Friday 21 August 2015

Dirt from a holy place - Age of Sigmarines


OK, once again I'm getting a little away from what the usual content here is but just like any other self respecting hobby geek, I just coudl'nt get past through that whole Age of Sigmar storm. 
I am not going to do a review of the rules (I haven't tried them yet but I fully intend to... at some point...in the future... probably) nor a review of the models but just like many people, I just bought the WD that gave the free rules and free model aaaand just like any good butterfly, I immediately stopped doing what I was doing at the time and started building my Eternal Stormcast to play with it.
Then Summer happened and with it a wedding, moving house, BOYL and many other things...
Now things are a little more settled I found it would be the time to finish all the WIPs I still have (some dating from almost 2 years ago).




I knew right from the start I wouldn't paint the Sigmarite as is and I had to convert it in some way. Being of a chaotic obedience, I immediately tried to turn the good guy into an bad one. Given the size of the model I though giving it terminator weapons would be a clever thing bu it turned out that even for this poor gigantic chap, the plastic terminator weapons were way too big...


A brief weapon swap and here I was with a far better looking model. Remember that at this point the model was still intended as some big ass chaotic dude...


That was until my Fallout OCD came back knocking at my sanity's door :

Big nasty guy in power armour from the enclave
Even bigger nasty guy in power armour from the enclave...
OK, so nasty he will be but not necessarily chaotic or evil...

Then I just realised that the guy's armour is covered in little lightnings (remember it's a stormcast eternal) and who else has got that :


That's right, thunder armour or one of the very first Space marine armours (I'm not very good at 40k canon fluff but I know that much). I have to say it imeediately lit a bulb above my head (or it would have in any good carton).
I had just modelled a proto primarch !


History will always remember Columbus, Gagarin and Sanguinius... just has it will ignore all those that were before them but didn't live to tell or weren't allowed to...
There's a sordid irony for Cain in knowing that it never occured to anyone that the primarchs everyone learnt about could have been the result of painful and long researches rather than the fruit of a divine miracle... being millenias old and spending most of your life fleeing from those who created you and need to erase you from History when they first meant to make a hero of you has taught Cain one and only one thing : nothing matters.
Every consideration about good or evil, every thought about the meaning of life, every feeling or hope ... all of these are just like dust blown by the winds of time.
Cain lives now though it could seem he's always lived, that must be what the gods feel like in their sacred havens, but he knows how the fall tastes...

Don't know about you but the idea of having that huge rogue monster on a table really sets me up, he could be on either side of a game, played by the GM with none of the players knowing his real intentions, he could be the prey of several rogue traders or space pirates, bounty hunters or whatever...

Just a few more shots of him just to show how bulky he is next to a recent plastic model and a classic Rogue trader one :



I normally have no real idea of what the next post is gonna be about but for once I have a pretty good idea about what I'm about to work on, let's just say he's another guy who's both been left aside by GW and myslef for way too long...

TTFN


29 comments:

  1. Brilliant ! The paint job and the conversion perfectly match. Simple yet very creative conversion and one of the greatest use of the free stormcast I've seen. Seems like after your take on Morikun summer is a great season ! :)

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    1. Cheers ! As often, ideas just come naturally when you just follow your instinct, this one was totally not planned or intended at all but since it was a stand alone, I could just work organically on it without caring and I have to say I quite like the result !

      Merci !

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  2. It's good, real good - a very decent outcome for a somewhat suspect piece of source material ;) Or maybe I'm just jealous because all the stores sold out of those WD in 5 seconds and I missed out, bahaha! Nice work as always mec, but I seem to recall this wasn't the model we discussed as being 'next' :p

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    1. I know, I said I'd clear this one out of the way to get cracking on "HIM" (nudge nudge, wink wink) I've actually started getting back on it yesterday night after finising the lad above.
      Thanks mec, glad you like the idea and model ;)

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  3. Nicely converted and painted .I wished I'd picked up one of these figures now. There has been some great stuff done to them.

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    1. I called my local hobby shop so they'd keep a copy aside for me and I did well because they sold them in the 5 first minutes !

      thanks for the kind words ;)

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  4. I like your approach! I didn't get the freebie, but I think I should have. Everyone out there is mumbling about doing some realscale Blood Angels or Custodes, but in fact I think these Sigmarites would make some decent realscale Emperor's Children. The curves on the armor, the whole design...
    I don't think I'll be taking the endeavour (though I love the realscale art), but it would be nice seeing them. I handn't thought of your approach, looks refreshing. Well done!

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    1. Well, I'm honestly not a fan of the whole "truescale" approach apart from the fact they look more bad ass than casual marines. The only way I can justifi having such a monster in a game is by assuming he's totally not human from the satr hence my choice for a proto primarch, it sort of made sense with the thunder armour. It also allowed to dig into some unexplored parts of the background (or maybe it has already been explored but since I don't read any 40k related book I may have missed those).
      Some people will surely come up with better ideas but at least I found an easy one to be original !

      Cheers Suber !

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  5. The color scheme is especially effective at transforming the figure into the 40K realm, and tying together the bolter and power fist with the rest of the armor. Really nice.

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    1. Thanks ! I try not to place everythig on the post-apoc side but for this one, it worked, it's also very forgiving painting wise !

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    1. The model is not that bad to start with but I just couldn't stand painting those hueg areas cleanly !

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  7. Really great - love the concept and execution. He looks fantastic.

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    1. Cheers, it's one of those flukes when you don't have any big plans and the result seems to work !

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  8. Great choice is making him a baddie. Love the weathering ... very realistic!

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    1. For some reason it's always easier to make baddies, them not making sense seems always more "normal" ^^

      Thanks !

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  9. Nice work! my own Sigmarine is going to be chaotic... I just need to finish some sculpting bits here and there, and have not had the hobby time to get to it.

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    1. I'll be intersted to see how yours turn out ! Always great fun seeing what others come up with on a same basis !

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  10. The ducks guts JB!

    The conversion alone (forgetting the paint job for a minute) is great! What's the the head from?

    I like the weathered armour too, recipe please :)

    Your probably the first one on the blogosphere to have converted one of these guys into a bad arse chaotic dude. Much kudos to you JB.

    Well done!

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    1. The head and backpack are simply taken from the latest Skitari set ^^', hands and glove form terminators and bolter from a chaos marine !

      The armour was painted easily with :
      - Charadon granite base coat
      - Agrax earthshade wash everywhere
      - Highlights finished by light drybrushes of charadon granite gradually mixed with bleached bone until highlights look fine
      - blister foam application of doombull fur here and there, same with chaos black
      - pick some of the biggest stains made with the foam with metallic paint
      - apply different tiny droplets of all kinds of washes with a toothbrush (I used thraka green and carrobourgh crimson)
      - I also added battle damage (basically a thin blackline above a thin silver line) to break some of the larger areas

      This was all an improvised scheme so there may be better ways to achieve a better looking effect but I was using the easy way here ^^'

      I love those kind of models for a break, no pressure, just fun, generally the kind that surprise people more than the carefully thought and done !

      Cheers buddy ;)

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  11. And they say you can't polish a turd! :)

    Twist of Cain! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XomMTY3NJII

    Great work JB, I had no idea one of these minis could look so good.

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    1. Cheers my friend !
      I wouldn't say those are crap, the pose on this one is a bit weird but I guess it's the whole graphic line now to do "over the top" and cartoony and in its own way it is very good, just not to my taste hence the need to alter it a bit...
      I'm thinking about giving him some friends now...

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    2. Yeah you're right, I guess it's more what the Sigmarites represent that I don't like rather than the minis.

      He really does look very much like what I imagine as coming from say, the "Age Of Strife"

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    3. Model wise the only problem for me is teh same as for all new big releases designed in 3D, tehre are plenty of plain surfaces which are probably great for good painters but which are a nightmare for guys like me who just can't get a clean surface on a large area hence my need to make something dirty. Old models had "grain" simply because teh sculptors just couldn't model huge flat surfaces either and the models were tinier.
      I guess it's about the same differences as between electronic music and analogic music...

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  12. Really nice. For what it's worth I've played more AoS in the last few months than Warhammer games in the last decade and had a blast.

    Nice banner up top by the way...

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    1. Cheers, the banner top is not from me (hence the quality ^^). I have yet to try AoS but I'll surely find someone at some point if I try a little ;)

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