The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Fire Hawks?

Something to think about for the dread banner.

Edit: Now with paint.

I'm not that great at freehanding, but I suppose it'll work after I'm finished touching it up a little bit. It doesn't have to look too terrific, since I plan on weathering the hell out of it to make it look centuries old. The back of the thing will look like parchment, which is why the parts that are hanging folded over are starting to be tan.

Just for those who are unfamiliar, the Legion of the Damned are rumored to be the remnants of the Fire Hawks Space Marines chapter after a trip through the Warp gone horribly wrong. Their chapter symbol was a mushroom cloud, because as I understand it their homeworld was destroyed in a nuclear event.

Edit: One more time, still trying to smooth it over a bit.

Some people seemed to be a bit horrified that the banner was yellow, but those are the Fire Hawk colors, so...

Dabbling with an airbrush

I figured I'd get some paint onto this thing soon, so while I was messing around with the airbrush this morning I set about putting some color onto it. I primed black, and then used some Vallejo Model Air German Grey and US Grey to brighten the thing up substantially in the hopes that after a black wash or two, I'll be able to tone the greys down to a nice, richer-looking black armor.

 

There's a couple places where I could have done better with the spray, but I figure the washes'll help blend it all together decently enough. Before I do those washes, though, I'm going to set about base-coating the colors on this thing properly, which means picking out the bones, scrollwork, and any other details.

Dreadful Machine

A couple more baby steps with my Legion Ironclad!

 

I wasn't sure what to fill the top of the dreadnought in with, between the two launchers. After a bit of head-scratching, I dug a neat little iron-halo-esque bit out from god knows what kit (I'm pretty sure it's non-GW) and then spiked a banner on there behind it. The banner's from the Vampire Counts Skeleton Warriors box, with a flaming skull added from the Warhammer Fantasy wizard kit. I've been thinking it might be really interesting to paint the banner up as a burnt, tarnished, and otherwise mostly destroyed Fire Hawks standard, as a homage to the Legion's fluff background. Something to think about, anyway.

I also added a couple bits to the sides of the hip joint, in those open areas that were bugging me. One is a sensor module, hacked free from a pintle-mounted hunter-killer missile launcher assembly, since most dreads seem to have some sort of sensors located around that area. On the opposite side, I just pinned some simple scroll canisters there.

I added a second layer of flames overtop the first. It looks a little messy, because I did some pencil sketching right onto the model that since got smudged; primer will hopefully make the torso look a fair bit sharper. I riveted the top layer of flames, since it seemed appropriate.

I like the current pose it's in; it's somewhat turned, which makes it less static, and more interesting.

There are a couple areas I need to address before I'm happily done with this model. These are the arms, and the engine.I'm not entirely sure I know what to do with these areas - I could try hacking more flame designs out to glue overtop, but I don't want to turn the whole dreadnought into some sort of hotrod. Alternatively, I could try sculpting bone motifs, but I'm not particularly talented with greenstuff, or for that matter sculpting, and I'm leery about ruining parts of the model.

Anyway! Work continues. I'm open to ideas and suggestions.

Legs on legs!

Well, I'm still working on it, but I felt like taking a break from trying in vain to sculpt some sort of bone details, so I took some pictures instead.

I stuck a quick plasticard spacer between the dreadnought's right arm and the torso - I'll use a bit of putty to smooth that whole area out overnight, since I can't be bothered to deal with waiting for the stuff to dry while I'm still working on things. The arms are also magnetized on now, in the event I need to remove them for game reasons (weapon destroyed) or I ever feel like making a hurricane bolter arm.

I also decided to see if I could play on the skeletal appearance of the dreadnought a bit. I filed the groin plate down and puttied it smooth, and then used some of the newer skeleton plastics to make a pair of legs hanging off the front and curling down between the legs.

I think it's a neat look with the ribs and skull right above it - better than the dodgy-cast purity seal that was there earlier. There were some bubbles on the underneath of that whole groin plate that I got to fill while doing all this.

I need to add some sort of additional armor plating to the upper leg area, on either side of the hips - nothing really clever's struck me yet, though.

Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with it so far. I need to add an engine to the back, and then do a fair bit of legion-related detailing - see if I can't get some bone textures and flames on the open spaces, and skulls everywhere else. I've also been thinking a narrow banner that hangs between the two launchers up top might be a nice touch, but I'm waiting to see what I do to the launchers themselves before I start filling that area in.

One last picture for fun's sake:

More to come!

Press-mold rib experiment

So I've got a couple things going on with the Dreadnought at the moment, most of which are drying and won't be ready to be finished off until later tonight. I hate waiting for putty!

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd try something. My buddy Zsoulless is a pretty great sculptor, and I asked him how I might go about sculpting ribs onto things. I thought it'd make good over-detailing to stuff like the cyclone launchers and maybe dreadnought shinplates or the likes. He recommended I get a baking clay like FIMO or Sculpey, and make a 'negative' of the ribs first. I gave it a shot, and figured I'd throw the results of the experiment up here.

This is my mold. It's not that great, but whatever, I'm just trying things out.

Here's what happens when you press GS into it and pull it back out.

 

It's not great - I probably won't leave that on there - but it's an interesting idea, nonetheless. I may have a go at making yet another mold with the ribs spaced a bit closer together, since I sort've like the idea of ribcage details over the cyclone launchers. I just wish I was a bit more of a sculptor, so I could just smear GS overtop this thing and somehow make it look like ribs, like all of those talented blighters do.

Legging it

Minimal updates, since I've only had a bit of time this evening to work on things. Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

I sanded down the top of the torso a bit, so that the Cyclone launchers I had would sit flush and straight on the thing, since previously they were angled out a bit and crooked. I glued 'em down, filled some gaps, and now they're on there for good.

I also smashed together what I think will be the Seismic Hammer for this thing - it's pretty simple, all told. A metal furioso dreadnought arm is the base; the standard Seismic Hammer head is the impact surface, and there's a part off the thunderfire cannon kit between the two that helps space the bits out a bit - joining the seismic hammer bit straight to where the dreadnought's fist would normally go looked too stubby compared to a stock seismic hammer.

It's nothing too extravagant. I was having difficulty coming up with something that would fit as a seismic hammer on this thing, but still be thematic, so I figured simpler was better. This way, the weapon is obvious - I figure most people recognize the seismic hammer bit by this point - and because the hammer is recognizable, the fact that the dread itself is intended to be an Ironclad should be made clearer.

The arm itself will be added to - flames, bones, and scrolls where appropriate, you all know the drill.

I have a bunch of questions for the lot of you, now.

The other arm I was looking at using, for the left side, is a standard dread CCW arm with a flamer slung underneath and a revised claw bit. This completes the wargear assembly I wanted for the Ironclad by providing lots of burny, close-range death. My concern, however, is that the styles of the arms are too different from one another to mesh properly on the same model. Have a look:

The old metal furioso shoulder on the model's right side is a bit smaller and sits closer to the body than the other one. I can try to bulk it out a bit by putting some thin styrene between the arm and the torso, so that it matches the width of the other shoulder, or I can dig around and see if I can come up with a left furioso arm for this thing. If I'm not mistaken, the furioso did have a flamer on the left CCW arm, right?

I sort've like both arms, I'm just trying to figure out how much work I'd have to do to make them both work together. I imagine the fact that one is metal and the other is plastic is contributing to why I'm seeing them a bit uneven, too.

The second thing I wanted to talk about was legs for the Ironclad. I don't actually have any spare Dreadnought legs. I do have the Forgeworld Chaplain Dreadnought legs, which you can see below. (Ignore the brown attempt at sculpted flames, that's coming off and being redone).

However, I don't know if I really want to use them for the Ironclad. Why? A couple reasons...

First off, I'm trying to plan ahead a bit. I figure I may end up with a couple non-Ironclad dreadnoughts in this army by the time I'm done, meaning I'd probably be working from a standard dreadnought kit. Adding these legs to the standard Dread kit would be an easy, easy start for making them fit in with the Legion, so they're valuable if I can save them to use down the road.

Second, I don't know if they really fit the Ironclad appearance. From what I've seen, the Ironclad has a substantially up-armored lower body with chunkier shin guards and groin plates, not to mention those big weird feet.

This isn't to say that I'm not still considering using them - I may very well end up doing so - but I'm tinkering with a couple other options. I'll end up going near my local game store tomorrow, and I was giving some thought to picking up a dreadnought variant kit to work from, such as the Venerable Dreadnought, or Throne of Judgment.

The Throne's an interesting kit. It seems to have a good collection of bits (skulls, torches, scrolls), a reasonably unique set of legs (I'd probably replace the shins and feet, all the same, since they're giant inquisitorial icons), and a throne that I could probably convert and place ontop of a Legion vehicle down the road. There's a lot of stuff I can't use on it, too, though, like the side gunners, the inquisitor, and most of the stuff with the Inquisition's iconography on it.

The Venerable Dreadnought has some really nice legs on it that I think fit the Ironclad appearance and the Legion appearance nicely, but as far as I'm concerned the upper body looks ridiculous, so I'd still have some wasted bits there.

I could, of course, buy the Ironclad kit, too, and just work from actual Ironclad legs, but that seems silly given how far I've made it without that so far.

Just some thoughts! I am well aware that I'm overthinking this whole thing, but I don't have a lot of time to actually build things while at law school, so I've nothing to do but ponder my builds between work.

Edit: You know, all told, I think I'll use the stock Chaplain legs and try to up-armor them a bit. No sense spending another $50 on legs from the Throne or Ven. Dread for a kit that's already $50 to begin with, yeah?

Fired Up

So after a bit of deliberation, I've decided to add flames to the front torso, assault launcher positioning be damned.

I went with this style of flame because it matched the general motif that can be found on Forgeworld Salamander Rhino and Land Raider doors, which I have and intend to use with a bit of modification.

After a bit of headscratching, I've come up with something that may be an acceptable substitute for the assault launchers. I hacked the central bit of a Cyclone Launcher off, and I'm considering mounting the launchers on either shoulder to count as a sort of Assault Launcher.

It looks a bit silly because of the lack of arms, so I took two quick shots of some test arms attached in place, borrowed from my old WIP Salamanders Ironclad.

It's large, but it does sort've fit with the characteristic shape I've seen of Ironclads. I haven't yet attached them - they're just resting ontop of the torso as a proof of concept. What do you guys think? I'm giving it some thought, but I can't think of much else that'd work. There's an empty area around the hip of the torso, near the armpit, where I could conceivably mount some sort of launcher, but I haven't had any clever ideas for it yet.

Even in (un)death…

While I was collecting parts to use for my Legion of the Damned army, I managed to get my hands on a pair of Forgeworld Chaplain Dreadnoughts through a couple trades.

I picked these guys up because out of all of Forgeworld's line, they seemed the most Legion-themed; skulls all over, a ribcage motif on the torso, and bones in the leg armor plates seemed hugely appropriate. The aquila plates on the front were the only questionable parts, but as you'll see in a moment, that's no longer much of an issue.

As is typical of Forgeworld, the quality was a mixed bag. One of the dreadnoughts was perfect - no miscasts, no bubbles, all the details were there, sharp, and lovely. The other? Not as lucky. There was a pretty blatant miscast on the front 'aquila' plates and the legs, and it just generally looked like hell by comparison. Both came new and mostly unassembled in their original FW baggies, so I think FW's Quality Control is more to blame than anything else.

In any event, I wasn't quite sure what to do with the one miscast one. After a bit of brainstorming, I decided I would grind the front plates completely off and turn the thing into an Ironclad because, hey, an Ironclad in an army with Vulkan rules is awesome - hello twin-linked burny death!

Of course, grinding the front plates off isn't quite as easy as it sounds. The skulls hanging off the front of the torso actually cover a bit of the aquila design, meaning that removing the design without mangling the skulls would be a bit of a challenge. I whipped out my trusty dremel, though, and with a bit of patience, sandpaper, and filing, I managed to essentially remove the entire front plate of the dreadnought. At that point, I grabbed some Apoxie Sculpt. This stuff is pretty fantastic if you need a putty you can smooth - a bit of water on your finger, and Apoxie Sculpt turns into a lovely flat surface.

I let it dry, and sanded it down a bit more so that it'd be flat, and viola, I have a dreadnought with no more aquila plates!

Now, my big issue is deciding where I'm going from here. I can see two options for the front plate, once I'm completely done sanding it down / cleaning it up. I can:

• Try and add Ironclad Assault Launchers to the front plate. I don't have the actual parts from the kit for this, so I'd have to improve something - perhaps the bits from a Terminator Cyclone Launcher.
• Add flames to the front plate to fit the Legion aesthetic, and maybe sling some sort of launcher-looking device underneath the plates, in the armpit area, to count as assault launchers.

Of course, I could just as easily leave the assault launchers off, as they're an optional upgrade and not necessarily the best wargear, but they always seemed iconic of Ironclads, which is why I'm considering. What do you guys think? Right now, I'm leaning towards cutting out some flames from thin plastic for the front plate and using those.