Ed's Thread

[Calarax]

Ive got a few projects im working on, mostly games workshop, so I wanted a place to dump it all. ive been told im really good at converting and scratch building and that i paint to match however im not happy with my paintwork.

Biggest projects are a pair of warlord titans; i scaled up the current epic titan to be around 6 inches or so taller than the forge world reaver. i made that into a series of templates that i placed on 22 ga. sheet metal and cut out all the major structures of the body and built around a central pvc skeleton, then overlaid all the details in plasticard/GW parts. pics of that sometime soon. the head and weapons were the difficult parts and will really make the titans as ive put alot of detail with attention to existing epic and forge world weapons.

aside from that a mess of super heavy tanks, scratch built and kit bashed as well as "codex" versions; along with 20 or so smaller imperial tanks which are probably the most fun to convert and build. Mostly what i do is converting space marines however, so that will likely be the bulk of my photos. roughly 3 companies of marines with tanks and command units elites and all, some pretty nice conversions in there. recently picked up some orks, eldar and chaos marines that im converting alot, but only around 1250 pts of each. By converting a lot i mean cutting the knees and elbows to reposition for better poses, and using green stuff to add more elaborate detail in some cases.

I have about 1000 marines in epic complete with all the tanks and goodies, but nothing much worth looking at, the titan legions and super heavy tank companies are pretty cool though. built an imperial BFG fleet thats of decent size and at least one of every GW BFG imperial model, i want to match my collections of BFG, epic and 40k so that I can play a campaign that uses each scale.

did a squad of inquisitor scale marines, back when you could get marine helmets and heavy weapons in that scale, and really hacked up a few artemis models and ground off all the inquisitor markings to make standard, basic marines, then converted those to iron hands with all the bionics/tech marine stuff etc, so they look pretty cool. One of my favorite chapters. been told i should put those in a golden demon comp. ill put up some pics and you can judge em.

recently started a mess of 1500 pt WHFB armies as well; empire, orc/goblin, brettonian, chaos, undead (not to be confused with vampires) and some random cool models. but not much special there. a few interesting chaos conversions. for the most part i built everything the way it was meant to be.

other than gw i have a large mess of reaper minis since you can get that stuff pretty cheap and it works great with GW models in conjunction with D&D. i got a copy of the game infinity with some of the more impressive models but never put it together or played for that matter. anyways enough talking, ill put up pics as I have the models out or im working on something, maybe it will give someone some ideas or help with a conversion theyre doing.

check back in the coming weeks for photos of this stuff as i work on it, or if youre really interested in something let me know and ill get pics up of that sooner.

[Calarax]

sorry been busy with trying to find a new job and doing engineering stuff...i havent forgot about getting pics up.

[Calarax]

got a ton of fantasy stuff when a local store went out of business, been putting that all together. bought a new house so busy with that. got a new job. puttin together new great knights now, pulled out all my old ones too. should be about a 2500 pt army when all together. havent posted in this thread in 2 years haha. will get pics up soonerish now that i have a bigger house with dedicated game space.

[Daniel36]

Lol well you are certainly taking your sweet time! Now get those pics up and running.

[Calarax]

heh ya i finished school, moved into my new house, got married and just got back from the honey moon. time for pics of the stuff ive been working on....just picked up new dark eldar and more chaos marines the other day, built a couple big deamon princes that might turn out cool. was going to do demon primarchs but not sure if they will be good enough to be called that. a soul grinder and a defiler plus demon prince bits got cut up to make a demon version of perturabo, and i used dreadknight parts and another demon prince to make magnus the red. my chaos stuff is thousand sons and iron warriors obviously. im reading the horus heresy books, cant wait to get to the thousand sons stuff. after i get through that ill read the battle of that fang. im curious how the thousand sons operate in the 40k universe and would like to see more written in that context, as they pretty much got wiped out and then split when magnus banished ahriman. i wonder if all the rubric marines stayed with magnus and the cabal went with ahriman or if ahriman would have any rubric marines with him as well...and what "talking" terms ahriman and magnus are on. i need to read the books i guess. i had to have abaddon in my army though so theres some balck legion elements as well.

[Daniel36]

Congrats on getting married and the new house and all that, but seriously, next time, open a log when you have pictures man! Lol

[Calarax]

ok well i dont have my camera out so i just snapped a couple shots of what im working on at the moment with my cell phone. sorry bout the crappy quality if you want to see something in detail just ask. im building a 12 foot work bench so when thats done it'll be picture time this is my imperial guard army (the armor anyways). i think theres 16 tanks and 5 superheavies, but you can see im about 2/3 done with everything. i have lots of tread to install...i hate doing the tread. that shadowsword is about to get hit with some plasticard to look more like the old epic shadowswords with extra armor etc.

the other pic is the terrain i just finished building for my table. i like building out of plasticard (like my titans) so i made a couple tanks. the laser destroyer tank has chimera tracks and i built the rest to be like a german stug from WWII since they were a neat little tank hunter, although they didnt work that well.

i played a game of guard vs guard, 1850 pts the other day mostly tanks/minimum number of troops, it was a lot of fun. guard vs guard makes for a great game because of the variety of choices there is and how even the game was. i think what set it apart from most games of marines vs marines or orks vs orks was that it turned out to be pure shotting, no close combat, so it was quick and more tactical than just rolling hand to hand for 4 turns. not that marines vs nids isnt tactical but maybe you see my point.

[Firah]

I spy some Dreadfleet at the back there, behind that mountain of tanks.

what are the conversions you are up to there? one looks alike a destroyer, they were always my favourite tank from IA.

[HereBeDragons]

Wow you sure do things to large scale! Alot of painting to get done there lol

[Calarax]

for my space marines i wanted to come up with something original for a chapter name, and wanted to make a long involved back story for them as well. I've spent a long time (years) trying to think of a good name. I've always been interested in the two missing space marine 1st founding chapters, and thought of doing something with that. in the past I've wanted to use "emperors shadow" or a play on those words (doesn't quite sound right), but haven't come up with anything along that line. more recently for a first founding chapter (that sounds real) i like the chapter name "Swords of Terra". i googled the name and its not only already in use but the guy on dakka that came up with it before me made a back story involving the lost 1st founding chapters. the similarity ended there however with his back story being quite different than mine, you can look it up on Google easily but in short according to the other author the Swords of Terra simply left our galaxy since their primarch was at odds with the emperor when they met (clash of ideals etc) and wanted peace with the xenos races (eldar namely). He might have been chaos too I didn’t read it too much.

my story however is that the swords of Terra, loyal to the emperor, went into the eye of terror as a whole for their expedition at the onset of the crusade and never returned, and the emperors then secret knowledge of the chaos gods led him to believe that the chapter had been wiped out or converted to chaos (maybe some piece of evidence to the support the latter could be provided). this occurring at the onset of the great crusade the remaining chapters were forbidden from entering the eye (ill have to research to make sure this doesn’t conflict with the Horus Heresy novel aurlian).

fast forward 10,000 years to the 40k universe and BAM a crusade expedition fleet with battle barges and a fortress monastery emerges from the eye as though nothing happened. Grey knights, other chapters, the mechanicus, and particularly the =I= say WTF. swords of Terra say WTF happened. they then are under the close eye of virtually every branch of the imperium for any chaos taint; which is strangely non-existent. they have a crap load of older armor and weapons, but are given new tech from other chapters and the mechanicus. the fleet is accompanied by a few other 1st founding chapters for good relations and they set off on a new crusade against chaos. that’s my back story. personally i like mine better, but since i came up with the Swords of Terra seemingly 2nd its not my place to say. maybe i should email the other creator and see if we can mash our stories and make it my chapter too. what do you guys think?

[juicytomatoes]

I think it's fine to use your background for yourself in your games etc. This kind of thing happens all the time unless you are using a codex chapter (hope I've used this term correctly...) You're not going to publish any of it, are you? If you are, you'll still need to clear it by GW and they will let you know if it's okay in the first place.

So what color scheme are you going with?

Wow you sure do things to large scale

I have to agree with this. Looking forward to see your progress on your collection, eblick99!

[Calarax]

nah i wasn't going to try and publish anything, its just for fun, and they aren't a codex chapter (rules wise ill be able to "counts as" whatever i feel like (chaos, blood/dark angels, wolves or generic marines), as long as the models are true to the rules i pick on and the opponent doesn't mind). i doubt ill be picked up by GW to write fiction but that would be amazing if i did; Ive always wanted to be a scifi author or editor. as for the colors i haven't decided that either. i was thinking jet black like the raven guard or iron hands, with a sword and lightning bolt, but maybe a two tone would be better with grey and maroon or grey and purple something along those lines, i like the darker colors. most 1st founding chapters seem to have been solid colors though and not 2+ so ill have to look at a color palette to really make a choice.

still putting everything together though so paint is a ways off. i had a ultramarine army when i was a kid but it was krylon blue, typical 8 year old paint job so i dumped that. did dark angels and got a lot of complements on them and eventually got an offer i couldn't pass up so then i did black templars since its a quick paint job for table top standard army. but they got sold as well so no more painting until i get the exact army i want for my own chapter, although i have a large number primed chaos black from years ago. i think my guard army will get split into a small =I= group, some mechanicus skitarri and the rest cadians, since they will be accompanying this marine force and hang around the eye of terror. I don't have any sisters but ide like to have a squad for the =I=/grey knights/death watch i have. of course a 1st founding chapter of loyalists showing up in the late M.41 would likely attract the adeptus custodes and sisters of silence as well. or did the sisters of silence become sisters of battle? for some reason i think the brides of the emperor became the sob and the sos are a separate smaller group that hang around the golden throne, but I'm probably wrong. i guess a quick search on lexicanium would answer that.

i finished my BFG fleet a month or so ago as well, its pretty cool i need to get pics of that. what the hell happened to the prices on the GW website for BFG? a sword used to be 8 or 10 bucks not that long ago and they're 15-20? good thing i didn't need much to finish my fleet. also my epic marine army has a full chapter of 1000 marines, its a codex chapter too so its kinda cool to see 100 terminators, 100 scouts, and all the tactical and reserve companies backed by all the armor and stuff. some of them are painted in grey and maroon when i first started painting in the late 80s early 90s when epic was still popular. i think all thats buried in the attic so i need to figure out where it all went. im pretty good about not throwing things out but then it leaves a lot to go through.

[Calarax]

started prepping my empire army for paint. the general is away getting a pro paint job while im going to hit the rest of the army in a more expeditious manner. here are the color schemes im going to use for different units within the army (thanks to whoever made the empire army painter..)

[Calarax]

finished building around 400 space marines. 100 terminators, 100 grey knights (half terminators), and 200 assorted marines (devastator, assault, tactical, special weapons, sergeants, captains, etc etc).... 3 land raiders, 4 rhinos, 2 razorbacks, 2 vindicators, 1 whirlwind, 2 stormravens, 12 bikes/1 attack bike, not even sure what else there is. its occupying all my free time. im getting sick of building stuff. the conversions/kit bashing at this point is almost random; ive made every cool combo i can think of so now im just trying odd mixes of armour and weapons. some look cool some look meh. ill get pics up as soon as everything is built. i feel like im grinding levels on wow characters.

[Daniel36]

The fact that you take half a year between each update is pure awesome!
Good luck painting up the million points worth of Space Marines.

[Calarax]

haha thanks for the support. its taken over a decade to get all this stuff together, assembled and converted in my free time, so im finally starting to get to the point where i can get pics up of everything (pics of sprues and bitz boxes are boring). i think the ball is going to roll faster and faster though. heres some pics of the marines im working on, theres about 250 of them in these photos. the 1st company and grey knight brotherhood are both done and in their foam organizers awaiting paint. ive got about 25 or so marines left to build for the 2nd and 3rd companies. there are also supporting units of blood angles, dark angels, space wolves, black templars, iron hands, and probably some other first founding legions that ill thrown in just because i like them too much not to have them represented along with my own chapter, the swords of terra. the first company is 20 sternguard, 20 vanguard, and 60 terminators; the 2nd is a codex company and the 3rd is still up in the air. all the leftovers i suppose.

ive just started my forge world marine army however (with the new horus heresy coming out and all i couldnt resist, not to mention how nice the models look and how they appeal to my sense of nostalgia). Ive been reading all the HH books, its pretty good series so far. i picked up some mkiii, mkiv, and mkv FW marines. mkii and mkvi are next (mkvi has always been my favorite, so i have ~30 new mkvi marines that are just GW plastics/metals and another 40 or so rtb01's/RT metals that i dont think i will use as they do not mix well with the new plastics/resins), along with a FW rapier and the captain/standard bearer. but thats a side project in comparison and wont finish until the FW books conclude with the death of horus and the loss of the remaining loyal primarchs.

once i get everything done for these 3 companies ill break out the SLR and get good pre paint shots of all the captains, masters, and other conversion work put into this army. ive got 2 golden demon painters ready to join me in this quest to speed paint one of the biggest armies that will be on display in the region(someday). i dont know if i already mentioned but the garage in this now 1 year old house has a 24 foot workbench that will be set up with a work line style paint booth, so it should really help knocking out the painting process. painting standards will be high for speed painting, i.e. well defined eyes lenses on the helmets etc but we will be using basic techniques and not get into much shading, just a base coat, layer, drybrish, a few highlights and thats it, maybe a dip in quickshade, hopefully spending no more than 5-7 minutes on each marine. i dont want thick paint or sloppy paint, but i dont mind a lack of detail. special characters will be a different story, ide like at least two of the captains ready to enter in the 2013 or 2014 golden demon, probably as a unit in a terrain peice. ive made a lot of progress with the back story of my chapter as well. more to follow there and probably a dedicated website to replace my old one (which i recently took down).






its a mess and a grainy cell phone pic. the block of rows of marines is the 2nd company of the swords of terra. 20 assault marines, 60 tactical marines, and 20 devastators. there are two chaos marines and two female marines in there somewhere if you can spot them. the two female marines were armed and armored by my wife, one with a melta gun and one with a las cannon. i asked if she wanted a close combat set up but she replied that anything would be dead by the time it reached her so there was no need. ill put that to the test... havent played much lately but we did a battle royale recently, yarrick vs gazkhul, mephiston vs abaddon, ghazkul vs abaddon and a few others. of course abaddon won 100% and yarrick lost 100%. ghazkull needed a tie breaker with mephiston so that was fairly evenly matched.

as for everything else my empire army is almost done being painted, my chaos armies (WH40k and WHFB) are built, brettonians are half built (another 50 knights to assemble), eldar is built except one FW tank i just got, havent touched my dark eldar/still in boxes, imperial guard is 80% built, undead is almost built just a new plastic dragon and i think thats it. dont have much for orks FB/40k but they are all built. once my marines are done i have a dozen cans of chaos black primer to get everything that is assembled primed at once. ill have help painting the 40k marines and FB empire but im on my own for painting everything else. i have an empire city and a imperial city that im building for terrain, looks like a lot of new building kits coming out in the next year or two but i should be able to cover a 6x4 game table for either 40k or FB in city scape or just generic forrest. the terrain will be pretty cool just by itself (see previous posts).

i saw in town the other day a warehouse for sale, $150k which is a lot at the moment but im considering opening it as a game store, it has frontage right on main street and its own parking lot which is huge. the last one went out of business after a decade and did online sales until GW killed its official online retailers, but i have enough left over stock to start another online store just for bits. probably just through ebay for now. if i do i ill throw my seller id on here, ill likely undersell the other bits dealers just to get rid of this and make space in my shelving.

see you in a few weeks and thanks for reading...

[HereBeDragons]

I notice I commented on this plog about a year ago...

You seem to have an awe inspiring pile of stuff, its quite scary actually. The scale you work on is so far beyond anyone else! I'd love to see some painted pics of the stuff you've finished, though it sounds like you spend alot of time building/collecting and not much painting Good luck with your epic batch painting plan for the marines/empire, it'd be nice to see some progress, and not the start of a different project in another 6-8 months

[Calarax]

ok so just to have something actually painted on my page here is a inquisitor scale marine i did not long ago. there are a few things ide like to touch up but all in all im happy the way he turned out. only added the eye targeter and studs to the shoulder pad (i need practice with green stuff), and slightly repositioned his arms. the sword is also from a different inquisitor model.







had to play around with the camera a little, i dont have a good place to take pictures here. the lighting is messing with the colors, his skin isnt orange but pale (elf flesh?). the bolter needs more detail/highlights as do some of the brighter colors; pretty much anything in red or blue is just a base layer with an ink wash on it. i need to go back and add shading. theres one other inquisitor scale marine im working on with a few parts from the same model but hes largely scratch built; the next one is an iron hands techmarine so he has augmetic legs and arms, and i made a gear axe and bolt pistol for him as well. hes not complete but i can get pics of him too if youre interested. yet another project...

[Tjarls]

Exciting read! Seems to me that you have about as oversized force as me. (at least my fellow gamingclub members think 15000 points dwarfs is too much) I find joy in seeing others with the same kind of unpainted hybris.

[Calarax]

building some bikes today. i think im done building space marines.



1 attack bike, 2 sgts, 2 flamers, 1 plasma gun, 1 melta gun, and 1 techmarine biker. 8 bikes total but ill probably make one more attack bike and one regular bike marine, for a nice round 10 bikes. the techmarine is becoming more and more fun so instead of a servo arm im scratch building a servo harness. ill get pics up tonight! im off to get a 1.5 hour massage now. ive been sitting too long.