Eldar Exodite Dragon Knights

As a break from working on the Terminator range I have been working on my Tevari Tala Riders from Macrocosm Miniatures which I pledged for on their first Kickstarter campaign, who I will be using as Exodite Dragon Knights for my 2nd Ed Eldar army.

I wanted to paint these up differently than to my usual way as they need to match into the Eldar army that I purchased a couple years ago (pictures of which you can find in an earlier blog post).  This entailed some different techniques I'd not tried before such as pre-shading and not using any washes but building up layers with over brushing/dry brushing.  Also as my usual painting style tends to be quite dark I wanted to go with a more vibrant scheme which would fit the time frame of gaming I'm aiming to use these in, this includes green base rims (a rather conflicted choice for me)!

The miniatures required very little cleaning up and were good clean metal casts, the dinosaurs having been part of the Hasslefree range at one point I believe and the riders being Macrocosm's own sculpts.  They went together relatively easy with just a little green stuff work need on the joints for the dinosaurs, the thing I thought would be the biggest issue would be how the riders sit atop the dinos however they all had a natural place where they balanced and all the was need was to pinch the legs in to get a good tight fit.  The right arms then fitted very nicely into the correct position on the saddle.

Once I'd base coated them black it was time for a white dry brush as a pre-shade layer.  I'm not sure what sort of impact this actually had on the end result but it did make picking out the details while painting much easier.

Now was time for the colour scheme, I knew I want purple/blue 'Dragons' because space dinosaurs right but I wasn't sure which way to go with the riders armour (something natural like leather or bleached bone or perhaps metallic) but in the end after a quick check on a handy colour wheel I decided to keep the vibrant theme going and went with and orangey/yellow scheme.  Finally I painted up the weapons to match in with the ones from my existing army and painted up the bases.
I'm still not sure on the base rims as I always paint mine black so I'd love some feedback on them, do they look right?

Here are some further images of the finished Dragon Knights:

Overall I'm quite happy with these considering I wasn't painted in safe zone so to speak but would love to hear your feedback on them.

Next up on the table are the five remaining soldiers for the Terminator Resistance force so hopefully these won't take too long to finish off before I move onto a couple of characters and the another project.

Phil

If you're reading this you are the Resistance - Terminator Genisys

I've just finished my next batch of miniatures for the Terminator: Genisys miniatures game, namely the resin Resistance soldiers.  These are fantastic miniatures with so much detail and though I've only done them to a table top level you could really go to town on them.

Two soldiers caught during their cigarette break 

Time to even the odds against the Terminators 

Some of the great poses you can make from the miniatures 

 Two men willing to do whatever it takes to bring down Skynet

Now for a nice option that comes on the sprue, Terminator Infiltrator heads (so the Resistance don't get all the love)

Though I do have more Terminator miniatures to go through I'm going to have a break from these and put together something I've been waiting for, Tevari Tala Riders from Macrocosm miniatures which will be joining my 2nd Ed 40k Eldar army and Exodite Dragon Knight Riders.

Here's a sneak peak of them on my desk at the moment.

Lastly it will be Salute this coming weekend, something we've always wanted to go to but it's always been difficult to attend.  Well not this year, in a last minute decision we've decided to drive there and back on the day making an 8 hours journey overall, hardly ideal and possible slightly nuts but we'll have all of Sunday to recover and it should be well worth it.

Until next time...

A journey into the world of 'Oldhammer'

As I mentioned in my last (and first) post I am going to be talking about my journey into the world of 'Oldhammer'.  Now as you may or may not know Oldhammer isn't a specific gaming system or set of miniatures and means something different to different people and to me personally Oldhammer is 40k second edition.

I guess the best place to start this journey is at the start, which is with me at the tender age of 11 or 12 playing Space Crusade round at a friends house.  This slowly progressed to us playing 2nd edition 40k, though I don't remember exactly how new 2nd ed was at the time I remember initially not having any Codices and using Codex army lists for our forces.  Many a Saturday was spent getting a return ticket to Manchester (for 50p!) to spend the day at the GW store in the Arndale centre with its impressive full size Space Marine in the window.
My force of choice was the Chaos Space Marines who's artwork really blew me away at that tender age however the range was rather lacking at the time as the 2nd ed Chaos releases hadn't started but the Rogue Trader Renegades weren't easily picked up (at my local gaming shop anyway).  So my original force consisted of the metal World Eaters, RT World Eater Champ on Juggernaut, RT Chaos Terminators, the newly released plastic World Eaters and then Abbadon upon his release.  It was at this time that my local gaming shop had a painting competition on, simple enough really as you just had to paint up one of the mono-pose Space Marines from the boxed game.  My friends were entering but I decided not to bother as our area had some excellent painters and I told them we didn't have a chance.  Roll on to the day before the competition and we were in the shop just chatting away to the staff and they asked if we were entering the comp, this somehow led to me picking up one of the miniatures and staying up till 11pm (on a school night) painting this miniature up for the day after.  So after school we all headed to the shop and dropped our entries off which were to be judged by a visiting GW staffer (I can't remember for the life of me how it was but I was excited to see them so I can only assume it was a member of the Eavy Metal team or someone of reasonable note, lost to my memory now) but after seeing everyone else's entries I thought we had no chance and wandered off to flick through the Citadel Catalogue of the time (I used to love doing this - I want that one and that one and...) however I then hear my friends shouting my name so I wander back over and low and behold I've come second place.  Slightly bemused the GW staffer explained why he'd liked my entry (creating my own Chapter colours and adding 'banners') and I got to pick my prize however as there wasn't much of a Chaos range at the moment and my prize was to be Rhino sized the GW staffer let me have a Predator so I could convert it to Chaos and that is exactly what I did (based off an image in the newly released Codex Chaos).
Anyway to cut an already long story a little shorter time passed on and I grew out of the hobby for one reason and another and sold of my collection to a budding new hobbiest I knew, though I did keep my competition entry, the prize, Abbadon and a World Eater to centimental value (here would be a great point to break up this wall of text with a picture of these but I forgot to take one so I'll do a small follow up post for these).

Roll forward many years and I start to remember what a great time I used to have playing 40k so I started looking into the hobby again and end up with a massive Chaos force.  However the dalliance with 40k wasn't to last as it just didn't 'feel' right and the miniatures just didn't quite hit the same spot the old ones did and so the collection was yet again sold on but this time round my eyes were opened to the wider hobby and gaming systems so there was no turning back.  Roll forward some years to 2013 and I stumble upon an announcement of an 'Oldhammer' day at Wargames Foundry and so I became aware of the Oldhammer movement. It would take a further year for me to really dive in (with the announcement of BOYL 2014 - we didn't manage to go but next year is a must - plus the discover of certain blogs like Realm of Chaos 80s and Eldritch Epistles) and after some trading and cracking eBay finds I'm left with a not so small collection of 2nd ed 40k :)

Now is finally the time for some images after giving you eye strain from the wall of text.

First up we have the amassed boxes and Codices.  I grabbed the the game box and Dark Millenium for £10 on eBay, there were no miniatures or the card scenery but everything else plus more (White Dwarf data faxes and cards).

I actually just started of picking these up to read of old times sake however once I started reading I was hooked and the miniatures started to be delivered.  The first force I had to get was my beloved Chaos which you can see most of here:

Being my first army there always hold a special feeling for me and particularly these miniatures.  Then I started to think about picking up some other bits and pieces but for armies that neither myself or my friends had played back in the day so I settled on the Eldar and  Tyranid.

What we have in the brown box is 28 Tyranid warriors and there'a Zoanthrope in that little bag at the bottom.  A strange force I'll grant you but one that was picked up from here and there at a cracking price so no complaints from me.
Next we have the Eldar, now this was a pricey purchase and a risky one.  We all know the issues with seeing 'well painted' on eBay auctions but after good communication with the seller I took the risk and you should have seen the smile on my face when I opened up the package upon delivery.

Fantastic old school paint job on everything with only a few touch ups require due to their age and better still no basing so I could do as I wished with them (I always find basing is a very personal thing with one person masterpiece another persons cluttered mess).
Next up we have one of those impulse purchases that we all make even though we've said that's enough for now, Necrons.  The original Necrons hadn't been released by the time I left the hobby as a lad but on getting back into 40k the first time round they were the army of choice for my wife (an army she is still working on now as they're one of the ranges GW put out now that still look good to our eyes), so while searching eBay for all things retro I came across an auction for a 2nd ed Necron force at a very (very) low price.  Well in for a penny in for a pound and all that so they were quickly making their way to me, this was then followed on with another cracking deal on a Necron force which gives me the following little lot.

As you can see there's no turning back now, just a smaller matter of getting it all painted up though...

One thing I forgot to mention in my first post is that I welcome any comments you have on my posts as well as any constructive criticism you may have when I get round to posting up some painting/modelling progress.

Crucium (otherwise known as Phil)