Merry Christmas Everyone

To all our readers and followers, thank you for hanging out with us here on the 14th Legion Blog. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Best wishes,

DiStudios

Horus Heresy: Night Lords By DiStudios Army Update #3

Seasons greetings all, I have officially been on holiday for one day and making every minute count! Amid the chaos of last minute gift wrapping, event organizing and food shopping, I have managed to make significant gains on my Night Lords project.

Horus Heresy: Iron Hands Sicaran Venator Wip By Hellstrom

Been busy recently increasing the size of my vehicle pool. At the time of writing I have put together two Spartans, a Sicaran and my personal favourite the Sicaran Venator. All the kits went together fairly well; aside the usual re-bending of some bits with hot water. All the tanks have been built with sponsons removed, as I intend to magnetise them for ease of transport and also the option to swap between lascannon/heavy bolters where applicable. 

As you can see in in the background I also went ahead and treated myself to the Legion Astartes Gamer Editions. While I do like the standard books, they are far too large to be lugging around to games so it was an obvious choice to make life easier. 

So with the tank pool filling up nicely, there was only one thing left to do really and that was to treat myself to something big. With any luck this order will turn up soon, so I build and share - The mighty Legion Glaive.

Thanks for reading,

Hellstrom

The 14th Legion

Horus Heresy: Night Lords By DiStudios Army Update #2

Taking the opportunity on one of my rare days off to show you the additional reinforcements for my Night Lords project. Basing it loosely on the background, I started investing in some armoured units for the legion, in the form of aircraft and drop pods. At the time of writing though, I am still a little sceptical as to how these elements work within the Horus Heresy backdrop as in my opinion there is quite a lot of anti deep strike options that make a great deal of the Night Lords 'tactics' difficult to pull off. Stack this with the inability to first turn charge, Night Lords are really left relying on getting that all important Night Fighting rule to come in play (Curze makes it automatic). However from a visual concept, Dread Claw Assault Pods backed by aircraft look simply amazing!

As you can see from the photo, on the table I currently have a Dreadclaw Assault Pod ready for painting, a Fire Gunship nearing build completion and still new in the bag - a Primaris Lightning Strike Fighter. I did initially want to use the Storm Eagle, but ended up preferring the more dedicated role of the Primaris. I actually am not a fan of paying a premium for troop transport and this shows in my lists and choice of aircraft.

I appreciate this is only a small update, as I only have the one day off this week, but I do have some other pieces which are at work - 10 Night Raptors armed with chain glaives! I am really excited to get this unit together as I feel they will look extremely visceral on the table top; sadly though; as the toys add up, the model count goes down!

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

p.s Sorry about orientation, Blogger just not playing nice with this pic today 8(

Horus Heresy: Iron Hands Autek Mor & The 'Retro Father' By Hellstrom

Greetings all! The tides of iron march onward in the Emperors name! Having ordered quite a large number of miniatures I have been busy working out a 1500-1750 points list as a guide. While it has been fun getting back into the hobby and building what takes my fancy, I really wanted a focus of some sort and nothing quite does it like a army list.

I have a real fondness for the Iron Fathers, so much so that I think I have around 4-5 of them, with respective servitor bodyguards. Naturally I do have some robots on the way to take advantage of the cortex controllers, but that is way in the future. Above is the finished 'Retro Father' I showed off in my first post. While he was more or less finished in the last post, I really wanted to get the transfers on for effect, it is also fun to point out, that the addition of a small amount  of brass really makes the miniatures stand out. I have also tried to match the base to DiStudio's Night Lords army, to give some form of narrative.

The overall leader of my starter force will be Autek Mor, and while from a fluff perspective he was not on Isstvaan, he is simply too good a choice not to take, until I get my Ferrus Manus done. I suppose that the first game narrative game I play could be a boarding action of some sort...

While these are the only two miniatures I have fully complete, I have a whole host of infantry and tanks in various stages of paint or construction, probably enough to make a 3500 point army. A long road but one with focus, perhaps if I remember, above is a the initial lot of Iron Hands being drafted for the war.

Thanks for reading,

Hellstrom

The 14th Legion

Horus Heresy: Night lords By DiStudios - Army Update #1

Welcome to the long overdue first post of my latest Horus Heresy project - Night Lords! Originally started a month ago, as part of a joint project with Hellstrom's Iron Hands, we have been avidly pooling together miniatures to build, paint and finally share; here on the 14th Legion Blog. I will be running the Terror Assault Rites Of War and I have to admit, that at first glance; I was daunted at the prospect of having to build and paint thirty Terror Squad miniatures, just to have a legal force. One of the key problems was keeping each squad unified, but also contain enough unique features that would separate them and keep a gang themed hierarchy. By adding a few well placed pieces of greenstuff I think I have achieved that look so far.

Horus Heresy: Iron Hands Test Scheme By Hellstrom

Greetings and welcome to my first post here with the 14th Legion! Here are a couple of works in progress of my budding Iron Hands army. I actually have quite a large amount of models already but all of these are in various stages of cleaning and building. I have a decent balance of infantry and while I have some heavy armour, I will be adding the majority of tanks towards the end as these will take longer to get up and running. I will be using the Rites Of War and of course Ferrus Manus in the foreseeable future! 

I decided to use one of my original Rogue Trader Terminators as a Forge Father for nostalgia's sake and I intend to throw a few more old school models in the mix here and there, ultimately though the army will be made up from Forge World's lovely range. Colour wise I am using gun metal over black with a wash of Tamiya Smoke and finished with Dark Tone, some final highlights with chain mail were then applied to the edges. I decided very early on to go the route of metallic, as I find flat black some what boring and wanted a bit of the 'Iron' in the Iron Hands name to show on the models.

So only a brief glimpse into my starter project, but signs of life to counter the Night Lords menace! Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Thanks for reading,

Hellstrom

The 14th Legion

Battle Report: Darklands Khthones Vs Ysians

**First of all, a small note from me DiStudios. This battle report is well over due, so apologies in getting it up so late! Sven; our resident Darklands and Kingdom Death fan; has put a huge amount of effort in producing this fantastic battle report, so read through and most importantly don't forget to look at all the lovely pictures!**

As I’ve mentioned in some of my recent articles, my motivation for the Darklands line doubled lately as I’ve found someone to actually play the game with. So today I’m going to report my latest game to you, which is something I’ve never done before so please feel free to comment on how I could improve the reports.

The game was fought with my miniatures, me using the Khthones (link?) and my opponent my Ysians (link). The size of the game was determined by my collection of Ysians, which came to 1212 Gold and miraculously fits in the force organisation chart.

 

 

Darklands: Ysian Infantry By Sven

Resisting the temptation of starting yet another Darklands kindred with the new Kickstarter I tried to focus on something else and took some pictures and wrote this article. Of course Darklands and its miniature range mainly live through the awesome characters and huge monsters, but to show the difference in scale and skill in battle every army needs some regular troops. It was during one of my first Khthones vs Ysians games that my opponent remarked that his Ysian commander was the only human-sized model on the field and so it seemed like the Brutes and Gorgonares weren't monstrous, but regular man-sized.

While the Khthones have no human-sized infantry available at the moment the Ysians certainly do and so I began work on the Ax-Drunes.

Site News: New Writer For The Blog Confirmed

Greetings all, I briefly mentioned last week, that I was working on getting a new writer for the 14th Legion Blog team, and and lo and behold I have managed it! What this means, is that in the next few weeks we will be having project updates from three different authors covering a wide spectrum of games and miniatures. More importantly we will consistent gaming and battle reports. The first project that our new writer will be handling is Horus Heresy Iron Hands - purposely set up to face my Night Lords! We are aiming to have 2500 points set up in the near future, with no Lords Of War, for our first game with Istvaan themed terrain. The blog's new author will be publishing under the alias of Hellstrom and his project section will be just under Sven's project log.

I am incredibly happy with this outcome, as it means more fresh content for the future and of course a new Iron Hands Gallery in the long run!

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Darklands: Ysian Carrowek of Carn Dhu By Sven

After finishing Ophios for the Khthones it seemed only fair to add a unique character to my Ysian host as well. Just like the Gorgon I bought Carrowek during the first Kickstarter of Mierce and he has been patiently waiting attention since then.

Site News: The Next Couple Of Weeks

Greetings all! 

From the outset I want to say a big thank you to Sven; my co-writer here on the 14th legion; at having done an amazing job with producing articles and miniature content while I am away at work. He has been a very busy man, working with all things Kingdom Death and Mierce. I also wanted to point out, that we might be having another 40K/Warzone article writer join the ranks of the 14th Legion, his key focus is all thing Tau, including all the Forge World goodies and he also dabbles quite a bit in other gaming brands, which will bring excellent article variety to the blog.

So what about me? Well I still very busy with work, but I have been chugging away at my Night Lords army. I just finished listening to the Prince Of Crows audio book and am more enthused than ever to grow this army on my desk. I have already started making some (quick) versions of some my favourite characters, so expect the likes of Alastor Rushal and pilot Tay Karenna (spelling?) to appear sneakily in my army as time goes by. I am purposefully holding out on making my absolute favourite Sevatar on the hopes that Forge World actually make him within a decent time frame and to a high standard...of course if they don't I already have plans for a kit bash...

Right now I am trying to source as many Nostraman Chainglaives as possible, as quite frankly I do intend to run every power weapon user in my army with them. No easy task mind you, since I will require 13 at the very least for my Night Raptor squad and the fact that Forge World do not have a weapons pack for this weapon just yet. I did look into 3rd party products, but quite frankly they do no satisfy aesthetically and I am in no mood to convert all those weapons. So it is looking like a long and expensive bits trawl for now - by the way if any of you guys can help me with the glaive problem, please email me *nudge nudge wink*.

I got a interesting response from Forge World concerning the fate of Night Lords products in the future. Obviously there will be Konrad Curze himself, but the team did gleam to me that there are more 'upgrade' packs to be released for the 8th legion, naturally no time frames were given, but to hazard a guess, I would expect a chain glaive weapons pack, brass icons and transfer in the future, possibly post Gamesday/Warhammer Fest. In terms of priority though I sadly would expect no new units for a long time; if at all; since the vast majority of the background being released is set during the Thramas Crusade, which could be a source book and list within itself. This works out excellent for me however, as it would be an excellent excuse to get back into knightly orders Dark Angels at the same time... 

Next week, things should be quietening down for me, which means I can finally do some meaningful hobby articles with picture as opposed to rambling on like a ferret on crack. Next week stay tuned and expect to see the following items painted or in the process of painting: Contemptor Dreadnought, 10 man terror Squad, Anvillus Pattern Drop pod, Moritat and of course Alastor Rushal.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Darklands: Ysians Torku By Sven

With the last two miniatures from my collection being rather harmless and the imminent Kickstarter of Mierce I thought it’s about time to show something “special”. Please note some pictures in this article are NSFW.

NSFW

NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Darklands: Khthones Ophios By Sven

With the newest Kickstarter of Mierce Miniatures launching tomorrow I thought it would be a great time to start catching up with the blog articles. My Mierce collection has been growing constantly over the last months and I have been able to get some games done. Gaming for me always triggers a great motivation to get painting and so my model choices were mostly aimed at getting playable hosts ready. One model I’ve owned since the very first kickstarter was Ophios, the Gorgon of Khthone, basically a special character for the Khthones.

Kingdom Death: The Gold Smoke Knight By Sven

Hey there, with the summer haze coming to a close, the article/hobby drought here on the blog has come to an end. Despite the lack of articles, I have been very busy over August preparing both Mierce and Kingdom Death miniatures to share with you all. Today, as a kick-start, I am bringing some good ol’ Kingdom Death… and today it’s even safe for work!

Site News: Back with new Toys!

 

Regular readers will have noted the last month (August) was a dead period here on the 14th Legion blog, this was simply due to real life work commitments taking over, that have now reached it's conclusions. The positive side is that this has brought in much needed cash flow which translates to new toys! Even though I have not had much spare time, what little time I have had, has been put to good use, we have the birth a new Horus Heresy project! The Iron Hands are sadly no more, despite loving the excellently written background from Book II Betrayal, the colours simply were not inspiring for me. So in response I have taken on the mantle of the traitor...

Introducing Ancient Carrow "The Reaper Of Noval V" and herald of my new Horus Heresy Night Lords project. I will be using the Rites Of War option of 'Terror Assault', so everything will be mounted in Dread Claw Assault Pods (where applicable). Naturally this is a complete turn around on my previous Horus Heresy project, as there are absolutely no tanks, but instead will see last years Christmas present: Fire Raptor gunship finally put to use. I am very pleased that the above is now underway as long term readers will recognize that the Contemptor above is from my Minotaurs project many years ago, and has been sitting unpainted until today. I intend to include a mix of either Storm Eagles or Scimitar pattern jetbikes to break up the mass drop pods, but one thing is for certain,: there will be plenty of skin, bone, skulls and flayed bits adorned infantry to represent the horror of the Night Lords!

Also Sven is not gone! He has plenty of hobby content ready to write up and share over the next few weeks, with my absence he also took a little break from his blistering painting pace, to do a little gaming and general relaxation. But from next week it's man all stations as the 14th Legion Blog resumes it's regular service...Winter is coming...

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Darklands: Khthones Liska Petroyos By Sven

Happy Mierceday everyone! Friday is the day Mierce show new sculpts and to celebrate this I have another very nice Darklands model to share with you. Hopefully most of you will have seen Mazikilias, the first model from the Liska realm that I’ve painted. Today I have the second and currently only other released Liska for you: Petroyos, the Liskarchon.

Darklands: Khthones Ýdron Ygandr By Sven

Today I'm back again with some big bad Darklands, as I'm currently blasting through my collection of unpainted minis. That's mainly due to a friend of mine who's actually willing to play the game with me. Which is great fun by the way! But more of that possibly in the future, today we're in for more painted minis.

So here comes Ygandr, Hydra of Ýdron:

Hobby: Spiked Helmets by DiStudios

Greetings! Today I will be going through a tutorial on how to make spikey helmets or pickelhaubes! Today's tutorial uses a Warzone Resurrection Bauhaus Vorreiters, but the methods used here could be applied to any number of projects including Blood Axe themed Orks to German themed Imperial Guard. Please note that this is a advanced tutorial involving sharp metal, pliers and superglue, for younger readers, please seek the assistance of an adult for this project!

First up, the materials. These should all be readily available from your local hobby craft store, I have included a link at the end of this article for where I get all my supplies from, and a direct link for the pikes has been included for your convenience:

Materials & Tools

Needles or brass pikes - Buy the ones I use HERE

Pliers - NOT regular hobby clippers they may not be strong enough and could break!

Pin-vice

Drill bits - The size will depend on the type of needle/brass rod you are using.

Blu-tack

Kingdom Death: Satan by Sven NSFW

Well, well, it seems like I really got my motivation for Kingdom Death back running. While all those shiny semi-big monsters and knights are nice this new “wave” is missing something disturbing KD-style. So please bear in mind that the following, is absolutely.

NSFW
NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Warzone Resurrection: Bauhaus Etoiles Mortant W.I.P

Greetings, another Warzone Resurrection update, I seem to be flying through these things at the moment! Having finished off the Juggernauts last night, I set to work on the next unit on my check list; the Etoiles Mortant; an all female assassin unit that specialise in combating the Dark Legion. These versions are the Kickstarter backer versions which; although more static; are actually my favourite of the two sculpts. I probably will get the newer version eventually, to boost up the numbers to the full twelve but for now I am very satisfied with the work I have done today.

The general consensus is: more fire! My Juggernauts with OSL flame thrower effects, proved so popular that I have been encouraged to do the same on this new unit. The only problem is the base size, which at 30mm is not a lot of space to work with. However with the input of fellow Warzone I managed to come up with what you see in the photo. Bits of cork mat spaced out allow enough space to anchor a piece of wire, which will have the flames sculpted onto. As a added touch, I will be adding Small droplets of fire to create a flame trail from weapon to target.

I still need to do more cleaning on the legs and of course fill any gaps with green stuff, however my enthusiasm and momentum are high, so fingers crossed we will have another complete unit by the end of the week!

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Grab your Warzone Resurrection bits and help support the blog by buying from: Wayland Games - Discount Wargames

Warzone Resurrection: Bauhaus Juggernauts Completed

Hi guys, amid all the football action - congratulations to our German readers! - I managed to finish off my Bauhaus Juggernauts. Now these are the second generation versions, which are more akin to the exo-armours from the Edge Of Tomorrow movie. The bases are still wet and will require another coat of black paint, and of course I still need to add foliage for some extra detail. But despite these small details, the unit is complete! I had a blast painting them up and it is just a shame that the initial photo did not get all the osl effort I put in to it. This is something I will have to consider carefully once I get round to taking proper gallery shots of the unit.

So next week will be the start of something new for my Bauhaus army...I do have a trio of Vulkans that need cleaning, but I also have the new Vulkans on route. The Grizzly Battle Tank is still waiting for some bits, so I guess I should make a start on some infantry. Right now the Etoile Mortants are winning out, purely because they will have the least amount of prep work to do (also I quite like the miniatures). As much as I want to work on my Hussars and Venusian Rangers, the Hussars need a permanent solution for the fragile head spikes (waiting on something for that) and the Venusian Rangers require putty work for the cloaks and hoods. I may end up building all three units, thus leaving me just painting to worry about.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Grab your Warzone Resurrection bits and help support the blog by buying from: Wayland Games - Discount Wargames

Darklands: Khthones Liska Mazikilias

In the world of Darklands the kindred of the Khthones is made up by different realms. The Gorgon - snake men, the Krokod - alligator men, the Savrar - lizard men, the Ýdron - hydra men and finally the Líska - basilisk men. Having a passion for snakes and weird reptiles in general, my force will consist of Gorgon, Ýdron and Líska. The Krokod and Savrar are just a bit boring for my taste, but I guess the three other realms are more than enough. So after showing you the beginnings of my Gorgon realm, I will show you in the following article, the Líska.

Warzone Resurrection: Bauhaus Vulkans With Fists Build

With the Juggernauts progressing quickly, I have decided to start building a new unit to follow up with straight after. The Bauhaus Vulkan is an iconic miniature with a lot of fans; including me; so naturally when the concepts were announced I knew I wanted a full trio in my Kickstarter pledge. When the miniatures actually arrived though, there were a lot of disappointed fans. Not including the various miscasting, one of the major problems is that when equipped with ranged weapons, the Vulkan just looks odd due to the overly long legs it has, the miniature ends up looking a bit like a chicken as opposed to the chunky looking suit of destruction, luckily one of the things offered during the Kickstarter was power fist arm. For fans of the original this still does not add up, as from a rules perspective, you lose both ranged weapons for a pair of fists, when the original model had a ranged weapon and a fist...so for this incarnation of Warzone, it looks like I will be having close combat Vulkans to start with.

The arm mounts are the same as the ranged weapons, and are quite fragile. To counter this I pinned absolutely everything, which has given me freedom to reposition all the arms as I see fit, before finally gluing. With some hot water, I adjusted the position on some of the fingers to give variety, but generally I have left this set of Vulkans stock as new (and vastly) superior ones are coming - no eta yet. But I am not one for wasting and because of that this trio will get the full paint job and will proudly represent on the table until the new ones eventually turn up. I think it is quite obvious that a great deal of the KS renders were rushed, low and generous stretch goals meant a lot of man power had to be invested into fufillment, but from this Prodos has decided to provide the quality they know they can produce, sooner rather than later. And while for some this is an issue of contention, for me it is a sign of integrity, they want to do Warzone/Mutant Chronicles the justice it truly deserves. 

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Grab your Warzone Resurrection bits and help support the blog by buying from: Wayland Games - Discount Wargames 

Warzone Resurrection: Bauhaus Juggernauts Paint Progress Shots

Another late night of painting for me as I finalise the highlights for my Bauhaus Juggernaut Squad. These figures are actually the second generation Juggernauts which have a much more fluid feel, due to the better dynamic posing and a better design approach akin to the Edge Of Tomorrow battle suits. I really liked the original 'boxy' Juggernaut concept art and was quite disappointed when Prodos Games took the direction they did due to fan feedback. I can honestly say that the Juggernauts I got with my Kickstarter order, nearly put me off the whole line, so I am immensely happy that they produced the MKII so soon after. 

One of the key struggles with this unit is the vast areas of grey paint, which can look dull if painted flat. By taking a subtle NMM (non metallic metal) approach I think I have added enough stark highlight and subtle shadows to make it stand out on the field. To further make this unit stand out, I am thinking of adding red eyes (maybe with a glow), but what i am hoping is that the osl (object source lighting) effects from the flame bits will be what defines these pieces.

Kingdom Death: Storm Knight By Sven

Feeling totally inspired by having finished the Slender Man and being teased by Adam hinting at new releases I couldn't resist to paint another of the rather recently released Kingdom Death models: The Storm Knight. This of course goes against my original plan of doing a human in-between every two monsters, but I feel that this made me lose motivation after having finished the Scribe early this year.

Warzone Resurrection: Late Night Bauhaus Update

Hi guys and gals, just waiting on the bases to dry before I add grass and bits to it and do some gallery shots. I am very pleased with the outcome and am looking forward to extending the paint scheme to the rest of my collection. I have a few units to choose from next, ranging from heavy infantry to the big tank, choices...

I have another two Vorreiters waiting to be built, but I think that will be a few weeks before I work on them as I need a bit of variety to prevent burn out.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Grab your Warzone Resurrection bits and help support the blog by buying from:Wayland Games - Discount Wargames

Warzone Resurrection: Bauhaus Rising!

Greetings all, it has been a long time since any hobby content has come from my end, and quite frankly Sven has been doing a Stirling job of providing excellent content during my hobby drought. Two things have signified the end of my complacency: the arrival of my Warzone Resurrection Wave 2 and the carpet fitting of my new hobby room (more on that in another post). So far regular readers will have seen a huge amount of Mishima miniatures being put together and painted up by my self, this is no surprise as the Prodo interpretation of Samurai in space, is quite frankly spot on. However while I truly have enjoyed my Mishima task force, I am at heart a Bauhaus man.

From the outset of 2013's Warzone Kickstarter I had planned to get at the very least one of everything of the initial Bauhaus release, some of the key lures of this being Vulkan Battlesuits, the Grizzly Battle Tank and the new Vorreiters mounted Hussars. In fact I by the end of the KS I ended up doubling up on almost every release, giving me the option to field 10 person squads of infantry. So with Mishima put away for now I immediately started building or dry fitting some of my favourite figures from the current range. I started two days ago with the probably the most intriguing unit, the Vorreiters:

Kingdom Death: The Slenderman By Sven

As hinted in DiStudios last post, I have finally finished off some more Kingdom Death goodness in the form of The Slender Man. This figure was first shown off as part of the Kickstarter Monster campaign and immediately ranked among my top 3 Kingdom Death miniatures; the others being the King and Lion God. So when Adam released a resin version I was instantly sold. The concept of a baroque Slenderman being just too awesome to resist. The miniature is quite unique in it's own way, the proportions are just so unnatural and I think it has a great, spooky atmosphere about it, it's also very tall, about twice the size of a regular KD-human and... well slender.