I’m full of tinier men!
The 40k squad I’m working on now is coming along fairly well, so I reckon I’ll post some pictures here on the ‘tubes. Note that this is a work in progress, so there are plenty of rough and/or unfinished spots — I’m pretty pleased with the progress I’ve made so far, though, and wanted to show it off. Note also that I’m a fairly garbage photographer, and completely inexperienced with taking macro photos; I did the best I could with the lighting given the tools I had at hand, but there are a few places where I’ve done a terrible job with the focus. But I’m getting better.
For this post, since it’s somewhat image-heavy, I’ve made thumbnails. You can click on all the pictures for the large version.
This guy is my Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Lord, the leader of my army. I’m playing Witch Hunters, which is an army that’s all about (as you might expect) purging heretics and unbelievers and (unlike historical witch hunters) actual real witches. This guy is the boss, so he’s a pretty intricate model. In his right hand is a force sword, which is a psychic weapon that ignores armour and can kill anything living in one hit (so not tanks or dreadnaughts, but it works just fine on giant demons and aliens). In his left hand you’ll see an inferno pistol — a rather short-range weapon that fires a concentrated blast of flame that does an extremely high amount of damage, and is highly effective against tanks and robots. As you can see in the larger picture, I haven’t really done his face yet, and I’ve only just started the flames from the pistol. There’s also a fair bit of detail on the back of the model I haven’t done.
This is an Acolyte. This guy (and all the remaining models in this post) are henchmen who work for my Inquisitor — they’re not very powerful on their own, but they give him a pretty decent set of buffs. This guy can take a hit for me; as long as he’s alive, I can redirect one wound per turn from my Inquisitor to the Acolyte. In his own right, you can see he’s covered with flaming this and fire that; that’s the dreaded Brazier of Holy Fire, which can set on fire the hell out of anybody who gets close, and can be used as a flamethrower once per battle. As with the Inquisitor, you can see I haven’t done anything on the face yet, and I’ve only just started the fire.
This big guy’s a Crusader. He makes my Inquisitor more effective in melee, and isn’t any slouch himself — that giant sword is a power sword, which smashes right through armour, and the giant shield makes him very difficult to hurt (and can also be used to bonk enemies in combat!). This model’s probably closer to finished than any of the others; mostly what I need to do here is cleaning up edges and fine-tuning details. The back of the model, which you can’t see, is very plain — really it’s just the back side of that big black cloak.
This is a Familiar — specifically, a Cherub-type familiar. This guy lets my Inquisitor use an extra psychic power and makes him move a bit faster in close combat, and he can also carry weapons for the Inquisitor — in this case, that bolter he’s struggling in vain to get off the ground. He can’t do much on his own, and is probably an easy kill for an opponent who gets to him. This model’s also in pretty good shape, though there’s a fair bit of detail on the back I haven’t worked out yet; I need to do some shading and clean up the edges, but he’s looking nice so far.
This is a Bound Psyker, which is pretty much a witch I’ve already successfully hunted. He’s strapped into some pretty sinister machines that prevent him from using any of the unlicenced psychic powers that got him into this predicament in the first place. Instead, he’s sort of a psychic shield for my Inquisitor — the codex describes him as a "psychic lightning rod," and that’s pretty much the size of it. If anyone tries to hit me with a harmful psychic power, there’s a chance that it’ll channel to "earth" through the Bound Psyker and have no effect. The model itself looks really good from the front like this, but the back is in much rougher shape; there’s a fair bit of detail back there I haven’t wrapped my head around yet, but I’m working on it. I messed up the edges on his gimp mask a wee bit while I was painting around it; it shouldn’t look choppy like that. But on the whole it looks pretty good.
This is a Chiurgeon, which is pretty much a highfalutin’ way of spelling "surgeon." She’s pretty good at keeping my Inquisitor alive, and allows him to ignore the first wound he takes every turn. When combined with the Acolyte’s wound redirection power, this helps make my Inquisitor stunningly hard to kill. As you can see, this model’s not as complete as the previous ones; I still sort of don’t have a handle on where I’m going with this one. My goal was dark red armour and a black cloak with white lining, but I don’t know how well that’s working out; I might go for the more traditional black armour / white cloak if I can’t get the red armour to work how I want it.
Finally we have the Sage. With a sage around, my Inquisitor gets bonuses to his shooting, and he also carries ferocious Inquisitorial Mandates that allow me to pronounce doom upon pretty much any fool crosses me. As with the chiurgeon, I don’t really have a complete handle on what this model should look like yet, but it’s improving; it also helps that I fucked up this photo really badly. You like how I threw the focus up there on his left shoulder? Yeah, that was great. His face looks terrible, but that’s because it’s barely started; he has a half-mask on that I haven’t painted at all, and I’ve only done a single coat of flesh with no details on the non-masked part.
