Blog Lord Agragax's Making and Painting Blog - The Asur are reinforced...

Thank you all for your feedback. Now, to answer all your questions @pendrake :

• It is, as the crew can push it around in a curve if they want thanks to the sliders.
• They would only rotate it before it actually fires, and when it isn't firing, the counterweight would be hanging down at the front. Think of it as a Trebuchet counterweight. Also I checked the arm before I stuck it on to make sure that the censer wouldn't touch the crew - it would swing over their heads but it is too high up to hit them.
• Don't know where you got that idea from - the counterweight side of the arm is swinging downwards, and the claw part is swinging up to launch the slime.

I didn't think of jewellery chains - thanks for that tip - but I would still need wire to tie the chain around the long bit on the right side of the claw to show the crew is holding onto the arm. It would have to be a chain with small links to look as if it's continuing from the crew's chain.

 

When viewed from the side (as in your picture) It looks like it is going anti-clockwards (aka counter-clockwise).

The way the big fiery thing is sculpted forcibly makes it appear to be in motion.

 

After having spent the last few months slaving away at University, I'm free for a whole week (it's the second winter exam leave week and all my exams were in the first week! ), so I've got a whole week to upload pics of my painting and making! Huzzah!

I've almost finished painting the Screaming Bell now, and have since got bases for both my catapult and Plague Priest from GW's in-store order point, so things are working really nicely now.

For Christmas I got probably one of the very last boxes of the old High Elf Spearmen ever made, as well as a Revell Battlestar Galactica kit, so have put them in the queue along with a load of Airfix kits I haven't made yet, a box of Black Orcs and probably one of the very last sets of Modular Movement trays ever made that I got just before the University term started, so I'll be busy for a considerable while!

Work on my Tyranid Warriors has halted with the Screaming Bell, Plagueclaw Catapult and Plague Priest, but I'll get back to painting those as soon as the Skaven stuff is done.

 

Screaming Bell's done!





Don't know if those images are too dim - I've included some lit-up ones as well if so:


You may be wondering why the Warpstone is blue - this is part of my Skaven army fluff - my rats have found a supply of super-rare blue warpstone and aren't willing to share it with anyone else! It has been painted with an old humbrol dark blue and then drybrushed over the edges with lothern blue to make it crystalline. I'm really pleased with how the smoke turned out - I painted it white and washed it with Drakenhof nightshade that gradually thins out from the warpstone to the tips of the smoke so that the end of the smoke is white, just as in the GW painted model!
The wood colour I've used is unique to my Skaven and features in all their artillery, even their spears - it involves using some Vermin Fur that has survived from the days of 4th/5th Edition Fantasy which is in turn washed heavily with Agrax Earthshade to get inside all those brown recesses. The steel is Leadbelcher, washed with Agrax Earthshade as well to make it look tarnished - Skaven aren't going to CLEAN their machines, are they?

Next I've been starting on my Tyranids, as per my Motivation.

Once again, please feel free to comment on one of the biggest pieces I have ever made and a valuable addition to my burgeoning Skaven force!

 

Whenever I do decide to have a colour variation in my army compared to the standard, I always try to think of a fluffy reason for it because it makes it more thematic.

 

Tyranids are nearly finished now I think, I managed to get quite a lot done yesterday and I've just got the bases to do.

 

I was wondering! Nice lore justifiction, the screaming bell looks great! [heresy!!!]

Looking forward to your new crop of Tyrannids!

 

So sorry chaps but I'm back! Also sorry to @Warden in advance because instead of my Tyranid Warriors, I'm leapfrogging (or leap-slanning) ahead to show you all my finished kit-bashed Plagueclaw Catapult!

The rope is a piece of string kindly donated by my mother from her sewing box - I wound it around the peg 3 times for security, then tied it as a double knot through the ring before cutting the ends off. I have to say that it has come off brilliantly, as it really looks as though the rope is straining under the tension of the arm pulling on it as it swings around to launch the filthy slime.
I painted the slime by first painting it with a dark green, before washing it with devlan mud/agrax earthshade, then paiting over the biggest bubbles with yellow (although making sure to keep the crevices brown) and then washing it brown again to make it look really slimy and 'orrible. The wood was done in the same way as that of all my other Skaven war machines - with a really old pot of Vermin Fur that is then washed thoroughly with agrax earthshade. The smoky censers were done in the same way as those on the screaming bell, with white on the smoke washed with drakenhof nightshade as it's coming from the eerie blue warpstone.

Here it is compared to my Screaming Bell - you will see it is a shade taller, meaning it is probably now the tallest model I own!

Also answering @pendrake 's query, the arm will hit the horizontal beam when it swings up to launch the slime, so the counterweight will not hit the crew because it won't go back that far. If it misfires and goes Twang it will probably be because the swinging arm has smashed that top beam and caused everything to fall apart. That's Skaven war machines for you - what the Dwarfs would call umgak, or shoddy (which also means man-made in this case, but Skaven machines are even worse than Empire stuff for misfiring so are umgak as well).

In fact the catapult is so tall that it won't fit in the already-tall box I'm using for my Screaming Bell!

A close-up of the crew:

And of course the counterweight, which is the plague censer from the Plague Furnace:


Hope you all like it, and as always I'm looking forward to hearing from you about it!

 

And if that wasn't enough ratty goodness for you all, I also managed to finish this chap:



And don't worry - you will see some actual Lizardmen in my blog at some point because as soon as I've finished doing my scratch-built Devastators and a Necromunda bounty huntress, my next project will be some Saurus Warriors!

 

Yay! Ratses. I love-love my skaven.

 

Very nice work @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl . That is a very inventive catapult. It turned out very well.

 

It’s my most ambitious conversion so far, and I am incredibly proud of how it turned out!

 

You should be be proud... it is well deserved. It's a great feeling when a conversion works out. I personally find conversions more satisfying than painting (don't tell @Crowsfoot )

 

Nice looking plague trebuchet!

 

I especially like the plague furnace as a counterwieght.

 

I honestly have been so lazy for the past few months that I’ve made no contributions to my painting blog for ages! Well, that’s about to change. Behold my Tyranid Warriors I redid ages ago:


You may wonder why they are in different unit colours - this all goes back to when I first started Tyranids and I wasn’t sure which Hive Fleet I wanted to do, so I painted each of the 3 Warriors I got in the Battleforce a different colour - one was in the blue-green-grey scheme, another was in the red-grey scheme (the one with the venom cannon) and the third was in a Behemoth scheme, which I later repainted as Kraken (the one with a Barbed Strangler and Deathspitter - having two guns was a legal build in the 4th Ed codex which was my first Tyranid Codex).

 

Next up, my two scratch-built Space Marine Devastators in Ultramarines 5th Company livery:


These were built purely out of spare Space Marine bits my Space Marine-mad uncle gave me. There were also some more legs that I could have used to make more Devastators, but I used them to make some heavily armoured sci-fi knights alongside some old 4th Edition Chaos Knight torsos and some Bretonnian bits a friend kindly gave me. However, I have an old 2nd Edition metal Devastator with a heavy bolter to make and with GW’s new Space Marine Heroes regime I can buy individual Marines to add to the squad - it doesn’t matter if they have bolters not Devastator weapons, as I can cut off the bolters and give them spare Devastator weapons.

 

My next piece is my Necromunda Eldar Exodite Bounty Huntress, riding her faithful horse. She’s a conversion of a Wood Elf Glade Rider with a High Elf Sword and a Space Marine Bolt Pistol.


She’s part of the Bounty Hunter gang I originally envisioned when I first started playing an amended version of Necromunda with my school friends, although I never got round to building the other members (it was intended for a grizzled Lizardman to lead the party with a Squat, some Cold One warhounds and even a Mantic Veer-Myn Night Spawn providing additional support).

 

Finally, my High Elf archer champion I built out of spares and my unit of Sword Masters of Hoeth from the Island of Blood:


Once again, I would love to see what everyone thinks of my creations - please feel free to like and comment!