Artist of the Week: Menelker!

This week's Artist of the week is CMON's Menelker. Also, in honor of the new Tyranid codex, this week's theme is tyranids. The reverse Hive Fleet Kraken theme looks amazing in these photos and the fact that he has a Hierophant is ridiculous! If the photos are too small here, take a look at his gallery here: http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/Menelker/orderby/Descending

Enjoy the art!

The psychic energy around the head and the position of this model has made me change my outlook on the once static Zoanthrope model - now I look forward to making mine really stand out!

This final photo of the space Wolf is not Menelker's. It belongs to Asylum, another CMON artist. I just posted it because it makes me think of Silence of the Lambs ... "It puts the lotion in the basket, it does what its told!"

How to: Green Stuff Chains

Here is a quick green stuff tutorial. I heard through the grape vine that certain parties are interested in making chains to hold pitiful human slaves to certain raider like vehicles so I thought I'd lend my artistic knowledge out. First things first when working with green stuff, especially small stuff, gloves! They'll keep your green stuff smooth and free of your fingerprints.

After you get your gloves you need some kind of lubricant. I've heard a lot of things for this and looked everywhere for the perfect lub. In my research I've found vasilne, spit, water, KY which is awesome, and baby oil. All of these work just fine. They'll do the job of making your green stuff no stick. The biggest challenge however is after you work your green stuff into the position you want you then have to get it to stick to your model. A lot of the oils fall short on this because you'll have to wash it and unless you're really good you might lose some of the detail you so painstakingly worked for.

This is when one day when I was working with some green stuff and was trying to figure out soemthing I had around the house because I was just tired of water drying up so quickly. It was then I looked across all the clutter that is my paint desk to see my personal green stuff savior: Flow Aid. Its great, it drys on its own, its viscous, it doesn't leave any weird film, it doesn't alter the greenstuff and it can be patted dry cleanly. I got my bottle of it at the local art supply for 8$. I don't imagine I'll need to buy a new one soon and I do a fair amount of green stuff work now.

Now for the record, I know this stuff isn't for green stuff. Its original use is to increase the flow of paint and to smooth the surface of brush streaks. That doesn't stop it from being awesome.

I digress... Making chains. First start out with two equal portions of green stuff from your yellow and blue tubes. I prefer a little more blue, I really have no justification except I find it holds its shape better and is a little firmer. To be 100% honest, I can't remember which one is the clay and which is the epoxy but I can remember which one I like to have a little more of and its the blue. After you get your two semi-even pieces mix them up. I put them side by side and twist until they're decently mixed then I just roll it around between my palms. Whatever works for you works. Work it until its a solid even tone of green.

After you get your piece let it sit for a little while and it'll firm up. Green stuff usually takes about a day to cure so you can let it sit around for about 20-30 minutes for it to become a little more firm. For this tutorial I didn't do that, but it shows that you don't need to but I know my end product would have looked better and not stretched had I let it cure that extra time.

Drop a bead of flow aid (FA) on your work surface and streak it with your finger. Seperate out a b-b sized ball of green stuff (GS) and work it into a thick cylinder in your hands. After that work the GS on the work surface while rolling it in the FA into a very long, very thin string make it about 1mm or as small as you can. The thinner you make it the better your chain will look but the more difficult it'll become to do long lengths of chain. Be care to support the ends down and work by putting pressure in the middle and out towards the ends. If you put pressure on the end and work inward you'll create a bump and end up twisting the string on its self.

After you get your string made, cut it in half and try to make it just a little thinner just to push that boundary. You could just make two smaller ones but I find that I end up making it two long any way and still have to cut it in half even if that wasn't my intention. Long story short; end up with two very thin lengths of GS that you want to be about the size of your chain.

Now comes the tools. Its very important to keep your tools lubricated to avoid the GS sticking to your tools. The biggest tool I use is my smoothing tool. I'm not sure the exact name so I just call it my smoothing tool because it smooths. It has a flat angled side and a round conical shaped opposite side. For this, we'll use the conical side.


















Lay one of your stings flat and straight on the work surface. make sure your still lubricated under it for when you want to pick it up off the surface in the end to put on your model. I do this by putting a bead of FA at one end and then just streaking it with my finger down the work surface.

After your GS is in place slowly and carefully put tiny indentations with your smoothing tool down the length of the string. Make them about .5mm apart.


Once this is done, try to pat the surface dry to get any excess FA off the GS being careful not to lose your holes you've created. Your holes need to be deep enough that they've buldged the sides out creating what looks like a bunch of 8's stacked on top of each other look. After you've patted it dry very carefully lay your other string on top of the 8's.

To get this as straight as possible I'll put some FA on my index finger and thumb and just run it down the length of the GS, careful not to apply too much pressure and loose the buldges on the bottom '8' string.

Once this is done I use my pin tool. I don't have a picture of it but at best its a wooden handle with a thicker-than-a-sewing-needle pin in it. Use this tool or something like it to press the top layer down into the indentations of the '8' sting by laying the side of the needle completely across perpendicular to the GS string. This creates your top links.

You'll want to make sure that you keep your needle well lubricated while doing this. (this is where you giggle and quote cpt. obvious) so I just dip it right into the bottle and usually keep a bead of FA on it while I'm doing this.

After that I just go back over it and poke little holes where I compressed the top string into the bottom string. It breaks it up and makes it look more like a chain. Also, I'll push the sides in to emphasize the curves of the bottom string.

Lastly, which I did bad in this, very carefully and very very slowly peel up the chain to put it on your model. I use the flat angle, with a bunch of FA, and slowly lift the end while wedging that under it and pulling it off the surface only by the wedging action. Holding the top is just to keep it from curving in on its self.

My chain ended up looking bad in this because I didn't let the GS cure at all before working it and because I didn't take my time pulling it off the work surface.







Here is the chain I made haphazardly wrapped around some spacemarine. Notice hows its stretched out. Thats bad, you don't want your chain to look that way, it looks like garbage. Give it time and be careful when working with green stuff. It should be called GREAT stuff.

Feel free to email with questions!

A blog of Note: 40k Hobby Blog

Old School here with another Blog of Note! I have been following 40k Hobby Blog for quite some time now and there are some amazing models in there. From the Award winning Trygon to the batch-painted Nids and of course the Raven/Deathwing, there is Mucho eye candy there, so follow the link at the bottom of this post and have fun scrolling!

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http://40khobbyblog.blogspot.com/

Rough Rider Conversion

Rough Rider conversion

Since GW hasn't put out a reasonably priced box set for rough riders its conversion time. For the conversion I used the Glade Riders box set from fantasy and a Cadian troop box. I picked the Glade Riders becasue the horses look awesome and they have spears. Pretty simple choice in my opinion.

The conversion is a pretty simple one that you could even get away with not using green suff you'd just have to figure something out with the non-lance arm. Overall I think the cost effectiveness and ease of the conversion should put more Rough Riders on the table. The glade riders were 35$ and the box of cadians was 25$ at retail and you'll get 8 riders. so it's around 7.5$ each and you'll still get 2 whole guardsmen out of your guard box. Obviously if you make them out of the battle box or get your supplies on ebay or whatever you could bring the price down.

So first thing after washing the models is that I put the horses together so that I can still play with my rough riders as I'm putting them together just as horses with no riders. They're very dangerous horses. After that the most work is done on the rider.

Step 1; Legs

I start with the legs and boots and work my way up. For this rider I didn't use the legs that came

on the cadian spure. I'm pretty frugal with combination options and box will give me so to me, why use the better legs when I could just use some legs on of my bit box, like I did here; the gunner from a vendetta.

Clip the boots offand clean them up just above the top of the boot. Make sureyou get your cut as flat as you can.

After you get your boots, clip the legs off the elf spure and clip the feet off the legs keeping the cut and filing straight as well. After that you'll have your boots and your legs.

I've found that the legs look the most normal and proportional when you cut the elf legs about 1mm below where the leather of the boot comes together just below the knee. Any higher and he'll look like a dwarf and any lower and he's some strange branch of long legged evolution.

After you get your legs and boots you'll want to glue them together. Becare at this step because though you may have never looked they do infact have a left and right boot with an arch and everything. You're guys will look like preschoolers going out to recess if you're not careful. Also, the inside of the arch of the elf legs sits pretty flush with the horse and if you're boots are set too far inward it'll bow the legs out and make a gap and eventually snap your boots off. Lastly, it is large enough in this area to pin the boots but I feel like scoring the plastic will be good enough. These guys end up pretty frail all over so I doubt you'll be just throwing them in a box any way.

The top section of the legs is a pretty small flat area and on the first one I did I messed this up by reducing the angle back and it ended up making the guy look like he was about to fall off. Now all I do is just take my clippers and shave about 1mm off and keep it at the same angle. This will keep the back of the torso flush with the back of the legs. Also, on a personal note, I shave off that little rectagular back pack thing on the're back. I hate painting around it and its just pointless any how.

Step 2: The Lance

Setting the legs aside for now, we can move to the hunting lance. You could get more fancy than I get for this but I'm fine just using the tiny gem that is conveniently just below the blade as my explosive charge thing.

The Glade riders come with 2 lances in hands, one complete lance with no hand and 3 on backs with quivers and cloaks.

Personally, I think the cloaks look awesome and add to the ruggedness of the rough riders and their back story of being scout units and more woodsmen. (Being from Michigan, these guys have a special place in my heart)

For this tutorial I've selected the spear that has both a left and right hands on it. I kep the right hand for this to eventually make a more relaxed "I'm casually looking for something to kill" look. I've used the left on another model and it kind of looks weird but it works.

The Lance also has some frilly wood elf stuff near both ends that I file off being careful to keep the knob at the end without the blade and keeping the gem near the blade to represent my explosive tip. I've lopped a few ends off and they can easily be replaced with green stuff but its obviously easier to just not file them off or cut them.

On the spear I clean it with a file only. I when I cut my end off I was trying to shave it by dragging an exacto blade side ways over it and it just sliced it off. The Lance is to fragile for an exacto blade. I just sort of spin it in my fingers when filing back and forth to keep it as round as I can.

I use the clippers to get most of the hand off and then we'll file it down smooth like with did the frill and we'll end up with a clean smooth lance.

After the lance is all cleaned up we'll clip the arm off leaving a bit of the wrist. the wrists have two little bracelet things and I usually cut the line in between them and it'll give me a nice sleeve cuff wrist area to use. You'll want to be careful to leave this area because the elf hand is smaller than a cadian's and it looks strange if you don't have this little buffer area.

After the lance is cleaned up completely I clip out on the the weapon arms from the Cadian spures that's used as the support arm holding the stock of the las gun. Scroll down for a picture.

Step 3; the reins arm

Again, a personal preference her, but I had when riders aren't holding onto a horse. I think its pretty crazy to think that they're all so skilled a rider that they can guide with their knees while fighting in a battle. It takes a ranger what...12 levels to do that?

For the reins army I just use an arm that is holding a las gun from the cadian box. There are several options for the bend of the arm, but for the most part the arm bends and will look like the rider is holding the reins tight into their chest. I've used arms from the command squad, tanks bits and weapons teams to vary the way they're holding the reins but in the end its all more for flavor than function.

To start with you'll select your arm and clip and clean it. I picked a sort of more relaxed elbow and started clipping. You'll want to clip the lasgun our carefully because the clippers can easily slide into the hand and chop off a finger or the whole hand. Also, on that note I have contemplated chopping off the triger finger because it does look kind of strange that his hold on the reins has a trigger finger and someone would be less likely to notice that my guy only had three fingers than that one is sticking out like it has a trigger.

To help clean up where the butt of the las gun touched the shoulder I use my round file to just extend the folds in the sleeve and make it a little more smooth. For the most part its a small detail that might be missed in the quick scan.

I didn't get a good picture of it, but after I cleaned the reins hand up I drilled a small hole in the top and bottom to jam green stuff into to help hold it on it. After playing with my first set of riders I realized that the reins are not held on very strongly and might benefit from a little extra holding area.

Step 4: Assemble the Rider

Now that we have all our pieces you'll just need to assemble them. This is where you can have your creative freedom to put arms at different angles, the head looking in different places, the torso twisted, the wrist of the lance hand twisted, ect. This creates a very personalized look and makes ever rider very very different. This is how I put him together keeping with my "I'm casually looking for something to kill" look.

After this you've got your horse and you've got your rider and its just up to you how much detail you want to use and how far into your bit box you want to dig. I happen to love flare and if I have 30 custom made rough riders they're going to be the center of my army and I want them to be as awesome as I can make them.

I used a number of bits to flare up my riders and its all up to you. I like having saddle bags to add to the background of forward scouts.

Also, you can just leave the reins hand open or use some green stuff to make it more complete. I'll have some details about green stuffing them in a later tutorial. For now, heres some finished products.

Here is a finished green stuffed and saddle bagged rough rider.

Chaos Space Marines Units and Tactics: Huron Blackheart

Old School Terminator here with another article to add to the Chaos Space Marine Units and Tactics articles. It is nearly complete now with only Typhus and Kharn left.
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ARRR Matey! Huron Blackheart led his own heresy and many a space marine to damnation along with him. He is the pirate lord of the Maelstrom and its denizens and all the stories that involve him in the Black Library really make me like him.
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Objective takers ahoy! Huron Black Heart is armed with both a powerfist and a power weapon, which can make him a pretty good muti-tasker in Close combat, but like any IC without eternal warrior, you need to make sure you engage him with the enemy's weaker troop units (non-dedicated CC units) or use him and his squad to finish of a powerful unit after it has been whittled down. The last thing you want happening is your pirate lord getting swatted by a Powerfist of poked to death by power weapons.
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With Warptime, he gets dangerous - now he has three Powerfist attacks base, 4 on the charge, rerolling failed to hit and wound rolls. Not to mention that his heavy flamer gets to re-roll now too.
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Using Huron: I have seen the few people who field Huron occasionally use him in a land raider and while that makes good use of his flamer and his charge, it really seems like a whole lot of points tied into a unit that could accomplish the same with a unit of zerks inside instead of them AND an IC.
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My take on him is that he is a force multiplier for troop squads that are meant to grab objectives. He can provide them a much needed CC punch and can also take their rhino-rush rapid fires that much more dangerous by adding a re-rolling heavy flamer. He can use the fist to add to their squad's fist in case an MC attacks you. He can switch to power weapons if an enemy squad comes your way - in both situations, the warptime is what makes him acheive greatness.
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I would take Huron with a squad of plague Marines with 2 melta guns and a champ with a powerfist in a rhino with extra armour. With proper support, this squad can deal with walkers, monstrous creatures, non-powered CC squads, most troops and should have the staying power to be holding an enemy objective at the end of the game - the limited support it needs also frees up a large number of your units to better support each other and take their own objectives.
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Aside from multiple objective games, he can add to your spearhead in 2 objective missions and should be used to hose light troops in KP missions.
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Overall: Huron is a decent special character, but he is an easy kill point for a sergeant with a powerfist, his warptime is needed to make him effective and without it going off, he just isn't as impressive. As with all special characters, I would rather have a daemon Prince or a sorceror and in Huron's case, I could take a nurgle prince with warptime for 5 points more or a sorceror with lash for much less. If you want a special character though, he is a decent one and he is often underestimated or incorrectly used - so making him work will give the guy a little credit - he is a Pirate Lord afterall!

Blood Angels thoughts

The Blood Angels Codex has become a snowball effect of rumours. If you were to believe the forums, there is nothing that can stop them and they will be the most broken codex ever ... good thing DFG cares not for the rumourhammer of the forums. Aside from the rumours in the forum, there are the rumours we have heard from BoLS which if we take the Guard, Wolf and Nids dexes into account, we can believe about 85% of what we hear, which is good as far as rumours go.

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here is the rumoured table of contents for the emo (I mean) Blood Angels:

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page -26 background
27 combat squads, red fury, furious charge, they shall know no fear
28 Commander
29 Sanguinary Priest
30 Chaplain
31 Librarian
32 Tactical Squad
33 Assault Squad
34 Devastator Squad
35 Death Company
36 Terminator Squad
37 Honour Guard
38 Dreadnought
39 Furioso Dreadnought
40 Scouts
41 Initiate Scouts
42 Bikes
43 Scoutbikes
44 Land Speeder
45 Exalted
46 Techmarine/Razorback
47 Rhino
48 Drop Pod
49 Tantalus
50 Predator
51 Baal Predator
52 Whirlwind/Vindicator
53 Land Raider
54 Commander Cervan Dante, Chaptermaster of the Blood Angels
55 Mikhael Faustus, Sanguinor of the Blood Angels, Exemplar of the Host
56-57 Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, Lord of Death
58 Erasmus Tycho, Captain of the 3. Company of the Blood Angels
59 Reo Lemartes, Chaplain of the Blood Angels, Guardian of the Lost
60 Victor Nergal, Master of the Forge of the Blood Angels
61 Moriar the Chosen, Death Company Dreadnought of the Blood Angels
62 Hieri Lorenzo, Sergeant of the First Company of the Blood Angels
63 Absolutus, Dreadnought of the Flesh Tearers, Furioso Supremo
64 Gabriel Seth, Chaptermaster of the Flesh Tearers
65 Toledo Astorath, Chaptermaster of the Angels Sanguine
66-72 wargear
73 psychic powers
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Force Organization Chart

Blood Angel FOC is divergant from the Ultramarine one:

-Dreadnoughts are heavy support.

-Furioso Dreads with droppods are fast attack.

-Twin scout entries are both elites, but one is scoring.

-Only dedicated ground transport is the Rhino (Razorbacks are out)

-Assault Squad and Tactical Squad are troops.

-Honour Guard can be troops if fielded with Dante.

-Jump pack units are in every FOC category except heavy support and HQ:

--Assault Squad - troops

--Honour Guard - elites

--Exalted - fast attack

Death Company is 0-1 and doesn't need a slot in the FOC

Units Rules

Tantalus Lander is a dedicated transport for everything in the army except tanks, Land Speeders and Exalted. Its weaponry is: 2 twin-linked assault cannons, 1 twin-linked special weapon.

Land Raider: Redeemer, Crusader and Standard

Terminator sergeants can get close combat wargear. There is a Terminator upgrade to allow shooting in an enemy phase.

Exalted: 4/4/4(5)/4/1/5/1+1/10/3+, jump troops, hit & run, furious charge, no red fury/combat tactics, power armor, stormbolter, power weapon, bolt pistol, no options, no transports.

Quite angelic: masterfully crafted slim armor, jump packs, mechanical wings, masks, long hair.

Named Characters

Erasmus: Furious charge, digital weapons (rending), master crafted combi melta: 18" S:8 AP:1 Assault 1, melta, reroll to hit, 4+ ward save, can chose one set of special rules:

-squad ignores red fury
-red fury and preferred enemy
-rage and feel no pain

Mephiston: 7/7/5/5/3/7/4/10/2+, FnP, Fearless, Eternal Warrior, Fleet, 2 psychic powers per turn.

More potent versions of Might of heroes, Transfixing Gaze and Blood Stasis powers:

The gun of Victor's servitor is 36" S:6 AP:6 Assault6

Psychic Powers

Quickening: Infantry moves as beasts, jump troops and walkers gain fleet.

Blood Stasis: 5" vortex of blood in base contact. Enemy models count as being in difficult terrain, and suffer one wound if they try to move and any of the distance dice shows a 1, Mephiston: can cast it in close combat centered on himself, and enemies attacking with a 1 suffer a wound.

Might of Heroes: one model in squad gets +D3 attacks, Mephiston: can cast it on himself.

Primarchs Grace: Squad may reroll dangerous terrain tests.

Transfixing Gaze: Target model must take a leadership roll off or not able to attack librarian, Mephiston: not able to attack any model.

Living Darkness: A template which blocks line of sight.

Fluff

Background: mainly Blood Angels and 4 successor chapters with one page each:

-Blood Consuls

-Angels Sanguine

-Flesh Tearers

-Angels Vermillion

This is a compilation of what I can find from the Hogs of War and BoLS. What it means can only really be left to the folks who roll the bones and divine the fates, but as I said earlier, if this is a whif of things to come, then the Angels look to be the first SM GT contenders in a long time. I don't day this because of the rumoured abilities of the units above, but because of their FOC. Being able to put Furiosos in DPs and make them FAs gives you the freedom to free up your elites, whicj may be really good for this dex. Also, from the ToC, it appears the Lander is a HS slot and may be able to carry Jump infantry and have the teeth to support itself ... add that to the troops that will undoubtedly be carried in it and basic Libbies that can grant 12" assault and you have the makings of an in your face army capable of taking it to the enemy DZ and tabling their troops ... let's not get too exited until they come out, but I know Captain Obvious is chopping at the bit to get into an aggro Marine Army! What are your thoughts?

Chris' Awesome, trophy-winning Ultra Marine Bikers!

Old School here,

I just wanted to take a minute to recognize Chris and his Ultra Marine biker army. It won him a trophy in a tournament at the Fortress in East Lansing and he has to be one of the coolest gamers in our area from his laid back attitude to the styles of armies he runs and that is why he is our Artist of the Week! The champ above is beautiful and if you look close it has plenty of freehand. Take a look below at some of his work and let us know what you think. Chris, let's here about your armies from the horse's mouth if you are out there! Enjoy the pics.

The bases he uses are actually made with broken tiles from the hardware store!

He used a lot of Ravenwing bits to augment his army and it has a really cool theme because of it!

C'Mon, who doesn't love the Dakka Dread?

This predator has a lot of freehand and it honestly was one of the things that first drew my attention to his army when he started hanging out at the store.

And here is his up and coming Guard army!