Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2024. Last time around I talked about the Dragon’s Lair GT, and my experiences playing in that event with one last ride of my Thousand Sons. This time I’m talking about what comes next, and my hobby prep for the Grand Narrative in Atlanta.
Right now my calendar is pretty open with regard to competitive play. I only have one event left this year, and that’s a teams event in early December with the Astros Militarum. I don’t know what I’m taking to that yet, but I’ll likely be looking at Death Guard, World Eaters, and Chaos Space Marines for it. Some of it will depend on how the meta shakes out and what the team needs. I’ll need to get some practice games in before then as well, but for now I’m pretty OK with where things are at. If I do World Eaters I’ll need to paint a lot more models than if I do Death Guard, but even the Death Guard will probably require I paint a dozen more Deathshroud. Or at least another six.
Hobby Progress
I didn’t really play any games last weekend, taking a week off. But I did get a fair amount done with regard to hobby progress. The biggest project was one I wasn’t really planning for – after seeing that Legends datasheets will be allowed in Atlanta, I decided I wanted to update one of my favorite models and do a modern Chaos Sorcerer on bike. I’d previously converted one using the old metal sorcerer for my Night Lords army back in third edition, and while I love that model, he’s definitely very small, and not really up to my current painting standard:
I don’t hate the model – that particular sorcerer is my favorite design they’ve done and I wish they’d revisit him in plastic. But I needed something to match my newer Night Lords bikers, who have been specially converted using the current Chaos Space Marine plastic kits. As a result they’re correctly sized compared to the rest of the army.
Converting a Bike Sorcerer
Converting bike models always sucks. You either use the dinky little legs that come with the bike, or you have to do some custom work and that usually involves cutting the legs apart at every joint and re-setting them to make them work. In this case, I started with the plastic Chaos Sorcerer, who’s a solid kit, and gave me something easy to cut apart:
The bike here is just a regular bike. What I like about this model in particular is that his left leg is already separated at the knee, and I could cut out his tabard.
From there I also had to cut out the back of his lower cloak, then I cut his legs apart at the knees and the inner thigh joints. As with all of my bikes, the legs have to be fully repositioned and fixed with green stuff.
My goal with this is to keep the appearance of the lower cloak and to hide the green stuff work with accessories like the a grimoire and a scroll. I also had to come back later and fill in some gaps in the cloak with liquid green stuff to smooth things out.
I filled in the middle section in his crotch area with green stuff mostly, then covered that with a random bit with a gemstone I could paint gold.
From there I positioned the top half of the model back on the legs, and just bent his cape upward so it would clear the back of the bike. This was delicate work and required a bit of liquid green stuff to smooth out, but gives a great visual appearance of the cape billowing out behind the model.
On the front, I did the same visual element I did with the other bikes, using the wings from old finecast Night Lords upgrade sprue helmets. I still have a few of these sitting around and they are perfect for this, acting as a great visual flourish that combos perfectly with the skull on the front of the bikes to complete the Night Lords iconography.
From there it was simply a matter of priming the model and painting him in my current scheme. I’m very happy with how he turned out, but he was definitely a pain in the ass – this model just had so many colors on it and I was always going back and adding more little details to it.
He makes a great companion to my other bikers and also gives the squad a little more weight on the table.
Is this a lot of work for a model I can only use in that one event? Yeah, definitely. Am I happy I worked on him? Absolutely. He’s a really cool model and he adds a lot to the squad. He’s also not bad rules-wise – he’s not packing an amazing psychic attack but he does give the unit -1 to be hit, and that’s pretty nifty, plus he gives them another real melee hitter to boost their melee output.
After I finished my Bike Sorcerer I went back to painting my other Rhino. I have three rhinos but right now I’m only planning to field two at the event, so I went ahead and gave them identical markings. The big difference on this one is the extra strips of flesh, which I made out of green stuff.
It makes a good pair with my other Rhino, and the two of them are now ready to go and transport my Legionaries into battle.
With those out of the way, that basically leaves the following things for me to paint before the Grand Narrative:
- 4 Legionaries (finishing a squad of 5)
- Night Lords Land Raider
- Night Lords Vindicator
- Master of Executions
- 5 Rubrics
- Chaos Cultists
Stretch Goals – If I can find the extra time, I’d also like to get these painted:
- 5 Chosen
- Predator Destructor
- 2 Obliterators
- 5 Raptors
That’s a lot but it’s not too unmanageable – the Vindicator is almost done as I type this, and I can knock out the Land Raider pretty quickly as well. My goal is to have a pretty mobile force that can get around the table easily, which means lots of transports and support units.
Next Time: More Hobby, and Maybe a Game
That’s it for my update this week but come back next Thursday for another hobby update and potentially a practice game in which I test out my Night Lords army against a real opponent.
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