My Ice Smells Spicy

Seriously.

Five Iron Warriors were all finished up in the past three days. I banged out the first one prior to my cousin's wedding shower Saturday, then Sunday was all eaten up by gaming but I think I put in some work afterwards on at least one. Another was finished last night, and one this morning. Hmm, where did the fifth one come from? I dunno, the days all blur together, so somewhere in there another veteran of the Horus Heresy was painted up.

Even with the yellow hazard stripes, which did eat up a bit of time playing with, the color scheme is pretty simple. Coat everything in Boltgun Metal, detail stuff in Shining Gold and Mithril Silver, wash with Badab Black. They are exactly what I was hoping to achieve. I do think I need to play around a bit more with the detail work. For lack of a better term, there is a "belt" where space marine torsos meet their legs and the belt on the Iron Warrior specific torsos has some big metal studs on it that so far I've left in Boltgun, but might do well with a dab of Shining Gold to break up the wide expanse of Boltgun Metal on the models.

I don't anticipate doing anything with these guys as far as highlights are concerned. I've seen some really well done highlights in my time, but most just seem either unnecessary or totally artificial. Plus, I'm sloppy. At most it would be either Chainmail or Mithril along the edges of the Boltgun Metal, although I think the Badab Black wash might render that pointless. Anyway, like I said, as of right now I'm planning on keeping these guys simple. I may do my hazard stripes in Iyaden Darksun though, as it is a darker yellow color that might go better with the darkened Boltgun of the Iron Warriors than the bright yellow I'm using now. We'll see.

Eventually, when I get some bionic bits (prepare to be heartily molested Iron Hands box set), my plan is to field all of these guys as Plague Marines and call them "bionic commandos" (they can jump) because Iron Warriors use a lot of bionics and the high toughness and Feel No Pain special rule of the Plague Marines goes nicely with the idea that replacing your flesh with metal makes you tougher. Iron Warriors use Chaos as a means to an end, but they are still subjected to the "gifts" of Chaos and experience mutation just as other legions do. However, they often replace mutated limbs and such with bionics. I might throw in a squad of Khorne Berserkers as "siege breakers" as well, no bunny ears though. I think the armor of the Khorne Berserkers would look pretty nifty done up in the colors of the Iron Warriors, especially after that wash I like. I'll probably stick with brass instead of gold though, brass is Khorne specific, or maybe I'll just do the skull rune of Khorne up in brass and keep the rest of the detail in Mithril and Shining Gold. So many options for my little mans.

That's basically my army, two or three squads of counts as Plague Marines and a squad of Berserkers, a Vindicator, and some Obliterators. I have a pretty neat conversion idea for my counts as warsmith's servo-harness. I'll use the Techmarine's servo-harness backpack and lop off most of the power claw and replace it with a mutated crab-claw of sufficient size from the Possessed sprues and use some green stuff to simulate muscles growing out of the backpack's metal arm.

Hopefully with skilled use of masking or painter's tape I can make the dozer blade/siege shield/whatever it is called on the Vindicator one big badass hazard sign. Hazard stripes are glorious, and they are my method of easing myself into doing checks for my Lamenters.

Lamenters are fond of black and white checks and those are more difficult than hazard stripes. I tried freehanding one onto a kneepad, just quartered it up with pencil and painted away. It did not look super. I can only imagine the difficulty I will have doing some of the more complex checks, like on the shoulderpads. Bleh. Oh well, they're neat looking and it will make me a better painter in the end.

What would be awesome is if GW would make some new Obliterator sculpts. Power fist, invulnerable save, and deep strike, plus the ability to use pretty much any energy based weapon in the Chaos Space Marine armory, some of them twin-linked, all for 75 points. Lots of points, but a pretty tough piece of infantry. They look like shit though. Oblierators are victims of the techno-organic virus and are basically an amalgamation of marine, power armor, and daemonic energy. Neat fluff, neat stats, ugly ass models. Not even awesome ugly. They look like they're taking a shit.

Music: War Pigs - Black Sabbath