Leopardens Ramblings - The Lepalia Project

[ElDuderino]

Sweet stuff. I love the small technocherubs and you've probably made the coolest version of the cairn wraith yet

[leoparden]

 

Oh my, that Cairn Wraith Tech-Priest is absolutely brilliant! If I may be so bold, he makes me think of my own dear INQ28 character Legion from back in the day...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...only much cooler! Love the small Tech-critters as well! Based on the models you have shown so far, your AdMech project should really be something to watch out for!

 

Keep up the fantastic work!

 

 

To be honest I’ve possibly taken inspiration from many hobbyists over the years, seeing as how most of my projects are very slow going and I tend to look around at forums and Instagram and Facebook-groups a lot.

 

I think the biggest difference in my version of the Cairn Wraith to Admech compared to a lot of what I’ve seen before is my heavy additions with green stuff robes, many shy away from sculpting cloth and this was a part of why I chose to tackle it the way I did – to get more experience sculpting.

 

 

Sucks to hear it will take much longer to complete the Monumentals but it’s going to be worth it. Plus, if you post any updates along the way I’ll be a happy camper

 

I was also loving another user Magos for its more humanoid form over the Cawl-style spindly body but hot damn does your cairn wrath turned techpriest look awesome! Has me lickiing my lips to try and mimic yours with those new ghostly fellas coming with the new AoS starter box that I want to hunt some bits out of.

 

The small servitors are also awesome.

 

 

We’ll see, hopefully I get inspired every now and then and make a burst of progress on their sculpting. I should – for example – assemble the base for the second one so I can sculpt on them simultaneously to increase my efficiency with the project.

 

The new nighthaunt miniatures gives us endless possibilities, I already have so many ideas that I want to try and build but as usual I’m strapped for time and don’t really know where to start. We’ll see.

 

 

nice! Well done on taking a conversion kernel a lot of people have attempted - a cairn-wraith into magos ... and  doing something very different, very fitting, and very cool with it

 

the small horde of cherubim or whatever you wind up calling them are also impressive and characterful.

 

Keep up the good work!

 

Making an idea your own is very rewarding, and this one in particular was a labor of love and most importantly – time. Some ideas have to fester (or perhaps mature is the better word) before realization so they are given the chance to turn into something truly spectacular!

 

I think my idea with the cherubim is that they are small ad-mech servitors – akin to the cherubim seen in the artwork but without wings – somehow that makes them “more mechanicum” to me, if that makes any sense?

 

 

I'm totally enamored! Great work!

 

I’m happy to hear you like it

 

 

Excellent work brother, the sculpting on the robes especially is very smooth and flows quite naturally. The little cherubim devils match the aesthetic we see in the artwork very well too.

 

Thank you, it gave me a lot of trouble and I’ve made some minor alterations to the miniature even after I called it finished. Cloth is pretty hard to master and I still have a lot to learn but it’s starting to become a fun process instead of a tedious one.

 

That artwork feel was exactly what I was going for, so that’s high praise in my book!

 

 

That primaris is sublime.

 

You've got some wonderful characters on the go here. I'm impressed with your designs and your green stuff work. Your getting the green stuff super smooth and so well shaped. Looking forward to your progress.

 

Slowly and steadily… Just a bummer that it takes me so long to finish things, but better to be pleased with your work than to rush it along I guess. Hope you’ll find the continuation of all these projects as interesting.

 

 

Absolutely stunning models mate! The conversions are sublime

 

Thank you for your kind words!

 

 

Sweet stuff. I love the small technocherubs and you've probably made the coolest version of the cairn wraith yet

 

Wow, high praise, I’ve seen quite a lot of cairn wraith build by now, and I know some things I’d have liked to adjust if I knew how, but I’m still very pleased with my iteration and my solutions to many of the issues I encountered while making it.

 

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The Coils of the Hydra

'Circle II'

Alpha Legion 102^th (CII) Company

As they slither into Stone

A

α

 

– Requesting Connection – – Requesting Crypt – – Crypt confirmed – – Code Required – – Code Input: 'Hydra-1-Delta-Circle-XXII-2388' – – Uplink Established – – 93% Efficiency – – Minor Atmospheric Interference – – Compensating – – Connection at 100% – – Channel Crypt Reconfirmed – – Channel Secure – – “Unit Formation 'Alpha-Alpha-Epsilon-CII' proceed to rendezvous point.” – – “All coils accounted for.” – – “No losses during insertion.” – – “Proceeding according to directive” – – “Additional information uplinked” – – “Target specification requested” – – “Target confirmed“ – – “Standing by” …

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH3TLG2W_uY

Ulf Söderberg – Vargskymning

 

– “Alpha-Alpha-Epsilon-CII-Executor: This is 'Hydra-CXX-Epsilon-CII'” – – “Status confirmed” – – “Circle is completed” – – “Repeating: Circle is completed” […]

 

 

 

 

 

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I realize that I’m doing these updates in a strange order, I also realize that it’s been a month now (wow). I’m not really following any logic other than what fancies me for the moment and what I’ve taken out of the cabinet to work on for a day or two. I must admit that I am the embodiment of hobby butterflying at the moment, the amounts of releases and the ideas that they enable is making it hard for me to focus on one thing and get it done before moving on to the next – specially when I run into minor hurdles or get bored with waiting on green stuff to cure or bits or magnets or what not to arrive before I can continue. Then again, my ability to concentrate is admittedly not the best either which could play a role as well.

 

Back when I was getting into 30k (for context - this was back when Book One Betrayal had just been released) I dabbled with Night Lords in the beginning, waiting for more releases to come and slowly getting stuff added to the collection and making choices. As it was I had a hard time choosing between Night Lords and Alpha Legion, settling for NLs because they had more character (from my perspective at the time) and more modelling opportunities for the skills I had honed with the Brethren of the Phoenix (my BA successors). As it turned out I couldn’t stay away from the AL for more than a few years before I crumbled and decided on making an AL army as well – with the caveat that every power armored miniature would be in a Corvus Pattern power armor (i.e. Mk VI), as you will see as this project grows.

 

The point being that every marine in the AL army should look similar and only have minor details that where different, a few studs, a letter / chain / symbol somewhere, maybe more or less pouches and grenades and so on. ‘We are Legion’, after all. Since I wanted similarities and a high degree of reproductivity I decided to try my hand at decals (seeing as how FW had released the Legion decals at the time) and I quickly took a liking to the process and began to experiment with it – ie cutting decals up, turning them up-side down and what not – which opened more options for me. As many of you probably have figured out the ultramarine symbol upside down is a perfect omega symbol, suiting the AL very nicely, just to name one example. This also means that a lot of decals are useable for you seeing as how the ultima is very common over all. And as it happens is also the reason that my mechanicum battlegroup is battlegroup Omega. Cutting up bigger decals to steal small elements of them to use on smaller miniatures is pretty rewarding as you end up with pieces that look unique but are reproducible should you want to (well, as long as you can get hold of the decal sheets…).

 

Suddenly most of the miniatures I owned that where space marine related and not built or painted got funneled towards the Alpha Legion project (leaving the NLs in the dark, where I guess they fit from a setting stand point). Not only that, I was making good progress, starting up batch painting marines and was planning army compositions and such. For once I was on fire, as the saying goes.

 

Then came 8^th and the Primaris and I lost all interest in the hobby for a while, you could sum it up with the statement “I felt lost”. I felt that all my miniatures I had worked so hard on gathering pieces for, converting, sculpting, where being replaced with a, scale wise, superior product and all my efforts would be for naught even if I ever did manage to finish the army I was building. It took me a while to recover and to not try to sell all my marines and even, as I was considering at some point, quitting the hobby.

 

As time passed I have changed position somewhat and I feel that both the Alpha Legion army and Night Lords army is worth at least finishing up – and then I can funnel whatever new releases for the Primaris that takes my fancy into the Effulgent Chapter building that army up over time. So this gives me 2 official Legions to work on and one “homebrew” primaris chapter to be more… Free(?) with. I do like marines after all, as you might have realized by now.

 

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So, where am I with the Alpha Legion project right now?

 

I’ve spent quite a lot of time changing all their bases to the 32 mm bases, for most of them I’ve used adapters glued to the bases simply because of how I build my miniatures and their bases. When I build my miniatures I always take the basing and the posing into consideration as I build, therefore each base is built to fit with the miniature (although some look wonky in retrospect…) and pretty much all of my infantry is pinned to the base via one of their feet and or legs. This made the prospect of making new 32 mm bases, building them up – repining and so on, such a big project that I went for adapters instead, simply adding to the existing basing instead of making it anew.

 

 

 

As you can see I have yet to “complete” the bases, it’s just texture paints and other technical paints and mixtures added to the added space to the bases. This means that as of this moment I have no (zero, none) finished miniatures for this project – so I’ve actually lost progress – ah, well. This will be taken care of when I’m finishing up the batch of miniatures I’m slowly painting at the moment:

 

 

 

They are obviously in various stages, most of them need the soft armour parts painted in grey and then the bolters and some other minor details (pouches, small metallic details and such) before they are ready for the final steps of the basing process.

 

Alongside the infantry I’m trying to finish my additions and minor conversions on all my rhino hulls and assorted rhino sized vehicles for the project. They are in various stages of disarray at the moment and progress is slow but I feel that batch painting the base colours with an airbrush is vital to these to avoid them all looking too different – had I done them one at a time over the coming 10 years or so…

 

 

Before I leave for now I’ll just put these two spoilers below detailing the planned units for this army and my paint scheme for them, mostly for my own sake so I know where to access it easily.

 

Till next time!

 

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Units planned for the Alpha Legion 102^th Company

• Alpharius (official miniature, probably converted)
• Omegon (idea stage, nothing concrete, will think about it)
• Lernean Terminators (official miniatures, 5-man (to start with))
• Armillus Dynat (official miniature)
• Praetor in Tartaros Terminator Armor (conversion)
• Damocles Command Rhino
• Tartaros Terminator Squadron (5-man)
• Tartaros Terminator Squadron (5-man)
• Tartaros Terminator Squadron (5-man)
• Tartaros Terminator Squadron (5-man)
• Tartaros Terminator Squadron (5-man)
• Tartaros Terminator Squadron (5-man)
• Apothecarion Detachment (3 x Apothecaries)
• Rapier Laser Destroyer
• Rapier Laser Destroyer
• Rapier Laser Destroyer
• Rapier Laser Destroyer
• Rapier Quad Launcher
• Rapier Quad Launcher
• Rapier Quad Launcher
• Tactical Squad (10-man) or other power armoured option
• Tactical Squad (10-man) or other power armoured option
• Tactical Squad (10-man) or other power armoured option
• Tactical Squad (10-man)
• Tactical Squad (10-man)
• Tactical Squad (10-man)
• Tactical Squad (10-man)
• Legion Rhino (x9)
• Legion Land Speeder (Tempest)
• Legion Land Speeder (Tempest)
• Legion Land Speeder (Tempest)
• Legion Sicaran Battle Tank
• Legion Deimos Pattern Predator Executioner
• Legion Deimos Pattern Whirlwind Scorpius
• Legion Vindicator
• Legion Vindicator
• Legion Vindicator
• Legion Medusa
• Legion Medusa
• Legion Medusa
• Land Raider Phobos
• Land Raider Phobos
• Land Raider Phobos
• Contemptor Dreadnought (conversion)
• Deredeo Dreadnought
• Leviathan Dreadnought (Red Scorpion Culn conversion)
• Leviathan Dreadnought

 

Paint Scheme – Alpha Legion

1. Black Primer.
2. Airbrush with thinned Leadbelcher : Ironbreaker (1:1 mix + Thinner) - (Old GW colours Boltgun Metal : Chainmail)
3. Airbrush from top of model with Thinned Runefang Steel - (Old GW colour - Mithril Silver)
4. Tamiya Clear Green with Tamiya Clear Blue (1:3 mix + Thinner) with airbrush over the model with 2-3 coats.
5. Airbrush armour with Tamiya Clear Blue (+ Thinner). I "shoot" this from the bottom of the miniature. Miniature should now look blue if viewed from below.
6. Airbrush from the middle upwards with Tamiya Clear Green. I "shoot" this layer from above the miniature, so the miniature looks metallic green if viewed from above.
7. Airbrush blend a highlight on the highest panels (head, shoulderpads, top of the backpack) with Runefang Steel with a tiny amount of Lothern Blue (extremely thinned downed) (14:1:14). Miniature is supposed to turn SLIGHTLY lighter on head, top of shoulderpads and backpack - (Old GW colours Mithril Silver + Ice Blue)
8. Airbrush: Apply a thinned coat of Tamiya Clear Blue over the highlight added in step 7 so to blend it into the surrounding area (turn it from silver to blue-ish).
9. Brush: Using a Blue Glaze (Guilliman Blue Glaze), drag down the entire model allowing it to settle in the deepest areas (and in particular around any studs/bolts and other irregularities on the flat armour surfaces). THIS step changes the look of the miniature drastically - it removes the glossy finish from the Tamiya clears - (No old GW colour equivalent)
10. Brush: Add battle damage with Leadbelcher and/or Ironbreaker. Highlight edges with Ironbreaker to create edge highlights if wanted - (Old GW colours Boltgun Metal and Chainmail)
11. Brush: Paint cables/hoses with Mechanicus Standard Grey : Abaddon Black (1:1) - (Old Gw colours Adeptus Battlegrey : Chaos Black)
12. Brush: Highlight cables/hoses with Administratum Grey - (Old Gw colour Fortress Grey)
13. Brush: Wash cables/hoses with Nuln Oil wash - (Old Gw colour Badab Black wash)
14. Brush: Paint stripes on hoses with Averland Sunset - (Old Gw colour Iyaden Darksun)
15. Brush: Highlight stripes with Flash Gitz Yellow - (Old Gw colour Sunburst Yellow)
16. Brush: Wash cables/hoses with Reikland Fleshshade wash - (Old Gw colour Ogryn Flesh wash)
17. Brush: Paint Bolter metallics with Leadbelcher - (Old Gw colour Boltgun Metal)
18. Brush: Paint Bolter casing, belt pouches and soft armour with Mechanicus Standard Grey : Abaddon Black 1:1 - (Old Gw colours Adeptus Battlegrey : Chaos Black)
19. Brush: Highlight Bolter casing, belt pouches and soft armour with Administratum Grey - (Old Gw colour Fortress Grey)
20. Brush: Wash Bolter, belt pouches and soft armour with Nuln Oil - (Old Gw colour Badab Black)

Grenades

1. Brush: Paint with Ironbreaker - (Old Gw colour Chainmail)
2. Brush: Apply Nuln Oil wash - (Old Gw colour Badab Black)
3. Brush: Highlight with Ironbreaker - (Old Gw colour Chainmail)

Lenses:

1. Brush: Abaddon Black over entire surface - (Old Gw Colour: Chaos Black)
2. Brush: Blend in Mechanicus Standard Grey : Abaddon Black 1:1 in lower front part - (Old Gw colours Adeptus Battlegrey : Chaos Black)
3. Brush: Add highlight to step 25 with Administratum Grey - (Old Gw colour Fortress Grey)
4. Brush: Wash with Nuln Oil - (Old Gw colour Badab Black).
5. Brush: Paint a small dot of White Scar in opposite corner of lens - (Old Gw colour: Skull White)

Bases:

1. Brush: Paint base with Vallejo Game Colour Mahogany.
2. Airbrush: Varnish entire miniature with at least one layer of Vallejo Satin Varnish (or matt or gloss, doesn't matter that much, you just want to protect the previous work done from the white spirit later on).
3. Brush: Add pigments to base (I use Orange Rust + Light Rust from FW).
4. Brush: Fixate pigments with small amounts of white spirit.
5. Brush: If desired, add new layer of brightest pigment (Light Rust from FW).
6. Airbrush: Seal pigments with Vallejo Satin Varnish.

I believe that's all the steps I do on an average miniature. On some of them I paint scope lenses red but that's optional.

[Deadass]

That is one SICK squad of Alpha Legionaries! Love the paintjob and subtle little details, and these characterful poses. I'm usually not a huge fan of beakies, but your marines are absolutely owning the Mark 6. I imagine that keeping up the same level of attention to detail for an army of that size will prove difficult, though I'm sure you'll manage. Keep up the amazing work, I can't wait to see your progress!

[hushrong]

WOWEE! That's a lot of Alpharius'!

 

Your Alpha Legion look great! Thank you for sharing them! There's a lot of great posing and paint jobs on all that sweet mk6 armor.

Speaking of armor that is a lot of tanks! I definitely hope your hobby butterfly hovers around your AL as I would love to see more of this too!

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Well done.

[Trixie]

Love that mk 6 squad Leoparden.

[Pearson73]

The infantry look great bud, that's one heck of an armour pool you've got there too.

[BrotherJim]

That’s a great update mate. The Alpha Legion look lethal.