39 replies to this topic

[Sherrypie]

It's finally time to start a thread here in B&C too, brethren.
 
My loyalist splinter of XIV Legio Astartes, known as the Echoes of Eisenstein, is a labour of love that has now taken three years and lost all brakes a while back. When I got hold of my first Betrayal at Calth set, the path to damnation was set and I knew I had to go and start a whole army of truescaled marines. There would be no respite. There would be no models left unconverted. There would be only chopping and the laughter of ever growing mountains of grey soldiers waiting for their day.
 
Inspired by Veteran Sergeant on DakkaDakka, the spiral into endless cuts and lenghtenings had begun.
 
From so humble a beginning...
 

 
https://lh3.googleus...U=w1625-h914-no
 
https://lh3.googleus...g=w1625-h914-no
 
https://lh3.googleus...8g=w515-h914-no
 
https://lh3.googleus...k=w1632-h918-no
 
https://lh3.googleus...U5=w728-h912-no
 
https://lh3.googleus...k6=w770-h912-no
 





 
 
...we arrive to the present, three years later.
























https://images.dakka...mmer 40,000.JPG

https://images.dakka...mmer 40,000.JPG

https://images.dakka...mmer 40,000.JPG

https://images.dakka...mmer 40,000.JPG

https://images.dakka...mmer 40,000.JPG

https://images.dakka...mmer 40,000.JPG
 
With even an eager new recruit trying to sneak into the comparison picture!
 
So, welcome to gawk at my insanity where I'll ever so slowly go through the same process with the rest of the 150+ guys I have either unbuilt or unstripped from previous owners of 5 boxes of Calth and Prospero, scratch tanks from busted Rhino carcasses, learn how to paint through my irrational biases ("dang my steel just looks bad in true metal but brass and copper, yaaaas queen!") and occasionally create piles of terrain out of ice cream boxes and my significant other's diabetes waste.
 
Not even joking there
 
https://www.dakkadak...53e2_103099.jpg
 
https://www.dakkadak...983b_103099.jpg
 
https://www.dakkadak...e829_103099.jpg
 
https://lh3.googleus...8=w1620-h912-no
 
https://lh3.googleus...i=w1620-h912-no
 
Count the seven, brethren (and drop a comment while at it, yo!).
 
EDIT: oh blimey, is there a limit how much pictures one post can handle or why did half of them turn to links? Hope those work, at least?

Edited by Sherrypie, 15 August 2019 - 12:03 AM.

[Sherrypie]

A word on the background driving the project:

 

I really enjoy the 30k setting, visuals and so, but my friends tend to operate more in the 40k timeframe. The army should be usable in both scenarios, and pretty much exclusively currently operates with the 40k Death Guard codex without daemons or zombies but taking the full alchemical advantage of plague weaponry. Somebody order a gas grenade fusillade, sir?

 

Thus, we are the distant, bitter descendants of the men who fled under captain Garro to take the word of Horus' betrayal to the Emperor. With the cold, determined fury of the betrayed we carried on true to the teachings of our sire before his fall: each man a perfect soldier for the most horrible war zones imaginable, skilled enough with all arms available and determined to defy death where lesser men would fall. Where our erstwhile siblings fell foul to the sickness that is Chaos, we held on to our colours and forged our vengeance through the stars after the Arch-Traitor's siege broke. Through the long years we fought, endured and waged ever more straining wars in the name of the Imperium, for the Emperor's dream was our dream as much now as it was at the start of the Crusade. But it would not avail us much, as the galactic realm once destined for greatness was heading to hell at an alarming rate. Religious fervour, purges directed by blinf idiots, unthinking savagery against slightest deviation from the norm... it overtook and devoured world after world, fanning the cooling embers of tragedy into a millenia long play of unreason and lunacy. Yet still we fought for humanity, for we were and are Astartes. Through the years we fought, with less and less support and more and more "accidents" caused by nearby forces, which erupted into outright battles on many occasions. Bit by bit, ignorance and hate took over them all, until there was no more reasoning with the people of the Aquila except by force. Blind fools, unable to see the grander scheme of things amidst their petty squabbles for power that will pass like leaves in the autumn. Cast out, we forged our war against the Great Betrayers on our own at the fringes of civilization. Bitter echoes of a lost age, the Unbroken Blades still draw breath and die for a dream long since dead. We are Astartes, and that is what we are made for.

 

(Since we use a Chaos codex but consider ourselves loyal, to the cause if not the Imperial machine, it fits that we get Death to the False Emperor hits against those shortsighted imperial fools, who didn't bother checking who they are actually fighting and how that only hurts the whole. It's not enough to hate the traitors, it's even better to hate those harmful idiots who further the enemy's plans unwittingly )

[SickSix]

Wow. This is an awesome army. I commend you on the effort in converting every mini. Looking forward to observing further progress.

[Sherrypie]

Wow. This is an awesome army. I commend you on the effort in converting every mini. Looking forward to observing further progress.

Thanks

 

Progress will inevitably happen, if slowly but surely. There are currently a Scorpius, a Land Raider and four Deathshrouds primed and waiting while the infantry hordes may not get their time this year before other projects like Epic / small Apocalypse and Titanicus get their due. At least one of the Epic armies will be this same group in 6 mm, so that counts I guess But I'll be damned if I can't one day field 100+ marines footslogging it across the field.

 

The next steps on the building front are probably a bunch of characters to bring variety: a librarian or two (as Malignant Plaguecasters) for support, a company standard bearer (as Noxious Blightbringer, inspiring the forces onwards while breaking the enemy's will to resist), military police (as Tallymen, keeping the aggression up at the front), some lone Destroyers (as Foul Blightspawns, lost cases handed with phosphex sprayers) and apothecaries (kinda worthless in-game, but you can't really have masses of Death Guard without the 21st men, can you now?). More heavy weapons would also do wonders, given the Blightlauncher is awesome and I want all of them on the field spewing alchemical death all over. Some Rhino riding melee squads with axes, power picks, radiation grenades and other Destroyer whatnots would also be cool and work nicely with the mortal wound waves that can be put out with the Biologis + Bombardment combo, if I can come up with a suitable miniature for the good ammunition alchemist.

 

Later on there are another couple of Contemptors, the second Leviathan and other pieces of heavier armour to support the troops. Currently I got the hots for a quad-lascannon Contemptor, as Death Guard are somewhat lacking in the long range antitank department and I love dreads for all they are. We'll see.

[Marshal Rohr]

Very well done scheme, and love the upscaling. 

Edited by Marshal Rohr, 25 July 2019 - 04:58 PM.

[Sherrypie]

Thanks Rohr

On the frontlines, tol scale has become smol scale as the XIV finally take steps towards the glorious fields of 6 mm too (instead of being simply stomped on by titans)!

There's "some" stuff in my Epic pile, like ~300 marines, trio of Baneblades and a reasonable squat army swimming side by side with old eggy sentinels and beastmen, so my table is currently like this:



One evening of diddling around yielded some test results:



I had quite some angst over basing with these guys, as I really do like round bases the most but then the 40 x 10 mm strips are best in case I eventually get to play E:A but they tend to produce really monotonous looks. I had some 20 mm disks lying around and they looked nice... with three marines, max. But I really want to have five per base for fluff reasons and... argh. Then I found some other bases I had lying around, which are actually something like 44 x 20 mm or whatever, which is a tad over the suggested maximum for E:A but... Sod it, we're going with these as they look nice and let the minis have some breathing room, damn it! At least they'll work just fine with their intended purpose of playing the new Apocalypse with some sense of actual battles instead of an overcrowded mess

Some space is nice, as then I can do little things like this base where the sarge is aiming the defence cannon.



Though we're at 6 mm scale, there's no exception to the guiding philosophy of #ConvertEverything and thus I tried to slice some dynamism into these killerbots (probably counts as Contemptors on tabletop). Repositioned legs and fists, mostly. I'll take less potato-ey pics when they're painted




Personal favourite from this batch has to be the witch. Body of a tactical with one side gouged away, a staff from an imperial guard standard bearer and a head of a beastman on top of his armour for that dignified occult flair.




For the future I'm pondering how to make something useable out of those horrible land speeders. The seat part is reasonable and the front... thingy looks like I could take it apart for parts to make predators out of some rhinos... We'll see what comes out of those.

[Tyrannicide]

This is such an awesome project!

What did you use for the auxilia? They’re perfectly scaled to complement all the hard work you put in on the Marines.

[Lexington]

You mad bastard, this is wonderful.

[Brother Kortmer]

Oh, my, what a fantastic job on the Death Guard. Good to see some Epic around here, and kudos for converting your models in 6 mm ... But the DG steal the show for me.

Please, I must know: how did you paint that green and specifically what paints did you use? I think this is the exact tone I want for mine.

[Sherrypie]

Cheers, all

@tyrannicide: the auxilia are made from Perry Miniatures Afrika korps 1941-1943 with gas masks sculpted on. They are about the same height as GW guardsmen, but more slender. Not everyone eats steroids for breakfast like the plastic IG does

@Lexington: mad is the operative word here

@Kortmer: that's easy. I base the models with Army Painter's bone spray and then do the green with old Dark Angels Green (modern Caliban Green, I guess). That is blended with Goblin Green, or if I can't bother, just with Vallejo's Ghost Grey. Both of my greens are in a terrible condition and barely resemble paint at this point, so my greens are more like a result of 6+ translucent layers of inky mess. With working paints, CalibGreen base + GobGreen blends on edges + CalibGreen and GhoGrey blends on battle damage ought to go far.

[Brother Kortmer]

Cheers, all

@tyrannicide: the auxilia are made from Perry Miniatures Afrika korps 1941-1943 with gas masks sculpted on. They are about the same height as GW guardsmen, but more slender. Not everyone eats steroids for breakfast like the plastic IG does

@Lexington: mad is the operative word here

@Kortmer: that's easy. I base the models with Army Painter's bone spray and then do the green with old Dark Angels Green (modern Caliban Green, I guess). That is blended with Goblin Green, or if I can't bother, just with Vallejo's Ghost Grey. Both of my greens are in a terrible condition and barely resemble paint at this point, so my greens are more like a result of 6+ translucent layers of inky mess. With working paints, CalibGreen base + GobGreen blends on edges + CalibGreen and GhoGrey blends on battle damage ought to go far.

Well, thank you. I'll admit, I'm surprised. Citadel Caliban Green is said to be a close match to Vallejo Model Air Black Green, which is my go-to paint for my DG (shown here). But yours looks more saturated, more vibrant, like ... richer and deeper. I wonder whether that's because I toned mine down too much, or didn't work it up enough with the lighter green I mixed in there occasionally, or ... whether there's a genuine difference between these two tones.

What I love about yours is that it's a rich and deep colour, but that it feels 'cold', that it almost has a tint of blue. Just checked the Citadel app and wonder now whether I should get myself a pot of Warpstone Glow and throw that in the mix. Maybe with just a dash of blue. I don't know. 

Anyway. Spectacular colours that you have there. I salute you. Thanks for your reply. 

[Sherrypie]

Nice DG in your blog, Brother Kortmer. I love your weathering work.

But yeah, the difference is probably in the lighter colours used. Let's take my Leviathan as an example, since it is the best I've done thus far. As my greens are in a pretty poor condition, more water than goo, I used them in many successive layers to build that depth, occasionally dropping in a splash of lighter green and blending that in before tying it back down with another glaze of darker green. As this was done over a light basecoat, there became a natural gradient as the glaze moved over the surface. Caliban Green is cold to begin with, and stays that way when basically only mixed with grey. Adding brown washes gives yet another push for depth.

[Sherrypie]

Epic adventures continue, this time in the form of armoured support.

So we had some killerbots, how about more?



I made some shooty dreads by removing the great ham-fists of doom from these robots and replaced them with ogryn ripper guns. The zippy guy with a fist received a knee surgery as well as a hip relocation.



Obviously we also need some tanks to fight tanks, so why not make some Predators? Bits come from all over, old land speeders and Titanicus Warhounds included



But there is one above others in Astartes armoury: the Land Raider. The OG model happens to be butt ugly, how to fix it while still staying true to the awesomeness that is the Land Raider? Answer: two Land Raiders (making up a Spartan)!



That one requires some stuffing on a later date, but otherwise it's just so much better use for those models.

Also, some more footsloggers.

[Sherrypie]

Bweeh, I ran out of superglue! The next 60 men will get their time soon...

Also, damn sawing those Raiders creates a ton of fine plastic powder. At least it's good for basing



Moar lords, slicin' and dicin' like there's no tomorrow.



A company needs a standard, which is also ruleswise cool in Apoc (Blightbringer ushers Death Guard forwards +2").



Getting there! When I get more glue, there's 100 marines, 10 dreads, 10 rhinos, 4 preds, 4 spartans, two lords, a witch and the standard bearer ready to march. That's a bit south of 400 Apoc points or 6000 40k points, which should allow for some swell gaming (especially when mixed with AT knights and God-Machines).



Now, if only I had terminators

[Sherrypie]

Tried to prime lil' guys but the spray died, bashed a big guy together for comfort

He'll be a Foul Blightspawn, or more accurately an old Destroyer veteran who has been handed some cans of ol' phosphex and shoved in the general direction of the enemy. Was fun to build, took maybe two hours.











Reasonably happy with the tartaros legs, might use them for other characters too since the termies themselves are bleh compared to cataphractii. But man, assembling those torsos gets weird.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The guy dual-wielding heavy flamers looks appropriately intimidating as hell, but without close combat weapons (other than his feet) or weapons with greater range than the heavy flamers' 8", I fear he'll either get hacked to pieces when he faces Khorne Berserkers and other melee specialists, or shot to pieces before he can get close enough to grant his enemies Nurgle's blessings. Maybe you can mount ax heads under the heavy flamer barrels, like bayonets? Or bolt pistols, converting the heavy flamers into combi-weapons?

[Sherrypie]

The guy dual-wielding heavy flamers looks appropriately intimidating as hell, but without close combat weapons (other than his feet) or weapons with greater range than the heavy flamers' 8", I fear he'll either get hacked to pieces when he faces Khorne Berserkers and other melee specialists, or shot to pieces before he can get close enough to grant his enemies Nurgle's blessings. Maybe you can mount ax heads under the heavy flamer barrels, like bayonets? Or bolt pistols, converting the heavy flamers into combi-weapons?

But hahaa, the modern XIV throwers are 9". You activated my trap card

More seriously, he does have a combat knife on his belt and there is a suitably nasty explosive hanging behind his left shoulder (rad, phosphex, neurotoxins? Who knows) as they have one bomb along with them. I imagine him fighting with the igniters and body slams most of the time, just clearing enough space to carry on burninating, burna boyz style

[Sherrypie]

Huh, more idle progress on the support character front.

 

I like Plaguecasters. Some psychic shenanigans are quite important, I've found. While the Echoes do share the XIV's original disdain for witches, they do utilize them more often than millenia ago, largely because of their isolationalist circumstances. Which naturally means more failed aspirants, some fleshchange victims and oooh is that an excuse to field Spawns in the future that I see... Anyway, here's a new addition from the librarium (with some stuffing happening on a later date, namely in the wrist and over the I-marks):

 

 

The real deal for me today, though, was this guy:

 

 

I AM. THE LAW! *whack! thud!*

 

I've always liked the idea of military police among the Astartes, keeping the unruly superhuman monsters in some semblance of order when they get too much into the thick of things or otherwise just behave like twats. I believe there was a pig-latin name for these guys during the 30k times, but cannot for the life of me recall what it was. In-game he'll be a Tallyman, pushing aggressively onwards with a melee squad of the more hotheaded brethren and occasionally cracking some skulls for good measure. He also gets a badge of rank, even if the XIV as a whole isn't too big on such embellishments

 

[Lord Raven 19]

Nice work all round, love the conversions.

[Sherrypie]

Thanks Raven, there'll be more

Speaking of which, it seems Bio-Corporal Oprah and his "you get a 'nade! You get a 'nade! Everybody gets a grenade!" tour are ready to take off, but suddenly an ancient challenger appears from the depths of the bitz box...

[Sherrypie]

Adventures in 6 mm jog on, this time there's even paint!







"Ach, Hans, run! It's the tanks!"

[Sherrypie]

And more paint. I'll probably add some bushes on the bases when I could bother, first I need to adjust my eyes back to normal









Phonecam doesn't do justice to the gradients here, might take proper pics when I get the army done. One week to the games, on to the infantry then. Bwee.

[Sherrypie]

Phew, ALMOST a company done in a day. These still need a lot of highlights and details like powerswords and bushes on bases but such little concerns aside, I'm pretty satisfied with the pace

[Sherrypie]

Trundling onwards, now a bit brighter after highlighting the armours.

[Sherrypie]

Roight, ye gits! Back to the front!



Done! Ish! I'm reasonably happy with these guys as it comes to getting them on the tabletop and not (yet...) spending the next month scribbling legion insignia on their pauldrons, painting trims and such frivolities. Which is good, as I'll be trying the new Apocalypse rules out against my buddy's Krieg this weekend and might still have to paint some buildings before that.

Here's the current 284 point force. Basically a truckload of marines get hauled forwards in the hopefully sturdy Spartans, jump out midfield spitting death everywhere, Spartans smash against their line (which they can really do in Apoc! Super-Heavies are not bogged by melee and since they use Hellforged rules, they actually know how to kill in melee ) shutting down those pesky Russes all while the dreadnoughts rain death from afar with lascannons. That's the plan anyway, let's see how horribly outgunned we'll be



The basing system worked like a charm, just look at this glorious flood of ceramite:



Changing from the potato to a real camera, I took some better shots from the ones already seen so you can now actually see something (like the gradient work on the dreads, pretty proud of that).








Newer work includes the first officers: lords, witches, standards etc.






EDIT: blergh, it seems there's a hard cap on allowed pictures or something here. Tried to put 20 more pics of the singular stands for show, but nope. Nor in split messages. Is there a cooldown in posting time or something? I'll put them up on later days, then

Anyway, I'm especially chuffed by how well this project managed to capture the feeling I originally had with my truescale project: silent, ominous figures appearing from the rad blasted wastes, the whole thing looking like an old washed out photograph with barely any colour left. Would you say that comes across?

Thanks for looking!

Edited by Sherrypie, 15 August 2019 - 12:01 AM.