More converted Blackstone Fortress Adversaries

In a fit of good sense and concentration rarely witnessed anywhere near my painting table, I managed to keep on going with the Blackstone Fortress figures and have now completed all of the adversaries.  I figured I'd get these done first and then treat myself to the Adventurers.

They're all converted/re-purposed and the first lot are the Traitor Guardsmen.  These are converted from the plastic chaos cultists set of figures.  A fair few head swaps and arm/weapon swaps with plastic Cadian guardsmen to make them more traitor guardsmen than generic cultists and lots of Imperial guard kit (radio pack, canteens, etc) help them along, as does the standard "army" green and brown paint scheme.

I've always rather liked beastmen, so I was pleased when I saw GW were including them in the Black Fortress game.  When I started 40k, back in the "Rogue Trader" first edition days, the Beastmen were part of the Imperial Guard.  They operated in abhuman packs and served in order to pay penance to the Emperor for having been born mutants!  I decided to bring this idea back and so my beastmen conversions are built using plenty of Imperial Guard kit, including a couple of breastplates.

The awesome flagellants kit helped too, with  bell, weapons and arms

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Next up are the big baddies - Chaos Space Marines!  These are smashed together from all sorts of chaos space marine and space marine kits and leftovers from other conversions.  I've always found the Black Legion a little boring (as well as not really wanting to paint black armour.....) so I went for my favourite traitor marine chapter instead - Word Bearers.

The Wordbearers are the real baddies of the 40k world, having been the ones who started the Horus Heresy in the 30k setting by making pacts with daemons and dragging other discontented legions in with them.  I'm particularly pleased with the Chaos Lord as he uses a cloak I really like.  For his helm I found the largest and most OTT helmet I could (not too hard in GW kits!) to help him stand out and hopefully catch his horns on the ceiling of the fortress, allowiing us adventureres time to escape.....  The other two are deliberately kept quite standard to help the lord stand out even more.

One of the fun things about converting is how ideas come to you whilst converting, like the idea of making my beastmen part of abhuman imperial guard squad.  The idea for the Rogue Psykers came when I decided to do Wordbearers as my chaos space marines.  It occurred to me that instead of doing psykers like the ones in the box, I'd instead make them the leaders of the Guardsmen, who have been given to the Wordbearers to make into daemonhosts.  It's this that gives them their horrifying psychic powers......

Some masked heads, a bell and an unholy tome with stocks completed the look and the gold breastplate marks one out as the captain.

Blackstone Fortress converted adversaries

Now, I've always been a bit of a Games Workshop fanboy - Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy Battle were what brought me into this hobby.  It's no great secret that GW diverged somewhat from what made them so successful during a lot of the 2000's....... but they've recently rediscovered a lot of what made them such a big draw in the 80's & early 90's - actually giving the customers what they want instead of telling customers what they should want and utterly ignoring them.  Mind blowing stuff, for sure.....

One of the things they've rediscovered is that wargamers rather like full games in boxes with great figures and so they've recently been churning boxed games out as often as they can.  A couple of years ago I bought the reinvented Warhammer Quest game (basically a dungeon crawl where you're all on the same side against AI controlled enemies) and our gaming group really enjoyed it, so when GW announced the next Warhammer Quest game would be in the 40k universe, I was absolutely in!

I decided to do something a little different though and despite the lovely figures GW were including in the game, I decided that this was a great opportunity for me to instead convert all the required figures from miniatures and parts that I already owned.  This would give me something unique, save a bit of cash and scratch the converting itch I always have.  Oh, and attempt to ever so slightly rebalance the wargamers scales, which are always heavily weighted towards buying shiny things instead of painting them.  So, I picked up all the game parts you needed to play for a song from eBay and got converting..... and I now present the first completed figures.

These first chaps are my take on the "Negavolt cultists" - lunatics who seem to have taken to electrocuting anyone who strays into their territory.  As you do.  I had some bodies from the old empire flagellants and having found some oversized power arms, they reminded me of fiddler crabs so I went with one massive arm and almost nothing on the other side.

Weird electro machinery on the back finished the look.

These next ones are my version of spindle drones.  The "proper" ones are a little metallic and clean for my taste, so I added some 40k weirdness with odd little robed individuals.  Are they robots, cyborgs or something else entirely?  We may never know....

Now, having said I was going to convert ALL of the figures, I now must admit to not converting these next four.  At all.  In any way, shape or form.  I stuck to that resolution about as well the one I periodically make to stop buying figures until I've painted a load of what I already...... I just really liked the figures and so caved in and bought myself some.

Anyway, these unsavoury fellows are Ur-Ghuls - ghoulish monsters who seem to use warp space to stalk their prey.  Or something.  Anyway, I suspect I wouldn't like to meet them down a dark alley, but they were delightfully easy to paint and hence why they leapt to the head of the painting queue.

And here they are, all together in the class photo.

If you go down to the woods today....

....you might meet these folk!

The Sylvaneth are finally over the line. I still need to do their woods but that should be a relatively quick job.

Now to get a game in with them!

The foliage was a bit of a pain in the bum but I'm pleased I did it as I think it finishes them off nicely!

These take my tally for the year so far up to 30.

TTFN!

Nearly there!

These little beggers are nearly done now.

Some varnish, basing and foliage needed still but that shouldn't take long.

I thought these were going to be a quick rather drab paint job but they've taken ages and have ended up being really quite colourful!

TTFN!

Trees and Deserts

Lots to do this year but I've found myself stymied by the current contents of the painting shelf.

My Sylvaneth have been half done for a number of months now and I can't bring myself to pack away unfinished figures in the fear that they'll never see the light of day again.

I have therefore resolved to paint them before continuing with anything else or starting any new projects.

They are straight forward in theory as they are predominately being drybrushed however this is taking longer than I expected as some of the extremities are a bit flimsy and I'm having to be fairly cautious.

Blues and white are added after the greens and browns to try and get a magical glow to the sigils.

 Not much more to do and then they can have some varnish and their foliage added.

I've also done a few more colour tests for my Martian gaming mat. I'm leaning towards the scheme on the right but with lighter highlights as found on the other two samples.

I shall muse on that a while longer.

TTFN.

Monday update

I've finally managed to finish a project I started in May last year.

I'm still unsure what inspired me to try and design a submarine out of MDF but given how its turned out I'm pleased I did!

Tally up to 7!

Now I need to crack on and do a dock.

Next up some deck guns for the VSF. Just a lick of varnish and these will be done as well.

TTFN.

Deadline Tuesday

Well not this Tuesday,

Nor the next.

In fact it's Tuesday 31st December 2019, as we all seem to work better to a deadline.

Yep its that time of year when we all take stock and look back at the ever growing pile of toys, regretfully thinking about all the ideas you didn't finish. So like Mr Artillery its time to get stuff done and not start anything else and to try and spend less... a lot less 😉

So no new toys, and I mean it, the hobby has taken over my house, my bedroom, the lounge, the snug (yes pretentiously I have a snug) and even the kitchen. Shelves, cupboards, tables and drawers are all littered with games, models, scenery and bits of kits. It needs sorting.


So Resolutions,

1, No purchases for the 1st 6 months, (Caveat 1, there is a dream forge kickstarter for a hover Stug which I have set money aside for) (Caveat 2, this does not included paint, glue and brushes etc).
2, Finish stuff, simply get stuff done, make lovely wooden trays for all the armies and a bespoke cabinet for it all to go in full of lovely painted minis and scenery.
3, No new game systems, we truly have everything covered between us.
4, Keep track of the progress, yep more blog entries and maybe a cheeky excel spreadsheet.
5, Keep it all in 2 places (I have a spare bedroom which I have spent that last 2 days moving it all into except all the stuff in my cabin/shed at the bottom of the garden, that stuff can stay there for now).
6, Review and refocus at the end of May.

So its not real until you firstly say it and secondly let others hear, hence this post.
It also didn't happen if there is not a picture... so a picture of where my painting table used to be.




Do I say this all in good faith... Yes.
Will it happen...I hope so.
Do I have the attention span o......SQUIRREL