Star Weaving Venom

Many moons ago I got presents. I have finally got round to making the Drukhari elements of it.

 The Star Weaver was bought to be the personal transport of one of my Archons or maybe a Succubus can borrow it.

 My first Venom is bare bones so the bigger Star Weaver should be a bit more interesting with full kit, extra crew and some conversion work.

 First up I wanted to assemble the main hull. From there it should be able to add bits on. Drukhari vehicles suffer from having their cockpit having a transparent hatch. Most people seem to just paint over the top of them but I like to paint up the side a bit. 

 Although the inside looks OK the windscreen itself can look bad. I tried on my jet fighter just to stick it on without any colour but it looks pants. With my bomber I tried to paint the structure blue. It kinda worked but is a bit transparent in places. This time I tried painting a thin layer of black on the structure to start with and then blue over the top. That worked much better but was still very messy. 

You can still see the guy inside and he looks a little mean. 

With that area taken care of I could start adding in the rest of the kit. 

 The gunner I used was just a kabalite with the arms off the original kit. If anyone looks too closely they'll notice that she doesn't have the armoured shoulders so I will have to be careful how I paint that. She is also shorter than the quins gunner so the arms didn't sit right. After some adjust ment she's riding on her heels leaning back so the arms sit at a better angle

As it started so come together more I could compare the size of the star Weaver against the Venom. Its very similar in shape but bigger. 

Kind of what you'd expect for a Archon's ride. 

Still lots of painting to do and I'm debating whether to add a couple more crew. I'm like the look right now and don't want to spoil it putting too much on one model.

 I managed to put a mock up together for a cheeky missus on the back, facing the other way holding some skulls in a sort of "Na-na-nah! "  way. 

Could work.

Then I tried a second crew standing next to gunner shooting a pistol.

But I think it looks wrong. Not to be discouraged I base painted the pair and mocked them up again.

I also found if I cantered the vehicle a bit so it looked like it was banking, the standing witch's pose doesn't look as bad. She looks more balanced.

8th Company Command Squad.

I had seen this idea to make space marines out of Stormcast eternals. Basically replacing bows and arrows with bolters and chainswords.

Another fancy project has begun. Like the Sternguard I made at the start of the year I had a kernal of an idea that churned in my head for a while.

 Could I use Stormcast Eternal models from AoS in my marines army?

Stormcast are the "space marine" faction of AoS small elite army of better than normal humans. Armoured and prone to having lots of skulls and bits of paper stuck to them.

 The armour is more greek/roman style than the medieval plate on the 40k side.

 I looked at the individual box sets and thought I could use the main body and add on marine extras. I had 10 power packs thanks to making primaries assault marines and a bunch from making the Sternguard. 

 Looking at the set for Stormcast eternals I played with ideas in my head and like normal I couldn't let them go so bought the pack. 

 It's been really fun to just go nuts with the bits box and try and turn medieval fantasy men into sci fi warriors. 

 This was going to be a one off set of guys so I constructed a narrative around them that they are the 8th company command squad. 8th Company are honor bound to perform the largest and most dangerous assaults clearing the breach for the battle line elements to strike through. Their weapons are their faith in The Emperor and his most holy of weapons. The Thunderhammer. 

Their command squad as such are more puritanical and are more prone to carrying relics and holy items to inspire and lead their company into the maelstrom. 

So far I have

Captain with jump pack and combi grav

Librarian with jump pack

Chaplain with jump pack

Chapter champion

Lieutenant with jump pack

Lieutenant with power fist and grav gun

3x bladeguard

Bladeguard ancient 

Judicar

5x Company veterans 

All these photos are works in progress. I will try and do an entry for each and link them back. 

Captain "Octavius" four four.

Aggressors rock. Captains in Gravis Armour look a bit dorky. Answer. Mix the two.

The cheapskate that I am I used one of my Aggressor Srgts to make a new Captain for 3rd Company. The one in the command edition boxset wasn't working for me and will most likely move to command the 8th company (which has no models yet). My original captain has already side stepped into commanding 7th Company (and its one razorback)

 I needed someone good to command the 3rd. My terminator captain almost fit the bill but compared to the primaris models around him he looked out of place. He therefore is the boarding commander and technically belongs to the 1st company although he is not their commander.

Instead the Captain in gravis armour would step into the role as 3rds Captain and Master of the Arsenal. 

I started off just replacing the right  arm with one from the Grey Knight terminators. The terminator arm was a good fit with the Gravis armour being similar in size and the larger pauldrons easily fitted over the shoulder joint. 

Once he was stood up I actually liked the silver colouring against the black so I was thinking I might try and keep a bit of the silver to make it stand out a bit. 

 I did struggle to get the angle on the arm I wanted. I was thinking the arm would be tighter to the body where I could try out some strong object source lighting. Problem was there was no arm with enough bend at the elbow and cutting through the elbow would be tricky and I don't think it would go back together nicely. He therefore had a more on guard position that was a bit too normal. One of the reasons I went with a custom captain over the AW one (from ebay) was that I wanted a more dynamic stance. 

I tried standing him on the base I'd done for the Aggressors Sergeant and I wasn't happy. He was just too upright. 

 Then a bit of luck hit me. I was playing with adding mechadentrites to his back using the spare hoses from the flame gauntlet options I wasn't using in the aggressors. While I was blue tacking them on and playing with the fit I also bluetacked his foot to a base to see how he was looking. By accident I put him on a slant with the blue tack raising his foot up. 

 Suddenly he was leaning forward into his slice. A bit more tweeking with the arm position and it was looking intentional. 

 Still not perfect but he definitely had motion now. 

 I got some modelling clay and sculpted the right angle for his pose. 

 The captain was looking much better. I really wanted him to stand out and putting him next to Gamma (Iron father ferros) he was looking less regal and smaller.

To help with this I added a servo skull on a mecha to his back pack similar to techmarines servo arms. It brought the model up and seemed to balance better with the sword in the right hand.

next I needed to add this little bits of ornamentation that say "officer" 

This is mostly  complete. With the ned for more highlighting. 

workshop....

I put this together from a oxo cube box I salvaged from the bin a while ago. It's been on the desk staring at me. It was too big for a crate so went with a Eric's hobby workshop hut.

Not looking bad so far but needs more details to get it to look less tacky.

It's turned into a little village since this went together with any small box pressed into service