Category: LEDs

Da Red Gobbo’s A-Bomb-Inable Snowman

On By Chris B.In LEDs, Orks, Warhammer 40,0005 Comments

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the Red Gobbo, so here’s my take on Games Workshop’s 2024 Christmas miniature, ‘Da Red Gobbo’s A-Bomb-Inamble Snowman’! Most of my LED miniature projects are meant for gaming so it’s always a nice change to paint a display model at this time of year. You may remember my take on Da Red Gobbo’s Surprise and Da Red Gobb & Bounca from previous years.

Modelling

Each year when the new Red Gobbo is announced I’ve check the preview images for signs of sculpted Christmas lights and other light sources to work out how many LEDs I’m going to need to order. This year had fewer than normal. The grenade fuse was an obvious one, but there were also lights on the wire connecting the bomb timer to the snowman. As these are partially hidden, I thought it might be fun to compliment them with an additional light on top of the bomb.

The object on the end of the grot assistant’s hat are open to interpretation. They could be lights, but I decided that making them lights would draw focus away from the Red Gobbo himself, so I painted them as sleigh bells instead!

The grenade fuse effect has been created from a Yellow/Amber 0805 Chip LED (3V) coated in acrylic gel, as per my Simple Muzzle Flare tutorial. To give the impression of sparks flying out of the fuse, I also added some very small lengths of fibre optic cable to the gel before it hardened. If you don’t want to purchase a full reel of fibre optic cable for this, you can simply cut small sections from a child’s toy using a sharp hobby knife.

I thought it might be fun if the LEDs connected to the bomb wiring were flashing, to help sell the idea it was counting down to detonation. The LEDs used were Red 0805 Flashing Chip LEDs (3V), flashing at approximately 1.5Hz. Each LED has its own inbuilt timer, and interestingly you can see minor variations in the manufacturing process mean that the frequency of each LED is very slightly different, so they slowly move out of sync. This was unintentional, but I don’t mind as I think it adds to the countdown effect – it reminds me of the lights on the Predator’s wrist-mounted self destruct mechanism!

Painting

Painting this miniature took longer than I expected. It felt like a relatively small miniature, but there were a lot of different colours used and areas of high detail. I mostly followed my own Ork-related paint recipes found in this article and the suggestions for previous Red Gobbos in the Citadel Colour App. I did consider using snow flock or texture again, as I had previously with Red Gobbo & Bounca, but I decided against it as I didn’t want to risk obscuring the details on the base.

I repainted the snow on this miniature because I wasn’t happy with my first attempt, and to be honest I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with the final version. But ‘perfect’ is the enemy of ‘done’, as they say! The snow recipe I settled on is shown below. All paints are Citadel Colour unless specified otherwise.

  • White Snow
  • Corax White base coat
  • Apothecary White shade
  • Skull White heavy drybrush
  • Fenrisian Grey thin glaze in areas of compacted snow (e.g. footprints)

I shared this tip for painting miniature Christmas baubles with last year’s Red Gobbo, but I’d like to share it again. base coat the bauble in a light silver like Runefang Steel, and then apply two coats of either Spiritstone Red, Soulstone Blue or Waystone Green. This gives a lovely glossy, metallic festive finish!

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed my latest take on the Red Gobbo. I wasn’t the only one to make an LED Red Gobbo this year – check out these other versions from warhamster_king_of_leds and therealmcrafter.

I still have a few more miniatures that I want to get finished before the end of the year, so please stay tuned over the Christmas holidays. As ever, thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter/X.

Silver Stars Marksman

On By Chris B.In LEDs, Silver Stars, Space Marines, Technical, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0002 Comments

I’m still tidying up after Armies on Parade this week. Last week I was rebasing Brother Garrett, and this week I’m doing the same for the Silver Stars Marksman. This sniper was last seen taking aim at the Flesh Eaters on my 2024 Armies on Parade, but now he has been given a proper base to join my growing Silver Stars Angels of Death Kill Team. He will take the role of ‘Intercessor Warrior with Stalker Bolt rifle’. This miniature will also be my entry into Apologist’s #HiddenArmies challenge.

Modelling

As with all my previous Silver Stars, this marine is built using a Primaris marine body and legs. The arms, pauldrons, backpack and bolter are from the previous version of the plastic Legion MkIII Tactical Squad set. To give the legs a more “antiquated” look, I added Mixed Micro Glass Balls from Green Stuff World as armour studs on the legs. To get the sniper pose, the legs required significant cutting an repositioning. You can see a work in progress image below, before I filled in the gaps with modelling putty.

The head is from the Legion MkVI Tactical Squad sprue. All of my Silver Stars are either wearing helmets or masks that cover their face. They are also all unnamed, unlike my Flesh Eaters. This is to help add to their sense of mystery.

When rebasing this miniature for game use, I thought it might be fun if he was seeking cover from incoming fire, just to help sell the pose. The LED techniques used here are based on my Simple Muzzle Flare tutorial, only with three LEDs connected in parallel instead of one.

I used a small section of cork tile to represent a broken concrete wall. Cork tile is great for this sort of thing as it is easy to work with and has a great texture when torn.

Normally I run the wires inside my miniatures, but because cork tile is quite soft, it’s difficult to drill through, especially for multiple wires. So in this case I simply concealed the wires under a layer of Milliput and then added some textured paste to help conceal it.

The final stage was to apply Green Stuff World acrylic gel to the LEDs, as per my Simple Muzzle Flare tutorial. To give the impression of additional debris, I also added some very small lengths of fibre optic cable to the gel before it hardened. If you don’t want to purchase a full reel of fibre optic cable for this, you can simple cut small sections from a child’s toy using a sharp hobby knife.

Painting

I used the same paint recipe for this Silver Star as detailed in this post, plus this post which expands on painting Silver Stars insignia. As you can see, this Marksman is another member of Squad Antimony.

The graffiti on the broken wall was influenced by this classic 40K diorama shown in the Rogue Trader rulebook.

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into the latest member of my Silver Stars Kill Team. As ever, thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter/X.

Brother Garrett, Flesh Eater Assault Intercessor

On By Chris B.In Flesh Eaters, LEDs, Space Marines, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0001 Comment

A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords at dawn.

Imperial Proverb

It’s more Armies on Parade aftermath from me this week. Last week I was finishing up a Silver Stars Vox Operator who missed the deadline. This week I’m converting Brother Garrett – last seen sneaking through a pipe in my 2024 Armies on Parade entry to gut an enemy sniper – into a properly based and game-ready member of my Assault Intercessors.

Modelling & Painting

Although I’m lucky enough to have a dedicated hobby space, I don’t have space to permanently store all my various display boards. Even before ‘Ambush at Pipeline 13’ was finished, I knew that I would be taking it apart and reusing the components elsewhere. Brother Garrett was easy to repurpose, and fairly simple as my LED miniatures go. He uses the techniques set out in my LED Eye Lens tutorial. The helmet eye lens effects are built around a Tru Opto Green 1.8mm LED with a 10 ohm resistor.

The servo skull was also originally spotted buzzing around Pipeline 13. It was built around a plastic servo skull and using the same techniques I used with Brother Nikko and Inquisitor Kant. I drilled out the eye and fed the wires of a 3V green 0603 nano SMD chip LED in through the eye hole and out of the bottom of the skull, then gently pushed the LED into the hole with fine tweezers. The wires then formed the “tail” of the servo skull. Then I applied a small blob of Water Splash Effect Gel, available from Green Stuff World, to fill in the hole over the LED. When adding the servo skull to Brother Garrett’s base, I simply wired it in parallel with Brother Garrett’s helmet LED. Both LEDs are controlled by a single switch in the base next to the battery.

The helmet eye lenses and the eye on the servo skull both received a glaze of Citadel Biel-Tan Green. This is to give the eyes some colour when the LED is off, as you can see in the image below (right).

Brother Garrett’s pose made the most sense in his original context when he was ‘mid sneak‘, but hopefully even out of that context he still looks like he is preparing to deliver a stealthy kill. The knife sheath strapped to his shoulder is from the Primaris Intercessors kit. I had to cut off around a quarter of its length to prevent it overhanging the shoulder pad, and it’s still large enough to obscure his vision to the left. Ah well, ‘rule of cool’ always wins!

I don’t really have anything new to say on the paint scheme. I used my standard Flesh Eaters paint recipes detailed here. The only difference was using additional glazes of Nuln Oil and Gryph-Charger Grey applied to the blade of the combat knife to add reflection points to the true metallic metal, as you can see in the image above (left).

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my latest Flesh Eaters marine. There will be even more Armies on Parade aftermath next week, so stay tuned! As always, thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter/X.

Silver Stars Vox Operator

On By Chris B.In LEDs, Silver Stars, Space Marines, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0006 Comments

This week I’ve added to my small squad of Silver Stars with a new vox operator. The Silver Stars are the mysterious chapter leading the Partisan forces in the War of the False Primarch. Although I’m fighting on the side of the Orthodox forces in this campaign with my Flesh Eaters, I have been slowly putting together a small force of Silver Stars to add a bit of flavour to my army display boards. This marine was intended to join his brothers on my ‘Ambush at Pipeline 13’ Armies on Parade board, but I ran out of time to finish him before the deadline.

Modelling

My aim with this model was to show a lit auspex screen. Readers who have been following my work for a while may remember a similar miniature in the past which was my Lamenter Comms Specialist.

When compared to my standard LED tutorials, this is closest to my Simple LED Muzzle Flare tutorial, only with an auspex screen instead of a muzzle flare. The LED wires run through the hand, arm, torso and left leg to join up with the resistors, switch and single CR2023 battery hidden in the base. The LEDs used are two Green Stuff World 1mm ‘Warm White’ LEDs connected in parallel. Two adjacent LEDs are intended to give the impression of two separate ‘pings’ on the screen. After hollowing out the auspex and inserting the LEDs, I used the ever-reliable Acrylic Splash Gel to fill in the screen. Once this was dry I painted two coats of with Citadel Spirit Stone Red, as this is a slightly gloss glaze and helps the screen to look good when the LEDs are switched off. Finally I added some additional lines to the screen using Citadel Wild Rider Red.

As with the previous Silver Stars, this marine is built using a Primaris marine body and legs. The arms, pauldrons, backpack, bolter and holstered pistol are from the previous version of the plastic Legion MkIII Tactical Squad set. To give the legs a more “antiquated” look, I added Mixed Micro Glass Balls from Green Stuff World as armour studs. The head is from the Legion MkVI Tactical Squad sprue, as are the antenna and vox elements of the backpack. This all helps to make the provenance of the Silver Stars armour intentionally unclear.

Painting

With the time pressure of Armies on Parade out of the way, it was nice to actually take my time over painting a Silver Stars marine! If you’re interested in the paint recipes I used, you can find a detailed list in this previous post. As I had more time, I refined my freehand process for the insignia. Details are below, all paints are Citadel unless specified otherwise.

  • White Insignia on Rose Band
  • Thinned Administratum Grey layer to produce rough outline of insignia
  • Corax White layer
  • 3:1 Screamer Pink:Lahmian Medium thin glaze
  • White Insignia on Blue Field
  • Thinned Administratum Grey layer to produce rough outline of insignia
  • Corax White layer
  • 3:1 Sotek Green:Lahmian Medium thin glaze
  • Dark Insignia on White Field
  • Slightly thinned Rhinox Hide layer
  • 3:1 Ulthuan Grey:Lahmian Medium thin glaze

This vox operator is from the unit dubbed ‘Squad Antimony’ by Orthodox codifiers during the War of the False Primarch – their actual squad designation remains unknown! The Silver Stars heraldry is quite different from other chapters, and they make use of alchemical and astrological symbols, as well as cuneiform numbers. You are very unlikely to find conventional High Gothic text or numerals on their armour. If you’d like to read more on this then Apologist has an excellent article on Silver Stars markings and heraldry.

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my latest Silver Star marine. I have a few more Silver Stars on the way soon, so stay tuned! As ever, thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, Bluesky and Mastodon.

“Ambush at Pipeline 13”, Flesh Eaters Armies on Parade 2024

On By Chris B.In Armies on Parade, Flesh Eaters, LEDs, Silver Stars, Space Marines, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0003 Comments

“The War of the False Primarch was a dark and bloody episode of the Imperium’s history, now largely lost to myth and purged from all records, that plunged the Segmentum Pacificus into anarchy from 780.M33 to 860.M33. The conflict was finally ended when the High Lords of Terra convened the Pentarchy of Blood and tasked five loyal Chapters to destroy eleven others that had been declared Traitoris Perdita for their actions during the war.”

IMPERIAL ARMOUR VOLUME TWO – SECOND EDITION PG. 17

Concept

The Flesh Eaters space marine chapter, a key member of the Pentarchy of Blood, bring the will of the High Lords to the followers of the False Primarch in Segmentum Pacificus. Early in the war the Flesh Eaters scoured civilian population centres for clues to the False Primarch’s whereabouts during ‘The Pacification of Logan’s World’.  The following year Brother-Chaplain Uriah Grimm set the world of Interlude Quay aflame during the ‘Interregnum at Interlude Quay’ as he assaulted hidden bases belonging to the Silver Stars chapter. 

Sent reeling by the ferocious Flesh Eaters assault, the Silver Stars attempt to regroup and retaliate, beginning a guerrilla war on Interlude Quay. Geothermal Pipeline 13 is sabotaged, and a Flesh Eaters patrol is ambushed. The Flesh Eaters take casualties, but are able to deploy their teleport homer. Brother-Captain Caedes and his Terminator honour guard arrive to lead the counter attack!

My plan with this year’s Armies on Parade board was to continue the story of my Flesh Eaters space marines, as told in 2022’s Pacification of Logan’s World and 2023’s Interregnum at Interlude Quay. The hunt for the False Primarch continues! I mocked-up several concepts for this board, including a multi-level bunker and a ruined plaza. In the end I settled on something a bit more ‘open’ so I could capture the army in its full glory. In hindsight, I think the way last year’s board was split between two levels didn’t do the army justice. Eventually I hit upon the idea of an ambush around an isolated pipeline crossing a wasteland. This seemed like the ideal concept for an open board that allowed the army to be viewed together, while also adding points of interest and something to focus the ‘battle’ around.

Designing & Building the Board

As in previous years, the board is built around a large picture frame with the glass removed and a texture applied to the wood backboard. The pipes are simply plastic drainage pipes bought from a local DIY store and glued together. You’ll notice they have some extra gothic details – like Imperial Eagle buttresses – to add some 40K flavour. The pipes were sprayed silver, then lightly sprayed dark brown in selective areas. I tried to target areas where rust would logically gather due to rain and weather. Further rust effects were applied to these areas using Typhus Corrosion and Ryza Rust. Various extra bits of scenery – such as a chain-link fence and small industrial building – were planned but eventually fell by the wayside as I realised just how much the pipes dominated the board.

I knew from early in the process that I wanted to include ‘smoke’ effects this year, as I thought it would really enhance the look of the LEDs and the smoke concept seemed to fit really well with the industrial pipeline idea.

The smoke was achieved with an ‘Ultrasonic Mist Maker Atomizer DIY kit’ purchased from eBay, and a small reservoir of water at the bottom of one of the vertical pipe sections. The ultrasonic atomizer, as well as the miniatures described in the next section, were all controlled by batteries hidden under the board.

The explosion at the back of the board was made from flickering LED tealights covered in soft toy stuffing. The stuffing was given a spray of Chaos Black to make the smoke darker. This was included to help sell the concept of a pre-prepared ambush by the Silver Stars.

Silver Stars, Flesh Eaters & Servo Skulls

The Silver Stars space marines from my Armies on Parade 2023 board returned to the fray this year. As the Flesh Eaters include so many LED muzzle flares and bullet impacts, I always think it’s important for them to have an antagonist on their display boards to help give some context to the effects.

At some point in the design process I thought it might be fun to have a little vignette playing out of a Silver Stars sniper and a Flesh Eater silently closing in with their combat blade drawn to deliver vengeance. Below you can see the initial reposing of the sniper (left), a test on my workbench (centre), and the final product in situ on the board (right). Both these miniatures will eventually find their way onto their own bases and join their respective forces as regular models.

The Flesh Eaters casualty on the right of the board is intended to represent the victim of the sniper – but he did at least manage to activate the teleport homer before he fell! The casualty is mounted on a 40mm base and will eventually be used as an objective marker. If you look closely, there is a ‘1’ on his pauldron, for missions where numbered objectives are relevant. The servo skull with its LED eye was made in exactly the same way as Brother Nikko’s servo skull. I glued a triangle of translucent green plastic to the LED eye to really emphasise the scanning effect.

There was another servo skull flying around the board, minding his own business. This was just meant as a fun extra detail, but I think I might have mounted him too high on the pipeline, as he doesn’t appear in most of the miniatures eye level photos!

Conclusion

So that brings us to the end of another ‘Armies on Parade’ project! As is traditional, I only finished assembling and painting everything on the evening of the deadline. But at least this year I sent that submission email with 40 minutes to spare, rather than the 10 minutes that I had last year! Last minute rush aside, I’m pleased with the outcome, especially the smoke and all the little extra details like the sniper, casualty and servo skulls. I’ll aim to start earlier next year, but I’ve been saying that for five years now – although in my defence Space Marine 2 dropped right in the middle of the prime board prepping season this year!

Given more time, would I have done anything differently? Not significantly. I would have mounted the second servo skull lower on the pipeline, as mentioned above, and probably would have included a few smaller extra pieces of small scatter terrain. There was also an additional Silver Star that I didn’t quite finish in time (I’m sure we’ll see him soon) and of course the large Flesh Eaters tank that I’ve been working on for a long time and still haven’t finished…

What’s Next?

This isn’t the end for the Flesh Eaters. I still have the tank to finish that I mentioned above, plus I’d also like to add some Scouts and Death Company into the mix. Will I revisit the Flesh Eaters for Armies on Parade 2025? Possibly, but I’m also tempted to rest them for a year and have a go at something else. Time will tell!

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my 2024 Armies on Parade board. Thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, Bluesky and Mastodon.