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Dragons of Bronze


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After a long break from miniatures, it's time to start something new. And Chaos has so many possible converty bits, and an interest in Cities of Death made me eager for something very close combat oriented. Khorne has replaced the Emperor!

I'll be starting with some ambitious conversions, a squad of Havoks to serve as Teeth of Khorne, done up as very angry Sisters of Battle. I'm also looking to experiment with some alternate helmet designs, the bunny ears just aren't doing it for me, sorry!

First up, the materials!

Green stuff in volume, some plastic rod that will go into the autocannons to come, and sprues, endless sprues of demonettes (Double Heresy!) and Berserkers.

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Yeah... The hair looked okay when I was working on it, the grain isn't so bad from a distance. Though I think I needed a thinner greenstuff layer to start with.

Hair is surprisingly tricksy. I'll try a thinner layer on my second attempt, and see how it goes, along with a finer texture. For the moment, I'll try to finish up this first one, and perhaps by the time I've finished, my second go at sculpting will generate a more convincing Demonic Sister.

Progress on the first one:

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  • 4 weeks later...

Quick update, other build projects not relating to 40k taking up a lot of my crafting time, so I'm not nearly as far along as I'd like.

Took a quick stab at a little painting, base color test for my zerkers, so not clean on the paint job. I'm planning to step up into a light bronze, or maybe more of a brassy color on the metallic, and a dusky blue for the trim.

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Got in a chance for a bit of work on the first Zerker, working up the metallic, and a little on the blue. I'm sort of fiddling with something of a combination of NNM with metallic paints. It's looking okay, though I've been out of practice, so my paint's a little shaky. And boy, the silver really picked up in the photo, it's not nearly so contrasting with the rest of the metallics.

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Interesting approche but don't forget that the "bunny ears" are in fact a Khorne symbole divided into two parts but roughly you clearly see the Sacred symbol of Khorne.

 

And why blue?,why not red or simply black?,those are Khorne's favorites colours,Red for Blood,Bronze because it is His favorite metal and Black for Death.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Bit of an update, finally able to focus a bit more on this project.

Two Zerkers mostly done. I'm not sure which way I want to go for the weapons; I'm trying to decide throwing in a new color, going with black as the dominant color, or carrying over the blue from the trim/accents. I chose blue for the trim primarily as a contrast to the heavy bronze scheme of the armor, red just blended in a little too much. Also, the final touches will be a hearty amount of blood spatter, which I felt wouldn't show up very well over black or red, and I'm already a little concerned it will require a little bit of excess to really stand out on the bronze armor.

About the head size, they are a little large, and I was a bit concerned about that. Now that I've the shoulder pads on, I'm liking the look, and I don't think I'll make much of an adjustment for the rest of the squad.

Yes, that is a loyalist backpack. I plan to scatter such features through the squad, to get across the idea of a recently turned force. It's my excuse for the lack of traditional Khorne antlers, which I'm not a big fan of.

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More on the corrupt sisters turned Havocs later, I set them aside and haven't made much progress yet.

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Brief update. meant to add something more last night, and it slipped right by me. For now, a sort of group shot of all the minis in their various stages of completeness.

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Four almost completed Berzerkers, 3 more in assembly. (The Skull champ is not yet beyond pieces. I need to find the leg I dropped.) The five sisters turned havocks are at least now sporting hair, with the squad leader getting some serious attention.

More to come tonight, hopefully.

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Some better shots of the Havock champ:

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And a few shots of Zerkers 3 and 4 for the squad:

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And new updates for today, the rest of the havoc squad is not quite so ..lopsided:

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Zerker # 7 has been assembled, and helmet crafted, though I don't have a shot of it. At this point, the only Zerker remaining to assemble is the Skull champion. I found the leg (yay!) so now I'm making some progress in getting him going. The plan is to make him stand out with a bit of true-scaling. I have no spare terminator bits, so it's turning into a sculpting project. Even more so than the sisters turned Havocks, crafted with daemonette bodies. With 99% of my mini sculpting experience really more of patch and filler jobs, this is turning out to be one sharp learning curve of a project.

I also realized that my helmet design, while I like it for the Zerkers, actually might look out of place if I also use it as is on a true-scaled marine. I thought about going for an animal head look, but that turned bad faster than a raw egg in Nurgle's hands. While I normally don't care for the bare headed look, as it seems rather silly to wear all that armor, and then leave your head exposed, but it occurred to me, "This is a Khornate Berserker, why would he care if he didn't have a helmet on?" So I looked around for a bare headed head. They are really tiny looking on a True-scale marine. I have no choice, sculpting time, bonus round ahead!

Having previously had some luck adding lips and nose to ork heads for super cheap ogryn conversions, and one attempt to turn a spare tau head into a human traitor turned out a rather French looking head, I dug through the old bitz box, and found another handy tau head.

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The nose and upper lip were started yesterday, and today I added in the lower lip, and chin. I might add a bit more chin to him before I buff out the cheekbones, and probably bulk out the brow ridge, along with a little layer to generally thicken the skull.

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  • 1 month later...

Wheee, I'm not dead. Yet.

So, onward and upward. I just didn't like how the biggerized marine was turning out, the legs were just not "right." So, I've set that aside, and gone for a different approach. Aside from a few touches, the zerker squad is now done. More pictures later, these are all I have handy at the moment for a lunchtime post.

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You can see the replacement skull champ there in front, with his lovely skull face paint, and my poor attempts at skull sculpts on his belt buckle.

The Havocs should be ready for painting by the time I get home, but here's how they looked in progress:

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And a couple of angles on the havoc champion, ready for paint:

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I had originally intended to add a collar and backpack assembly but by the time I had the shoulder pieces set over the arms, it all started to look a little too out of proportion; the collar would rise up over their heads if kept sized to the tubing, or the tubing would dominate everything. There wasn't a lot of anchoring on the back for any sort of pack, either. In the end, I decided to just go with the shoulder armor, and skip the other bits. It carries what I wanted well enough, and looks decent enough.

With any luck, I'll have them all finished up tonight.

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Havocs and Zerkers completed!

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All in all, Things turned out pretty well. The havocs aren't the prettiest sculpts ever, but this has been above and beyond anything I've tried before, and applied to so many minis at once. Quite the challenge, frustrating at times, but a good learning experience.

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