Reinforcements for the Flesh Eaters rumble off the production line this week, in the form of a Forge World resin Deimos Predator.
Painting & Modelling
This is a slightly unusual one as it’s a rescue job – from myself! This Predator has been languishing base coated on my ‘Shelf of Shame’, waiting to join the Imperial Fists since around 2014. Anticipating an upcoming game of my Flesh Eaters against Apologist‘s Silver Stars, I decide to quickly revamp this model to add a bit of firepower to my boys in red.
The LED work on this miniature is incredibly basic by my current standards, as you can see in the picture below. The headlights are cast resin, each with a white LED inside, and these are the only part of the model that illuminates. The battery and switch are accessible via the magnetised front panel. I did consider completely re-doing the LEDs, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort as they were still serviceable. All I did in the end was swap in a fresh CR2032 battery.
I took a lot of influence for the paint scheme from the classic Blood Angels Predator above. I wasn’t aiming to replicate it exactly, but I certainly wanted to capture the Rogue Trader/2nd Edition vibe. My Flesh Eaters are themed around the War of the False Primarch in M33, so the whole army intentionally has a retro feel.
In terms of colour selection, I stuck with my normal Flesh Eaters palette of colours (as detailed in this post). I’ve chosen to limit myself to only green and yellow LEDs in this army. The LEDs originally installed were white, but a quick yellow glaze over the headlights helped to give them a yellow hue that fits in with the rest of the army.
The Imperial Eagle and numerals are transfers that I then painted over in Administratum Grey and Corax White so that they matched the rest of the army’s heraldry. The Flesh Eaters chapter symbol is freehand, as usual. I added the white stripe to the turret to emulate the white stripe on the Flesh Eaters helmets, and also to give a bit of visual interest to what was otherwise a very large area of flat red.
I also applied some damage and corrosion around the bottom of the tank, mainly near the treads. The battle damage was Rhinox Hide applied in spots with a sponge and then highlighted at the bottom to give the appearance of depth. I also applied a little Typhus Corrosion technical paint in areas where I thought dirt and mud might naturally collect.
That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this relic from another age! As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram.
Explosive hull decompression sounds the same in any language.
Brother Oram, Flesh Eaters Assault Marine
It’s back to the Flesh Eaters project this week with Brother Oram, an explosive-equipped Assault Intercessor. Brother Oram is technically the first member of a new Assault Intercessor squad, but for the moment he will join Squad Levers for games of Kill Team as a grenadier specialist.
Building & Painting
I used the techniques described in my LED Eye Lens tutorial to create the effects of Brother Oram’s helmet. The only significant difference worth noting is that I used a TruOpto 1.8mm Green LED instead of the red LED described in the tutorial.
Oram’s bullet ricochet effects were achieved using the techniques described in my Simple LED Muzzle Flare tutorial, only with the “flares” coming from the armour rather than a gun barrel. The two LEDs on this model are connected in parallel and both powered from the same battery and switch.
In the images below you can see the exposed LED on the left, and then the impact effects after the acrylic gel had been applied, as described in steps 13 – 15 of the tutorial. There is one difference though, and that is the addition of “sparks” made from tiny pieces of fibre optic cable. This was an experiment, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. As seen in the centre image below, after the first application of the acrylic gel, I used a set of fine tweezers to push five short approximately five millimetre lengths of fibre optic into the gel in what I hoped was a random pattern. The end of the fibres in the gel are touching the outer surface of the yellow LED. The acrylic gel is strong enough to hold the fibres in place as it dries, so long as you are careful not to disturb it. Once the initial layer of gel had dried, I then applied a second layer to further sculpt the shape of the ricochet effect, as seen in the image below on the right. This included sculpting the gel upwards to follow the paths of some of the fibres. This was intended to make the “trajectories” of the “sparks” (i.e. the ends of the fibre) look a little more natural. This required some very fine sculpting – I used a small piece of wire to get in between the fibres, rather than my normal sculpting tools.
As I’ve described previously for other members of this squad, the base model is a Primaris Assault Intercessor that I have modified to wear MkVI armour, in keeping with the War of the False Primarch theme for my Flesh Eaters army. You can read the latest from the War of the False Primarch campaign here. For those that are interested, my painting recipe for the red Flesh Eaters armour can be found in this previous post.
One aspect of this model that I painted differently was the battle damage on the pauldrons and left forearm. I haven’t added much battle damage or weathering to the Flesh Eaters in this project, other than some subtle dust and dirt around the feet. But with this miniature I really wanted to sell the idea of a Marine under fire, so I added some damage to hint at previous impacts. This was applied using the sponge method. The damage is Rhinox Hide, which I then highlighted along the lower edge with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red to give a sense of depth.
My plan from the start with this model was to have him be a grenadier in Kill Team, so I knew that I needed to give some visible indication of this specialism. If you look closely you may see that he has a number of grenades in his belt. His left hand originally held a melta bomb, but I wasn’t happy with the look. I tried switching it for a belt of grenades, but I wasn’t happy with that either. In the end I settled for the limpet mine as something that looked suitably dramatic and brutal! This came out of my bits box, but I think it was originally from a plastic Ork set. In hindsight I wish I’d filed off the rivets to make it look less Orky, but with the right paint job I still think it is feasibly an Imperial weapon!
That’s it for this week, I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about Brother Oram! As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram. I’ll see you again soon for some more LED miniatures!
“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
The Flesh Eaters space marine chapter, a key member of the Pentarchy of Blood, bring the will of the High Lords to the Partisan frontier planet Logan’s World on the border of Segmentum Pacificus. Brother-Chaplain Uriah Grimm leads elements of the third company in a purge of the population. Resistance is put down and captives are taken for interrogation. Clues are sought regarding the whereabouts of the Abomination, the so-called “False Primarch”, and his Silver Stars chapter.
Concept
The concept for this board was fairly straightforward. The Flesh Eaters have come to a world loyal to the False Primarch, and are conducting a purge of the citizens while looking for clues to the whereabouts of their enemy. The local population are mounting a resistance, but without space marine support of their own they don’t have much hope…
The Flesh Eaters have chosen the ruined Sanctum Imperialis – an obvious symbol of Imperial authority – as their base of operations. Brother-Chaplain Uriah Grimm directs the purge from the balcony. The colour scheme of the Sanctum subtly echoes that of the chaplain, with a lot of red, black and white on the details. The red backdrop behind the building is a cardboard miniature photography background that came free with White Dwarf a few years ago.
The Partisan Population
The Partisan resistance are all made from the Necromunda Hive Scum boxed set, and the market stall and accessories come from the Underhive Market set. I wanted to give a “Jesus kicking the merchants out of the temple” vibe with how the Flesh Eaters were dealing with the locals who had dared to use the Sanctum as a market place. A small easter egg, you may have spotted the market stall has a Silver Stars helmet for sale! The Sotek Green – more of a turquoise despite the name – of the Silver Stars’ helmet is also used in the clothing of the Partisan population. This was used to help visually associate them with the Silver Stars’ cause, and also to give a contrasting “red versus blue” vibe to the display board.
The graffiti artist being captured for interrogation is based on the artwork below from the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook. The Hive Scum box didn’t have any arms in this pose, so I had to sculpt them from scratch myself.
What’s Next?
There we have it, another ‘Armies on Parade’ project concluded! I hope you’ve enjoyed all the photographs of the display board. Don’t forget you can click on any of the images to open a larger view. So what’s next for the Flesh Eaters? This certainly isn’t the end of the project. I’m still aiming to reach at least 1000 points. I have at least one more squad, one character and two vehicles planned, so stay tuned over the coming months to see this army continue to grow.
That’s all for today, thanks for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s Armies on Parade project. Don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram. I’ll be back again with more miniatures soon!
This past weekend I attended the Golden Demon painting contest at Warhammer World in Nottingham. In the pictures below you can see my entry packed and ready to go, along with my extensive emergency repair kit and plenty of spare batteries!
Below you can see my ‘Flesh Eaters Ancient’ entry in the entry display cabinets. I decided to enter him in the anything-goes ‘Open’ category, as I worried that the LEDs were a little be “out there” for the 40K Single Miniature category. In hindsight though, I think it would have been fine. At the last minute I also decided to enter Assault Squad Levers just for fun. They’re certainly not painted to a Golden Demon standard, but they are one of my favourite units that I’ve made to date. This really was a last minute decision though – I built the display base from an old picture frame the day before and was drybrushing the small rocks in the hotel on the morning of the contest! You can see a picture of the unit in the ’40K Squad’ cabinet below.
There were so many great entries that it would be impossible to do them all justice with a quick camera phone photo. I had to snap quickly so I wasn’t holding up the lines of viewers. Here are a select few highlights!
We also checked out the Warhammer World exhibition hall while we were there (twice in fact). It was free entry to the exhibition with our Golden Demon tickets, but even when you have to pay it’s definitely worth the money. A new Horus Heresy display had been created since our last pre-Covid visit, highlights of which can be seen below. I loved the tunnel-fighting cross-section below the main board!
And of course I had to pay my respects at the classic Crimson Fists display on the way through.
We also checked out Apologist’s retro-inspired Blood Angels army which was on display in the hall. You may recognise them from White Dwarf 479. Check out Apologist’s blog and Instagram, if you don’t already follow him, for some excellent hobby!
As you may have guessed there was no trophy or finalist pin for me this time! However, I did buy myself myself a Golden Demon mug as consolation prize (wooden spoons were not available)! Joking aside, we had a great time and it was well worth the trip. It was also nice to briefly meet and say hello to other hobbyists from the Warhammer Community social media sphere, such as Spencer and Gonders.
I’m not too disappointed I came away empty-handed considering the level of talent on display was so incredibly high. The whole experience was incredibly positive and has left me feeling inspired to try and up my game. In fact, I’m already in the initial planning stages of several entries for next time!
That’s all for today, but I’ll be make with more painted miniatures soon. As ever, thanks for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram.
Raise the colours high, Ancient Harlon! Let the enemy see who comes to claim their lives!
– Flesh Eaters Chaplain Uriah Grimm
Allow me to introduce Brother Harlon, Flesh Eaters Ancient. This model is my entry into the Golden Demon painting contest this weekend at Warhammer World.
The Long Road To Golden Demon
I know I say this increasingly often, but this was one of the most fiddly LED projects to date. I had already planned to make this model for my Flesh Eaters army project, but decided it might make a good Golden Demon entry. I was lucky enough get a Golden Demon ticket in the first round at the start of August, so I had a little time to plan and think. My initial idea for what I would build and submit was actually not part of the Flesh Eaters project, but I couldn’t get the prototype of the circuit to run for long enough off small batteries. With the current multi-day format the model will be on display somewhere between 24 – 36 hours, so it had to be long lasting. Unfortunately the prototype for my original project only lasted a mere 5 hours! So I decided to put that one on the back-burner (no details yet, as I may revisit it later) and instead tackle the Primaris Ancient. So with one project abandoned and two weeks in August “lost” to a summer holiday, I didn’t properly start the Ancient until the 1st September.
My initial iteration of this project involved using filament LEDs to represent energy beams lancing past the Ancient and through the banner. You can see some WIP shots of this version below. Unfortunately there were two drawbacks with this version:
They required a 12V battery, which meant a different base design.
The ends of the filament were not illuminated. No matter what I did to try and hide this they drew the eye and spoiled the effect.
They were ridiculously bright! So bright in fact that I couldn’t take a decent photo and it was difficult to see the details of the paintjob.
I tried my best to persevere, telling myself it would all come together when it was finished, but I had my doubts. Finally, when I accidently snapped one of the filaments while making fine adjustments two days before the contest, I finally said “screw it”, and removed both filaments and the 12V battery from the painted model! Making such a huge, fundamental change to a competition entry just 48 hours before submission was the stuff of stress-dream nightmares! But I managed to do it after a couple of hours and without inflicting too much damage on the paintwork.
Painting & Modelling
The standard bearer in picture above is one of my primary influences for this piece. This photo is taken from one of the colour sections of the ‘Rogue Trader’ first edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook. I’ve always thought this was a really cool model.
The base model for my version is a Primaris Ancient. As you can see in the images below, the model required some serious reposing. I wanted to banner to be on the viewer’s left as they looked at the model, while the stock Primaris Ancient holds the banner to the viewer’s right. The reason I wanted to change this is two-fold: one was to emulate the pose of the model that inspired it, the other was because when humans view an image their eyes start in the top left and track down diagonally to the bottom right (interestingly this is regardless of cultural influences). So I wanted the visual story to begin with the banner under fire, followed by the Flesh Eaters heraldry announcing who you were looking at, then on to the heroic Marine himself with the glowing eye lenses firmly in the centre of the image. Finally, the eyes take in the second round of incoming fire and the damage to the pauldron, bookending the visual story with the fact that this is a Marine in the heart of battle!
To paint this model is used my normal red armour receipe, but with a few extra steps; a Rhinox Hide glaze shade at the bottom of large panels, a Trollslayer Orange point highlight, and a Bloodletter glaze. I wanted to do an extra nice paint job for Golden Demon, while not having the model look out of place with the rest of the army. If you look at the close-up shots then hopefully you’ll notice some subtle battle damage as well.
For the banner, I was trying to emulate the look of the banner from the Rogue Trader book. I decided not to extend the chequered pattern the whole way around the border. This was partially to save time, but also because I thought it would draw the eye too much. I thought it was worth adding the chapter name as the Flesh Eaters are relatively obscure and some viewers may not recognise the chapter symbol alone.
The final thing to talk about is the display plinth, seen in the picture below. I went for a transparent Perspex base, rather than the traditional black, to demonstrate that the miniature was entirely self-contained. This way you can see that there are no batteries or circuits hidden in the plinth.
So there we have it! Of course I will keep you all updated on how it goes. It would be weird for an LED model to win a painting contest, so I’m not holding my breath for any trophies, but it’s the taking part and the fun of being there that counts! As ever, thanks for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram.
Chris Buxey Paints 