Piping a Night Lords rhino, building a Chaos Venerable Dreadnought & a Lord.

First of all, I have to thank amaximus for his great idea; adding piping to a chaos rhino, without him my rhino would not look so good.  Right, that's out of the way so let's get on with it shall we?  Adding the piping that trims the armor of all good (bad?) chaos marines to a vehicle is deceptively easy.  If you can find a model store that sells plasticard (Evergreen and Plastruct are the two big ones) simply pick up some .020 x .040" strip styrene, cut it to the correct length and glue it on.  Then cut the corners off one bit and glue on your sharp arrow-like piece, easy-peasy.

 Above you can see I've lined the front depressions, as well as the rear exhaust.

There was a large gap between the aft hull sides and the top, so it got some piping.

After some Army Painter blue primer, they blend right in.  That will change later when they will be painted brass like the Night Lords' armor.

The large power cell is from the new Sentinel kit and fits perfectly.  Much like the strip styrene it is less of a conversion and more like slapping on pieces that look good.



Since the first moment I saw the first images of the new plastic Venerable Dreadnought a million ideas ran through my mind, "What if I gave it a terminator helmet?" (looks good)  "What if I gave it a steam knight helmet from MaxMini?" (looks bad)  "Why would anyone make an armored machine to protect a crippled marine pilot and then let him peek out so he can be shot in the face, oh and let's make a bullet trap around his helmet just to make sure it happens.."  Ahem.  So this is my answer to the underlying question, "How could I use that kit to make a Chaos Dreadnought?"  Here is my answer:

His head is an old chaos marauder shoulder pad.  It is actually the one I used to make the toothed gorget on my Blood Pact officers.

I like to think the astartes pilot is nestled safely in the middle of the vehicle and the head is merely a sensor pod to help keep the pilot's perceptions as close to a human body as possible.  A human body with tiny legs, huge arms and its head in the middle of its chest.

I pondered what to do for a Dark Mechanicum symbol since all the Mechanicus symbols had 12 teeth on their cog they did not easily become a chaos star.  The solution stared up at me from my bits box in the form of two resin skulls from the Forge World rogue psyker'.  Cybernetic eye on a skull?  Check.  Eight pointed halo?  Check.  Add to that half a chaos star from Forge World's etched brass and I think it gets the job done.

 

When not destroying the followers of the Unfaithful Emperor, Chaos Dreadnoughts enjoy such hobbies as being chained to the floor while plugged in to a corrupted cogitator to keep them (in)sane.  Hence the giant hooks for attaching chains and the mass of hoses.




Lastly I picked up a metal Chaos Lord from amaximus and although I did not like the way the model was posed, I saw potential in adding to it.  I normally do not like astartes that look like chaos knights, but this guy is just on this side of that line for me.  Can you believe it is even the same model?  No really, follow that link and then look at mine.

The back banner was something of an afterthought.  Should it stay or should it go?

I had my first go at sculpting chainmail with his neck armor and I have to say I am happy with the result.

Back banner yes?  Back banner no?  For those wondering it is from the Skaven clanrat box.

Rotate!

Family portrait.  What's that on the far left, you say?  Why that is a fantasy plastic ghoul who may be standing in for daemons in the Night Lord army.

Blood Pact Valkyrie mock-up, Painted Night Lord

I'm still frustrated with what to do about chimeras.  I converted a chimera halftrack with some toy wheels, plasticard, lots of chopping and not a small amount of swearing.  It looks ok, but there's no way I'm doing that again.  More about that next blog.

In frustration I turned to the Valkyrie I've show you before and thought, "How could I make this more Pact-ish?  How could I lower the tech level?"  I've been thinking of this conversion for a while, but it wasn't until a friend pointed out the nifty stock tracking feature Toys R Us has, that I was able to find one.  The Avatar helicopter, aka fodder for the Urdeshi Forges.

 To get an idea of what I'm going for, here's the valk with the toy rotors, winglets forward.  After looking at this picture again, I may go with winglets back, to fill up the space where the wing would normally be.

 And out of the box.  As you can see, they take up about the same amount of space, but look far more primitive.

 The toy comes with some nice landing skids as well.  They happen to fit onto the bottom perfectly.







 Not much happening in the world of painting.  I think I may be burning out on painting the Pact, but I only have a couple dozen infantry left so I've based, and primed like crazy.  For another break, another Night Lord.

Again I primed it with Army Painter's blue primer.  Then followed a wash of watered down black paint before building up highlights again with a mix of several blues.  I tested out a vallejo paint called Verdigris Glaze for the patina and it worked alright.  It's a little white for my tastes, but goes on nicely.

The hammer has various reds and browns stippled on the upper side to represent dried blood, with fresh blood on the downward side.

The rusty backpack arms were achieved by globbing dried out GW terracotta on, which gives it great color and texture.  I then lightly drybrushed boltgun over the surface to pick out the applied texture.