Warhammer 40,000 6th edition cover art!

I'm not into the rumours thing that much, i'm just too busy taking care of my not-40k-related stuff, anyway i just found the new 40k cover art in the internet and i thought it could be nice to share. The guys look like Dark Angels so the rumour they would be in the new boxed set could be true... I don't particularly like them but i think their time has come so i hope that GW will give them a good set of rules they surely deserve. Anyway, too bad the picture is out-of-focus... i guess they did this on purpose. Do you see the red bolter? Hail to the red bolter! I love it sooo much!

Old school Ultramarine meltagunner!

Did i ever tell you that i love early 90s Space Marines range?
I find these miniatures amazing even if they look kind of goofy and dolly somehow. Yes, i know: in a world where everyone is looking for true scale Space Marines this may sound silly. Anyway that's how it is, i consider them quite a rarity.

+++ If you own some and want to get rid of them, please contact me +++

This Ultramarine has been built combining all the old stuff (metal body, plastic arms and backpack) with the 1999 slim looking metal meltagun. I was afraid that the overdeformed hands could look awkward with it but on the opposite it seems they quite fit.
Above, the Ultramarine symbol has been painted by hand.

The Tactical designation has been painted by hand as well. the roman numeral is the only decal on this miniature.
The whole model has been painted the usual way, with Vallejo colours plus Citadel's Ultramarines Blue. They fit very well for my personal taste: i love the way 'Eavy Metal studio painted space marines in the 90s and i'm painting every miniature this way. I don't like that much the new Citadel's paint ranges.

Do you like it? Suggestions?

Tigurius WIP

Still WIP but i simply couldn't resist to post this awesome old school miniature! I hope to make this my very best masterpiece!

Ral Partha Wizard!

Sorry for the long wait friends! I hope to be more productive!
I bought this miniature when I was living in Edinburgh. I consider it rare because we can't find anything by Ral Partha here in Italy and I'm sure it is out of production which is in my opinion quite a pity: there are few old school looking fantasy miniatures around these days.
Anyway, I painted it in order to represent in Dungeons & Dragons the usual evil or chaotic wizard you always encounter in towns at night coming back from a long quest:you and the party have no more enchantments nor potions and there comes this guy with his own mob of monsters/thugs screwing up things and maybe even killing someone.

To be honest i'm not satisfied at all with the colour scheme. The main problem is the hat, looks too orange to me while i wanted to paint it yellow with just a bit of depth. I guess I should have not used two layers of orange as background. Well, I will re-paint the hat in some time. Suggestions?

100,000 VISITS!

Just a quick word about this: there's no other way to thank you guys, I love you all for the appreciation and the support you gave me since the founding of Black/Red painting studio!

I swear I'm going to post lots of stuff just to deserve your trust!
thanks again!

Counts as Vulkan (WIP)

I'm afraid many will turn up their noses, anyway...
In the fifth edition Space Marines codex there are some options to make quite competitive army lists: I found that Vulkan of the Salamanders is the most funny and suitable to my way of playing so, since there are no restrictions about the use of special characters in other chapters different from their own, I chose to make Vulkan join my Ultramarines army.
I don't like at all the GW miniature of this Salamanders' hero and even if I liked it I wouldn't buy it because I didn't want to use a Salamander with my Ultramarines, even if it is possible to do that.
So I chose to make a conversion. His name is captain Cassius, my historic Ultramarine commander.
I started from an old metal Space Marine body (precisely mark 7 armour 6, from 1990 range) and then i added stuff in order to reflect Vulkan wargear. After all I like to stick to WYSIWYG rule. I think that this body has lots of personality, seemslike he's looking for enemies to slain.
The Spear of Vulkan, which is a master crafted Relic Blade, became a two handed sword taken from Grey Knights bits. GK weapons are amazing stuff, before them there were no two handed weapons for Space Marines, except some previously released metal stuff.
Gauntlet of the Forge is sort of heavy flamer built in an armour gauntlet so I converted it starting from GK forearm storm bolter. Quite easy.
Kesare's Mantle has been represented with the old Space Marine commander metal cloak. This is going to be painted in some fancy way.
Artificier armour is yet to be represented (as well as Digital Weapons). I'm thinking about some milliput sculpts.

I added some detail in order to show his "veteran" status like a Crux Terminator and some Purity Seals. I also used Space Marine captain sculpted shoulder pads and a Ultramarines banner icon.

What do you think? If you have any suggestion please let me know!

UPDATE: I just saw GW miniature. In comparison mine looks silly! I've got to load my version with more detail so I hope to post it back soon!

Battle Masters Chaos Warrior... again!

I posted this miniature in november 2009, but the halberd sucked so, some time ago I re-painted it. now it's much better! I attempted to do some blending on the blade and I'm quite satisfied about it! I also added some burnt grass on the base (it gives a great "wasteland" taste to the miniature) and took a better picture!
Anyway, more to come!

Sol'Kanar, elven ranger of Cormanthor

The second D&D character I ever had was a ranger. In those days the ranger was the only fighter that could wield two weapons at the same time and this was why in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons there were plenty of them.

My ranger was, and still is, a wood elf from the Cormanthor forest who even spent some time living in the elven fortress of Evereska. With him I played lots of adventures and also the second chapter of Baldur's Gate saga (Shadows of Amn) and both Icewind Dale games during my high school years and later. After a first cycle of adventuring (and some planar travels) he retired for a while, because i switched to a different kind of characters like spellcasters for some time. Then came 3rd edition rules (Dungeons & Dragons 3.0) and I chose this guy to approach the new game. Lots of tales again. Lots of enemies slain in the name of Rillifane Rallatil.

His name is Sol'Kanar, taken from a legendary creature of the game Magic The Gathering which has nothing else to do with my ranger. I just liked the name when i was a really young D&D and Magic player at the same time.

I chose a quite rare miniature (that came for free together with White Dwarf) to represent him: it is Aenur, the Sword of Twilight from Mordheim, the 1999 GW game. He was a high elf mercenary, kind of a swordsman. I like this miniature basically because of the cape and the sword, i found those things well representing the ranger fashion tipical of Sol'Kanar Fireblade.

I can't wait to play a new D&D campaign with him!

Alexei Draconis, cleric of Tempus

This miniature represents my very first D&D character which I created in 1992-93 circa when I was just a kid. At that time I used to play with an italian edition of the classic D&D boxed set and its expansions:

In the beginning he was a simple cleric, without any focus: the cleric was just a healer with some fighting skills even if he couldn't use any edged weapon; its "forgiving" nature of priest forbid him to make the blood run.  His name is now Alexei Draconis but in the first years was Alex of Dragons (which is kind of a silly name for a fantasy character but i guess that's how it goes when you are 7). With the shift to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules set, this guy became a cleric of Tempus but still he bore a morning star or some other bludgeoning weapon. The axe came with the 3rd edition of the rules. Needless to say that all this memories make me really nostalgic!

Right now Alexei Draconis lives in Cimbar, a city of Chessenta (in Faerun, Forgotten Realms), and runs a big temple of good gods. He's involved as a NPC in my last D&D campaign. I wonder if I will ever make him go to adventure another time with a party of adventurers...
By the way, this miniature is a converted Guard of the Citadel (from Lord of the Rings range by Harlequin miniatures). Quite rare stuff, I guess.

Battle Masters Orc!

When i bought my Battle Masters box it was 1992 circa and i was just a little kid so i had no skill at all in painting miniatures. After almost 20 years i'm ready to paint all of that miniatures in an old school fashion, like the way they were painted at that time.
This is an orc which i'm going to use for my Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I painted it to make it look pretty much like the leader of the mob so i gave him some bright clothes and a magical weapon. I'm really happy with the highlights of the skin (50% goblin green + 50% sunburst yellow) and also with the GW's Burnt Grass that is invaluable on a rock base like this one.

Last Imperial Guard Tank Crew member!

This running guy is painted in the same way the previous were. The thing i like best is his green pants. Anyway there's not that much to say about him! do you like it?

Bretonnia: START!

I must tell you, my dear friends, that i decided to start Warhammer Fantasy Battles with Bretonnia since i have many knights from the 1996 boxed set of a friend. I'm really excited about this because of the painting challenges that are waiting me, I think Bretonnians are a big opportunity of having fun with painting all those amazing heraldries! So stay tuned!

BTW: today I won on Ebay the miniature shown above which is a classic metal Bretonnian duke on pegasus... sweet!

Advancing Valhallan Ice Warrior

This is the last Valhallan of this batch. Painted as usual, please just note the particular attention for the details. Nothing more to say, he's just a basic veteran trooper.

Another Valhallan veteran

I love this Valhallan Ice Warrior, the pose is pretty much like "ok: what's going on there?". I find him quite funny and suitable for a static command squad that looks the battle from a second line trench, giving orders or transmitting coordintates to the artillery batteries.

The colour scheme is the usual 34th Valhallan urban camo. Above, the regimental insigna painted on the coat right sleeve.

On the left sleeve it has been painted the squad number. Please note the camo roll this model bears, useful in case of heavy snow.

OOP Commissar into veterans 2nd squad sergeant

More veterans! This guy is an old commissar miniature, 1996 circa i guess, which i used to represent sort of "improved" infantry sergeant so, because of his veteran status, i thought it could be a good idea to replace the usual Valhallan Ice Warriors sergeant with something more sofisticated. I find it very suitable to Valhallans because of his greatcoat and his peaked cap makes him look pretty well like a hardened commander.

His pistol is a now almost disappeared hand flamer which i think is only available to Battle Sisters and Blood Angels but i'm not sure. Anyway even if this isn't available anymore to Imperial Guard, i chose not to replace it because of the beauty of its aquila marking on the side and the rarity of this OOP miniature.

Another Imperial Guard Tank Crew guy!

Welcome back!
This guy is basically the same than the previous one, except he is standing instead of kneeling and he's armed with a lasgun instead of a laspistol. It is quite clear to see what i was telling you before about the black "armoured corps" vest, which makes him quite "panzerdivision" looking. Beside of that, his leather helmet and his black leather boots give him a Soviet taste.

I painted of course a squad patch on his left sleeve.

Valhallan veteran!

One more painted veteran! This time a Valhallan Ice Warrior, the one with the rebreather. I already painted this kind of Valhallan trooper so i tried to make him look a bit more different adopting a slightly different camouflage scheme, darker in comparison to the other miniatures i painted last year. also i introduced a fourth level of highlighting and i must say that i really like how it came out, do you?

Look at how the coat colours and the base colours are blended together but somehow the model manages to stand out and look bright!

OOP Imperial Guard Tank Crew, limited edition

I'm particularly proud of these miniatures: this is one of the three members of the Imperial Guard tank crew that i own. These models came out in 1999 when, with the first 3rd edition codex, you could give tanks a piece of equipment called Crew Escape Mechanism meant to save a D3 members of tank crew in order to avoid losing completely the Victory points of the tank. Very fancy wargear, i wish i could buy this right now for my Russes (i deploy three). These miniatures were available only from GW Mail Order so this made them pretty rare stuff.

I decided to use these three models because i wanted to give my army kinda "survivor" feel, like if it has been deployed for a really long time, so starting from the day this guy lost his tank, i got attached to a veteran infantry squad to allow him to go on fighting.
The colour scheme is a bit different from the other veterans: the trousers are the same but the jacket is, instead of grey-black urban camo, plain black to represent his status of elite tank crew, pretty much like the way WW2 Germans did. In fact in my army i painted tank crews from Leman Russes or artillery with a black vest while the Chimeras' crews just plain olive green (quite Soviet looking).
Anyway, i really love the way i painted the potentiometer on the laspistol! looks like it is glowing in the dark!

Cadian veteran!

I began to paint seriously all of my guardmen: this is the first of the first batch. the camo scheme is the usual urban camo made of medium grey as main colour and black stripes.

Right now i'm using Vallejo game and model colours and for the grey i combined:

• German grey
• Basalt grey 
• Cold grey

Black stripes are painted with:

• Black
• German grey
• Black wash or Lifecolor's Panzer Uniform instead of German grey

 Green fatigues are painted with:

• Yellow olive
• Cayman green
• Camouflage green

I'm particularly happy with the red patch of the squad's number on the left shoulder. This make my guardsmen really tidy, very clear to understand who is who on the battlefield!

Command squad part IV

Fourth and last meltagunner: this one is Animal from Schaeffer Last Chancers. quite rare miniature, out of production of course even if still available from GW mailorder i guess. its rarity is why i've decided to include it in my Valhallan command squad even if it doesn't make much sense to make an almost naked man to walk into a snowy environment. i imagine this guy like a prisoner of war used by the other members of the squad like human shield and/or expendable soldier when the firefight gets tough.

 

this was the last command squad member so that's all for now! see you in a couple of days!