Weirdboy (Warhammer 40k)
I bought the new 40K Armageddon box set as the miniatures looked too good to ignore. I started with the Weirdboy and first up was to think of a colour scheme. I went pink for the warp lightning effect and in addition to Vallejo’s sunset red with touches of white, I also added fluorescent magenta, with some of the effect cascading through the staff head and the tips of the various cabling and a little pink effect around the eyes to overall give that warp suffused look.
For the flesh I used various greens including Citadel’s ork flesh and moot green for highlighted parts. I add various Vallejo metallics to metal parts for that copper and iron look, Vallejo’s stonewall grey for the cables as a nice contrast to the copper wiring and then added green and yellow stripes for the broken cable to symbolise a damaged ‘earth’ cable and the ork belief that they’ve seen Humies use this colour scheme for some cables to make electrics safe, so Ork belief is if they paint one of their cables this way, it makes their gear safer.
Finally, it was all about contrast, painting the white of the staff shaft with dark ink wash over; copper with dark wash on the ork headgear and a blue distinct part to add variety from the green and pink. I’ve not added a lot of highlighting on this model, except for the flesh, preferring to rely on the inks and colour scheme. I may revisit it at a later date, but for now I like the way it looks.
Neil Parker
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Hi Neil, what an amazing model. I have this on my shelf to paint too and can’t wait to go a bit crazy with it. The pink and magenta was a great idea for the wrap lightning, staff and ends of cables. Plus the damaged earth cable was inspired. I can’t wait to see what you do with the rest of the boxes models.
Halo Flashpoint Spartan edition (Halo Flashpoint)
I have been a bit under the weather, so serious R&R means painting the Halo Flashpoint Spartan edition.
I am not much of a computer gamer, but did play a bit back on the x360. I am however a big fan of Deadzone (#deadzoneislife !) from which this uses the same core mechanics.
I really tore through these to get them to the table. They are not my best paint jobs but I don't paint boardgame components, as a rule - equally, though, I won't play miniature games with unpainted models, so was caught in a bind.
Everything was as always painted with Vallejo colors (all Model Color series, apart from US dark green used on the objectives) with Golden Maple brushes. Fun to paint, big bright colours, nothing grim dark here!
Sam de Smith
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Hi Sam, hope you feel better soon. Despite being ill you’ve done a great job with these, the Halo models, where following a general theme, give you a lot of room to experiment with different colours. You squads look really good. I hope you can enjoy them while you get better.
Sekhtar Robots…ish (Warhammer 40k)
I’ve been doing weird things lately. I’ve not been in the hobby zone for a while so for me it’s been more about getting back into the routine. A part of that has been doing things that inspire me, rather than toiling away at painting infinite numbers of infantry. One thing that I love is converting models for other purposes and it just so happens my Thousand Sons army needs more Sekhetar Robots, which come in expensive packs of 2 when they run around in squads of 4. So the hunt began for an alternative.
It turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Usually there are any number of things you can use as proxies or as conversion fodder, but barely anything had both the right height and general look for the robots, they are an odd bunch. Eventually I landed on Aeldari Wraithguard, they are a tiny bit short but I felt like I could make them work. And so, the snipping began. The heads I left off to start with, but we’ll come back to them. The main body is fine but I wanted Sekhetar weapons, and so I trawled my bits box and found some, plus some other Thousand Sons weapons which looked close enough, including replacing their more elegant blades with cool Thousand Sons style ones.
And so finally it was just the head to figure out…and honestly I got super stuck for ages. I didn’t have a ‘roboty’ head that looked similar enough to the originals to do a direction replacement. What I do have, and I mean a lot of (not sure how) is Armiger faceplates (Armigers as in mini Knights). They come in a variety of styles but I eventually decided the one eyed tusked ones gave me the right vibe. So I just slapped them on there. My idea is they hide in walls with just the faceplate poking out like a trophy, and then spring out the wall and catch the enemy unaware!
Not painted yet, but I’ll likely feature them again when they are as I really enjoy these, and I hope you did too.
Ross Coulbeck
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Hi Ross (yes I’m replying to myself, shh), definitely some fun conversions you’ve got there. I’ve always been a fan of wraithguard so it's interesting to see them being used for something different. Are you a Timesplitters fan? Me thinks there is a Dearhaunter theme behind your lore for those robots. Not that I need to be reminded of that terrifying boss fight thank you very much.
