Salamanders Tactical Squads Update

Progress has been slow to say the least, as the Air Conditioning went out in the house two weeks ago now. So it's been way to hot to work on anything that would involve paint, and I really don't have any comfortable hobby setup at the apartment I'm renting for at work. But this weekend I was able to get the temps in the house to an alright point, and worked on my Salamanders Tactical Squads for my 1,500 point army. I was able to get the decals placed on the shoulder pads yesterday, and worked on painting some special weapons for the Tactical Squads. Then today waiting for the laundry to finish I put together the Marines with their Bolters & Flamers.

Now for what still needs to happen to them: Clean up some details on the ends of the Bolters since I had just cut them off the barrel end of the sprues. Need to seal the decals on the shoulder pads with gloss and then give them a shot of matte. Finish the ends of the two flamers & one Multi-Melta to make them look like the others that I've already completed. Work on the Dark Arts Lava Bases finally, I've been dragging my feet on them as I was wanting to use the airbrush to see if it went faster. And put the backpacks on the guys to round out this stage of the Tactical Squads. I will come back and work on highlights on them after I get back from the Geek Nation Tour to England & the UK Games Day coming up.

Salamanders Second Company First, Second, & Third Squads

Salamanders First Squad

Salamanders Second Squad

Dragon Warriors Daemon Prince #2

First off I'm sorry I got distracted while working on the Plastic Daemon Prince and watching a movie at the same time. So I glued the torso together before taking a picture, but let me tell you it is super simple to magnetize the wings on your plastic daemon prince models. I used an 1/16" drill bit and drilled into the socket the wing base studs go into on the back of the torso. Then from the inside of the torso piece I used a 1/8" drill bit to drill out for my magnet, which there really is not a lot of plastic right there either. So I decided to add 3d Finish Nails as pins into the stubs on the wing bases. This added more length to the studs so the magnets would actually rest inside the torso on the surface of the plastic for the most part. I Super Glued the magnets down with the wings inserted into the torso so that the pins held the magnets in place til the glue dried. The wings hold in very well with the 1/8" dia. x 1/32" magnets and the Finish Nail pins, I'm able to hold the model with the wings towards the floor and shake it without the wings falling off.

The arms were a little more complicated then I expected, but I finally came up with a plan of attack. For the DDP's left arm there is a good socket that the arms go into, so that was simple to figure out. Drill the pilot hole so that it is in the center of this socket, then use the 1/8" drill bit for the final holes. Glue the magnets in place so that they are just inside the plastic, this gave me an decent bond for the arm. I then glued the shoulder pad on with just a little bit of plastic glue at the very bottom of the pad, this way it wouldn't glue the arm to the torso. For the right side that was a little more challenging then the left side, but I finally seen who to go at it. There is a flat area where the arm & torso join on the right side at the top of the joint, I was able to drill the holes and place the magnets in that area. Again it's not as good of a hold as the wing magnets, but the arms stay on unless you get rough with the model. Then all you have to do is put the arm back on if you pull it off.

So that was it for now on the plastic & metal Dragon Daemon Princes, I've got more GS work to do to both of them. But I think that will have to wait till after the Geek Nation Tour in September. More pictures of this and the other Daemon Prince can be found on my Photobucket Album for them, see link in first post or on the side bar for the recent uploads link.

Right Torso Magnet & Neck Detail

Wing Pins & Arm Magnets

Dragon Daemon Prince in Pieces

Dragon Warriors Daemon Prince
And what looks to be flipping the bird, but the pointer finger does not curl up.

Dragon Warriors - WIP

I had the idea to do a Dragon Warriors CSM army after reading Salamander from the Black Library. And after looking into the Lexicanum entry for them & reading the Salamander I figured I would try and do some sort of scales on their armor. I never really progressed to far with the scales on the armor idea, but I started working on a Daemon Prince conversion for the army. Even thought the references that I've found don't suggest they have a Daemon Prince that is warped into a Dragon form, but it sounded cool to me. I also had inspiration from the last Grey Knight series book Hammer of Daemons, which had a Chaos guy that was a Dragon in Armor that sounded like a Daemon Prince.

So with those to go off of I got a metal GW Daemon Prince and some other bits to convert this Dragon Daemon Prince (DDP from here on out). I started off JB Welding the torso together, and pinning the hands together and JB Welding them into the arms too. For the head of the DDP I bought a Dark Elf Cold One bits from the Warstore, which the head bit is separate from the torso bit. So I cut all of the reigns from the head, but left the collar part around the neck. I was going to use that collar as the start of the suit the marines wear, and this would cover the joint between the head and the torso too. I used my Dremel to cut down some of the neck area of the torso so that the head could sit back into the torso without having to cut down any of the plastic neck on the Cold One. Then I joined the head and the torso together and used some Green Stuff to form up to the collar of the neck.

For the tail I just cut off the tail from the Cold One where it connects to the Cold One torso. Then I drew the outline of the area I would have to cut out of the back of the torso on the DDP, and used my Dremel to remove the metal from that area. Added some GS in the hole and stuck the tail on, this makes to tail look like it burst from the armor on the DDP. I JB Welded the arms on and the shoulder pads and the legs to the torso. Work of advise on the JB Weld is to take your time and try and do one part at a time, as the normal JB Weld takes some time to setup. I tried to put both arms on the torso at the same time with JB Weld, that was a pain in the butt for sure. I finally got the to work and had to use some temporary items to hold the arms on, same with the shoulder pads but I used some Blue Tac to hold these light items in place. I have tried JB Kwik before but I didn't think the bond was very good, and I was able to peel it off metal parts like it was tape. I still need to do some GS work to where the arm and torso meets to smooth out the transition between them.

The wings on the DDP are Ultraforge Daemon Wings, and I'm still working on them for the most part. I put pins in the bases of the wings and drilled holes for the pins in the torso. I built up the area on the back of the torso with GS, then pushed the wings into the pin holes and made imprints of the wing bases. Then I worked the GS from there to form a basic area for the wings to mount to. I tried to add magnets to hold the wings in place but that failed at that point cause they were under the GS and didn't have a good enough grip to hold the wings in place. I'm still working on figuring out if I want to make this DDP's wings permanent or removable, since a foam tray to hold him with wings on would take up a lot of space. But I might go ahead an go permanent on this one and use it for at home or local gaming, and then the all plastic DDP that I'll be working on soon will be able to break down into a small space (all magnetic).

I'm going to start working on the all plastic Daemon Prince this weekend and hope to get some pictures of it as I work on the magnetization of the kit. Until then here is two pics of the metal DDP, and you can find more views of him and some older WIP photos in this Photobucket Album. Comments & Suggestions are always welcome, and any ideas on the scales on armor would be appreciated too. I've got a few ideas on the armor that I'll post on here at some point down the road.

Updates on Salamanders

It's been a while since I posted anything and that is mainly due to being on the road with work at the moment. I don't have a laptop to take with me to work on posts while on the road, and Blogger is blocked at work & I have not cell signal there either. So it has to wait until the weekends when I'm home, and normally that is when I'm working on painting stuff and converting.

The Salamander's Army is slowly getting closer to being finished for a 1,500 point battle. I've got a few more details & decals on the rest of the Tactical Marines and they will be complete other then their Dark Arts Miniatures - Lava Bases. Then I have to finish their Rhino Transports, which are almost done other then a little paint and some decals. The Land Raider Redeemer has some more touch up paint left and then decals and it will be ready. The Drop Pod needs to be repainted with the lighter green and then all the details picked out again, then some decals and it should be done. Oh and Vulkan He'Stan is complete other then his Lava Base, some maybe I'll get those Lava Bases done during this week and next weekend and get his pictures up. And they will be ready to go into my new BattleFoam - PACK 432 with it's custom cut foam for both 1,500 points worth of Salamanders & Space Wolves with room for a Blood Bowl Team or two.

Space Wolves

And some of them are magnetic too.
I've been working on Space Wolves lists for awhile since the Codex came out, and I've settled on a few different load outs. But the problem I ran into is that there is a lot of great options and I didn't want to be stuck with a model that had a single purpose. Like a Grey Hunter with a Bolter in hand or hands depending on what parts you use, or a Wolf Guard with a Power Sword and a Bolt Pistol. I had looked at making Space Marines with magnetic arms for my Salamanders Sternguard, but figured that was a waste at the time & dropped the Sternguard from my lists due to points. But now with the Space Wolves & possibly my future Blood Angels the magnetic arms is looking like the way to go, this will give me flexibility with a limited amount of miniatures.

So I drilled holes in the torso where the arms attach normally, and then drill a hole in the arm in the same area for the magnets. As for magnets I'm using 1/8" dia. x 1/32" for the arms & torso, just have to make sure I don't glue the wrong side down. Only one arm was done with a reversed poles so far, so I'll have one special model later down the road. And on the Space Wolves two hand weapons I've used 1/16" dia. x 1/32" magnets in the hands and the wrists connects. I still need to setup some arms holding bolters in both hands, and some special weapons like meltaguns & plasma guns. And do some conversions on Terminator Storm Bolters to make them work for Wolf Guard Storm Bolters in Power Armor instead of Terminator Armor.

Also I have an order coming from Scibor Miniatures for use with the Space Wolves. I have a War Bear without rider, one of their Celtic SF Warriors, and some Celtic Shoulder Pads. Go check out their site, as they are always adding new items to their existing lineup. Scibor Miniatures

Wolf Guard

Wolf Guard with Chainswords & Storm Bolters


Wolf Guard with Chainswords & Bolt Pistols, same three from above picture


Grey Hunters

Grey Hunters with Wolf Guard carrying Frost Axe


Long Fangs

Long Fangs with Squad Leader & Wolf Guard Terminator with Cyclone Missile Launcher

Little Bit of Chaos...

Well Chaos Blood Bowl Team that is.
I had posted before in "And a taste of things to come" that I was going to use some models from Privateer Press for my Chaos Team. Well part of that idea has failed, it's not a big part of the team as a whole but is a big part within the team. The model that I was going to use as a Minotaur from P3 is super sized compared to GW minis. So I think I'm going to go ahead with the Satyxis Raiders for Beastmen, the GW Chaos Warriors, and use the GW Minotaur that I put together instead of the P3 items.

As for the pure GW Chaos Team, well I have them put together and in their primer coat so far. I believe that I'll use the primer coat as the base color on the Beastmen, and give them some washes to accomplish what I want with them skin wise. I figure on using that same basic process for the Minotaur as him and the Beastmen will be about the same. The Warriors are going to be black armor with red and gold trim.



Sorry for the not so great lighting, but the primer was not showing up well either way & I'm in a hurry. As for when these guys will see a paint brush it's hard to tell really, as I'm still working on getting my Salamander's Army done for my end of September trip to the UK. So it will more then likely be after I get back from there, unless everything else decides to start painting them self. Don't figure that is going to happen.