Completed Dark Mechanicus Daemon-Knights

I painted my Dark Mechanicus Daemon-Knights! Not to a very high standard, but hey. One x 1500pt Imperial Knight army, fully converted to Chaos, complete and ready to play with :)

Full size pics are up on Flickr

Painting my Dark Mechanicus Daemon-Knight Conversions

What is the Omnissiah? As the Mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus tells us, "The Omnissiah Knows All, Comprehends All" and "A Soul Can Only Be Bestowed By The Omnissiah". So what is the repository for all knowledge and souls? What contains every thought, every feeling, every comprehension? The answer is obviously: the Warp, the Empyrean, the Sea of Souls. The Warp is the Omnissiah, and so the Warp is that which should be worshipped. The Emperor was a powerful psyker, using the power of the Warp, nothing more and nothing less. And so to power our machines, to give them souls, we draw down spirits from the Empyrean. A Soul Can Only Be Bestowed By The Warp...

I've been splashing paint around furiously! I started painting these guys on Sunday 19th. With any luck, I'll get them finished tonight and can then say that I've painted 1,500 pts in a week (and can enter them into Armies on Parade). Rubbish camera phone photo I'm afraid (I've got no time to take good photos!), but just to show that they do have some paint on:

So far the stages have been:

• Spray Chaos Black
• Ironbelcher over pretty much everywhere
• Dark grey over all fleshy bits
• Drybrush white over all fleshy bits
• Mephiston Red over all armour plates
• Balthashar Gold over all armour plate edges & selected details
• Nuln Oil over pretty much everywhere

Next the carapace armour needs to be brought back up to a brighter red, and the big glowing runes need to be done. Plus lots of touching things up, and the bases. But I'm getting there!

Baron Galfridas de Nordcote, Converted Imperial Knight

My converted Imperial Knight, Baron Galfridas de Nordcote, is now all painted. Here he is with his smaller cousins:

And here's some close-ups:

Bigger pictures of everything are available on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/47446154@N08/sets/72157624191172526

My Army So Far

I love the Adeptus Mechanicus! There are so many really cool converted armies of them out there, with such strong themes. Mine's not really one of them, it's more of a random collection of pieces that I've made over 5 years or so. But it's kept me entertained! Long post this, sorry... Next I want to add the new GW Knight Titans (if they do make them!), all the lovely Forgeworld pieces, and I have a set of Skullz models sitting around waiting to be painted. Then an armies on parade board... There's always something new to add! All the photos are on Flickr here The whole army: The left flank, with lots of ranged Skitarii converted from Space Marines in the front: The centre, with a variety of leaders and elites: The right flank, with feral Skitarii converted from Orks in the front: Some Praetorians, converted from Tyranid Warrior torsos: Some more Praetorians, a mix of Ogres and classic ork warbike tracks: And yet more Praetorians, again converted from Ogres: Not really sure what these are! Made from Tyranid Warrior lower halves, obviously: Robots (or maybe dreadnoughts?) These are inspired by the old Space Crusade dreadnoughts, with hulls from Forgefiends (& an old Space Crusade dread), and legs from IG Sentinels: More robots! Ork Killer Kans here. They remind me a bit of Wall-E, I like them: A final triad of robots/dreadnoughts. Dreadnoughts on sentinel legs, obviously: And one big boss robot, some sort of Forgeworld grot-controlled mega-armoured dude: My Knight Baron, a converted Decimator: My Knight Paladin, a converted Dreadknight: My Knight Lancer, converted from a Blood Slaughterer: And my Knight Crusader, converted from a Defiler: When GW finally release their Knight Titan, I'll probably swap the head for a sentinel...

Knight Warden

The Warden is my third Knight. Wardens are heavy support Knights, crewed by semi-retired veterans, which are only used in the direst of circumstances. The Epic models were very varied, but Warden 1 is probably the most famous: overlapping armour plates, stubby arms with gatling cannons, carapace mounted missile launcher.

Ever since I saw the Decimator I knew I wanted to make it into a Knight. It just looks so perfect... Here's my chance! The overlapping armour plates and general bulkiness of it compared to my other Knights made it a good Warden. Like the Blood Slaughterer, I ended up rotating the torso 180 degrees and mounting the head where the daemon-engine-hatch is meant to be. Then with a Sentinel's engine on the back and a Defiler's Havoc Launcher on the carapace we're almost there! There was also lots of removing Chaos iconography - I wouldn't approach this job without a dremel, lots of files and a pile of green stuff.

The guns came from a kid's toy, the "Kung Zhu Rhino Tank". I thought they had a good AdMech look, with hints of the Thunderfire Cannon? The arms are actually a Blood Slaughterer's arms, swapped with my Lancer who has the Decimator's arms.
3 down, 1 to go, and then on to painting! Coming up next: the anti-vehicle Crusader...

Knight Lancer

And here's the second Knight. This guy is a Lancer, a fast scout Knight armed with a battlecannon and a power lance. I wanted to keep some unifying elements (sentinel head, loin-banner, colour scheme), but shake things up and make it clearly a different type of Knight. And as it's meant to be a scout I wanted it more stream-lined and lanky...

King Fluff's amazing Knights were obviously a huge inspiration, both to this whole "build a Knightly household" project and to this model in particular. He uses the Blood Slaughterer torsoes to absolutely stunning effect. I can't hope to approach his standard of painting and modelling, but I can steal his bits choice!

The torso itself is actually rotated 180 degrees from the standard Blood Slaughterer, with a whole new armour plate added to cover the wires & dead bodies (made out of half a GW paint pot!) To make it look more stream-lined than my Paladin all the armour plates were cut from roung plastruct tubing.

The legs are Defiler legs with Chaos iconography removed. Still waiting for some better feet bits to arrive from the internet (I've ordered Ork Deff Dread toe-caps), and looking at the pictures that crooked leg needs to be straightened, and they need to be rotated so they're more upright in line with the centre of gravity, to stop it toppling over backwards...

The lance is a mix of a killa kan arm and a missile I found in my bits box, the las-battlecannon is the same design as my other Knight.

Knight Paladin

I'm currently preparing my Adeptus Mechanicus army for Armies on Parade. And I wanted some big impressive eye-catching centrepieces - I wanted Knights!

Step 1 was to do some research (you can tell I'm a librarian in real life, right?) So I devoured the original fluff and scoured the internet to see how other people had converted their Knights, and gathered all my findings and links into the uber-post here: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=248882

My plan is to make a complete feudal Knightly household - House Nordcote (named after my mother's family, using their heraldry).

In the original fluff there were 7 different types of Knights. For now I'm making 4 of the 7:

• the basic Paladin, with battlecannon and chainsword
• the scout Lancer, with battlecannon and power lance
• the heavy Warden, with carapace-mounted missile launcher and twin gatling guns
• the anti-tank Crusader, with mini-quake cannon and twin-linked lascannon.

If I get time I'll add an Errant (meltacannon & powerfist) and a Baron (individualised & fancy suit), but this current list covers a nice spread of styles. I want each type to be clearly distinct, made from very different parts (and stealing ideas from all the coolest Knight models I found on the internet!) But I also want them to share common unifying elements - sentinel-cockpit-heads, loin-cloth-banners displaying matching family heraldry and a matching half-and-half colour scheme. My first challenge was the Paladin, the basic Knight. Here's the Epic models:

I made a non-specific Knight model from a Grey Knights dreadknight at the start of this year. With a bit of work, this became my Paladin. Here it is before any changes:

To update it into a Paladin it needed to have a battlecannon and a chainsword. Later I'll also repaint it slightly, and add the loin-cloth.

After testing out a few options for the battlecannon I decided that having it fire solid shells is hugely impractical - it'd need an absolutely massive magazine! So I made it into a sort of las-battlecannon instead, firing massive bolts of energy at the enemy. Much more AdMech. The gun is made from a Tau Ion Cannon's rear end and 3 sizes of plastruct tubing.

The chainsword was another difficult choice. The giant chainswords people put on their conversions always look a bit unwieldy to me, and cutting out all those individual teeth did not sound tempting... So I went for a spare Ork Killa Kan buzz-saw instead. It's still got teeth, and is clearly different to a powerfist or lance?

Everything's magnetised so that I can change it's armament for gaming purposes, but this is what it'll have in my Armies on Parade entry.

Next step: the Lancer! This needs to be taller and lankier, to fit it's role as a fast moving scout. And it needs to be armed with a similar las-battlecannon and a cool power lance.

Armies on Parade

Hello, world. It's been a while!

I'm currently revamping my army, preparing for Armies on Parade. In my view a good Armies on Parade entry needs 5 things:

• A cool theme
• Great basic models
• Big wow-factor centrepieces
• Interesting details that reward closer study
• An impressive board

Point 1 - let's face it, "Adeptus Mechanicus" is an awesome theme!

Point 2 - I've tried my best! I've now got a huge pile of infantry of two basic types - a heavily armoured skitarii/protector and a more combat-orientated skitarii/servitor (inspired by Titanicus).

Here are pics of the skitarii, with their old WestWind heads replaced so that they're 100% GW bits (a very boring task). Pics:

Which means I'm on to point 3, a big centrepiece!

For the AdMech there's a wealth of options available - bizarre tanks, hulking robots, ogryn-servitors, and so on. And, my favourite, Knights or Knight-Titans or whatever you want to call them. I love the old Epic Knights. Larger than a dreadnought, smaller than a warhound, they were 1-man humanoidish Imperial Mecha. And now's my chance to add them to my Adeptus Mechanicus army, hurrah!

Inspiration: Asymmetrical Xeno

I've just found a very nice "Cult of the Dragon" AdMech army.

Made mostly by mixing Iron Brotherhood and Necron Warrior parts, it's a very dark and evil looking force. Marvellous!

Check it out here: http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?p=111032

Converting & Painting: Avatar of the Machine God

The Nightbringer has long been one of my favourite GW models, and I've been dying for an excuse to buy him. Now that I'm playing Adeptus Mechanicus, and in our campaign I've been siding with the Necrons, this seemed the perfect time...

This is a very simple little conversion, just to get him finished & on the table as soon as possible. The shoulder pads were Space Marine tank crew, the axe head was a vintage techmarine's, and the backpack is a few Cities of Death bits (to match my Techno-Magi Lord).

Rules-wise he'll be a Daemon Prince when I'm running my guys as CSMs.





Also, have a preview of my Skitarii Assault Maniple, coming soon:

Converting & Painting: My Army

Here are some pictures of all my converted and painted Adeptus Mechanicus models from GW Oxford's cabinet nicely laid out on their pretty cityscape board. This is probably about 1,200 pts, possibly 1,500 pts if I put in Wolf Guard and upgraded my Rune Priest & Iron Priests. In my complete model collection I've also got an additional Protector and Protector Support squad, plus I'm working on my first Feral Skitarii squad (to be Blood Claws) and my Avatar of the Machine God (C'tan / Daemon Prince). Once the Assault squad is complete I'll be up to about 2,000 pts, hurrah!

Inspiration: OddJob

I'm working on making a converted C'tan-as-Omnissiah model. Whilst searching for cool pictures of other C'tan conversions, I discovered OddJob's AdMech. And by the Omnissiah they're awesome!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/229548.page

They're largely focussed on huge stompy robots & armoured suits, using Penitent Engine pieces heavily. Rules-wise they're (fascinatingly) Tyranids, with Techno-Magi as Zoantropes, servitors as Hormagaunts and big stompy walkers as monstrous creatures. Seriously cool, and a great colour scheme (pale slightly blue skin contrasting with the red cloth).

Beautiful & inspiring stuff!

Converting & Painting: Techpriests

I couldn't really run an Adeptus Mechanicus army without some Techpriest / Techmarine / Iron Priest equivalents... So here they are! One is the classic Techmarine, the other is the excellent Imperial Guard Techpriest, and they're accompanied by converted servitors.

The servitors are made from Catachan legs & bodies, with Space Marine scout heads, mostly ork heavy weapons and (oddly) Goblin arms. Just because I had lots of Goblin bits lying around from my Imperial Guard Grot conversions, and Goblins have good straight arms.

The combat arms are from a classic NecroMunda Pitslave and the GorkaMorka ork bionics blister. Good old days!

Painting is the same scheme as the rest of my models. Note that anything power-weapony has green on it.