Sunday, May 2, 2010

For I am the Angel of Death, and I have come for You

Alright, with the deadline for finishing my Dwarves (which I missed, of course) now passed, I can focus on hammering out Blood Angels for 'Ardboyz. Here's the latest (unpainted) addition to my force. . .


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This is my homemade Astorath the Grim. I know, I know, I totally cheated. The jump pack is the one from the Astorath model. But it's just too amazing not to use! The pictures on GW's website do it no justice whatsoever. When I saw it in the blister, though, it blew my mindhole. The actual model itself I hate. I hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. First off, the whole "armor that looks like muscle" thing was cool. . .when they did it with Mephiston. Doing it again is kind of lame, and I didn't really like it that much in the first place. And could he look a little more like Dracula? Anyway, I picked the mini up so I could build my own, and as I just purchased a crapton of stuff for my Bangels, I had plenty of bits to choose from.

The torso, legs, right arm (with the axe) and shoulder pads are straight out of the Sanguinary Guard sprue. The left arm is from the devastator box, and the head is from the Ravenwing upgrade sprue. All in all, you're talking about a $27 - $28 model ($20 for the blister, and one-fifth of a $33 box plus other stuff), but I really like the way it came out. It was perhaps one of the simplest conversions I've done for a named character. The only thing I had to cut n' file was off of the foot. All of the Sanguinary Guard legs have bits of rubble or stone on the lower foot, to get that dramatic taking off/landing/running pose on the base, so I had to clip that off and file it down. Unfortunately, they also molded designs into the soles of the boots. So, instead of trying to carve the design into the part of the foot I had cut the rubble from, I filed both smooth.

Anyway, I think this bad boy will be a nice addition to my emerging army. It's kind of funny to me, though, that he was one of the first models built, but will be one of the last painted (I tend to paint my characters last).

2 comments:

  1. Very sexy model!! I am a sucker of kitbashing and converting my models. My favorite to convert up are the assault marines. Dual pistols, dual blades, acrobatic positions, all that fun stuff. I am currently putting some Sternguard together for my army and trying to create different ways to make them look good with a basic bolter in hand...lol.

    Awesome job man keep up the good modeling and writing...

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  2. Well thankee! The more I look at the model, though, the more I think it would work better as a DIY Sanguinor. I'm liking the idea of an Angel of Death sort of character that appears on the battlefield, bent on killing the enemy general (as, after all, the Sanguinor chooses an enemy HQ to be his target). Or, I could just use it as either.

    I do agree on the assault marines. Since they're Troops for Bangels, I'm not spending as much time crafting the standard assault marines (just like I wouldn't standard tac marines), but each squad has a unique sarge, a unique brother-corporal (to command the combat squad), and I'm thinking of giving the special weapons troopers unique poses too (after all, they already have nifty shoulder pads). The Vanguard Vets, though, will all have different poses.

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