Epic 40k Evil Sunz Clan

Following on from my previous post about the Snake Bite Clan, I present to you my recently completed Evil Sunz orks for Epic 40,000.

VROOOOOmVROOOmVROOOM!

The Evil Sunz are one of the 2 ork clans that fulfill the role of mechanized infantry in the Ork army list as they come with attached battlewagons – the other mechanized infantry company is the Blood Axe Clan which comes with attached Rhinos. Being attached to the core clan means that they don’t tie up one of the 5 valuable support choice slots which is handy if you want to load up on fast stuff like vehicles.

The Evil Sunz Clan

The core of the force consists of the clan of 15 boyz stands with 5 attached battlewagons as transportation accompanied by 3 stands of nobz with their own battlewagon.

The bikes and buggies can either be taken as support choices for the core clan or alternatively they can be fielded as a standalone Kult of Speed clan.

The Kult of Speed

A scratch built Skullhamma Battlefortress can transport up to 5 stands of infantry if any of the ladz get stranded. It triples it’s move on a charge so it can keep pace with the faster battlewagons. All round armour makes it ideal for flanking charges and the 2 battlecannon can punch big holes in things reasonably accurately at a decent range.

Converted Plastic Battlewagons and Skullhamma

I like how the big model in there gives the whole clan a nice visual focus point and stops the force looking too flat.

A flanking force consisting of a Kult of Speed with a Skullhamma Battlefortress in support

Evil Sunz clan quickly seize the hill supported by a Skullhamma Battlefortress

I would like to add some more vehicles to the clan at a later date, perhaps some Spleenrippas or some more battlewagons. They will probably get a Slasha gargant for the Evil Sunz and a Mekboy gargant for the Kult of Speed as their Clan Totem vehicle. For the moment it’s time to work on finishing off another Ork clan so I can get the army into decent shape. So it’s Bad Moons next.

WIP – Skullhamma Battlefortress

WIP – Battlewagons

Epic 40k Ork Snakebite Clan

Recently I have been filled with desire to work on an old bucket list project of mine, a nicely painted Epic 40,000 force of orks.

Epic 40,000 Ork Snakebite Clan

I intend to play some games with them using the open source NetEpic rules (with some house rules tweaks to it to get rid of the templates as they tend to slow up the game and effectively reduce the available table space).

At 24 stands, the Snakebites are the most numerous Clan, with Goffs in 2nd place at 23!

Working on some scenic items to build up the battlezone thematically alongside the army would be ideal also.

Boss Nobz

To begin with, I decided that I would work on a Snakebite Clan as I have never in all my time painted a single Snakebite, and now I would paint 105 of them at 6/7mm (Epic scale is in fact a bit wobbly with sizes often dramatically different for infantry models – your average person would probably never notice it anyway).

Snakebite Boarboyz

As the Snakebites are supposed to be staunch traditionalists, I wanted them to have a lot of browns, green and metal with a smattering of primary spot colours – like classic fantasy orcs really.

Da Snakebite Boyz

The banners were done by carefully cutting out GW Ork transfer sheets to fit. The Nobz got a bit more attention than the boyz. I converted the Epic Ork Warlord to carry a power klaw cut from an Ork dreadnought. In game terms you have 4 identical stands but to my mind the whole Ork Clan should have the Warboss as the focal point, so there he is!

Snakebite Warboss and Nobz Bodyguard

As there are not a huge variety of models available, I decided that I would make my Snakebites unique by sculpting a special Ork to represent them.

My first 6mm sculpt of an Ork – clearly I am influenced by Aly Morrison’s large head Marauder Space Orks (Trish Carden made the ones with the Normal sized heads for the record)

I did a quick and dirty casting in lead from this – the detail is not quite as crisp as the original but more than adequate to express the idea in miniature.

While I was working on him, I started working on an Ork for when I get around to doing the Goff Clan. I think he is adorable so far <3.

Back on the Brian Nelson/Kev Adams influenced mode for this guy

So that’s a solid 600 points of stuff to begin with. I am looking to add some Squiggoths to this lot and perhaps some Stompas (as they move at about the same speed as the infantry).

Epic 40K Death Guard Battle Company – Infantry Done

Death Guard Battle Company

Finished the infantry for the Death Guard battle company.  They got a fair bit of attention but it’s a labour of love.  Happy with the result and I have developed a streamlined process for painting for painting other Death Guard formations e.g. their Rhinos.

Death Guard Assault Marine Detachment

Couldn’t resist a few minor green stuff conversions for the assault squad.  These guys looked a bit too uniform as there is only one plastic assault marine model.  Differentiation of the Sargeants with some heavy hitting close combat weapons helps to make them look more like their tactical and devastator brethren.

Death Guard Assault Squad – lightening claw and one guy with a broken chainsword (they are delicate little zoggers!)

Death Guard Assault Squad – power fist

Death Guard Assault Squad – power fist

Death Guard Tactical Squad

Death Guard Tactical Squad

Death Guard Tactical Squad

 

Infantry is now done but still waiting for their taxis…

 

Casting bases for my little traitors…

Apologies if this seems a little long winded today.  Being rather visual I prefer to avoid long winded texts in what is fundamentally a blog about pictures of the miniatures I paint.  Sometimes its just unavoidable, as in this case.

It is a wee bit of my technical process for making bases to measure, feel free to just look at the pictures though, I don’t mind.

😉

Convoy!

Epic 40,000 is played with lots of fun tiny models.  Traditionally in epic it seems to me that models were often unpainted as many of my contemporary players used the tanks unbased.  This is not any problem for the rules as it is generally obvious when something is in range or not.  I am from the “base the damn model!” school of thought – the best painters are I hazard to think.

It is better to protect that nice paint job you spent hours on with a sturdy base.  Basing makes painting much easier as I won’t paw my paint job with my trotters accidentally.  Basing is an opportunity to bring uniformity to your forces, or to designate one part of it from another, e.g. square base – infantry, round base – vehicle.

I had some years previously based my imperial guard Epic tanks using Warmaster bases.  This proved to be kind of not quite what I should have done with them.  What I should have done was used a round convex shape.  Round just works better for more shapes of model than rectangular.  The convex shape means the vehicle model can be placed driving up or down the slope and lurching from one side or the other.  This allows a formation of them to get away from the cookie cutter look of lots of tankmodels on planar bases.

For this project I grabbed a suitable shape to begin with.  The most apt thing I could find to hand was an old flying base which I had previously based with sand and spayed black for some abandoned project.  The epic tanks looked good on it and that was enough for me to make a mould.

Master model (with the bit of a pen that was super glued to it) and silicon moulds

I used the two part silicon stuff that hardens from a putty to set in like 10 mins or less.  It takes a bit of trial and error to get it right with this stuff but I like it because I can mould using hot led which is quite dangerous on a few levels but is very 80’s and rock and roll in my twisted mind.   This stuff is soft and easily damaged by carelessness but quite robust vs. lead. It can take a lot of castings (I have gone as high as about 20 but one could certainly do more).  However I found it important to let the mould cool down a little after about 4 castings or the lead takes too long to cool in the mould.

Siligum – comes in larger packs as well

I am not really a fan of resin as it’s not particularly dangerous enough to be exciting but more importantly I can’t bend the $%^! out of a resin casting should I wish to repose a casting a bit.

The base is cast using a high quality lead based alloy

A lovely texture base, exactly what I wanted.

Tiny Rhino

Tiny Land Raider

I promised you some Rhinos…

So now I am off to paint the buggers!

Next issue – Assault and Tactical detatchments!

Battle Company WIP

Battle Company infantry is starting to take shape. I have gotten into a flow with painting the marines now getting the bulk of the work completed on the assault and tactical detachments. They just need some armour highlights and detailing now really.

Battle Company – still minus 10 Rhinos!

Epic 40k Death Guard – Devastator Detatchment

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!

 

Death to the False Emperor!

I recently had a wave of enthusiasm for NetEpic and had a go at painting some Heresy era Death Guard, it doesn’t take much to send me into a painting frenzy for epic scale 40k.  I always find epic models to be very rewarding projects to work on.  It’s a damn shame they have dropped support for this scale.  Luckily I have a decent horde of those old models so that I can now paint up several armies for it at my leisure.

So I decided on space marines and messed about with the Minotaur colour scheme which is basically copper coloured.  I didn’t like it and changed to a heresy era Death Guard colour scheme which I think is much brighter on the tabletop.

Death Guard Company HQ with Devastator Squad

You want to be able to make out those details at this scale so a bright scheme is your friend in this regard.  The Death Guard being predominantly white fit the bright requirement nicely and I really like the burnished gold edging on the armour to boot.

Pre-Heresy Death Guard

 

The green colour I could take or leave and notably the original Death Guard scheme was red and white which looks kind of cool, but I painted them green anyways…for now.

The Death Guard in the days of Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine wore red it seems