Warhammer 40k: Venomcrawler

After a long gestation period the next giant gribbly monster is finally finished.

The grimdark paint scheme continues on here with minimal colouring but with vibrant spots of visceral red.  I did find working on this mini and bit fiddly due to all the fleshy bits being in hard to get places but as usual once you have the finished paint job in front of you it finally all "comes together".

 

Warhammer 40k: Maulerfiend

After finishing up all the troops for my Black Legion it was time to start adding some of the larger options available to the armies of Chaos.

This beastie was a bit of a slog to get through with all the fleshy parts mixed in with the mechanical bits as well as the plates on top but in the end I just cracked on and it now looks a suitably menacing part of the army.

Warhammer 40k: Possessed

Well the itch of chaos finally took hold so it was time to pick up the Black Legion again, so of course the first thing I did was to buy a new unit!

I spotted these new Possessed sculpts while shopping and thought I'd treat myself to them in order to kick start the Black Legion project again.  As per any new GW kit the miniatures are fantastic but long gone are the days of being able to build them as you like with only a few different build options available (unless you want to get a saw and some green stuff out).

As I already had two (formerly Greater) Possessed miniatures in the army I had to make sure these matched up with them to look like one cohesive unit but once I started painting it all came back to me and they've turned out pretty decent making an eye catching unit within the army. 

Below are the individual shots of the Possessed and in the meantime I've already started on something from the actual Black Legion backlog, a bit of a monster you might say.

Warhammer 40k: Contemptor and Leviathan Dreadnoughts rise for the Black Legion

After finishing the characters it was time to add some heavy support to the Black Legion harking back 10,000 years to the Sons of Horus.  These ancient machines of hate will once again stride across battlefields  with only one objective, annihilate the enemy!

It's also good to have a change of pace when painting and that is what these two chaps provided.  Sticking to exactly the same paint scheme as the rest of the army meant I got the paint down on them in no time and the Contemptor has even seen action in it's first game.

The Leviathan has had some work done to it so that it better fits in with the rest of the army courtesy of some brass etchings and the usual bits box dive while the Sons of Horus Contemptor couldn't have been any more suited to the Black Legion (for obvious reasons).

Next I'm taking a break from the Black Legion for a "short" time to paint up the newly arrived Hellboy expansions!

Warhammer 40k: Dark Apostle, Master of Possession and Chaos Marine Champion

To finish off the infantry for this project I bulk painted the three remaining non-named character miniatures I had left; a Dark Disciple, Master of Possession and a converted Chaos Marine Champion.

To help distinguish the character miniatures I painted their shoulder pads in gold as well as having more gold embellishment on their armour.  For the warp emanations/flame I wanted a colour that would really stand out so I opted for one of Army Painters Speedpaints, Plasmatic Blot, which did the trick nicely.

The Champion was converted from Haarken Worldclaimer, which I thought wasn't all that great but had some potential and I quite like the way it turned out.  I mainly removed some of the excessive bits that GW seems to like adding to all their modern sculpts as well as giving him a head change and a re-position

Last up were the underlings that came with the Dark Disciple.  They're actually a couple of decent sculpts as they aren't too busy though the incense holder broke twice during painting due to the thinness of the chain.

Warhammer 40k: Greater Possessed

Following on from the Obliterators I moved on to my next elite unit, the Greater Possessed.  I used a lot of the techniques I used on the Obliterators on these, the more organic bone-like armour as well as using Contrast paints to paint the flesh/Daemon areas (I find they work great for getting smooth blends).

Even though I used a lot of basic techniques on the Greater Possessed (dry brushing/Contrasts/washes) I think they are the stand out miniatures of the army so far, the pops of colour really make them eye catching when stood with the other units. 

Warhammer 40k: Obliterators

Hot on the heals on the Hounds of Abaddon come the Obliterators.

With these I tried adding in some flesh tones to the black armour highlights to give an organic/bone like feel, which has worked quite well in conjunction with the organic textures on the armour plates.  They also received more gold trim as they're very special boys (and also to break up the black). 

I also used some contrast red on the cabling (sometimes over a metallic, other times over flesh) to add a bit of pop to the paint scheme.  This is also the first time I've used my Chaos skin scheme over such a large area and I'm happy with how that turned out, a nice deathly purple tinged off-white.

I'm working on a couple of Greater Possessed next so a lot of the techniques used here will be used on them as well and I'm hoping to knock them out relatively quickly.

Warhammer 40k: The Hounds of Abaddon

I've had these Hounds of Abaddon kit bashes primed and sat on a shelf for too long a time so they definitely deserved their time under the brush.

Overall I'm happy with the conversions however if I were to do them now I would use the lower halves of the new Chaos Space Marine kit (that wasn't released when I put these together) so that they wouldn't be wearing boots however I don't think it takes away from the overall look of the miniatures, they still look 40k rather than AOS.

The paint scheme is the same as the rest of my modern black legion except for the left shoulder pad and head crests, which I painted metallic and then used contrast blood red over the top before giving the entire miniature a black wash.  I really like the result of this so will be using a similar technique for my Horus Heresy Word Bearers.

The only thing I would say about these miniatures is that they were a bit of a pain to take photos of due to their dynamic poses, it creates a lot of shaded areas and out of focus weapons but hopefully the pictures do them some justice.