Prospero Burns Review

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of the latest instalment of the Horus Heresy, Prospero Burns. This novel tells the other half of the epic battle for the Thousand Sons home planet, Prospero. Unlike most of the Heresy novels that follow Primarchs, Dan Abnett follows Kasper Causer as he is initially protected by native Fenrisians and then by the Space Wolves. Kasper, aka Ahmed Ibn Rustah, is an academic who enables us to understand the mind set and logic of the Sixth Legion. This understanding includes everything from how members admit their mistakes (I have seen the error of my ways and will work to correct it (worked awesome with my Wife!)), to what scares the Space Wolves and how they deal with that fear. Through out the book we are transported back into Kaspers memories where we learn more about the Council of Unification and it transitions into the Imperium of Man. We see the Rout's (one of the Space Wolves names for themselves (like Clan)) perspective on the ceremony at Ullanor and the council of Neakea. It isn't until we are about 7/8 through the book that the Wolves land on Prospero. There are several secrets that are revealed, which I won't spoil but make for a very enjoyable and informative read. Abnett did a great job encapsulating the Wolves and their mind set when it comes to life, death and war. I have been a Space Wolf player since they were the first codex brought out in 2nd edition 40k and this book did more than them justice in my mind. The only thing that I would have liked to seen was more of how the Space Wolves interact with the other Legions as part of the great crusade. If you get a chance to pick it up I highly recommend it as either a stand alone if your a fan of the Wolves and as a must read if your a fan of the the HH.

Orks!

I have recently started two new projects. One I have already posted here and that is my new Dark Eldar army. As you can tell from the pics I am putting a huge amount of time into painting everything. I think my first 10 warriors took about 15-20 hours total and the Raider was about 10 hours. This is the first army I have really started in earnest after my Tyranids and I have to say that I am feeling a bit drained putting that much effort into one project for over a year and a half (the nids). I decided I needed something to work on along side my DE to take a break from using a 000 brush painting everything.

So my second army project is a speed painting project painting the one army I have started and stopped about 7 times now, and that is Orks. I have owned a decent amount of these green skinned buggers for as long as I can remember (like, well before the 4th ed Ork Codex came out) and I just could never decide on a colour scheme that I was happy with. I liked my Deathskullz scheme but each Ork Boy was taking me 2-3 hours, and when you have well over a 100 models to just hit 2000pts your will power really starts to vanish. I did some test models about 3 years ago of some Ork Boyz and the 6 of them took me about 2-3 hours (so 6 in the time it took to do one from my old scheme). The scheme in question ONLY uses foundation paints (well, like 95% foundation :P) and uses a lot of inks. The smallest brush I use on anything for this army is a #3 and there is a liberal use of the Tank brush. They don't look nearly as good, but at least they are finished lol. The following group shot (minus the ork boyz, so the Trukk, 3 Killa Kans and the Dread) I did in the last week.




The Dread was what got me back into painting my orks. Freaking LOVE the new plastic model, easily up there with the Trygon and any of the new DE as my fav kit GW makes. He was just sitting on my shelf collecting dust so I figured "lets do this" and ended up painting him in about 3 hours. The whole model was dry brushed boltgun metal, then delvin washed. I then painted black on all the areas that weren't going to be metal. After that I did the red patches, inked them with Delvin Mud, then did the black, followed by the checkers. After that there were a couple of touch ups as well as a final dry brushing with Chainmail to help pick out the metal and give it more definition. All the mechanical stuff in this army is painted this way and I try to do as many things as I can at once due to how much ink I use and how long that takes to dry.






Killa Kans took a bit longer then the Dread, around 4-5 hours.




Trukk was about the same amount of time as Dread, so 3 hours. Oddly enough it is the biggest thing I have painted, but it was by far the easiest. I am going to finish the crew for my first Trukk Boyz squad this week (hopefully) and then it will be onto the bikes. I will also finish the crew for the Trukk when I find them (no idea where they are lol). I have decided to try and do the large, difficult stuff first, then just do the assembly line for the Boyz. I also have 10 lootas primed, ready to go. Anyways, that it for now, let me know what you think :)

Ogryn Mobile Turret

This guy isn't painted yet either, but I figured it was time to get it up and running. Some green stuff and super glue later, and here is the Tallarn Ogryn Chimera Turret.
I needed a way to show that this Chimera had my 5-6 Ogryns in it, so I thought it would look cool if the Chimera didn't have enough room for the turret mechanism so they took out the turret, piled some sandbags, and one of the Ogryns grabs the heavy flamer and uses it. Living turret! And I wanted to make a "turret" that was removable so that if this Chimera was not going to be carrying Ogyrns, we can go back to the original turret.

Anyway here he is. He's even older than the OOP Ogryns I use as my troopers. I think he's first generation! But I got him from a gaming buddy, and his goggles really work with the open top desert look. I was really close to giving him an Afrika Korps style cap, but decided the face material would be enough. The arms and hand of course had to be cut and re-glued so that they were facing the right way. Might also add in a flame thrower hose and tanks after he's properly painted. Also have to remove the heavy flamer tab that was from the Sentinal sprue that the flamer came from. The Chimera body is from the only Chimera I've fully painted so far so I wanted to show it in its glory (pre-painted)

Valkarie/Vendetta Initial Magnetizing

So with the Waaagh GT a mere 10 months away, I decided I needed to get EVERYTHING ready for my army painted STAT. That includes getting the Vendetta ready for action. But I also realized that you need to magnetize the Valkarie because what happens if GW decides that vehicles aren't as important in their next edition of 40k? Well with that, I looked around a few sites that do this kind of conversion and magnetization, and here is my contribution:

First of all, the multilaser in front needed to be swapped for a twin linked lascannon. I'm assuming for now that I won't have just a single lascannon on the front of this thing. Since with the side pods, you get 3 options for the spotlight, I used a trick where you reverse one of them and place it on the back side of the weapon pod thusly:

The 0.135 x 0.03" rare earth magnets I used for this project were just a tad too weak, so I generally had to double them up. On this particular piece, I used only 2, but there was plenty of space so not a big deal.

Next the lascannon and multilaser were magnetized:The top half of the twin linked lascannon was cut down from a triple pack of regular guard las cannons that I bought from www.thewarstore.com. Nice and cheap, they look the same, and you'll see what I did with the other 4 lascannons soon enough..

Here you can see the connected lascannons to the side pod. The magnets touch and are quite strong.
Here's a shot of the side pod glued onto the Valkarie body:
One problem with doing two magnets is you have to worry about polarity, so to make sure that they were correct, I mounted everything using multiple magnets while the super glue dried:
After the glue is dried, the pieces can be pulled apart easily, and I KNOW for certain that the weapons attached to them will face the right way.

Below is a shot of the weapon pieces. The missile and the rocket pod are fairly straight forward. You just have to carve down the top pieces a bit until you have nice flat surfaces to glue the magnets to. The lascannons are ground down to that they glue evenly to each other, and then I tried to glue a stryene tube with a paper clip inside it to the top. That sucked as the magnets were not strong enough, so I cut it in half and glued the magnets to it. It looks messy, but should paint up fine.
Here's the rocket pod and lascannons mounted to the wing. It looks pretty sweet if I do say so myself. You may notice there are 3 magnets on the wing. This is because the magnets weren't strong enough (it was flimsy, and I want my connections strong), so I had 2 magnets mounted to the wing sponson.

And here's the full weapon loadout on the Vendetta/Valk conversion. You'll notice first that the wings aren't glued on yet. That is because I'm trying to decide whether to magnetize them or just leave them detached for easier transport. The slots are very firm and easy to put the wings in, so may not need magnets. Also notice that the top has not been glued on. I did this to be able to paint the inside more easily. For this build I'm not planning on using the side bolter gunners, but I'll have them and magnetize them if necessary. Also the back ramp has magnets so that it can be closed easily (I think it might get loose after a while, so you gotta think ahead!)

That's it for now. I'll start painting this baby in the next few weeks, although I also want to get my Ogryn Turret conversion greenstuffed. I need to figure out how to do sandbags in greenstuff first though...