Finally got me some time to put into the Epic 40k Death Guard. These 6mm beauties are always a joy to paint and I usually get carried away with myself if I have a small number of them to concentrate on over a couple of nights. I settled on a quick way to paint them using spray from brown to bone to white with a little drybrushing before detailing them in a fairly flat way with minimal highlights to bring out the detail a tiny bit more crisply.
Death Guard Devastator detachment with their commander – minus 4 rhinos!
There are 6 stands in the devastator detatchment, and they will be getting 3 Rhinos to cart them around. These chaps are part of a larger formation, the company, which is fundamental to choosing epic armies, so you tend to paint minis in formation groups, in this case 19 stands of infantry and 10 rhinos.
Captain looks a bit like he is conducting the choir…
Are you sure such a sensible colour for a cloak is allowed on a GW model from the 90s?
Note the heavy bolter here is converted from a land speeder heavy bolter and green stuff for new arms and the backpack. I really like that low slung heavy bolter look with the suitcase full of ammo on his back. I think I may try to create some more for other command stands later.
This group represents 3% of a codex chapters fighting strength apparently. Having said that this force is painted in a pre-(horus)heresy glory days of xeno-exterminatinon-happy-fun-time of the emperor scheme though, when men were more than men and even a chapters choir was thousands strong 😉 .
Sgt. Whitehead’s burly men
Sgt. Biff – He just looks like a Biff
Sgt. Picard’s compelling annunciations elicit acts of valor from the men
This is what a player generally gets to look at of their models during a game of epic, assuming they have not been obliterated by a barrage missile launcher rolling a 6.
Happy with the painting but the finish could be better. The side effect of spraying can be a slight texture on the surface which is apparent. I might try to do them by hand and drybrush them on the next batch to get better control on the finish.
So next up for this company is 6 tactical stands and 6 jump pack assault stands. I am saving the best bit till last, the 10 Rhinos. Painting tiny versions of 40k vehicles is satisfying stuff, and I can even throw in some minor conversion work!
TheOttoVonBismark 
I enjoy painting and looking at 6mm infantry, but its the vehicles where the scale shines really. In the Epic marine ranges its the rhinos that I most enjoyed painting. I thought that the land raiders would be the most enjoyable, but the standard rhino APCs were the most satisfying, followed closely by a few of the rhino variants, the Whirlwinds in particular.
I mixed a the occasional chaos marine on to my Sin Eaters bases (they are traitors after all). There is a bit of a scale disparity, but they did make painting more fun. They also featured a model shooting his heavy bolter from the hip that looks a lot like that one IIRC… its the seventh guy from the left in the rear rank of this shot:
I remember being amused by the mixing of the chaos models in your force when I looked at them before. I was put in mind of the ones who get the favour of their god before the others which made me think of a space marine Eric Cartman lording it over the other boys in South Park because Nurgle gifted him first.
I also remember enjoying Rhinos and not enjoying the land raiders because of the awkwardness in painting the tracks and joining areas. They suffer from overhangs and you need to rotate them a lot to paint them properly which means you end up handling them. They are a pain to mount on a painting stand any suggestions in good ways to approach them is most welcome.
I superglued the Raiders to paint pots or similar while painting. I subsequently based my epic tanks as I decided thst I liked that uniformity. That would likely remove the need to stick them to pots.
The MK1 design makes painting the links a bit of a chore but the MK2 is a lot less hassle. I would use different techniques to paint them now than I used almost a decade ago, but the tracks have to get some attention one way or another.
The rhinos were way more fun 🙂
Interesting. I might play around with basing them then. I am with you on the uniformity thing so it will be rhinos and raiders all on bases or not. I didn’t really love the square bases I did on my Guard (not that I dislike them particularly either) so I might try coins or washers. I like the idea of square bases – infantry, round bases vehicles for clarity of troop type.
I am not using any MK2 ones as A) I don’t have any of the expensive buggers and B) I want to keep it fairly old school Heresy era where possible. Well it’s mainly A to be honest. 🙂
My MK2s are plastic, from the Epic 40,000 box set, so not too pricey back then.
Pre-heresy is all about the MK1, WWI look anyway.
Indeed. I might even try to covert some bikes into jetbikes – you know the huge phallic ones that seem to be popular among young men for some reason…
The Forge World HH stuff thats so hotrightnow is a full on riff of the Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine era, meaning that the new FF bikes are actually large versions of really old epic bikes. I enjoy the resonance, dewy-eyed grognard that I have become…
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Space_Marines/Space_Marine-Infantry-and-Accessories/LEGION_MKIV_OUTRIDER_SQUADRON.html
These look great, they set the standard pretty high for when I get back to painting some Epic. The heavy bolter conversion is excellent and nice job on the tiny Nurgle banner!
Thanks Subedai. The banner is an ancient transfer from when Citadel/GW first introduced transfers in the “Realm of Chaos” days. It is fortunate that there are a couple of transfers which fit on the tiny marine banner because I could not really find any other apt ones to fit it. I could always do a Subedai freestyler banner 😉 if I was stuck.
I had a look at your epic stuff and you have quite a nice horde there. Your Guard are just as carefully painted than anything on this page!
Often my epic paint jobs were fairly flat affairs as I thought “hey, they are tiny and hard to see so why put too much effort into highlights, it will only double the time to paint them”. I think that this is the conclusion that most people come to also. I now realise that the vast % of time I spend on painting epic models is spent in preparation and basing. It turns out that when I looked at it critically I spent very little time on them doing detail work. I may as well spend much longer on the detail work as the finished product is much more rewarding I feel.
Really nice painting, especially considering the scale. How does one get Epic minis these days? Surely GW doesn’t support the game any more?
Main source of Epic minis is probably Ebay at this stage. They are not really manufactured any more. They are not the most difficult things to cast if you fear not the powers of copyright infringement and don’t mind a little loss in defintion. You never know though, GW might always revisit the scale in some form in the future in some evil scheme to make a quick buck hopefully because they can have my bucks if they do.
I was lucky enough to inherit a horde of stuff from a good friend who used to stockpile stuff but now doesn’t have the inclination or space to keep them. This way they are going to see painting and use rather than sitting in dusty boxes for another 20 years!
I have a mountain of orks, squats, marines and imperial guard to keep me busy for the foreseeable future, a rosy future indeed.