Character Models – Marco Columbo & the Solar Auxilia

About two years ago, I went to the Birmingham GW Games Day event, 2014. Amongst other things, the event included an exclusive model (as they often do)  of Marco Columbo, this is apparently the second version of the character they’ve done, this one in finecast resin.

I set to work, figuring I’d try and change up my style to a more brightly coloured pallete. Hah.
About an hour into painting it I realised I wasn’t having any fun with it, set it aside and worked on something else.

Cut to Two years later.

GW:Manchester runs a Speed-Freaks competition, paint a model within one week and include the specified colour (in this case Xerius Purple) somewhere on the model.

I figured I should dig out Marco again and have another try at painting his purple britches.

This was on the saturday evening, the competition being judged on the sunday afternoon.
I spent five or ten minutes gluing the parts together, spray-based it in black and took it into the store the next day.

Two and a half hours of painting later, I submitted it to the competition.

I’m given to understand that it was a very popular result in the judging, but set aside simply because it was an exclusive model no longer sold, not for its painting standard.
So I feel pretty happy with that 🙂

I’ve been painting character models pretty much ever since.

After having done Marco to my satisfaction, I went ahead and painted Perturabo (as previously seen) and now more recently got around to some of the models of my Solar Auxilia command squad.
I’ve painted the Vexillius and the Legate Commander.
I’m particularly pleased with the freehand on the banner and the mix of tones on the cloaks and coats.

The Saga of Magos Yaena.

There are a few pictures here and there of my custom character model for my Mechanicum Magos
She’s gone through a few iterations. the broad strokes are all based on her character story.

Magos Yaena is an Adeptus Mechanicus diplomat, of sorts. Her role is to interact with the more snobby high society types, the sort who would find the pungent incence, greasy robes and stink of burnt flesh that the average tech priest inflicts on those around them to be horrifying and revolting and refuse to allow them an audience.
To that end, her cybernetics are concealed, and of the highest quality available, artfully made and decorated.
Her robes of office are crafted to fit in (at least a little) with the gowns and function-robes of imperial courts.
She is expected to be the face of the Mechanicum to these people.

So, her model depicts skirts and corsets. Her combat cybernetics resemble medieval armour plates rather than the power-armor of most tech priests.
Her face is concealed behind a protective mask to prevent scars from debris and to protect against gases and toxins in the air. as part of her duties, she doesn’t wear (or have an implanted version for) the respirator that is common to most in her order.

In her story, the forces of Chaos have come to her world, compelling her to take up arms and fight. In the midst of battle, she confronts a chaos sorcerer of Tzeentch who she manages to best in single combat.
As a parting Gift/Curse the sorcerer imbues her with a measure of his power.

Quickly realising the nature of this power and the inevitable consequences of it, she takes ship and flees the planet. Her substantial personal army travels with her.
The battles I play with my Mechanicum army chronicle her unwilling descent into becoming a member of the Dark Mechanicum (or an agent of the Inquisition, depending on the path I feel like telling the story of at any given time)

This story lets me craft dark mechanicum monstrosities as can be seen elsewhere on this blog as well as having a nominally loyalist army when I choose.
In my 30k era battles the Tahgmata Yaena fights for both factions roughly equally though I lean towards loyalist wherever possible.

Her chosen armament in story is between two and four custom crafted plasma pistols, on tabletop I typically choose to have her carry a plasma fusil or two. either way she’s a close-ranged and extremely shooty character with little melee capability.

I have written full rules to represent her story capabilities, however it’s a bit out of date.
The broad strokes are that in her Loyalist pre-renegade status she’s more focused on boosting the coordination and accuracy of her forces.
Post-Renegade, she gains a form of unstable psychic powers (easier to cancel out than normal) and her rules are much more focused on her personal capabilities.

So far I’ve made four versions of her model, The first is based on a Sisters of Battle Hospitalier. with a few bits and bobs (notably a plasma pistol) and some green-stuff.
This fairly adequately represents her non-combat pre-renegade status. it’s a butt-ugly sculpting of green-stuff, not that my later work is substantially better! I’m practicing, but ah well.

The second is based around a Dark Eldar Lhamaean character with a lot of conversion.
I use Dark eldar parts for a lot of my conversions. lots of poses and lots of nice clean lined parts.
I like the idea that this is Yaena in her battlefield pre-renegade role. This is also my tabletop model at the moment, though that’s set to change when Mk4 is finished and painted.

Third is an effort to use the New Neferata model as a basis. I got a pretty satisfactory build out of it, but I haven’t been able to decide what she should be sitting on. the Magos Prime rules say she can have an Abeyant to ride on, but that seems too small for her. I’d like maybe to build some sort of Admech Skimmer.
This build represents her as the mistress of her forces either before or after her turning renegade.

Build 4 represents her post-renegade status, she’s carrying a corposant stave, two plasma pistols (or a single plasma fusil if I want to follow the actual ruleset) and a rad grenade.
Her backpack (and Mk3’s backpack) are intended to be teleport/jet packs.
Her custom ruleset mimics the Magos in the Horus Heresy books whose rule allow him to negate victory points for killing him, he is considered to have teleported to his ship in orbit at the last moment.
I’m rather pleased with the result of this sculpt, I’m using parts from a second Neferata kit (traded from a friend) and the lower half of Isabella Von Carstein. Plus parts from a Dark Eldar Scourge kit, some 40k Cult Mechanicus/Skitarii kits and the backpack of a Grey Knights Interceptor. (interestingly, also a teleport pack, so that fits in)

On her base is her Cyber Familiar. made using a few clipped parts from the guns and backpack, as well as a couple Ruststalker hands.
I’m quite happy with how gribbly it turned out!

As to her green-stuff, I’ll be smoothing it out a bit and generally improving the sculpt later. but these are the WIP pictures.

Finally, I’ve also bought a Solar Auxilia Command squad. Just finished assembling them this evening and looking forward to painting them. Lovely models with an amazing level of detail.

Interesting tidbit. the Lord Marshal’s cloak is actually provided in two parts. but because of the clever way it’s designed it doesn’t require any green-stuff to blend it together and hide seamlines.
The collar of the cloak is part of the body and overhangs the area where the top of the cloak meets the model, so that seam is hidden, and the center-line seam down the middle of the cloak is a) very closely fitted and b) made into a feature with a lot of detail mouldings there.
I was delighted by this little bit of clever design work, whoever sculpted these guys knew what he or she was doing!

Maybe I’ll get a chance to find out, I’m going down to Nottingham on Wednesday for my Birthday! Planning to bring back a few new projects..maybe even the rest of the Warlord Titan!

Solar Auxilia: Storm Section

Today was a good day, I spent the morning cleaning resin and spraypainting stuff.
Then I went out to Games Workshop and assembled a bunch of things.
Then I spent a couple hours painting…this guy…

 

Total painting time: about two hours. I’m pretty happy!

The idea was to switch out for a colour palette I don’t normally use, namely flourescent orange and greys, I wound up using my usual metals and washes over most of it anyway but the orange and the moon-rock dusty basing worked out really nicely!
The photos don’t really do it justice I feel.
I also gave him pupils in his eyes..not that you can see them. Originally they were hilariously wide-eyed and staring off towards the left, like he’d just seen some Shenanigans and was determined to kill it with the pistol. I actually broke down laughing at it after realising how silly it looked, then went and narrowed his eyes with more rakarth to reduce the “kill you with my mind” stare a bit.
I think the result looks good when it’s not in a uber-high resolution photo 😛