was better and sticked to it.

Maybe in a future repaint

Here you have them all, alongside a couple of Dreadnoughts, which, now compared to these, would benefit from another repaint, it seems.

What are we doing on the open field? We need steel and wires

How come my pics with natural light look worse than the inside ones??

It's been a nice and short project, and I have to say I've enjoyed it more than I expected, even with the neverending layers of increasingly white. Not sure of what will be next, but I already have some candidates on the queue!

11/02/2024

The roar of the boar

 It's been some weeks since I don't post. Please insert regular excuses about real life here.

I took this old mini that needed some refurbishing. Silly me, as I'm currently working on different stuff at the same time, I totally forgot to take WIP pics of this until it was really too late to make any sense.

It's an old Rogue Trader Ork cyboar rider, which had the boar's head missing, so I had to sculpt it. The result is... crude, but fun nevertheless. Here you have the only pics I've taken:

Colour blast

I'm not particularly strict about Ork Clanz, as my current army is more Rogue Trader than 2nd Ed, so I felt more or less free about colours. Bone white for the armoured parts of the cyboar looked nice, and I built it colour-wise from that point on. You can see the army marking on the pic above, the horned skull over red field.

Alien boars look like that. Very alien boars

The sculpt didn't end up as well as I would have liked, but it can pass as some kind of furry xenos of the same family as boars, which is enough for me. In fact, as the whole body is mechanical, I could have sculpted literally any kind of animal. A camel would have been nice, now that I think of it.

Anyway, not a nice fella to mess up with

Even not using Snakebite Clan colours, I painted a snake on the boar. It's in a Celtic fashion, I guess, making a design and biting it's own tail. I wouldn't dare to call it Beithir nor Ouroboros, but it simply looked nice in that way, along the trimming on the rider's coat. I mean, there's not much more to it.

There's also another snake on his back!

I currently don't have more cyboars, so I faced this one as some standalone project, something feasible while I do some other stuff. I'm finding it fun to get these old minis back, so take for granted I'll be doing more RT in the near future ;)