Purestrain Pleasures!

Well after adding a few more finishing touches to last week's hybrids/magus I thought it was time to introduce these new beauties to the rest of their cult.

As it stands this xenos cult consists of the following:

First up we have the brood's Big Daddy...The Patriarch:

This gnarled and weathered old genestealer is the primogenitor of this cult and as such he is decades, if not hundreds of years old, and in light of this I have tried to give him an appropriate paint job that demonstrates his venerable status. 

The model itself is the original 'Running Patriarch' from 1989 and I just love the character this sculpt oozes.  So much cooler than the Broodlord of modern canon; I particularly like his swanky giant medallion; perhaps this cult has infiltrated a world where 1970's disco is still cool and John Travolta will be the first of his brood brothers!

Unfortunately when he arrived via a Space Hulk (aka EBay) to my home world (aka Doorstep); one of his legs had snapped off completely.  This is one of the dramas with old lead, it's such a soft metal that weak areas such as joints and spindly limbs are prone to snapping/breaking.  So after I dried my tears I broke out the sculpting tool and green stuff for an afternoon of intense battlefield first aid; I'm not a great sculptor, but I am competent and I am pleased to say that you can no longer see the injuries this chap had previously sustained.

Moving on...

Well a patriarch is nothing without a brood to command and so here is his horde of vicious purestrain offspring (21 of the murderous little blighters in total). There are a variety of figures here including the early lead sculpts and the more common plastics from Space Hulk/Space Crusade.  As an interesting aside I discovered that the models from these two games are not quite identical; whilst the core body/torso is the same sculpt it is the arms that are slightly different as the Space Crusade ones are a little more basic and lack the fleshy nodule of muscle in the centre of the claws...look closely at these pics and see if you can spot what I mean.  I didn't really notice this until I started painting these guys in bulk!

To add some variation to the brood I tend to differ the tone of purple/mauve I use on the genestealers heads/flesh so as to break things up a bit. Overall I am happy with the look of these guys, and they frequently stalk the cardboard corridors of my first edition of Space Hulk.

Finally here is the whole family including the new hybrids from last week...lovely.

I will definitely start cracking on with some more hybrids (the crappy plastic ones from the GENESTEALER expansion are looking like they need some love; and I want to see if I can make a sculpt I don't really like look good) and those brood brothers I sprayed up probably need some attention too!!

I'll let you know how I get on!!

Legio

Genestealing my time!!

Well hello everyone,

Apologies for the time gap since my last post! Unfortunately I have been remarkably busy with work recently and so I haven't been able to get online to blog, however I have managed to squeeze in a bit of painting time here and there.

As regular readers of my Blog will already know, my girlfriend is not only supportive of my hobby interests but has also become a keen participant and frequently takes to the battlefield to command troops against me in games of Rogue Trader.

One set of models that she has fallen in love with is my collection of first edition Space Hulk genestealers which I have been painting on and off for the past few decades (we've all got one of those projects we return to from time-to-time!). 

The majority of these figures are the original plastic purestrains that were released with the Space Hulk box set, supplemented by a couple of the metal purestrains that were released in 1989.  These uni-pose models have fascinated her since she first saw them (she does an awesome genestealer impression) and she has asked if they can be fielded in our next battle.

Always keen to please I have put together a scenario for us to play that features the aforementioned genestealers in a bitter struggle to the death with the might of the Imperial Inquisition.  However as I was constructing the scenario's background I quickly realised that a battle against a force consisting of only purestrains could be quite boring and so I decided to augment these insidious xenos with a few genestealer hybrids in order to shake things up a bit. I proceeded to dig around my unpainted lead pile and pulled out some classic old models to paint up.

Initially I was a little ambitious with my painting goals and prepared the above models for painting.  Here we have the following:

1 x metal magus (1989)
3 metal hybrids (1989)
2 x plastic hybrids (from the Genestealer supplement for Space Hulk (1990))
10 x Imperial Army troopers to act as brood brothers (1987 - 1989)

I quickly realised that the sheer number of figures that I had prepped was too ambitious to paint up quickly and so I decided to attack the project piecemeal.  For the first batch I chose the magus and three metal hybrids to complete. 

When choosing a colour scheme I decided to paint their body armour and chitin blue in order to tie them in with my traditionally coloured purestrains.  For the fleshy areas I decided to go for a deep, rich pink which would be a perfect medium between the purple/mauve of my pure 'stealers and the human hosts normal flesh tones.  When painting both these colours I decided to go proper old school in my technique and so I started from a darker base colour which was highlighted progressively by simply adding white to the base...I have to say that I'm quite happy with the results (this picture was taken mid way through the project).

I also added some yellow to the armour segments for a little variation and painted the combat trousers/robes a fairly standard grey.

Below are the finished models:

The magus is a fourth generation hybrid and as such is genetically far close to humans than most of the brood, in light of this I gave him a more usual human flesh colouration...albeit with a light purple wash to hint at his alien origins.

Above are each of the other hybrids in turn...unfortunately the lighting wasn't great when I took the photograph thanks to the onset of bloody winter in the UK.  I envision that these guys are either second or third generation hybrids and as such their flesh colour is far closer to the genestealer norm than the magus. 

...And this is all four of my new hybrids together and ready for the upcoming battle. 

Now I will need to get working on the brood brothers...or maybe some more hybrids!

Again I apologise for my recent absence from the blog but I hope that you approve of what I've been doing in the meantime!!

Legio