Building: Blood Pact officer

I was building my beautiful Mort pattern tank and waiting for glue to dry so I thought I'd put together an officer from a model I picked up a while back. A raid through the bits box, some grinding with the dremel and an hour later I give you my first officer.

I purposefully picked up this model after reading in The Guns of Tanith (I think) where a Blood Pact officer is spotted with worn gold frogging. So here he is with bolt pistol so I can use him as a Commissar Lord and a lash so he can drive his troops forward. I'm planning on red uniform as normal, tattered black/brown coat, gold frogging washed with lots of brown and maybe some green for tatters, bright silver or gold grotesk.

The flail is from the Empire Flagellants box, the bolt pistol is a Chaos Marine bolt pistol with the ammo and about a millimeter of the back of the weapon cut off to make it human size. Any ideas about where to put the chaos/khorne symbol on him?







Oh, and for those that remember, MaxMini's replacement package came today. All the missing pieces were there, plus I got 4 gasmask heads from their tox-guardsman range and another tommy gun! My thanks to Przemas from maxmini.

Squad 2 Finished!

My Blood Pact now number twenty men and I have learned quite a few things during the process.

Here's the sergeant of squad 2.


How'd this crazy get sgt stripes?


Gasmask and rusty bayonet.


Affix bayonets, prepare to repel.. aw hell.. Chaarge!


Autocannon team.


The spent shells are greenstuff sausages left to cure and cut to size.


Ready for the reload.


Top tips from these 20:
Plan ahead on how to get the paintbrush in to paint the heavy weapon crew while gluing the models to the base.
Greenstuff sausages can be used for shells, hoses, pipes, cables.
Devlan Mud wash is my friend.
Paint the grotesk before the eyes, that way the paint or ink does not run into the low area and ruin the face.
Use colors of different chroma next to one another, or "brown does not shade red."
Black might be cool for a facemask, but it just looks like a black blob from a distance.

Now to take a break from infantry and go tank!

Blood Pact Plasma Gunner and Grunt

A couple realizations today as I was finishing up two more Blood Pact: When I was building these I think I went into autopilot and made them much more plain, as if I was building loyalist IG with just a headswap. Next time I'll go back to giving them extra weapons and nicking and scratching everything up. The second thing I realized is that I had slipped into assembly line painting rather than painting one at a time. I think I liked painting one at a time better, I'll have to see about switching back. Without further ramblings, two more Pacters:

Plasma gunner and Private.


Plasma Gunner detail.


Scratch built hydrogen flask for the plasma gun, made from a plasticard tube capped off.


The Private's backpack, I tried to make the smoke grenades more interesting, but I'm not sure it worked.


I'm really happy with the rocks now.

New red, old red.

When I picked up my new Imperial Guard codex the other day I saw a display of GW's foundation paints. Having just painted two layers of basecoat on four Pacters I decided to give it a try even though it's a bit lighter than I wanted.

Here's one coat of Mechrite Red. Yes, one coat. It certainly does what it says on the tin.


One coat Mechrite red plus one wash of Devlin Mud.


And next to another Pacter painted with two layers of Vallejo's Gory Red followed by one wash of Devlin Mud.


I'll wait until it drys and put another wash of Devlan Mud on, but it looks like a winner to me. One coat will stop my already university-addled brain from frying like bacon. (Four more weeks!)

4 Blood Pact Painted

I tried something a little different this time. They are a bit brighter than my previous efforts, but not because I've used a different color or highlighted more. The poll was a wash, but it did cause me to take a closer look at squad 1.

Result of the previous poll:

Bright Red (far right model.)	4 (44%)
Dark Red (everyone else.)	5 (55%)

I discovered something while staring at my completed squad. The brown I used to shade the red was the same intensity as the red itself. What this means is that if I took a black and white picture of the old squad, you couldn't tell the difference between the red and the brown. It's hard to shade something when the paint isn't actually darker!

Sorry the pics aren't that great, it's 11pm, so no natural light.
Alright, new Pacters with new red (shaded with a brown that's actually darker) and new rock paint style:

Grunt and yelling grunt with Tommy Gun.


Two grunts.


MaxMini's tommy gun and a Flagellant head Pacter.


My, what bad teeth you have.


Micron pen used for text on skin parchment.


Trying to make the pack look less imperial. Battered white smoke grenade, spade and rolled oak-leaf camouflage tent. (Oak-leaf tutorial here.)


I've kept to my plan of BBP (Buy, Build and Paint) for the most part. The Mort tank showed up sooner than I expected and I've cleaned it of oils, but I'm trying to power through this squad of Pacters before I move on. I picked up a commissar model at the UFLGS (un friendly local game store) and I plan on using him as an officer, but haven't built him yet.

Future plans:
6 Blood Pact of squad 2.
Mort tank as AT-83 Brigand.
Command Squad.
Stalk Tank. (If I can pick up more plastic rod of the correct size this may well be bumped up.)