Stargrave Q-Bots (AKA Skullz Servitors)

Everybody knows that robot characters are cool, and that if you have opportunity, you should include them in a starship crew. I wasn't quite sure how best to include some robots in my Cold Trader Stargrave crew, as nothing really seemed to fit the bill stylistically. I happened on the Q-Bot soldier type from the Quarantine 37 supplement and decided that 40k servitors would be a fun way to represent them. I dug out a couple of the early 2000s servitors, but it was nagging me that they didn't have any detail that could be easily passed off as the one-shot flamer or grenade launcher. And then I remembered my Skullz servitors...

The Xenobiologist - Unreleased Rogue Trader Adeptus Mechanicus

Back in 2014 my mind was blown when Steve Casey showcased the unreleased Rogue Trader Adeptus Mechanicus figure on his Eldritch Epistles blog. The figure was from the collection of Bryan Ansell and I instantly both desired it and resigned myself to never owning it.

Happily I was recently able to acquire my own copy of the figure and wasted no time in painting it up!

Let's Talk About Techs, Baby - Rogue Trader Techpriests

About this time of year, five years ago, I painted up Techpriest Zon from the Adventurers range (aka Telepath from the first 40k releases). He was painted up for a speed painting challenge, and I finished him in an hour. Overall, I was pretty happy with the outcome, but I always regretted painting him in a grey tunic (rather than a white lab coat) and giving him ridiculous yellow footwear.




So, lacking a focus for a particular project, I decided to grab a couple of models I fancied painting up - this time a pair of Rogue Trader Techpriests.

Techpriests attending to some a regular maintenance inspection.

Techno techno techno - Meching up Aenur

There's a fun little competition been running on one of the Facebook groups I'm a member of. The basic premise was to take the model of Aenur, the Mordheim Elf Hired Sword, and convert it to sci-fi. Entries are starting to roll in before the 30th September deadline, and seeing as I've just posted my resulting figure, I thought I'd share it here too.

Evo over at Port Imperiale very kindly donated an Aenur for my attention. If you're not familiar with the figure, this is what Aenur looks like unaltered:

My initial reaction was to do something Eldar-y, but then I decided I wanted to try and push things a little further from the original figure. After some thinking, I put together a little visual mock-up of what I wanted to try and do, in the form of an Adeptus Mechanicus tech priest:

Speed Painting Challenge - Tech Priest Zon

On Monday, Orlygg over at Realm of Chaos 80s resurrected the Speed Painting Challenge - a simple competition from the good old days at GW shops and Games Day: grab a model and paint it in an hour.

I usually take 3-4 hours per model, so condensing this down would be a significant challenge. In order to get a model done in an hour, I decided I needed to develop a strategy.

1. Model Selection
This is key; picking an Eldar Harlequin with lots of frills, jewels and different textures is no good. You want something relatively plain and simple. My choice was Rogue Trader era Tech Priest Zon. Although he has some nice details, he essentially only has 3 key areas to paint: tunic, skin, leggings/feet.

Under Orlygg's suggested guidelines, undercoated models with base texture are acceptable.

2. Paint Selection
You're going to need a trim, accessible selection of paints. Most importantly, don't bother with anything light or with high transparency. Dark, high pigment paints are the order of the day - you really want to transfer the paint onto the model in one pass, rather than building up lots of layers.

The selection of paints I planned to use.

So with my strategy in hand, I had the perfect opportunity to try out the challenge as my wife went for her run last night. She usually takes an hour - could I complete Tech Priest Zon before she returned?