Cepa Knight - Blanche

+++
Iron Sleet moved me.
The care and dedication that went into Pilgrym was inspiring.
Seeing as I don't play anymore it seems like a good fit for me to concentrate on characters and bringing out the strangeness of the setting, John Blanche style.
The Cepa Knight came to me fully formed in my mind, but seeing the model here I think he still needs a little something. Maybe a bundle of cables hanging down from the back of the helm.

Blood Pact Death Brigade

200pt BloodPact Killteam game

Empyrian be praised, I played a game!  It was a 25 strong platoon of Pact vs 6 wraithguard, so nothing too big or fancy but it was still a game.

I started off a little rough with two plasma-gunners killing themselves but in the end it was a close run thing, with both of exactly at our break point.

I wasn't used to the new victory points and failed to get line-breaker because I forgot it was a thing! 

I think I was 3 models shy of fully painted and with the store's great terrain the game looked inspiring.

What are your favorite versions of 40k skirmish?  Kill Team?  Fan made?  Tell me about them in the comments!

Blood Pact vehicle pool

By popular demand here is a picture of the Pact motor pool.  I've tossed a hellhound in there for size comparison with the Warlord halftrack.  The halftrack looks awfully small in comparison.

On the far right we have an old Corgi Saladin armored car to take the roll of the STeG-4.

On the left a captured Macharius with one last imperial eagle to scrape off.

Blood Pact halftrack and grenade launcher

The new expansion e-book Kill Team has me thinking about the Blood Pact again.

For 5 points a grenade launcher seems like a versatile skirmish weapon so I built one up.  Never able to do it the easy way I converted it to have a rifle stock.

The halftrack is from Warlord games and will soon get a plasticard roof and a turret.

New Blood Pact links

I've decided to post when I update the links here so you, my kind readers are updated when I find a new resource or an old one changes.

Welcome FortWargame to the Blood Pact links.  His work was already over there but is now easier to access on his own blog.  Lots of great vehicles and scratch-building there so give it a look!

JackHammer's fantastic scratchbuilt AT70 is well worth a look.

Walker90234's xenos mercenary gallery shows off his Loxatl, Hrud and Tarrelian dog soldier conversions for use with the Pact.

This wiki page on the Loxatl has great information and a couple pieces of art I hadn't seen before.

_blacklibrary built lego versions of quite a few Gaunt's Ghosts, but more importantly he also did a lego Blood Pact soldier.

I also added links to Blood Pact appropriate heads from Secret Weapon and Blight Wheel, as well as the Blight Wheel mantis tank which would be a great stalk tank.

In other news, I finished painting my chaos rhino!

New Blood Pact models & desk

I was pretty excited a couple months back and posted that Blight Wheel minis would be making a model that was perfect for use as Loxatl.  Well the model will never be put on the market; GW issued a cease & desist order.  So the search for good Blood Pact models continues!

I found these great heads from Blight Wheel that are perfect for Blood Pact.  They're right up there with the ones from Maxmini.  I ordered them as well as their walking tank for fear of GW trying to make them stop production of those as well.

I can finally stop converting helmetless heads to have a mask!

The helmet is bigger than my other models, but it still works.

Grotesk!

The mantis walking tank is much bigger than I imagined a stalk tank, but it certainly works!  Only the large pieces are pictured here, the smaller leg bits and forward grasping arms & top gun are still in their baggie.  I cleaned all his parts up, not too many mold lines, but they usually ran across a smooth surface so they were a bit annoying.

A titan must have stepped on him.

I also went through my Blood Pact links here, deleting the dead ones and putting in more specific links so you don't have to trawl through an entire photo album to find the Pact pictures.

Lastly, I picked up a new painting desk from IKEA that is tall enough I don't have to hunch over to paint or build.

Loxatl sighted!

Updated with five new pictures: March 25, 2013

I just saw this update from Blight Wheel: a perfect Loxatl figure!

Sadly it is only available as a freebie at Salute this year.  If anyone gets one and doesn't want it, I would be happy to take it off your hands!

 

I asked if there was any way I could get them without going to Salute and they said no but they might do a line based on the figure in the future.

UPDATE:

Additional pictures surfaced and it's easy to see the chest flechette gun rig. The base looks like a 40mm round, which sounds right for these guys.

 

Dreamforge Kickstarter unboxing part 3

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.

I managed to build a leg tonight.  Just one.  The leg is still articulated, even though it is glued together.  The thigh swivels, the knees bend, the ankle is a ball and socket joint that rotates, the toe even has a small range of motion.  While all this is happening, the hydraulic pistons extend and retract!  On top of this engineering genius, there have only been mold lines on two parts of this leg.  Two.  Once I progressed to the point where the armor plates go on I had to stop.  Covering up all this detail just felt wrong.  Ah well, you know that means I'll just have to buy a Leviathan Mortis. 

So how big is this thing again...?

The assembled leg is remarkably sturdy and balanced well on its own.  The only way I can make it fall over is by rotating the ankle joint all the way to the left or right.  It balances with the leg itself extended all the way to the back or front.  The hydraulic pistons do pull out if the leg is fully extended but that is no criticism, just the limits of the kit.  As neat as all these moving details are, I will be finding a cool pose and then gluing the joints down for added stability and ease of painting.


Speaking of great details, check out the Stormtrooper accessory box below.  Tons of bits!  So many bits!

Accessory box sprues and instructions.

Accessory sprues.  That's a lot of bits.

Accessory sprue #1.

Accessory Sprue #2.

Accessory sprue #3 (three mules).

Dreamforge Kickstarter unboxing: Part 2

Part 1 is here.


In part 2 of the unboxing I take a look at the DreamForge stormtrooper infantry.  Tons of pictures of the sprues themselves are at the bottom of this post.

The stormtroopers are hard plastic, injection molded and are 10 parts each.  While this may seem like a lot, it's the same number for Space Marines.  Mold lines are faint and easily scraped off with a blade, details are crisp and the plastic will flex.  I love the peg on the foot of the model and the hole in the base.  It makes for a sturdy join and allows you to easily build a model without needing to glue it down first.

10 parts each, plus base.  Notice the peg on the foot?

Before you build: certain arms line up with certain rifles.  The stock of some rifles have a section cut out of it so it will perfectly align with one of three right arms.  The left arms are also meant to work with certain right arms, so read the little color coded chart that comes in the box before you build!  I was not so careful and I ended up carving a small part out of a rifle stock to get it to fit.

Left to right: GW IG-based Bloot Pact, DreamForge Stormtrooper, GW Space Marine.  In the background are the older metal Stormtroopers from DreamForge, another plastic Stormtrooper and a GW Space Marine scout.

Dreamforge has gone above and beyond to make negative space work for you.  The backpack is a perfect negative of the torso back.  The detail is so fine that the backpack clicks into place when it aligns thanks to four tiny ribs that insert themselves into four tiny vents in the torso back.

Torso (with vents) on top.  Backpack with matching ribs on the bottom. Click!

The rifle stocks are the same way: any part that would have clipped through another on the 3d model has been removed, leaving a perfect negative space to receive its neighbor.  Even the drum magazines have an imprint of the rifle's side!

Even with mismatching arms and a chopped rifle stock I couldn't make him look bad!

Not glued to the base.  Attached only by the peg.

The plastic version took half as long to build and involved 100% fewer glued fingers.

Stick legs in peg on base, build torso, glue gun to right arm, glue arms to torso, glue torso to legs.

Squad option box and squad box dwarfed by Leviathan box.

Stormtrooper box.

Stormtrooper squad and diagram.  Pay attention to the diagram!

Stormtrooper sprues.

Stormtrooper sprue #1.

Stormtooper sprue #2.

Stormtrooper sprue #3.